From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2014 10:36 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
_____
>>> Energy and all other non-renewable and critical resources should be
taxed and taxed heavily
>> So you think it likely that people will not voluntarily use less energy
but will vote for politicians who force then to do so. I don't.
> Most people WILL voluntarily use less energy
>>If most people can use less energy, and most people want to use less
energy, then why don't most people use less energy; why isn't energy
consumption going down?
Perhaps the fact that in just one year 2012, more than $500 Billion was
spent globally on advertising of one form or another, and this is not an
outlier year. When a half a trillion dollars is spent to encourage people to
consume goods and services.. to feel impulse needs, to experience desire,
sexual desire you don't think that that has an effect? On what planet is
that? The incessant propaganda of materialism has been drenching our mind
space - as evidenced by how much more we spend globally (and in this country
as well) on pushing product than we do on all sectors of education combined.
Of course it has an effect, especially considering that this mass media
messaging has been going on for more than a hundred years, if we start the
mass media era with Marconi and radio.
>>And without cheap energy how are we going to fix nitrogen from the air to
fertilize the plants that 7 billion people eat.
Permaculture has demonstrated high yield sustainable practice. We won't have
cheap nitrogen; agriculture is going to have to get off of its
petro-chemical addiction; a terrible addiction that has led to wide spread
mono-cropping (a biologically insane practice) that is made possible by
slathering phenomenal quantities of various petro-chemical products - from
the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, to the fertilizers. When money and
the profit motive took over our land through the - self afforded right to
print money that a private cartel of anglo-american, but also franco-german
banking cartels have given for themselves. The degree to which a few money
center banks can leverage their real assets is not only insane it is clearly
not based on any real substance and stinks of criminality and naked ugly
greed.
When the power of money took over the land of this earth the rate of rape of
the land of this earth increased dramatically, and now comes the hangover.
No. you will certainly shout the party must go on. I know, I feel ya, but it
won't because it can't. Every single sector of modern life depends on
petroleum products - even when this is not apparent. Agriculture is one of
those places. The natural soil fertility has been poisoned to death by the
poisons of Monsanto and Bayer, soil under onslaught by mono crop industrial
profit motive driven agriculture that views land in the same manner as it
views any fungible resource. Money rules right?
Global oil production has peaked; the argument about it is over. This has
been masked by the shale oil (kerogen) and gas plays, and by the Canadian
tar sands national sacrifice zones, which are bringing - very temporary -
supplies online, but conventional oil production has peaked globally and has
entered into inexorable decline. There are no new Ghawar fields on planet
earth; petroleum geologists are good, and they know where to look. Some new
fields will be discovered of course in places like the Arctic that once were
covered in ice, or in very deep water fields, but there is nothing left like
Ghawar that had in the beginning an energy return of as much as 100 times
invested energy. The signs are clear. For example the recent massive tax
breaks that were given to the oil sector by the state of Alaska and sold to
the public as a measure that would lead to a big increase in production.
well. where is the new production?
All of this at a juncture in history when hundred of millions of aspiring
people are trying to join the material land they see on TV and at the malls;
which means that the global gap between demand for oil and supply is going
to hit the global economy like a jack hammer - IMO. Because as soon as
things anemically begin to recover the demand for oil increases - and there
is no swing supply. The Saudis do not have it. Ghawar is sucking up salt
water now.. more and more. What this means is that the global spot market
price for oil spikes, driving up the cost of everything - at all levels of
production and distribution, sending the global economy into a tail spin
once again - more social dislocation.
We have entered the era of jettisoning countries - ask any Greek. It is
becoming like a game of musical chairs, a very gruesome game of musical
chairs.
The global economy remains anemic.. look at labor force participation rates
if you want to get a clear picture of just how bad it remains here as well.
Oil has peaked. Do you see a coincidence? No matter what kind of economic
activity you engage in - you need oil and oil sourced products. When the
price spikes not only does the price of everything go up but you have less
to spend in order to cover your own direct oil needs.
With each next great recession more and more people in more and more places
are going to find themselves squeezed out and left more or less to fend for
themselves. This also has the perverse effect of collapsing the spot market
price for oil - sending the wrong market signal to capital allocators who
need to make forty year or longer duration capital allocation decisions -
oil projects have long pipelines from upstream to downstream - they are huge
capital intensive endeavors. The wild price swings are not helping.
The shale play will mask the decline for a while.. the tar sands as well -
though both of these are more PR than substance. The EROI of this kind of
energy extraction is barely above the levels it needs to be in order to
sustain its own activity; the marginal return is rapidly shrinking
everywhere. The same story applies to coal and to uranium as well - what do
we burn when we are done burning through the Soviet bomb uranium we got?
Peak uranium is nearing as well. Coal reserves are being slashed - in this
country as well. Many were over optimistic statements - and again we come
back to money. If you are say a company, a well-connected coal company that
can influence reserve statements - or the reporting agency "wink" "wink"
accepts your own stated reserve figures this has very substantial real world
implications for the valuation of your company. In fact energy (and mining a
swell) companies are in large measure valued by the perceived size and
quality of their future reserves. This is almost as important a factor in
evaluation as is current production, market share etc. There exists a huge
motive to overstate reserves and to get the most highly optimistic possible
value into whatever authoritative reporting agency documents as possible.
This is trillions of dollars of value. My suggestion is to take stated
reserve figures with a grain of salt.
There is no easy answer, only hard facts. Oil - the critical factor in
almost everything that we do is running out and the gap between supply and
demand is growing much faster because this is a global product with a global
market and there is at least a billion new want to be consumers of nice
stuff like cars. right as the world is running out of gas. literally.
Please don't shoot the messenger. Isn't it better to deal in facts, as
opposed to wish it were so(s)? It is not like I wish it were so, after all.
Maybe some miracle - like that little boy in England - will occur and I will
buy you a beer. It is not like I wish to see our world and our civilization
go over a cliff.
But it is. we are full speed ahead smack into the immovable force of hard
facts. By the way, absent the affordable petro-fertilizer fix seven billion
people will not eat, except perhaps if everyone eats a lot less meat, and
human-scale bio-intensive permaculture, and a highly re-cycling and lean
systems approach and ethic is adopted. Petro-fueled agriculture is going
over the cliff.
And how are we going to fuel the farm equipment to harvest the crops? And
how are we going to refrigerate them? And how are we going to transport the
food from the farms to the cities where most of the people live?
Again. we won't. Welcome to collapse. Just because you wish it were not so
won't stop it from occurring once the system has already been ground down in
a fifty year cycle of severe recessions followed by all too brief interludes
that benefit fewer and fewer people, followed on by another body blow
recession. All driven by collapsing energy, and especially oil supplies.
The system as it is cannot endure and will not last. We either adapt or we
die; it really is as stark as that.
Chris de Morsella
John K Clark
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