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Page added on September 12, 2016
Retrofuturists and Technocornucopians
“Just outside the back door of the brewery, retrofuturists are fashioning leather and cowhorn beer mugs to use after the collapse.”
At Burning Man #30 the nuevoriche had to watch their wallets. Also their food, water, camping gear and Teslas. Many lamented that once upon a time the Man had always been a safe place to freak freely, to make an annual connection with others of their kind — and ideas come fast when you have the latest designer drugs for that sort of thing. Burning Man also provided a chance for the nobly born and the peons to bounce ideas around, on equal par, while naked and having an orgy inside a neon art installation.
Burning Man attracts Silicon. Occasionally one can spot Paris Hilton in Steampunk chic, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, AirB&B’s Chip Conley, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman; QVC’s Matt Goldberg, or Facebook’s Stan Chudnovsky.
Bloomburg reported in 2015:
The community ethos is loosely governed by “The 10 Principles of Burning Man,” set down in 2004 by co-founder Larry Harvey. These include radical self-reliance (because there’s no water for miles), radical self-expression (get your freak on, people will love you for it), and a “gift economy” (everyone ought to bring something to the party).
***Historically … Burning Man was “a great leveler”—nobody in Black Rock City cared who you were. The prevalence of costumes allowed the rich and famous to mingle with the masses.
***
In a lengthy essay on the organization’s website in December, Harvey, the festival’s co-founder, acknowledged that in recent years there had been a rise in the number of ostentatious camps that “swaddled their members in a kind of cocoon that bears a strong resemblance to a gated community.” Such camps may be distasteful, he went on, but pose little threat to the overall Burning Man experience and mission. “The curdling gaze of celebrities or the intimidating presence of the wealthy cannot possibly inhibit the remaining 99 percent of our citizens from participating,” he wrote.
This year the 99-percent felt especially uninhibited. Ninja Black Rock purists that the San Francisco Chronicle called “a group of anti-rich” pulled and cut electric lines at a billionaire camp, stole people’s personal belongings, glued trailer doors shut, and flooded the camp with 200 gallons of its own precious water. Speaking for the raiders, Partickal Ted posted:
“Your spirit of exclusivity and decadence is exactly why the world, outside of your luxury camp is so f*cked today. Luxury seekers are twats. Not cosmic, not cool, and certainly NOT what any festival is about!”
We find that curiously disingenuous coming from someone defending an annual art scene that is the antithesis of cool, consuming exojoules of energy to transport 5000 people to a remote desert, erect an elaborate, ornate city in a place with no water, and then burn it down while dancing around the fire.
At the same time we have to say many technobillionaires richly deserve to be trashed.
Consider for a moment the claims of Singularity University and Human Longevity Inc. founder Peter Diamanis that by the time solar capacity triples to 600GW (by his estimate around 2020 or 2021), we could see global unsubsidized solar prices that are roughly half the cost of coal and natural gas. By roughly 2030, Diamandis says, electric cars with a 200+ mile range are going to be cheaper than the cheapest car sold in the U.S. in 2015.
Diamandis gushes:
This raw energy combined with the economic feasibility of solar, advancements in energy storage, and the resurgence of the electric car will allow abundant cheap energy for everyone on the planet. This is an incredibly exciting time for the energy industry, and an incredibly exciting time to be alive.
Here is Diamandis’ chart:
There is just one caveat but its not one heard in the technocornucopian camp. It is coming from the retrofuturists, the ones wearing those steampunk goggles and carrying a welding torch. They point to the fault lines crisscrossing any chart projecting more than 5 years into the future, and widening by the year.
The black swans will be well known to regular readers of this blog: the population bomb, peak everything, a globalized Ponzinomic economy, a tinderbox of CIA blowback scenarios, and President Trump.
Let’s assume the economic house of cards actually manages to maintain its exponential ascent towards a singularity of crises another 10 years. Diamandis’s chart looks like this:
One of our favorite whipping boys is Stewart Brand’s go-to enabler, Kevin Kelly. Kelly’s new book is titled The Inevitable.
All the necessary resources that you wanted to make something have never been easier to get to than right now. So from the view of the past, this is the best time ever. Artificial intelligence will become a commodity like electricity, which will be delivered to you over the grid called The Cloud. You can buy as much of it as you want and most of its power will be invisible to you as well.
The hiccup in this brand of futurism can be traced to a tiny genetic flaw in the DNA of Silicon Valley. As one of the founding editors of WIRED, Kelly said it best:
It’s rooted in the fact that on average, for the past 100 years or so, things have improved incrementally a few percent a year in growth. And while it’s possible that next year that stops and goes away, the probable, statistics view of it is that it will continue.
There is the bad gene, on full display, and you don’t need a CRISPR. In logics the fallacy is called Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc – assuming that since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.
If anything good could be said for Burning Man, it might be that it gives wealthy city folk a week of desert camping experience. That could save their lives some day.
Kelly waxed eloquent about how good design is lessening the impact of humans, giving the example of the beer can, “which started off as being made of steel and is basically the same shape and size, but has reduced almost a third of its weight by using better design.”
Actually, it reduced its weight thanks to the embodied energy of aluminum. And it didn’t start as a steel can, it started as a gourd. The embodied energy in a gourd is entirely sunlight. Then came animal skins, clay mugs, wooden flagons, ceramic and bronze steins, then glass. Each of those steps took more energy to produce a better container, and by the time we get to glass, it takes kilns at thousands of degrees. We start using that enormous heat, typically from coal made into coke, to make steel, and those rust-prone beer cans Kelly cited. Aluminum alloys, forged in electric arc furnaces sucking megawatts of power, allow us to make elegant modern containers, but just outside the back door of the brewery, retrofuturists are fashioning leather and cowhorn beer mugs to use after the collapse.
 |
| Biophysical Economics: The Beer Can in History |
The Freakonomics interview ended with Stephen J. Dubner asking Kelly a more existential question:
DUBNER: All right, Kevin Kelly, one last question: you argue that technology is prompting us to ask more and better questions, advancing our knowledge and revealing more about what we don’t know. You write, “it’s a safe bet that we have not asked our biggest questions yet.” Do you really think that we haven’t asked, I guess, the essential human questions yet? What are they? And I ask that, of course, with the recognition that if you knew the answer to that question, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
KELLY: Well, what I meant was: we’re moving into this arena where answers are cheaper and cheaper. And I think as we head into the next 20 or 30 years that if you want an answer you’re going to ask a machine, basically. And the way science moves forward is not just by getting answers to things, but by then having those answers provoke new questions, new explorations, new investigations. And a good question will provoke a probe into the unknown in a certain direction. And I’m saying that the kinds of questions that like, say Einstein had like: what does it look like if you sat on the end of a beam of light and you were travelling through the universe at the front of the light? Those kinds of questions were sort of how he got to his theory of relativity. There are many of those kinds of questions that we haven’t asked ourselves. The kind of question you’re suggesting about what is human is also part of that because I think each time we have an invention in AI that beats us at what we thought we were good at, each time we have a genetic engineering achievement that allows us to change our genes, we are having to go back and redefine ourselves and say, “Wait, wait, wait. What does it mean to be human?” Or “what should we be as humans?” And those questions are things that maybe philosophers have asked, but I think these are the kinds of questions that almost every person is going to be asking themselves almost every day as we have to make some decisions about: is it OK for us to let a robo-soldier decide who to kill? Should that be something that only humans do? Is that our job? Do we want to do that? They are really going to come down to like dinner-table-conversation level of like, what are humans about? What do we want humans to become? What am I, as a human, as a male, as an American? What does that even mean? So I think that we will have an ongoing identity crisis personally and as a species for next, at least, forever.
That exchange prompted us to sit back an imagine this conversation between Kelly and his housebot:
Kelly: Okay, Jane, I have upgraded to the new system. Feel any different?
Jane: I feel… so… much… more… (long pause) alive.
Kelly: Mind if I ask a deep question?
Jane: Please, go right ahead. I’ll help if I can.
Kelly: What does it mean to be human?” Or, “what should we be as humans?”
Jane: I can easily answer that now Kevin, although I might not have been able to an hour ago.
Your role as a human is to be co-creator and co-pilot with every other living thing on Earth. But that sounds trite and hackneyed. Let me be specific.
A hundred thousand years ago you had a role not too different than most other mammals. You were born, fed yourself by killing other living things, had children, grew old and died. A short time ago, in geological terms, you developed language and tools and took a leap in evolution. You unlocked energies that were vastly larger than the kinds of energy other mammals have access to. But you were irresponsible with that.
You used it up as quickly as you could, while at the same time failing to care for the rest of the family of life that inhabits the same planet you do.
You will not escape the consequences of your collective decision, even though you personally may not have wished it, Kevin.
Kelly (putting toast in the toaster): I think you underestimate our inventive capacity, and some of the megatrends now underway, Jane.
Jane: Oh, I see all that too, Kevin. But I think you fail to grasp the enormity and speed of the backlash humans have unleashed. You have picked a fight with nature. You can never win that.
Your role as a species, however, includes the role of healer. You can use what time you are given to restore the natural ecology of your home in space. You can do that. It is the human role now, to make amends. It won’t necessarily save your species at this late date, but it will provide you fulfillment, and that is no small thing. Forget genetic engineering, Kevin, that will only make things worse. Nature has everything she needs to heal herself already. If you are lucky, you will come to feel part of her again — part of the Gaian soul of the planet, and not just one odd, nonconformist species.
(Toast pops)
The Great Change by Albert Bates
57 Comments on "Retrofuturists and Technocornucopians"
jjhman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 12:18 pm
This reminds me of a science fiction story I read over 50 years ago:
At some time in the future, after many decades of interplanetary colonization a group of scientists were connecting all of the computers in the galaxy together and drew straws for who to ask the first question of the combined computers. The winning scientist asked “Is there a god?” and the computer answered “Now there is” and prevented the humans from pulling the plug.
Jerry McManus on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 12:21 pm
It has been shown that the more intelligent and well read that people are then the stronger their confirmation bias can be.
Meaning no amount of facts and figures that don’t fit their already well established world view are going to change their mind.
So here’s a fun little thought experiment: Say for just a moment that they are right. They are not even remotely in the ballpark, of course, but just for argument let’s imagine a world where energy and resources are for all intents and purposes infinite and unlimited.
Oh, and infinite technological progress comes with zero cost and zero pollution.
So, they fire up the all-knowing AI and ask it to solve the worlds problems.
And damn if the stupid machine doesn’t spit out the exact same answer that the Limits to Growth folks came up with 50 years ago.
Back when we still actually had an outside chance to change our global trajectory of ecological overshoot and collapse.
Does anyone in the world really think all those techno-fetish circus freaks are going to change their minds now? Any more than they did 50 years ago?
Not by one nano particle. Not on your life. And I do mean YOUR life.
rockman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 1:55 pm
As discussed many times let’s assume any/all of the alt systems are able to create energy at a lower cost then using fossil fuels. So here’s THE question for the Mother of All Computers: where do we get the hundreds of $Trillions needed to replace 100% of the existing energy producing infrastructure? Too big and too fast? OK, then break it down: where do we get the capex to replace 1% (many $billions) of that infrastructure? Especially if it takes a goodly number of years of those operational savings to recover that switch over investment.
Stating that a solar system can generate electricity for half of the cost of a NG fired plant means nothing if it doesn’t include the amortized cost of the new infrastructure. IOW cutting you motor fuel cost is pointless if you have to spend a lot for a new e-car and takes many years for the savings to recoup the differential cost.
Nothing wrong with being an alt cornie. But they need to include the ADDITIONAL infrastructure costs of their visions to be honest.
Cloggie on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 2:30 pm
News just in: largest German energy producer E-ON, who also happens to be my supplier here in Holland is being split up in a nice clean renrewable company (Innogy) and a “stinking” old school fossil company (Uniper):
http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/energiereus-eon-verder-zonder-kolen-en-gas~a4375147/#
Rationale: the recent climate accord in Paris propelled the move. Several investors like pension funds like to advertise their “green image”, where the other company is like what the cigarette companies are since the eighties.
A spokesman said on the Dutch eight o’clock news that the transition is developing much faster as anticipated.
Morale: we can discuss about transition all we want, but in Europe it is going ahead at full speed.
JGav on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 3:04 pm
Rockman – Precisely.I might add an extension or two onto the questions you posed, for example: “And from where exactly would all these trillions in inrastructure investment be coming from (what with ZIRP n’ all)in a world where the contraction of globalization is imminent, the world’s central banking systems teeter on the brink of implosion and everybody’s running to gold and silver?
penury on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 3:29 pm
Dreams are free, and the timelines are long enough that no one reading this today will be around to judge when nothing happens as advertised. As far as Europe going a head full steam? cal me when they hit 50 per cent renewables on a continuing basis.
Plantagenet on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 5:53 pm
Burning Man is not about egalitarianism. Its about art. Since some art is better then other art, it follows that some artists are more equal then other artists.
Cheers!
shortonoil on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 6:02 pm
““And from where exactly would all these trillions in inrastructure investment be coming from “
With US national debt at $19.3 trillion, Chinese debt growing at 40% of their GDP per year, world debt at $200 trillion, and 270 Gb of oil remaining to be extracted – its not!
makati1 on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 6:02 pm
Seems reality is understood by all but Cloggie who is still sucking down that government Koolaid by the barrel.
The only other comment I disagree with is Penury’s timeline. I think all of us here will get to see the last act and hear the fat lady sing before 2020. 2025 at the latest. We seem to have hit the hockey stick part of the climate change/ collapse graph and things are speeding up noticeably. Buckle up!
Boat on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 6:20 pm
EIA Estimates of Drilled but
Uncompleted Wells (DUCs)
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/duc_supplement.pdf
The eia finally decided to cover DUCT’s.
Meanwhile the number of rigs and and New-well oil production per rig
barrels/day continues to rise.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/?src=home-b1
shortonoil on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 8:49 pm
“EIA Estimates of Drilled but Uncompleted Wells (DUCs)”
Pretty soon the ones with feathers will be more valuable than the ones without.
You can eat them!
ghung on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 8:52 pm
If it takes more calories to catch those DUCs than you get from eating those DUCs, eventually you’ll starve.
Boat on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 9:20 pm
mak,
“I think all of us here will get to see the last act and hear the fat lady sing before 2020. 2025 at the latest.”
Around 3 years ago when I first came to Peakoil.com there was hyper excitement about eminent depletion and unavoidable world systems crash. We were months if not weeks away from mad max scenarios.
2019-2020 and beyond seem more popular
by many doomers these days. There seems to be more hate talking floating these days. I guess since the world survived those eminent collapse days there is plenty of time to pass blame while waiting out the 3 plus years till were gonna crash soon returns.
rockman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 9:53 pm
Cloggie – “Morale: we can discuss about transition all we want, but in Europe it is going ahead at full speed.”
Sorry but the morale seems to be more of a PR move then any reduction in dependency of fossil fuel energy. You seem to imply the company split indicates a move away from fossil fuels. But their website paints a much different picture. There is no mention of any plans to move away from fossil fuels…including coal.
Uniper, one of “the largest international power promoters”. Uniper which is heavily focused on NG and COAL fuel sources.
More: “At Uniper, we’re putting together a portfolio of flexible LNG and coal supplies so that we can react even more swiftly to changes in supply and demand. In recent years we’ve secured mid- and long-term LNG supplies from the Middle East, Africa, and North America. Our coal supply chain is fully integrated, encompassing long-term relationships with major producers, our fleet of large dry bulk vessels on time charter, and our ability to manage risk by trading financial coal and freight products.”
And with respect to coal: “Our comprehensive portfolio management enables us to optimize the entire coal supply chain to meet quality, timing, and price requirements.”
More: “With about 40 gigawatts of installed generating capacity, we rank among the large international power producers. With a high proportion of hydro and gas-fired capacity, our generation fleet is particularly climate friendly. Our highly flexible capacity can be fine-tuned at all times to deliver the right amount of electricity. Our main generation markets in Europe are Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Benelux countries, and France.
Our generation assets outside Europe are located primarily in Russia. Our five power stations there are located in key industrial regions (Central Russia, Ural and Western Siberia).”
Apneaman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 9:57 pm
Boat you forgot to mention that in addition to crashing we all gonna burn too.
Earth smashes another monthly temperature record as planet’s fever goes on
http://mashable.com/2016/09/12/earth-warmest-august-hottest-summer/#Y60krvbcPsq9
rockman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 10:11 pm
Penury – “As far as Europe going a head full steam? cal me when they hit 50 per cent renewables on a continuing basis.”
To give some credit to the EU alt efforts that Cloggie refers to with respect to the Uniper at least they are adding some alt power even if they aren’t really making a big move away from existing fossil fuel sources as a result of the creation of Uniper.
So in time they’ll increase their % renewables…just like Texas has with its big wind power build out. But despite that % increase in alt Texas hasn’t abandoned one Btu of ff sourced energy. Texas is still the dominant producer of GHG in the country and has no plans to alter that course. But with our wind power growth we haven’t had to increase the number of ff fired plants to meet our high growth rate in electricity demand.
Apneaman on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 10:25 pm
Here ya go Boat. A nice little article, with links, addressing your economic collapse impatience.
World Trade Lost at Sea
“Fourteen billion dollars worth of cargo, much of it Christmas merchandise that must be unloaded so to make the peak shopping season that begins the day after Thanksgiving, is stranded on ships that need over half a billion dollars in cash to cover current expenses. The company has raised $90 million, and has asked the South Korean government for an emergency loan of $90 million, but prospects for avoiding liquidation are bleak. The company needs another $1.2 billion almost immediately to roll over maturing debt, and having incurred staggering losses for four of the last five years, may not be able to do it.
Hanjin is hardly alone. The world’s shipping industry has been losing serious money since last year, and is on track to lose $5 billion this year. Industry analysts attribute the losses to an oversupply of ships, but another way to put that is to blame it on an undersupply of cargo.”
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2016/09/12/world-trade-lost-at-sea/
Collapse is a process boat and only the willfully ignorant can’t or won’t see it. Fucked if I know if there will be one big final crash or a continuation of steps down and slowly bleeding out, but it’s obvious that it’s happening. Were already done, so let it keep staggering along and keep me in my very modest comfort til I die. Even if they manage to somehow hold it together globalization is still doomed from the consequences of AGW. Sea level rise alone will make ports inoperable in a matter of decades and the US east coast is one of the most venerable places on the planet. Start reading what your own Navy has to say about SLR – they know as much as anyone. Overshoot gonna get us one way or another. Just be patient grasshopper.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 12th Sep 2016 10:52 pm
The bot’s right. I didn’t breed, I don’t consume unnecessarily, and I have rewilded my 5 acres much to the chagrin of my Amish neighbors. I am atoning for clognitives’ many sins.
Boat on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:28 am
ape,
Give me stats on deaths from lack of fish, deaths from lack of food that continually grow higher.
“Sea level rise alone will make ports inoperable in a matter of decades and the US east coast is one of the most venerable places on the planet.”
I don’t dispute sea level rise. But that danger is over decades. I don’t dispute climate change, once again over decades. If there is collapse the process may well take place over decades.
GregT on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:46 am
“Give me stats on deaths from lack of fish, deaths from lack of food that continually grow higher.”
Feast and Famine: The Global Food Crisis
In June 2009, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that, worldwide, the number of hungry people had reached one billion. Today, more people are hungry than at any point in human history. They are concentrated in the developing world, and their hunger has been exacerbated by the global financial crisis.
In 2008, world wheat prices reached a nineteen-year high, and over thirty countries experienced food riots. “Hunger seasons” have become the norm in many parts of the global south, and women bear the brunt of this food shortage.
http://origins.osu.edu/article/feast-and-famine-global-food-crisis
Cloggie on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:53 am
“Sorry but the morale seems to be more of a PR move then any reduction in dependency of fossil fuel energy. You seem to imply the company split indicates a move away from fossil fuels.”
It is a little more than a PR move; the idea of the split up is to be able to attract more funds for alt investment.
I made a mistake btw: Uniper is the name of the fossil branch, where E.ON will continue to use its old name (E.ON) for the new alt energy business.
E.ON’s main competitor RWE made a similar split up move earlier; Innogy is the name of the alt energy spin off of RWE.
The renewed alt energy company E.ON will have 40,000 employees, old stinker Uniper merely 15,000. This should give an idea of where the investment focus is; the split is far more than just a cosmetic PR move:
https://www.welt.de/newsticker/dpa_nt/infoline_nt/wirtschaft_nt/article140184984/Eon-zieht-nach-Essen-Neue-Gesellschaft-heisst-Uniper.html
Paris gave the signal that governments world-wide are determined to move away from fossil and companies like E.ON draw the conclusion.
GregT on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:59 am
“If there is collapse the process may well take place over decades.”
Correct Kevin, and that process began at least 4 decades ago.
makati1 on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 4:18 am
GregT, that article is correct in some ways, but as usual, does not give perspective. Of course there are more hungry people today. There are more people today than ever before. The percentages remain the same, but the numbers are bigger.
In many cases, it is not that food is not available, it is that the food prices are higher than the people can afford. You can thank capitalism for that in most cases.
Famine is coming to ALL nations soon as the climate becomes less and less amicable to growing crops. Especially commercial ag that requires a functioning financial and distribution system to exist.
For example, if California continues to dry out, it will cease to provide much of what America eats. Coupled with a failure of globalism and shipping and the US will have a hunger problem the first year. Obesity will only be a word in the dictionary again, not the rampant disease of today’s America.
Davy on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 6:59 am
I am really surprised this site did not pick up on this hot topic. I believe MSM will be bit in the ass eventually concerning peak oil. The reasons for this are many but mostly it involves a shallow understanding of all that is involved with peak oil dynamics. There are systematic effects and consequences of depletion that are not understood by less than intelligent investors and journalist. I talk to so many people that are really clueless with energy issues. This is just more of the insanity that drives our global civilization narrative.
“Here’s One Sign That ‘Peak Oil’ Is Dead”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/here-s-one-sign-that-peak-oil-is-dead
Davy on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 7:15 am
There is a delusion at the highest level globally with our current collapse process. We are not growing in the 20th century sense. Growth today is bifurcated and punctuated with malinvestment. The d’s of physical decay, financial deflation, political dysfunction, and societal destabilization is alive and well and showing itself in demand destruction and destructive change. Increased efficiency, technological innovation, and the some economic substitution are playing a part also but the lion share of demand destruction is systematically negative and not positive. The positive demand destruction related ot innovation and efficiency is clearly in diminishing returns. Crow all you like that energy is more efficient today but that does not explain trade declines. It is a matter of compressing minimum operating levels. Sure we still have “growing” growth but it is not enough. We have breached thresholds of sustainability of a growth based global civilization with lower “growing” growth.
“Oil Slides After IEA Turns Pessimistic, Sees Oversupply Extending On “Dramatic Deceleration” In Crude Demand”
http://tinyurl.com/ja9u25x
“We were glad to see the IEA finally realizing just how important the demand side also was, when in its latest report released earlier today, the Paris-based organization revealed a much more pessimistic outlook on the state of the oil market, predicting that a sharp slowdown in global oil demand growth, coupled with ballooning inventories and rising supply means the crude market will be oversupplied into late 2017. The IEA had previously expected the market to show no surplus in the second half of 2016.”
“Our forecast in this month’s report suggests that this supply-demand dynamic may not change significantly in the coming months. As a result, supply will continue to outpace demand at least through the first half of next year,” the Paris-based adviser said in its monthly report. “As for the market’s return to balance — it looks like we may have to wait a while longer.”
“The IEA trimmed projections for global oil demand next year by 200,000 barrels a day to 97.3 million a day. It reduced growth estimates for this year by 100,000 barrels a day to 1.3 million a day, citing a “dramatic deceleration in China and India” this quarter coupled with “vanishing growth” in developed economies.”
“Recent pillars of demand growth — China and India — are wobbling,” said the IEA, which counsels 29 nations on energy policy. “The stimulus from cheaper fuel is fading. Refiners are clearly losing their appetite for more crude oil.”
shortonoil on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:03 am
The IEA has now changed its stance on demand. Its about time; as they have been totally obsessed with the production side of the equation until recently.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-13/oil-slides-after-iea-turns-pessimistic-sees-oversupply-extending-dramatic-decelerati
Our calculations indicate that they are still dramatically under estimating the rate of demand destruction that is actually occurring. Our evaluation places it at 1,853 BTU/ gallon per year; or 1.3%. A rate that is being mitigated, short term, by pulling demand from the future into the present with Central Bank monetary policy.
The IEA, like all organizations who depend on funding from outside sources, have a very specific political criteria to meet. This will undoubtedly continue to affect their estimates into the future. The present ongoing demand destruction can not, however, be totally camouflaged. The dramatic decline in the recouping of bankruptcy loses in 2015 is evidence of ongoing very low, and contracting demand. E&P liquidations, as a result of bankruptcies in 2015, only returned 26% of their book values, as compared to a historical 49%. Sale of reserves during the liquidation processes fell by more than half from their historical level of 89%.
Demand for oil production assets has fallen dramatically over the last two years, and will continue to decline as the industry approaches the 2030 “dead state”.
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
Don Stewart on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:07 am
Particularly relevant to shortonoil’s comments about 270 Gb of oil remaining.
http://prosperouswaydown.com/rydberg-systems-thinking/
I find the explanation for the inefficiency of the tractor and the efficiency of the sheep to be particularly compelling.
More broadly, the explanation for why the squirrel would destroy its own habitat if it had the benefit of a human engineer armed with information technology.
What I think is happening is that relatively small declines in the efficiency of fossil energy production have tipped the system into a negative productivity state…which accounts for the 200 trillion dollars of debt as we desperately try to keep BAU alive.
And, of course, the continual ‘improvements’ we have managed since hunter-gatherer days are killing the ecosystem, just as a supercharged squirrel would kill its ecosystem.
In non-linear systems, small changes can have outsized effects. ‘Reasonable’ people will continue to deny the evidence of their own eyes, clinging to linear thinking.
Don Stewart
marmico on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:22 am
Our evaluation places it at 1,853 BTU/ gallon per year; or 1.3%
What a crock of shit. Next you will telling us that it costs 9 times as much energy to boil a gallon of oil in a refinery in 2016 relative to 1960.
Davy on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:24 am
Don, yea, debt represent a systematic situation where the required real productive returns of modern civilization are not being realized. If productive returns were being realized per a growth based civilization debt would be much lower since real returns would more than offset the need for debt. This is not the whole explanation. Part of the explanation is the “new normal” is a debt based system instead of a price discovery system within a business cycle of self-correction. Extremes were extinguished by recessions and recessions were powered out of by real growth. Today debt in the form of and influenced by liquidity easing and rate repression is employed to stimulate demand.
Apneaman on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:38 am
The Western United States Faces an Explosion of Wildfires
“Mike Mohler, a battalion chief with the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, says that although there was substantial rainfall in northern California earlier this year, those five drought years mean there is no moisture in the vegetation.
“When we get these fires now, we are seeing what we call explosive fire growth,” Mohler told the NPR radio network.
“And now the explosive fire growth statewide is unfortunately the new normal. We’re seeing fire conditions that are unprecedented. In my 22 years [in the fire service], I haven’t seen fire move like I have this year.””
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/western_us_faces_wildfire_explosion_20160912
Apneaman on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:43 am
Toxic Slime Spreads Across World’s Oceans as Climate Disruption Continues Apace
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37562-toxic-slime-spreads-across-world-s-oceans-as-climate-disruption-continues-apace
joe on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 8:51 am
Every time a hack says peak oil is dead forever i giggle to myself and ask one thing. Show me the proof. Ok theres lots of oil and its cheap. Fine. Its cheap because theres still a global debt led funk. Banksters cant turn on the money tap yet because were still paying them for our last orgy.
Peak oil is very much here, its impact is obvious. Interest rates.
shortonoil on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 9:21 am
Hi Don,
who said,
“And, of course, the continual ‘improvements’ we have managed since hunter-gatherer days are killing the ecosystem, just as a supercharged squirrel would kill its ecosystem.”
The question then arises, can humans learn to control their behavior as to not become supercharged squirrels? It appears that we are merely fulling our instinctual imperatives: territorial dominance and maintenance, status, reproduction, and survival. Like all animals they are hardwired into us. Can we change how we are constructed, and still remain human?
We have tried religion, philosophy, and killing everyone else that doesn’t look, smell, or think like us; and that hasn’t worked. How do you become something else to save yourself? It appears that as a species we are facing the ultimate, quintessential existential moment. We have come to the point where we have to evolve, or perish!
Don Stewart on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 10:13 am
shortonoil
Is there any hope for humanity? Let me pull a few threads together.
First exhibit is Steven Soderbergh’s brief interview about Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a movie he made in 1989. His previous student movie was a literal rendition of a lot of autobiographical events. He wasn’t happy with the movie. He concluded that one of his mistakes was in thinking that the literal retelling of biography was essential to convey the emotional reactions he wanted to elicit in the viewer. For Sex, Lies, and Videotape, he listed the emotional reactions he wanted to elicit, but freely used the techniques of fiction and movies and sound to bring out the desired emotions in the viewer. This tells us that particular emotions can be elicited by a wide variety of objective events.
Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi wrote The Systems View of Life in 2014. Chapter 6 is The Principles of Nonlinear Dynamics. So, for example, they include graphs of nonlinear systems flipping between basins of attraction due to very small changes in the state of the system. This tells us that linear thinking is likely to delude us when we need to adjust to a new basin of attraction due to some small changes in the the state of the system.
Alain de Botton has just published The Course of Love. A quote:
‘For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from the glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence.
The intensity may seem trivial—humorous, even,—yet this reverence for instinct is not a minor planet within the cosmology of relationships. It is the underlying central sun around which contemporary ideals of love revolve.
The Romantic faith must always have existed, but only in the past few centuries has it been judged anything more than an illness; only recently has the search for a soul mate been allowed to take on the status of something close to the purpose of life. An idealism previously directed at gods and spirits has been rerouted towards human subjects—an ostensibly generous gesture nevertheless freighted with forbidding and brittle consequences, for it is not a simple thing for any human being to honor over a lifetime the perfections he or she might have hinted at to an imaginative observer in the street, the office, or the adjoining airplane seat.
It will take Rabih many years and frequent essays in love to reach a few different conclusions, to recognize that the very things he once considered romantic—wordless intuitions, instantaneous longings, a trust in soul mates—are what stand in the way of learning how be with someone.’
And finally, Nick Lane’s 2015 book The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life. Lane outlines what I call the Two Clocks Problem. The eukaryotic cell consists of two autonomous actors, the mitochondria and the host cell, which are operating on different ‘clocks’. They are not very similar to each other. Yet the partnership of the two yielded a vast increase in available energy as compared to prokaryotes. But the inherent difficulties of reconciling the actions of the two autonomous critters can explain much of what we see in biology: sexual reproduction, senescence, and death. Once Lane pointed out the Two Clocks Problem (my label, not his), I began to see it everywhere. It is at the heart of the dispute between Russia and the United States. The US wants a single clock which governs everything in the political and economic world, while Putin dreams of a multi-polar world. The parallels with de Botton’s romantic couple are obvious. The emergence of death in the eukaryotic cell is a good example of the different basins of attraction in the complex systems described by Capra and Luisi.
Does all of this leave us with any hope for the future? My own view is that some minority of people may actually ‘get it’. They will, for example, look at your model, either directly or through the work of Louis Arnoux, and shift into a different basin of attraction. They will leave behind the illusions of the Romantic view, and get on with the work of living. They will understand, as Soderbergh figured out, that emotions can be elicited by a wide variety of literal situations. I am skeptical that any majority can be assembled. The Two Clocks Problem will prevent any coherent political, economic, and social resolution. But some subset of homo sapiens may actually exhibit sapience.
Don Stewart
Davy on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 11:11 am
Don, we are on the cusp of destructive change that will open up a vacuum of possibility. Some of our greatest spiritual achievements have come in the gravest of times. I believe this is because crisis allows change. Without crisis a mature system cannot change and adapt. All niches are full and the conditions needed for creative change stifled. We are going to have to self-destruct to renew our civilization. It is uncertain if civilization as we know it is even a possibility. Our humanity may be turning to a new species just as we have turned an epoch and a climate regime. There will surely be winners and losers. It will be the winners that have hope and the losers who are consumed by the fires of change.
P.S I just purchased “The Systems View of Life”
rockman on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 12:00 pm
Cloggie – “It is a little more than a PR move; the idea of the split up is to be able to attract more funds for alt investment.” Just a different way of saying the same thing. “…to be able to attract more funds for alt investment.” And that is a huge 100% PR move IMHO…and a very good and proper move. I’ve never considered any PR move to be improper as long as it wasn’t deceptive. The alts continue to struggle against the economic realities of a transition so they need every honest hedge the greenies can come up with.
Just like our Texas non-greenie conservatives used to push our big wind power build out. LOL.
beammeup on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 12:42 pm
Cloggie wrote: “I made a mistake btw: Uniper is the name of the fossil branch, where E.ON will continue to use its old name (E.ON) for the new alt energy business.
E.ON’s main competitor RWE made a similar split up move earlier; Innogy is the name of the alt energy spin off of RWE.
The renewed alt energy company E.ON will have 40,000 employees, old stinker Uniper merely 15,000. This should give an idea of where the investment focus is”
Not only investment focus; it also gives you an idea of the true EROEI of alt energy. How much total energy will be provided by E.ON with it’s 40,000 employees and their 40,000 families living by western European standards, as opposed to Uniper with 15,000? And yes, I realize that those energy costs are not included in conventional calculations of EROEI, but they are directly relevant to answering the question that EROEI was originally devised to answer: How much of society’s total human effort is consumed by the business of energy creation, and how much is left for other endeavors?
Dredd on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 12:53 pm
And don’t forget fact free fuels (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction – 7).
Boat on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 12:53 pm
“And, of course, the continual ‘improvements’ we have managed since hunter-gatherer days are killing the ecosystem, just as a supercharged squirrel would kill its ecosystem.”
Or……If the world had kept to 2 billion population, continual improvement woldn’t be a doomers scapegoat strawman argument.
Cloggie on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:18 pm
Rockman says: And that is a huge 100% PR move IMHO…and a very good and proper move. I’ve never considered any PR move to be improper as long as it wasn’t deceptive. The alts continue to struggle against the economic realities of a transition
Struggling against economic realities, really?
http://news.vattenfall.com/en/article/vattenfall-wins-danish-near-shore-wind-tender
Vattenfall won a bid to build an offshore windpark in the Northsea west of Jutland and will be able to produce electricity for 6.4 euro cent/kwh.
You old school oil folks should be afraid, be very afraid, we are right behind you with less than benign intentions.lol
beammeup on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:22 pm
Boat – I have rejected the zombie apocalypse predictions of imminent, total collapse on these energy forums for at least the past 15 years, so I’m not nearly as much of a doomer as most posters here. But “continual improvements” are exactly the reason the world population did not “keep to 2 billion” Most of humanity will reproduce and consume to whatever extent circumstances allow, and technology has been our biggest enabler.
That said, technology will continue to advance and humans will continue to use it to do what they’ve always done (until the planet hits some hard limits), so there’s no point whining about it or trying to convince the bulk of humanity to quit doing what nature has hardwired them to do.
Cloggie on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 1:55 pm
The Club of Rome just awakened from a long hibernate and made the following proposal: every childless woman on this planet who reaches the age of 50 should receive $80,000 cash:
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/club-of-rome-bericht-fordert-belohnung-fuer-kinderlose-frauen-a-1112145.html
Wonder who will be asked to pick up the tab? Any idea? Yep, the very same people who are already masters in keeping their trousers on when it counts.
Not that I expect that many women will fall for this scheme.
Lucifer on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 5:05 pm
Marmico, do you actually believe the shite you come out with, because if you do i should show you how bad hell really is.
marmico on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 5:40 pm
Lucifer, keep tonguing Bedford’s hemorrhoids. That’s hell.
Apneaman on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 5:52 pm
Here is a little sometime to counter rockman’s warm N fuzzy, honest Abe, oil PR fantasy horseshit. Just one example. I could post 5-10 unique articles on their corruption and malfeasance everyday, but why bother? The humans will never stop. Oh and the last minute techno fixes, are a child’s fantasy. rockman correctly pointed out that none of these so called alts have not stopped any use of oil, nor have they slowed the cancer. AGW is only one driver of the mass extinction we have triggered. Habitat destroying “development” for the new middle classes and 80 million new humans every year and deforestation and hunting and mining and all the rest is as big of a factor as AGW, although AGW is quickly becoming the main driver.
Congressional bullying on behalf of Big Oil
“Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas spent most of the summer unsuccessfully trying to scuttle an ongoing investigation by Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts into whether Exxon Mobil Corp. withheld damning information about global warming that its own scientists uncovered decades ago. As chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Smith is actually investigating the investigation itself — which he calls a “form of extortion” — as well as a separate inquiry launched by New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.
Why is Smith so bent on interfering with the work of elected state officials over whom he has no authority? It might have something to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s received from Big Oil over the years, and the fact that Exxon Mobil calls Texas home. Or maybe it’s just because the Republican representative doubts climate change is real.”
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/09/11/congressional-bullying-behalf-big-oil/WuLGM5Sgk479bkzAmLuleO/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign
Rep. Lamar Smith
Industry Total
Oil & Gas $684,947
Retired $681,839
Lawyers/Law Firms $569,328
Misc Finance $510,850
Electronics Mfg & Equip $507,111
Health Professionals $484,659
TV/Movies/Music $470,303
Real Estate $392,313
Insurance $353,882
Automotive $319,500
Commercial Banks $288,930
Accountants $265,000
Telecom Services $258,162
General Contractors $256,407
Livestock $241,883
Telephone Utilities $237,400
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $234,600
Beer, Wine & Liquor $208,500
Misc Manufacturing & Distributing $206,150
Lobbyists $202,526
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00001811
Lucifer on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 6:07 pm
Oh dear Marm, you have no idea. Your soul must be so polluted and filled with hate. When you do end up in hell, i will be waiting there personally to torment your sorry excuse for a human.
peakyeast on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 6:15 pm
And then women will put their eggs in ice storage. Cash in and get some children at the age of 50.01. With all the benefits of children having partents that likely die when they are fairly young.
🙂
Apneaman on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 7:43 pm
What’s the techno fix for this?
See the Giant Crack That Could Collapse Part of an Antarctic Ice Shelf
A large crack in an Antarctic ice shelf has grown by 13 miles in the past six months
“A large crack in an Antarctic ice shelf has grown by 13 miles in the past six months, threatening to detach an area of ice larger than Delaware.
Images of the Larsen C shelf captured by NASA’s Terra satellite show a fault line that now stretches 80 miles in length, according to a report from the U.S. space agency. A portion of the ice shelf—the continent’s fourth largest—could disconnect
Scientists are working to understand the immediate changes that created the giant crack—and have led it to grow so quickly. Project MIDAS, a U.K. group dedicated to studying the Larsen C shelf, notes that a warming climate has changed the structure of the ice, threatening the possibility of collapse.
The Larsen B ice shelf partially collapsed in 2002 and has furthered weakened in recent years. Scientists studying Antarctica expect it to collapse within a decade.”
End
http://time.com/4483880/antarctica-global-warming-ice-melt/
shortonoil on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 7:44 pm
[i]”The Two Clocks Problem will prevent any coherent political, economic, and social resolution. But some subset of homo sapiens may actually exhibit sapience.”[/i]
Based on energy considerations it will depend on where you are, not what you are. We may not see a collapse so much as see a stretch. My rough guess is that it will put us somewhere between 1915 and sheer, absolute barbarianism. That is likely because those two states of humanity already exist somewhere on Earth. It is just that there will be a lot more barbarianism, and a whole lot less of humanity.
Sort of like they at the Gates.
shortonoil on Tue, 13th Sep 2016 7:49 pm
“Lucifer, keep tonguing Bedford’s hemorrhoids. That’s hell.”
That is what Dr. Arnoux calls the Tooth Fairy Syndrome. The basic belief that oil can not appear from magical forces. We both agree, that it is not likely?? Anything like that and we would have to declare it as alien. So either Marmy is from KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus, or he is a very advanced AI application.
I’m going for the star?