Page added on June 4, 2020
The easy thinking flies smoothly off the keyboard: “Fossil Fuels are Done;” “End of the Oil Era;” “The Inevitable Death of Natural Gas;” “The Demise of King Coal;” On and on, a parade of abstractions unconnected to the empirical world but sounding good, nevertheless. Preying on everyone’s wish for a clean, healthy environment, special interest groups push their rhetoric far beyond the reality of what is happening in energy and what will continue to happen in coming decades. Far from being dead, dying, or moribund, fossil fuels are steadily expanding their contribution and keeping billions of people alive all over the world. More people, living longer, living better through fossil fuels.
The hard data tell the tale, and these data are readily available in the latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) by the International Energy Agency (IEA). And by “hard data,” I mean absolute numbers, not the growth percentages frequently used to exaggerate the relevance of non-fossil sources like wind and solar. Here is the reality:
More than one writer has hyperbolically averred that the Covid 19 crisis has “forever” changed energy demand and the recent trajectory of onward and upward will never return. But the coronavirus notwithstanding, energy demand will resurge and continue to increase for decades to come. China’s gasoline and diesel consumption are already back to pre-virus levels and daily coal burn at power plants is on the rise as factories reopen. India’s fuel demand “is set to reach pre-coronavirus levels in June” stated Indian Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Meanwhile, the IEA recently affirmed its projection that peak oil demand is “nowhere in sight.”
Finally, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, put the situation in perspective: “American business consultants using Zoom will not compensate for 150 million new urban residents in India and Africa traveling, working in factories and buying products transported by trucks.” This is the shape of things to come.
Here are some numbers from the latest IEA “Current Policies Scenario” regarding the future role of fossil fuels:
For the record, even in the more ambitious “Stated Policies Scenario” of the IEA, fossil fuels still steadily increase, albeit at a slightly lower rate. Nevertheless, in this alternative scenario, in 2030, 77% of energy demand is met by fossil fuels and, in 2040, the number is over 74%.
It is no surprise that these data receive little or no play in the media. It is much more exciting to write “man bites dog” stories than simply compose the same old, same old, pieces on continuity. Stability and normality do not generate clickbait and obviously do not fit the agenda of those seeking dramatic change, however infeasible it may be. Given this penchant toward hyperbole, it is easy to lose perspective on the role fossil fuels play, and will continue to play, in virtually every society across the world.
The short-term perspectives of the media belie this fundamental fact, but Demography always wins in the end. Well over 80 million people will be added to the global population this year—upwards of a quarter million today alone or a new Philadelphia every week. By 2025, the global population will have increased by over 400 million. If these people were a country, it would be the third-largest nation on earth. President Obama was correct in his assessment of needing “all of the above” even though his policies belied the mantra.
Consider oil—the overwhelming fuel for automobiles, tractors, trucks, airplanes, ships, etc. Demand was about 100 million b/d in 2019 and by 2025 is projected to reach over 105 million. These increases in oil consumption will be the pattern for years to come. The IEA has stated “there is no peak demand on the horizon.” In the next two decades, billions of people will seek to enter the global middle class. The transportation sector will drive more than half of liquid fuels demand and trucks alone will consume 30 million b/d by 2050.
Petrochemical demand will add 7 million b/d. Few people other than Mark Mills recognize that even a 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace only 5% of global oil demand. Oil is here to stay.
And now electricity—an area where assumptions about the death of fossil fuels follows the Mark Twain pattern of being “greatly exaggerated.” Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society and global demand for electric power has increased over 125% in the last 30 years, from 11,731 terawatt hours (TWh) in 1990 to 26,603 TWh now. Yet, despite this incredible progress, over one billion people do not have any electricity whatsoever and another two billion have severely limited access—e.g. two or three days a week or several hours a day. Electricity poverty is rampant and for three billion people food is cooked on fires fueled by biomass—e.g., wood or dung. Estimates are that over four million people die prematurely each year from diseases related to indoor air pollution. Given the energy density of fossil fuels, they are the only sources that can scale up to meet this latent demand and pull billions out of electricity poverty.
Fossil fuels, especially coal, have already been the savior of billions of lives by providing electricity for clean water, sanitation, cooking, refrigeration, communication and illumination. China’s dramatic surge of electricity from coal is the best example and why the IEA called coal-based electrification an “economic miracle.” Coal-based electricity was the foundation of this great leap forward not only for China but countries stretching back to the industrial revolution in England.
More recently, global coal generating capacity grew every single year between 2000 and 2019, nearly doubling from 1,066 GW to 2,079 GW. Further, about 500 GW of new coal capacity is either being built or planned. The Current Policies Scenario of the IEA projects that in 2030, 11,464 TWh of electricity will be produced by coal—a 13% increase. To be sure, the construction of coal plants is slowing down throughout much of the world, but the plants that have been put in place over the last decade, as well as those that will be become operational in the next decade, will form a modern, highly efficient core coal fleet that will last throughout the lifetime of many readers of this article.
In other parts of the world, natural gas, coal’s power generation counterpart, is on the dramatic upswing. Gas currently accounts for 6,118 TWh of electricity and by 2030 is projected to account for 8,086 TWh—an increase of 32%. In other words, by the end of the present decade, the combined total electricity generation of coal and gas will be over 19,550 TWh—the equivalent of four times the electric power production of the United States—plus Russia.
Some critics may complain that I use the Current Policies Scenario of the IEA rather than the Stated Policy Scenario. A point well taken, but it is dangerous to deal in political hypotheses stretching out 10,20 or 30 years when the architects of those hypotheses will be long gone and never have to answer for their unfounded exuberance. In fact, the IEA itself cautions that the Stated Policy Scenario merely describes “the direction in which today’s policy ambitions would take the energy sector.”
Regardless, in the interest of fair play, let us note that even in the Stated Policy Scenario coal generation will still increase by 2030 and pretty much plateau by 2040 but certainly not decline. Growth of natural gas-based generation in this Scenario will still be dramatic, increasing from 6,118 TWh now to 7,529 TWh (+23%) by 2030 and 8,899 TWh (+45%) by 2040. Although these data do not fit the preferred story line of many pundits, it is abundantly clear that fossil fuels have been, are now, and will remain, the primary component of energy systems throughout the world.
Note: The IEA also presents a “Sustainable Development Scenario” that some may embrace as feasible. Not me. If one feels that in just 20 years, we can reduce fossil fuel consumption more than 30% while adding 1.5 billion people to the population without condemning several billion children, women and men to permanent energy poverty, our interpretations of the global energy situation are so far apart any interaction is meaningless.
Dr. Frank Clemente is Professor Emeritus of Social Science at Penn State University where he was the Director of the Environmental Policy Center. He has served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin and the University of Kentucky. His research specialization is the socioeconomic impact of energy policies.
73 Comments on "Fossil Fuels for Decades and Beyond"
JuanP on Sat, 6th Jun 2020 4:00 pm
Hi Guys! Im back after shaving my back and jerking off my pet fish. Me Gads!, I am woke!. It all started at 6am when a mighty tummy rumble gave way to an enormous arse tearing fart!
Then mid burble the shart came!
The horror if the next few seconds has caused be to loose my loose grip on reality and even this dimension!
God help us Trump lovers in the year of the covid liquid fart and the toilet paper shortage!
Uppity Nigger Window Breaker of Minneapolis on Sat, 6th Jun 2020 4:05 pm
I feel fo’ yo’ brudder!
Now uz gottaz look aftas urself with some fried chickens!
Thatsa gonna make uz feel good afta browning all yo’ beddin’
gnomesayin’ ?
Sum Ting Wong : Sweat Shop owner extraordinaire on Sat, 6th Jun 2020 4:10 pm
Here in China we dont shart!
We have just opened a new gwiant wubber dog shit fwactory using new twech you silly little americans can only dream of.
Our fwactories are gworius and are so high twech!
Soon the world will be ours and everwee won will be eating egg noodles and bwending knee ro our gworius leader XI XINPING!
Michelle Obama on Sat, 6th Jun 2020 4:16 pm
Yeh but no but Biden will save us!
I am fully woke
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 1:36 am
In between all the BLM garbage…
https://www.wattisduurzaam.nl/26904/energie-besparen/transport/extra-range-voor-tesla-model-y-in-de-winter-dankzij-warmtepomp/
Tesla Model Y has 10% more range because of the installation of a heat pump to keep the vehicle warm.
The vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wxGl7m2sw
Anonymouse on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 2:19 am
Can we get a picture of you standing next to your Telsa with its new and improved range CloggFraud?
You can blur about your massive kike schnoz if you like to maintain your anonymity.
But we really wouldn’t mind if you could off your worthless ass for even 10 mins so we can see a picture of you standing next your Tesla.
Oh, and dont forget to hold up a copy of your Certificate of Ownership to the camera as well. So get your get worthless ass on that, and find a ….well, you dont have any friends, but maybe you can pay someone to snap that picture?
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 3:48 am
Already scored yourself a free flat-panel, anonymouse? No? At least a pair of Nikes?
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 3:56 am
The FBI, the coming American Cheka, loyal to ZOG to the core:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/07/fbi-pledges-allegiance-to-black-lives-matter-antifa-nation-of-islam-and-new-black-panthers-protesters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka
Trump may be the president, but he doesn’t hold total power, far from it. In the background the deep state (media, Wall Street, Fed, Pentagon, State, CFR) is still alive, very much so, Biding their time in the basement (pun intended) for a possible takeover in November. The censorship is increasing:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/joseph-mercola/peak-internet-the-censorship-bubble-is-about-to-burst/
American whitey, of which our umpire dave is a perfect example (2/3 libtard, 1/3 wannabee closet white nationalist) is with the back against the wall, with no way out.
Cloggie on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 5:09 am
What’s the fossil fuel footprint of a kWh electricity?
Offshore wind: 10 gram
Natural gas power station: 450 gram
Coal power station: 1000 gram
Offshore wind in 30 years time: 0 gram
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/co2-footprint-offshore-wind-park/
Davy on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 5:37 am
“Study Finds Extreme Protests Turn The Public Away From The Cause”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/study-finds-extreme-protests-turn-public-away-cause
“New research shows that public support for a protest movement wanes as the protesters get more extreme. The study, published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, says even protesters who are part of the movement become disenfranchised by things like “inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism.” One of the authors of the study said there is a strong backlash to extreme protesting. For example, they “found extreme anti-Trump protest actions actually led people to not only dislike the movement and support the cause less, but to be willing to support Trump more.” And the same held true across protest actions for both conservative and liberal causes. What this means: The evidence supports another study which found that since 1945, “nonviolent campaigns were more successful at bringing about large-scale political transformation than violent campaigns.”
REAL Green on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 5:50 am
Looks like THIS cause might be different
“”A Police-Free Future” – Minneapolis City Council Votes To Abolish Police Department”
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/minneapolis-city-council-disband-citys-police-department
“In a stunning harbinger of things to come across the country, on Sunday afternoon, amid calls for defunding police departments countrywide, the Minneapolis City Council members went one further, and announced their intent to disband the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.”
Davy on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 6:04 am
Table 1 Energy efficiency of transportation in kilojoules/ton/kilometer (Smil 2013), Ashby 2015)
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/fuel-consumption-by-containership-size-and-speed/
(A) ……………Transportation mode
50……………. Oil tankers and bulk cargo ships
100–150….. Smaller cargo ships
250–600….. Trains
360………….. Barge
2000–4000 Trucks
30,000…….. Air freight
55,000…….. Helicopter
Zero Juan on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 6:05 am
JuanP on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 5:50 am
Looks like THIS cause might be different
“”A Police-Free Future” – Minneapolis City Council Votes To Abolish Police Department”
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/minneapolis-city-council-disband-citys-police-department
“In a stunning harbinger of things to come across the country, on Sunday afternoon, amid calls for defunding police departments countrywide, the Minneapolis City Council members went one further, and announced their intent to disband the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.”
Davy on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 6:15 am
“I Love Spam Madly, Deeply, Unironically”
https://tinyurl.com/y5lxedqa Lenny
“I am skilled at classical French cooking. I have a Higher Certificate from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. I also, however, love Spam. (In case you were wondering, Spam pairs well with Gewürztraminer.) I kept kosher for a few years (long story). When I broke away from the dietary laws — because I was quitting smoking and could not maintain so many forms of self-abnegation at once — the food item I cheated with was Spam. It symbolizes both the part of me that is Korean and the part of me that is American — two identities that are difficult to unite. More important, I associate Spam with relaxation, being present, and not worrying about what you can’t control. Why? Because Spam evokes beaches, pineapples, funny tropical shirts: i.e., Hawaii. It’s the one place in the world where I can be un-stressed-out, and it happens to be the only U.S. state that loves Spam as much as I do. Mainland Americans have given me no end of grief for this. First rule of Spam Club: You never talk about Spam Club. Otherwise, you risk social death. Case in point: When I was at university, my friend Mike told me that his freshman-year roommate threw out Mike’s Spam and gave him $5 to cover the cost. But Mike and I both had a really good excuse for this embarrassing proclivity: We’re of Korean extraction, and Korea is the world’s largest consumer of Spam outside the United States. How did Korea become hooked on the laughingstock of all supermarket products? The meat that was so ridiculous that Monty Python created not only a sketch around it but an entire Broadway musical? A bit of history: Spam has been manufactured by the Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods Corporation since 1937. It became widespread in Korea during and after the Korean War (1950 to 1953), when the U.S. government shipped loads of Spam to Korea, at a time when fresh meat was hard to come by. Korea was by no means the only beneficiary of this largesse; during and after WWII, the U.K. also turned to Spam to supplement monthly meat rations. In fact, articles on Spam’s role in wartime Britain bear titles such as “Spam: Did It Save the Nation?” (Here are some nostalgic British WWII-era Spam recipes.) Unlike the U.K., however, where they poke fun at Spam, Korean Spam consumption was unironic. While modern-day Brits no longer regularly eat Spam, it has remained part of the diet in Korea. In September 2017, Korean sales of Spam reached 1 billion tins. And Spam’s Korean co-distributor, Cheil Jedang, announced in January that its top-selling New Year gift box was Spam. In my day, the tins were usually packed in velvet-lined boxes and wrapped in white satin ribbon. Spam is an important part of Korean home cooking. It’s the sine qua non ingredient of kimchi jjigae (stewed kimchi) and budae jjigae — literally “army stew.” My mother, a biochemist with a particular fear of foodborne illnesses, was virulently anti-pork, making it sound like a veritable menagerie of revolting organisms — trichinosis, tapeworm, hepatitis, all reproducing at exponential rates. Yet we always had Spam in our pantry. Apparently Koreans are now accepting their love of the lowbrow: David Chang, the Michelin-starred Korean-American chef, is extolling Spam. Spam’s enduring popularity in Korea surprises me, because I had assumed Koreans were now prosperous enough to abandon any food item that you need a key to open. This is a common phenomenon, though — hardship habits die hard. Some Germans raised on the substitute coffee product “Ersatzkaffee” — either during the Second World War or subsequently in the former GDR — occasionally used the bad stuff over real coffee much longer than was necessary. Wartime food is a symbol of survival. I am constantly surprised by how many non-Koreans have never seen Spam, so I’ll describe it. It’s like gefilte fish but made from compressed processed ham. As with gefilte fish, Spam is surrounded by a clear gelatinous amniotic fluid. After you open the tin (now it’s regular pull-tab, but when I was growing up, you needed to twirl open the top with a key), you hit the bottom until the Spam block pops out, though most of the time you need to go around the edge with a knife. When it exits the can’s vacuum seal, it makes a slurpy noise, like when you push cranberry jelly out of a tin. Whenever we moved house — which was pretty often — the first meal in our new home, usually eaten on moving boxes instead of tables — was Spam and instant ramen. Spam is already fully cooked, but in my house we usually fried it anyway, cut into narrow slabs. When my family lived in the United States, my parents were really into long road trips to national parks, which I enjoyed about as much as those kids did in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation. And my parents must have been victims of Manchurian Candidate levels of Midwestern American suburban brainwashing, because they really did sing folk songs in harmony while driving — “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” comes to mind. At the end of a long day in the car, we’d stay in these cheap hotels, where my mother would violate the hotel fire code — and every basic tenet of the social contract — by secretly making rice and frying up Spam right on the floor of the hotel room. She’d use a rice cooker and hot plate THAT SHE HAD BROUGHT FROM HOME. On one such occasion, I spilled my Spam and rice all over the hotel carpet, leading her to yell at me, “This hotel will never let Oriental [sic] people stay here again!” To which I replied, “Erm … why should they, really?” So Spam, in other words, evokes all kinds of memories: changing house, boring road trips, and my cheap-ass family. There is no substitute for Spam. When I lived in France, where Spam was unavailable, I was forced to resort to a depressing Danish knock-off. A few years ago, I went with some Korean-American friends to a trendy Korean restaurant in New York (not David Chang’s, a different one). We ordered the aforementioned budae jjigae, the army stew, so named because it was invented using random U.S. Army-provided rations, like Spam, hot dogs, and waxy government-manufactured cheese. This restaurant’s upscale version, however, was made with homemade ramen noodles, high-quality mozzarella, and what looked like Spam but was too fancy. “I’m really not into this artisanal Spam,” my friend said, grimacing and poking at it with a chopstick. I agreed. It felt wrong to dress up a poor man’s dish, like making puttanesca sauce with caviar or cottage pie with chopped truffles. Which — what am I saying? — probably does exist somewhere. I’m not a purist about food, but I do object when I feel that people are just missing the ontological essence of a dish. I needed the real thing. The healthy versions are not nearly salty or greasy enough, and the salt and grease are precisely why Spam goes so well with rice. By far the most common form in which I’ve eaten Spam is in the form of kimbap. Imagine maki rolls — the kind of sushi that is rolled into logs and cut into small cylinders — but instead of fish, they contain vegetables, a thin omelet cut into strips, and, in our house, Spam. Kimbap wasn’t really dinner food. I associate it primarily with picnics. In Korean school, kimbap was, without exception, the food that everyone’s mom packed for their kids’ school-picnic lunches. As a sullen teen, I hated those picnics with a passion you can only imagine. They were hokey affairs with long hikes and teachers screaming at you about what a nice fucking day we were having. Invariably, some tool would bring a guitar, and everyone would be forced to sing. To this day, I hate acoustic guitar. But then there was my Spam kimbap. It was a reminder that this hell passing for a picnic was only temporary, and that somewhere out there was a mother with whom I battled daily but who had nonetheless gotten up at dawn to make me Spam kimbap. My mother, in addition to the frugality, had a psychological hang-up about food. She hated cooking and resented that it was considered the domain of women. Cooking symbolized her wasted education and the career sacrifices she had made for her family. Perhaps because of her hostility toward cooking, I hated food until age twelve or so. I remember wishing it were possible to take a pill instead of having to eat dinner. Consequently, I looked like a famine victim. When I hit puberty, though, my metabolism kicked in, and I developed a normal teenage appetite. This concerned my mother. When I was five-foot-six (167 centimeters) and my weight crept past the 115-pound mark (52 kilograms), she put me on a kale-juice diet. And trust me, kale was not easy to find in those days. Yay, body dysmorphia. And yet, paradoxically, she also served me greasy, salty, insanely caloric Spam, always fried. Why, you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? Fried foods are always evocative of love. The smell of frying itself is mouth-watering — be it Spam, tempura, croquettes, or chicken drumsticks. Even people who don’t like you can make a sandwich. I mean, what is the office deli platter if not hard evidence of that? But no one who hates you will fry you some Spam.I remember from those school picnics that some of the other kids’ mothers didn’t use Spam in their kimbap, instead using surimi, that pink fake-crab thing. Surimi — now, that’s bad parenting. Life is too short to have more than one dubious processed-meat product in your kitchen: Let Spam be it.”
Zero Juan on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 6:19 am
JuanP on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 6:15 am
“I Love Spam Madly, Deeply, Unironically”
https://tinyurl.com/y5lxedqa Lenny
“I am skilled at classical French cooking. I have a Higher Certificate from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. I also, however, love Spam. (In case you were wondering, Spam pairs well with Gewürztraminer.) I kept kosher for a few years (long story). When I broke away from the dietary laws — because I was quitting smoking and could not maintain so many forms of self-abnegation at once — the food item I cheated with was Spam. It symbolizes both the part of me that is Korean and the part of me that is American — two identities that are difficult to unite. More important, I associate Spam with relaxation, being present, and not worrying about what you can’t control. Why? Because Spam evokes beaches, pineapples, funny tropical shirts: i.e., Hawaii. It’s the one place in the world where I can be un-stressed-out, and it happens to be the only U.S. state that loves Spam as much as I do. Mainland Americans have given me no end of grief for this. First rule of Spam Club: You never talk about Spam Club. Otherwise, you risk social death. Case in point: When I was at university, my friend Mike told me that his freshman-year roommate threw out Mike’s Spam and gave him $5 to cover the cost. But Mike and I both had a really good excuse for this embarrassing proclivity: We’re of Korean extraction, and Korea is the world’s largest consumer of Spam outside the United States. How did Korea become hooked on the laughingstock of all supermarket products? The meat that was so ridiculous that Monty Python created not only a sketch around it but an entire Broadway musical? A bit of history: Spam has been manufactured by the Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods Corporation since 1937. It became widespread in Korea during and after the Korean War (1950 to 1953), when the U.S. government shipped loads of Spam to Korea, at a time when fresh meat was hard to come by. Korea was by no means the only beneficiary of this largesse; during and after WWII, the U.K. also turned to Spam to supplement monthly meat rations. In fact, articles on Spam’s role in wartime Britain bear titles such as “Spam: Did It Save the Nation?” (Here are some nostalgic British WWII-era Spam recipes.) Unlike the U.K., however, where they poke fun at Spam, Korean Spam consumption was unironic. While modern-day Brits no longer regularly eat Spam, it has remained part of the diet in Korea. In September 2017, Korean sales of Spam reached 1 billion tins. And Spam’s Korean co-distributor, Cheil Jedang, announced in January that its top-selling New Year gift box was Spam. In my day, the tins were usually packed in velvet-lined boxes and wrapped in white satin ribbon. Spam is an important part of Korean home cooking. It’s the sine qua non ingredient of kimchi jjigae (stewed kimchi) and budae jjigae — literally “army stew.” My mother, a biochemist with a particular fear of foodborne illnesses, was virulently anti-pork, making it sound like a veritable menagerie of revolting organisms — trichinosis, tapeworm, hepatitis, all reproducing at exponential rates. Yet we always had Spam in our pantry. Apparently Koreans are now accepting their love of the lowbrow: David Chang, the Michelin-starred Korean-American chef, is extolling Spam. Spam’s enduring popularity in Korea surprises me, because I had assumed Koreans were now prosperous enough to abandon any food item that you need a key to open. This is a common phenomenon, though — hardship habits die hard. Some Germans raised on the substitute coffee product “Ersatzkaffee” — either during the Second World War or subsequently in the former GDR — occasionally used the bad stuff over real coffee much longer than was necessary. Wartime food is a symbol of survival. I am constantly surprised by how many non-Koreans have never seen Spam, so I’ll describe it. It’s like gefilte fish but made from compressed processed ham. As with gefilte fish, Spam is surrounded by a clear gelatinous amniotic fluid. After you open the tin (now it’s regular pull-tab, but when I was growing up, you needed to twirl open the top with a key), you hit the bottom until the Spam block pops out, though most of the time you need to go around the edge with a knife. When it exits the can’s vacuum seal, it makes a slurpy noise, like when you push cranberry jelly out of a tin. Whenever we moved house — which was pretty often — the first meal in our new home, usually eaten on moving boxes instead of tables — was Spam and instant ramen. Spam is already fully cooked, but in my house we usually fried it anyway, cut into narrow slabs. When my family lived in the United States, my parents were really into long road trips to national parks, which I enjoyed about as much as those kids did in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation. And my parents must have been victims of Manchurian Candidate levels of Midwestern American suburban brainwashing, because they really did sing folk songs in harmony while driving — “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” comes to mind. At the end of a long day in the car, we’d stay in these cheap hotels, where my mother would violate the hotel fire code — and every basic tenet of the social contract — by secretly making rice and frying up Spam right on the floor of the hotel room. She’d use a rice cooker and hot plate THAT SHE HAD BROUGHT FROM HOME. On one such occasion, I spilled my Spam and rice all over the hotel carpet, leading her to yell at me, “This hotel will never let Oriental [sic] people stay here again!” To which I replied, “Erm … why should they, really?” So Spam, in other words, evokes all kinds of memories: changing house, boring road trips, and my cheap-ass family. There is no substitute for Spam. When I lived in France, where Spam was unavailable, I was forced to resort to a depressing Danish knock-off. A few years ago, I went with some Korean-American friends to a trendy Korean restaurant in New York (not David Chang’s, a different one). We ordered the aforementioned budae jjigae, the army stew, so named because it was invented using random U.S. Army-provided rations, like Spam, hot dogs, and waxy government-manufactured cheese. This restaurant’s upscale version, however, was made with homemade ramen noodles, high-quality mozzarella, and what looked like Spam but was too fancy. “I’m really not into this artisanal Spam,” my friend said, grimacing and poking at it with a chopstick. I agreed. It felt wrong to dress up a poor man’s dish, like making puttanesca sauce with caviar or cottage pie with chopped truffles. Which — what am I saying? — probably does exist somewhere. I’m not a purist about food, but I do object when I feel that people are just missing the ontological essence of a dish. I needed the real thing. The healthy versions are not nearly salty or greasy enough, and the salt and grease are precisely why Spam goes so well with rice. By far the most common form in which I’ve eaten Spam is in the form of kimbap. Imagine maki rolls — the kind of sushi that is rolled into logs and cut into small cylinders — but instead of fish, they contain vegetables, a thin omelet cut into strips, and, in our house, Spam. Kimbap wasn’t really dinner food. I associate it primarily with picnics. In Korean school, kimbap was, without exception, the food that everyone’s mom packed for their kids’ school-picnic lunches. As a sullen teen, I hated those picnics with a passion you can only imagine. They were hokey affairs with long hikes and teachers screaming at you about what a nice fucking day we were having. Invariably, some tool would bring a guitar, and everyone would be forced to sing. To this day, I hate acoustic guitar. But then there was my Spam kimbap. It was a reminder that this hell passing for a picnic was only temporary, and that somewhere out there was a mother with whom I battled daily but who had nonetheless gotten up at dawn to make me Spam kimbap. My mother, in addition to the frugality, had a psychological hang-up about food. She hated cooking and resented that it was considered the domain of women. Cooking symbolized her wasted education and the career sacrifices she had made for her family. Perhaps because of her hostility toward cooking, I hated food until age twelve or so. I remember wishing it were possible to take a pill instead of having to eat dinner. Consequently, I looked like a famine victim. When I hit puberty, though, my metabolism kicked in, and I developed a normal teenage appetite. This concerned my mother. When I was five-foot-six (167 centimeters) and my weight crept past the 115-pound mark (52 kilograms), she put me on a kale-juice diet. And trust me, kale was not easy to find in those days. Yay, body dysmorphia. And yet, paradoxically, she also served me greasy, salty, insanely caloric Spam, always fried. Why, you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? Fried foods are always evocative of love. The smell of frying itself is mouth-watering — be it Spam, tempura, croquettes, or chicken drumsticks. Even people who don’t like you can make a sandwich. I mean, what is the office deli platter if not hard evidence of that? But no one who hates you will fry you some Spam.I remember from those school picnics that some of the other kids’ mothers didn’t use Spam in their kimbap, instead using surimi, that pink fake-crab thing. Surimi — now, that’s bad parenting. Life is too short to have more than one dubious processed-meat product in your kitchen: Let Spam be it.”
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 7:15 am
Capacity Dutch electricity grid to be doubled in 10 years time, to accommodate the energy transition and deal with all that fluctuating renewable electricity, everybody and his mum try to push into the grid:
https://www.wattisduurzaam.nl/17336/energie-beleid/groei-zonnestroom-iets-minder-explosief-wegens-lokale-knelpunten/
SocialRevolutionComing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 7:39 am
Europe is a shit hole and a brown multiculturalism brown toilet. Whites people of quality have abandoned Western civilization and are isolating themselves in the woods and the country side. Real Whites don’t care about the future of Western civilization and wants to see it destroy.
What will be left in main cities are losers globalists/leftists. Leftists are too stupid and lazy to build anything or fix anything.
Only stupid globalists/leftists believe in renewable energy.
We are witnessing the destruction of Western civilization. Quality Whites people are aborning it and transferring to leftist and Blacks people.
SocialRevolutionComing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 7:48 am
SocialRevolutionComing
Europe is a shit hole and a brown multiculturalism brown toilet. Whites people of quality have abandoned Western civilization and are isolating themselves in the woods and the coun
supertard supertard sock SRC,
I agree with you.
Tard research shows when I was younger, i broke societal rules without much penalty.
this is because society is in a balance and it takes enormous effort to reign in my bad behavior.
Eurotardland can’t reign in muzie behavior on a massive scale.
tard research always try to undertand the why and hopefully project findings to society at large.
and what is the picture at large? whitey supertard douglas murray said and published a book “death of europe” and this whitey supertard love muzzies less.
i submit my thoughts for your consideration
SocialRevolutionComing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 8:38 am
dear supertard supertard sock SRC,
another thing, by breaking societal rules, i programmed the masses to tolerate my behavior and create more people who break societal norms.
society responds with raising more compliant children but compliance means they won’t stop kids like me.
this is tard research, i submit result for your consideration
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 8:40 am
“Europe is a shit hole and a brown multiculturalism brown toilet.”
Have you ever been more than three miles out of Montreal-East?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada
Canada currently at 68% white and declining rapidly. No country in Europe is as bad as yours. Even the Netherlands is almost 90% white. And the reason why it is not 100% is because of f*cking Anglos like your ancestors, who parked us unwittingly in the US empire, run by George Soros types.
“Whites people of quality have abandoned Western civilization and are isolating themselves in the woods and the country side.”
You mean empire dave? That’s quite a relief! White civilization saved! LOL
“Real Whites don’t care about the future of Western civilization and wants to see it destroy.”
You probably mean the impending destruction of Anglosphere during CW2/WW3? North-America balkanized, Quebec back to France, Down-Under parked in the Chinese empire, Scotland and Ulster going Europe-direct and London a semi-independent Caliphate, without statues (all racists).
“Quality Whites people are aborning it and transferring to leftist and Blacks people.”
Quality whites are identified for starters by that they can spell their own language correctly. There is only one real loser around here and that is you. Good luck building a homestead, North of the Arctic Circle.
Abraham van Helsing on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 8:53 am
White Canadian minority as of 2036:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-politics-of-2036-when-canada-is-as-brown-as-it-is-white/article33814437/
Zero Juan on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 8:59 am
Zero juan as in zero brain:
juanPee asshole socks:
SocialRevolutionComing said dear supertard supertard sock SRC, another thing,…
SocialRevolutionComing said Today’s top stories: BP has said it plans to…
SocialRevolutionComing said SocialRevolutionComing Europe is a shit hole and a…
SocialRevolutionComing said Europe is a shit hole and a brown multiculturalism…
Dustbuster said Right you are Truthbuster. The only one suffering…
Truthbuster said We dont have multiple-personalities do we davy? Th…
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REAL Green said So true Davy-Juan. So true.
Davy said JuanP pays taxes Dustbuster, but he doesn’t receiv…
Davy on Mon, 8th Jun 2020 9:02 am
“Whites people of quality have abandoned Western civilization and are isolating themselves in the woods and the country side.”
“You mean empire dave? That’s quite a relief! White civilization saved! LOL”
I have respect for POC. What I don’t have respect for is blind lying extremist liberals playing the race game or extremist Natzi’s like you cloggo that whine race issues because you are getting your ass kicked yet again. grow some balls, pussy.