Home » Posts tagged 'Alex Ates Haywood'
Tag Archives: Alex Ates Haywood
The End Of Fossil Fuels Will Be The End Of Modern Capitalism
That which is unsustainable can not be sustained
None of us are ready for the chaos of the we are stoking, caused by the rapacious growth of what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. referred to as “thermodynamic whoopee”. You might know it as Global Industrial Civilization-GIC. This is the beginning of how the world will sort itself out for the next 20 years.
An energy conversion from fossil fuels will not be possible to an equal extent in all world regions before peak oil occurs. It is likely that a large number of countries will not be able to make the necessary investments in good time and to the required extent.
The communities that live around those festering wounds and the toxic pools know this. And their anger and disquiet is growing as is their numbers. From sanitation employees in Paris to farmers in Punjab.
Even under the threat of our mighty military the other economies and nations of the world will make alliances, some out of necessity and some out of short-term gain, but the harder we push the more defined the battle lines will be. Our ruling class wants us to believe we can win this energy transition war. By any humanitarian definition of “winning” they are lying. They think THEY can win this war. They are wrong.
The contemporary financial system is at severe and worsening risk because of the gargantuan scale of the ‘excess claims overhang’ that has been created on the false assumption that the creation of money and credit in their various forms (known to conventional economics as “demand”) can somehow expand the real economy of goods and services. Demand can raise prices but demand can not create more oil in the ground.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The Energy Transition Will Run Through the Copper Gauntlet
And it may not survive
Since the 2018 IPCC climate report laid out the calamitous consequences of our unbridled carbon emissions, every pathway published by academics and think tanks that claim to save us from ourselves involves the expansion of solar and wind farms as well as net-zero and carbon capture dreams of unbridled optimism.
Net-Zero, the idea that we can keep emitting greenhouse gasses only if we somehow capture or offset those emissions by some yet-to-be-determined means was a dubious proposition at best. It relies on untested-at-scale projects such as carbon capture and sequester (CCS) as well as accounting fantasies that pretend a young sapling that takes 50 years to grow offsets the carbon released from the burning of a mature tree today after being shipped overseas.
Net-Zero plans also assume a rapid and universal deployment of renewable energy-capturing machines a.k.a. solar panels and wind generators. Unfortunately, contrary to their portrayal in mainstream media, solar panels and windmills do not produce renewable energy. These are machines designed to capture and transform energy (electromagnetic or kinetic) available to them and they are manufactured, installed, maintained, and replaced using fossil fuels.
It’s astonishing how the continual absence of any credible carbon removal technology seems to never affect net-zero policies. Whatever is thrown at it, net zero carries on without a dent in the fender.
Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter
Many other metals and rare earth elements have received a great deal of attention due to their exotic-sounding names, relative scarcity, and utilization in cutting-edge technologies, but one of the most critical minerals to the energy transition that is essential to curtailing the most serious effect of climate change is also one that the human race has learned to work earliest — copper.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The End Of Growth Is Here
Thank God and not a moment too soon
It was bad before. Before we decided to exponentially increase the thermodynamic whoopee Kurt Vonnegut Jr. warned us about, but now, not only have we decided to add a whole nation to the funeral pyre we call the Global Industrial Economy but we are just burning shit unabated, and maybe are in for a nuke or two.
Great!
Before the slaughter of civilians and belligerents exploded in Eastern Europe, the global economy, according to SwissRe the giant reinsurer, was faced with an annual contraction of 14 % by mid-century, when global warming is set to breech 2–2.6 ˚Celsius. (No, 1.5˚ C was a dream that was never meant to be realized and is now out of our reach.)
Even the Pentagon was panicking in their 2021 report titled: “Climate Change and International Responses Increasing Challenges to US National Security Through 2040”.
The report, in the dry, matter-of-fact tone of uncharacteristically worried, military language, designed to convince politicians but not alarm them, states up-front:
“Risks to US national security through 2040 will increase as countries respond to physical effects of climate change. Global temperatures most likely will surpass the Paris agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius by around 2030, and the physical effects are projected to continue intensifying.”(emphasis mine). Now we are being told there is a 50% chance of reaching 1.5˚ C by 2025! That’s three years from now.
Unfortunately warming to between 2.5 and 3 degrees by 2050 is probably about the best-case scenario we might reasonably expect at this stage. That means, relative to a world with no additional warming, it would cut per-capita economic output by the end of the century by between 15 and 25 percent. (Burke et al.) and will cost the lives of tens of millions.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
