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Forget Peak Oil Demand, Supply Crisis Could be Hitting First

In today’s IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook 2020 report, the OECD energy watchdog states that it doesn’t see a peak oil demand before 2040, only a possible oil demand flattening. The energy agency repeats that oil demand is effected by COVID, but all scenarios show that oil demand has not peaked yet. The energy agency contradicts here the views currently being proponed by BP and others that oil demand has peaked already. The report bluntly states that after recovering from the “exceptional ferocity” of the COVID-19 crisis, world oil demand will rise from 97.9 million bpd in 2019 to 104.1 million bpd in 2040.

Even that the agency acknowledges that demand has been hit and is lagging behind 2019 levels, overall demand will increase, only the increase will be slightly slower than expected. The Paris-based agency, financed by the OECD governments, and lately known as a main proponent of energy transition and renewables, expects that a slower increase of oil demand the coming years will be caused by clean transport policies and surging renewable energy. At the same time the IEA also reiterates that demand for petrochemicals and global growth of long-distance transport will be leading to a net increase of oil demand until 2040.

It needs to be reiterated that several major factors are very unsure that could have a major impact on global oil demand growth. The current assessments are all taking into account a wide range of proposed and/or signed energy transition and net-zero emission government policies.

These will have an impact if fully implemented by all. Looking at the current situation, especially due to COVID-related economic issues, renewable and emission reduction policies could however become sidelined, delayed or put on ice. The need for a revamp of the global economies is clear, but choices will be made by respective constituencies without full focus on climate change and renewables.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How one Swedish city grew the commons by foodsharing during the pandemic

October 17, 2020

How one Swedish city grew the commons by foodsharing during the pandemic

A Solikyl volunteer waits for someone to approach her table. Photo credit: Rikard Rensfelt

It’s more hands-on than soup kitchens or free-food giveaways, it strengthens the commons — and you can even do it during a pandemic.

It’s called foodsharing, and the way it’s growing in Gothenburg, Sweden, just might be a model for the rest of the world.

Taking root

Foodsharing is a practice developed in Germany, where volunteers visit grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, and other such businesses, to collect high quality food that would otherwise have been thrown away.

Foodsharing groups give away food in various ways — sometimes through short events and sometimes through public or semi-public pantries or fridges.

Although making use of excess food is not new as a practice, a German website, Foodsharing.de, has enabled community groups to form quickly and organize effectively.

The phenomenon has since moved to non-German-speaking countries with the help of Karrot, a website that enables groups of people to organize around collecting and distributing things — such as old clothes, bicycles and food — that would otherwise be thrown away.

“Solidarity Fridge”

A few people at a time visit the tables to collect food. Photo credit: Rikard Rensfelt

Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, is home to a variety of initiatives that support resource sharing between individuals.

This includes the foodsharing group Solikyl, which reorganized its practices as the pandemic swept the country, learning how to minimize exposure to the virus, while also expanding its partnerships.

Solikyl — which translates as “solidarity fridge” — organizes itself as a food commons. Unlike traditional charities, which rely on volunteers to collect and distribute food to clients, Solikyl and other foodsharing groups organize themselves to help one another.

Thus, the people visiting the grocery stores to pick up food donations are also allowed to use the food themselves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

World Economic Forum Outlines Its ‘Great Reset’ to End Traditional Capitalism

October 15, 2020

World Economic Forum Outlines Its ‘Great Reset’ to End Traditional Capitalism

AP Photo/Michel Euler

The coronavirus crisis presents an opportunity for a “new kind of capitalism” and “great reset” of global economies, politics, and societies, according to World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab.

In an article published Monday by the WEF, an impatient Schwab claims neo-liberalism is dead and with it traditional notions of economic capitalism.

In their place is a set of “Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics” the WEF says enables the world to progress under one set of overarching rules as drawn up by it, with “social justice” a key component of this brave new world.

This restructure of the way we do business is the new model for the “great reset” Schwab argues, adding he foresees the coronavirus crisis as too good an opportunity not to “re-evaluate sacred cows of the pre-pandemic system.”

He outlines his argument by pointing to just how serious the epidemic has been to the way we live now: Schwab writes:

No event since World War II’s end has had as profound a global impact as COVID-19. The pandemic has triggered a public health and economic crisis on a scale unseen in generations and has exacerbated systemic problems such as inequality and great-power posturing.

The only acceptable response to such a crisis is to pursue a “Great Reset” of our economies, politics, and societies. Indeed, this is a moment to re-evaluate the sacred cows of the pre-pandemic system, but also to defend certain long-held values. The task we face is to preserve the accomplishments of the past 75 years in a more sustainable form.

Schwab believes that if the Chinese coronavirus crisis has shown us anything, it is “that governments, businesses, or civil-society groups acting alone cannot meet systemic global challenges.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto

October 15, 2020

Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto

Pandemic politics highlight how predictions need to be transparent and humble to invite insight, not blame.

Cartoon of scientists and policymakers inspecting the inside of a black box that is outputting a policy document — Illustration by David Parkins

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates perfectly how the operation of science changes when questions of urgency, stakes, values and uncertainty collide — in the ‘post-normal’ regime.

Well before the coronavirus pandemic, statisticians were debating how to prevent malpractice such as p-hacking, particularly when it could influence policy¹. Now, computer modelling is in the limelight, with politicians presenting their policies as dictated by ‘science’². Yet there is no substantial aspect of this pandemic for which any researcher can currently provide precise, reliable numbers. Known unknowns include the prevalence and fatality and reproduction rates of the virus in populations. There are few estimates of the number of asymptomatic infections, and they are highly variable. We know even less about the seasonality of infections and how immunity works, not to mention the impact of social-distancing interventions in diverse, complex societies.

Mathematical models produce highly uncertain numbers that predict future infections, hospitalizations and deaths under various scenarios. Rather than using models to inform their understanding, political rivals often brandish them to support predetermined agendas. To make sure predictions do not become adjuncts to a political cause, modellers, decision makers and citizens need to establish new social norms. Modellers must not be permitted to project more certainty than their models deserve; and politicians must not be allowed to offload accountability to models of their choosing²^,³.

This is important because, when used appropriately, models serve society extremely well: perhaps the best known are those used in weather forecasting. These models have been honed by testing millions of forecasts against reality.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can we Predict Collapses Before they Happen? What we Learned from the Pandemic

October 15, 2020

Can we Predict Collapses Before they Happen? What we Learned from the Pandemic

My 2019 book “Before the Collapse.” In it, I examined several scenarios of the future of humankind. Was I able to predict the current pandemic? Of course not in the details, but I think that I did note an important facet of the story: epidemics are never very deadly when they come alone. They become true killers only when they are associated famines. In the case of the current coronavirus pandemic, the human population is not so badly debilitated by famines that we should have expected disasters comparable to those caused by ancient epidemics. So, we could have been better prepared if we had paid more attention to history. But the main thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history. And so it goes. This post includes a review of the book written by Daniel Ruiz.

After nearly one year from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, we can say that, at the very least, we learned a lot from it. One lesson was that we should be much more careful about “model hubris”, to think that because a model is complex and detailed, it can predict the future. This problem is well described in a recent paper by Saltelli et al. in a recent paper in “Nature.”

But perhaps the most important lesson we learned was how easy the future can surprise us and how our perception of it can be remote from reality. We tend to judge on the basis of our past experience, but our mental models are often poorly calibrated. When the COVID-19 started diffusing in the West, many people panicked, some seemed to think that it really was the end of the world. Maybe they had in mind as a model the great plague of the Middle Ages, an image that has been with us for centuries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Has oil peaked?

October 10, 2020

Has oil peaked?

Last month, the world’s 4^th largest oil company—BP—predicted that the world will never again consume as much petroleum as it did last year. So, have we finally hit peak oil? And if so, what does that mean for our economy and our world?

There was fierce controversy in the first decade of this century over claims by petroleum geologists and energy commentators that peak oil was imminent (I was a figure in that debate, writing several books on the topic). Most of those early claims were based on analysis of oil depletion and consequent supply constraints. BP, however, is talking about a peak in oil demand—which, according to its forecast, could fall by more than 10 percent this decade and as much as 50 percent over the next 20 years if the world takes strong action to limit climate change.

Source: PeakOilBarrel.com; production in thousands of barrels per day.

Numbers from the US Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Review tell us that world oil production (not counting biofuels and natural gas liquids) actually hit its zenith, so far at least, in November 2018, nearly reaching 84.5 million barrels per day. After that, production rates stalled, then plummeted in response to collapsing demand during the coronavirus pandemic. The current production level stands at about 76 mb/d.

Many early peak oil analysts predicted that the maximum rate of oil production would be achieved in the 2005-to-2010 timeframe, after which supplies would decline minimally at first, then more rapidly, causing prices to skyrocket and the economy to crash.

Those forecasters were partly right and partly wrong. Conventional oil production did plateau starting in 2005, and oil prices soared in 2007, helping trigger the Great Recession.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The One Assured Outcome of the Election

October 9, 2020

The One Assured Outcome of the Election

Ever since the crash of 2008, a trend has developed in U.S. election debate: the near complete avoidance of serious discussion about the economy. Ron Paul was the last candidate to attack the subject with any energy, and that was quite a while ago now. The economic decline of our nation is being aggressively ignored, even though it is the most important issue of the past century.

For example, talk about the actions of the Federal Reserve over the past decade has fallen off the radar. Both sides of the aisle love the Fed and both sides are happy to let the central bank print the dollar into oblivion. Both sides have mentioned little or nothing about the current stagflationary wave hitting the country, causing price inflation in many necessities, from food to electricity to rent (except for certain major cities where no one want to live right now). And all examination of globalism and forced interdependency has ceased, even though global interdependency in manufacturing is one of the major causes of supply chain shortages and price inflation right now.

The real unemployment rate remains high, holding at 26.9% when accounting for U-6 measurements. While some jobs have been recovered from the initial COVID lockdown, most of these are part-time, low-wage retail and fast food jobs. The question that might arise during the election is: Which side is more likely to keep the lockdowns going despite the economic disaster they are helping to cause? That award obviously goes to Biden, though the President continues to leave lockdown decisions to state governments, which means they will probably remain an issue regardless of the election outcome.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scavenger or thief: The line will continue to blur

October 5, 2020

Scavenger or thief: The line will continue to blur

The role of scavenger in nature is to find that which others have discarded or which no longer has life. Vultures are the best-known example of a species that lives off the dead carcasses of other animals. Many insects act as scavengers as well.

Human scavengers go by many names: junk removal—the junk man often reclaims things of value even as we pay him to take them away—recycling companies, and finally, those who out of economic necessity rummage through trash cans and pick out containers redeemable for a deposit that others leave behind.

In the human world, the more desperate the times, the more scavenging people are likely to do and the less stuff there will be to go around. That’s when scavenging may cross the line into theft.

I was struck by a piece on the damage being done to the South African railways as they have been poorly guarded and far less used in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “[P]erpetrators removed windows, lights, seats, water taps, guard rails and the entire roof of the buildings…,” according to the report. Electric cable and track are being looted as well.

The writer does say that theft has gone on for years and accelerated recently due to lack of security. As a result travelers are having to find other ways to get around as the system continues to be degraded.

Unfortunately, I believe what is happening to railways in South Africa is a preview of the not-to-distant future practically everywhere. I do not believe we are done with the current economic downturn. As the economic slump renews itself, more and more people will become desperate for cash with which to buy food and pay for shelter, if they have any. They will lay their hands on anything salable that is accessible and that taking offers minimal chance of arrest or harm.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why am I feeling so anxious? The end of modernism arrives

October 3, 2020

Why am I feeling so anxious? The end of modernism arrives

A friend of mine quipped that it is one thing to talk about the end of modernism—as the two of us have been doing for over 25 years—and quite another to live through it. It might seem that such notions are far too abstract to account for the anxiety of our fraught times. But underneath all the disorder we see in our pandemic-plagued economic, social and political lives is the crumbling of key assumptions about what we call modernity, a period of “enlightenment” that has supposedly freed us from the past.

First, let me recount what I regard as four key assumptions of modernism—I’ve written about them before—which are being demolished every day right before our eyes with the help of an invisible virus.

Humans are in one category and nature is in another.
Scale doesn’t matter.
History can be safely ignored since modern society has seen through the delusions of the past.
Science is a unified, coherent field that explains the rational principles by which we can manage the physical world.

The next thing I need to remind you is that modernism is as much a religion as any other. In the not-too-distant past, whenever anyone raised questions about its basic tenets—directly or indirectly in one form or another—that person was quickly shushed. If the person persisted, he or she was then shamed. If shaming didn’t work, then that person was shunned or even unceremoniously ejected from the party.

Enter COVID-19.

The very first thing COVID-19 reminded us is that humans and nature are both in the same category, whatever you want to call it. (My favorite living French thinker Bruno Latour proposed the compound term “nature-culture” in his seminal book We Have Never Been Modern.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What’s Behind the Fed’s Project to Send Free Money to People Directly?

October 3, 2020

What’s Behind the Fed’s Project to Send Free Money to People Directly?

A lump-sum payment in digital dollars for all Americans during a recession or to raise inflation, as an alternative to QE and negative interest rates, which have failed.

By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript of my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT. You can listen to it on YouTube or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

There is a lot of discussion suddenly about a Federal Reserve project to make direct payments to households during an economic crisis. In March, legislation was proposed in the House and in the Senate to authorize the Fed to do this.

At the beginning of August, two former Fed officials floated a trial balloon of this type of operation with some specifics as to how it would work and how it would be accounted for on the Fed’s balance sheet.

And now, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Loretta Mester, gave a speech on the modernization of the decades-old, slow, and cumbersome payment systems we have in the United States. The Fed has been working on this modernization since long before the Pandemic. And near the end of that speech, she said that the Fed was looking into ways in which it could make direct and instant payments to every American, even those that don’t have bank accounts.

So free money for all Americans. This is very different from the stimulus checks because the government had to borrow the money that it sent to consumers. The Fed would just create the money and send it to consumers. And this is getting pretty serious now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Empire of Uncertainty

October 2, 2020

The Empire of Uncertainty

Anyone claiming they can project the trajectory of the U.S. and global economy is deluding themselves.

Normalcy depends entirely on everyday life being predictable. To be predictable, life must be stable, which means that there is a high level of certainty in every aspect of life.

The world has entered an era of profound uncertainty, an uncertainty that will only increase as self-reinforcing feedbacks strengthen disrupting dynamics and perverse incentives drive unintended consequences.

It may be more accurate to say that we’ve entered the Empire of Uncertainty, an empire of ambiguous borders and treacherous topology.

A key driver of uncertainty is the Covid-19 virus, which is a slippery little beast. Nine months after its emergence on the world stage, discoveries are still being made about its fundamental nature.

Humans crave certainty, as ambiguity and uncertainty create unbearable anxiety. This desire to return to a predictable “normal” drives us to grasp onto whatever is being touted as a certainty: a cure, a vaccine, a fiscal policy to restore the “Old Normal” economy, etc.

But none of these proposed certainties is actually certain, and those touting these certainties are non-experts who latch onto an “expert” opinion that resolves their need for certainty and predictability.

What we want, of course, is a return to old certainties that we’re familiar with. In the context of pandemic, the model most people are working from is a conventional flu pandemic: a certain number of people get the virus and become ill, a certain number of then die, and those who survive resume their old life.

But there is mounting evidence that Covid-19 doesn’t follow this neat pattern of “the dead are gone and everyone else picks up where they left off.” Counting the dead as the key statistic completely ignores the long-term consequences of Covid-19 that include permanent organ damage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Propaganda Game & Nothing But Blue Skies

October 1, 2020

The Propaganda Game & Nothing But Blue Skies

COMMENT: I don’t know if anyone has informed you of this, but the UK government is heavily advertising their new Track and Trace app on all platforms. I’ve seen it on Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads and not to mention billboards on every street corner and bus stop. I’ve worked at an online marketing agency and I know the costs of these types of campaigns. The number of impressions and clicks must cost them a fortune. The ads are of the most persistent and visible kind, which are of course the most expensive ones.

Unless these big tech companies are giving them huge discounts, the costs don’t add up to the problem. If there’s a vaccine coming in a couple of months, this app shouldn’t have to be necessary after that anymore. So why use so much money in advertising an app that will be completely useless and mass-deleted in just a couple of months?

I have proof of this in the form of screenshots but unfortunately, I can’t seem to attach them in this contact form, but you could ask anyone who is in the UK right now and they could confirm it.

Londoner

REPLY: Thank you for your input from your unique perspective. There is clearly an agenda here and they are indeed discussing in London using LOCKDOWNS to prevent climate change. Klaus Schwab has sold this idea that the economy can be restructured in less than a year and he is also in partners with Thomas Piketty, the French Communist economist who wants to confiscate all wealth from anyone who has more than him and redistribute it for he claims the problem with the economy is equality. These people do not believe in freedom, democracy, or human rights.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

London Police Attack COVID Protestors on Saturday 9/26/2020

September 27, 2020

London Police Attack COVID Protestors on Saturday 9/26/2020

Once again, the London police continue to support the government and attacked peaceful protestors in Trafalgar Square. No matter what the evidence, the government is maintaining these Draconian lockdowns. We can see that the protest was peaceful until the police showed up to brutally abuse the rights of the people that will suppress their own family’s future.

Unfortunately, the London police are supporting absolute tyranny. This is clearly part of this global agenda to hand sovereignty to the United Nations. It may sound more like a conspiracy theory, but already there is talk in London that they will next use these lockdowns to combat Climate Change. Keeping people from commuting to work to reduce fuel consumption. Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London and also a Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She has bought into the UN agenda and claims that the world is “approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions.”

Mazzucato is suggesting that if we do not reduce CO2, then these lockdowns will be justified to save the planet. We are already dealing with a fake pandemic, which is clearly being used to expand the powers of government. They have Europe in their back-pocket, New Zealand, and of course Australia under the insane control of the madman Daniels Andrews. Above, is street art in Melbourne against this orchestrated agenda. What has escaped most of the headline is what is going on in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has suspended Parliament. This battle to overthrow Trump is part of this Globalist Agenda. If they can get rid of Trump, then all that stands in their way is China and Russia. They intend to impose sanctions to try to force them to comply with this UN Agenda.

The Supply Chain Is Broken and Food Shortages Are HERE

September 27, 2020

The Supply Chain Is Broken and Food Shortages Are HERE

If you are a reader of this site, you might be more interested in the food supply chain than most, at least when things are good. So, if you have been paying attention recently, you might find that there have been some severe disturbances in that supply chain.

Several months ago, the immediate disruptions began at the beginning of the COVID-19 hysteria, when factories, distribution centers, and even farms shut down under the pretext of “flattening the curve.”

As a result, Americans found necessities were missing on the shelves for the first time in years. Items like hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes were, of course, out of stock.

Soon other items became noticeably missing as well.

People began to notice meat, and even canned vegetables and rice were soon missing from the shelves. Most of this was simply the result of mass panic buying, although “preppers” were blamed for “hoarding.” Therefore, people who had not been prepping all along and were suddenly caught with their pants down.

But that’s not the whole story.

Manufacturing and packaging facilities and slaughterhouses shut down due to intrusive totalitarian government reactions to an alleged pandemic. Combined with panic buying, those facilities’ ability to replace what was bought up was drastically reduced. As a result, consumers were forced to wait weeks before buying what they needed (or wanted) again. Even then, they had to show up in the morning.

We are still experiencing those shortages, though better hidden. As anyone who shops regularly can tell you, you can find what you need, but you may have to go to three stores to get it, where one would have done in the past. In this article, you’ll find some advice about dealing with the limited varieties of inventory that people are currently noticing at stores.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The LWA Response to the National Food Strategy

September 26, 2020

THE LWA RESPONSE TO THE NATIONAL FOOD STRATEGY

‘Another food system is possible and urgent, but this won’t get us there’

‘Be bolder, go further’

A few weeks ago, Part 1 of the National Food Strategy (NFS) was released. Rebecca Laughton, a grower and campaigns coordinator for Landworkers Alliance, and co-author of the Peoples’ Food Policy is on the advisory panel. However, she was not allowed to share the report with us for comment in advance of its release, nor was she given time to discuss and debate the content, as would be expected of an Advisory Panel.The need for a National Food Strategy is pressing. A NFS should be a collectively determined vision and set of policies designed to get there. It should be drawn from the lived experiences of a cross section of civil society. When compared to the People’s Food Policy, produced by LWA in collaboration with many other unions, organisations and NGOs on a limited budget, the democratic mandate, vision and strength of proposals is disappointing. As it stands the NFS is not a strategy; it’s a synthesis of information collected by Henry Dimbleby – an entrepreneur who owns LEON’s restaurants. He has met with a wide range of people and read a huge array of documents, but we’ve ended up with an essay of Henry’s thoughts on the food system, rather than a democratic roadmap for our food system.

Reclaiming our food system

The report begins with a damning critique of the health impacts of the industrial food system and makes some brave recommendations to a government that has historically left food to the market. It states that “The single most important force that shapes our food environment is the free market,” and makes the case for intervention to correct market failures. It calls for regulation to protect public health, defends taxation (the sugar tax) and other interventions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript of my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT. You can listen to it on YouTube or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

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