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Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast - Burning Down The House
Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It’s like being buried alive in Jell-O. It’s embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war.
Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical “recovery” and the “shale gas miracle” on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations.
Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt — with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage. Some of us are anxious to get on with the job, to expel all the rats, bats, bedbugs, roaches, and lice, tear out the stinking shag carpet and the moldy sheet-rock, rip off the crappy plastic siding, and start rebuilding along lines that are consistent with the demands of the future — namely, the reality of capital and material resource scarcity. But it has been apparent for a while that the current owners of the house would prefer to let it fall down, or burn down rather than renovate.
Some of us now take that outcome for granted and are left to speculate on how it will play out. These issues were the subjects of my recent non-fiction books, The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic (as well as excellent similar books by Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, Dmitry Orlov, and others). They describe the conditions at the end of the cheap energy techno-industrial phase of history and they laid out a conjectural sequence of outcomes that might be stated in shorthand as collapse and re-set. I think the delay in the onset of epochal change can be explained pretty simply. As the peak oil story gained traction around 2005, and was followed (as predicted) by a financial crisis, the established order fought back for its survival, utilizing its remaining dwindling capital and the tremendous inertia of its own gigantic scale, to give the appearance of vitality at all costs.
At the heart of the matter was (and continues to be) the relationship between energy and economic growth. Without increasing supplies of cheap energy, economic growth — as we have known it for a couple of centuries — does not happen anymore. At the center of the economic growth question is credit. Without continued growth, credit can’t be repaid, and new credit cannot be issued honestly — that is, with reasonable assurance of repayment — making it worthless. So, old debt goes bad and the new debt is generated knowing that it is worthless. To complicate matters, the new worthless debt is issued to pay the interest on the old debt, to maintain the pretense that it is not going bad. And then all kinds of dishonest side rackets are run around this central credit racket — shadow banking, “innovative” securities (i.e. new kinds of frauds and swindles, CDOs CDSs, etc.), flash trading, insider flimflams, pump-and-dumps, naked shorts, etc. These games give the impression of an economy that seems to work. But the reported “growth” is phony, a concoction of overcooked statistics and wishful thinking. And the net effect moves the society as a whole in the direction of more destructive ultimate failure.
Now, a number of stories have been employed lately to keep all these rackets going — or, at least, keep up the morale of the swindled masses. They issue from the corporations, government agencies, and a lazy, wishful media. Their purpose is to prop up the lie that the dying economy of yesteryear is alive and well, and can continue “normal” operation indefinitely. Here are the favorites of the past year:
- Shale oil and gas amount to an “energy renaissance” that will keep supplies of affordable fossil fuels flowing indefinitely, will make us “energy independent,” and will make us “a bigger producer than Saudi Arabia.” This is all mendacious bullshit with a wishful thinking cherry on top. Here’s how shale oil is different from conventional oil:
- A “manufacturing renaissance” is underway in the US, especially in the “central corridor” running from Texas north to Minnesota. That hoopla is all about a few chemical plants and fertilizer factories that have reopened to take advantage of cheaper natural gas. Note, the shale gas story is much like the shale oil story in terms of drilling and production. The depletion rates are quick and epic. In a very few years, shale gas won’t be cheap anymore. Otherwise, current talk of new manufacturing for hard goods is all about robots. How many Americans will be employed in these factories? And what about the existing manufacturing over-capacity everywhere else in the world? Are we making enough sneakers and Justin Beiber dolls? File under complete fucking nonsense.
- The USA is “the cleanest shirt in the laundry basket,” “the best house in a bad neighborhood,” the safest harbor for international “liquidity,” making it a sure bet that both the equity and bond markets will continue to ratchet up as money seeking lower risk floods in to the Dow and S & P from other countries with dodgier economies and sicker banks. In a currency war, with all nations competitively depreciating their currencies, gaming interest rates, manipulating markets, falsely reporting numbers, hiding liabilities, backstopping bad banks, and failing to regulate banking crime, there are no safe harbors. The USA can pretend to be for a while and then that illusion will pop, along with the “asset” bubbles that inspire it.
- The USA is enjoying huge gains from fantastic new “efficiencies of technological innovation.” The truth is not so dazzling. Computer technology, produces diminishing returns and unanticipated consequences. The server farms are huge energy sinks. Online shopping corrodes the resilience of commercial networks when only a few giant companies remain standing; and so on. Problems like these recall the central collapse theory of Joseph Tainter which states that heaping additional complexity on dysfunctional hyper-complex societies tends to induce their collapse. Hence, my insistence that downscaling, simplifying, re-localizing and re-setting the systems we depend on are imperative to keep the project of civilization going. That is, if you prefer civilization to its known alternatives.
Notice that all of these stories want to put over the general impression that the status quo is alive and well. They’re based on the dumb idea that the stock markets are a proxy for the economy, so if the Standard & Poor’s 500 keeps on going up, it’s all good. The master wish running through the American zeitgeist these days is that we might be able to keep driving to Wal-Mart forever.
The truth is that we still have a huge, deadly energy problem. Shale oil is not cheap oil, and it will stop seeming abundant soon. If the price of oil goes much above $100 a barrel, which you’d think would be great for the oil companies, it will crash demand for oil. If it crashes demand, the price will go down, hurting the profitability of the shale oil companies. It’s quite a predicament. Right now, in the $90-100-a-barrel range, it’s just slowly bleeding the economy while barely allowing the shale oil producers to keep up all the drilling. Two-thirds of all the dollars invested (more than $120 billion a year) goes just to keep production levels flat. Blogger Mark Anthony summarized it nicely:
…the shale oil and gas developers tend to use unreliable production models to project unrealistically high EURs (Estimated Ultimate Recovery) of their shale wells. They then use the over-estimated EURs to under-calculate the amortization costs of the capital spending, in order to report “profits”, despite of the fact that they have to keep borrowing more money to keep drilling new wells, and that capital spending routinely out paces revenue stream by several times… shale oil and gas producers tend to over-exaggerate productivity of their wells, under-estimate the well declines…in order to pitch their investment case to banks and investors, so they can keep borrowing more money to keep drilling shale wells.
As stated in the intro, these perversities reverberate in the investment sector. Non-cheap oil upsets the mechanisms of capital formation — financial growth is stymied — in a way that ultimately affects the financing of oil production itself. Old credit cannot be repaid, scaring off new credit (because it is even more unlikely to be repaid). At ZIRP interest, nobody saves. The capital pools dry up. So the Federal Reserve has to issue ersatz credit dollars on its computers. That credit will remain stillborn and mummified in depository institutions afraid of lending it to the likes of sharpies and hypesters in the shale gas industry.
But real, functioning capital (credit that can be paid back) is vanishing, and the coming scarcity of real capital makes it much more difficult to keep the stupendous number of rigs busy drilling and fracking new shale oil wells, which you have to do incessantly to keep production up, and as the investment in new drilling declines, and the “sweet spots” yield to the less-sweet spots or the not-sweet-at-all spots… then the Ponzis of shale oil and shale gas, too will be unmasked as the jive endeavors they are. And when people stop believing these cockamamie stories, the truth will dawn on them that we are in a predicament where further growth and wealth cannot be generated and the economy is actually in the early stages of a permanent contraction, and that will trigger an unholy host of nasty consequences proceeding from the loss of faith in these fairy tales, going so far as the meltdown of the banking system, social turmoil, and political upheaval.
The bottom line is that the “shale revolution” will be short-lived. 2014 may be the peak production year in the Bakken play of North Dakota. Eagle Ford in Texas is a little younger and may lag Bakken by a couple of years. If Federal Reserve policies create more disorder in the banking system this year, investment for shale will dry up, new drilling will nosedive, and shale oil production will go down substantially. Meanwhile. conventional oil production in the USA continues to decline remorselessly.
The End of Fed Cred
It must be scary to be a Federal Reserve governor. You have to pretend that you know what you’re doing when, in fact, Fed policy appears completely divorced from any sense of consequence, or cause-and-effect, or reality — and if it turns out you’re not so smart, and your policies and interventions undermine true economic resilience, then the scuttling of the most powerful civilization in the history of the world might be your fault — even if you went to Andover and wear tortoise-shell glasses that make you appear to be smart.
The Fed painted itself into a corner the last few years by making Quantitative Easing a permanent feature of the financial landscape. QE backstops everything now. Tragically, additional backdoor backstopping extends beyond the QE official figures (as of December 2013) of $85 billion a month. American money (or credit) is being shoveled into anything and everything, including foreign banks and probably foreign treasuries. It’s just another facet of the prevailing pervasive dishonesty infecting the system that we have no idea, really, how much money is being shoveled and sprinkled around. Anything goes and nothing matters. However, since there is an official consensus that you can’t keep QE money-pumping up forever, the Fed officially made a big show of seeking to begin ending it. So in the Spring of 2013 they announced their intention to “taper” their purchases of US Treasury paper and mortgage paper, possibly in the fall.
Well, it turned out they didn’t or couldn’t taper. As the fall equinox approached, with everyone keenly anticipating the first dose of taper, the equity markets wobbled and the interest rate on the 10-year treasury — the index for mortgage loans and car loans — climbed to 3.00 percent from its May low of 1.63 — well over 100 basis points — and the Fed chickened out. No September taper. Fake out. So, the markets relaxed, the interest rate on the 10-year went back down, and the equity markets resumed their grand ramp into the Christmas climax. However, the Fed’s credibility took a hit, especially after all their confabulating bullshit “forward guidance” in the spring and summer when they couldn’t get their taper story straight. And in the meantime, the Larry-Summers-for-Fed-Chair float unfloated, and Janet Yellen was officially picked to succeed Ben Bernanke, with her reputation as an extreme easy money softie (more QE, more ZIRP), and a bunch of hearings were staged to make the Bernanke-Yellen transition look more reassuring.
And then on December 18, outgoing chair Bernanke announced, with much fanfare, that the taper would happen after all, early in the first quarter of 2014 — after he is safely out of his office in the Eccles building and back in his bomb shelter on the Princeton campus. The Fed meant it this time, the public was given to understand.
The only catch here, as I write, after the latest taper announcement, is that interest on the 10-year treasury note has crept stealthily back up over 3 percent. Wuh-oh. Not a good sign, since it means more expensive mortgages and car loans, which happen to represent the two things that the current economy relies on to appear “normal.” (House sales and car sales = normal in a suburban sprawl economy.)
I think the truth is the Fed just did too darn much QE and ZIRP and they waited way too long to cut it out, and now they can’t end it without scuttling both the stock and bond markets. But they can’t really go forward with the taper, either. A rock and a hard place. So, my guess is that they’ll pretend to taper in March, and then they’ll just as quickly un-taper. Note the curious report out of the American Enterprise Institute ten days ago by John H. Makin saying that the Fed’s actual purchase of debt paper amounted to an average $94 billion a month through the year 2013, not $85 billion. Which would pretty much negate the proposed taper of $5 billion + $5 billion (Treasury paper + Mortgage paper).
And in so faking and so doing they may succeed in completely destroying the credibility of the Federal Reserve. When that happens, capital will be disappearing so efficiently that the USA will find itself in a compressive deflationary spiral — because that’s what happens when faith in the authority behind credit is destroyed, and new loans to cover the interest on old loans are no longer offered in the non-government banking system, and old loans can’t be serviced. At which point the Federal Reserve freaks out and announces new extra-special QE way above the former 2013 level of $85 billion a month, and the government chips in with currency controls. And that sets in motion the awful prospect of the dreaded “crack-up boom” into extraordinary inflation, when dollars turn into hot potatoes and people can’t get rid of them fast enough. Well, is that going to happen this year? It depends on how spooked the Fed gets. In any case, there is a difference between high inflation and hyper-inflation. High inflation is bad enough to provoke socio-political convulsion. I don’t really see how the Fed gets around this March taper bid without falling into the trap I’ve just outlined. It wouldn’t be a pretty situation for poor Ms. Janet Yellen, but nobody forced her to take the job, and she’s had the look all along of a chump, the perfect sucker to be left holding a big honking bag of flop.
We’re long overdue for a return to realistic pricing in all markets. The Government and its handmaiden, the Fed, have tweaked the machinery so strenuously for so long that these efforts have entered the wilderness of diminishing returns. Instead of propping up the markets, all they can accomplish now is further erosion of the credibility of the equity markets and the Fed itself — and that bodes darkly for a money system that is essentially run on faith. I think the indexes have topped. The “margin” (money borrowed to buy stock) in the system is at dangerous, historically unprecedented highs. There may be one final reach upward in the first quarter. Then the equities crater, if not sooner. I still think the Dow and S &P could oversell by 90 percent of their value if the falsehoods of the post-2008 interventions stopped working their hoodoo on the collective wishful consciousness.
The worldwide rise in interest rates holds every possibility for igniting a shitstorm in interest rate swaps and upsetting the whole apple-cart of shadow banking and derivatives. That would be a bullet in the head to the TBTF banks, and would therefore lead to a worldwide crisis. In that event, the eventual winners would be the largest holders of gold, who could claim to offer the world a trustworthy gold-backed currency, especially for transactions in vital resources like oil. That would, of course, be China. The process would be awfully disorderly and fraught with political animus. Given the fact that China’s own balance sheet is hopelessly non-transparent and part-and-parcel of a dishonest crony banking system, China would have to use some powerful smoke-and-mirrors to assume that kind of dominant authority. But in the end, it comes down to who has the real goods, and who screwed up (the USA, Europe, Japan) and China, for all its faults and perversities, has the gold.
The wholesale transfer of gold tonnage from the West to the East was one of the salient events of 2013. There were lots of conspiracy theories as to what drove the price of gold down by 28 percent. I do think the painful move was partly a cyclical correction following the decade-long run up to $1900 an ounce. Within that cyclical correction, there was a lot of room for the so-called “bullion banks” to pound the gold and silver prices down with their shorting orgy. Numerous times the past year, somebody had laid a fat finger on the “sell” key, like, at four o’clock in the morning New York time when no traders were in their offices, and the record of those weird transactions is plain to see in the daily charts. My own theory is that an effort was made — in effect, a policy — to suppress the gold price via collusion between the Fed, the US Treasury, the bullion banks, and China, as a way to allow China to accumulate gold to offset the anticipated loss of value in the US Treasury paper held by them, throwing China a big golden bone, so to speak — in other words, to keep China from getting hugely pissed off. The gold crash had the happy effect for the US Treasury of making the dollar appear strong at a time when many other nations were getting sick of US dollar domination, especially in the oil markets, and were threatening to instigate a new currency regime by hook or by crook. Throwing China the golden bone is also consistent with the USA’s official position that gold is a meaningless barbaric relic where national currencies are concerned, and therefore nobody but the barbaric yellow hordes of Asia would care about it.
Other nations don’t feel that way. Russia and Switzerland have been accumulating gold like crazy at bargain prices this year. Last year, Germany requested its sovereign gold cache (300 tons) to be returned from the vaults in America, where it was stored through all the decades of the cold war, safe from the reach of the Soviets. But American officials told the Germans it would take seven years to accomplish the return. Seven years ! ! ! WTF? Is there a shortage of banana boats? The sentiment in goldville is that the USA long ago “leased” or sold off or rehypothecated or lost that gold. Anyway, Germany’s 300 tons was a small fraction of the 6,700 tons supposedly held in the Fed’s vaults. Who knows? No auditors have been allowed into the Fed vaults to actually see what’s up with the collateral. This in and of itself ought to make the prudent nervous.
I think we’re near the end of these reindeer games with gold, largely because so many vaults in the West have been emptied. That places constraints on further shenanigans in the paper gold (and silver) markets. In an environment where both the destructive forces of deflation and inflation can be unleashed in sequence, uncertainty is the greatest motivator, trumping the usual greed and fear seen in markets that can be fairly measured against stable currencies. In 2014, the public has become aware of the bank “bail-in” phenomenon which, along with rehypothication schemes, just amounts to the seizure of customer and client accounts — a really new wrinkle in contemporary banking relations. Nobody knows if it’s safe to park cash money anywhere except inside the mattress. The precedent set in Cyprus, and the MF Global affair, and other confiscation events, would tend to support an interest in precious metals held outside the institutional framework. Uncertainty rules.
Miscellany
I get a lot of email on the subject of Bitcoin. Here’s how I feel about it.
It’s an even more abstract form of “money” than fiat currencies or securities based on fiat currencies. Do we need more abstraction in our economic lives? I don’t think so. I believe the trend will be toward what is real. For the moment, Bitcoin seems to be enjoying some success as it beats back successive crashes. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of investing in an algorithm. I don’t see how it is impervious to government hacking. In fact, I’d bet that somewhere in the DOD or the NSA or the CIA right now some nerd is working on that. Bitcoin is provoking imitators, other new computer “currencies.” Why would Bitcoin necessarily enjoy dominance? And how many competing algorithmic currencies can the world stand? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of an alternative “go to” currency? All I can say is that I’m not buying Bitcoins.
Will ObamaCare crash and burn. It’s not doing very well so far. In fact, it’s a poster-child for Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong). I suppose the primary question is whether they can enroll enough healthy young people to correct the actuarial nightmare that health insurance has become. That’s not looking so good either now. But really, how can anyone trust a law that was written by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry? And how can it be repealed when so many individuals, groups, companies, have already lost their pre-ObamaCare policies? What is there to go back to? Therefore, I’d have to predict turmoil in the health care system for 2014. The failure to resolve the inadequacies of ObamaCare also may be a prime symptom of the increasing impotence of the federal government to accomplish anything. That failure would prompt an even faster downscaling of governance as states, counties, communities, and individuals realize that they are on their own.
Sorry to skip around, but a few stray words about the state of American culture. Outside the capitals of the “one percent” — Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, etc. — American material culture is in spectacular disrepair. Car culture and chain store tyranny have destroyed the physical fabric of our communities and wrecked social relations. These days, a successful Main Street is one that has a wig shop and a check-cashing office. It is sickening to see what we have become. Our popular entertainments are just what you would design to produce a programmed population of criminals and sex offenders. The spectacle of the way our people look —overfed, tattooed, pierced, clothed in the raiment of clowns — suggests an end-of-empire zeitgeist more disturbing than a Fellini movie. The fact is, it simply mirrors the way we act, our gross, barbaric collective demeanor. A walk down any airport concourse makes the Barnum & Bailey freak shows of yore look quaint. In short, the rot throughout our national life is so conspicuous that a fair assessment would be that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished.
Elsewhere in the World
Globalism, in the Tom Friedman euphoric sense, is unwinding. Currency wars are wearing down the players, conflicts and tensions are breaking out where before there were only Wal-Mart share price triumphs and Foxconn profits. Both American and European middle-classes are too exhausted financially to continue the consumer orgy of the early millennium. The trade imbalances are horrific. Unpayable debt saturates everything. Sick economies will weigh down commodity prices except for food-related things. The planet Earth has probably reached peak food production, including peak fertilizer. Supplies of grain will be inadequate in 2014 to feed the still-expanding masses of the poor places in the world.
The nervous calm in finance and economies since 2008 has its mirror in the relative calm of the political scene. Uprisings and skirmishes have broken out, but nothing that so far threatens the peace between great powers. There have been the now-historic revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other Middle East and North African (MENA) states. Iraq is once again disintegrating after a decade of American “nation-building.” Greece is falling apart. Spain and Italy should be falling apart but haven’t yet. France is sinking into bankruptcy. The UK is in on the grift with the USA and insulated from the Euro, but the British Isles are way over-populated with a volatile multi-ethnic mix and not much of an economy outside the financial district of London. There were riots in — of all places — Sweden this year. Turkey entered crisis just a few weeks ago along with Ukraine.
I predict more colorful political strife in Europe this year, boots in the street, barricades, gunfire, and bombs. The populations of these countries will want relief measures from their national governments, but the sad news is that these governments are broke, so austerity seems to be the order of the day no matter what. I think this will prod incipient revolts in a rightward nationalist direction. If it was up to Marine LePen’s rising National Front party, they would solve the employment problem by expelling all the recent immigrants — though the mere attempt would probably provoke widespread race war in France.
The quarrel between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands is a diversion from the real action in the South China Sea, said to hold large underwater petroleum reserves. China is the world’s second greatest oil importer. Their economy and the credibility of its non-elected government depends on keeping the oil supply up. They are a long way from other places in the world where oil comes from, hence their eagerness to secure and dominate the South China Sea. The idea is that China would make a fuss over the Senkaku group, get Japan and the US to the negotiating table, and cede the dispute over them to Japan in exchange for Japan and the US supporting China’s claims in the South China Sea against the other neighbors there: Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
The catch is that Japan may be going politically insane just now between the rigors of (Shinzo) Abenomics and the mystical horrors of Fukushima. Japan’s distress appears to be provoking a new mood of nationalist militarism of a kind not seen there since the 1940s. They’re talking about arming up, rewriting the pacifist articles in their constitution. Scary, if you have a memory of the mid-20th century. China should know something about national psychotic breaks, having not so long ago endured the insanity of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-71). So they might want to handle Japan with care. On the other hand, China surely nurtures a deep, deadly grudge over the crimes perpetrated by Japan in the Second World War, and now has a disciplined, world-class military, and so maybe they would like to kick Japan’s ass. It’s a hard one to call. I suspect that in 2014, the ball is in Japan’s court. What will they do? If the US doesn’t stay out of the way of that action, then we are insane, too.
That said, I stick by my story from last year’s forecast: Japan’s ultimate destination is to “go medieval.” They’re never going to recover from Fukushima, their economy is unraveling, they have no fossil fuels of their own and have to import everything, and their balance of payments is completely out of whack. The best course for them will be to just throw in the towel on modernity. Everybody else is headed that way, too, eventually, so Japan might as well get there first and set a good example.
By “go medieval” I mean re-set to a pre-industrial World Made By Hand level of operation. I’m sure that outcome seems laughably implausible to most readers, but I maintain that both the human race and the planet Earth need a “time out” from the ravages of “progress,” and circumstances are going to force the issue anyway, so we might as well kick back and get with the program: go local, downscale, learn useful skills, cultivate our gardens, get to know our neighbors, learn how to play a musical instrument, work, dine, and dance with our friends.
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I think you must have a bad case of yourself.
VD, you are both correct and incorrect.
There is indeed no consensus on why the Classical Mayan civilization collapsed, as there cannot be such a consensus, as the Mayan civilization collapsed at different periods in different areas for a number of different reasons. Most or all of these reasons, however, ARE fundamentally related to resource depletion, whether due to soil exhaustion, topsoil loss, disease due to malnutrition due to inadequate nutrition due to soil exhaustion and topsoil loss, or drought and overpopulation aggravating all of the above. The proximate cause (trigger) of the collapse of each city and each region no doubt differs, but the underlying cause of the overall civilization's collapse is not in doubt --- except for dogmatic deniers of historical and scientific fact such as yourself.
Thanks for playing.
which resources now? give me a fucking break! cite your fucking Mayan references why don't you. you act like you were there. maybe you can tell us that the Romans ran out of oil too¿¿ r u fucking trolling with a purpose here? what FACT can you cite when you admit there is NO consensus....just theories like peak oil theories like you have no clue man. go plant a fucking potato... over and out.
Theories are just theories. And my time machine is out for repairs. Quote your own that supports your position. Please. So far you haven't provided any contrary argument.
FYI - even Nasa has theorized resource depletion as a probable contributing factor for the Mayans.
i've reviewed reports on energy and done my due diligence. that is why these idiotic theories and inane generalizations are just so amatuer and annoying. i typed my peace -- there is no winning with rubes. i can link u to energy papers and such but there's no point to that....
Dude, have you ever considered just looking at the world around you?
Oh, I'm sure he has, but when one has one's head in the sand, the perspective is pretty limited.
If you wrote a message on a large nail and hammered it into his head, he still wouldn't get it.
Just stop wasting your time and effort on a hopeless case.
the dozen ZH morons have banded in theory alone.
here's a theory: perhaps the Mayan's had a central bank cartel that sacrificed the (debt-) slaves at the alter and that tipped the scales to their (un)timely demise.
peak oil LOL! peak stupidity on the other hand will never be reached as proved by akak et al. njoy trolling urselvz.
akak's head is in the sand looking for peak oil
SyphilisSays's head is in her crack looking for VD.
Imminent Cunt has her troll head up her mother's ass looking for peak oil
Hmmm.... VD seemed to be thinking about putting things up asses and now you. Hmmm... Is Sylviasays an alternate account for VD, or should we all chip in and get you boys a room?
dude uncle remus creates his own world and needs to lay off the meth and crack
Confirmation bias here......
When you get the time machine back, zoom ahead 2-300 years and come back and let us know how it played out.
Thanks.
Oil (economically viable oil) has got to run out eventually, why can't this occur in your lifetime. I have the same argument with my old man who suffers from normalcy bias. Go watch Professor Alan Bartletts lecture on population, food and energry and our lack of understanding on the exponential function then come back to this thread.
See, it's possible to be civil . . . . . . cunt.
Professor Albert Bartlett – physicist b1923
"Can you think of any problem on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?"
http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html
peak oil trolls are out in force tonight
What . . . . . . trolls for peak oil. Does that make sense. Are non peak oil theorists then non peak oil trolls. I'm amazed this is even up for debate. The problem as always is definition. I would argue that at the "current" rate of oil consumption, and the current rate of population growth, and the current rate of industrialisation then peak oil has coime and gone. However, if any of the aforementioned facts changes significantly then peak oil will not have been achieved.
At the current rate things are going though we are seriously screwed. Environmental degradation alone is enough to sink our ship. Mother nature though has this insidious and uncanny ability to balance the scales. The scene may be set to rebalance the scales in a dramatic fashion. With ongoing uncontrolled Fukushima radiation pouring into the Pacific and jetstream leaking enough contaminants into the environment to weaken our immune systems, not kill us mind you, just weaken our immune systems then a H1N1 outbreak or other nasty strain of flu and WHAM . . . . . . . . a billion people pushing up dasies. By identifying this black swan have I neutralised it?
peak oil trolls like green energy where billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars disappear in bankrupt companies like solyndra or disappear into slush funds to re-elect democraps
How do you ever address the issue though. I've often thought the entire anthropmorhpic global warming argument was complete bullshit but if it starts humans thinking about the incredible damage we're doing to this world, environmentally, then this is a good outcome. The real problem is the greed that has become the norm. No longer can you trust anyone to promote a cause that they don't have a financial vested interest in. This will simply accelerate the demise of our culture, society and evntually species.
I strongly suspect though we are not going to have to deal, in any meaningful fashion, with climate change or peak oil because the days of 7 billion humans is numbered. If we were moral thoughful creatures who placed as the number one priority, the environment, then 7 billion would be no problems for the earth to accomodate. But to think we can treat our ecosystem with absolute contempt and still thrive, well this is typically childish of the adult human being.
The Bernanke is a reincarnated High Priest of the Sacrifice. Given the dearth of virgins in contemporary society, he has deemed entire economies as a suitable alternative. Evisceration is evisceration.
And, it scales!
I'm starting to like you
AkAk Don't encourage the trolls. Your clarity is lost on anyone who obviously knows it all.
"Some minds are like cement, all mixed up and permanently set"
They're not here to exchange ideas...
akak is the peak oil troll
I know you are but what am I?
Nah nah nah nah nah!
(Just trying to keep it on your own level.)
nah nah nah you be just a fucking peak oil troll! nah nah nah!
You have absolutely no fucking idea how funny that statement is...
"I tried to type slowly, as I know you cannot read very fast."
Can I use that one?
It's so old, it's almost new again, but sure, it's all yours.
ergo akak, the pompous peak oil troll speaks again about which it knows nothing of.
how's life working out for you as a tranny?
No that's funny, as we all know "History is a series of lies agreed upon" and on these cultures we have basically only tea leaf readings - but you take them as "p(r)oof!"
peak trees
peak social complexity/supply-chains
etc.
Jesus. The game playing here is all you VD. The concept is that resources are for the most part finite. Infinite growth is not possible. Simple math.
In our case, resource constaints ARE the constraint at the base of the ponzi scheme that is our global economy. Social complexity, politics, etc. all are part of determining the "peak" beyond which growth is no longer possible and decline usually occurs - or war.
If only it was peak human beings.
OK, the silly bastards who donw arrowed me, who want more people, identify yourselves . . . . . . . . you . . . . . you . . . . . Christians.
Screw you. I am a Christian. I did not Down Arrow your sorry atheistic Animal Kingdom ass. I have been awarding Greens to you, jerk.
Now...just go and DIE...DIE...DIE
/sarc
It is probably those Statist jerks who think that Shale Oil is going to save them from the Mathematics of Collapse.
We need to go Lunar, mine Helium-3, and build Fusion Reactors. Make NASA do its job.
Even Robotic Mining Operations on the Lunar Surface will do the task.
Another peak oil troll who forgot to medicate tonite?
peak oil = peak human beings, unless a high-energy density substitute can be found.
Buzz off and come back after you have done your homework. Here read Jared Diamond's "Collapse", then come back and tell us what you learned retard!
I thought the Norse at least on Greenland were doomed by climate change? It got cold...
Peak warm weather.
Ha ha. Just kidding. Don't know shit about the Greenland Norse. Got to look this up tomorrow.
The Norse in Greenland are a particularly instructive and poignant example of societal collapse and outright extinction.
Being pastoralists, they were fundamentally doomed by the cooling climate of the Little Ice Age, yet they could probably have survived if they had been willing to adopt some of the survival strategies of their Inuit neighbors, much less not have funneled so much of their efforts and limited resources into trying to maintain their churches and church hierarchy, or most egregriously sending many men off on the Nordsetr hunt during the short summer for polar bears and narwhals to 'pay' for imported but non-essential luxury goods from Europe related to said churches and church hierarchy (such as brass bells, communion wine, vestments, gold and silver chalices, etc.), none of which they were willing to do even in the face of their own extinction.
see akak your above explanation proves definitively that you have no fucking clue about today's energy tech/markets/projections. the world is a bit more complex these days...
Oh, I forgot, "This time is different!".
The lame fallback of the historically ignorant.
it will be the same, but the theories will be different this time... PLEASE REFER TO MALTHUS' work on this -- he too failed.
If you could ask the ghosts of the Classical Maya, they would probably tell you that Malthus was pretty much dead-on. Pun intended.
akak, the peak oil troll falls back on lame insults typical of the historical ignorant.
Well, accidentially I know for sure that akak did break a window lastly, thereby providing GROATH to the economy! What did you accomplish?! (Besides tacky ad-homs, which in no way can compete with the quality-stuff from, say, MillionDollarBonus.)
I think akaks post made perfect sense. Put more simply, they expended finite resources on stupid shit they didn't need, which left them without sufficient resources for things essential to their survival. Sound like another society y'all know?
Well Put!
DaddyO
Thanks GC, and I agree completely with your summation.
The situation with the Norse Greenlanders was even more insane than laid out above, as their effort-wasting (my opinion, of course) long-distance Nordsetr hunts to northern Greenland for ivory and polar bears (some of which they exported to Norway LIVE --- and in small and open-decked boats!) to pay for their church-related luxuries deprived them of the time to make sufficient trips to "Markland" (i.e., Labrador) to harvest and bring back sufficient timber with which to make the extra boats which they could have used for fishing. Because, as utterly astounding as it may seem, and contrary to their recent cultural background, the Greenland Norse did NOT engage in fishing in any way! The resource was there, and was vast, and was utilized by the more northerly Inuit, but the Norse did not and could not exploit the tremendous abundance of fish in their outer waters due to both the lack of boats as well as the lack of sea ice-free time in which to fish, choosing instead to subsidize their insanely expensive church hierarchy and trappings, and to rely on their dairy-based pastorialism which was slowly but steadily succumbing to both the cooling climate as well as the attendant soil erosion and loss of fertility.
I don't recall them not fishing so much as it having to do with the KIND of aquatic creatures that they were willing to fish for. Regular fish (can't recall what is was at the time) was OK, but the shift in climate, I believe, turned their spawning grounds elsehwere. What was mostly left for meaningful catch was seal, and it was seal that the Norse just wouldn't go after. No idea why this was: it's possible that it was partly based on conflicts with the Inuit (because at that time the Norse were probably pretty beaten down and any skirmishes with the Inuit would have turned out poorly).
For sure, though, they were accustomed to grazing livestock.
cLIMATE cHANGE.
Little Ice Age, ya know.
It got pretty chilly there for a while, froze those fuckers out.
Can't make hay while it is snowing.
Stack On
That trap of seeing ourselves as one thing and one thing only is a serious problem. It means willfully not adapting to new conditions because to adapt to the new condtions ends our old existence.
Change for change's sake (read: from boredom) is a waste, but it's hard to know rationally when it's time to give up one way of defining a culture and moving on something closer to reality.
"Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" - we are no longer those things; but tell your neighbot that and he'll look at you like you're Satan.
gawd, professor peak oil who thinks it knows it all
I think VD is defending his purchase of the latest iPhone 5s.or whatever model they are up to now.
Sent from my iPhone 5s.
Ha gee I wonder who down voted me...
did ya'll just get out of the peak oil troll convention tonight at the same time?
yes, like soviet communist russia?
or, like fake green energy where billions of taxpayer dollars disappear into bankrupt companies like solyndra or into slush funds to re-elect democraps?
or like fake carbon tax credits that go into slush funds to enrich democrap elitist pigs?
Like that sort of "fake green energy" that powered half of germany on christmas eve, with roughly 30 GW electricity solely from windpower? Like that: http://www.heise.de/tp/Gaensebraten-Blackout-Windige-Weihnachten--/zoom/... ?!
akak, the Norse's problem was they they landed on Greenland during a "warm spell" and thought that that was typical. When the weather/climate normalized they were fucked (because they couldn't adapt- culture hangups as you note).
That is very true, Seer.
And as you (I think) noted above, yes, the Greenland Norse did engage in seal hunting, which however is quite separate from actual fishing. In fact, they came to increasingly rely on seal meat as the climate became colder, although the abundance of and accessibility to seals varied widely from year to year, and was so probably not as dependable as the fish resource would have been.
Hah! The Maltusian Dilemma is sexually transmitted disease, like VD.
http://davidmdelaney.com/overshoot-in-a-nutshell.html
Overshoot in a nutshell
(Malthus was an optimist)
By David M. Delaney, 2003
no, the Maltusian Dilemma is a progressive leftist mental disease that comes from smoking too much radical marijuana laced with meth
Centerline have VD (great handle btw) explain this graph.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Oil%20discoveries.png
( http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3664 )
Man, I just think of all the shit that goes in relative to the MENA region. It's all about energy. Energy = wealth = power. Even the shifting balance of energy production has the ability to wreck economies and start wars. Posturing these days is getting really intense, which ought to speak volumes about the state of resoures like oil and gas relative to economic conditions, which are also a by-product of relentless growth.
Want to understand what they are afraid of?
What was the FIRST, I mean First thing Cheney did in 2000?
That's right an energy task group with (among other things) detail maps of Iraqs Oil fields. Look at dickie's 1999 speech
""By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?"
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-06-08/full-text-dick-cheneys-spee...
It's a slow grind down Centerline.
Instead of 50 million, We just killed GROWTH !!!
And THAT's where we are at.
Any whisper of growth and price will climb killing growth.
Rinse, repeat.
DING DING DING !!!
We have a winner !
Ding Dong
Another peak oil troll
Thanks for the link. I am going to copy the link and read this in the morning.
in the morning after centerline gets out of bed with akak?
two little peak oil trolls in a bed...
What was the FIRST, I mean First thing Obummer did after winning the elections in 2008 and 2012?
Hand over billions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to his cronies in the green industry after they gave billions to his election campaigns
this is your first reasonable post, sylvia.
50 posts in a row of pure crap, followed by one that was sensible and actually had some INFO content.
you're 1 for 51 so far, keep up the good work!
your posts are pure crap with no info and your mother is pure crap.
now go put your troll head up your mother's ass and find some peak oil!
billions of taxpayer dollars = green energy = wealth for crony capitalists = wealthy leftist communist pigs = corrupt marxist regime in white house
Hmm...centerline scratches head with finite brains
must be a peak oil troll
Wow, Sylvia, don't you have some homework to do, and isn't it past your bedtime anyway?
I remember when I was in grade school, I had to be in bed by 9:30 PM. I think you're being a naughty girl again.
you are being a naughty tranny who is also a peak oil troll!
i am so god damn sick and tired of these know it all fuckers like kuuntsler thinking he understands the workings of shale and oil. fucking idiot trying to scare the world bullshit. I KNOW WTF is going on - now, your turn to figure it out...but not from him!
edit, hint(winners and losers)like in all capitalistic endeavers...
The best way to play anything is to have lots of truth mixed with bad timing. These guys all have something to sell. Very few out there will say it straight up for the greater good.
centerline and peak oil trolls are trying to sell green energy where billions of taxpayers dollars disappear into slush funds to relect democrap party elite
Your impressive use of capitalization, punctuation, grammar and logic, along with your keen wit and your obvious intellectual depth and coherency, inspires great confidence on my part in the complete veracity, validity and relevance of your every pronouncement.
veracity, validity and relevance blah blah blah
yawn
akak pompous peak oil troll
Shood of payed moar attenshun inn skool, rite?!
rite go hump wit asak da peaked oil troll
Exactly right.
i am so god damn sick and tired of these know it all fuckers like peak oil trolls thinking that they understand the workings of shale and oil. fucking idiots trying to scare the world bullshit. I KNOW WTF is going on - now, your turn to figure it out...but not from them!
edit, hint (only predetermined winners and losers) like in all crony capitalistic endeavers...
Like, oh my GOD, fer shur!
^ akak lame peak oil troll just being a valley gurl
roar!
Peak Oil is the hardest for the awake and aware to come to grips with. It's much easier to find out that diamonds' "scarcity" is manipulated or all the gd in the world is sitting around waiting to be flown to where there is a "shortage" but so few can see that oil is abiotic and its scarcity is manipulated as well.
It's not that gold or diamonds or oil are not finite (I'll leave the abiotic argument out), they are. But nowhere near as rare as we are lead to believe. Oil is discovered and capped ALL the time. Yes, it will run out some day but we ALREADY have Tesla's discoveries that are shelved. There will be no collapse due to energy. Yes, there will be collapse when the liquidity spigot is shut off. But worrying about peak anything is a waste of time.
The globalists make us feel guilty for using up natures resources. Give me a break. Give me free energy and free fresh water from desalination combined with high density permaculture and there would be NO world hunger. It's all bullshit.
oh, it will crash and burn out there in the wild wild west. but in the mean time get it whilst it is gettin good. then off to more hostile envirnments...
everyone in the game know wtf is going on. some will lose and some will win. All in the leases!
some of the losers will have deep pockets and move to oilier slicks and very hositle envirn, like -40 F.
or 5 miles below the sea...plenty of oil, but at what cost? add 25/ bbl every five years at rate of find/cost of extraction. 2020>125-135/bbl plan your economy accordingly. we will be driving cars that get 30-50 mpg. simple stuff howie...
When one's life depends on something then they'll defend to the death that thing.
Years ago I'd penned the issue as "peak oil exports." As the Saudis, Iranians and Russians continue along their internal consumption will go up (as total oil production drops due to depletion of reserves) in which case oil available for export will be reduced. There's a good reason why the US introduced Iran to nuclear power back in the 50s (http://nuclearenergy.ir/history/): hoping that them getting nuclear power up would mean that their oil would more readily be available on the "open markets."
"Give me free energy and free fresh water from desalination combined with high density permaculture and there would be NO world hunger. It's all bullshit."
Ever?
And if the population kept going then the total number of humans has no bearing on the ability to produce ample food? What if there were so many people that we all stood shoulder-to-shoulder, where would the food come from?
Your equation is missing one key variable (human population size). Otherwise, it's OK...
For sure. Agreed. I have never doubted that Mother would ever let us get shoulder to shoulder. Petrie dish and all. But the limits are so much further out than any globalist would have us believe. THIS is what keeps them up at night dreaming up things like mercury in our vaccines, aluminum in our skies, soil and water, oil and radiation in our seas, cracking fluid in our wells, fucked up DNA in our food, agenda 21 in our bedrooms, etc. Can't get these redneck merkins away from their guns so we'll slow roll the Georgia "Guide"stones wet dream.
"Give me free energy and free fresh water from desalination combined with high density permaculture"
Is that all you will be needing sir? All essentials, free? Will the gentleman be having unicorn with his panacea wine?
"Panacea" --- isn't that an ancient continent that the dinosaurs once roamed?
(Until they suffered Peak Plants, that is.)
No. It was Pangea
He left out all the good stuff in medieval .
the chopping off of limbs, the lack of Obama care, the use of gold and silver as currency, 9 course meals, witchcraft, dancing with the lords , and way more orgies !
Truth is beauty for those who seek it. Abhorred by those who pervert it and benefit from their ugly creation. Agree that this article contains beauty.
I am relieved after reading this, I was way more pessimistic.
Me too, abducens!
"... the current owners of the house would prefer to let it fall down, or burn down rather than renovate."
Amen:
It just slowly rots, until it rather suddenly collapses and/or burns down.
P.S.
"Japan may be going politically insane."
I believe that Gorbacev stated the collapse of the Soviet Union was started by Chernobyl.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/04/gorbachev_chern...
Since Fukushima is many times worse than Chernobyl was, I do not think there is any doubt that Japan is going insane. However, I would generalize that, because the globalized Neolithic Civilization is ALL based on legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, where that violence can keep those lies socially dominate, but never make those lies become true. Instead, the basic nature of that triumphant application of destruction to back up deceits NECESSARILY drives civilization towards psychotic breakdowns.
More radical truth would be necessary to develop better human ecologies, and industrial ecologies. Even IF there were some basic science breakthroughs towards some new energy technologies (which I believe is possible) the established financial systems are already way too insane to be able to scale those up to resolve the problems. Furthermore, it is NOT merely running out of cheap energy that is the problem, but rather, everything our economic systems do is based on turning natural resources into garbage and pollution, as fast as possible. The only theoretical solutions are to deliberately design production so that there could be the maximum possible recycling.
However, none of that kind of sanity is remotely possible when the real world is controlled by the most criminally insane people, who are who they are merely because they were the best at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, while everyone else has become who they are by adapting to operate within those systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. As George Charlin had famously described it, in one of his performances, HOW could anyone else ever effectively resist the runaway past successes of "the current owners of the house THAT would prefer to let it fall down, or burn down ???" SINCE "THEY OWN YOU," or already own almost everything that you need to live, such as the land, and so on and so forth ...
The deeper problems are that our REAL human ecology operates through the maximum possible deceits in its murder systems, while our REAL industrial ecology operates through the maximum possible frauds in its monetary systems.
The only genuine solutions would require much more radical truth about how to operate better death and debt controls. However, that is practically a non-starter notion, given the degree to which the currently established systems depend upon the ruling classes continuing to be dishonest and violent, while those who are ruled over continue to adapt to operate within those realities. Given those basic social facts, the ruling classes that control the people that control the government of the USA, as well as most of the rest of the world, DO PLAN ON CONTINUING AS "... the current owners of the house WHO would prefer to let it fall down, or burn down rather than renovate."
Therefore, there are no sane preparations possible for the coming collapses and conflagrations. In my humble opinion, those who pretend that they are preparing for those events are mostly applying mental bandages wrapped cosmetically around the actual degree of our collective social insanities. However, I do NOT agree what "the rot throughout our national life is so conspicuous that a fair assessment would be that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished" because the majority of those who will suffer worst will be young people, or those not yet born, who had nothing directly to do with setting up these runaway social insanity problems.
I think the collapse of Japan started a long time ago.
I think Fuku will be the end of the collapse - as in completion.
Yeah, I agree that is a logical view.
Same with the U.S.S.R.. Final straw: at that point people could no longer pretend that they weren't drowning in hubris.
The problem is that, in the short term, violence works. And, on the other hand, "on a long enough timeline...."
the above is why you should never mix too much radical marijuana with meth
The above is why you should never mix your job as a stuntwoman with your pregnancy.
the above post by akak proves why you should never post after having an operation to be a tranny
the drugs made akak delusional about peak oil
Peak Oil. Fukushima. Japan/Chinese showdown.
http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Radiation-KIO3-Potassium-contains/dp/B001Q...
I would get some potassium iodide...before the .gov gets it all.
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=5cd0c1800435272c80a...
Just remember, it is not to be taken as a prophylaxis until exposure is imminent or has occurred.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp
DaddyO
I been popping em' like candy, but I still ain't high yet. I am sure it will kick in soon enough.
I hear the flashbacks are killer.
You know, after all these years I'm thinking that I want my money back...
if anyone should know about drug induced flashbacks, it is you!
I call bullshit! That would be me! And let an experienced psychonaut tell you something: You obviously don't have a clue what you talk about! Ever heard of "expansion of mind"?! I suspect that you could use some of that ...
That implies.... Oh, never mind.
Hey if it's worth doin', it's worth doin to excess!!
I'm feelin' you bro...
I od'd on the old Rorer 714's back in the day with the same attitude. Kept poppin 'em until WHAM everything was over but the crying.
DaddyO
Hi IR,
How about Alex Jones' Survival Shield - Nascent Iodine?
http://www.infowarsshop.com/Survival-Shield--Nascent-Iodine_p_1104.html
I like this stuff cuz it covers the whole family. You want 130 mg. Its good until 2025 too. I'd say we will either be in the clear or have an orange afro by that time. Try the fish!
Blue skin, orange hair.
Thanks.
Place an orange afro on your avatar and you'll have it.
Looks grim.
Never walk in rags to the guillotine. Resist, by any means necessary, preferably constructive. I have no fear for the future when I read all the exceptionally wide awake people who want to negotiate a better way. No surrender.
Go Medieval could also easily be construed to go Neo-Feudal.
We have neo-feudal now, although I agree with you that the level of mistrust runs so deep now that thinking people are concerned, lest we be led into another trap which profits the guilty and ruins the good.
Nothing better than a good fart after a big meal....
go rub one out too
He covers many problems but he missed the fallout from the infinite NSA spying on US technological companies, the chance of wars (Obama almost lied us to a war with Syria), declining food production relative to population in the world and Fukushima radiation spreading world wide (Russia blocked 130 cars exported from Japan due to excessive radiation).
Happy New Year to the banksters, NSA and their lackeys, the politicians, for ruining everything - your freedoms, privacy, health and wealth.
He probably sees NSA spying as a short-term problem because he thinks most electricity is going away.
Electricity is magic made by ferries and will always be here....ALWAYS.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/06/5463926/cold-weather-causes-surg...
FORT WORTH As the Arctic air settled in across North Texas Monday morning, temperatures plunged into the teens, wind chills dropped to the single digits and energy consumption soared across Texas.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the electric grid in most of Texas, briefly issued an Energy Emergency Alert 2 early Monday morning, the last step before rotating power outages would be implemented. ERCOT canceled the warning about possible outages shortly after 9:30 a.m.
But the loss of just one more large power plant could have pushed the grid over the edge, Dan Woodfin, ERCOT director of system operations, told reporters on a conference call. The grid lost two big power plants to weather-related problems and some others to other problems, totaling about 3,700 megawatts of power, Woodfin said.
During that time, the state imported about 800 megawatts from the nation’s eastern power grid, and another 180 megawatts from Mexico. A megawatt is roughly enough to supply about 200 Texas homes during a period of peak electricity use, although demand in Texas peaks during the summer as air conditioners fire up.
For about an hour during the emergency alert period, wholesale power prices hit the state’s regulatory ceiling of $5,000 per megawatt-hour, Woodfin said. That’s about 100 times the $50 per megawatt-hour price generally seen.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has been raising the ceiling in an effort to encourage generators to build more capacity to meet growing demand.
ERCOT said demand for electricity today reached 55,486 megawatts between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. That’s short of the record winter demand of 57,265 on Feb. 10, 2011, which produced rotating outages, and lower than peak demand during last month’s run of low temperatures, said ERCOT spokeswoman Robbie Searcy.
“Cold weather will continue through tomorrow morning, and we will continue to monitor conditions closely,” said Woodfin. “Consumers are encouraged to use electricity wisely, and a conservation alert remains in effect throughout the ERCOT region.“
ERCOT was asking residents to set their thermostats no higher than 68 degrees and turn off and unplug non-essential lights and appliances. It was also advising individuals not to run large appliances such as washers, dryers and electric ovens during peak energy demand hours — between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Businesses are also advised to minimize the use of electric lighting and electricity-consuming equipment as much as possible.
About 4,600 customers lost power in Burleson from what Oncor said was equipment failure. Those were expected to be restored sometime Monday afternoon.
At D/FW Airport, the low temperature hit 15 degrees, making it the coldest weather since the Super Bowl ice storm in February 2011. On Feb. 2, 2011, it dropped to 13 degrees and on Feb. 10, 2011, it dropped to 15. While it was not a record-breaker — that came in 1912 when it got down to 11 degrees — it hasn’t been this cold on this date since 1924 when it also reached 15.
But Alliance Airport dropped to 10 degrees shortly after 7 a.m. Monday and recorded a wind chill of minus 1. At DFW Airport, the coldest wind chill recorded was 1 degree above zero.
This was still far warmer than the coldest temperatures on record for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. On Feb. 12, 1899, it dropped to minus 8 degrees. It reached 2 below zero on Jan. 31, 1949 and it has reached minus 1 twice, most recently on Dec. 23, 1989.
The winter weather in the Midwest and Northeast was causing more than 3,000 flight cancellations nationwide. American Airlines , the largest carrier at DFW Airport, was advising customers they could change flights to affected areas in the Midwest, Northeast and Canada.
Temperatures will be back in the teens Tuesday morning across North Texas and concerns about energy consumption will continue as some parts of the state, including Houston, are expected to see colder temperatures on Tuesday morning than they did on Monday morning.
“It will probably be around 17 or 18 degrees across the Metroplex with wind chills probably around 14 or 15,” said Tom Bradshaw, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service Office in Fort Worth.
“It's will still be well below freezing a long period o ftime but it it will be interesting to see if any of the ponds put on ice overnight,” Bradshaw said “There was little too much wind for that to form last night.”
The colder weather this winter across much of the United States can be attributed to a dip in the jet stream that has brought cold air south across the Midwest and down into Texas. But National Weather Service meteorologist Jesse Moore said it’s having implications beyond the U.S.
“The jet stream has basically dived southeast of the Rockies and it heads back north off of the East Coast,” Moore said. “They’ve been getting big storms in the United Kingdom. We’ve gotten the cold air here but the jet stream pushes back up north toward Europe, giving them warmer, windier weather.”
While temperatures will be in the teens again Monday night, the Arctic air will give way to milder temperatures the rest of the week. Highs will be in the 40s on Tuesday, the 50s on Wednesday and back in the 60s on Friday. Forecasters are also predicting a chance of rain from Wednesday through Saturday after the freezing temperatures have left the area.
“We actually start warming up tomorrow, but it will be more noticeable on Wednesday,” Moore said.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/06/5463926/cold-weather-causes-surg...
It is made by my hair and God.
And Bitcoiners ought to be sure to stock up on "electricity!" </sarc>
Yes, after all, there are only so many electrons in the universe, and they aren't making any more of them!
The hell you say...I thought they were abiotic?
Actually there is only One Electron according to Quantum Physics and Relativity. It can manifest itself at all times and places necessary as it travels at Light Speed. There is not some machine out there creating Electrons.
Japan just might be among the first ones to experience this:
And the nations were wroth, and thy wrath came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, the small and the great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth.
But the rest of the world will not be far behind.
GODzilla?
Oh gawd, another bible quote.
So if this is prophesised in the bible, then it's good, right? Christians must be happy, right? As yopur children are dying in your arms you'll be ecstatic, right?
The human race has no future when their feeble minds cling to this shit.
The bible was written decades (at the very best) after the event. How good do you think people are at remembering events that took place decades ago and most likely know through second, third, fouth hand etc accounts. 99% of christians read the bible as if it was recorded in real time. Their feeble minds can't accomodate the stark reality that it iis story telling. Shit, if I'd doggedly clung to a belief all my life I'd probably be a bit embarrased to admit that I was gullible, lacking in insight and basically a dufus to finally admit it's all bullshit. Yes, I agree, if you cherry pick certain verses out of the bible then there is good to be read. This however does not warrant or justify the enormously wealthy organisational complex of the worlds religion to basically teach people not be assholes. Jeez, just lookm at the 10 commandments. what a waste of 6 commandments. Where's the "Thou shall not rape", "Thou shall not enslave" - I'm winging this and I'm not even a god. How can I come up with better commandments than god himself.
You people have been indoctrinated, it's a tough lesson to learn but you are all adults, mostly, nearly mostly, some of you at least.
You seem to be missing the point sir so I will elaborate :o)
There are presently almost 500 nuclear reactors spread across this globe. If just four of them at Fukushima are presently destroying Japan and the Pacific ocean just from one little shaking of the earth image what might happen if your avatar struck or a couple more shakings similar to 3/11/11.
Your right the human race has no future as it was never meant to last:
For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
This may seem like silly writings from the past to you but you will witness them unfolding :o)
I totally agree with you on the nuclear reactor situation. Forget asteroids hitting the earth. War is THE greatest threat to humanity now because everyone will target everyone else's nuclear reactors. End of life on earth.
As far as the other stuff goes you are simply indocrinated to repeat these words over and over again. It does border on insanity, but a socially acceptable insanity. Humans project their experience of life onto the universe as a whole which is absurdely childish. Being placental mammals who emerge or are created by a higher mammal (our mother) who is by all definitions to the child an omnipotent being to our personal death we project these local happenstances onto the external world in the form of gods and end of the world scenarios.
Maybe, just maybe as you lose consiousness for the last time, as you have your last cogent thought, maybe nothing happens. Maybe you simply cease to exist. Just as you have a dreamless sleep at night you are as good as dead as far as the concious mind goes. every night you experience death and you handle it well. You don't obsess about not waking up, at least you didn't until I brought it up. Maybe there is no purpose to the universe and even if there was maybe we are incapable of even understanding this as there are simply no English words to describe it. Maybe, just maybe all this god, jesus, holy spirit, resurrection, angels, heaven, fire and brimstone and the rest is pure confabulated bullshit that is no more a characteristic of the human mind than stripes are a characteristic of a zebras coat.
If evidence, cold hard evidence, testable by scientific process indicates the presence of a god, then I am fine with that. If the converse is actually true though, are you fine?
The Evidence for God's Existence is the Physical Universe.
The odds for a Chance Manifestation of the Physical Universe are an infinitesimal. If the Universe did not happen as a Random Chance event then it happened by Design. I can demonstrate design throughout the Physical Universe.
Here is the Funniest Science Joke which I have ever heard...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SbwmooRTBI
Now we can laugh at the Punchline because we know it to be implausible.
But if the Punchline of the Joke is implausible then just what are the chances that an Entire Universe manifests? Would that even be infinitely more implausible?
If it was not a chance event then it was a designed event. Thus one must infer a Designer.
"The odds for a Chance Manifestation of the Physical Universe are an infinitesimal".
If this is so, then the odds of a chance manifestation of god must be even more infinitesimal. I've been down this road with illogical christians many times before. Your incredulity is simply misplaced and you are constrained in your thought by your immediate wordly experience and using this to describe the entire universe.You are basically projecting your local experience onto the entire universe. Only a very ill-educated (in sciences) human being is capable of this. You are surrounded by things designed by humans. Designed by intelligence of some form. You leap to the conclusion that this must also apply to the natural world. Very simplistic and indeed peurile.
If we take the initial state of the universe as reasonably simple, very little structure, very little order, a homogenous soup of subatomic particles. The chance of this universe popping into existence by chance must be infinitely more likely that the chance of a infintely complex and omnipotent god popping into existence.
The funny thing about the joke above is that you can't see that the joke is on christians, not on science.
Again missing the point.
It is science that brought us nuclear energy.
The very same energy that will be used to bring much of the fire that will destroy the earth spoken of in my last post.
If you can't see this world is on a collision course with its own destruction your not looking very far past your faith in science.
Please look past the God verses science debate you are trying to make this and look at the good verses evil that has been taking place for over 6000 years:
And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever -
Both of those were created mindsets to set apart one from the other:
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things.
The joke will be on the soul who thinks there is no after life and does nothing in this life to impede on a possible outcome :o)
God is Light. In Him there is no darkeness.
Now I have previously demonstrated Omnipotence, Omnipresense, and Omniscience using Relativity Physics in other posts on this website.
Light is Energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus God cannot be created or destroyed.
A question of what created God is like that of what is South of the South Pole. It is a nonsensical question. It smacks of Intellectual Dishonesty.
Now the retort which I will expect is that you will use the translation of Genesis 1:2 where God "created" Light.
But it never actually says that in the Hebrew. The literal translation is " In the First age Light be" or "In the first age Light IS"
The Energy transcends that of the Physical Universe. It creates what we perceive as the Physical Universe. The study of Physics is the study of how energy fields interact with one another.
What I find to be a curiousity is that the ancient writers somehow knew to equate God to Light as it satisfies all attributes necessary for a Creator.
By the way. You are abusing the use of the term evidence. How is the existence of the universe any less evidence of a superior alien intelligence than it is of god.
This is the problem with debating christians, we're talking about completeky different things. When I talk about the sun I am talking about the fusion of hydrogen into helium resulting in the release of energy in the form of photons. When a christian talks about the sun they are talking about how sunlight feels like a hug from jesus.
oh gawd, another indoctrinated obamatron who hates christians and has smoked too much weed laced with meth. isn't it time to meet up with your drug dealer or your imam?
I don't hate Christians, I hate illogical, gullible and credulous stupidity. I hate an absence of critical thinking. I hate the inability of people to absorb deep history (not just 2000 years worth). I hate the fantastical and insurmountable egos of western judeo-christian theology. I hate the childish need of grown adults to pretend they hear the voice of god in their heads when they are listening to their own internal dialogue. I hate the utter hypocrisy of people who claim to be christian yet lie through their teeth about this aforementioned fact without the slightest compunction. I hate that the pious can dismiss countless billions of hours of rigourous work by science to uncover the true nature of the world and reality yet accept without question the ramblings of ancient texts. I hate that people find it incredulous that the universe can come from nothing yet find it completely reasonable that an infinitely complex being can. In short, fuck I hate dumb.
So do also you hate the utter hypocrisy of other religions? What are your feelings about Islam? So are ya rooting for Sharia Law?
I heard that akak looks lovely in the bee keeper's outfit since the tranny operation
Ever heard of the "golden age"? Try to get a clue. It were people from the Islam, who brought prosperity and science to europe, when they occupied spain. It would suit you well, to overcome your personal hypocrisy before you arrogate to judge those of religious communities. Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone. You really fancy yourself as being that?
Hahaha. Islam, Christian, Judaism, Hindu, Zoroastrian, <insert skyman or mythological creature based religion here>. The claims on which all these religions are based are just too stupid to bare.
slyviasays...Get thee behind me Satan!!!