alan2102
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EURASIAN ECONOMIC BOOM AND GEOPOLITICS: China’s Land Bridge to Europe: The China-Turkey High Speed Railway
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, April 27, 2012
The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand. The first steps binding the vast economic space are being constructed with a number of little-publicized rail links connecting China, Russia, Kazakhstan and parts of Western Europe. It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle: NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession. Rail infrastructure is a major key to building vast new economic markets across Eurasia.[go to the link for exciting details, map]
Mark BC: “China’s industrial “miracle” could only have happened as a result of the west’s de-industrialization.”
Irrelevant. Regardless of the cause, China has undergone a spectacular industrialization, combined with massive urbanization, massive improvement in living standards across almost the entire population, dramatically reduced illiteracy, fertility collapse, etc. (all of the foregoing being related).
Mark: “And there seems to be lots of evidence that they are in a huge bubble of their own.”
Some evidence, yes. They’ll undoubtedly contract somewhat (correct some of the internal imbalances) and, ongoing, be unable to sustain double-digit growth rates as they had in the past. That’s just part of the process; nothing to get in a twist about. The important thing is that they have made gigantic productive investments that will pay off for over a century, or longer. Their debt problems are different from ours, since they’ve spent their money on industry, infrastructure and the like — the basis for wealth generation — while we have pissed-away our money on worthless crap. The issue is not debt; it is debt in relation to the ability to generate wealth, so as to service or pay off the debt. On that point they are far ahead of us, and gaining almost by the month.
As for “big things fading” (ilargi): there’s zero evidence that China is now fading, or that it is in any danger whatsoever of becoming weaker as a regional and indeed global force in any foreseeable future. To the contrary: there’s every indication that China is coming into its own as a great world power — having just this year (for example) surpassed the U.S. in GDP (PPP basis). There’s a blizzard of evidence, in contrast, that the West, and the U.S. in particular, is on the verge of fading. All of the fundamentals are in place for a sharp downward turn in the fortunes of the Western powers in general and especially the U.S., with simultaneous rise of the East or Eurasia. Whether or not that materializes remains to be seen, but it is a more than fair bet.
Though not “fading” in the slightest right now, demographics does allow a rough guess about China’s fate in the latter half of this century: population stabilization and likely decline, combined with a rapidly aging population, will render China less of a dynamic economic power and world player. In other words, China will rise and fall (or come in for a long slow landing) at some point, probably starting in 50 years or so. This is not surprising. Other areas such as India, and then Africa, will by then be on growth trajectories similar to China’s of the last few decades — i.e. dramatic growth and development. After that, who the heck knows? That’s far too distant to even guess. Perhaps the battered old U S of A will be ready for a comeback by then… 😉
“Is the Plunge Protection Team really buying oil now? That would be so funny. Out of the blue, up almost 5%? Or was it the Chinese doing some heavy lifting stockpiling for their fading industrial base? Let’s get to business.”
The Chinese have a “fading” industrial base?! The most spectacular industrial development story of all time, over decades, and they are “fading”?! Are we living on the same planet?
CORRECTION:
I wrote: “Rare earths: for what? Hydrogen production?”
Pardon. I was thinking of the platinum group metals, esp platinum and palladium, which are the key elements for hydrogen fuel production. The same point stands, however. We have no need for vast fleets of automobiles, hence that (metals) limit does not represent anything of serious concern.
To that I would add that, on reflection, I am probably being far too optimistic about platinum/palladium shortfalls limiting the perpetuation of a bad technology (personal automobiles). It is possible and even likely that substitutes or partial substitutes will be developed which will allow large-scale development of hydrogen as fuel. Already, technology exists using nanoparticulate palladium as the catalyst, which cuts palladium requirement by about 10-fold. Surely there will be more development along the same lines, and the platinum group metals might ultimately become irrelevant. I say that sadly, since I was hoping to see the collapse of the insane auto-industrial complex and all the mayhem and destruction — everything from unlivable urban environments to the impaired personal health of millions — that goes along with it. Oh well.
As for the rare earths: More or less same point as regards the finding of substitutes (full or partial) or other workarounds. This is already happening, and will happen a whole lot more in the coming decades. Vis: https://www.mining.com/rare-earth-prices-plunging-as-manufacturers-turn-to-substitutes/ — Rare earth prices plunging as manufacturers turn to substitutes – November 16, 2011
Here’s a question for you: just because a particular technology HAS (PAST TENSE) required a certain amount of element/resource X, why are you so quick to believe that X cannot possibly be substituted, or that a workaround which averts the need for X cannot possibly be found, or that some new(er) technology, accomplishing the same end but without the need for X, cannot possibly be found or developed? And that question doubly so when the demand for the end product of the technology is great and when developments along the lines just mentioned are powerfully incented. In other words, why this static view of the world, of human activity and industry and knowledge, such that whatever is now known and in operation is taken to be the limit of that which is knowable and operational?
In doomster circles scornful reference is often made to the idea that “technology will save us”, as though that belief were one that only deluded Pollyannas could possibly embrace. But what I see is something like the opposite of that. I see half-deluded doomsters (“doomerannas?”) remaining blind — willfully blind, it appears — to the obvious reality of technological development, and indeed dramatic technological development, in our lifetimes alone, let alone for all past generations. Doomerannas have copped this bizarre notion that technological advancement has reached its apotheosis right now, and development — which before had been brisk and relentless for decades or generations — is at an end. I honest to god don’t know where this idea came from, or how it could be believed, unless one subscribes, superstitiously, to a theory of predestination, and within the theory is the precise time (right now!) when we are fated to — in contrast to all experience — cease being creators and innovators, cease to solve problems, cease to take effective action, and so on.
None of this, by the way, is an argument for the idea that all will be sweetness and light, with smooth sailing from here on out as we effortlessly resolve all our problems. No. We have huge problems, they will not be easy to overcome, and in fact we MIGHT just blow ourselves up or burn ourselves out, or bring about a civilization-wrecking series of events. Possible, indeed. But if those things happen, it will not be for lack of rare earths, or because we suddenly forgot how to solve technical problems. It will be because of spiritual and characterological sickness.
Dr Diablo: “Do the math on scaling technologies: pounds of rare earth, lithium, nickel, silver, copper, needed.”
Rare earths: for what? Hydrogen production? And hydrogen for what? To fuel an insanely oversized fleet of automobiles that should never have existed? Goalposts, again. No, it is true we do not have enough REs to allow us to maintain one of the most stupid misallocations of energy and resources of all time — and one that has almost nothing to do with meeting real human (or other) needs. I’m all broke up about that, believe me. Just inconsolable. 🙂
Lithium? For what? Car batteries? See above.
Nickel and copper? Perhaps you were not aware, but these are cheap elements available in enormous quantity. Gigatons.
Silver? Ah, at last we’ve got a real concern. But not all that serious, given that silver use for photovoltaics eats up only 5% of annual production at present, while other highly-non-essential uses of silver (silverware, jewelry) eat up many times that much. In other words, there is plenty of silver for the immediate and mid-term future of PV production, especially after silver prices explode higher (which they will before too long), which will reduce competition for the element (reduced silver jewelry demand, etc.). Long term is another matter, but not that big a deal, since copper is being developed as a replacement for silver. Copper is available in vastly larger, essentially unlimited quantities, cheap. Plus other replacements and alternatives are under development. Plus, solar PV is only one SMALL part of the renewables mix. Solar thermal — requiring no silver or any other seriously limiting element — actually has more potential than PV, even though PV has gotten all the headlines. I could go on, but that should be enough for now. Not a serious issue.
That all you got?
Ilargi: “We swallow FF industry propaganda whole, which I’m guessing shows in the fact that I call them zombies?!”
“Zombies” or no, what you are saying is quite consistent with what they are saying. They LOVE it when guys like you mouth the messages that they wish to propagate. You’re acting as unpaid propagandist for them. You should send them a bill.
Ilargi: “And the blessings of renewables must be proven through a Citigroup report, who of course have no interests in the huge investment booms in solar or, for that matter, shale?!”
Yes, of course they have an interest in investment booms! That’s the whole fucking point! They see the writing on the wall. Their green-eyeshade types have analyzed the situation, likely in mind-numbing detail, and they are now saying that it is safe and advisable for major institutions to begin investing (or I should say investing MORE) in renewables, since renewables are now obviously the wave of the future. Their next report might be about investment in the cannabis industry, which is likewise rapidly coming into its own and will soon be (if not already) a vehicle for major institutional investment. It is their business to analyze stuff like this and tell investors when a sector has matured enough to be taken seriously.
If the year were 1914 instead of 2014, then Citigroup would be writing reports on this great new “petroleum” industry and why investors should be piling into it right now (i.e. then), if they want their portfolios to grow in the coming decades. And of course they would have been right.
The Citigroup report does not itself prove anything, except that the pre-existing proofs are so numerous and compelling that a large conservative institution like Citigroup is now recommending the sector in question. I’m not saying that Citigroup cannot be wrong on its calls, only that the likelihood is low.
Ilargi: “John, great write up of the other 800 pound underlying beastie: storage, buffering.”
Great? What was great about it? The fact that he left out the non-battery technologies that actually will, more than likely, solve the problem and reduce the “800-lb beastie” to a 99-lb weaking? The fact that he was fixated on batteries as though only batteries COULD solve the problem? The fact that energy storage is beside the point as regards the viability of renewables for most worthwhile purposes? Well, OK, maybe it was “great” if you’re grasping at straws, trying to intellectually justify an anti-renewables bias that has been doomed by events.
Ilargi: “If ever you feel like expanding on this and turning it into an article, I’m game.”
If you ever feel like publishing an article-length expansion of my views on renewables, I’m game. 🙂
John Day:
“Buffering capacity is what is lacking for massive shift to wind and solar.
Batteries to hold that much electricity are just too vast to be created.
Would you as a person buy enough battery to run an electric dryer or oven?
You shouldn’t.”Dr Diablo:
“There is another technology that could fill the grid gap in a major way, which is Vanadium-Redox Batteries, or VRBs. ”Why are you guys so stuck on batteries? There are lots of other ways around this problem, I assure you. Highly creative minds are working on it. They’ve already come up with great ideas, and there will be many more, as economic and environmental pressures DEMAND that solutions be found. Here’s a start:
The startup behind Bill Gates’ ‘ski lift for energy storage’
Besides, even if there were no such thing as batteries, and no such thing as storing energy by any other means, renewables would still play a critical role in the transition. In the case of solar, power is supplied during most peak demand hours — and that’s pretty damn good.
Further, not yet mentioned in this exchange is the “goalpost” issue: the goal in my view, and my expectation from renewables, is NOT to maintain every idiotic shit-for-brains excess that the wild age of fossil fuel profligacy cooked up and built-in to our psyches as permanent expectations of “the way things are supposed to be”. The idea, for example, of turning (most) things OFF after dark — of not carrying on after dark as though night were day — does not scare me, and in fact it would be a good thing to do. There is increasingly compelling evidence that high illumination after dark (aka “light pollution”) is having very bad effects on health, by way of screwing up melatonin production and the whole internal circadian rhythm/clock.
We should not be looking to renewables to completely replace every crazy demand now supplied by fossil fuels, and thus to maintain the age of rampant greed-driven growth and capitalistic excess. Given that understanding, we can set reasonable “goalposts” as to what we expect of renewables. If you set the goalposts the way the American Enterprise Institute or the like would set them — or the way Exxon et al would set them — then of course you will end up with a defeatist picture of what renewables can do, at least in the medium term (next 2-3 decades, say). Longer term, who knows? Maybe it will be possible to replace fossil fuels entirely with renewables. I can’t say that that is what I want, but it is possible.
I totally agree with the “reduce consumption” sentiment expressed by several of you. This is critically important, and indeed it is another way of expressing the “goalpost” issue. In a world of reduced demand, renewables have even more to offer in less time. But I have to admit (the facts have compelled me to admit, though I was a Jay Hanson-like skeptic back in the day) that even in a world without reduced demand, renewables are rapidly coming into their own and have a brilliant future no matter what else happens or doesn’t happen. I mean, barring black-swan catastrophe — e.g. exponential global warming, precipitating total collapse of civilization; all-out nuclear war, precipitating total collapse of civilization; etc. (all possible, just low-probability).
There was a time, 10-15 years ago, when hard skepticism about renewables was consistent with enough facts to be a viable position. Those days are over.
On another note: Walayat is enjoying some well-deserved “I told you so’s” as the market hits new record highs:
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article46521.html
Stock Market in DANGER of Strangling the Bears to Death
Jul 20, 2014 – By: Nadeem_Walayat
“The 5+ year stocks bull market continues to tighten its noose around the bears throats, though despite reddening faces and bulging eyes this has not halted the increasingly exasperated calls for the stocks bull markets always imminent end to definitely end this time.” end quoteHa. “Reddening faces and bulging eyes.”
Yes, Nadeem, you were RIGHT, and all of us nervous nellies were WRONG.
Eventually the bears will be right, of course; i.e. nothing ever goes straight up and never comes down. Walayat thinks the bull has a couple good years left, unless a blow-off top develops, in which case the bull could end sooner, according to him. See link for details.
You would think that all this talk of tapering and tightening would have given him pause, but no. He probably views things as does Ackerman:
https://news.goldseek.com/RickAckerman/1404741600.php
When Will the Fed Tighten? Never.
Rick Ackerman
7 July 2014
“I worked some numbers over the weekend in order to refine my forecast for Fed policy. One prediction that has stood the test of time is that any real tightening by the central bank is as likely as a Martian invasion. Turns out that when you crunch the latest data available, a Martian invasion winds up being 1.835 times as likely as any Fed tightening now or in the future. The formula I used to handicap this bet is proprietary and somewhat esoteric, so I won’t go into it here. But the bottom line is this: Anyone who believes that deliberate tightening is even remotely possible, let alone likely, is delusional.”Boogaloo:
“Has Odysseus been drinking the MMT koolaid? – ‘How much sovereigns can spend is directly related to the amount of available productive work.’”You don’t have to be a koolaid drinker to recognize that all this endless handwringing about debt lacks fundamental (and radically modifying) context. Yes, of course debt can get out of hand, and it probably IS out of hand, but it still cannot be viewed as a thing apart from the milieu in which it lives. There is an enormous difference between debts incurred in building productive infrastructure, for example, and those incurred as a result of consumption and waste. ENORMOUS. To just compare bald debt numbers (number of dollars, or yuan, or whatever) is terribly misleading — and yet it happens all the time.
“Yet even if there is a “direct relation” the amount of available productive work is not the only factor (and besides, how do we define what is “productive” and what is “wasteful”?) the other limits are the price and availability of natural resources, the acceptance of the currency….” etc.
Yes, of course. Many factors. But in answer to your question: “how do we define what is productive and what is wasteful” — I would say it is not too hard to arrive at APPROXIMATE definitions that are good enough.
“… the sheer scale of “stranded assets” and potential write-offs in the fossil industry raises eyebrows…. Under a global climate deal consistent with a two degrees centigrade world, we estimate that the fossil fuel industry would stand to lose $28 trillion of gross revenues over the next two decades, compared with business as usual,” said Mr Lewis. The oil industry alone would face stranded assets of $19 trillion, concentrated on deepwater fields, tar sands and shale.”
Yo.
The Cheuvreux stuff was indeed an eye-opener. I almost posted it over on that old renewables thread (you know, TAE’s “renewables-won’t-amount-to-shit” thread), but got busy with other things and forgot to do it.
The thing is, this “stranded assets” issue is of great significance for capital allocation vis a vis renewables, as is the growing realization that the LCOE (cost curve) for renewables keeps on going DOWN over time, whereas for fossil fuel crap it goes UP. The more renewables deployed, the cheaper they get to deploy.
Meanwhile, the EROI is going up dramatically for renewables as it declines for FFs.
What all of this adds up to is an increasingly compelling case for massive investment in renewables. It is about to reach critical mass, i.e. we are perhaps just moments before the dam breaks and all heaven (so to say) breaks loose, after which we can all sing “ding dong, the [fossil fuel industry] witch is dead!” — except maybe for the TAE writers, who seem to have swallowed the FF industry’s propaganda hook, pipeline and sinking drill bit (to turn a phrase).
I predict that once the investment-in-renewables race begins in earnest, which could happen over the next 2-3 years, it will proceed in a self-fueling, feed-forward, almost runaway fashion, producing results that were scarcely dreamed of just a few years before. The more money is invested in it, the more profitable it will become, and the more investment money it will attract, leading to further growth, still more profit, and still more investment, and still more growth.
Fossils are doomed, thank god. The age of renewables has begun (thanks, Citigroup).
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“In short, the plummeting cost and skyrocketing efficiency of both wind and solar technologies have proved the peak oil theorists like Richard Heinberg wrong. The energy returned over the operating lifetime of today’s solar panels and wind turbines is vastly greater than the energy invested in producing them. Moreover, unlike fossil fuels whose EROI necessarily gets worse over time, as the lowest-cost, highest-quality supplies are exhausted, the EROI of wind and solar gets better over time because the energy sources themselves are both free and inexhaustible, so the EROI is purely a function of the rapidly improving technology.”
……………………………
https://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-says-the-age-of-renewables-has-begun-69852
Citigroup says the `Age of Renewables’ has begun
By Giles Parkinson on 27 March 2014
Investment banking giant Citigroup has hailed the start of the “age of renewables” in the United States, the world’s biggest electricity market, saying that solar and wind energy are getting competitive with natural gas peaking and baseload plants – even in the US where gas prices are said to be low.
In a major new analysis released this week, Citi says the big decision makers within the US power industry are focused on securing low cost power, fuel diversity and stable cash flows, and this is drawing them increasingly to the “economics” of solar and wind, and how they compare with other technologies.
Much of the mainstream media – in the US and abroad – has been swallowing the fossil fuel Kool-Aid and hailing the arrival of cheap gas, through the fracking boom, as a new energy “revolution”, as if this would be a permanent state of affairs. But as we wrote last week, solar costs continue to fall even as gas prices double.
Citi’s report echoes that conclusion. Gas prices, it notes, are rising and becoming more volatile. This has made wind and solar and other renewable energy sources more attractive because they are not sensitive to fuel price volatility.
Citi says solar is already becoming more attractive than gas-fired peaking plants, both from a cost and fuel diversity perspective. And in baseload generation, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydro are becoming more economically attractive than baseload gas.
It notes that nuclear and coal are structurally disadvantaged because both technologies are viewed as uncompetitive on cost. Environmental regulations are making coal even pricier, and the ageing nuclear fleet in the US is facing plant shutdowns due to the challenging economics.
“We predict that solar, wind, and biomass to continue to gain market share from coal and nuclear into the future,” the Citi analysts write.
Citi says the key metric in comparing power sources will be the levellised cost of energy (LCOE). “As solar, wind, biomass, and other power sources gain market share from coal, nukes, and gas, the LCOE metric increasingly becomes important to the new build power generation decision making,” it says.
[…snip…]
Coal, it says, is basically priced out of the market. Environmental regulations means that the LCOE for new coal is around 15.6c/kWh, and it notes that coal only accounts for 2 per cent of the generation projects under development.
On nuclear, Citi says cost over-runs at the Vogtle plant under construction in Georgia – now slated to cost $15 billion, way above expectations – mean that nuclear is pricing itself out of the market. Citi puts its LCOE at 11c/kWh), which it said is relatively expensive, vs combined cycle gas plants and solar and wind. And it notes that while financing costs are inexpensive in the current monetary environment, this situation will not last.
minor further note:
Carbon: “I can’t quite explain why the population growth has slowed to zero in most of the western hemisphere.”
Or, I presume, why it is slowing rapidly everywhere else, too, except subsaharan Africa and a few other places? You’ll note that this is the opposite of what the neomalthusian/peakists maintain; to wit, that plenitude (of food and everything else) gives rise to rapid population growth which, in turn, rapidly overruns resources, resulting in mass starvation, dieoff, etc. The opposite is happening: relative plenitude is giving rise to drastically falling fertility, and with that, falling rate of population growth (which will plateau and probably go negative in about 30 years on the current trajectory). Oh well. The Malthusians might get something right one of these days, after being consistently wrong for two centuries and running.
And, as I’ve pointed out in detail elsewhere, it does not require Western levels of plenitude (like income of $50,000/year) for this effect. More like $5,000/year. The demographic transition has taken place in huge populations like China and (mostly) India at what are still rather miserably-low per capita GDPs, by Western standards. In other words, it is not necessary to make people filthy rich, like in the U.S., for this wonderful effect on fertility and population to take place; it is only necessary to bring people out of dirt poverty.
Carbon: “I believe that Ilargi found an ariticle recently that said that China had used as much cement in 2 years as the USA has historically. That kind of profligacy, misallocated resources and unwarranted growth dwarfs all Alt. energy efforts by a super wide margin.”
Why is it “profligacy”? Why is it “misallocated” and “unwarranted”? I mean, maybe it is, but what evidence or argument do you have for those ideas? If you don’t have an argument, then your statements are as though ad hominem (though in this case not “to the man” but “to the investment” — “ad investmentum”? 🙂 )
It is worth mentioning that concrete is for the most part a one-off expenditure. It is true that China has used enormous quantities of concrete in recent years. It is also true that they will not need to use more than a small fraction of that same quantity over the next century (or actually forever). Why? Because concrete lasts a LONG TIME. The same thing happened in the U.S. Huge quantities of concrete were used during the robust infrastructure and other buildout years, but then it fell off steeply and will never have to be repeated at that level, just much smaller amounts for maintenance.
Further, the building spree in China has a very sound long-term economic basis. The Chinese are, wisely, looking to invest in real assets and divest themselves of intrinsically risky and indeed certain-to-decline or collapse paper assets, particularly dollar-denominated ones. Hence they are rapidly and massively accumulating gold, silver and various strategic metals/materials and their sources, and building out infrastructure and residential and industrial facilities at an incredible rate. These things are very sound investments in the future, especially relative to the inherently unstable and in fact doomed paper bullshit peddled by the Western shysters. The entire ridiculous bloated paper/derivative/debt-bubble/etc. “economy” of the world could collapse tomorrow, and the Chinese would still have all that physical stuff with which to rebuild. It would not be easy, of course. NOTHING would be easy under those conditions. But physical economy is physical economy; it does not just disappear, the way electronic “assets” disappear (in the blink of an eye).
By the way, I’m not defending everything that the Chinese have done. They’ve been guilty of excesses, certainly. Some of their development could be described as “misallocation”, no doubt. (How could it be otherwise in that overall context, really?) But that word would have to be used judiciously, with respect to SPECIFIC developments or aspects of specific developments, not just a general characterization of the whole of what they’ve done.
Carbon: “So I am not as sanguine as you or L.B.Crowell are about our prospects.”
I don’t know that Larry and I are “sanguine”. But we are, appropriately, UNSURE, quite unlike Emperor Hanson.
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Diogenes: Alex Jones! I love that guy. And I’m sure the Bilderbergers are going to take my guns away and stuff my ass into a railroad car bound for the FEMA deathcamps any day now, so it really doesn’t matter anymore.
Carbon: “If your most dangerous 5% get in positions where they can force debt based collapse and servitude on others, and bend the resources of society to their own narrow will, then they have a disproportionate effect on the directon of society compared to the rest.”
I agree! And this is what has happened. And it could UNhappen. We’re not powerless. We’re just being told we are powerless. The important thing to remember is that the culprits can be identified; it is not “in our [i.e. ALL OF OUR] genes”, as Hanson would have it.
And btw, insulting people is not ad hominem unless it is used entirely in lieu of argument. Ad hominem is the spewing of insults, exclusively, unaccompanied by any argument.
Carbon: You can start with “human nature”, and Hanson’s pathetically impoverished view of it. All you really have to do is read widely on the subject, outside the walled garden of dieoff.com. Nothing special.
I learned a LOT from following discussions for the better part of 10 years on energyresources, evolutionary-psychology, and other yahoo groups, in which a lot of very smart people participated. I saved hundreds of notable posts, and followed up on hundreds of references to articles and books. I have scores of disk files stuffed with material. I suppose some day maybe I will try to organize it all into a coherent intellectual journey/litany or something that might be helpful to others. Very long story short: past about 2007 or so it dawned on me (blockhead that I am; it should have happened much earlier) that Hansonism was largely a crock of shit, although a crock of shit with a few minor bits and pieces of value, here and there.
There are numerous angles to this whole story. We’re talking about core philosophical principles, philosophy of science and epistemology; evolutionary and general psychology; anthropology and human history (including much that is debatable); demographics, and demographics vis a vis agricultural and other technology and energy resources; human culture and social psychology; technology; and more! A comprehensive answer to your question would be impossible without writing a book.
Just one thing I will quickly mention: I followed Hanson’s initially quite alarming warnings about alternative energy sources and their (claimed) hopeless inadequacy in the face of peak oil. What appeared in 1999 to be convincing arguments of his now appear outright laughable. He is being disproven by events on a yearly basis, and with dramatically accelerating speed. TAE has of course swallowed the Hansonian (and Big Oil-ian) anti-alternative-energy koolaid. But if there were ever a time to back off from that position and shut the fuck up about it, it is right now! The next few years will be decisive, as on the current trajectory alternative energies will be doing exactly what Hanson said was impossible: powering, in some contexts, with minimal or possibly even no fossil inputs, their own production. Of course it will take a while for “some contexts” to become “most contexts”. What would you expect? You can’t turn the Queen Mary around inside of one mile. Fossil fuel-based infrastructure has had a one-century head start; it might take 10-20 years to get things reversed. Anyway, events are racing ahead and leaving the naysayers in increasingly dense fogs of dust. It should be fun to watch this unfold.
In closing, I’ll leave you with a portion of one post to energyresources from Larry Crowell, a physicist. It was a response to Jay, and a good post, which set me to thinking. It was posts like these, combined with other reading, and thinking, that led me to conclude that Emperor Jay was wearing no clothes, so to say. And btw this post was just approaching matters from ONE angle; there are several others. For example, it became evident that Jay’s thinking as regards “human nature” and Darwinism was to a large extent just a re-hash of late 19th-century bullshit, long discredited, but recently resurrected by a small circle of reactionaries who more or less wanted to believe certain stuff for political reasons (or so it would seem). The whole thing just stinks, as you will learn as you plumb deeper.
Anyway, here’s Larry, on another angle:
clipped from: https://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyResources
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:12:24 -0600
From: “L. B. Crowell” <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Re: Jay’s question on the Fed[…snip…]
I am suspicious of ideas that attempt to reduce human behavior, societies, and how we should manage ourselves to some strict set of putative scientific rules, or statements trumpeted as such. Such ideas have been promulgated before and they are invariably judged later as complete pseudoscientific rubbish. The ideologies of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were based on ideas that at the time were regarded as the pinnacle of scientific understanding of humanity. Needless to say both of these systems were the height of ghastliness. To be honest over the past couple of years I have seen much of your thinking on these matters as having evolved into a latter day form of the same crap that has been stated before.
Science is really a very restrictive subject that deals with either basic foundations of reality or the universe, or it is concerned with a particular subject that is amenable to experimentation. An example of the first is Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and an example of the second is the interaction of a transposon that codes for a tyrosine kinase in some chromosomal region. I can look out on a nice spring day and see a thunderhead cloud building up and say, yes the phase transistion of water vapor to liquid is producing latent heat that is the driving power for building up this cloud. I can say many things, but I also admit that what I see is so complex as to utterly befuddle any predictive capacity. Look at the flow of a small river and see the splashes, eddies, and how water falls over rocks. I can say, Ahh yes the Navier-Stokes equation tells me that there is a continuity of flow,” but I also have to be honest and admit there is utterly no general predictive hydrodynamic theory for how this stream is flowing. And yet nature is such that this stream flows exactly how it should.
Frankly I think for anyone to say they have some scientific understanding for human behavior and societies with the predictive capacity you claim, along with the bones of other such wags from the past, is the height of arrogance. To be honest human beings are simply too complex to make the sort of concrete statements that you make. You tend to use terms such as “algorithm” in describing the trajectory of human events, which is to suggest that the outcome of the human condition is determined according to some finite set of rules. The problem is that the universe actually does not work that way. For instance, the outcome of all possible quantum measurements results in a set of symbol strings that are not reducible to some set of data compressions rules, and so this problem can’t be reduced to any finite set of axioms a’la Turing’s halting problem and Godel’s theorems on the incompleteness of axiomatic systems. If this is the case with all possible outcomes for a simple “spin up-down” quantum system, then how in the devil can anybody say they have some comprehensive set of rules for human behavior?
The universe has an entropy of about 10^{100}GeV/K, and this means that the cosmological horizon has permitted a vast number of combinations or combinatorial probabilities. Take a look at the Shannon-Khinchin theorem for information theory and entropy. We are one of those outcomes, and in some sense we are the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Infinite Improbability Drive. So here we are, vastly complex on this even more vastly complex planet, and the whole thing came about through a near infinitesimal probability. Stephen Jay Gould stated something similar about “rewinding” the clock of evolution and how that would in priciple lead to vastly different outcomes. To say that one has some predictive theory on where all of this is going is the zenith of complete absurdism.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Rapier: “Who can however quibble with the human will to power and those who have it rise to power within groups and nations.”
I don’t think anyone quibbles with the existence within humans of something characterizable as a “will to power”; but that is not the issue. The issue is a will to power *uber alles*, or without any competing or checking values or tendencies, and ruthlessness. Add to that a social/cultural environment that gives outsize rewards to such brazen “will to power” type behavior, and that metes out punishments large and small to the meek. But all of that kind of stuff escapes the radar of guys Hanson. Too complex for them, I would wager. No clear-cut answers.
An amusing thing is that even when Hanson is (partially or slightly) right, he does not understand HOW he is right. For example, there really is a ruthless and will-to-power-uber-alles personality type — the psychopath — which is to some extent genetically determined, or for which there is at least genetic predisposition, in about 5% of the population. Hanson seems to think this personality type, or important elements of it, is characteristic of ALL HUMANS, which is preposterous. It is about 5% of humans. What to do about it is a serious matter which should be the subject of wide discussion. Too bad Hanson was/is not smart or aware enough to be part of that discussion. Psychopathy is a very serious issue and it is indeed responsible for much of the abuse and mayhem, on all levels, that Hanson (as well as many others) decries.
Because 5% of humans are affected with this does not mean we have to give up on humanity, as the misanthrope Hanson would have us do, any more than a schizophrenia rate of 3% or an OCD rate of 6% would suggest that we give up on humanity. Rather, it means that we have a serious collective social problem that requires deliberation and appropriate, sensitive action.
Hanson is just an ignorant old fool, and is probably by now becoming demented. Fortunately, he has a very tiny audience and thus has little impact. Otherwise I would be more concerned.
Dr Diablo: Outstanding reply to this “human nature” bilge — bilge that, I am ashamed to say, took ME in at one time, also. Like Ilargi, I took “a month off” (more, actually) 15 years ago to read dieoff.com and related stuff, and was most impressed. But the difference between me and the average dieoff.com maven (including Hanson himself) was that I did not stop reading and thinking and, of greatest import, I did not stop exposing myself to new and challenging ideas, including ESPECIALLY ideas that ran contrary to the ones that I had accepted as probably (or even “certainly”) correct. As I result I came to understand that the Hansonian view of most things, though offering some (rather meager) value, is dreadfully narrow, often misleading, often outright false, and at times downright evil in effect.
Ilargi: “[Hanson’s] talent is that he has the right kind of unrelenting curiosity, needed to dig deep into the reasons we put ourselves where we do (it’s hardwired). This curiosity made put together the best library of information on ourselves and the world we live in that one can ever hope to find”. This says a great deal about the quality of your thinking and level of your research. It is shockingly ignorant and foolish to call Hanson’s narrow, prejudicial little collection of nihilistic, neo-Malthusian, vulgar Darwinistic and laughably genetic deterministic screeds “the best library of information on ourselves and the world we live in that one can ever hope to find”. Or, if that is the best library in the world, then we live in hell on a retarded earth.
RENEWABLE ENERGY: yet another dose of reality…
This is snippets: go to the links for full text:
Solar’s Insane Cost Drop
[…snip…]
the cost of solar PV has come from – quite
literally – off the charts less than a decade ago to a point
where [investment bank Sanford] Bernstein says solar PV is now
cheaper than oil and Asian LNG (liquefied natural gas).
[…snip…]
“For these (developing Asian economies) solar is just cheap,
clean, convenient, reliable energy. And since it is a
technology, it will get even cheaper over time [while]
fossil fuel extraction costs will keep rising. There is a
massive global market for cheap energy and that market is
oblivious to policy changes” in China, Japan, the EU or the
US, it writes.
[…snip…]
And then Bernstein drops this bombshell – while solar has a
fractional share of the market now, within one decade, solar
PV (plus battery storage) may have such a share of the market
that it becomes a trigger for energy price deflation, with
huge consequences for the massive fossil fuel industry that
relies on continued growth.
[…snip…]
Sitting on oil and gas reserves for the benefit of
generations yet to come ceases to be a rational strategy if
that reserve represents a depreciating rather than an
appreciating asset.”
This, Bernstein says, is the hidden flaw with the idea that
solar is “too small to matter”. Ultimately, it says, what may
kill the energy market for equity investors is not the fact
that renewable technology and battery storage will turn into
behemoths, but the realisation of that future as inevitable.———————-
and:
Bernstein: Utilities Have 4 Choices In Solar Revolution (None Are Easy To Swallow)
Bernstein: Utilities Have 4 Choices In Solar Revolution (None
Are Easy To Swallow)Can electricity generation companies live off two hours of
demand a day? And what if utilities actually tried to slow
down the rollout of rooftop solar? If these are questions
energy utilities are asking themselves in the current market
environment, they may not like investment bank Bernstein’s
answers.
[…snip…]
“Instead of high-cost (and high-priced) gas-fired peaking
power plants being engaged in the middle of the afternoon when
all of the air-conditioners are operating and all of the
factories are running, solar addresses that load. California –
like Germany and Australia – is already seeing this effect,”
Bernstein writes.
[…snip…]
Bernstein points out that by 2020, the installed capacity of
solar will be so great that the demand profile will resemble
the green line and daytime power demand will have effectively
collapsed… “For companies selling electricity into merchant
or competitive markets like California, this is a disaster,”
the Bernstein analysts write.
“Demand during what was one of the most profitable times of
the day disappears. With it, the need for part of the merchant
fleet disappears too for all but the dinner hour. And that is
the issue competitive generators face globally in this
2020-scenario: how to live off demand of two hours a day.”
[…snip…]
“The response of simply raising prices per kWh is therefore
unsustainable,” the analysts note. And they are faced with
increasingly unattractive choices.
[…snip…]
“The behavior from here seems clear: the solar industry will
expand. Retaliatory steps from distribution utilities will
increase the market for cost-effective battery storage. This
becomes – initially – a secondary market for battery
technologies being developed for the auto sector. A failed
battery technology in the auto sector (too hot, too heavy, too
rigid a form factor) might well be perfect for the home energy
storage market… with an addressable end market of 2 billion
backyards.”
As I said up thread: “it will be more than a little
interesting to see just what transpires over the next 5 years.
Inflation? Deflation? Stagflation? Collapse? Business as
usual? Who knows? I’ll bump this thread yearly at least for an
update.”So, I’m a little late, but may as well get started… and nowhere
better to start than with Walayat, who has been consistently
correct in his calls. The key facts are:
DOW, early Feb 2013 – circa 13,500
DOW, late Apr 2014 – circa 16,300
…. and S&P, etc., to match.QUOTE
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article45331.html
Stock Market Bears Wrong Again, Apple to Push Dow to New All
time High
Apr 24, 2014 – 04:34 AM GMT
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Despite continuing perma bearish diatribe of why the stocks
bull markets demise is always imminent, instead the general
stock market indices such as the S&P have been setting new all
time highs with the Dow set to imminently make its next all
time closing high that follows on strong corporate news from
the tech giants such as Apple and Facebook.
[…snip…]
So to answer the question – Is the stocks bull market over?
NO! No sign whatsoever that this (what people decades from now
will look back on as being the greatest bull market in
history) bull market is anywhere near being over!
The subsequent price action closely matched my trend
expectations as the Dow bottomed at around 15,250, and then
began its volatile climb to set a new all time intra-day high
on 4th of April 2014 at 16,631, just failing to break its
closing high of 16,577 of 31st December 2013 by 5 points
(16,573).
My next in-depth stock market analysis will follow early May
2014, following the completion of my latest ebook in the
Inflation Mega-trend series by the end of this month. Ensure
you are subscribed to my always free newsletter to get BOTH in
your email inbox.
END QUOTE———————-
Walayat actually does give all this stuff away free, fyi.
I last mentioned him here:Would that I had been smart enough to listen to his advice! On the
other hand, it is OK to suspend judgement and just listen to
someone for a good long while before adopting them as a
personal authority in such matters, and taking action based on
their opinion.———————-
Meanwhile, on a less-successful note:
Re: US Hyperinflation Is A Myth
February 12, 2013 at 10:51 pm #6917
SteveB
If inflation is happening at all, it’s temporary. Deflation
has been underway for more than a decade….
The Dow topped, S&P is topping today, and the NASDAQ is only
a week or so behind….The World According to The Automatic Earth – A 2013 Primer Guide
Re: The World According to The Automatic Earth – A 2013
Primer Guide
February 16, 2013 at 8:50 am #6935
stoneleigh
The crisis of 2008 isn’t over. What we were concerned about
then is still very much on the cards. We’ve had a longer
reprieve than we had expected in between phase I and phase II
of the credit crunch, but that reprieve appears to be over.
There are strong signals of an impending market reversal,
indicating a coming shift from euphoria to concern and then to
fear. The optimism we see at the moment is simply
characteristic of a top. Things always look really good from
the peak of a bubble, but at that point there’s nowhere to go
but down.Very well said, Tabarnick. And telling that no one replied.
“….And yet they have had fewer and fewer babies, instead of having more and more as the malthusian theory would have them behave. That seems a clear sign there is more to human population growth than availability of resources.”
Heh. Yes, far more. In fact, it works the reverse way: more resources, LESS babies. Being a Malthusian means remaining persistently blind to plain facts, directly in front of your nose. It means getting VERY creative with the rationalizations…. like claiming that the reason things have not collapsed into a Malthusian black hole is that technology keeps coming up with “temporary” fixes. And of course that is true. The problem is with the underlying assumption: that permanence (of technology) is possible and desirable. But it isn’t. Every single thing that technology does — and indeed that any of us do, ever — is temporary in nature. There is no such thing as permanent, and most certainly not in a highly-dynamic, rapidly-changing area like modern technology. It is ALL temporary… until the next generation of (vastly better) stuff comes along. It is all temporary, and that is as it should be. Some old technologies will continue to exist for various reasons (tradition, habit, aesthetic value, and sometimes real practical superiority/unbeatability), but that continuation will be in the context of waves of newer technologies with great advantages.
Back to tabarnick:
“We may have problems, but to me overpopulation is a problem that is taking care of itself without drama”Indeed it is, and it is wonderful! You would think it would be cause for celebration, amongst those of us (and I count myself among them) who are aware of environmental issues, resource limits and population pressures on resources. But instead, those who should be celebrating seem to be regressing in incomprehension of what is happening right in front of their faces. Incomprehension, followed by further neo-Malthusian ranting. It is a strange spectacle.
Drilling down with my handy personal Wayback machine, I find that I already covered this:
January 25, 2013 at 4:43 am #6825
alan2102
Stoneleigh wrote: “People have fewer babies when they don’t think they’ll be able to look after them, or when they don’t like the look of the world they would have to bring them into.”
Actually, the opposite is true. People have more babies under those conditions. As conditions improve, they have fewer babies. This has been proven time and time again, all over the world, over many decades. There is no doubt. It is a paradox, but it is true: women in chaotic and resource-poor environments, suffering from existential insecurity, are much more fertile than women in more stable and resource-rich ones. You would think it would be the opposite, but it isn’t. It is counter-intuitive.
An interesting sidelight on this: there is an ugly streak in neo-Malthusianism, characterized by a “let ‘em die!” attitude toward the third world, or impoverished populations. The idea is that we should not support the starving or impoverished; we should “let nature take care of the problem on it’s own”, or something like that. Maybe I should not say that this is just an “ugly streak in neo-Malthusianism”; maybe this is intrinsic to all neo-Malthusianism. In any case, my point is that that idea does not work. “Letting them die” does not work. They will not just die; they will have more kids. (They WILL die, but they will have more kids before doing so.) The problem does not solve itself. It gets worse. However, the opposite approach DOES work. Want lower population? Simple. Feed ‘em, clothe ‘em, etc. Presto! Lower fertility. And several decades later, falling population.
And it happens at a VERY low level of consumption and SES/GDP. It is not necessary to bring people up to anywhere near the level of the modern west/north. Something on the order of $U.S. 5000 per capita per year is plenty. A good example is China: their fertility has now fallen BELOW replacement at a per capita GDP of under $U.S. 5000. (That is down from fertility of 5-6, before the revolution, when most of the population was living in desperate poverty.) It will go even further negative as the poorer rurals are lifted up. India is headed in the same direction, though they are still slightly above replacement. They are like China, but 20-30 years behind.
Raliegh: “China’s birthrate pre-policy was 5.8 in 1970 and 1.5 in 2013. The fertility rate has indeed fallen. However, China’s population was ~900 million in 1970 and 1.6 billion in 2013. Given that a population can’t increase (excluding immigration and immortality) with less than a fertility rate of 2.0, most of the country clearly have had more than one child.”
No. Because of demographic momentum. It takes a LONG time for fertility to impact absolute population numbers. You can imagine why if you just think about the subject for a while. You can cut fertility to zero and it will have little appreciable effect on population for quite a long while. But then, over a period of generations or half-centuries, it works profoundly. The same idea cuts both ways: once fertility HAS dropped off so drastically, and for a long enough time to reduce absolute population, then that same state will be maintained for a very long time (and possibly intensified, if the same causal factors are still operating).
Before you draw conclusions on this subject, it would be a good idea to acquire some basic knowledge. Here’s a start (an actual textbook would be better, but this is easy and free):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_trap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_gift
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradoxYou’ll note that everything is unfolding the opposite of what Malthus predicted.
“So the policy reduced the fertility rate, but the country still grew significantly.”
Yes, because of demographic momentum. But the magic of fertility decline expresses itself more in the context of centuries than (single) years or decades.
“Interestingly, despite the 1 child per family policy, China has grown proportionally faster than the US in the same time period.”
The one-child policy had very little to do with China’s fertility decline. Just for the record. The big drop came well before the OCP. The OCP just produced a small, incremental improvement over what had already largely happened.
……………..
Ilargi: “Just lowering the birth rate doesn’t work, or at least not well.”
Work well to… what? It is working just fine to reduce the rate of population growth, which is WAY down since it maxed-out in the late 1980s. Growth continues to decline every year with no end in sight (demographic momentum). The point of negative growth will come around mid-century (takes a long time because of demographic momentum).
Ilargi: “A healthy population is dependent on a healthy age balance. I don’t know how to solve the overpopulation issue, but I do know this is not the way to go.”
You know that reduced fertility is not the way to go? What other way IS there? I mean as a volitional act: what other way is there? Mass killing? Tear out the public health infrastructure that prevents disease, so as to increase morbidity and mortality (i.e. mass killing by another means)?
Ilargi: “Then again, I also can’t see older people -boomers, the most numerous generation- go voluntarily in large numbers, though I’ve been suggesting it to them here at TAE.”
You’ve been suggesting WHAT to them? That they “go voluntarily”, i.e. suicide? I guess Ruppert took that idea seriously. Not a surprising outcome for a depressed mega-doomer (doomerism itself is depressogenic).
Ilargi: “I’ve written earlier that we may have to concede that we can’t solve this one, we’ll have to leave it to nature to do it for us.”
Ah, yes. “Leave it to nature”. Let ’em DIE! Malthusianism is so very heart-warming and compassionate.
The funny thing is that the “let ’em die” attitude, apart from its striking coldness and amorality, is in practice highly ineffective. “Just” letting ’em die does not work. It results in higher fertility and ultimately exploding population. The very things that Malthus thought would bring population back down do the opposite of that. Whereas, taking care of people — instead of letting ’em die, as Malthus suggested — results in lower fertility and declining population, beginning with declining population growth, and ultimately (demographic momentum!) declining absolute numbers, though it takes a long time.
It’s unfair! You would think that if we turn ourselves into amoral beasts (“let ’em DIE!”) that we would at least get something of practical value out of it, like declining population. But noooooo.
Tabernac: “in the real world even though population has been going up, fertility has been going down for the last 50 years and this even though the world population has never been so well fed.”
I was wondering when someone was going to say that! Malthus continues to be proven wrong, century after century, and yet he still has his fans.
Ilargi: “I [do not] see any reason to assume falling fertility rates are not a ‘natural’ part of any such cycle in any organism, be it yeast, mice, or people.”
Did anyone say anything about what is or isn’t “natural”? (Whatever “natural” means)
In any case, falling fertility rates do seem to have causes (does that make the phenom “unnatural”?).
Ilargi: “The underlying question would be if any such falling rate in any of these cases could arrest the drive towards more consumption, for the group”
Well, of course it modifies (not “arrests”) that drive, insofar as resource use figures are always the products of a numerator as well as denominator. Smaller numerator = smaller product.
What’s interesting is to contemplate what would have happened if fertility had NOT begun falling off a cliff in the 1970s. In that case, instead of being at 7 billion, we would be far above that by now, maybe 15 billion, headed for 25 billion or more by mid-21st-century. Such numbers (high numerators) would have put a lot of stress on the resource base, much more stress than exists today. So, given that angle of view, yes we have been successful at “arresting the drive towards more consumption, for the group”. Our net level of consumption is certainly much smaller than it would have been at a population of 15 billion, or whatever. I say that knowing full well that consumption has not been controlled nearly as well as it could have been, if the denominators had been checked just as the numerators were. The denominators have been out of control, in fact, and this is mostly the fault of the rich:
book:
How the Rich are Destroying the Earth
by: HervΘ Kempf
https://www.forewordmagazine.com/reviews/viewreviews.aspx?reviewid=4337&rssref=20080927
https://thepanelist.com/Opinions/Opinions/Book_Review:_How_the_Rich_Are_Destroying_the_Earth_200809151182/
https://www.truthout.org/article/how-rich-are-destroying-planet
[hopefully those book review links are still good; they’re from 2008, when the book came out]ilargi post=8244 wrote:
So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
10 years seems a good time frame, as long as you don’t try arguing the past 10 prove anything towards your notion. See ya in 10.
So 10 years is long enough to demonstrate something, but only prospectively. Data from previous periods of 10 years must be discarded. Correct?
I don’t know about that. It seems a strange attitude toward the data.
Maybe I’m just being an idiot, again.ilargi post=8243 wrote:
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business …
So I didn’t. My exact words:
I’m not saying things will happen in this order and timeframe. Just that they’re going to if central banks and treasury departments don’t up the ante. But they will.
And may I add to prove my point:
Enter stage left Janet Yellen ….
Your exact words, IN THE TITLE (nb: it is hard to feature a thesis more prominently than in a title): “Deflation, A STOCK MARKET CRASH, AND THEN CHRISTMAS“
That seems clear enough. I take the word “then” to mean AFTER the stock market crash. Though, it is true that I am only an idiot who takes words at face value, and who often fails to appreciate the subtleties.
But in this case, I will appreciate the subtleties, such as what you wrote later: “What can hold off a crash? Probably only more asset purchases by the Fed, and temporarily at that [i.e. it could be postponed, but not for long]…. We may make it to Christmas without a market crash, with lots of happy expectations for record sales and a last bout of happy moodswing. That’s not that interesting. What is, is what’ll happen after that.”
OK! So, soon after Christmas (right?) everything will implode, the market will crash, etc. That’s clear, too. I say “soon” because, if we’re seriously thinking in terms of a crash BEFORE Christmas (only 7 weeks away), then it could hardly be all that much longer AFTER, right? Stands to reason.
Bottom line: It will happen before xmas, unless it doesn’t, in which case it will happen shortly after. “Shortly after” might mean, say, a couple or three months, or perhaps even six months, stretching it. Right? Would that not be a reasonable interpretation? If not, please advise as to what is.
Ilargi: y-o-y consumer prices “say nothing about inflation or deflation, other than as a lagging indicator.”
OK. So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business — as Chris Martenson et al learned this year.
Nadeem Walayat, proprietor of marketoracle.co.uk, has a different view, below. We’ll see who is right.
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43068.html
Stock Market Forecast 2014 Crash or Rally? Drone Wars and the Nuclear Apocalypse Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2014 Nov 11, 2013 – 11:46 AM GMT
By: Nadeem_Walayat
[snip]
The bottom line is this: the US government shutdown is GREAT NEWS! because for bull markets to persist and continue they NEED BAD NEWS every few months, THEY NEED MOST PEOPLE TO BE SKEPTICAL, TOO AFRAID TO INVEST! And so it continues to be the case for the DURATION OF THIS BULL MARKET, where over 90%, NINTEY PERCENT OF Market commentators have been WRONG and continue to be WRONG, Everyone who has just proclaimed its END IS WRONG and Will BE CRUCIFIED, just as they have been crucified at every market turn for the past FIVE YEARS !
YOU WANT TO LOVE MARKETS THAT ARE HATED!
YOU WANT TO BE AFRAID OF MARKETS THAT ARE LOVED!
UNDERSTAND THIS – THIS stocks stealth bull market is one of the GREATEST bull markets in HISTORY!gurusid post=7375 wrote:
Total all renewables (including others such as solarthermal & geothermal) = 11%
(I know startling facts eh?An addendum:
I spoke above of “trajectory”, by which I meant (I hope it was clear) the rate of growth. At this link you can see the rate of growth in Germany; click on “7 Renewable Energy Industry” in the table of contents, and note the bar chart, green bars, on the right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_GermanyYou can see that the rate of growth from 1990 to 2000 amounted to a little better than doubling, while the rate of growth from 2000 to 2010 amounted to a little better than trebling. That would suggest, if that trend were to continue (as data for the last couple years indicates), at least a further trebling by 2020, to 33%.
Of course, the rate of growth might continue to grow, as it has in the past, making that figure too conservative. We don’t know, do we? But even without an increase in the rate of growth, just staying at that level of growth would allow Germany to reach its target of 100% electricity from renewables by 2030, as you can see (trebling of the 33% in 10 years from 2020).
Startling facts, eh Sid?
…………………………………
But of course targets are one thing, accomplishment another. Will Germany succeed? Who knows? It is a VERY ambitious plan. There are obviously (see clippings above) powerful reactionary forces arrayed against it. And, among the lesser but still mentionable forces against it, are all the natterers on fora around the world, arms akimbo, posting snippets from articles written by (probably) oil- and nuclear-industry-subsidized liars denouncing Germany’s renewables efforts, and snickering their derision. Germany has to overcome all that negative energy. And they probably will, but there is no guarantee. We’ll see.
The other factor in this is that such 100% targets are almost certainly unnecessary, if appropriate energy conservation techniques and practices were brought into play. A 50% target or even a 25% target may be all that is truly required, given a context of full resource conservation. See up thread, “factor 5”, in post 6009:
https://theautomaticearth.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=14&id=5865&Itemid=96#6009There are really no energy or resource problems. Only human and political problems.
One last thing about Neubacher: just because he’s a fringe right-wing crank and a liar does not mean that he is wrong about everything. He might be right, for example, about the idea that solar is getting disproportionate support — excessive subsidies — when the funds could be put to more efficient use. I suspect that he is right about that. All arguments should be addressed on their merits, regardless of who they come from.
A little further digging reveals the context in which this (this Neubacher/Spiegel vs. The European mag thing) is happening. It seems that there is a titanic political battle going on in Germany over energy issues and over this transition to renewables program.
Predictably, the conservative/reactionary forces, along with the oil and nuclear industries, oppose the move to renewables, while more enlightened minds wish to see humanity move forward.
Clearly, Neubacher represents the conservatives, and perhaps is even employed by some sort of right-wing political action group, charged with grinding out anti-renewables and anti-solar screeds.
All articles purporting to expose the “failure” of Germany’s renewables program should be held in high suspicion until VERY carefully vetted and proven to be from a non-reptilian source. Or to put it more plainly: such articles are very likely to be packs of lies.
https://cleantechnica.com/2012/06/28/sol-invictus-german-government-cuts-solar-fit/
Sol Invictus — German Government Cuts Solar FIT
June 28, 2012
[snip]
Attacks on the pro-solar policy framework of Germany are nothing new. They are actually more of a recurring event that happens every time the “Renewable Energy Act” gets reformed or whenever solar power installations break a record. All of this started with the stark opposition of the current government coalition against the “German Renewable Energy Act” back in the year 2000, when those parties weren’t in power. They especially disliked the concept of providing independent investors with a technology-specific feed-in tariff that was high enough to turn a profit if investors made wise choices when developing their project. Back then, Angela Merkel’s conservative party was basically fundamentally opposed to the the core principle behind the success of the “Renewable Energy Act.”
At the start and until 2003/04, this uncapped and guaranteed possibility to turn a profit with clean energy investments did not apply to solar power because it did still received subsidies in the form of a credit incentive program — the 100,000 roof program aiming for 350 MW of solar power. Disgruntled by the reality that the Renewable Energy Act has proven to be more successful and efficient than portfolio-standards/quota-systems, the opponents focused their criticism on the support of photovoltaic energy use in Germany… something that was a pure waste of money and would never accomplish anything according to their opinion. In 2009, the opposition parties of the early 2000s managed to win a majority in the federal election and form a government coalition. The parties are Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and the free-market and business-friendly Liberal Democrats.
Here We Are Again
This February, things turned very ugly though, when the economics ministry (responsible for regulating conventional energy markets) and the environment ministry (responsible for renewable energy sources) proposed a rapidly drafted revision to the renewable energy act at a joint press conference. This draft was proposed just 6 weeks after another revision of the law went into force on January 1, 2012. The content of the proposal was so radical that it was soon dubbed “The Solar Phase-out Law,” or even the beginning of a rollback of the “Energiewende” and nuclear phase-out.
In the eyes of the economics minister Philipp Rösler (the head of the free-market oriented “Liberal Democratic Party” and the vice-chancellor), a rapid revision was necessary due to the “out of control” growth of solar power capacity in 2011. Soon the usual bunch of anti-renewable energy vultures within the conservative party joined the criticism and voiced their support for rapid cuts to “contain solar energy.” They are a relatively powerful group within Angela Merkel’s conservative party and have close ties to powerful industry groups and the conventional power and energy corporations. This anti-solar coalition of politicians within the government and vested economic interests in the private sector was also heavily disgruntled by the decision of its party leadership to speed up the phase-out of nuclear power a few months before. It’s safe to say that the situation was serious and more than dangerous for effective pro-renewable policy. Especially since pro-renewable supporters are a minority within the government, and the public was distracted by the looming European debt crisis.
The original “Solar Phase-Out Law” proposal included a wide range of changes that were officially focused on reducing incentives to install more solar power. In reality, it was the strongest attack on the fabric of the successful “German Renewable Energy Act” since it was passed into law in 2000. Among the gems of the ministries’ wish list were harsh 30-40% cuts to feed in tariff rates, the ability to further adjust feed-in-tariff rates by ministerial decree without consulting the parliament and exempting 10-20% of the generated electricity from receiving feed-in tariff payments. To make things even worse, the proposed changes should take effect retroactively* only 2 weeks after the proposal was made. (*Retroactively because it was obvious that the legislative process to pass the law would take longer than 2 weeks.)
From Proposal to Legislation
What followed was a legislative dispute that took more than 4 months and was accompanied by a massive anti-renewable/anti-solar campaign throughout many media outlets that aimed at reducing the popularity of solar power among the public. But there were also pro-renewable/pro-solar voices in the media and even mass demonstration by the solar industry together with unions and activists.
[snip]
It appears that this fellow Neubacher — author of the Der Spiegel article — is a fringe right-wing anti-environmentalism crank with a vendetta against renewable energy in general and solar in particular. He also appears to be a liar. I knew I smelled something.
https://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=7918
Alexander Neubacher’s Fringe Minority Loser Position
Oct 23 2012 Published by Karl-Friedrich Lenz under European and German energy law
I have read some of the articles of SPIEGEL journalist Alexander Neubacher on energy issues. I already had the impression that he is strongly opposed to renewable energy, and even stronger to solar.
Since he unfortunately has a big platform at SPIEGEL, he is probably the most important anti-renewable propaganda cheerleader in Germany.
Now I just watched him in a television discussion round with several other journalists. My impression on his positions was confirmed.
Of course he was trying to make hay of the recent decision to increase the surcharges, pretending to be worried about poor people’s ability to pay for them, just as anyone else in the anti-renewable propaganda brigade.
The nice thing about his position is that it is a fringe minority loser position in Germany. People outside of the country who read him on his SPIEGEL platform would be well advised to take note of that fact.
Neubacher himself said at one point in the discussion (around 12:35 in the recording) that all political parties agree on being opposed to his position. He complained that the opposition (the Social Democrats and the Greens) are not doing their job because they agree with the governing coalition on that point and refuse to agree with his opposition to the Law on Priority for Renewable Energy, the EEG.
There is a super great coalition between all parties that tries to give ever more sweet deals to owners of renewable energy installations, and squeezing rate payers for that, in Neubacher’s opinion. He is the lone voice of reason.
It is difficult to imagine a more clueless remark on German energy policy.
[snip]
https://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=7146
Who is Alexander Neubacher?
Jul 05 2012 Published by Karl-Friedrich Lenz under European and German energy law
Mark Lynas mentions in this tweet the latest anti-solar propaganda article by Alexander Neubacher.
Alexander Neubacher is a German journalist who has won the “Helmut-Schmidt journalist prize”, named after a former German chancellor for work about health insurance, as is explained at his author biography page here. That page also tells us that Neubacher is born in 1968, has studied economics and journalism, and is working since 1999 for the economic section of SPIEGEL magazine.
I have not read his recently published book “Ökofimmel”, but from descriptions I understand that it is a critical look at verious German environmental policies that Neubacher thinks are failures.
Neubacher has a Twitter feed here.
His latest anti-solar propaganda piece recycles the same old talking points. Solar is expensive. The sun doesn’t shine at night. Exactly what one would expect from anything with the byline Alexander Neubacher.
It does contain some remarkably easily refuted errors, though. For one, there is this:
Photovoltaic power plant operators and homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops are expected to pocket around €9 billion ($11.3 billion) this year, yet they contribute barely 4 percent of the country’s power supply, and only erratically at that.
Actually, the latest reports say that solar contributed 4.5% of all electricity in the first six months, with generation at 14.7 TWh, up 50% from the same period in 2011, when 19 TWh were generated over the whole year.
So the figure “barely 4 percent” is not factually correct, though it is at least close.
Neubacher then asserts:
For the same amount of money, wind power produces about five times more energy than solar power.
That can’t possibly be true. Solar feed-in tariffs even in the highest bracket are now at 18.92 cents. For wind to be five times as cheap it would need to be generated at 3.704 cents. But the tariffs for wind are at 8.93 cents in Article 29 of the law on the priority for renewable energy (EEG).
[snip]
gurusid post=7377 wrote:
Alexander Neubacher of Der Spiegel[url=https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/solar-subsidy-sinkhole-re-evaluating-germany-s-blind-faith-in-the-sun-a-809439.html] Solar Subsidy Sinkhole: Re-Evaluating Germany’s Blind Faith in the Sun
Hmmm. Interesting!
We seem to have a case of dueling alleged facts!
Who’s got the Real Scoop? Der Spiegel? Or The European magazine?
Methinks some deeper research is needed!
gurusid post=7375 wrote: Hi Alan,
Share of Primary energy consumption % (Germany) for 2011:
Hydro = 0.5
Wind = 1.3
Photovoltaics = 0.5
Biomass = 7.6Total all renewables (including others such as solarthermal & geothermal) = 11%
(I know startling facts eh? I had to dig into those figures to double check but that is how ‘small’ PV is, as a total of all energy consumed, its a bit more if you take it as a percentage of energy produced in Germany, as they import roughly half of their energy requirements according to the data, and if you then boosted it further by taking it as a percentage of electricity – which is an energy ‘carrier’ you can get close to the nuclear contribution for all renewables, but certainly not PV on its own)That source is here, table 6 the same source used by the article that you posted that states:
Talk about propaganda… :dry:
Sorry, Sid, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Yes, of course solar PV is a small percentage of the renewable total. It always is, except maybe on the equator.
Yes, Germany has an ambitious plan to get rid of nuclear by 2022, and to get 100% of electricity from renewables by 2030. That IS ambitious. But what is “propaganda” about it? The statistics that you quoted don’t mean much. That’s where things start. What counts is the trajectory and commitment to the goal.
It is quite possible for things to start slow and multiply. In fact they often do. That is exactly what happened with solar PVs. In the 1980s they were a rare curiosity, at very low production levels. In the 1990s production had picked up and they began to be used more commonly but were still quite expensive. In the 2000s production finally exploded and prices began collapsing. This is still underway. It is unlikely that we’ve seen the bottom. The same will be likely be true of other renewable energy technologies.
Anyway, I can’t make much sense of your “reply”.
cheltman post=7188 wrote: I do also believe the mainstream sees growth as a religion, such a fundamental truth that cannot be questioned and we must have faith in, with a ‘heaven’ where the whole World population has been lifted out of poverty
Leaving aside the matter of “religion”, the fact is that the whole world population IS being lifted out of poverty:
https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not
Poverty
Not always with us
The world has an astonishing chance to take a billion people out of extreme poverty by 2030
Jun 1st 2013
IN SEPTEMBER 2000 the heads of 147 governments pledged that they would halve the proportion of people on the Earth living in the direst poverty by 2015, using the poverty rate in 1990 as a baseline. It was the first of a litany of worthy aims enshrined in the United Nations “millennium development goals” (MDGs). Many of these aims—such as cutting maternal mortality by three quarters and child mortality by two thirds—have not been met. But the goal of halving poverty has been. Indeed, it was achieved five years early.
In 1990, 43% of the population of developing countries lived in extreme poverty (then defined as subsisting on $1 a day); the absolute number was 1.9 billion people. By 2000 the proportion was down to a third. By 2010 it was 21% (or 1.2 billion; the poverty line was then $1.25, the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines in 2005 prices, adjusted for differences in purchasing power). The global poverty rate had been cut in half in 20 years.Further, overall growth appears to have played a role in poverty reduction:
Growth Decreases Poverty
In 1990-2010 the driving force behind the reduction of worldwide poverty was growth. Over the past decade, developing countries have boosted their GDP about 6% a year—1.5 points more than in 1960-90. This happened despite the worst worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. The three regions with the largest numbers of poor people all registered strong gains in GDP after the recession: at 8% a year in East Asia; 7% in South Asia; 5% in Africa. As a rough guide, every 1% increase in GDP per head reduces poverty by around 1.7%.
GDP, though, is not necessarily the best measure of living standards and poverty reduction. It is usually better to look at household consumption based on surveys. Martin Ravallion, until recently the World Bank’s head of research, took 900 such surveys in 125 developing countries. These show, he calculates, that consumption in developing countries has grown by just under 2% a year since 1980. But there has been a sharp increase since 2000. Before that, annual growth was 0.9%; after it, the rate leapt to 4.3%.The article goes on to say (thank heaven!) that growth is not the only factor in poverty reduction, just one along with income distribution.
For my money, we don’t need any damn “growth” at all; just smarter use of what we’re already using, and/or MUCH smarter use of less than what we’re now using; see:
https://theautomaticearth.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=14&id=5865&Itemid=96#6009
… scroll down to:
Topic: Factor 5: Resource Efficiency vs. “Resource Shortage”Here’s another dose of renewable energy reality — an interesting story about Germany’s energy transition. Interesting for several reasons — among them, the fact that high-latitude Germany was not supposed to be able to benefit so much from solar. Another, that the U.S. is so ignorant of what is going on over there; see the section on “Propaganda and energy illiteracy”. Methinks the fossil fuel propagandists over here have done their job well. B)
https://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/chris-nelder–2/6747-germanys-energy-transition
31.05.2013
A Secret Success Story
Germany’s energy transition is already a success story. If
only the rest of the world paid attention.
Germany has become the world leader in solar power generation
in just 12 years, while phasing out its nuclear power, yet few
people in the United States seem to be aware of its success….
The growth of Germany’s solar capacity has been nothing short
of astonishing, adding as much PV in the first half of 2012 as
the US has in total cumulative installed capacity….ilargi post=7284 wrote:
Hmm. Less than a quarter of respondents say they might buy stocks by 2018. Unless perhaps the world is not the exact same anymore by then, in which case they might decide otherwise. Or their successors. Whichever comes first.I would be skeptical too, except for two things:
1. Central bank money is BIG money, so 23% is a lot.
2. More importantly is what the 23% represents elsewhere. The point is that very conservative big money, LIKE central bank money but not limited to central banks, is going into equities to escape the extremely low returns elsewhere. This cannot help but be an influence on things. Below is an example of what I’m talking about — big university endowments getting out of treasuries, looking for yield, sometimes in equities. Surely big pension funds, insurance companies, etc., are moving in the same direction. Big, conservative money is looking for a return that bonds are not providing. That’s the point.
https://srsroccoreport.com/universities-cutting-their-u-s-treasury-exposure-in-a-big-way/universities-cutting-their-u-s-treasury-exposure-in-a-big-way/
University Endowments Cutting Their U.S. Treasury Exposure In a Big Way
[snip]
Princeton’s endowment converted its entire U.S. Treasury holdings to cash while Duke’s $5.5 billion endowment shifted out of its U.S. Treasuries and into high yielding stocks and emerging market securities. Futhermore, Cornell’s endowment reduced its treasury securities to only 3%.Now THIS is an interesting thing that could have a profound impact on stock indexes going forward:
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40365.html
How to Profit from the Latest Desperate Moves By the World’s Central Banks
Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2013 May 09, 2013
By: Money_Morning
Ben Gersten writes: You already know central banks have been boosting markets through loose monetary policies the past few years.
Now it looks like they’ll move markets in another way – by pouring record amounts of money into buying equities.
The stunning revelation comes in a survey by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (NYSE ADR: RBS) and CentralBanking.com. The survey reveals that 23% of the 60 central bank respondents are buying stocks or plan to do so in the next five years.
In fact, this marked the first time in the survey’s nine-year history central bankers were asked whether they bought or planned to buy stocks.
While it’s not the first time central banks have ever bought equities, it is the most aggressive purchasing they’ve done.
“This time around, they’re not just throwing in the kitchen sink; they’re throwing in the garage, a couch, the guitar, the dog, anything they can get their hands on,” said Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald.
[continues at the link]Wow!
Everybody is being proved wrong.
Nadeem Walayat:
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article40358.html
“No one saw Dow 15,000+ coming in this time frame, not the bears, nor the bulls (me included)….
I did not see Dow 15,105 coming in this time frame. Instead I had engineered my portfolio by mid March down to about 18% net Long in anticipation for a probable correction of a good 12% or so from Mid March to Mid August to accumulate into, Instead the market as of writing has since risen by a good 5%.
The key to successful investing is not to lose money when one is wrong, and that can only be achieved through understanding the underlying forces at work which have remained constant for the duration of the stocks stealth bull market of the past 5 years, and that constant is one of stocks being leveraged to money and debt printing inflation consequences.
Whilst the mainstream media will be pointing to an improving U.S. economy as an explanation, I will instead reiterate the real reason that I have repeatedly stated for at least the past 4 years is that asset prices tend to be leveraged to inflation with sentiment driven prices oscillating around the inflation mega-trend (which is exponential) between extremes of over bought and over sold states.
And there is nothing, NOTHING to suggest that this fundamental structure of our economic and financial universe is about to change any time soon. Instead everything points to far more inflation during the next 5 years then we have witnessed during the past 5 years as illustrated by the following graphs….” [images at link]and, interestingly:
“Whilst I am getting a number of requests for detailed analysis of the stock market, I have to remind readers that the stocks bull market is a 5 year old trend. Instead my focus for a near year has been on the NEXT trend – The HOUSING Markets, which is where I have been shifting most of my wealth into.”Hmmmm.
How d’ya like that DJIA, hitting record high after record high, week in, week out, for months? That 85 billion per month that Benny and the Ink Jets been puttin out ain’t fer nuthin’, ya know! 😉
https://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-charts/?symbol=%24US%3aDJIA&pt=4
alan2102 post=6027 wrote:
The solar PV industry is a victim of its own success and efficiency in grinding out ever-more panels at ever-lower prices….
The market is now glutted with cheap panels, and no one is making any money, for the time being.Below: an amusing further addendum to this conversation.
The market is not only glutted with cheap panels, but in places is beginning to be glutted with cheap energy, which is a big threat to established energy interests.
The problem with solar PV is not its non-scalability, its expense, its low EROI, or any other such rubbish. The problem with solar PV is that it is too cheap, too efficient, and therefore too disruptive to existing entrenched interests. We can’t be allowed to have anything THIS good. Governments have now done an about-face: from subsidizing solar, to trying to obstruct it, in order to protect Big Energy! This really is a hoot!
“[T]he scalability and low prices of PV may mean that this transition is now inevitable. But the growth of solar power clashes with the traditional market structures and concepts of our society in such a way that make the end result rather uncertain.”
https://www.theoildrum.com/node/9841#more
The Price of Solar Power
Posted by Luis de Sousa on February 26, 2013 – 5:05am
snip
Summary
The actions recently taken in Europe against solar power are not a sign of failure but rather a consequence of the highly successful progress of PV technologies. Governments are simply trying to defend large electricity suppliers and the electricity markets they created in the last decade. With marginal generation costs close to zero, technologies like solar power wreck havoc on the open market once they reach a critical volume and threaten to steal away revenues from traditional base load suppliers.
The actual prices of electricity generated with PV have fallen relentlessly in recent years and are now on par with the gas fired generation at about 40º North in Europe. Even in more northern member states like Germany the cost of solar electricity is now about half of what consumers pay to the grid. At these prices the installation of solar panels can only grow, either on or off grid, unless installation is outlawed.
Present strategies by governments to keep these technologies away from the electricity market can at most delay the process. A fundamental shift in the way the grid is managed and prices are set is required, otherwise the electricity generation and distribution complex is left subject to major disruptions, both physical and financial.
In great measure the technology required to perform the Energiewende is already here. In fact, the scalability and low prices of PV may mean that this transition is now inevitable. But the growth of solar power clashes with the traditional market structures and concepts of our society in such a way that make the end result rather uncertain. The remaining obstacles to the Energiewende are now of a social and economic nature, and these may not be exactly the easiest to overcome.
“At these prices the installation of solar panels can only grow, either on or off grid, unless installation is outlawed.”
Now THERE’S an idea! OUTLAW solar PV installation! :cheer:
ilargi post=7005 wrote: Hmm Armstrong. Little paranoid for my taste. Leads to strange ideas.
This is about keeping the banks alive to service the debt of government.
I think maybe that should be the other way around.
It might be both/and — symbiosis.
BTW, what is that about the world moving into gold? $20,000 an ounce? Are there really still people touting that line?
Yes, but not me.
It will surely go to a multiple of the current price, though.
