Doomstead Diner Discussion: Whither China?

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On Sunday afternoon, June 15, the Doomstead Diner hosted a video discussion of the prospects for China. In addition to Doomstead‘s RE and Monsta (or whatever their real names are), the discussion included me, Tom Lewis, of The Daily Impact and Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence, Italy and the blog Cassandra Legacy. Or whatever our real names are. Running time is just over an hour — an hour you will never get back.

It’s Official: The Shale-Oil Boom is Over

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A Halliburton fracking setup in North Dakota’s Bakken play. “Whaddaya mean it’s over? We just got this thing connected!” (Wikipedia Photo)

A Halliburton fracking setup in North Dakota’s Bakken play. “Whaddaya mean it’s over? We just got this thing connected!” (Wikipedia Photo)

It comes now from the US Energy Information Agency, and is headlined by Bloomberg Business, so yes, it’s official. As Bloomberg put it, “US Shale Boom Grinds to a Halt.” Which, actually, is overstating the case by a good bit, there isn’t going to be a “halt.” Nevertheless, as sane people everywhere have been insisting for years, the shale boom is, as it always was going to be, a bust.

This — now official — assessment is in the form of a set of projections by the EIA, which, we should remember, has pretty consistently been overly optimistic in its assessment of the oil business. Remember, they were the folks who estimated that the Monterey Shale in California held 14 billion barrels of recoverable reserves — two-third of America’s total oil wealth — until they ran the numbers again and re-estimated the Monterey at 96% lower. Continue reading →

China, the Paper Tiger

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Is China a paper tiger or a pussycat? It depends on which numbers you look at. (Photo by Jinzl’s Public Domain Photos/Flickr)

Is China a paper tiger or a pussycat? It depends on which numbers you look at.
(Photo by Jinzl’s Public Domain Photos/Flickr)

The punditocracy assembled yesterday, as they do every Sunday, to yelp their yin-yang talking points that pass, these days, for wisdom. Mostly they want to talk about who, a year and a half from now, might be chosen as the new captain of the Titanic — Hillary or anti-Hillary? Then, like the proverbial elephant terrorized by a mouse, they vent about the latest pimply-faced adolescent who, dreaming of celebrity and inspired by an ISIS website, takes the first giant step toward jihad: gets in touch with an FBI informant for his very own ACME bomb-making kit. Then before the pundits rest, they make their fervent nominations for our next war. Continue reading →

Coming Soon to Us All: The Choice Worse Than Sophie’s

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Sophie had to choose which child would live and which would die. Now multiply that problem by a couple orders of magnitude. (Photo by Bill Strain/Flickr)

Sophie had to choose which child would live and which would die. Now multiply that problem by a couple orders of magnitude. (Photo by Bill Strain/Flickr)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, desperate citizens of New Orleans seeking water, food and shelter began streaming by the thousands out of the city on foot over the US Route 90 bridge across the Mississippi River and into to the city of Gretna, Louisiana. The city had no electricity, no water, no medical services and little in the way of a functioning government. It had been this way for three days when the refugees began streaming in, and unless conditions improved almost immediately, the people of Gretna were looking at severe privation. So they closed the city. Put a line of armed police across the Interstate Bridge and turned the refugees back. Sorry. Can’t help you.

The story has haunted me for nearly ten years. Not just because it is one of the gnarliest ethical problems I have ever come across. But also because in the aftermath of the crash of the Industrial Age — perhaps well before the crash, during the current preliminary stresses — every one of us is going to face the kind of decision Gretna had to make. We will be asked to give help to distressed neighbors when giving that help will endanger our own survival. How will we answer? Continue reading →

Oil Money: Too Dumb to Fail

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Bankers on the trading floor at CITI make a market in the latest derivatives of derivatives. (Photo by Mike Licht/NotionsCapital.com)

We interrupt the Crash of 2015 for a brief word from some people who are not participating, on the belief that the oil boat — having been hit by two icebergs, dwindling resources and plunging prices — is not sinking, it is merely bobbing in a trough between two lovely crests. We will return to the previously scheduled sinking as soon as these folks discover once again that no matter how much stupidity and cash you pump into a ship with an enormous hole in the hull, you can’t save it. Continue reading →

First the Fuel Subsidies Come Off. Then the Wheels.

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(Photo by okinawatakarabako.com)

“Damn! I can’t afford this! I just filled up with gas!” (Photo by okinawatakarabako.com)

A funny thing happens when countries can no longer afford massive subsidies to keep down the cost to consumers of fossil fuels: the governments stop paying, and their country stops dead, or changes governments. Cheap fuel was once a perk for anyone who happened to live in an oil-rich country. But the perk has become an entitlement, and woe betide the country who, upon discovering it is not in fact oil rich anymore, tries to balance the books by charging its people the actual cost of fuel.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil exporter, and third largest economy, yet it has desperate needs for investment in roads, power generation and water systems. The two principal reasons these needs have been unmet are generations of rampant government corruption, and the roughly $8 billion a year in fuel subsidies. In March, a new government won election on promises to stop the corruption and the subsidies. Continue reading →

The Crash of 2015: Going Global

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Titanic_sinking,_painting_by_Willy_Stöwer

First you get some stowaway yelling avbout being “king of the world.” Then there’s this iceberg….

Just in the past week, the headlines have been coming like triphammer blows: in Bloomberg News, “Something has gone wrong with the global consumer,” (according to JP Morgan); in International Business Times, “G7 Finance Ministers to address faltering global growth;” in London’s Telegraph, “HSBC fears world recession with no lifeboats left;” in OilPrice.com, “Clock running out for struggling oil companies;” and even in the mainstream vanilla Washington Post, a column by Robert Samuelson predicts “China’s coming crash,” then puts a question mark at the end to make sure we don’t worry too much.

When you add these concerns to longer standing ones about wild gyrations in the world’s stock and bond markets; the advent of peak oil in pretty much every oil-exporting country in the world; the onset of the effects of global climate change in California, the Middle East, North Africa, Brazil and elsewhere; it becomes apparent that optimism ought to be listed as a disorder requiring medical intervention. Continue reading →

What’s Next — Evolution or Extinction?

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(Poster by sorah42/funnie.st)

Our friends at the Doomstead Diner (they frequently repost Daily Impact essays) have caused a bit of an uproar among doomers — their term for people who believe the crash of industrial society is imminent — by conducting a poll on whether and when all humanity will be extinguished by the collapse. The Human Extinction Survey immediately revealed strong differences and strong feelings among the doomers surveyed. Just a few years ago it was controversial in the extreme to raise the prospect of collapse; now the idea is moving to the mainstream but wait, extinction? Yikes. Continue reading →

GOP and Coal Launch War on America

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This is how the Republican Coal War will look, fought not with artillery but smokestacks. It’s a war no one can win. (Photo by alohaspirit/iStock)

This is how the Republican Coal War will look, fought not with artillery but smokestacks. It’s a war no one can win. (Photo by alohaspirit/iStock)

To celebrate their coming to power in the United States Senate, Republicans this week launched their answer to the imaginary “War on Coal” by declaring war on clean air, and thus on all of us. Newly elected West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito introduced a bill that would make it impossible for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions from coal-burning power plants. Climate-change-denier-in-chief James Inhofe, celebrated for bringing a snowball onto the floor of the Senate in February to prove that global warming is a hoax, cheered Capito on from his throne at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Continue reading →

New U.S. Recession Already Here

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** ARCHIV ** Hostess Kim Sturmhoefel geht am 19. Maerz 2004 am Microsoft-Stand auf der Cebit in Hannover eine Treppe hinab. Dem Software Hersteller droht eine Strafe der Europaeischen Union wegen Verstosses gegen EU-Wettbewerbsregeln in der erwarteten Rekordhoehe von 497 Millionen Euro. Am Mittwoch, 24. Maerz 2004, will Wettbewerbskommissar Mario Monti die Entscheidung verkuenden. (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach) --- Hostess Kim Sturmhoefel steps down some stairs at the booth of U.S. software giant Microsoft at the Cebit 2004 in Hanover, northern Germany, March 19, 2004. The European Union treathened Microsoft with an expected record fine of 497 million euro (US$ 612 million) for alleged antitrust abuses. An EU decision is expected Wednesday, March 24, 2004. (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach)

We hear every day from the bean counters whose jobs require them to play in the Don’t-Worry-Be-Happy Band, whose favorite numbers (by which I mean their favorites, not ours) are “Recovery is Bustin’ Out All Over,” “Happy Days are Here Again,” and “When I am a Rich Man.” The other, independent bean counters are hard to hear amid the blaring brass, but if you pay attention you can hear what they’re yelling: the next recession has already started.

When the federal government reported yesterday on the growth of retail sales last month, there wasn’t any. Growth, that is. Continue reading →