Nassim
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I just saw the following article and it got me thinking.
“Ice-breaker plea for trapped killer whales”
https://www.theage.com.au/environment/whale-watch/icebreaker-plea-for-trapped-killer-whales-20130110-2ci2b.htmlIt is particularly pertinent since Australian newspapers are currently indulging in a bit of manufactured hysteria – because of some wild fires and a bit of seasonal hot weather. The weather bureau is obligingly coming up with forecasts that Australia will have it hottest day ever – by averaging a selected number of sites – but the weather repeatedly fails to oblige.
The sad thing is that the records were set over 100 years ago and as we seem to be unable to get there we are now being told that our great-grandparents were using faulty thermometers and so on. It is really quite remarkable since the trains in those days were running faster than today and pretty well all the heavy infrastructure of places like Melbourne and Sydney were in place generations ago. We have been coasting off the work that was done a long time ago.
“‘Exceptional’ heatwave challenges records”
https://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/exceptional-heatwave-challenges-records-20130108-2cdn9.html“Now you see it, now you don’t: weather bureau backtracks from 50-plus forecast”
https://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont-weather-bureau-backtracks-from-50plus-forecast-20130109-2cfm5.html“Weather watchers look to red-hot outback town to predict temperatures”
https://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/weather-watchers-look-to-redhot-outback-town-to-predict-temperatures-20130109-2cgv4.html (by Peter Hannam – Carbon economy editor)“Mercury to climb again as hot cell hovers”
https://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/mercury-to-climb-again-as-hot-cell-hovers-20130110-2ci5d.htmlFunnily enough, yesterday’s maximum for Melbourne was a very pleasant 21C (70F). I cannot make up this stuff. 🙂
Anyway, the interesting thing about the first article is how people seem to be unable to accept that nature is pretty cruel and unpredictable. If some whales get it wrong, why do people have to send an ice-breaker to rescue them? I mean, whales have been around for a long time and the lucky and smart ones survived and that is how it goes. They will probably be around a long time after we are not.
BTW, in Russia they have been having what they call an “old-fashioned winter” with snow meters deep in places.
“Russia suffers its coldest winter ever”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/russia-suffers-its-coldest-winter-ever-1289248.htmlBabble,
Anyone who thinks that the “National Healthcare Act” is anything other than yet another unfunded entitlement program – for the pharmaceutical companies and allied industries – is someone who has not “got it” yet.
Writing of “Republicans” and “Democrats” as though they were truly opposing representative parties is a bit of a bore. It reflects the success of the MSM at deluding ordinary Americans as to what is really going on. 🙁
Continued …
Some motorcyclists wear electrically-heated clothing. I am not sure how practical it would be to do something like that for people indoors. Many elderly people don’t move about much. In any case, it would only need to be 20-30 Watts rather than the 100 Watts that riders require – an enormous energy saving compared to heating the house to a similar temperature. Also, there are substances that release a lot of heat as they solidify (e.g. wax)
Today, I drove past the “National Wool Museum” (of Australia):
https://www.visitgeelongbellarine.com.au/geelong/museums/national-wool-museum
and the nearby “Wool Exchange”:
https://thewoolexchange.com.au
Of course, it used to be a huge business – before cheap coal, town gas, natural gas and electricity made house-warming affordable for almost everyone. I was thinking that maybe its time will come back.
Apparently, 4-5 million people in the UK are now classified as “fuel poor”. This total is expected to rise to 8-9 million by 2016 – 10% of the population.
I suspect that wool will return to favour in a big way in Europe, and cotton will lose its shine. People will have to dress warmly indoors.
Rodney7777,
I think this link to the Fairwinds website may help you change your mind regarding the safety and feasibility of thorium reactors:
https://fairewinds.com/content/thorium-reactors
Here is some of it:
Following a review, even the U. S. Department of Energy has concluded placed Thorium Reactors in the same category as all other nuclear power reactors.
The choice between uranium-based fuel and thorium-based fuel is seen basically as one of preference, with no fundamental difference in addressing the nuclear power issues [of waste management, proliferation risk, safety, security, economics, and sustainability]. Since no infrastructure currently exists in the U.S. for thorium-based fuels, and the processing of thorium-based fuels is at a lower level of technical maturity when compared to processing of uranium-based fuels, costs and RD&D [research, development and deployment] requirements for using thorium are anticipated to be higher.
Rodney7777
I see. Material science and energy do not even enter into the equation.
If we build – with the help of 3D printers – gadgets, we will no longer need the factories of China or the resources of Africa and Arabia
I see. Material science and energy does not even enter into the equation. If we build – with the help of 3D printers – gadgets, we will no longer need the factories of China or the resources of Arabia, Africa and Australia.
I am thoroughly fed up with the regular articles in the “Daily Reckoning” from down-under which exalt the wonders of shale gas.
The shares of an Australian company that has some sort of permission to drill in the UK have gone up by 60% this past week. It is totally insane.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=ASX%3AAJL&ei=wd3UUPD7EMrqkAWb5QE
The FT also had a recent one in which most comments were very positive and dismissive of “greens”
https://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e5a6c1f6-49ec-11e2-a7b1-00144feab49a.html
The whole thing looks like another “pump and dump” operation.
The documentary that you mentioned – “The Great Spanish Collapse” – is now the subject of a ZeroHedge article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-20/great-spanish-crash-documentary
Showing the full, high-definition version, on TV did make an impression on my wife. She was a student when the Russian economy collapsed and depended on her parents to send her food parcels. Of course, the boys on her course swapped their parental food parcels for vodka. 🙂
I was able to download a high-quality version of “The Great Spanish Crash” (“This World” BBC2, 16th Dec 2012) and to watch on TV – I had to show it to my wife.
Here is how I did it:
1- I downloaded and installed the free program BitTorrent (https://www.bittorrent.com)
2- I found a torrent by searching for “The Great Spanish Crash”
3- I let it download slowly over a period of 6 hours.
4- I copied it to USB – my TV can handle files
It is a shame that the BBC – which used to be so good with its “World Service” on short-wave – does not let one download interesting programs.
alan,
What these guys say they are doing is what they want others to do, no more and no less. Nothing to do with what they are really doing with their private money. It might be the same thing, but then it might not.
This has been going on for an awfully long time. The main difference between India and China is that the traffic for China is only ever been in one direction. The Indians occasionally export precious metals – when they think that it is overvalued.
Check out Marco Polo. He was an arbitrageur who took silver to China and came back with gold. Most of the silver the Spaniards acquired in South America ended up in the Far East. The precious metals that the Japanese grabbed during their recent excursion into mainland Asia was never returned – there are lots of articles about it on the Internet. Perhaps that is why they didn’t need a Marshal Plan after WW2.
For people outside the UK, you can now watch this video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ldu8X_UQPRA#!
Thanks gurusid. I haven’t watched it yet, but is seems stoneleighstic. 🙁
Thanks Dave.
To me, the Greek bonds look like they are going back to “normal” – the way they were in the early 90’s
I just saw this in the French newspaper le Figaro. It seems that the young (15-24) in mainland France now have an unemployment rate of 24.2% – it was 22.8% three months ago. Of course, a large proportion of people in that age group are students and don’t count as unemployed.
Here is a Google translation:
And the original:
I can’t see them not protesting in the Greek way sometime soon.
Kiwipoet,
“Rising sea levels are now an uncontested fact.”
References please!
Here is the situation for the Maldives which lie in the Indian Ocean:
https://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
I strongly suspect that the readings your information is based on comes from piles that are sinking.
I think that I am currently living only around 1-2 meters above sea-level, and there is certainly no panic going on locally. In fact, the houses along the shore are selling for over one million dollars. Here is a plot of land right on the sea-shore and barely above sea-level and it is selling for around $200/sq ft.
https://www.domain.com.au/Property/For-Sale/House/VIC/Altona/?adid=2009913239
Here is an image based on 1993-2010 satellite data. It suggests that where I am and the Maldives have the sea rising at 3mm/year (1/8th of the rate you mentioned).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NOAA_sea_level_trend_1993_2010.png
Of course, according the satellites, some areas have the sea-level dropping – off New York, for example. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NOAA_sea_level_trend_1993_2010.png
Frankly, it is all a red herring and what Stoneleigh is putting the emphasis on is vastly more important and certainly more immediate.
Here is an excellent example of optimism-bias:
“Preventing Armageddon Would Cost Only $100 Million … But Congress Is Too Thick to Approve the Fix”
I guess when something like that happens, they will blame it on the “terrorists”
p01,
Here is an article from today’s main Melbourne newspaper
Cardinal George Pell shows all the manifestations described above. In fact, his boss, Pope Ratzinger is very similar in outlook. They are ponerologists.
Let us not forget that Ratzinger was in charge of the Vatican’s internal FBI (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and there has been zero cooperation with police investigators into such abuse during that period and since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI#Sexual_abuse_in_the_Catholic_Church
In fact, the local police believe that the Vatican has files on all these priests and is hiding this information.
Lastly, I would like to point out that 30-40 years ago, the Catholic Church used to try to protect Palestinians who were being terrorised by the Israelis. The Popes of the day would publicly condemn the Israelis and it would make the news.
Now, that no longer happens. The Israelis can do what they like with scarcely a squeak coming out of the Vatican. I can only conclude that the Mossad has thick files on a huge number of priests and that they have forced the Catholic Church to shut up. The depravity of these psychopathic priests has made the Church an anachronism.
Kiwipoet,
A very long time ago, I studied civil engineering and even worked as one for a while, before realising that it was an under-valued profession and I moved to greener pastures. We were taught to estimate how much to spend on flood-defences and suchlike.
I did a quick search and found the following book from 1961:
“Flood in New York, Magnitude and Frequency”
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=c6EvAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=falseI suspect that if you looked at the historical record, you may find that quite a few serious floods occurred in the past in New York. This one was aggravated, as we all know, by a full moon:
https://www.onenewspage.com/n/US/74rh5yibq/Expert-With-Full-Moon-During-Hurricane-Sandy-Flooding.htm
I am not saying that “climate change” does not have something to do with it – since the climate has never been a fixed factor anywhere for any long period of time. I am simply pointing out that we do not – and never have – lived in non-dynamic world. Frankly, this book from 1961 probably has some estimate of the chances of something like Sandy occurring.
Here in Australia, on my favourite channel SBS (I only watch stuff recorded on a hard-disk), we had a great Vietnamese movie – “Journey From The Fall” about the way the losers of that conflict were sent to “re-education camps”. The movie was financed by ex-boat people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_from_the_Fall
Of course, re-education was a minor part of the process. The prisoners worked as slaves (who were disposable as they cost nothing). They were clearing mine-fields and jungle by hand. They were starving and when a prisoner was fortunate enough to catch a cockroach, he would share it with his friends – “please you take the rear, it is the best part” They were frequently beaten by their guards.
Of course, the people who own the film distribution business, TV stations and paper media in the USA and many other places – ahem ahem – did not want any competition with their own favourite theme for suffering. The film was only shown in a handful of places to sold-out audiences. I am sure that with proper marketing and distribution and a bit of Spielberg, it would have done as well as “Schindler’s List”
I guess, from the point of view of some people, anyone who reads this blog needs some “re-education” 🙂
I note that Burma is rapidly becoming a “friendly nation”. The fact that they are clearing out Moslem minorities does not seem to have received much attention.
dusha,
I guess you are aware of it already. However, just in case, here is a link to what is happening in France:
Please use Google translator:
I am not sure if it made it into the English-language press
jal,
I concur with you. I find that I am at my most creative when I have nothing “important” to do – like right now. 🙂
I think boredom is a very valuable thing. I try to make sure that my kids are bored some of the time. Of course one can be actively doing something physical or repetitive and be bored and creative. One does not have to be sitting along on a bench. Watching a boring program on TV or reading a boring book does not inspire that sort of thing.
Here is another article where the author refers to this phenomenon in an oblique way:
From what I have read, this condition exists in 1% of women and 10% of men.
Here is an especially interesting book and interview about Ponerology.
“The Trick of the Psychopath’s Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others”
BTW, Blair is in a class all of his own.
I can’t help thinking that if the “Chicago Plan Revisited” were to reach a wide audience, the whole edifice would go down in short order:
Seems like the kids are playing with a financial hydrogen bomb.
We are really fortunate to have in Ilargi a person who is Dutch and who pays attention to what is happening in that little, but critical, corner of Europe. I mean, most German exports and imports pass through the Netherlands and pretty well all long-distance trade in the valley of the Rhine has to pass through either this country or Belgium (Rotterdam and Antwerp). It is the canary in the coal mine.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Rhein-Karte.png
While I agree that solar will never be of much use in Northern Europe, Canada and much of the USA, I believe it will have a much better future in places that are less distant from the equator. In much of Australia, it should replace conventional power stations in a decade or so.
Here in Melbourne, largely thanks to the Carbon Tax and over-investment in the grid, our electric bills have gone up by far more than inflation:
https://www.theage.com.au/victoria/power-shock-bills-up-33-in-five-years-20120920-268qr.html
There are plenty of offers for solar power which work out at $3/Watt – including installation, inverter and batteries. Here is a system suitable for a number of houses:
We use a daily maximum of 15KW-h (and an annual daily average of 10KW-h) so this system which costs $46,000 for a maximum output of 20KW should be sufficient for at least 8 similar households. Since the cost of the unit we live in is $500,000+ – we rent – this is a small part of the whole. We currently pay around $1,200/year for electricity. Frankly, if we owned a property, it would make excellent sense to get something – even without the government subsidy which is being phased out next July.
Very interesting. Thank you.
My first thought on reading this article was “is this the best of what the brightest of the bright can come up with?”
I mean, it is amazing to store all this stuff in such a location when the “Global Warming”/”Rising Sea-level” mantra has been in the news from many years.
My second thought was that this was a very good advertisement for physical gold.
Elle,
I thought the link was going to provide some information as to the technology – it was just a rehash of how great it would be if a way did exist of storing electric energy. Sad.
Pipefit,
It looks like you misunderstand the message Stoneleigh and Ilargi are making.
If money (i.e. credit) disappears at a faster rate than stuff does and its speed continues to drop, that does not lead to hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation is always a political choice and right now the guys and gals with all the dough do not want hyperinflation – only those with massive debts could ever wish for such and event.
Thank you Otto. I will try not to fall for that so I am not taking any further the bait presented using perpetual motion suggestions 🙂
Dave,
It is revealing that you chose not to give us a link – ensuring that we got hundreds of results on Google so that you could let us know that the one we read is not THE one.
Anyway, here is one of them
“Australian sceptic Dick Smith has offered $AU200,000 for proof that the device works.”
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/e_cat_opens_australian_web_shopfront
Non-Australians should know that this Dick Smith has managed/owned a huge number of electronic shops around Australia. He is not a sceptic, more likely a realist.
<< Re: small gold particles. Very interesting! Though ripping up a 1oz gold coin with tweezers doesn't strike me as an exact science. >>
Best way is to beat the gold into a thin sheet – very easy for anyone with the right tools and skills – and then cut it with scissors. Accurate weighing-scales are readily available.
Try beating tungsten flat, just to see the difference. 🙂
If the IMF is saying that European banks will need to sell $4.5 trillion in assets through 2013, I don’t really need to know any more. I mean, that is around $10,000 per person in Europe.
Where is the money coming from Golden Oxen? Selling gold? Or is this also “economic mumbo jumbo” 🙂
Given the lack of real options in the UK, I would vote for him over the others. I am not saying here that he is right in every respect, I am simply saying that he has grasped the big picture regarding Europe.
“Nigel Farage on the Rise of UKIP, the Fall of Europe, and the Parallels for the US”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LsQY1OxoEY&feature=player_embedded
Well worth watching. Ilargi’s message, but in a different way.
Like Ilargi, I am a monetary deflationista. Unlike Ilargi, I do dabble in precious metals, but I sold everything two weeks ago.
I recently saw this recent post on ZH:
“The Fed Has Another $3.9 Trillion In QE To Go (At Least)”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-23/fed-has-another-39-trillion-qe-go-leastThe writer clearly understands the importance of the on-going deflation in the Shadow Banking system. However, he comes to dramatically different conclusions (I think) regarding price inflation.
Any comments?
we pay to bury dead people
This reminded me that during the Victorian era, millions of corpses of India’s poor were imported to the UK – by the shipload – for use as fertilizer.
The Hungarians are in a rather special geographic situation. Pretty well all their neighbouring countries have Hungarian minorities and they don’t have that “problem” themselves.
The other thing is that Hungary was the superhighway for horse-powered invasions from the East – it always has been. The Hungarians are perhaps the last to do that and settle the land. Yes, our old friend Atilla the Hun was the culprit, and he nearly took over France and Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atilla
In the same way that Genghis Khan is worshipped in Mongolia, Atilla is revered in Hungary. In fact, Atilla is quite a common name in Hungary.
