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Presenting The 2015/2016 Geopolitical Heat Map

Tyler Durden's picture




 

If you follow geopolitics, you might have noticed that many of the world’s emerging markets are beset with fractious political dynamics, violence, protests, and any number of other tail risks that could at any time mushroom into black swan events with ramifications for the developed world. 

Take Turkey, for instance, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on the PKK and determination to alter the constitution and consolidate power in his office have served to plunge the country into chaos and now, Ankara’s brazen move to shoot down a Russian fighter jet threatens to drag NATO into an armed conflict with the Russians. 

Or have a look at Brazil, where an intractable political crisis and a nasty bout of stagflation have plunged Latin America’s most important economy into a veritable depression (yes, that’s right, a depression), and where the future looks even worse than the recent past. 

And then there are less “consequential” nations that still have an outsized impact on how we see the world. Take Tunisia, which is supposed to be a beacon of hope for those who believe an Arab state can embrace secular governance. As we saw last week, extremists are determined to take every opportunity to curtail progress, and thus demoralize those who point to the country as the antithesis of Libya and Egypt.

As we head into 2016, it’s worth taking stock of the geopolitical events that have shaped EM in 2015 and it's also worth cataloguing what we know about the landscape for the coming year. On that score, we present the following EM political heatmap from Barclays which tallies terrorist attacks, civil strife, protests, and elections across emerging economies. We would note that there are some rather glaring omissions (like the absence of a placeholder for the 1MDB protests in Malaysia which unfolded in August), but generally speaking, this is a decent summary and does a nice job of laying out important upcoming political events in 2016. 

The only real question, we suppose, is how many black circles they'll be on this map at this time next year...

 

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Wed, 12/02/2015 - 16:06 | 6867108 Bunghole
Bunghole's picture

I dont see San Bernadino on the chart.

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 16:29 | 6867299 TheDanimal
TheDanimal's picture

That chart is emerging economies, not submerging economies.

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 16:33 | 6867182 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

A good a place as any for this:

 

Back in 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a climate conference in Moscow that global warming wouldn’t be such a terrible thing in cold countries like his. “We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up,” he said. Twelve years later, Putin has apparently changed his mind, telling his fellow world leaders on Monday that “climate change has become one of the gravest challenges humanity is facing.” [New York Times]

 

Looks like he realized that the grain harvest won't be increasing....

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 16:39 | 6867355 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

“climate change has become one of the gravest challenges humanity is facing.” 

 I have to agree, if for the opposite reason:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif


Wed, 12/02/2015 - 17:23 | 6867642 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

So much ignornace and so little time...

You are aware that the solar output was about 10% less ~300 MM years ago...

For comparison, the current solar cycle is a variation of about 0.2%...

Oh, and are you aware that your famous figure is not based on data, but only a schematic? Or did you?

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 20:13 | 6868495 PoasterToaster
PoasterToaster's picture

Lies.  Global Warmists' religion is based an absolutely zero data.

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 20:44 | 6868621 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

How do you breathe with your head up your ass??

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 20:41 | 6868613 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

"Oh, and are you aware that your famous figure is not based on data, but only a schematic? Or did you?"

You mean it's just made up? Golly, that's not what the author of the article that included the graph told me. Feel free to contact him directly, and tell him I sent you: Timothy Casey @ www@geologist-1011.com

Also:

From a historical perspective, an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 400 ppm is actually almost scraping the bottom of the barrel. Over the Earth’s history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have ranged from 180 ppm to 7000 ppm, see Figure 1 below. On that scale we are in fact today barely above the Earth’s record lows. 

http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/17/atmospheric-co2-"concentrations-at-400-ppm-are-still-dangerously-low-for-life-on-earth

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 20:46 | 6868629 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Ball is in your court...

What peer reviewed publication did it come from??

You might want to ask your buddy....

Toodles....

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 22:17 | 6868882 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

He's not my "buddy" (as we only had an email exchange), and all you have to do is investigate the geological research, i.e., have or have not atmospheric CO2 concentratios and global termeratures correlated over the last ~600 million years, and are they both not now descending (prior to the Industrial Revolution) to historic — and therefore dangerous — lows.

And for what it's worth, I preside over a green building startup that has everything to gain and nothing to lose from jumping on the "Climate Change" bandwagon.

I just refuse to do so unless the one-trick pony — i.e., that atmospheric CO2 controls the Earth's climate — is proven to any reasonable extent.

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 23:27 | 6869152 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

Your "buddy" is a poseur and  you are sadly misguided with your "facts"....

And lay off the strawmen...

That being said, good luck with your startup...

Seriously...

Thu, 12/03/2015 - 10:13 | 6870130 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

Here's my "buddy's" reply to my inquiry about the graph:

First and foremost, all extremes (e.g. minimum possible CO2 production, maximum possible CO2 production) are both dangerous and unnecessary.

The CO2 data, in question, is sourced from:

Berner, R.A., 2001, "Modelling Atmospheric Oxygen Over Phanerozoic Time", Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, v. 65, pp. 685-694.

If you take a look at the period from 340-260 mya, you will see that it's all happened before and if planet earth were not such a robust system, we wouldn't be around to argue the toss in the present.

I've even been offered a somewhat rational argument in the face of a stronger presentation of Berner's curve in the comparison over at: http://climate.geologist-1011.net/ [Note the similar but separate graph.]

This time, the arguments began with the old myth that the deep past is not relevant to the present, despite the fact that the laws of physics simply don't revise themselves and evolve like the systems they drive. Eventually, someone pulled out the old faint sun paradox, which is drawn from the Archaean and not the Phanerozoic. While, empirical evidence contradicting a unconfirmed hypothesis is hardly a paradox, the past 500 million years is a bit late in the history, to date, of the earth and there is no empirical evidence, to date, which would suggest that the sun was fainter 500 million years ago, than it is today. People try to explain the faint sun paradox with the greenhouse effect, but that's like trying to explain heat propagation using luminiferous aether - and yes, it's been done before, notably, by Tyndall and Arrhenius.

When you get down to it, the greenhouse effect is a hypothesis which has never been verified because it's built on a complete misunderstanding of the underlying thermodynamics in favour of pandering to other unfounded hypotheses (e.g. luminiferous aether, reciprocal heat exchange, etc.). I'm currently writing a book on this which both documents historical experiments and some modern day experiments (including a few of my own) which not only fail to show the presence of the greenhouse effect, but demonstrate how observable physical processes and measurable physical parameters offer us a better explanation of all the phenomena which the greenhouse effect is used to explain. 

The main problem is that "global warming" is political. It doesn't matter how strong your case is, the other side will always come up with an excuse to reject it and, if they can't refute your evidence, they try to censor the discussion of facts by attacking you, personally. 

Above all, the day you take politicians seriously is the day you loose the largest part of your freedom and freedom forms the basis for quality of life - which is what makes life worth living in the  first place.

Timothy Casey

Thu, 12/03/2015 - 10:39 | 6870265 Flakmeister
Flakmeister's picture

I was referring to the temperature curve in your plot, as you very well know...

So you are telling us that the scientists don't understand thermodynamics and you do? And you have clearly never heard of a HR diagram or even know what it is...

Are you that deluded? Seriously?

Thu, 12/03/2015 - 14:17 | 6870502 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

I'm not a climate or any other kind of scientist; I just follow the science (and politics) as a layman, my reason for contacting Timothy Casey having only to do with the validity of the chart of global temperatures and atmospheric O2 over geologic time. If it is valid — i.e., if the planet is in fact experiencing the lowest readings of each in some 300 million years — then trying to drive them down further is beyond insane, given that plants cannot survive, much less thrive, below 150 ppm of atmospheric CO2.

Moreover, if manmade CO2 has played a major role in increasing atmospheric CO2 from around 250 ppm at the onset of the Industrial Revolution to over 400 ppm today, then this would be an enormous blessing to life on Earth, just as Patrick Moore maintains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z5FdwWw_c

Can you provide evidence that the chart is incorrect or otherwise irrelevant? And can you refute Moore's thesis?

Wed, 12/02/2015 - 16:50 | 6867411 CHoward
CHoward's picture

The U.S.?  What - we got no problems?!?!?!?

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