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Page added on May 13, 2016
Resource Doom Postponed Indefinitely
“Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever” was the title of an urgent report written by the legendary asset manager Jeremy Grantham in 2011. Grantham proclaimed the advent of a resource scarcity “paradigm shift” that was “perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.” As evidence, he noted that “the prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70%.” Since then, he continued, “this entire decline was erased” by the price surge, which he took as a signal that the world was using up its natural resources at an alarming rate. The result, he declared, would be a permanent shift where the prices of raw materials rise and shortages become common.
Grantham also pointed to a slowdown in crop productivity, suggesting that it would be impossible to feed the world’s burgeoning population. “How we deal with this unsustainable surge in demand and not just ‘peak oil,’ but ‘peak everything,’ is going to be the greatest challenge facing our species,” he wrote.
This week, Grantham took almost all of that back. Grantham, like a whole raft of professional doomsters, was declaring Peak Everything just as the latest economic super-cycle was cresting; many commodities’ prices peaked the very year of his report and have been drifting downward ever since.
Economic forecasting often seems little better than reading tea leaves or parsing the convolutions of a sheep’s liver. Nevertheless, some economists argue that stepping back from the crises and volatilities of the moment and taking a longer view can shed light on how the economic future will likely evolve. Specifically, they have identified what they call economic super-cycles, which trace the steady downward trend of commodity prices as they have gone through a series of decades-long peaks and valleys. A 2012 study by economists associated with the Australian National University analyzed price trends from 1650 to 2010 and concluded that “relative commodity prices present a significant and downward global trend over almost the entire capitalist age.”
In their 2012 study “Super-Cycles of Commodity Prices Since the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” economists Bilge Erten and José Antonio Ocampo—from Northeastern University and Columbia University, respectively—confirm that the commodity price increases in the first decade of this century were the result of a super-cycle upswing. Parsing real price data for nonfuel commodities such as food and metals from 1865 to 2009, they find evidence of four past super-cycles ranging in length from 30 to 40 years. The cycles they identify ran from 1894 to 1932, peaking in 1917; from 1932 to 1971, peaking in 1951; from 1971 to 1999, peaking in 1973; and the post-1999 episode, which is ongoing. The increases in commodity prices during these cycles are driven largely by increases in demand arising from strong periods of industrialization and urbanization, such as those experienced by Great Britain, Germany, and the United States in the 19th century, by Japan in the 20th century, and by China and other emerging economies at the beginning of the 21st century.
Erten and Ocampo find that “for non-oil commodities, the mean of each super-cycle has a tendency to be lower than that of the previous cycle.” In other words, the valleys after each super-cycle peak is lower than the preceding ones—commodities become cheaper over time. In their 2012 study, they noted that metal prices were still high, but observed that “the contraction phase of this cycle has not even begun yet, which can lower the mean of the whole cycle in the upcoming years.” Four years later, metal prices are nearly back to their pre-boom values. If previous commodity trends they identify are right, th
IMF Metals Indexen metal prices will continue to fall and eventually will reach a new nadir lower than their previous trough.
The Dallas Federal Reserve economist Martin Stuermer tries to account for trends in commodities by looking at how prices have evolved for four minerals—copper, lead, tin, and zinc— since 1840. In a 2014 working paper, “150 Years of Boom and Bust: What Drives Mineral Commodity Prices?,” he finds that commodity price increases are driven by demand shocks rather than by supply shocks. These “persistent price increases caused by commodity demand shifts trigger technological advances and new discoveries,” which then lower commodity prices. A demand shock’s increasing prices typically continue for 15 years or so, and the resulting supply shocks that lower prices last between five and 10 years. “Price surges caused by rapid industrialization are a recurrent phenomenon throughout history,” concludes Stuermer. “Mineral commodity prices return to their declining or stable trends in the long run.”
Back to Grantham. Practically ever since he issued his dire forecasts in 2011, the trend in commodity prices has been steadily downward. The Bloomberg Commodity Index (see below) has dropped 50 percent since 2011, back essentially to where it was in 1998, when it was first formulated. The index tracks commodities, including petroleum, natural gas, corn, soybeans, copper, aluminum, coffee, and live cattle. Writing this week in GMO Quarterly Letter, Grantham presented “an admission of a past mistake on resources.”
Bloomberg
First, he admits to buying into the notion of “peak oil” as petroleum prices began their steep ascendant 10 years ago. He then explains, “If we were running out of low-cost oil, I asked myself in 2011, why should we not run out of other finite resources? That everything finite runs out is known by everyone except madmen and economists (Kenneth Boulding).”
Grantham was far from alone in prophesying peak oil. For example, the Princeton geologist Kenneth Deffeyes predicted that global oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. As it happens, global oil production averaged 85 million barrels per day in 2005; the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that it was nearly 96 million barrels per day in 2015.
Astute readers will have noticed that all of the super-cycle researchers cited above make an exception for crude. For example, Erten and Ocampo find that while oil prices do indeed trace a similar boom and bust price cycle like other commodities, the average has been drifting upward since 1962. On the other hand, researchers at the Colorado School of Mines do detect super-cycles for oil after World War II: one running through 1966 to 1996, and the current one, which has just peaked. They note that the timing of the two recent crude oil super-cycles correlates with the super-cycles in metals and matches the timing of the industrialization and urbanization phases of economic development in the U.S., then Europe, and finally Asia.
The month Grantham issued his 2011 Peak Everything report saw oil prices reach $112 per barrel for refiners, just down a bit from their pre–financial crisis peak of $129 per barrel in July 2008. According to the most recent EIA figures, oil averaged $33 per barrel in March, up to $46 per barrel this week.
fuw.chInterestingly, Grantham predicts in his new Quarterly Letter that oil prices will rise toward $100 per barrel by the end of this decade. But all bets are off after that, since demand for crude could falter as new technologies enable such things as transport systems based on shared electrified self-driving vehicles.
What about Grantham’s food fears? Here he was worried that agricultural productivity would not be able to keep up with the world’s growing population. He was particularly alarmed about allegedly impending shortages of two fertilizers, phosphorous and potash. “These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It’s a scary set of statements,” he warned in a 2012 column for Nature. “What happens when these fertilizers run out is a question I can’t get satisfactorily answered and, believe me, I have tried.”
Grantham could not have looked very hard for satisfactory answers to worries about peak phosphorus and potash. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that current reserves of phosphate rock will last 300 years at current rates of production. The estimated total resources of phosphate rock would last over 1,300 years. Similarly, known supplies of potash would last 95 years at current rates of usage. Total world estimates of potash resources would last 7,000 years.
Grantham notes with alarm that agricultural productivity gains have slowed. Partially this is because crop breeders, agricultural scientists, and farmers rapidly ramped up yields in response to the steep food price increases of the 1970s; once food production caught up to market demand, it slowed down. In any case, agricultural productivity increases at about 1.7 percent per year; world population is increasing at 1.2 percent annually, and that rate is expected to fall. Taking into account higher future demand for meat and milk as the world grows richer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects a “75-percent increase in total production and consumption of major field crops between 2005 and 2050. This increase is larger than the 43-percent increase in global population projected for the same period.” In the meantime, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s annual deflated food price index peaked in 2011 and has dropped back to where it was in 1997.
Grantham concludes, “I do not believe that the current distress in commodities is caused by the workings of some super cycle, some decadal cosmic force, as some observers are tempted to say.” Perhaps he’s right. But so far, long-term bets against human ingenuity have proved to be pretty bad investment advice.
54 Comments on "Resource Doom Postponed Indefinitely"
Plantagenet on Fri, 13th May 2016 6:41 pm
Peak oil and an oil glut are two different things
Cheers
onlooker on Fri, 13th May 2016 6:55 pm
Their we go again appealing to human ingenuity in the meantime human stupidity, greed, aggressiveness, selfishness continue and are features of ourselves that are responsible for us making the world the way it is. Oh and the author forgot we live among and within Nature and are subject to its immutable laws and no amount of ingenuity can circumvent the ironclad rules of living on a finite planet with these laws as we shall soon find out.
makati1 on Fri, 13th May 2016 6:59 pm
Ability to buy is the limiting factor. Otherwise 3rd world people would all be obese and drive SUVs. I see that ability going only one way. Down.
I think his ‘reasoning’ is false. “Human ingenuity” was fed by cheap, plentiful energy. Those days are history.
Boat on Fri, 13th May 2016 8:00 pm
onlooker,
“Their we go again appealing to human ingenuity in the meantime human stupidity, greed, aggressiveness, selfishness continue and are features of ourselves that are responsible for us making the world the way it is”.
Repeat after me, sex causes over population.
Davy on Fri, 13th May 2016 8:17 pm
Another academic getting lost in numbers and notions. There comes a point where a system can no longer maintain its stasis. We have been forced the health of our system with population, excessive complexity, and ecological destruction. If you cannot acknowledge limits along with diminishing returns in this trap you will continually return to the same thinking. It becomes circular and involves denial. A system that is at or approaching a threshold will not behave the same as one that is in a stable state. Turbulence has no mathematical formula hence randomness and the irrational further complicating traditional thinking. We are approaching multiple thresholds at multiple levels of abstraction from physical infrastructure to human confidence. These thresholds are not exclusive. What is more worrying these thresholds are combining negatively and are reinforcing further destructive change.
Traditional economics of supply, demand and price fails to work properly as our global system approaches a threshold of bifurcation. This bifurcation potential is influenced by many variables but it is just a few that matter. The velocity of our economy with its minimum operating levels and oil are really what matters short term and they are both forcing the other in a cycle of demand and supply destruction. Do not look at excess supply, prices, and or consumption. This is to miss the point of the relationship of the health of oil and the economy influencing the other. Both supply and demand potential is being destroyed. Economic cannibalization is occurring. The depletion of oil that drives economic activity is damaging consumption. Producers and consumers are not in an envelope of productivity. We are in an envelope of destructive decay at a time when more than ever we need high quality energy and a healthy strong economy to solve multiple problems. Low prices now are not driving economic health instead we are seeing widespread global economic decay and deflationary disturbances. Producers are going bankrupt and not investing. The economy itself is stagnating in a deflationary phase of excessive debt. This is in multiple sectors but oil is the most important because it is the foundation for all the others
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 8:50 pm
Don’t matter if resource Doom is postponed, AGW Doom is about to kick the cancer monkeys in the fucking face.
Polar Heatwave Digs in as Arctic Sea Ice Crashes — Blue Ocean Event Looking More and More Likely
“We’ve never seen May heat like what’s being predicted in the Arctic over the next seven days. A shot of warm airs blowing northward over Siberia that are expected to generate a warm front that takes in nearly the entire Arctic Ocean. A weather pattern that, if it emerges, will completely compromise the central region of polar cold that has traditionally driven Northern Hemisphere weather patterns.”
“For the Arctic, it appeared that June had arrived a month early.”
“For Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Mid Summer is Happening in May
Pretty much all the major monitors now show Arctic sea ice plummeting deep into record low ranges. The JAXA extent measure yesterday rocketed past the 11.5 million square kilometer mark with barely a blink following multiple days of 100,000 square kilometer losses. DMI looks like the bottom dropped out of its own extent and volume measures. And NSIDC shows Arctic sea ice extent levels widening the gap from previous record lows for this time of year.”
“Overall, not only is the sea ice less extensive and thinner than it has ever been for this time of year, but the rates of loss it is now experiencing are more similar to those that would typically be seen during June and July — not May.”
“An event many scientists thought wouldn’t be possible until the 2070s or 2080s as little as ten years ago. A Blue Ocean Event that is now a very real risk for 2016.”
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/13/polar-heatwave-digs-in-as-arctic-sea-ice-crashes-blue-ocean-event-looking-more-and-more-likely/
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 9:43 pm
Will taxpayers foot the cleanup bill for bankrupt coal companies?
“Fifty U.S. coal companies have filed for bankruptcy since 2012. Competition and more stringent environmental regulations played a role in this decline. But, just before coal prices collapsed, speculating top producers borrowed billions to finance unwise acquisitions. Now, unable to pay loan interest and principal, they have sought bankruptcy protection to restructure US$30 billion in debt. The bankrupt companies include Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Patriot Coal and Jim Walter Resources.
Last month Peabody Energy Corp., the world’s biggest private-sector coal producer, followed suit. Peabody seeks to restructure $8.4 billion in debt. Its capitalization has fallen from $20 billion in 2011 to $38 million at the time of bankruptcy.
Amid this turmoil, many observers fear that bankrupt coal companies will be able to shift their huge liabilities for reclamation, or restoring land that has been mined, to taxpayers.”
https://theconversation.com/will-taxpayers-foot-the-cleanup-bill-for-bankrupt-coal-companies-56415
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 9:48 pm
And yet another way Merica’s frackers have fucked the little guy.
Insurers shun risk as oil-linked quakes soar in Oklahoma
“Even as they insured more and more properties against earthquakes in the past two years, six insurers hiked premiums by as much as 260 percent and three increased deductibles. Three companies stopped writing new earthquake insurance altogether, state regulatory filings obtained by Reuters show. Several insurers took more than one of those steps. ”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oklahoma-earthquakes-idUSKCN0Y30DC
makati1 on Fri, 13th May 2016 9:49 pm
Ap, corporate bankruptcies, retirement fund failures, climate change disasters, etc., are all going to take down the American financial system in the next few years. Taxpayers are not going to be able to fund all of that collapse. The tax base is shrinking. Only the printing presses are still working and I hear grinding noises and smell smoke coming off of them. You and I are prepared for that coming time. Many here are not.
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:02 pm
mak, most of my prep is psychological- acceptance, very low expectation and mega doses of sarcasm and absurdity.
Boat on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:11 pm
ape,
One or two per 500 links you post are excellent. Earthquakes from fracking will become class action law suits soon. Claw back those bloated insurance rates.
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:22 pm
Boat, I get props for my links everyday and I’m guessing there are an even greater number who appreciate them (if not me) that never say so. Do you have 1 or 2 examples out of the 498 you disapprove of that you wish to debate? Throw the links up, We’ll debate and then have a vote.
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:30 pm
Boat, here’s some more trending reality.
Many of Today’s Factory Workers Rely on Public Assistance
Nostalgia for manufacturing jobs is obscuring the fact that their 21st-century incarnation doesn’t tend to pay very well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/manufacturing-public-assistance/482592/
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:32 pm
Workers on Public Assistance?
Sounds like socialism to me.
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:34 pm
Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral
http://haveland.com/share/arctic-death-spiral.png
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 10:41 pm
Our cancer strikes again.
Gospeedracer would appreciate this,
9,000 flee from massive tire fire, toxic fumes 18 Photos
http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2016/05/9000-flee-from-massive-tire-fire-toxic-fumes/#1
Apneaman on Fri, 13th May 2016 11:59 pm
Oceans have been a great resource for the humans. Not for much longer due to the humans.
TV: Scientists warning of mass die-off along California coast — Official: Seafloor littered with dead fish, washing up “as far as I could see” — Toxin has spread all up and down West Coast — Experts: “Very, very unusual… Really extraordinary” (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/tv-scientists-warning-mass-die-ocean-california-official-seafloor-littered-dead-fish-washing-could-reports-dead-seabirds-already-coming-toxin-spread-all-down-west-coast-experts-worried-abo
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:25 am
The vicious cycle that makes people afraid to talk about climate change
“If you want to understand why it is that on a planet wracked by climate change, people still don’t talk much about climate change, then this may be the key: They’re people.
Or, more specifically, they’re evolved social mammals who are acutely attuned to how they are perceived by the other evolved social mammals around them — and reasonably so, because those perceptions greatly influence their own lives.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/12/the-vicious-cycle-that-makes-people-afraid-to-talk-about-climate-change/
I always talk about climate change. Does that mean I’m not an evolved social mammal?
I’ll take that as a compliment.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:58 am
mak, most of my prep is psychological- acceptance, very low expectation and mega doses of sarcasm and absurdity.—-I like that AP.
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 4:32 am
onlooker, I forgot ranting and yelling at retards too.
No plan is perfect eh?
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 5:47 am
Nestlé Just Gained Control Over This Town’s Water for the Next 45 Years
“Tea Party Republican Governor Paul LePage of Maine helped Nestlé secure a contract that gives Poland Springs, a Nestlé subsidiary, permission to take the small town of Fryeburg’s groundwater for the next 25 years for their own profit. The deal could stretch to 45 years due to built-in extensions.
Today that deal was upheld by Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, essentially cutting off activists’ last attempts to scuttle the deal.
There has never been a contract that ties up local water resources for such a long period of time in American history. Water activists worry that this could set a precedent for future corporate attempts to take water from rural towns for extended periods of time.”
http://usuncut.com/news/nestle-water-deal-fryeburg-maine/
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 5:50 am
Gonna be slim pickings on those forestry resources – good for wild mushroom and berry pickers.
Risk Of Alaskan Wildfires To Quadruple
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/10/alaskan-wildfires/
Kenz300 on Sat, 14th May 2016 9:58 am
Climate Change is real………fossil fuels are the cause…
Britain Gets No Power From Coal for First Time Ever, UK EV Drivers Soon to Sell Electricity Back to Grid
http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/11/britain-no-coal/
Kenz300 on Sat, 14th May 2016 10:00 am
Too many people demand too many resources……yet the worlds population grows by 80 million every year…..
How many charities are dealing with the same problems they were dealing with 10 or 20 years ago with no end in sight. Every problem is made worse by the worlds growing population. IF you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
joe on Sat, 14th May 2016 10:15 am
I love when both sides doomers and boomers get hot under the collar fighting about whether or not the future will be bright.
The fact is that more is going than can be determined by simple supply or demand or price stats. The trend is simple. The Developed Economies in which I now include China and much of the Brics are stagnating because the Western World Economies have become disfunctional. Stock markets are following a hold pattern, while TARP and FED funds boosted the NYSE DOW INDEX to over 15000, big whoop. The measure of some western nations of gdp include legal prostitution and gambling. Thats the sign of the nation on the way out. Growth has not been as good for workers (by workers i mean people not in recipient of social welfare) as the stats seem. The rich continue to get richer by expanding food supply and carbonisation to less developed areas of the world, thats the big secret guys.
Paris was a fraud, a trick.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 10:33 am
Oh, I think us Doomers know how much of a fraud Paris was and is. In fact what probably makes us more than anything Doomers is the status of the climate and that we know very well that the powers that be along with the masses have NO real intention to do much about the fossil fuel situation. We want the good things this world has to offer via fossil fuels too much. We are not willing to pay the price to give all this up. The price by the way would include forsaking some of the truly overpopulated regions to an even greater extent than we have already but then where would we get all the slave labor. And of course reinventing ourselves as paupers. Not going to happen.
JuanP on Sat, 14th May 2016 11:56 am
Boat “Repeat after me, sex causes over population.”
Maybe if you are stupid, ignorant, or a fool, but not if you are smart and had a Vasectomy like I did. Repeat after me, human arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity cause overpopulation. I have been fucking like a rabbit all my life without contributing to overpopulation at all. My existence is living proof that your statement is wrong. Any man can do it, it just takes five minutes of your time to get snipped.
JuanP on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:02 pm
Joe, Congrats on realizing Paris was a fraud. I could have told you that before it happened. I, for one, don’t get hot arguing with cornucopians, I mostly consider them ignorant fools and ignore them. The world is full of fools and if you waste your time or energy on them, you won’t achieve much in life. I come here for the very smart doomers we have commenting on the forum. I, basically, don’t read the cornies’ comments.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:14 pm
Oh and I may add even if we wanted to we could not do much, climate change feedback loops and tipping points have been activated and passed. Whats more we do not even have a robust infrastructure to allow most of the worlds population to live and yet not in some way contribute to GHG emissions. Even the cooking fires that dot the landscapes of places like India and China are signs of our total overshoot and how GHG one way or the other are escaping into the atmosphere. We boxed ourselves into a corner without a way out. Catch 22 dammed if we do dammed if we do not.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:16 pm
You said it Juan, Cornies might as well live on another planet for all their understanding of the forces now at play and the comprehensive reality of the situation.
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:24 pm
Houston here’s your problem.
In cities, flooding and rainfall extremes to rise as climate changes
Just how global warming is making storms more destructive has been established by researchers
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160509105611.htm
GregT on Sat, 14th May 2016 12:42 pm
“Repeat after me, sex causes over population.”
Strange that. Mankind has been having sex for tens of thousands of years. Overpopulation never became an issue until we started burning fossil fuels, and indulged in all of the technologies that fossil fuels provided for us.
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 1:20 pm
BAHAAA BAHAAA BHAAA two legged sheep to the AGW slaughter.
The smoke filled room experiment, which shows that even if there’s smoke filling a room people will stay for as long as 20 minutes if no one else is reacting to it. Otherwise they’d leave quickly.
Dangerous Conformity – 8 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-SY3EuljH0
Major herding bump by the denial industry.
denial on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:10 pm
Mak I can’t believe you are spending time on the computer with what is going on in the Phillpines! !Rodrigo Duterte is a sheathed and if he gets elected eventually you will become a scapegoat…good luck you are going to need it….!!!!!!
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:20 pm
“Indeed, unlike Donald Trump, to whom he is sometimes likened, he proposes no radical change of economic direction.” I don’t think Mak necessarily has much to fear first because he is not living like a wealthy elite there and also because of this quote from this linked article.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21698648-return-bad-old-ways-under-rodrigo-duterte-dangers-duterte-harry
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:37 pm
Polar Heatwave Digs in as Arctic Sea Ice Crashes — Blue Ocean Event Looking More and More Likely
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/13/polar-heatwave-digs-in-as-arctic-sea-ice-crashes-blue-ocean-event-looking-more-and-more-likely/
denial on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:38 pm
Onlooker it does not matter when things fall into dissent you don’t want to be odd man out in any way….look at history…you could be living a monastic life and you will still become a target if you are a foreigner.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 2:42 pm
From the article, I do not get the impression Duterte is that radical to really turn society upside down.
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 3:13 pm
A taste of the future?
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/334317/16-robots-that-will-definitely-kill-you/4
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/10/11648062/first-click-robots-will-make-it-even-harder-for-poor-countries-to-get
http://www.geek.com/news/middle-class-workers-are-losing-their-jobs-to-robots-1654097/
http://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-robots-2016-5
http://www.techinsider.io/wendys-workers-will-lose-jobs-to-robots-2016-5
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3577192/The-future-fast-food-KFC-opens-restaurant-run-AI-ROBOTS-Shanghai.html
http://fortune.com/2016/04/28/target-testing-robot-inventory-simbe/
denial on Sat, 14th May 2016 5:13 pm
Whoa! You don’t understand this man! Someone who brags about raping women and does not know how many people he has killed?!! He says 20 or so…. Yeah, onlooker he has got it all together!!!
onlooker on Sat, 14th May 2016 5:17 pm
Whoa, if that is the case then I guess your right. Not someone you want leading a country.
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 6:42 pm
Merica 2016
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2ei47CboQ44/VzeeJ8k_IDI/AAAAAAABrfE/7ASnx6AsWFAFA_9W4hGXmAtQ5M5mDQvFQCLcB/s1600/13226756_1145140405538626_8940849762424297502_n.jpg
makati1 on Sat, 14th May 2016 7:26 pm
Denial, look at who YOU have to choose from in November.
Trump (America’s Duterte)
vs.
Clinton (Serial war monger and liar)
I am not worried. The Ps has a functioning Congress, and a powerful elite to keep pull his chain if he trys to do anything rash. Thia is NOT America. Millions riot if they don’t like their government. And things change.
Besides the fact that there are over 10,000 Americans living here as retired citizens. The fools who you read about being kidnapped are like the last one who was stupid enough to sail into Mindanao in his yacht and likely played the rich American part onshore. Pure stupidity. There are few places in the world where that would not attract the negative parts of humanity to relieve him of some of his money. Even America.
No, Denial, I am safer here than I would be on the streets of an America city. And when we move to the jungle, I will be even more safe. Distance is important in a country where most do not own a vehicle. 100 miles is a long way to walk.
BTW: I learned to dress down when I go out. Worn jeans, cheap sneakers, no watches, jewelry, rings, etc. No expensive brand name clothes. No flashy I-toys. My cell phone is 8 years old. In other words, the same way I dressed when I lived in Philly. No big city is safe if you flash bling.
makati1 on Sat, 14th May 2016 8:05 pm
I found this interesting…
“Many feel a collapse of any kind is impossible in the mighty USA but times change and anyone that fails to heed the warnings will pay dearly when events unfold and they find it is to late to get the supplies they need. People buy many types of insurance just in case. They save for retirement just to make sure. Then they ignore economic warnings that make all those things useless. The government helps people when it is convenient for them. The government has also shown its willingness and ability to take from people when it suits them. Any government big enough to give you anything you want is also big enough to take everything you have. And, they will eventually.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-14/economic-collapse-logistics-government
Are YOU prepared?
Apneaman on Sat, 14th May 2016 10:08 pm
Mak, take a look at these pictures. The final one is the near future fate of much life on this planet including the humans. Man cannot escape his biology.
Bleaching is caused by warmer-than-usual water temperatures that stress the coral,…
“The phenomenon is linked to global climate change, says Marshall: “Mass coral bleachings have only been happening for 20 years, and they are irrevocably, totally, absolutely linked to man-induced climate change.”
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/14/477963623/new-photos-show-the-rapid-pace-of-great-barrier-reef-bleaching
makati1 on Sat, 14th May 2016 10:35 pm
Ap, my major in college was biology. My hobby as a youth was raising tropical fish, hamsters and white mice for the local pet shop. I understand what is happening to the ecosystem of our small planet. And it is ALL bad. I keep close watch an all articles describing our slide to extinction.
GregT on Sun, 15th May 2016 12:15 am
“Dangerous Conformity – 8 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-SY3EuljH0”
Explains a lot Apnea, especially why the sheep need ‘leaders’.
Apneaman on Sun, 15th May 2016 12:54 am
Talk by Sonia Shah author of “Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond”
recorded February 29, 2016 at Town Hall Seattle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_zhHHQHmkU
Apneaman on Sun, 15th May 2016 1:43 am
Zika’s coming, and there’s not enough money for another health emergency
“Less than two years after the Ebola epidemic set off a scramble for money to contain that deadly virus, state and local health officials around the country are rushing to prepare for Zika outbreaks this spring and summer.
But after years of declining funds, many are coming up short.
Government investment in public health has been declining for years. So too has the nation’s public health workforce, which is almost 20% smaller than it was in 2008, according to health authorities.”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-zika-money-20160512-snap-story.html
Houston authorities bracing for Zika virus appearance
” So far there’s no evidence mosquitoes in the U.S. are infected with Zika virus, but scientists say it’s almost inevitable. The flooding in Houston this past week means an explosion of potential breeding sites.
At one point, the CBS News crew came across a stack of tires with sitting water inside.
“This is Aedes aegyptiheaven right here,” said infectious diseases expert Dr. Peter Hotez. He said protecting vulnerable neighborhoods is critical for disease prevention.
How is the U.S. preparing to combat the Zika virus at home?
“For Aedes aegypti, they’re so intimately linked to human habitats that they’ve evolved to breed in tires and in plastic containers, and those are what have to be removed.””
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/houston-texas-authorities-bracing-for-zika-virus-arrival/
How Global Warming Is Making Some Diseases Even Scarier
The link between climate and vector-borne infections
” Ben Beard, associate director for climate change at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He’s one of more than 100 researchers who contributed to the report, and his specialty is vector-borne diseases. These illnesses—which include Lyme disease, dengue fever, and Zika virus—are transmitted by other animals, especially insects such as mosquitos and ticks. Beard talks with co-host Indre Viskontas about how global warming is poised to alter their spread and whether the changes we’re already seeing can be attributed to climate change. “These diseases are emerging in the United States,” he says. “There are more and more cases every year.” You can listen to the full interview with Beard below:”
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/climate-change-mosquitos-inquiring-minds
Climate change can be described like some bizzaro world version of that cancer company BASF commercial.
AGW – We don’t make the things that you hate, we just make them worse.
platinumshore on Sun, 15th May 2016 3:09 am
Any chance of showing a graph of netenergy per capita ? Demand (aka speculation) can come and go, but the costs and debt of net energy will break you.