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Guest Post: Oil Limits And The Economy - One Story; Not Two
Submitted by Gail Tverberg of Our Finite World blog,
The two big stories of our day are:
(1) Our economic problems: The inability of economies to grow as rapidly as they would like, add as many jobs as they would like, and raise the standards of living of citizens as much as they would like. Associated with this slow economic growth is a continued need for ultra-low interest rates to keep economies of the developed world from slipping back into recession.
(2) Our oil related-problems: One part of the story relates to too little, so-called “peak oil,” and the need for substitutes for oil. Another part of the story relates to too much carbon released by burning fossil fuels, including oil, leading to climate change.
While the press treats these issues as separate stories, they are in fact very closely connected, related to the fact that we are reaching limits in many different directions simultaneously. The economy is the coordinating system that ties together all available resources, as well as the users of these resources. It does this almost magically, by figuring out what prices are needed to keep the system in balance—how much materials of which types are needed, given what consumers can afford to pay.
The catch is that the economic system is not infinitely flexible. It needs to grow, to have enough funds to (sort of) pay back debt with interest and to make good on all the promises that have been made, such as Social Security.
Energy use is very closely tied to economic growth. When energy consumption becomes slow-growing (or high-priced—which is closely tied to slow-growing), it pulls back on economic growth. Job growth becomes more difficult, and governments find it difficult to get enough funding through tax revenue. This is the situation we have been experiencing for the last several years.
We might think that governments would be aware of these issues and would alert their populations to them. But governments either don’t understand these issues, or only partially understand them and are frightened by the prospect of what is happening. The purpose of my writing is to try to explain what is happening in terms that people who are used to reading the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times can understand.
I am not an economist, so I can’t speak to the question of what economists are saying. I do know that what economists say tends to change from time to time and from researcher to researcher. For example, in 2004, the International Energy Agency prepared an analysis with the collaboration of the OECD Economics Department and with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund Research Department (Full Report, Summary only). That report said, “. . . a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second year of higher prices. Inflation would rise by half a percentage point and unemployment would also increase.” This finding is consistent with the issues I am concerned about, but I expect that not all economists would agree with it. Oil prices are now around $100 per barrel, not $35 per barrel.
The Tie of Oil and Other Forms of Energy to the Economy
Oil and other forms of energy are used to power the economy. Historically, rises and falls in the use of oil and other types of energy have tended to parallel GDP growth (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Growth in world GDP, compared to growth in world of oil consumption and energy consumption, based on 3 year averages. Data from BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy and USDA compilation of World Real GDP.
There is disagreement as to which is cause and which is effect—does GDP growth lead to more oil and energy demand, or does the availability of cheap oil and other types of energy power the economy? In my view, the causality goes both ways. Oil and other types of energy are needed for economic growth. But if people cannot afford oil or other types of energy products, typically because they don’t have jobs, then energy use will drop. And if oil prices drop too low, we will be in real trouble because oil production will stop.
How Oil Limits Work
People tend to think of limits as working in the same manner as having a box with a dozen eggs. Once the last egg is gone, we are out of luck. Or a creek dries up from lack of rainfall. The water is no longer available, so we have lost our water source.
With the benefit of the economy, though, limits are more complicated than this. If we live in today’s economy, we can purchase another box of eggs if we run short of eggs, assuming markets provide eggs at a price we can afford. If the creek runs dry, we can figure out a different approach to getting water, such as buying bottled water or hiring a tanker to get water from a source at a distance and bringing it to where it is needed.
Oil limits are a kind of limit we often hear concerns about. Being able to drill oil wells at all and refine the oil into products of many kinds requires a complex economy, one that can educate engineers working in oil extraction and can build paved roads, pipelines, and refineries. The economy needs to be able to produce high tech equipment using raw materials from around the world. Thus, there must be an operating financial system that allows buyers at one end of the globe to purchase materials from the other end of the globe, and sellers to have the confidence that they will be paid for contracted products.
If a company wants to extract oil, it can almost always figure out places where this theoretically can be done. If a company can gather together all of the things it needs—trained workers; enough high tech extraction equipment of the right type; enough pollution-fighting equipment, to prevent oil spills and spills of radioactive water; and leases on land where drilling is to done, then, in theory, oil can be extracted.
In fact, the big issue is whether the extraction can be done in a sufficiently cost-effective manner that the whole economic system can be supported. Even if the cost of extraction “looks” fairly cheap, such as in Iraq, or in some of the older installations elsewhere in the Middle East, the vast majority of the revenue that is generated from oil extraction (often as much as 90%) goes to support the government of the country where the oil is extracted (Rogers, 2014). This revenue is needed for many purposes: desalination plants to provide water for the people; food subsidies, especially when oil prices are high because food prices will tend to be high as well; new ports and other infrastructure; and revenue to provide jobs and programs to pacify the people so that the government will not be overtaken by revolt.
A major issue at this point is the fact that most of the easy-to-extract oil is already under development, so companies that want to develop new projects need to move on to locations that are more difficult and expensive to extract (Bloomberg, 2007). According to oil industry consultant Steven Kopits, the cost of one major category of oil production expenses increased by an average of 10.9% per year between 1999 and 2013. In the period between 1985 and 1999, these same expenses increased by 0.9% per year (Kopits, 2014) (Tverberg, 2014).
When production costs are higher, someone loses out. It is as if the economy is becoming less and less efficient. It takes more people, more energy products, and more equipment to produce the same amount of oil. This leaves fewer people and less energy products to produce the goods and services that people really want, putting a squeeze on the economy. The economy tends to grow less quickly because part of the goods and services available are being channeled into less productive operations.
The situation of the economy becoming less and less efficient at producing oil is called diminishing returns. A similar problem exists with fresh water in many parts of the world. We can extract more fresh water, but it takes deeper wells. Or we have to ship in water from a distance, using a pipeline or trucks. Or we need to use desalination. Water is still available but at a higher per-gallon price.
Diminishing Returns is Like a Treadmill that Runs Faster and Faster
There are many ways we can reach diminishing returns. One easy-to-illustrate example relates to mining metals. We usually extract the cheapest-to-extract ores first. An important cost consideration is how much waste material is mixed in with the metal we really want–this determines the ore “grade.” As we are gradually forced to move from high-grade ores to lower-grade ores, the amount of waste material grows slowly at first, then dramatically increases (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Waste product to produce 100 units of metal
We know that this kind of effect is happening right now. For example, the SRSrocco Report indicates that between 2005 and 2012, diesel consumption per ounce of refined gold has doubled from 12.7 gallons per ounce to 25.8 gallons per ounce, based on the indications of the top five companies. Such a pattern suggests that if we want to extract more gold, the price of gold will need to rise.
The economy is affected by all of the types of diminishing returns that are taking place (oil, fresh water, several kinds of metals, and others). Even attempting to substitute “renewables” for nuclear and fossil fuels electricity production acts as a type of diminishing returns, if such substitution raises the cost of electricity production, as it seems to in Germany and Spain.
If the total extent of diminishing returns is not very great, increased efficiency and substitution can act as workarounds. But if the combined effect becomes too great, diminishing returns acts as a drag on the economy.
Oil Increases are Already Higher than the Economy Can Comfortably Absorb
For oil, we can estimate the historical impact of increased efficiency and substitution by looking at the historical relationship between growth in GDP and growth in oil consumption. Based on the worldwide data underlying Figure 1, this has averaged 2.0% to 2.4% per year since 1970, depending on the period studied. Occasional years have exceeded 3%.
The problem in recent years is that increases in the cost of oil production have been much higher than 2% to 3%. As mentioned previously, a major portion of oil extraction costs seem to be increasing at 10.9% per year. To make this comparable to inflation adjusted GDP increases, the 10.9% increase needs to be adjusted (1) to take out the portion related to “overall inflation” and (2) to adjust for likely lower inflation on the portion of oil production costs not included in Kopits’ calculation. Even if this is done, total oil extraction costs are probably still increasing by about 5% or 6% per year—higher than we have historically been able to make up.
According to Kopits, we are already reaching a point where oil limits are constraining OECD GDP growth by 1% to 2% per year (Kopits, 2014) (Tverberg, 2014). Efficiency gains aren’t happening fast enough to allow GDP to grow at the desired rate.
A major concern is that the treadmill of rising costs will speed up further in the future. If it is hard to keep up now, it will be even harder in the future. Also, the economy “adds together” the adverse effects of diminishing returns from many different sources—-higher electricity cost of production, higher metal cost of production, and the higher cost of oil production. The economy has to increasingly struggle because wages don’t rise to handle all of these increased costs.
As one might guess, when economies hit diminishing returns on resources that are important to the economy, the results aren’t very good. According to Joseph Tainter (1990), many of these economies have collapsed.
Why Haven’t Governments Told Us About these Difficulties?
The story outlined above is not an easy story to understand. It is possible that governments don’t fully understand today’s problems. It is easy to focus on one part of the story such as, “Shale oil extraction is rising in response to higher oil prices,” and miss the important rest of the story—the economy cannot really withstand high oil (and water and electricity and metals) prices. The economy tends to contract in response to a need to use so many resources in increasingly unproductive ways. We associate this contraction with recession.
We have many researchers looking at these issues. Unfortunately, most of these researchers are focused on one small portion of the story. Without understanding the full picture, it is easy to draw invalid conclusions. For example, it is easy to get the idea that we have more time for substitution than we really have. Financial systems are fragile. The world financial system almost failed in 2008, after oil prices spiked. We are still in very worrisome territory, with many countries continuing a policy of Quantitative Easing and ultra low interest rates. We may have only a few months or a year or two left for substitution, not 40 or 50 years, as some seem to assume.
Of course, if governments do understand the worrisome nature of our current situation, they may not want to say anything. It could make the situation worse, if citizens start a “run on the banks.”
The other side of the issue is that if governments and citizens don’t understand the full story, they may inadvertently do things that will make the situation worse. They certainly won’t be looking long and hard at what collapse might look like in the current context and what can be done to mitigate its impacts.
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"You mean to tell me those tar sands in North Dakota and Canada that will end up requiring 3.5 barrels of oil for every 4 barrels produced won't be able to keep up with demand?"
And this is the crux of the situation. The non-conventional fuels will not be able to hold the gap with depleting conventional fuels. And then there's the key issue of a growth-or-die world not being able to create growth: gotta have that growth in order to cover interest on debt (which is what spurs investments).
Mechanisation of agriculture is driven largely by the rising cost of human labour.
Meanwhile .gov pays people to sit at home and do nothing???
There's that word " government" again...
Agriculture can reduce fossil fuel inputs quite easily, the only problem is that people will have to lower their wage expectations, get up early and actually WORK.
Peak oil, obesity and the FSA could one day be long forgotten memories.
It is not just about the machines, the fertilizers, pesticides, etc are a pretty big part of it.
Without ammonia nitrates, it may be difficult to grow enough food with the water and arable land available.
No argument with that, but the point stands that there are 70 year old farmers who have had two knee replacements who get up each morning before 6 am to run their farms.
They produce enough food to feed a small town and yet cannot afford another labor unit to help with the actual workload.
Meanwhile millions of folks sit idly in front of their screens, I devices, and x boxes, getting paid to do NOTHING...
Do the math on this and it becomes obvious that people will eventually get some dirt on their hands or reduce their standard of living.
I agree with everything in this second post, but that new farm labourer is still going to be consuming lots of oil products.
Unless you are talking about replacing 1 farmer on a tractor with 500 serfs working their plots or strips, I don't see oil consumption really dropping while maintaining comparable food production.
I suspect no matter what, most people's standard of living is going to be revised downward.
Oil, or no oil, people still have to eat.
So the question still stands, will they WORK! Or will they starve in front of their i-devices?
Brutally simple really, when you get down to it.
Hope to see you out there in the fields to arsehole
"Agriculture can reduce fossil fuel inputs quite easily, the only problem is that people will have to lower their wage expectations, get up early and actually WORK."
Up-vote!
That's why I got in to farming- I saw the future, and, rather than being a hired worker I figured I'd be an "owner" (full responsibilities and unlimited hours- ha ha!).
I live here in the USA and there is no way we can continue to borrow and consume as we have...especially the last 10 years.
It cannot happen, and therefore it will not happen. The only open question is when the "crack-up boom" will happen.
Who the fuck cares?
If man is a scourge upon the planet, destined to destroy himself, so be it.
Mother Earth will still be here long afterwards,
Long Cockroach DNA
I saw a book today titled The Gnat is Older Than Man.
Maybe so, in the large cosmic scheme of things, but this old man intends to outlive a lot of gnats.
What is the meaning of life?
There are broadly 3 answers, depending on your belief system.
42.
And that's the agnostic's answer. 42 is as good an answer as any other to an agnostic.
I thought is was from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
>> If man is a scourge upon the planet,
If?
I don't see it that way. I'm pretty neutral about it. ALL life forms "seek" [perhaps not knowingly, it's just built-in] to overrun their carrying capacities. The difference with humans is that (well, some anyway) know that this happens.
The Mayans and the Roman Empires - these societies didn’t end because they got bored of being Mayans and Romans.
Complex civilizations collapse because their strategies for energy capture become subject to the law of diminishing returns.
The energy windfall of that one-off historical blip called the Petroleum Interval made possible a six fold growth in human population from 1 to 6 billion, five billion of us would not exist but for cheap abundant easily extracted fossil fuels. The Petroleum Interval also institutionalized the least energy-efficient food-distribution network the world has ever known.
- Robert Newman
Precisely.
The more specialised you are, the more likely you are to be made extinct when your specialisation becomes irrelevant.
Our societies are highly specialised these days.
Then we SHOULD be sending every Murican to college, after all....
"Complex civilizations collapse because their strategies for energy capture become subject to the law of diminishing returns."
Having an ever larger percentage of the population dependent on .gov and being otherwise totally unproductive, would meet that definition of "diminishing returns".
Unfortunately it is exactly that unproductive segment of the population that is most vocal about yet more redistribution, (to themselves of course).
The simplest solution is to switch off the gravy train, massively reduce the size of government, scrap the MIC, and otherwise FOLLOW the CONSTITUTION.
Apparently the FSA and their enablers at the FED know better than this however.
Now just imagine if all the wasteful financial engineering, and .gov spending bullshit had simply been allowed to collapse in 2008.
Would "peak oil" be an issue now and how much MORE resources would now be available to everyone everywhere?
Simply scrapping the MIC altogether would instantly free abundant locked up diminishing return resources.
It boggles the mind how wasteful and ungrateful the modern generations are towards the miracle of short-lived abundance. Every drop of oil should be cherished.
What do we do with fuel? We haul inert metal boxes across great distances so we could sit at a desk somewhere and move papers from tray A into tray B. We burn electricity lighting up places like Las Vegas that in the process of consumption generate no energy whatsoever. We discard close to 50% of our food...
... and when it comes to MIC, that's just resources fired straight out of a canon. No justification whatsoever to the amount of waste being produced for the sole purpose of producing even more waste.
Future generation will definitely look back in disbelief... that is if there will be any future generations.
Turn off your damn computer Julia you are wasting energy! :)
If there wasn't a bunch of puppet governments selling all of their people's resourses out from under them so cheaply, the fuel might last longer. I often wondered why SA would pump it all so quickly and sell it so cheaply. The good ole US of A most likely have a gun to their heads.
You are deluded...
The country that has been drilled the most and exploited the quickest in order to make the most bucks as soon as possible was the good old USA...
And it sure as hell wasn't the gubbmint behind it...
Now there are shills telling that drilling and fracking source rock, the equivalent of scraping your hash pipe, is going to change everything...
Greed conquers all....
All empires collapse. The collapse doesn't create more resource... (and tends to make resources harder to obtain due to failing infrastructure [which is going to happen no matter]).
I pity the poor generation alive when this house of cards comes crashing down. What a terrible terrible time it will be. Yet unborn have no knowledge of the maelstrom that awaits.
There may not be a crash. It may just be 100 years of slowly grinding downwards. We may already be 6 years into this process.
That would be us. we are living through it, basically since the gold window closed. Things lean slowly, first wages were flattened, then jobs, then savings, then housing.
Its easy to see which way the wind is blowing. Stocks are the last artifice and they can be maintained indefinitely until the currency and then the government collapse.
the trifecta, stock market, the dollar, the federal government. They all collapse together thats why hank paulson was wetting himself and begging nancy pelosi on bended knee when they wanted to loot the treasury in 2008.
Tarp, its what you put over a dead body.
Exactly. Imagine a trillion or two spent not on unproductive mideast wars, but rather on windmill generators throughout the midwest. Could still happen. "Death by lack of easily extracted oil" articles assume there are no real alternatives. There are - they are not cheap, but neither is war.
How did you plan to ship those windmills anywhere, or the spare parts for them when they break?
Ever hear of railroads?
Sailboats (wind) and Horse-drawn carriages (oats).
Not a lot of those around. You also have to use them to ship raw materials to the windmill maker.
And then the high pressure water wash to get the smashed bugs off the windmill blades that upset the laminar air flow over the surfaces.
It doesn't work.
Make the FSA scrub them by hand.
It will solve the obesity problem as well!
I would look into kite generators or bladeless turbines myself, but I'm sure there are non-water based ways to clean turbines. Heck, if society collapses enough, they can just stop the windmills once a day and have people wipe them clean by hand.
I live near a highway which is used to haul the huge blades used on massive wind systems. It takes a special trailer, and multiple support vehicles front and back to safety move those things. Is this cost factor ever thought about? I have recently seen what appears to be used blades going south, the new ones are always going north, and have begun to wonder about life spans of these things. It has been about seven years since the first of the major clusters started to be installed.
I fully support any effort to replace our dependance on fossil fuels. But has there been done honest non agenda driven long term ROI in the absence of subsisidies?
If it is not profitable it will not continue. Replacing major components in such a short time span seems like a problem to me. I wonder how long the electiricty generating systems lifespans are?
The narrative is loud and it's constant babble about "transition" and "replace" and "substitute".
The contrary thought, mine, is that there is no replacement because oil is beyond awesome in its capacity to serve as fuel for transport. Nothing is going to substitute. A horsepower is 745 watts. You can't even have a little 100 Hp Camry that goes 500 miles on a tank of gas, how are you going to move a truck carrying serious tonnage 300 miles between fillups with a silly battery.
And because there is no replacement, no substitute, and no transition, the solution is twofold. You kill as many other consumers of oil as you can, and then they'll try to kill you. The 1 billion remaining will live on what's left and what's left will deplete and medicine transport will die and eventually humans will be extinct from local disease.
There is no law of nature that says this has to work out happily. Humans fight and they kill "to make a better life for my children". That's their nature. Sacrificing the lifestyle of their own children for someone else's children is not in their nature. And so kill they shall.
a 50 ton truck would require ~10 tons of battery to overcome air resistance and rolling friction to travel 350 miles on the freeway. theoretically possible, but very expensive with $500k of batteries.
it is even possible to fly planes on batteries, but the maximum theoretical range of a battery-powered airplane that needs to generate lift and overcome air resistance is ~100 miles. short-hop flights are possible, but the airline industry is unlikely to survive in its present form.
off topic, but i believe using crop biofuels to power agricultural infrastructure (but ignoring costs of manufacturing, e.g. making tractors) uses less land than food for workhorses/oxen would, by a factor of a few.
Solar powered airplanes. Or Solar powered blimps.
But what about the trucks that transport batteries, huh! -)
Just aint any energy source that as energy dense AND portable (and "cheap") as fossil fuels (especially diesel, which I'm really hooked on- gonna hurt when I can't get it).
Heard Willie Nelson talking about biofuels one day (anticipating something stupid like supporting them because they come from a "farm") and was impressed when he stated that they shouldn't leave the farm, that it was (only) OK if generated on farm and used there. As soon as you export things get exploited (the future gets sold).
Great idea. Too bad out myopic governments and many citizens can't see the forest for the trees. We deserve to go extint. The solutions are right in front of us yet we ignore it. Very disheartening.
Why aren't you extinct yet, hypocrite?
Wars are largely for the sake of having a war. But all wars need a sales pitch and are often chosen by the side benefits.
Middle east wars when it comes to oil are more about who gets the benefit of extracting the oil rather than oil itself anyway.
ALL wars are about resources. Having resources means that you can control people (and if you're a sociopath that means that you can make others do your work).
By including the AGW fantasy as a major world problem, this author has hung a sign around his neck which says, "Do not take me seriously. I am delusional."
RIGHT ON!!!!
Is it hard living in denial?
Is it hard lurching around without a brain?
Is it hard to argue against AGW when all you have is lame ad homs?
It's impossible to reason with an empty-headed fool who mistakes his eco-fascist religion for science. "Climate Change" is the best kind of BS for you delusional misanthropes to push at us, because it's completely unfalsifiable. Whether it's hot or cold, you insist to us that it's all our fault the weather is changing and so we'd better give lots of money and power to our government NOW! NOW! NOW!
The weather, the climate, and the entire planet has always changed, and always will. This is not a problem. Goose-stepping greentards trying to impose their delusional doctrines on us are the only real problem here, which can be solved by having you lunatics all being locked away in the padded cells where you belong.
Did it make you feel better to give yourself a greenie for every post while junking every one of mine? That is about the level of your intellectual integrity...
All I see from you is empty sloganeering and a paucity of fact-based arguments...
So take your bullshit and shove it back up your ass...
The problem the 'press' has in reporting is that all the propaganda it spews doesn't often fit into all the other propaganda...and gosh it can get hard to keep the lies straight. Sure we are in recovery but sure we don't want to use energy to have a recovery....sure we want 'green' energy but no we don't want shortages. and please keep buying vehicles...but not the kind you can afford...buy electric so you can't really go anywhere...especially if it is cold outside.
(1) Our economic problems:
(2) Our oil related-problems:
(3) the reality, developed countries sent all the jobs offshore and now have an economy where the citizenry can no longer afford to live in those countries.
it's just math folks, when the .1% gets all the money the result is what we have now.
The citizenry can no longer afford to live, based on what living standard? I think there is plenty of resources for people to live a life of greater quality than pre-industrial revolution.
There is not enough wealth for everyone to spend 2 hours per day driving alone in a 2-ton vehicle at 75 miles per hour, going on two-week cruises on floating cities.
The problems we face seem to be mainly social and political, as the system prevents us from making changes to adapt to reality. The longer the system fights to maintain status quo, the worse we will be, both at the time of the collapse, and likely for a long time afterwards.
"We have many researchers looking at these issues. Unfortunately, most of these researchers are focused on one small portion of the story. Without understanding the full picture, it is easy to draw invalid conclusions."
I have always found that the more I learned about the full picture, the worse that situation looked. While there is no doubt that human civilization is basically an energy system, the most important principle of general energy systems that applies to human civilization is that those systems are CONTROLLED BY THEIR MOST LABILE COMPONENTS. What that means in human terms is that our society developed in ways which were controlled by the people who were the best at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence. When human energy systems flow along their path of least action, or least resistance, in human terms that means that human affairs actually follow the path of least morality.
The most important aspect of running into limits to growth on our finite planet is that there will be PEAK INSANITIES, at the same time as there will be Peak Everything Else!
In my opinion, most of the comments above indicate the ways that we are headed towards the expression of Peak Insanities. The more serious our problems become, and the more madly self-destructive the established systems threaten to be, the more impossible it becomes to have any kind of rational public debate about those issues. Combine the central social fact that society is controlled by Huge Lies, backed up with Lots of Violence, to the fact that there must necessarily be some real limits to continued exponential growth, and that results in the situation that the ways that our real problems will be resolved is through the expression of human beings' PEAK INSANITIES.
Human civilizations have been actually built on the basis of the maximum possible deceits and frauds, because those were selected to be the most successful strategies and tactics in each short-term increment for those who were the best at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, to prevail through the context of human conflicts. Civilization was created by the resolution of human conflicts in ways which enabled the development of systems which were based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds. Since those were the systems that became triumphant, there is utterly no rational way to discuss the essential issues, which are that endless exponential growth is absolutely impossible, because no environment can sustain that.
There must evolve some sort of ecological system to cope with the limits of the real world. However, the real ways that that was actually done in the past was through people fighting with each other, in which context the most dishonest and violent prevailed. Therefore, our human ecology operates death controls which are buried under the maximum possible deceits, wherein both those operating the murder systems, and those opposing the murder systems, function through the abilities to advance the most preposterously absurd contradictions betweeen what they say, versus what they do, compared to what must actually happen.
Similarly, our political economy operates through the maximum possible frauds, where almost all "money" is created out of nothing as debts by private banks, which is objectively the most insane social system which is possible, because it was the historical result of the successful application of the methods of organized crime to make and maintain governments. Paradoxically, it makes sense that human energy systems are controlled by lies about themselves, which lies work because they can be backed up with violence, so that those lies end up dominating what is happening, in ways which depend upon those lies being treated within that society as if they were sensible truths.
I REPEAT, the most important aspect for understanding human civilizations as general energy systems are that they developed to become controlled by the most dishonest and violent people, who became the most criminally insane that it was possible to thereby become. Furthermore, virtually all of their "opposition" is functionally just as insane, because they have adapted to be able to operate within that overall context of a society which is dominated by Lies, backed up by Violence, in ways which were necessarily consistent with how the energy systems of human civilization actually operated. Paradoxically, it makes sense that the energy systems of society have become as totally twisted up through infinite tunnels of deceits as it was possible for them to become.
Discussions of the apparent problems regarding the energy supplies, to operate the general energy systems of civilization, tend towards the absurdities of deliberately not understanding the full picture! The most important central feature of civilization is its ability to operate with as much evil deliberate ignorance towards itself as it was possible to have made and maintained. That is the real nature of the combined money/murder systems, which are attempting to cope with the limits to the continued exponential growth of human civilization, which demands that, in one way or another, sooner or later, some evolutionary ecology to cope with those limits must be produced, assuming that any human beings survive ... However, between the present situation, and the range of possible futures is the time of PEAK INSANITIES.
The central problems were that civilizations were created in the crucible of conflicts. The civilization that exists now was the result of the history of warfare, where success depended upon deceits. That then became the foundation for the current monetary system based on the maximum possible frauds, of privatized fiat "money" made out of nothing as debts, being the accounting systems that are imposed upon everyone to operate through. It is impossible to exaggerate the degree to which civilization is being controlled by Legalized Lies, backed by Legalized Violence.
Since the REALITY is a globalized system of electronic frauds, backed up by an abundance of weapons of mass destruction, that REAL world is already almost totally insane, due to having been constructed through the history of warfare, in which success was based on deceits. That REALITY has created a runaway criminally insane society, because social success was based on being able to be deceitful, and develop fraudulent financial systems, which are headed towards PEAK INSANITIES, as they reach the limits about a finite planet, regarding which it is enabled to maintain the maximum attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards.
The growing gap between society controlled and dominated by Lies, throughout all of the ways that various people perceive the world, compared to whatever may be the relatively more objective, actual situation beyond the human perceptions which are almost totally organized systems of lies, operating robberies, done by people who are the best at dissembling about what they are doing, when they are doing that, is constantly getting BIGGER, at an exponential rate, as we more and more rapidly approach times of Peak Insanities, which will coincide or be precipitated by Peak Everything Else.
Ironically, skimming through comments on Zero Hedge articles tends to confirm that view quite strongly, as one can quickly glean from the comments under this article, in which, over and over again, utterly irreconcilable views are asserted by people who seem to believe that their view must be the right one. The most basic facts are not agreed upon, and apparently impossible to agree upon. Therefore, this little thread confirms my attitude that human civilization is headed towards times of Peak Insanities.
Natural selection commensurate the incommensurables. That is to say that human energy systems are human manifestations of general energy systems, which have traveled through the infinite tunnels of self-reference, wherein the most important of those self-referential systems have been those developed through the history of warfare, where success was based upon deceits, that then became the foundation of a financial system based upon frauds. During the process, human consciousness has become so entangled with those social paradoxes that success was based upon deceits and frauds that it is now practically impossible for human beings to untangle that situation.
Human beings were always living through systems of organized lies, operating robberies, which have recently been pumped up by technologies to become magnified trillions of times BIGGER. However, primarily what that has done is amplify to astronomical sizes the social pyramid systems, which were always based on backing up lies with violence. That is WHY we are headed towards PEAK INSANITIES, as the most important, and most dangerous and deadly aspect of all of the rest of the Peak Everything Else.
Let's head 'em off at the peak! ;-)
Yes, Bearwagon, I say THAT too:
RETOOL FASCIST PLUTOCRACY.
A double fraud article. Peak Oil and Global Warming.
The "easy to get oil" has been gone or nearly run out for over a century. The problem is that the "easy to get oil" has been redefined over and over again in the last century.
Furthermore oil prices can't be adjusted using CPI because CPI doesn't include energy or food or any other place monetary inflation shows up quickly and strong.
As to global warming, I'll leave that to others to display that correlation is not causation.
The premise of AGW is complete and utter BULLSHIT!!!
The mechanisms of greenhouse gases causing warming have been scientifically demonstrated for more than a Century. However, the bigger picture is not clear, since there are so many different factors all adding together.
AGW is NOT totally BULLSHIT, despite the facts that our civilization is almost totally dominated by bullshit. Sure, when one studies whether or not one should or could blame human activities for climate change, one can end up feeling like a dog twirling around chasing its tail, because one can not necessarily trust any of the sources of information about that.
But nevertheless, the basic theory of greenhouse gas driven warming is sound, despite that there are no climate models at present that appear to be accurate enough. After all, naturally speaking, one may more probably have presumed that we were headed back towards another ice age, rather than global warming. However, my current view is that human activities have already introduced enough greenhouse gas warming so that we have triggered a cascade of irreversible changes. Those changes are going to slowly reverse the previously natural climate cycles, to drive unprecedented climate changes. Although I can not be certain, these days I tend to presume that AGW has already triggered runaway climate changes, that human beings no longer could stop, even if there were enough political miracles that they could agree to try to do so.
IF I am right that, despite that we are getting a break from natural factors driving us towards another ice age, the human activities have already triggered enough of a cascade of runaway exponential greenhouse gas mechanisms to engage, then we are trillions of times more screwed than is possible for us to imagine at the present time!
P.S.
I envy those people, like you Dickweed, that are able to dismiss that problem as nonexistent. Like many of the other comments above were able to scoff at the ideas that there were any limits, that provides a wonderful personal rationalization to enjoy living in the ways that are possible after one has adopted an attitude of evil deliberate ignorance towards the consequences of one's actions. (Often I wish that I could time warp back to my previous states of more blissful ignorance about these matters.)
HOWEVER, just because the ruling classes dominate everything with their bullshit does NOT mean that everything they say is all "complete and utter BULLSHIT!!!" Instead, I now look at them as like the "boy who cried wolf." My view today is that the threat of climate changes are trillions of times worse than those which are being used by the ruling classes as excuses to control other people, and force more people to pay the ruling classes more tributes or taxes.
"After all, naturally speaking, one may more probably have presumed that we were headed back towards another ice age, rather than global warming. However, my current view is that human activities have already introduced enough greenhouse gas warming so that we have triggered a cascade of irreversible changes."
Read Survival of Civilization (http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/The-Survival-of-Civilization). The planet is a self-balancing system. It pretty much runs in one direction until it burns itself out and then does a re-cycling. Humans are most likely to have influenced the timeframe for thext reset, though it would/will happen regardless. Heating precedes and triggers the next glacial period, which plays the part of a big soil tiller (and life takes off again).
Yeah, I agee that "Humans are most likely to have influenced the timeframe for that reset."
M. King Hubbert put it this way:
“It is as true of power plants or automobiles that it is of biological populations that the earth cannot sustain any physical growth for more than a few tens of successive doublings. Because of this impossibility the exponential rates of industrial and population growth that have prevailed during the past century and a half must soon cease. Although the forthcoming period of stability poses no insuperable physical or biological difficulties, it can hardly fail to force a major revision of those aspects of our current social and economic thinking that stem from the assumption that the growth rates that have characterized this temporary period can somehow be made permanent.” Scientific American, Inc Energy and Power W.H.Freeman & Co. San Francisco 1971 p 40.
"Dang it, Ellie Mae, we'll have to sell the 5 liter turbo G-wagen and fix to get that stepthru 50cc scooter with the wicker basket. The commute is going to be chilly, I figure."
Mind you, Mr. Hubbert did say that 45+ years ago, but 300-350 years of post-industrial revolution glory has to glide down sometime...maybe this is it.
Good quote, OldNewfy:
"Although the forthcoming period of stability poses no insuperable physical or biological difficulties, it can hardly fail to force a major revision of those aspects of our current social and economic thinking ..."
As my comment above explained, the problem with forcing a change in our current thinking appears to require the psychotic breakdowns of the established systems. To adapt to the FACTS surrounding that "the exponential rates of industrial and population growth that have prevailed during the past century and a half must soon cease" IS going to drive civilization through transformations which will manifest PEAK INSANITIES.
"The earth cannot sustain any physical growth for more than a few tens of successive doublings," while we appear to be near the last possible doubling. However, bizarrely, the vast majority of people manage to deliberately ignore that. The whole established system, and most of those who were more or less successful with those established systems, perceive the world in ways which presume endless exponential growth should happen, or could happen. By and large, it is practically impossible to have any rational political debates about the limits to growth. The main reasons are that, BY DEFINITION, limits to growth are due to death controls, but the current systems of death controls operate through the maximum possible deceits in the ways that military murder systems are running, as well as that those death controls back up the debt controls, through the maximum possible frauds, regarding how the symbolic monetary systems are managed.
Therefore, despite that it is THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE that "the forthcoming period of stability poses no insuperable physical or biological difficulties," in terms of practical politics, nothing less than the psychotic breakdowns of the established systems would allow there to maybe then emerge any "major revision of those aspects of our current social and economic thinking ..."
First admit there is a problem.
Then identify and confirm the cause.
Find a good and practical solution.
Then comes the hard part. The doing it right part is allways harder.
We are just now starting to admit we have a problem. Peak insanity is people not facing the problem. These days its getting very hard for people to pretend they dont see it. It is after all getting bigger and uglier every day.
There is another way. Honesty and integrity. We could simply stop lying to ourselves. That in and of itself would be a great place to start.
I agree! Often properly diagnosing a problem is much more difficult than we think. Unfortunately even when this is done deciding on and completing a long-term and economical fix can be just as vexing.
Of course, I agree with you VWAndy!
However, people who have been successfully backing up lies with violence are NOT interested in "honest and integrity," nor in stopping lying to themselves as well as others. The only thing that they are interested in is being able to be even more violent, in order to continue to back up their lies. In that context, social psychiatry is extremely difficult and dangerous!
The vast majority of articles on Zero Hedge are telling the banksters that creating more and more "money" out of nothing as debts is a bad idea, which is making everything worse. However, so far, there are barely any indications that the banksters are paying attention. HOW could they personally go through the paradigm shifts in their own perceptions enough to admit that their system is fundamentally fraudulent? The same goes for attempting to talk to the police who are getting well-paid to enforce the legalized lies, including significant fringe benefits such as their expected pensions.
FURTHERMORE, THE DEEPER PROBLEMS WITH TRYING TO STOP LYING TO OURSELVES IS WE WOULD HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THERE MUST BE SOME MURDER SYSTEM, TO BACK UP SOME MONETARY SYSTEM. The kinds of articles on Zero Hedge that recommend the banksters simply stop making more "money" out of nothing as debts, tend to never address that deeper problem that money is measurement backed by murder. The evolutionary ecology of human civilization DOES MAKE SENSE in terms of the theories of general energy systems. Militarism is the supreme ideology because people murdering each other is the most important thing that they do. However, regarding that problem it is practically impossible for us to simply stop lying to ourselves.
Finding a good and practical solution requires a better system of death controls, to back up better debt controls. That then returns to the deeply entrenched problems that the current systems were based successful warfare operating through backing up deceits with destruction, which then morphed into a financial system based on backing up frauds with force. Furthermore, there is nothing else that human beings can do to continue living than to continue to operate some systems of organized lies and robberies.
Finding a good and practical solution requires us muddling through the madness of human evolutionary ecologies, whereby there are dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, wherein all of the most dominant of those systems promote the view that they are the only ones which have the absolute truth. The crucial problem is that the ruling classes are the most criminally insane, because they are the most committed to promoting their bullshit as the one and only truth, which they defend and advance with relentlessly ruthless and reckless violence.
Yeppers. But there are folks that do get the honesty and integrity thing. Those folks are the ones that pose the greatest threat to the powers that be. Simply becuse they can agree and are able to trust one another. I feel that is the one area where the advantages are ours. The ravenously feral tend to attack first and can be turned on each other. This is not the case with the honest. Our ability and need to trust one another has been used against us for a long time. At some point we will need to use this to our advantage it is not a weakness. Thier lack of trust is also thier weakness and they hide it well. Revealing the cold hard truth does not bother honest folks much they find comfort in it. Thats why the truth must be kept hidden for this system to continue. The truth is making a big comeback. It may take a long time to arrive but it is comming.
Below is a list of the worlds ten most crucial problems counted down from "least to most crucial" The world must begin to address these many problems with long term solutions. Most of these are issues that center on our sustainability.
Sadly, politicians do not deal well with such things leaving us without direction. As we look at the human condition we can let fate take us where it may choose or we can take control of our future by proper planning and by guiding it as best we can.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-worlds-10-worst-problems.html
you don't need 10 when 3 will do.
oil
food
water
scarcity of any will cascade into collapse of just in time systems. Just in time systems will amplify any levels of scarcity and cause collapses in tangentially related areas.
Tangential pressures will cause politicial problems including war.
War will consume additional resources but destroy demand by destroying humans.
less people more resources, population expansion, collapse, war, rinse and repeat til infinity ends.
"rinse and repeat til infinity ends" ... or until some better internalized systems of natural selection create some systems of artificial selection, which can prevent that cycle from repeating as badly as they previously did ???
That 10 point article emphasized the FACT of previous exponential growth ... which MUST hit real limits hard, since it runs into them as fast as it can possibly go at that time. However, I found all the "solutions" to be way too much based on impossible ideals, rather than unitary mechanisms.
Natural systems have, over and over again, been able to evolve sustainable ecologies. Theoretically, there could be evolutionary ecologies which would integrate human, industrial and natural factors. However, first we have to see IF we survive hitting the wall of real limits at an accelerating rate, and then bouncing off over a cliff whose bottom we can not currently see.
'The Gates Of Delirium'
Talking about "peak insanities" had me recalling the above title of a little ditty recorded forty years ago by a progressive rock group of musicians known as YES. It is said that 'TGOD' was loosely based on Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' which I have never read. When I looked at the Wiki I was amused to learn that Tolstoy was a veteran of The Crimean War, which the Russians lost. Funny how chaos winds it's way through events that later become history. Anyway...
It looks like we are very close to, if not at, The Gates Of Delirium. As you have so masterfully expressed, the craziness of power Train has finally arrived at the moment of truth a quadrillion times more powerful than when this journey got underway. One thing I repeatedly pick up on from your comments is that there are solutions, however improbable that they are implemented in the small timeframe available, the main thrust of which is a political miracle where a better gang with a better murder system/better violence replaces the current bunch of bullies. Money as measurement can be improved on is what your saying unless I'm mistaken. This brings us to the current cacophony of chaos and mayhem we hear about in the news of the world today and back to Crimea.
The failure of OWS proves the point that at this point the Ghandi non-violence approach failed to accomplish the redress it hoped to inspire. The coordinated takedown of Occupy was a very big mistake because while it pleased TPTB to see their bullying tactics in action, it allowed the organic pressure to keep building. Had they only come to the table in Philadelphia... The PTB returned to business as usual confident that the People had been put in their proper place, nevermore to grace the night. HA! Energy systems just don't work that way! That energy went elsewhere. It showed up in Vlad Putin. He too offered the non-violence approach when he offered safe harbour to Snowden. He offered to be civilized but a little tough (hint hint) in Syria. But the biggest bullies, as they showed in OWS, didn't want to accept that there was any stronger force in the world, and so they stumbled into Kiev. Three strikes and you're out. Putin will resort to whatever murder is required from this point onward. And if that results in mass murder and WW111, so be it.
Let's take a look at the numbers. GDP, S&P, BOE, polls, bushels per acre, QE/m, MPH, likes, tweets, views, subs, green arrows or red, ppm...
redoubling of the human population. You are correct to say that there will not be another redoubling of the human population and that the most likely 'final' number will be somewhere <1B within ten-twenty generations, but Hans Rosling, statistician extra-ordinaire, has us at about 10B in the not too distant future. Of all the numbers out there, this is the only one that matters. Sustaining 10B in a healthy ecology presents some problems but if we are able to solve them then YES, it's do-able.
The current bunch don't seem to really want to make that happen manifested by Obama's speech in Copenhagen in 2009. That action speaks of mass murder and depopulation. Merely lip-service to buy them more time to prepare. But the exponential function has caught them unprepared and now out of control. This is why the errors are now occuring more and more frequently. Enter Putin.
Putin knows the numbers... and the odds of success. He isn't the only one, hell even a few posters on ZeroHedge know, but as OWS proved, Putin is the only person on the planet with enough power to better the current gang. He's simply a better gangster! Quisling politicians and scientists BEWARE!
Putin is going to mean business when he talks in Paris in 2015. 21 months is a very long time at the rate things are going, and he will tell the world in no uncertain 'numbers' that mass extinction is the meanest business of all. He will kill all who stand in his way, including the IPCC and the UNFCCC.
In The Gates Of Delirium, the cacophony finally climaxes and Peace arrives to the singing of 'Soon'. By design, it pushes the listener to the peak of insanity then shows us that stopping the insanity is better than crashing through the gates incurring massive damage or having the Gates flung open at the last minute and go hurtling into the abyss. Best to come to a halt, disembark, and simply go open the Gate. Then proceed : )
Soon, oh soon the light...
MEAN BUSINESS, you appear to be summarizing my views correctly, and poetically too: "the craziness of power Train has finally arrived at the moment of truth a quadrillion times more powerful than when this journey got underway."
Regarding your mention of Hans Rosling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz_kn45qIvI
OVERPOPULATED - BBC Documentary
Over-simplified statistics to demonstrate that things are NOT as bad as they could be, since there ARE some resolutions to overpopulation. The concept of "Peak Children" at ~22:10 mark was quite interesting, but still, I felt misleading. There is a profound failure to recognize that what we call "birth control" is actually a form of death control. Another over-simplified statement is that women who have less than 2 children are committing suicide, while women who have more than 2 children are declaring war on their neighbours. In that context, the AVERAGES ARE MISLEADING. The rich are tending towards committing suicide, while the poor are declaring war on the rich. Meanwhile, the richest of the rich are preparing for more genocidal wars, along with democidal martial law.
I liked the line delivered at the 19:55 minute mark:
"People never lived in ecological balance with nature.
They DIED in ecological balance with nature."
THE "FINEST UN DEMOGRAPHERS PROJECTIONS" APPEAR TO ME TO BE RIDICULOUSLY OPTIMISTIC, SINCE THEY DO NOT ACCOUNT FOR A CONVERGENCE OF ALL OF THE VARIOUS FACTORS OF SOCIAL POLARIZATION, NOR OF THE MORE IMPORTANT DESTRUCTION OF NATURE, AND THE EXHAUSTION OF NATURAL RESOURCES, DRIVEN CRITICAL!
At the 28 minute mark is the leap into fantasy that there WILL BE enough natural resources. Unless industrial ecology goes through bigger changes than human ecology has, during the last 50 years, or so, then there is no way for the real future to be sustainable. IT IS NOW IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE BETTER HUMAN ECOLOGY WITHOUT BETTER INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY TO SUSTAIN THAT.
AT THE 45 MINUTE MARK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT GRAPH WHICH SHOWS THE EFFECT OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITHOUT POLITICALLY MIRACULOUS INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, THAT REVOLUTION SHALL COLLAPSE.
As long as we continue to have a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, where private banks get to make the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, that it is IMPOSSIBLE for that human accounting system to be integrated with the natural world systems, nor integrate any saner industrial ecologies, because making "money" out of nothing is flatly in contradiction to the basic laws of nature, the conservation of energy. What is actually happening is that fraud is backed by force, to make it fly. The world is being dominated by lies, backed by violence, through the established monetary system. There are many deeper, different levels to understand how that manifests through the combined money/murder systems (as many of my previous comments have attempted to elucidate.)
The paradox is that it is consistent with general energy systems that human civilization operates through lies about its own energy systems. The fraud of making "money" out of nothing does not actually break the laws of nature, but rather, works because force backed that up. However, the prolonged success of backing up that fraud with force has driven society stark raving mad. The longer term paradox is the final failure from too much success at controlling our civilization with fraudulent accounting systems, where the history of the murders that backed up the money get to pretend that it did not exist, and most people agree to go along with that pretense by deliberately not understanding how the monetary system really works, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand.
Hans Rosling gets promoted by mainstream media like the BBC because he does NOT address the central issues of the real human ecology in a forthright way, but rather operates through euphemistic language, which he can get away with because our whole society has been trained to use the language which is the biggest bullies' bullshit. THEORETICALLY, WE COULD DO BETTER, BUT WE WOULD HAVE TO STOP AGREEING TO ACCEPT THE BULLSHIT LANGUAGE OF FALSE FUNDAMENTAL DICHOTOMIES, AND THEIR RELATED IMPOSSIBLE IDEALS, AS SOMETHING WORTHY OF BELIEVING IN.
Intellectual scientific revolutions that face more of the radical truth about human civilizations are theoretically possible. Initially that does not change anything which exists, but only changes the ways that we perceive what exists. IF enough people went through enough of those paradigm shifts in perception, then we would be able to start actually changing the world on the basis of understanding more radical truths, instead of continuing to be controlled by the same old Huge Lies, which dominate society now ...
This is the kind of focus needed. Ya dont see it every day. All Hail ZH!
YES, Radical Marijuana, I totally agree that the documentary glosses over the hardcore issue of "THE MORE IMPORTANT DESTRUCTION OF NATURE, AND THE EXHAUSTION OF NATURAL RESOURCES, DRIVEN CRITICAL!" but Rosling qualified that (28min), perhaps as a concession from the BBC? He states right here in this video that it isn't his area of expertise(52:30). It's hard for me to think that Hans Rosling is unaware of stats regarding AGW but that he chooses to beat around the AGW bush when making his presentations in docs like this and TED Talks in order to get his core message out, which is basically under the business-as-usual paradigm. I think he is sufficiently influential to use the MSM to get his message out through them while subtly poking his audience to dig deeper into the climate change issue elsewhere. A covert operation? lol
While we're on the topic of MSM/time B.Y. (before youtube) it will never cease to amaze me that James Burke was able to get his documentary After The Warming produced and aired 25 years ago by Maryland Public Television and Film Australia. The Documentary I keep reminding people about where 90 seconds into it he talks about "climate change". I've noticed lately the they-had-to-stop-calling-it-global-warming canard has resurfaced since the WG1 report came out last September. ATW is the ying to Rosling's yang where Burke's core message of AGW pauses briefly to point out the growing population pressures.
I may be going out on a limb with the Putin thing but your recurring theme about better organized crime to combat the bullies, scary as this will be for many 'folks', might be manifesting in Vlad Putin. It seems many are willing to put up with his bullshit rather than Obama/Kerry/McCain bullshit and their Fed owners! Again, I don't think Vlad is naive regarding AGW and he won't be beating around the bush in Paris.
Soon...
Deliriously HAPPY when we open the Gates?! Thanks RM : )
Love seeing articles like this on ZH!
Also I'd like to thank the following individuals for chiming in to defend the truth of this article...
Flakmeister
CrashIsOptimistic
GeorgeHayDuke
Radical Marijuana
This article is total goose-stepping greentard BS, and you're all obviously Al Gore's rimjobbers and NSA shills.
What's the matter? Can't handle the truth?
I see you've replaced the ability to think systemically with the ability to fail at insulting people.