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Page added on February 11, 2017
Entropy in Geopolitics
A hundred and fifty years ago, a German physicist derived the concept of “entropy” from the second law of thermodynamics. Since then, entropy has stood for the idea that everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder, from structure to formlessness, and from predictability to uncertainty. Entropy is the measurement of that change. It is also the most fitting description of current trends in geopolitics and geoeconomics.
The strategic stabilities of the old order are all in various stages of decay. Some in my country and abroad had come to view the United States as the next best thing to a world government and global policeman. But, even before tweets replaced policy papers in Washington, this conception had become preposterous. The established presumptions no longer operate.
Washington led the way in creating global institutions after World War II. It fathered the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the G-7, among others. But these institutions have ceased to rise effectively to the challenges before them. The world increasingly ignores them, bypasses them, or seeks to replace them with new deals struck at the sub-global or regional level. New organizations, banks, and coalitions are emerging to address new needs.
Think of the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the various Silk Road funds, China’s initiative to connect everything on and adjacent to the Eurasian landmass, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, the G-20, and the Pacific Alliance. More often than not, institutional innovation has been taking place despite the United States, which has diminished credibility and seems to have run out of ideas for global governance, the money to fund it, and the will to lead it. President Trump’s bilateral and transactional approach to foreign policy is dealing a final, fatal blow to the United States as the global rule-maker.
The European Union, whose coalescence was a major contributor to world order, is now shrinking rather than expanding. According to President Trump, it could even disappear. Britain has set itself adrift. Turkey and Russia have ended centuries of effort to redefine themselves as “European.” Turkey has given up on the EU accession process and is affirming a non-European, authoritarian, and Islamist identity. Russia now emphasizes its civilizational distinctiveness. Ukraine continues to wobble in place. War in Europe is no longer unthinkable.
Ankara and Moscow have begun to work together with Tehran to pick up the pieces of a Middle Eastern order shattered by ill-conceived U.S. interventions and their aftermath. The region is further shaken by Saudi-Iranian rivalry. (Iran appears to be coming out ahead.) Former US client states (Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) are only somewhat less estranged from the United States than Iran has been. The Middle East is less pivotal to a global economy in which concerns about peak demand –not peak oil — predominate. But the rise and spread of transnational Islamist terrorism has put the region at the center of worldwide anxiety about homeland security.
After a few bad centuries, Asia is back as the global center of economic gravity. It is home to three of the world’s great economic powers – China, India, and Japan – as well as formidably competitive societies like south Korea and a flourishing group of Southeast Asian countries. It is also full of intensifying rivalries and potentially explosive confrontations, including some that pit China against the United States. China is fast becoming a technology leader. India is now the largest destination in the world for foreign direct investment. Despite its amazing earlier success, Japan remains economically becalmed. Korea is in political distress. The Association of Southeast Nations is increasingly divided. The sound of jet engines and gas turbines in the East and South China Seas foretells the possibility of catastrophic armed conflict between major powers that could erase decades of socioeconomic progress.
Meanwhile, Africa is on the rise. It has some of the world’s fastest growing economies. What it blessedly does not yet have is a direct role in the escalating rivalry between the great powers of America, Asia, and Europe.
This brings me to where I stand – en México, una ciudad , una cultura, y un país que llegué a admirar hace más de medio siglo, cuando estudié aquí en la UNAM. This is a city, a culture, and a country for which I have had special regard since I studied here at the national university fifty-six years ago. No nation matters more to the United States than this one, and none is so sadly misunderstood or neglected. México está a punto de descubrir que tiene muchos más amigos y simpatizantes en el extranjero de lo que sabía. ¡Afortunado México! Tan cerca de los dioses del comercio y tan lejos del pantano en Washington.
Like the president of this country, I do not believe in walls. As a great poet from Vermont once urged:
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”“Antes de levantarlo, yo quisiera
saber a quién incluyo, a quién excluyo
a quién, quizás, ofendo con el muro.
Algo hay que no es amigo de los muros,
que quiere derrumbarlos.”
But some sort of wall on the border is the opening gambit of the Deal-maker-in-Chief who has just taken up residence in the White House. This should be treated as a proposal for more effective border control. That is something that is in the interest of both Mexico and the United States. In diplomacy, the best answer to an unwelcome proposition is to reframe it so that both sides can gain. There is a bargain to be struck, perhaps including commitments from the United States to finally do something about the uncontrolled demand for illegal narcotics and traffic in guns that have been so disastrous for domestic tranquility in Mexico.
There are, of course, broader questions raised by the surge of populist, protectionist politics in the United States and some other industrialized democracies. Mexico is not alone in its concern about the implications of these policies for trade, investment, and the global energy economy. Neither the United States nor the world can afford to dismantle global supply chains. There is a limit to how many trade wars any country can manage at once. If the United States takes on the world, the world is likely to unite in pushing back. Mexico will have many allies.
I don’t want to take any more time from my fellow panelists. I was asked to speak about geopolitics. But, since this conference is about the transformation of oil and gas markets, let me offer a parting observation about energy in the new world disorder. As is the case with many other issues these days, no one is in charge. Saudi Arabia is now the swing producer for OPEC but not for the world. The role of a global swing producer has fallen to US frackers, a motley group driven by market forces rather than policy. They can and will rapidly increase or reduce production in response to shifts in demand. Barring civil strife and terrorist attacks that prevent oil from coming to market, this heralds lessened price volatility in future.
To conclude: Increased entropy in geopolitics means that the world will either return to respect for the UN Charter, international law, and the sovereignty of nations or anarchy will allow might to make right in world affairs. In either case, middle-ranking powers, like Mexico, have no choice but to seek greater independence, to maneuver internationally, to seek new allies, and to play a larger role in global and regional governance. We are entering an era in which regional, not global balances will clearly be the dominant feature of the international state system.
The last century was claimed by the United States. My country is voluntarily forfeiting its claim to this one. The 21st century is now up for grabs.
56 Comments on "Entropy in Geopolitics"
Davy on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 12:37 pm
Let me rephrase the last sentence:
The last century was claimed by the modern global civilization. Our civilization is voluntarily forfeiting its claim to this one. The 21st century is now going back to nature in a rebalancing of species with man’s survival up for grabs.
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 1:11 pm
A hundred and fifty years ago, a German physicist derived the concept of “entropy” from the second law of thermodynamics. Since then, entropy has stood for the idea that everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder, from structure to formlessness, and from predictability to uncertainty. Entropy is the measurement of that change.
In reality we have seen an evolution from “planet of the apes” towards a race of moon-landers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM6OIlreneA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyjOjT8d8RI
You can apply entropy to a simple piston-cylinder system, not to human evolution.
President Trump’s bilateral and transactional approach to foreign policy is dealing a final, fatal blow to the United States as the global rule-maker.
BS. Trump, like Gorbachev before, is drawing the correct conclusion that the US empire (c.q. Soviet empire) no longer can impose its will upon the rest of the world.
The European Union, whose coalescence was a major contributor to world order, is now shrinking rather than expanding.
More BS. After 2014 they drew the Ukraine into the sphere of influence of the EU and Britain is not yet gone. I hope they will, so we can draw Russia into the EU, or rather create a new form of European cooperation.
Turkey has given up on the EU accession process and is affirming a non-European, authoritarian, and Islamist identity.
Wonderful development. Let the Turks provide leadership to the Islamic world.
Russia now emphasizes its civilizational distinctiveness.
Even more BS. Russia until today has made it clear it wants to be part of Europe, because it is shitting in the pants for the growing might of China.
China is fast becoming a technology leader.
There is no such things as “a” leader. China doesn’t even seriously make cars or high-tech. If they do, they do it mostly in license. They are still reliant on western technology. That could change in the future, but not yet.
No nation matters more to the United States than this one, and none is so sadly misunderstood or neglected.
Huh? The US stupidly gave away large past of the SW to invading Mexicans and eventually will lose these territories to Mexico. Demography is destiny. Here the leader of Anonymouse, Louis Farakhan, stating the obvious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KM_rP3moHM
Like the president of this country, I do not believe in walls.
Good old Jim Lobe just signed the death warrant of the US empire.
Increased entropy in geopolitics means that the world will either return to respect for the UN Charter, international law, and the sovereignty of nations or anarchy will allow might to make right in world affairs.
Applying the concept Entropy in geopolitics is rubbish. The US was the last (racial) communist country. What we are seeing is the formation of a multi-polar world and the center of political gravity will shift from NE-USA to Eurasia, where it was home for thousands of years.
Slightly adapted (by me) Samuel Huntingtonian geopolitical map of the future.
https://s17.postimg.org/6wwnomfpb/worldmap.jpg
The US will fail in delivering the entire world into the hands of the Self-Chosen, and the latter will experience a 1492 style downfall in geopolitical power. It took them two centuries before their money enabled the Dutch military to bring them to prominence again in 1688. This time not in Islamic Spain, but in the heart of London, running the newly erected central bank, a return of favor after the Dutch were given the money to organize a Protestant expedition and expel the Catholic king and neutralize the British danger.
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 1:53 pm
Trump has taken full control of the Republic Party.
Only John McCain & Lindsey Graham do exercise some limited form resistance, the rest follows the leader.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/829682794951475200
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/donald-trump-und-die-us-republikaner-applaudieren-und-abwarten-a-1133894.html
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 3:17 pm
Clog
“You can apply entropy to a simple piston-cylinder system, not to human evolution.”
Clueless again.
Energy and Human Evolution
by David Price
“But the exhaustion of fossil fuels, which supply three quarters of this energy, is not far off, and no other energy source is abundant and cheap enough to take their place. A collapse of the earth’s human population cannot be more than a few years away. If there are survivors, they will not be able to carry on the cultural traditions of civilization, which require abundant, cheap energy. It is unlikely, however, that the species itself can long persist without the energy whose exploitation is so much a part of its modus vivendi.
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance.”
http://www.dieoff.org/page137.htm
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 3:34 pm
Friday, perhaps you check your own links:
The article you link to is from 1995.
A collapse of the earth’s human population cannot be more than a few years away.
[Snicker]
Dieoff is no longer maintained, it died-off so to speak, not a minute too early. Bunch of total losers, exactly your kind.
Helpless, weak, nihilistic children that can’t carry their own weight. Ohohoho, we all going to die!!! ROFL
Fossil fuel served us to develop a system of science and technology, from which we have developed a system of renewable energy generation, that will serve us fine in the future.
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche
Complete rubbish:
http://www.renewablegreenenergypower.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/RenewableEnergyPotentialVsFossilFuels.jpg
Humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years before fossil fuel was ever heard of.
Nobody needs fossil fuel anymore in a couple of decades.
Davy on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 4:06 pm
Clog, I think you have concern or why would you be on a doom site? Ape’s reference is a valid potentiality that is open ended. It does not expire as your techno optimism does. Your hubris is amusing and a reflection of the society we live in.
onlooker on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 4:11 pm
Cloggie,once again clueless. Fossil fuels enables and enabled everything we call modern nowadays. Without them we will revert back to medieval and probably even worse times. So yes Cavemen do not need fossil fuels haha. Oh and Davy great reply. Our growth proclivities in numbers and in economic matters is set to be drastically and forcefully curtailed by the limits that Nature imposes. We are going to be humbled by our own limitations as well. Lots of limits being reached. I would not call that Entropy but simply a re-balancing and restructuring. A new era aligned more harmoniously with Nature and with limits.
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 4:12 pm
Clog, I think you have concern or why would you be on a doom site?
Good question, more out of habit I guess. Was absent for a long time but came back for commenting the Trump development. The concerns I still do have are related to geopolitics and mass migration. Energy no longer matters much to me. Renewable has won the fight and is rapidly being implemented the world over, yawn. And if we have achieved the transition in 30 years, CO2 related climate change (if any) would have stopped. Currently I am far more upbeat than 5 years ago. All of a sudden a lot of things go as I would wish them to develop.
Meanwhile the war against Trump continues and is lead by the youknowwho under the guise of “humor” and supported by liberal traitors a la Friday, who want to bring down Western civilization and turn it into a third world hell hole:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqxOZvgTLXE
With types like Soros and Maher at the helm, the US will be completely destroyed through continued mass migration and turned into the next Brasil. Which would be sad news for European-Americans but for Europe, Russia and China it would be a different story.
But fortunately the US Euro’s grew a pair and lifted one of them into office, who brought a set of brains with him (Steve Bannon), who exactly knows what the problem is.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/stephen-bannon-5-things-jews-need-to-know/
If Trump would leave office (dead or alive) and no precautions have been taken, it is game over for European America. But the longer Trump holds out, the better the situation gets, because he would enable the political transition in Europe, in a sharp move to the right and rearmament.
What is the way out: splitting up the country after Trump, exactly like happened after Gorbachev in the USSR. Every American right-winger knows that by now. Let the Soros mob govern the East coast and make them harmless again.
Easy does it.
GregT on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 4:29 pm
“Renewable has won the fight and is rapidly being implemented the world over, yawn.”
They are not renewable cloggie. Every single source of alternate electric power generation requires fossil fuel energy in it’s resource extraction, refinement, manufacture, distribution, and maintenance. As does the entire electric grid and all of the gadgets that we power with that same said electricity. As does modern industrial society, and the economies of scale that we use to pay for all of the above. Alternate energy production is not ‘rapidly being implemented the world over’. It is still but a tiny percentage, and fossil fuels continue to be consumed at greater rates.
It’s one thing to play devils advocate, an entirely other to just make shit up.
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 4:48 pm
Why don’t you get a proper education on physics Greg, before you venture to contradict an entire world of engineering. Don’t punch over your weight on this topic.
You can’t have a mega-club like the EU of 500 million embarking on a 100% renewable energy strategy while violating elementary principles of physics.
There are complaints against the strategy from a viewpoint of cost or violating the landscape with large number of wind-turbines, etc.
But nobody with a reputation has ever claimed that a renewable energy base is fundamentally impossible. It is not.
Show me the link to a study or article from somebody who has a reputation to lose. You can’t, it doesn’t exist. Even the trained engineer and nuke fanboy Antius from Britain (who knows what he is talking about, but he made different personal energy choices), won’t make that fake argument.
Don’t continue to make up shit because you have dug yourself into a hole a few years ago based on false assumptions and now you don’t want to paddle back.
Alternate energy production is not ‘rapidly being implemented the world over’
You are wrong:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solar-idUSKBN15J0G7
http://energy.sia-partners.com/dutch-energy-agreement-2013-2023
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jun/28/solar-power-energy-us-utilities-environment-climate-change
makati1 on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 5:24 pm
Cloggie, remember this”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-06/renewable-lies-and-deception-dutch-commuters
makati1 on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 5:35 pm
Humanity, from start to finish will be about 3 million yeas, and only the last 10,000 or so could be considered to be homo sapiens. In the estimated 15 billion year life of the planet 10,000 years is about 0.0000015% of that time. About an eye blink in your lifetime. Not so important if you look at it in perspective. The dinosaurs had at least 1,000 times that long and they were just non-sentient animals.
Entropy is as obvious in homo sapiens as anywhere else. Take Democrats for instance:
Thomas Jefferson to FDR to JFK to … Snowflakes and insane old women. There are exceptions to the rule, but they too are becoming fewer. Nothing new in the techie world. Just rehashes and tweaks of old stuff, and dreams discarded by more intelligent people long ago. Ditto for government, education, and even war. Our time is up people.
GregT on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 5:48 pm
“Why don’t you get a proper education on physics Greg, before you venture to contradict an entire world of engineering.”
I don’t need either cloggie, just plain old common sense. Out of every single component of the grid here, the only thing that is renewable is the wooden electric transmission poles, and even they would be extremely difficult to chop down, delimb, debark, transport, and put into place without fossil fuels. Not impossible, but extremely labour intensive. Every single remaining part of the grid is completely reliant on finite resources and fossil fuels.
“You can’t have a mega-club like the EU of 500 million embarking on a 100% renewable energy strategy while violating elementary principles of physics.”
Apparently, you can. Like we have billions of people embarking on the American dream. Just because billions of people believe it to be possible, does not make it so. No matter how many engineers tell you otherwise.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
Boat on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:01 pm
There is more structure and cooperation in the world than ever in human history. There are more humans in the world but life expectancy grows globally. We still have wars and rumors of wars but the scale and intensity has dropped dramatically.
What we also have is a bunch of education debt writing BS trying to squeeze out a few bucks.
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:03 pm
Fine, Greg & makati, believe what you have to believe and rejoice in your superior knowledge.
Cloggie, remember this”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-06/renewable-lies-and-deception-dutch-commuters
Sure, remember this?
Windparks owned by Dutch rail, in capacity covering Dutch rail consumption:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/dutch-railway-powered-for-100-by-wind-in-2017/#jp-carousel-60313
And no, the current generated by these wind parks does indeed not propel any locomotives, but that’s irrelevant in the light of the transition.
But you will always only see the negative aspects in anything.
Your society will go under, running to Manila or in the Canadian jungle doesn’t count as defense. If you are lucky we will get you out of the Soros Gulag, after Trump, now that your masters target you, after they used you to target us first in WW2.
http://www.infowars.com/live-now-emergency-trump-is-surrounded-by-enemies/
makati1 on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:32 pm
Cloggie, You just ignore facts and anything that might cause you to think or open your eyes. Too bad. The techie religion is difficult to walk away from, even if it means you die if you stay.
Europe is devolving into chaos and internal wars again and this time there will be no ‘rebuilding’ because the rest of the world will ignore you, not loan you money. They just don’t care. Live in your fantasy world of “renewables” if it makes you happy. It is NOT the real world.
onlooker on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:45 pm
Cloggie, sees renewable/alternatives even as the Oil Age is winding down and Economies are barely staying afloat. Sees the Predominance of Europe even as it will be targeted by US,
Russia and China to eliminate competition. Clog, Europe has nothing the world is going to need. It is going to be inundated by the hordes of the entire Eurasia continent. Just building your walls is going to bankrupt you. Oh and Europe has neither the stomach nor the arsenal to wage a war with chances of winning. It is in the crosshairs of a ravenous China, a militarily lethal Russia and a US outpost. Dreams though are cheap.
onlooker on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:47 pm
Oh sorry forgot to mention Europe does have land, something China is eager to get.
DMyers on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 6:59 pm
I’m inclined to understand this in a more metaphorical sense. Not sure a very strong case is made for the entropy proposition.
Although, a statement is well made here about our natural aversion to walls, whether they be originated in a spirit of exclusion or inclusion, I do not very clearly see Trump’s function as a latter day figure of decline. The stage has already been set by actors from both parties for the decline and fall of the West.
Which brings me to this, Oswald Spengler. One of the more enlightening ideas I was able to appreciate from Spengler’s Decline of the West, is this idea of the decaying culture. The culture bound for ultimate civilization status has certain strengths and tendencies which will dispose it to rise in power and complexity. But the final decline of the civilization so spurned is predicated on the decay and disappearance of those original qualities of destiny.
The argument that the current world order seems to be collapsing under the weight of its own final stage ambitions, and that this at least resembles the physical law of entropy is an idea worthy of consideration. But for this to fit, it must embrace a longer piece of history than the present moment of the present administration.
makati1 on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 7:11 pm
DM, the entropy has been on going for decades, everywhere, in everything. Especially in the West. It has nothing to do with ‘current administrations’. It has to do with the decline of everything including energy per capita.
Current administrations are just signs of that entropy, not the cause. We are breaking down into tribes again. Education is failing in most countries, infrastructure collapsing, huge migrations beginning, ecology destruction rampant. All signs of the entropy/decay of human civilization.
onlooker on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 7:20 pm
one of the biggest signs of the Entropy is precisely the shameless chicanery and corruption by both politicians and corporate leaders. Look at Exxon Mobil and the Cigarette companies lying for so long about what they knew what deleterious effects of their product. Tell me if we all do not wince now and just how corrupt the financial system is or politics. So that to me is a big sign of entropy
Cloggie on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 7:37 pm
Oh sorry forgot to mention Europe does have land, something China is eager to get.
China is on the other end of Eurasia, that’s a long walk…through Russia, that has nukes.
Cloggie, You just ignore facts and anything that might cause you to think or open your eyes.
But you are not going to reveal what that facts might be. Just remain abstract.
Europe is devolving into chaos and internal wars again
Dream on. You are the one who admitted that one of the reasons you fled your country was to avoid the coming civil war. That’s indeed the only good reason for you to move to the Ps. We in Europe are further away from that prospect than the US.
Cloggie, sees renewable/alternatives even as the Oil Age is winding down and Economies are barely staying afloat.
Talk for yourself onlooker. You are the world’s greatest debtor and have negative trade balances with literally everybody.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/06/reuters-america-german-current-account-surplus-to-hit-record-high-worlds-largest-in-2016–ifo.html
But the worst thing is that below 5 years old you are no longer majority white. Third world USA is next.
Just building your walls is going to bankrupt you.
The walls are already in place in Eastern Europe and have sealed off the invader routes. But we still have the traitor and Soros vassal Merkel in our midst. She will be dealt with.
And if the Soros bunch will return, don’t be surprised that Washington will find the entire world against it and get serious about de-Amerikanizing the world, as the Chinese prefer to call it.
The whole world has witnessed that Amerika is split in the middle between the liberals who want to continue with their silly empire and the heartland that wants to become a normal country. This can only result in civil war. The deplorables are already flirting with another “1776”. Civil wars are usually not very good for ones geopolitical stature.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 8:32 pm
Clog, the “heartland” wants religious schools and no atheists, so you’re out. No abortions and a bunch of other shit too. You just don’t get it. I’m not even talking about the fact you have never been around those people. You cherry pick and go to a great effort to ignore the parts of their beliefs that are contrary to yours. If we could plop you down into one of those Heartland towns, before the first week was up you would be crying to go back to your soft, multicultural, welfare state. You would not like their “normal” one bit old fool.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 8:36 pm
Clog, another thing for you and the other children. America is in the pickle it is because of Americans – all of them. Anyone who’s laying the blame on one “side” vs the other is living in a fucking cartoon world.Yab-a-dab-a-doo asshole.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 8:38 pm
Oh look. More infrastructure entropy (AGW helped out some).
State says repairs to crippled Oroville Dam could run as high as $200 million
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article132154774.html
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 8:42 pm
“It’s February 11th, and 100% of Oklahoma hit at least 80F!”
“Now to burst all our excitement QA met looked at raw data file Mangum top out at 99.41F or 37.45C. Rounding caused 100F in some files”
https://twitter.com/okmesonet
Uberant on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 10:50 pm
Human genome will continue decay because the unfit are breeding and out-breeding the fit. The end result of any social animal is to become like penguins or ants. Brain power gets in the way of socialization.
makati1 on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 11:12 pm
Fit? What is YOUR definition of “FIT”? Those like you? Or real people? Humans are not some breeding program like cattle. They are thinking animals that chose their mates for hundreds of different reasons, ‘fit’ never having been one of them, except like those ‘breeding programs’ of Hitler’s. Are you a Hitler groupie? lol
Sissyfuss on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 11:34 pm
Darling Cloggenfruitcake, your bifurcation is showing. Your empathy deprived hero, das Trumpenderhumper is the greatest enemy of renewables known to ecosystems. He’s all fossil fuels all the time. If it don’t burn, I will spurn. He’s is well down the road of sustainability destruction and you tell us he’s the answer. You must have the question wrong.
Anonymous on Sat, 11th Feb 2017 11:56 pm
cloggerster is a fraud. He keeps trying to convince anyone that will listen, that trump is amerika’s Vladimir Putin, a hard-core anti-NWO type. Hes nothing of the sort of course. When hes not shilling for trump, he pimping for another shill, Alex-the-fat-medicated-retard-Jones. The only one falling for that is his hill-billy buddy, the exceptionalist. Birds of a feather I guess. And if hes not doing either of those, he’s always informing us how his native hollandia is a de-fact post-scarcity, eco-utopia par excellence. The only thing the dutch dont appear to have(yet), according to clogged arteries, is vacations on the moon.
His love-affair with trumpy has ZERO to do with trumps non-existent anti-NWO credentials, and is almost entirely based on trumps climate-change denialism. It gives clogg a woody that the ‘president’ of the JewSA, is an unapologetic denialist. If Barack obomber, or shillary clinton even had been denialists, cloggo would have declared them both the greatest humans to ever live.
Cloggie on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 3:47 am
Clog, the “heartland” wants religious schools and no atheists, so you’re out. No abortions and a bunch of other shit too. You just don’t get it. I’m not even talking about the fact you have never been around those people. You cherry pick and go to a great effort to ignore the parts of their beliefs that are contrary to yours.
Friday, I couldn’t care less about religious schools and cowboys and what not. I did notice though that these bible thumpers have guns with which they can and will blow the brains out of big city libtards like you and siss and mouse. And I gladly leave it to you as an exercise to figure out who is going to support the cowboys in the coming standoff, after the Merkel clowns and the rest of the US c-suckers will have been dealt with:
http://tinyurl.com/jzppuek
Your empathy deprived hero, das Trumpenderhumper is the greatest enemy of renewables known to ecosystems. He’s all fossil fuels all the time. If it don’t burn, I will spurn. He’s is well down the road of sustainability destruction and you tell us he’s the answer.
Who cares? Trump will be gone in 8 years max. It gives the European industry a head start in all things renewable over the rest, just like the British had a head start with coal in the 19th and Americans with oil in the 20th century… with corresponding geopolitical clout. There is more to life than renewable energy or 10 CO2 ppm extra.
He keeps trying to convince anyone that will listen, that trump is amerika’s Vladimir Putin, a hard-core anti-NWO type.
Trump is not an American Putin, a Putin wannabee perhaps, but in reality an American Gorbachev, who is busy blowing up the American empire, whether he wants it or not. Trump wants to abolish NATO, wants Europeans to pay for their own defense, wants to build a fence to keep the darkies out and wants to represent European-American interests against corporate globalist interests. Ergo, Trump is hardcore anti-NWO. You just have to look at the hysterical hostile reactions of the real NWO crowd like media to know that Trump is hard-core anti-NWO. They didn’t react like this when Bush the Lesser won:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtJvYdX4GKM
Hardcore authoritarians like Stalin, Hitler, Putin and Trump is what it takes to defeat the heroes of the little guys like Friday, the folks without the Anglo big city libtards would be leaderless… and are going to be leaderless.
European America has drawn a line in sand and will not return to the days before 2016, no matter how these leftist judges try to sabotage Trumps measures or how much chosenites like Maher will make fun of Trump. America is preparing for the great showdown. Trump, that’s 2025 max. Shortly after Trump the US empire will be history.
https://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Superpower-Will-America-Survive-ebook/dp/B004YD36HS/ref=sr_1_1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMsCUeZ6rw
Darkie countries can’t be superpowers.
Fred on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 3:50 am
Hey Cloggie,
Are you saying that something written a while ago and hasn’t been updated for a while, has no merit, can’t be valid, has “died-off”? Come on, you must be able to do better.
Why don’t you read the article and then explain why you so clearly disagree with it’s findings?
TheNationalist on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:04 am
If the Trump administration pushes through their “protectionist policies” in the U.S. the emission reductions over the next decade or two may be substantial. I have seen some projections which show the current U.S. plans causing less “growth” in globalisation and marked lower emissions. Global emissions dropped nearly 2 percent last year and old Trumpy was just warmimg up.
*somewhere in the forums these graphs exist
Davy on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:14 am
Ape, you don’t know shit about the heartland. A dumbass west coast Canadian who is steeped in hypocrisy talks about the heartland he has never been to. Vancouver is just an extension of that US west coast attitude that lost the election and now is losing world leadership. You fit perfectly the victimization soup Kunstler talks about. Always whining about how bad everyone else is. We may be a mess here in the heartland but you could not pay me to live up in Canada.
Hubert on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:15 am
Most of the Western Countries are bankrupt and these losers have no real interest in pay it off.
A quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher goes along the lines of, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Margaret_Thatcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
makati1 on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:41 am
Hubert, you are right on. And the U$ leads the debtor parade by many trillions. It will never be paid and that is why many countries are dumping their USTs and USDs as fast as they can without causing a panic. They know they will soon be just paper of no or little value.
Antius on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:49 am
‘Who cares? Trump will be gone in 8 years max. It gives the European industry a head start in all things renewable over the rest, just like the British had a head start with coal in the 19th and Americans with oil in the 20th century… with corresponding geopolitical clout. There is more to life than renewable energy or 10 CO2 ppm extra.’
Clog, I find myself in agreement with much of your political analysis, but believe you expect too much from renewable energy. Coal and oil were able to support impressive economic growth in the last century because they provided excellent EROI on a whole systems basis. Britain’s growth rate never was very impressive, because most of it’s coal came from labour intensive deep mines. But it had a head start on everyone else.
For renewable energy, with back-up and storage factored in, EROI is weak, probably in single figures. Nuclear is better, depending on the technology used, but will probably never approach the high EROI of oil and gas in the wonder years of 20th century US.
Basically, there is no way for Europe to evolve into a new age industrial or cultural power house. Nuclear in one form or another has better EROI, but as you point out, has problems of its own. I wonder if the western world actually has the spending power necessary to buy the infrastructure needed for a nuclear or renewable future. In the case of Europe, I do believe there is any hope for renewable energy to replace the contribution of fossil fuels on an absolute basis. Remember, much of Europe does not have the wind resource of UK, Denmark or Netherlands and only the UK has significant wave or tidal resource. To live in this way would require a big reduction in population.
I personally think we should be thinking of building new generation nuclear power plants to bolster our economy. This is not a perfect or permanent solution. But it would keep the European economy going long enough for us to develop space colonisation in the 21st century. With that accomplished, we can start to replace nuclear energy with solar power satellites in the second half of the 21st C and import rare metals from Near Earth Asteroids. It will be an enormously difficult transition for humanity, but it is the only way I can see a happy ending for us all.
Cloggie on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:54 am
Most of the Western Countries are bankrupt and these losers have no real interest in pay it off.
Hubert, you are right on. And the U$ leads the debtor parade by many trillions. It will never be paid and that is why many countries are dumping their USTs and USDs as fast as they can without causing a panic.
Exactly right. The global Big Reset is coming, forget about peak oil and climate change hysteria. The contest is going to be who will default first: Greece or the US.
The thing I resent most about Richard Heinberg is that he failed to deliver on his predicted peak oil crash. What both Europe and America need most is a giant crash, necessary for some major creative destruction and systematically destroy modernity and its liberalism, economic totalitarianism, feminism, holocaust superstition and WW2 lies, third world-ism, easy divorce, gay parades, porn, refugee baloney, UN, devirilized men, giant shopping malls, giant stadiums, kosher egalitarian propaganda, holiday’s at the other side of the planet and the rest of the modernist satanic hoopla.
What we need are boring fifties that last for several decades.
makati1 on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 6:56 am
Ant, dream on. You and the clogmeister are both drowning in the ‘renewables/alternates’ Koolaid. In 8 years the EU will be gone. The Euro will be gone. Maybe even Europe will be gone under hundreds of mushroom clouds. Keep your little NATO play soldiers banging on the Russian Bear and you will not need to worry about energy. You will not exist. Or, you will be bowing to Mecca 5 times a day and hoping you are not beheaded by your bearded neighbor.
Davy on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:01 am
I am happy to see Trump in power. He is causing destructive change to a broken system. The issue of stemming globalism is a scary one. We are talking about a system that delivers more than any alternative can. Even those who are not part of the visible prosperity are being supported by a system that may give them more than the alternative. Those upset by being left out of the prosperity of globalism may only see their plight get worse. This is not going to be about fairness. It is going to be about a steamroller of fate. Those who want change do not realize what change might mean. Nothing is going to produce goods and services like globalism so we should acknowledge its end will mean more pain.
The upside of this is we may as a people be made more sustainable and resilient through this pain. The disruption of global trends will force people into alternatives like localism. Bad attitudes and lifestyles of affluence may be altered. Maybe industrialization will decline lowering CO2. I am still of the opinion abrupt climate change is baked into the cake so this will be insignificant. It looks like nature’s feedbacks will now dwarf human contributions. I see this end as a beginning of a plan B of sorts that develops out of the failures of nationalism. Nationalism cannot give us more and only leave us with less. Its real beauty is its destructiveness of its failures.
It should be clear to any of us who are here on a regular basis and understand the predicament we are in that we must slow this process down. There is no getting out of jail free card. My feelings are the sooner we embrace the pain of destructive change the sooner adaptations will occur. This is of course a gamble because we may not survive this change. We may hasten the destructive forces without a landing at more stability. This is a question of fate of an undefined process. It will be about judgment of sorts. Any of those global locals built upon unsustainability will be judged harshly. Fossil fuels and complexity has allowed mega cities with no future and urban areas to inhabit unsustainable places. Local without sustainability will be tried early on. Those locals who have resilience built into them have a chance to survive this destructive process.
No place is immune because risk has been dispersed globally through delocalization. All locals now are directly or indirectly exposed to decline. Even poor sustainable areas are exposed to migrations out of unsustainable areas. Climate and ecosystem destruction is globally spread. Luck is going to play an oversized role here because we are all vulnerable even though some are much more than others. The reason luck is such a potent factor is the nature of the unfolding of a collapse process. This is an A-Z of possibilities. It could be economic or it could be climate with a long list of others. What is even more dangerous is the comingling of different processes making these mixtures force multipliers.
We live in a global world but we still inhabit a local world. If you are in a local that has good bones you are better prepared from the get-go. If you can find a better prepared local. If you can’t do what you can to make your immediate surrounding better prepared. We are still in the prelude of collapse of globalism. We are not even sure this will go very far. Nationalist have gained momentum but is that momentum the inertia needed to reverse globalism or will this process just be absorbed back into the status quo. It is not even apparent if destroying the status quo is the best option but it is an option. Like it or not this option is being entertained by nationalist. These nationalist are entertaining it for selfish reasons because that is what nationalism is about. The reality is globalism is about self-interest too but more cooperatively. We are on the cusp of change in a paradigm shift of decline. It may be the case that nothing will matter because the degree of change will be so strong. Nationalism might be just an insignificant hiccup in this process.
Antius on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:11 am
‘Ant, dream on. You and the clogmeister are both drowning in the ‘renewables/alternates’ Koolaid. In 8 years the EU will be gone. The Euro will be gone. Maybe even Europe will be gone under hundreds of mushroom clouds. Keep your little NATO play soldiers banging on the Russian Bear and you will not need to worry about energy. You will not exist. Or, you will be bowing to Mecca 5 times a day and hoping you are not beheaded by your bearded neighbor.’
That could be the way of it. However, the winds of change are starting to blow in European politics. First Brexit, then Trump, hopefully Le Pen will be next. These people will try their damndest to slam the door on the Islamic heathen. And they are far more likely to take the sort of long term view that I have outlined. It isn’t easy and it may not be the most likely outcome, but it is the best one that I can see.
Cloggie on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:22 am
Antius, we are not going to convince each other about the very fundamental nuclear/renewable choice. But there is no pressing energy problem:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2593032/Coal-fuel-UK-centuries-Vast-deposits-totalling-23trillion-tonnes-North-Sea.html
Britain has fossil fuel reserves perhaps 30 times the cumulative world consumption to date that can be exploited via Underground Coal Gasification, no mining necessary. Britain doesn’t need nuclear other than for its war heads.
The UK government is apparently confident it doesn’t need to resort to UCG, but the reserves will be patiently waiting:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/uk-government-rejects-ucg/
Obviously we should not opt for this UCG future, but at least we are not going to run out of energy before we have set up a renewable energy base.
About the privileged position of the states bordering the North Sea… there isn’t any. The oceans are free to exploit:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/windfloats/
You can set up giant wind farms in the North Atlantic and convert the electricity in gas and pump them into tankers.
Davy on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:40 am
Antius, I am sorry I have not introduced makati. makati is a 75 year old American expat living in a cheap condo in Manila on a SS stipend. He is in a mega 3rd world metropolis that is a series of urban areas connecting in a mega urban region of 20MIL. He is in the crosshairs of climate change in a small Island nation of 100MIL that around 1900 had 7.5MIL. Making matters worse he is in Asia with 4.5BIL people confined to a region being destroyed by a quick drive of industrialization and urbanization. Nothing good can come out of this.
If any region has a better shot at surviving the destructive change ahead it will surely be Europe that is focused on leaving fossil fuels. Clog is a hopeless case of techno optimism but the facts are clear that Europe is taking the problems of a declining modern civilization seriously. You both are much better positioned than makati in his mega urban death trap. You are better position than my region who has yet to embrace the focus of leaving fossil fuels. IMA, I greatly appreciate both you and clog giving us alternative energy updates from your continent’s efforts at change.
Davy on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:43 am
Clog, you will get a kick out of this:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-12/latest-proctologist-cover
Cloggie on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:52 am
Haha!
Davy on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 7:58 am
LOL, good, we have enough snowflakes here already.
“Canadian school cancels trips to US due to ‘unsafe’ political climate”
https://www.rt.com/news/377110-canada-school-trips-unsafe-us/
“A Canadian school has canceled trips to the US because of the “unsafe” political situation created by President Trump’s travel ban. The decision was taken before the restriction was blocked by US courts. The school board in Windsor, Ontario, which is separated from Detroit, Michigan by a river, has canceled all trips across the border planned for this month because it considers the political landscape of its close neighbor to be too unpredictable and “unsafe.”
Antius on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 8:03 am
Clog, it is possible that UCG could be part of a solution, but I think the UK’s rejection of it may relate to deeper technological problems.
We are talking about seams that are deep underground, typically more than 1km and are waterlogged. Getting this energy out, will require setting up a rig in the sea and pumping pure oxygen into the seam at very high pressure. We then must get the coal to burn. What comes out will not be high quality methane, but a much lower energy density mix of CO, H2, CO2, steam and tar-like products. We must compress this and pump it to shoreside power plants. I wonder if this energy source might not suffer from the same issues as shale oil and gas. It may require a high drilling rate to set up new pockets of combustion and draw off the partially combusted gases.
I may be wrong, but it doesn’t look to me as if this is a straightforward thing to do. It would appear to have similar EROI problems to shale gas. But I am speculating. It should be seriously considered and studied.
Antius on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 8:11 am
‘Antius, I am sorry I have not introduced makati. makati is a 75 year old American expat living in a cheap condo in Manila on a SS stipend. He is in a mega 3rd world metropolis that is a series of urban areas connecting in a mega urban region of 20MIL. He is in the crosshairs of climate change in a small Island nation of 100MIL that around 1900 had 7.5MIL. Making matters worse he is in Asia with 4.5BIL people confined to a region being destroyed by a quick drive of industrialization and urbanization. Nothing good can come out of this.
If any region has a better shot at surviving the destructive change ahead it will surely be Europe that is focused on leaving fossil fuels. Clog is a hopeless case of techno optimism but the facts are clear that Europe is taking the problems of a declining modern civilization seriously. You both are much better positioned than makati in his mega urban death trap. You are better position than my region who has yet to embrace the focus of leaving fossil fuels. IMA, I greatly appreciate both you and clog giving us alternative energy updates from your continent’s efforts at change.’
Thanks Davy. I guess I am fortunate enough to live in a prosperous, largely white area in northern Britain. I am 37 years old, earn a very good wage and I am still foolish and idealistic enough to think that I might change the world. I need a few more years of seeing things turn to crap, so I can become old and bitter like Makati 🙂
Cloggie on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 8:33 am
Clog, it is possible that UCG could be part of a solution, but I think the UK’s rejection of it may relate to deeper technological problems.
There is no reference to technological problems in the UK government report, only pollution:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/08/underground-coal-gasification-uk-gas-coal
Some UCG pointers:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/fracking-is-for-amateurs/
joe on Sun, 12th Feb 2017 9:17 am
Can’t seriously say Trump symbolises greater Entropy than say Chairman Mao. Without Hitler certainly Germany would not rule the doomed EU and Britain would probobly still possess much of the world. So called geopolitics is litterally human interaction usually on the earths surface. If anything this oily age tends towards order, not chaos. Peak oil is solving that issue. As we go crazy looking to mine tight oil and easy oil dries up, we will go back to desperation, where the Hitlers of the world win over people by doing something as seemingly simple as providing bread and feeding children. We are only 3 meals from chaos, never forget.
Trump, Trump is a marshmallow, nothing more. He can only help himself.