Debt Rattle June 5 2022
- This topic has 55 replies, 21 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
@phoenixvoice
I’m close to off grid here at almost 44 degrees North. Stuck out in the North Atlantic of eastern Canada. Have been since ’07. I’m running 5.4 kilowatts of solar with propane for my hot water, cooking, clothes dryer and a 7kw gen. The gen sees some use between early November and early February. I use lead acid batteries, 8 200 amp hour in series for 48vdc.the battery cost is/was $320C with an expected life span of seven years. Six is all I can get. No ac here as we don’t receive enough really hot days to make it pay, yet! We budget $100 a month to cover our propane and expected battery replacement costs. The gen runs at times of low light, the above mentioned period. It comes on automatically when the battery bank voltage hits certain points for specified times, programable by me. When it runs the inverter charges the bank while the house is powered, it takes two to three hours to fully charge the bank. Entire system cost approx. $25,000 gen included. We watch all the TV we care to and have a fridge with an ice maker, other half insists on ice. Two small freezers for our garden production, still eating last years haul of veggies and such. I planted carrots in a raised bed in the green house last July and we ate the last of them last week. Carrots keep really well in the ground if they don’t freeze, same with parsnips. If you allow them to start growing again in the spring they will flower and go to seed, which I did last year and have planted that seed in the outside garden yesterday. We still have frozen carrots as well. New head lettuce and spinach rolling in now, just finished the outside garden planting today. Rhubarb is ready for processing and still have some in the freezer from last year. I do envy the growing season you and Dr. John have but not the heat. Our life style is somewhat Spartan compared to others however we enjoy much more leisure time than all but the fully retired. We no longer travel much or great distances but present times sort of dampened that anyway.
@dr-d
No argument about the amount of oil still in the ground it’s the energy cost of getting it. Not dollars but energy. Dollars are fiat and as such are of no value when it comes right down to it. They are a believe system, as long as most believe in them they have value until they don’t. Our present set of living arrangements require the same amount of energy input to maintain during its lifetime as it took took put it in place. As soon as energy is no longer put in it starts to decline, think of it as maintenance. In our growth to infinity and beyond system every increase in prosperity requires the same amount of energy over its life span that was used to create it. Hence the need for more oil to be pumped daily then was pumped daily some years ago. The world can’t get by on 80 million barrels a day now because it was using 90 plus before the shut down. It needs 90 to stay even and 100 to regain growth. If it gets to 100 in a few years it will need a few million more for more growth. These need to have a replacement value in joules with at least the same excess joules that the oil had that made them. The west and N.A. in particular built most of our infrastructure will 90 plus excess joules per joule used to get them excess little buggers. So now we are maintaining that infrastructure with 40 or less excess joules and want added growth to boot. These numbers aren’t hard and fast, not at my finger tips right now, but you get my drift I’m sure. I see the Russians are said to be able to produce oil for profit at $40. Whose dollars? Are they 1910 dollars or 2010 dollars. Not the same thing. Inflation! It takes energy to get energy not dollars or rubles or lira or any fiat. Joules or calories burned is the only way. I’ve read in one of my agricultural manuals that in 1900 for every calorie burned on the farm they received back approx. 10 in return. With the advent of industrial ag it is now the reverse and may be worse. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is merely changed from a dense form to a less dense form until it is spread so thin as to be of no use to us.Thanks BoomerDoomer2. I do stuff like that, too. The clover in Yoakum has stickers. I spend sooo many hours pulling all kinds of weeds from the vastness, different weeds in every season, and they are unperturbed… I put in berm features to hold water sometimes, mainly with a shovel. I did plant white clover in the Austin garden, along with a lot of shredded cedar, and pick weeds there.
Fukuoka was the inspiration, of course.@Formerly T-Bear: Yes, You are absolutely right. I meant “Autarky”, not “autocracy”..
I’m chagrined, blushing-in-print here. It’s as bad as saying “jury rigged” for Jerry-rigged”, or “boogyman” for “bogeyman”, or “hip” for “hep”, or that other mixup I can’t recall that always bugs me.
@Phoenixvoice: Good analysis of how they get you coming and going with electrical utility inducements like residential solar. Phoenix is unsustainable. Seek to develop living options in underpopulated areas with favorable climate and soil.
It’s hard to make a living in those places these days, which is why they are underpopulated…More good contributions, Red.
I don’t like the long periods of cold and dark. I’m better down here where it is hot and humid and I still have AC, but the new addition has special mitigation features, like a screen-porch in the shade, and really good insulation upstairs, downstairs and between, which allows for passive heat containment, like downstairs being 15 F lower than outside if only upstairs windows are open for flow-through heat-scavenging.
I used a fossil fuel economy to build it, and am still doing so. It’s not an “alternative” as much as an investment in the next 30 years.
Yesterday Kasparov tweeted something to the effect that Russia was not a real nation but a mafia front and a gas station with nukes.
William Taylor US Ambassador to Ukraine said, “Russian artillery firing at Ukraine from Russian territory will be a justified target for destruction by HIMARS missile systems.”
The ideology here is pretty morbid. It demands victory at any cost.
More apocalyptic predictions and nuclear threats on Russian state TV. Some of the Kremlin's propagandists argue that the world is descending into a nuclear abyss, but the Russians should be happy about it. Others seem borderline delirious. Are they cracking under pressure? Watch: pic.twitter.com/1HhLZhxGGY
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) June 5, 2022
I must apologize for the Dr. Morgan quote I posted this morning. It is his quote just not the one for The Consciousness of Sheep. It was in reply to:
Pause for Thought: Money without Value in a Rapidly Disintegrating World
The quote for The C of S was :
drtimmorgan
on June 5, 2022 at 7:15 am said:
This is a particularly good article by Tim Watkins.I think he said, in a recent article, that the British economy is “collapsing”. I wouldn’t argue with that. The current government seems remarkably incompetent. But Mr Johnson was given an emphatic majority by the voters, and Labour seems to offer nothing, in the economic sphere, that is really different.
For things to be different – in this context meaning “better” – the public, in this case the British public, have to want things to be different. I’ve yet to be convinced that they do. Perhaps they want to stick with things as they are?
When Russia’s battle is being narrowed down to a battle for Severodonetsk, a city in Ukraine’s east – it doesn’t appear to be going in their favor. It’s also being reported that two more Russian Generals got killed.
Updates from
Obrien
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1533348568119103489.html
And Telenko
I recommend the “Military Summary” channel on both Youtube (which I avoid) and Rumble for daily updates and analysis on the Ukraine-Russia military situation. About 20 minutes each day updating what happened since yesterday, and going into some analysis on objectives for each side, etc. The commentator uses both Russian and Western military maps/sources for his info, and seems objective.
@chooch: As we have our media whores, so does the Russian media. Both the West and Russia give certain people a long leash on their speculations, both for reasons of their own.I wrote an essay for the blog today, and there’s a nice picture of Jenny and the jungle
https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/crystal-ball?s=wI’m reluctant to make predictions without a lot of evidence to support them, but there is now a lot of evidence showing the near-term trends of energy use in industrial societies, with good historical comparisons.
The currently stated objectives of western governments are not compatible with near-term real-economic requirements for societal survival. They can’t be carried out. They are a bluff, or some kind of strange trick to create a crisis, before a “new-solution” is magically presented to us.Gonzolo Lira just pointed out what happened to the US during the Arab Oil Embargo , starting in 1973. It caused Stagflation in the US, because prices went up and the economy imploded when the core commodity, oil quadrupled in price. America still produced almost all the oil it needed, and Americans used a lot less oil than we do now. Lira points out that Europe is now doing that to itself (at America’s behest).
It’s worse for Europe, because Europe produces very little oil or gas without Russia. Global economy is so tightly knit, and running right at capacity, that there is not slack to be given from elsewhere, even if the oil were the same, and the refineries could just use it as-is. It’s not. They can’t. It also has to come long ways by ship, with long transit delays, and shipping shortages are already a big problem. Pipelines that work 7 days per week are the best. Russian pipelines and oil are the best for European refineries and industry.American and Qatari liquefied natural gas are a pipe-dream, because the billions of dollars required won’t exist when the economy shuts down for the decade to build that infrastructure. Japan and other Asian economies already buy that stuff, are set up for it, and will outbid Europe.
A pipeline from Iran is a good idea, blocked so far by USA/NATO, since Syria wants to collect for Syrian participation, and is getting pounded for that affront.
Here in Texas, with the summer driving season already underway, people now let me drive just under the speed limit, maybe even follow me for 30 miles, instead of tailgating, flashing their brights in my mirror, and punching the accelerator to jump past me at 90 mph, like usual.
WTI is $120/bbl. The bank that used to show that price on the time & temperature display quit doing so in late March.
It went from being interesting to threatening, I guess.I suspect the WEF/Globalist/Bilderberg plan was to spring a global financial crisis all at once, with the miracle solution of global central bank digital currency, with initial free-money, and a free smartphone to go with your free biometric ID, which could be used anywhere, and only by you, as long as you remained on good-behavior.
The failure of Russia to financially collapse, coupled with the advanced preparations for a shared trade-currency with organizations like the Eurasian Economic Union, BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, seem to make that plan too risky now. The choice would be a real choice, and a lot of people in a lot of countries are already prepared to opt out of the nefarious biometric CBDC scheme. It has been outed.
Global biometric CBDC is a trap that won’t catch all of us, and like the Kool-Aid, it won’t work without full participation, because everybody will shortly want out.Russia and China have the opportunity to be good guys this summer for an affordable price. Russia can make a profit on oil and meet the national budget when it is $40/bbl (maybe lower). Russia is already channeling big middleman-fees to Chinese tankers and Indian refiners for taking Russian oil at night, refining, rebranding and selling it at a handy profit for all, even including the final customer. Russia and India have both expressed intentions to sell grain preferentially to countries whose populations need it to survive, like Egyptians… These charitable acts will reduce profits of Oil-Majors and Agribusinesses like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and even Bayer/Monsanto, since Russian grain eschews their patented seeds and necessary inputs.
Cheating and accepting cheap grain are the low-hanging-fruit. This will throttle-back the extractive cash flows to the imperial financial machine, which is set to grab all the productive assets of countries that can’t make their interest payments to banks, hedge funds and the IMF, like in the Asian Economic Crisis. It’s that time of the credit-cycle again, unless it’s not…
How beguiling, to be spared from the fate you have dreaded for 30 years, when you know it is an evil, tyrannical, downright unjust fate, cast onto your country by a cynical global parasitic class… “Odious debt” is the legal term. It’s ok to default on it, and you might gladly do so, if you only had a choice.
Russia shares your pain…
China is likewise sympathetic, and willing to give you a clean slate, a fresh credit card, to replace the Bank-of-America VISA card you are about to cut up. You won’t be able to use it at every gas station (Rosneft and Valero, not Texaco), but you can get by without the slavery of unpayable debt hanging over your head.When will this transition happen and how long will it take. “Slowly at first, then all at once”? What will that mean?
Cheating is underway, and will have to increase and become the basic business model for EU oil and gas purchases. It will be a hassle, but as long as the pipelines are still running, it just means pretending you don’t know that the petroleum products on that tanker originated in Russia. Easy.
Cheating will rapidly refine as a business model. Funds to build LNG ports and transport ships in Germany will hit snags in committee. It will just go so slowly that it does not happen. Nordstream-2 just sits there, calling to you… “Profits, profits, warm winters, social approval from friends and family…”What I don’t know is how close to the precipice the western financial machine is, and when it will trip over that edge.
I personally think that the east does not want to give it that push. The east is also invested in that machine. The controlled-demolition of western finance by western financial elites appears non-viable now, and it was their main option.
WW-3 is always a button they can push. It just needs to keep being a slightly worse option than something else, anything else. Walk it down slow…
I think everybody can keep not-rushing-the-crackhead-with-the-detonater for awhile longer, indefinitely.
Just ignore all that stuff about your mom.While the world is lying and cheating, and paying less to western financial institutions, and starting to default on $US debts (I’m looking at You too, “Eurodollars”)
western central banks can play their money-printing games, and they might try some kind of CBDC, but they will lack total-buy-in, and it will be part of a crumbling system, and the neighbors will have this other gig going across the street, which won’t look bad by comparison. The neighbors won’t be paying on that credit card, mortgage, and SUV, either. (It’s just my pension. I need my pension. I earned my pension. The neighbors borrowed my pension..)This will go on for longer than I can imagine. Everything always does. That’s my prediction.
Red sends this article on Surplus Energy Economy, the economic model that modern economy runs on the energy remaining after energy is used to extract, refine and employ energy sources, the net energy after all that, the gasoline, diesel and electricity after production-expenses are paid. It’s odd that that was not considered as a discrete mode of analysis before the 1930s, and is still not embraced by many economists. “The third part of the “blindingly obvious” trilogy is that money acts only as a ‘claim’ on the output of the real (energy) economy.”
This essay looks at the tightly linked energy and economic growth of recent centuries, then overlays the increasing cost of extracting and producing forms of energy, which reaches a point of dragging-down the economy, as happened during the Arab Oil embargo (and has been happening since the middle of 2018 by my estimations). this provides a very useful framework for understanding modern economics, which nobody really wants you to understand. It looks like it is downhill from here forward for the average person, due to rising costs of energy extraction.
#175. The Surplus Energy EconomyThis just in (and forever) There’s No Immediate Cure For Sky High Gas Prices (Recession is not a “cure”, but another resulting ill.)
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/Theres-No-Immediate-Cure-For-Sky-High-Gasoline-Prices.htmlThe borders in Eurasia are complicated and confusing to an American. I can remember the Colorado and Mississippi rivers, but Europe has so many big rivers and seas, even Russia does. This clear and excellent article has really helped my understanding of all of the geostrategic and economic considerations around the Black Sea, Azov Sea, Kerch Straits and the internal waterways of Russia. Adequate maps, too.
Black Sea Geopolitics and Russia’s Control of Strategic Waterways: The Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov
https://www.globalresearch.ca/black-sea-geopolitics-and-russias-control-of-strategic-waterways-the-kerch-strait-and-the-sea-of-azov/5661045St Paul Minnesota mandated COVID vaccination for all city employees by 12/31/2021, and about 20% did not comply. This was unilateral, not negotiated with the unions. The judge says the city did not have that unilateral right, and needs to renegotiate this in contracts. The workers requested a testing-option, bodily autonomy.
Judge rules in favor of St. Paul unions over COVID vaccination mandate
Very reassuring medical article explains that 50 years of viral mutation, compressed to 4 years, allowing monkeypox to spread rapidly in humans across the globe happened coincidentally after the virus jumped to humans, and only took 4 years instead of 50, because the human immune systems made it mutate 12 times faster. See how that works?
What the surprising mutations in the monkeypox virus could indicate about the new outbreakWhat the surprising mutations in the monkeypox virus could indicate about the new outbreak
To be “fair and balanced” I’m including this conspiracy theory that the 50 years of mutations, compressed to 4 years, that allowed monkeypox to spread effectively in humans on a global scale, for the first time ever, happened in a lab, and was even the subject of one of those “tabletop exercises”, like a war-game without a war, that predicted it’s date of discovery within a week, and just last year. You’ve seen this kind of paranoid rambling with graphs, analysis and footnotes before… They even quote Robert Malone MD ,and he’s a “vaccinated, vaccine-developing anti-vaxxer” as he says himself.
Study Finds Latest Monkeypox Outbreak Is Result of Biolab-manipulated Virus Possibly Released Intentionally
https://www.globalresearch.ca/study-finds-latest-monkeypox-outbreak-result-biolab-manipulated-virus-possibly-released-intentionally/5782369Not finding much detail about Severodonetsk, but this:
Military Situation In Eastern Ukraine, Izyum-Severodonetsk Region, On June 5, 2022 (Map Update)
Clashes between the AFU and Russian forces were reported in Severodonetsk city;
As a result of the counterattack, the AFU reportedly managed to repel Russian forces from the western outskirts of Sirotino and from the village of Lesnaya Dacha.Funny story of-the-day:
Elderly men escape nursing home to go to Wacken metal festival ~ Police then found the aging metalheads at 3 a.m. at Wacken Open Air, the world’s biggest heavy metal festival. A police spokeswoman said they were “disoriented and dazed.” 😆
https://www.dw.com/en/elderly-men-escape-nursing-home-to-go-to-wacken-metal-festival/a-44955305
John Day:
No need to get defensive unless you enjoy feeling insecure. I meant, plant the rest of the dirt in garden. I’ve resumed posting a bit here but on a ‘no parley with the natives’ basis. I made an exception for you but I’ll rescind it now and stick to just sharing a bit of data or relevant ideas sans discussion.
Dr, have you seen the old cellar pipes or the hacienda air towers used by the Spanish in 1500 for AC? I’m not sure about having tunnels under the ground leading to the house, in non-deserts they would fill with water, and they may eventually warm up, but the concept of heat rising is sound.
Today of course that would just be a geothermal heat pump, but that takes steady 120v. 220V?
Red, can you use the cold as a resource instead of the heat? Like Iceland: thermoelectic needs a temperature delta more than temperature. You’re already running a stove in the winter. Can you then get the other side of the plate in solid freeze? If not overheated TE is pretty solid generator and lasts a while but you’d never get to use it in moderate Virginia. Iceland uses snow vs volcanoes, both an infinite resource.
I see your point about the Red Queen Race. Obviously we CAN de-energy, re-simplify, and LEDs show even sometimes use less energy. But that’s just not human experience which is Jevon’s Paradox: if we make LEDs we just light up twice as many of them and gain nothing. (Why???) Nothing is decommissioned, they either let it collapse as a waste, or dump more energy into it. That I understand, so I’m torn that my read is that Mr. Global, trying some things and realizing this in 1979, released “Limits to Growth” and decided the only possible answer was to simply lock up the energy and refuse to allow it to be pumped at all. And also to kill people. For them, to stop runaway population and thus runaway depletion. But those specific wells back then are time-locked for 1979 and will have 1979-era energy returns. That is, high and very profitable. 1 in 20 out. Which is why we can’t let Iran have them, we will need to control them, or Iran will control us. As Russia is doing right now, with more wells and more firepower. If they don’t nuke Russia, they lose the world. For some reason they won’t though. And that’s in Fatima.
“The currently stated objectives of western governments are not compatible with near-term real-economic requirements for societal survival. They can’t be carried out. They are a bluff, or some kind of strange trick to create a crisis, before a “new-solution” is magically presented to us.”
Exactly. There is NO intention of using Green Energy, LNG to Germany, or anything else. No one on earth is that dumb. So since that’s a transparent scam, where is the real game? Last two years we found out. Kill everyone. Take Russia. Or die trying because as you say, if it’s a mirage and a dead end that they’ve been feeding us this whole time while intentionally getting us into this miserable, wasteful jam, every Joe on planet earth is going to hang them. I’m putting a dramatic bent on it, but I’m not wrong.
Scythes are very, very fine instruments, so respect that they have to be sized exactly for you and for the task. That’s why if you pick up an American one in an antique store, you’re going to feel like it’s a lead pig. It’s almost certainly for heavy use, and made for someone far shorter than you are. European scythes are now popular, perhaps more than American, but you have to respect that they can tend to be very light. So if you’re using one, get the right thing. If you think oil’s running short, get the bush blade and a grass blade and don’t beat up your fine gear. You’ll have the second problem that you almost shouldn’t bother to harvest without a cradle as well, which is another whole thing. THEN you have to learn tying sheaves with their own straw, and stooking the sheaves, and hauling them without dropping, and keeping the mice off, and threshing. You know what? Just go get some gas and have a machine do it, you don’t want to know. That’s why they stopped doing it by hand the first time ‘round.
@Dr.D: thanks. Underground pipes take a whole lot of energy to dig tunnels for and set-in. Man, that’s a lot of work and expense, and it tears up tree roots. Trees make shade.
@Boscohorowitz: Gasoline remains key to even minimally managing 0.8 acre, mostly grass, with lots of fruit trees planted. That takes 4 hours of steady-pace mowing with gasoline in little Honda. Digging in a garden takes so much broadfork and roto-tiller work after covering the bed with black plastic for half a year to smother weeds. Forking and tilling in amendments after shoveling them out of the Ford Ranger is a lot of work. Covering the beds with multiple truckloads of mulch is lots of work, and every year or two. The amount of work, per area of modest garden and homestead, even with gasoline, is a hard limit for one human. I can’t really talk about pulling sections of weeds to have them return or be replaced with others in a couple of seasons…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.