Home » Posts tagged 'resource crisis'

Tag Archives: resource crisis

As climate change accelerates, the political environment will start to boil. It’s happening already.

More and more ordinary people are beginning to connect the dots between extreme weather, rising climate related death tolls, collapsing ecosystems, refugee/resource crises, and other grave anomalies.

The political outcome of all this will either be a reactionary or progressive response.

On the reactionary side, the tendency will be to put up strong national defenses and seek out convenient sacrificial lambs such as migrants and refugees. It will attempt a screeching halt to cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and globalism.

On the progressive side, either some of the old parties will broadly transform themselves or new parties, such as the Greens, will seize new ground. Here the tendency would ideally be to aggressively endeavor to bring about a rapid phase of global/local decarbonization combined with generously funded technological-ecological innovation whether geoengineered or otherwise.

Whether we choose the former or the latter, will in large part be due to whoever has the greater political will as well as the power to transform that will into effective organizations.

In Europe, particularly in Germany, the Green party is beginning to show that something like this can and might be done effectively.

In the United States, both mainstream parties have yet to show a serious concern, other than mouthing platitudes, about the potential catastrophic threat to long term health and wealth.

Due to the two-party system in the United States, the Greens have a formidable barrier to political entry to confront. However, either a shake up in their party leadership or, better yet, a defection of a major political figure (such as Bernie Sanders) to their camp would definitely help their cause.

But if the US Greens are ever to have a chance at power of any kind, now is the time for action.

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

The next financial crash is imminent, and China’s resource crisis could be the trigger

September 13, 2018

The next financial crash is imminent, and China’s resource crisis could be the trigger

Over three decades, the value of energy China extracts from its domestic oil, gas and coal supplies has plummeted by half

China’s economic slowdown could be a key trigger of the coming global financial crisis, but one of its core drivers — China’s dwindling supplies of cheap domestic energy — is little understood by mainstream economists.

All eyes are on China as the world braces itself for what a growing number of financial analysts warn could be another global economic recession.

In a BBC interview to mark the 10th anniversary of the global financial crisis, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney described China as “one of the bigger risks” to global financial stability.

The Chinese “financial sector has developed very rapidly, and it has many of the same assumptions that were made in the run-up to the last financial crisis,” he warned:

“Could something like this happen again?… Could there be a trigger for a crisis — if we’re complacent, of course it could.”

Since 2007, China’s debts have quadrupled. According to the IMF, its total debt is now about 234 percent of gross GDP, which could rise to 300 percent by 2022. British financial journalist Harvey Jones catalogues a range of observations from several economists essentially warning that official data might not reflect how bad China’s economy is actually decelerating.

The great hope is that all this is merely a temporary blip as China transitions from a focus on manufacturing and exports toward domestic consumption and services.

Meanwhile, China’s annual rate of growth continues to decline. The British Foreign Office (FCO) has been monitoring China’s economic woes closely, and in a recent spate of monthly briefings this year has charted what appears to be its inevitable decline.

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

What were the real origins of the great oil crisis of the 1970s? Politics or depletion?

November 10, 2015

What were the real origins of the great oil crisis of the 1970s? Politics or depletion?

If you happen to be caught in a boat in a major storm, such as in this image by Hokusai, you’ll surely think you experiencing a major shock. However, it is also true that no storm changes the average water level of the oceans. So, the oil storms of the 1970s were perceived as major shocks, but did they change the average patterns of the world’s oil production? In this post, I argue that they didn’t. Just like a sea wave has to crash on a shore, sooner or later, so oil production had grown so fast in the 1950s and 1960s that it had to crash, sooner or later. And it did.

The oil crisis that started in the early 1970s is still widely remembered today and much of the interest in the vagaries of the present oil market is derived from a comparison with the events of that time. Yet, it may also be that the crisis was widely misunderstood while it was taking place and that it remains misunderstood even today; often reduced to the work of a small group of evil Arab sheikhs, perhaps the ancestors of today’s Daesh. But, as it often happens, every question may have an explanation that is simple, obvious, and totally wrong.

Last week, there was a meeting at the University of Venice, Italy, dedicated to this issue: what were the origins of the oil shock and of the countershock of nearly half a century ago? The conference collected for two days experts in subjects such as political science, economics, communication science, history, and more and I won’t even try to summarize for you all what was said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ten years that changed everything; and prevented all change

November 2, 2015

Ten years that changed everything; and prevented all change

We are one month away from the COP-21, in Paris, that should change everything – and will probably change nothing relevant. But change does occur, even though in ways that often surprise us, and in ways we may not like to see. The past decade has been a period of enormous changes and, also, a decade of gigantic efforts aimed at avoiding change at all costs. It is one of the many contradictions of our world. So, let me try to tell the story of these difficult years.

– The acceleration of climate change. In 2005, climate change seemed to be still a relatively tame beast. The scenarios presented by the IPCC (at that time updated to 2001) showed gradual temperature increases and the problems seemed to be decades away – if not centuries. But 2005 was also the year when it became clear that limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees C was much more difficult than previously thought. At the same time, the concept that climate change is a non linear process started to penetrate the debate and the danger of the “runaway climate change” was more and more understood. The events of the decade showed the rapid progression of climate change. Hurricanes (Katrina in 2005, Sandy in 2012, and many others), the melting of the ice caps, the melting of the permafrost, releasing its deadly charge of stored methane, giant forest fires, entire states going dry, the loss of biodiversity, the acidification of the oceans, and much more. It was found that high temperatures affect humans more than it was believed and, as a last straw, that the negative effects on the human behavior of increasing CO2 concentrations are much more important than previously believed. We are discovering with horror that we are transforming our planet into a gas chamber and we don’t know how to stop.

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

When conspiracy is not a theory: an example of a false flag operation in the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940

October 30, 2015

When conspiracy is not a theory: an example of a false flag operation in the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940

The Italian attack against Greece, that started in October of 1940, was one of the greatest military blunders of history and it may be argued that it cost the axis powers the whole war. Here, I discuss how the attack provides is one of the few documented cases of a strategic “false flag” operation designed in order to create a pretext for a military attack. (Image: Italian infantryman of the Italo-Greek war, from the front cover of “Storia della Guerra di Grecia” by Mario Cervi)

False flag attacks are a popular item, nowadays: secret operations carried out by governments to place the blame on their political or military enemies. However, If you try to examine the question in any depth, you immediately find yourself facing an incredible variety of claims and counter-claims. On one side, there are those who simply laugh at the conspiracy theorists and at their funny antics, and, on the other, those who list case after case of presumed false flag attacks, including everything from the sinking of the Titanic to the blowing up of a tire of uncle Joe’s truck. So, do strategic false flag attacks exist? And, if so, how common they are?

There are several cases of strategic false flag that are almost certain or, at least, very probable. Perhaps the best example of a documented false flag attack is that of the “Gleiwitz incident” of Aug 31, 1939, when Nazi forces posing as Poles attacked a German radio station, performed in order to justify the German attack on Poland. A more recent case is that of “Operation Northwood” which, however, was never actually carried out. There are many more examples where false flag attacks are claimed, but cannot be proven. The best example, here, is the the Reichstag fire, in Berlin, in 1933; for which many details are not completely clear.

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

Tertullian was a conspiracy theorist: propaganda and irrationalism in Roman times and in ours

October 27, 2015

Tertullian was a conspiracy theorist: propaganda and irrationalism in Roman times and in ours

The Romans knew well the dark art that we call “propaganda” today. As an example, this image, from the Trajan column in Rome, shows Dacian women torturing naked Roman prisoners; it was part of the demonization of the enemy during the Dacian campaign of the early 2nd century AD. However, with the gradual decline of the Empire, its propaganda was becoming more and more shrill and unrealistic. Christian thinkers such as Tertullian were reacting against the absurdity of the official propaganda by contrasting it with ideas that at the time were regarded as even more absurd.

Quintus Septimius Tertullianus (anglicized as “Tertullian”, ca. 150 – ca. 230) was one of the early fathers of Christianity. Of his numerous works, we often remember a sentence that reads “Credo quia absurdum.” (I believe it, because it is absurd). This exact phrase doesn’t exist in Tertullian’s works, but it describes well the essence of his way of thinking. He and the other Christians of that time were proposing something truly absurd: that a virgin had given birth to the son of God, that God was at the same time one and three, and that the son of a Jewish carpenter who had been executed as a common criminal was, actually, one of the three!

Almost two thousand years of diffusion of these concepts made them familiar to us and we don’t see them as absurd any more. But think of how they would be perceived in Roman times: they were the very essence of absurdity. Nevertheless, there is a logic even in absurdity and, in upholding these concepts, Tertullian was reacting to an even greater absurdity: the very existence of the Roman Empire.

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

The Club of Rome, almost half a century later

October 20, 2015

The Club of Rome, almost half a century later

The Club of Rome held its general assembly in Winterthur, Switzerland, on Oct 16-17 2015. In the image, you can see Ugo Bardi (center) together with the co-presidents of the Club, Anders Wijkman (right in the photo) and Ernst Von Weizsacker (left in the photo).

Almost half a century ago, in 1968, Aurelio Peccei convened for the first time the group that was later to be known as the “Club of Rome”. The aim of the group was not what the Club was to become known for, “The Limits to Growth”. At that time, the concept of limits was vague and scarcely understood and the interest of the members was, rather, in an equitable distribution of the resources of the Earth. What moved Aurelio Peccei was the attempt to fight hunger, poverty, and injustice.

That approach led the Club to commission a report on the world’s resources and their limits to a group of researchers of the MIT. The result was the study for which the Club of Rome became known ever since: “The Limits to Growth,” published in 1972. From then on, the debate mostly moved on whether the scenarios of “The Limits to Growth” were correct and whether the study would really describe the possible trajectory of the world’s economy and its collapse as the result of the combination of persistent pollution and resource depletion. It soon degenerated into insults directed against “Cassandras” and “catastrophists.” Still today, it is widely believed that the study was “wrong”, even though it was not.

But world models were not so much what Peccei and the other founders had in mind. Their aim had remained the initial one: justice, social equality, freedom from want. The discovery of the world’s limits had made these objectives more difficult than they had seemed to be at the beginning, but not an impossible target. The “Limits” report, indeed, had sketched out how the world’s economy could be steered in such a way to avoid collapse and to maintain for a long time a reasonable level of production of goods and services per person.

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

“Peak Oil will save us from Climate Change:” a meme that never went viral

October 13, 2015

“Peak Oil will save us from Climate Change:” a meme that never went viral

Image from “Peaksurfer“

The idea that peak oil will save us from climate change has been occasionally popping up in the debate, but it never really gained traction for a number of good reasons. One is that, in many cases, the proponents were also climate science deniers and that made them scarcely credible. Indeed, if climate change does not exist (or if it is not caused by human activities), then how is it that you are telling us that peak oil will save us from it? Add to this that many hard line climate science deniers are also peak oil deniers (since, as well known, both concepts are part of the great conspiracy), then, it is no surprise that the meme of “peak oil will save us” never went viral.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ask the question of whether we have sufficient amounts of fossil fuel to generate a truly disastrous climate change. The debate on this point goes back to the early 2000s. At the beginning, the data were uncertain and it was correctly noted that some of the IPCC scenarios overestimated what we are likely to burn in the future. But, by now, I think the fog has cleared. It is becoming increasingly clear that fossil fuel depletion is not enough, by far, to save us from climate change.

Nevertheless, some people still cling to the old “peak oil will save us” meme. In a recent post on “Energy Matters“, Roger Andrews argues that:

All of the oil and gas reserves plus about 20% of the coal reserves could be consumed without exceeding the IPCC’s trillion-tonne carbon emissions limit.

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

Unstable world: Is it time to buy volatility?

October 12, 2015

Unstable world: Is it time to buy volatility?

On Wall Street buying options–options on stocks, on commodities, on currencies, on almost anything–has been seen as a sucker’s bet (unless you are doing it to hedge an existing investment).

For the uninitiated, options are the right to buy or to sell something–practically anything really–at a set price over an agreed period of time. I can call my broker and buy the right to purchase Yahoo at $35 a share between now and April 15 next year for $2.32 a share. I can also buy the right to sell Yahoo at $25 a share for $1 a share. I might do this if I owned the stock and wanted to protect my investment in case of a decline. With Yahoo trading at about $32 a share, neither option would make me any money right now. But either one could make me money, and possibly lots of it, if there were to be a major move in Yahoo either up or down between now and April 15. In essence, I would be buying volatility.

Yahoo dropping to $2 a share or zooming upward to $200 in the period before the options described above expire would surely destroy a significant chunk of the wealth of those who sold options to others that allow them to sell at $25 in the former case or to buy at $35 in the latter case.

But, it turns out that most stock and commodity options expire worthless. And so, those selling the options walk away with the premium paid by the buyer and then reinvest that money or spend it elsewhere. These option sellers (or “option writers” as they are often called) make a very handsome living during times of low volatility such as we have seen since the stock market bottomed in 2009.

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

A distant mirror: bimillenary of Germanicus’ campaigns in Germania

October 5, 2015

A distant mirror: bimillenary of Germanicus’ campaigns in Germania

(Image: a battle scene showing Roman troops fighting Barbarians. This relief is much later than the times discussed in this post, but it gives some idea of how these battles were seen in Roman times: “Grande Ludovisi Altemps Inv8574” by Unknown – Jastrow (2006). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons)

Julius Caesar Germanicus, grandson of Emperor Augustus, was called “Germanicus” not because he liked the Germanic peoples; rather, he was engaged in a ruthless, scorched earth campaign against them. Nevertheless, he managed to accomplish very little; mainly to show that the Roman Empire, despite all its might, could not possibly conquer Germania.

Success, sometimes, shows one’s limits more than defeat. That’s a lesson that the Romans had to learn the hard way when they tried to subdue the Germanic tribes east of the Rhine, between the first century BC and the first century AD. The attempt involved a long series of campaigns and, perhaps, the climax came exactly two thousand years ago, from 14 to 16 AD, when the Romans invaded Germania with no less than eight legions under the command of Tiberius Claudius Nero, known as Germanicus (at right), grandson of Augustus and the adopted son of Emperor Tiberius. The total number of the troops employed could have been at least 80 thousand men, perhaps close to a hundred thousand; about a third of the whole Roman army. Using a modern term, we could say that the Romans were trying to steamroll their enemies.

In this case, the concept of “steamrolling” can perhaps be intended in an almost literal sense. Tacitus makes it clear for us in his “Annals” that the Romans were going into Germania with in mind something much different than “bringing civilization” to those primitive peoples. No, no such silly idea; the Romans were there to teach those Barbarians a lesson. For this, they were burning villages, slaughtering everyone, or taking as slaves, as Tacitus says, even “the helpless from age or sex.” Germanicus’ name, evidently, didn’t imply that he loved Germanic people. Again, using a modern term, we could say that the Romans were practicing a scorched earth campaign, if not an outright war of extermination.

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

Climate Change: a clash of epistemologies

October 2, 2015

Climate Change: a clash of epistemologies

In a post published earlier this year, Ugo Bardi explains that the debate on climate change is going nowhere due to a fundamental incommunicability – or a ‘clash’ as he calls it – between different types of epistemologies over climate change. In his post he refers to some exchange between scientists and a newcomer – not any newcomer, actually the vice-president of the Italian Coal Industry Associations –which happened on the blog of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI). The newcomer used this section to attack climate science and climate scientists. The latter fully felt the attack and reacted as if their own persona had been aggressed. Apparently, the exchange degenerated in assorted insults and personal smears.

Quoting Ugo, “stiffen up and look offended when someone belittles climate science is not useful.” Indeed, it is not. But as I dare reading through the lines of Ugo’s post, the reason why it is not has nothing to do with the consequences of such insulting exchange – certainly the newcomer has not changed his mind on climate change; it has to do with the reasons of such incommunicability between different categories of individuals, one which raises conflicts rather than mere disagreements. To understand such conflicts Ugo mobilises the idea that the two groups – the scientists and the newcomer – are endowed with opposite epistemologies, that is, opposite ways of knowing and believing the world. The discrepancy goes beyond differences in perceiving the world and understand it accordingly; the discrepancy concerns the way the world is analytically constructed and given a sense.

I am sure that Ugo would have appreciated the concept of ‘epistemological rationality’ used by Alban Bouvier, a French social epistemologist, with reference to discursive exchanges between reciprocally suspicious interlocutors, in which each party considers that the arguments of the other rely on false or unreliable knowledge.

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

Stewards of the earth: a role for humankind

September 29, 2015

Stewards of the earth: a role for humankind

Image from GreenGrenwich.org

This post was inspired by a meeting held last week in Florence on the subject of the Pope’s climate encyclical, and, in particular, by the presentation given there by Father Bernardo. prior of the San Miniato church. I had been thinking about the relation of religion and the environment for some time and, as a comment, I reproduce below a text that I wrote on the interpretation of an ancient Sumerian myth that, in my opinion, describes an ancient ecological catastrophe, not unlike the one we are facing nowadays. Many elements of the ancient Sumerian religion have survived through the millennia and are still with us; in particular the concept that humans have both power and responsibility: they are there to serve the creation, not to use it for their purposes. (h/t Antonella Giachetti)

When I started my career in scientific research, I could hardly have imagined that the Catholic Pope would, one day, teach to scientists (and not just to them) how to do their job. And yet, it seems that we have arrived exactly to this point.

The attempts performed so far to settle the debate on the various disasters befalling on us (and that we ourselves created) have led to nothing. For how many decades have we been trying to get an agreement to avoid the climate change disaster? Now we are putting our residual hopes on the Paris conference of this year, but do you really think that a group of politicians and bureaucrats dressed in dark suits will be able to save the planet?

What we are seeing, instead, is the utter failure of a way of thinking that we call sometimes “positivism” that has its origins in the 19th century with thinkers such as Condorcet, Saint Simon, Comte, and others. At that time, it seemed to be a good idea to use the reason and science to settle all questions.

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

The Volkswagen scandal: say goodbye to the internal combustion engine!

September 23, 2015

The Volkswagen scandal: say goodbye to the internal combustion engine!

By now, I guess that everyone in the world has heard of how Volkswagen cheated consumers by falsifying the results of the emission tests from their diesel engines. It is a true witch hunt unleashed against Volkswagen. Maybe there are good reasons for it, but I think it is also something that should be taken with caution. A lot of it.

I have been a consultant for the automotive industry for some 20 years and I think that I know the way they operate. And I can tell you that they are not equipped for “cheating”, intended as willingly ignoring or breaking the law. They just don’t do that, they understand very well that the result could be something like what’s happening to Volkswagen nowadays; something that could lead to their end as a car manufacturer. On the contrary, carmakers tend to be extremely legalistic and apply to the letter the current laws and regulations.

This said, it is also clear that car makers are there to make a profit and their managers are supposed to “get results”. So, if the laws and the regulations are not clear, or do not explicitly say that something is forbidden; then, if that something is supposed to provide some advantage to the company, it may be done.

This is, I think, what happened in this case. It is very well known that the results of the pollution tests made in the lab are always much better than those made on the road. And it is very well known that the performances of cars as measured in standardized tests are always much better than those of real cars. It is all very well known and documented: look for instance here and here. (h/t G.Meneghello).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What happened to peak oil? The cycle of a meme and of its antimemes

September 21, 2015

What happened to peak oil? The cycle of a meme and of its antimemes

The result of a Google Trends search for the term “Peak Oil”. The fading out of the concept may be due not so much to reasons related to the validity (or non validity) of the concept but, rather, to a memetic phenomenon equivalent to the development of an immune response in the human body. Not all memes have sufficient viral power to entrench themselves in the human mindspace.

Likely, you haven’t heard much, lately, about peak oil. If you did, it was because it was summarily dismissed as “wrong”. Indeed, as you see in the figure above, peak oil had a peak of interest around 2006, a second one around 2008, then it gradually declined.

Why this decline? You might say that it was because the recent drop in oil prices. Maybe, but note, from the figure, that the interest in peak oil started a steady decline just when oil prices went up to reach a plateau at levels over 100 $/barrel. Then, you might say that the decline is because peak oil didn’t appear when it was predicted. Maybe, but the record of the “peakist” approach is not bad at all when compared with of mainstream oil pundits. Had any of them anticipated such things as the burst of high oil prices that started in 2005? Did any of them foresee that the oil industry would have had to switch to expensive and difficult resources, that they had always shunned before, in order to keep production from falling?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global warming: how much heat, exactly?

September 7, 2015

Global warming: how much heat, exactly?

It is often difficult to visualize what we are doing to our planet. But a simple calculation shows that the greenhouse effect generated by fossil fuels can be seen as the equivalent of turning on more than a hundred 1 kW electric heaters for each human being on the earth. And we can’t turn them off!

If you look at the way climatologists describe global warming, you’ll see that they use a lot the term “forcing”; that is, the additional effect of human activities to the natural heating from sunlight. Not all forcings increase temperatures, some tend to reduce it; for instance, atmospheric particulate. The overall result is called “imbalance” or “net forcing.” You can think of a forcing in terms of someone trying to budge a person who doesn’t want to move. If the person pushing is stronger, the net force will cause the person being pushed to move. In the case of climate, the warmingforcings are stronger than the cooling forcings, and the net result is a rise in temperature.

As we keep emitting CO2 and other gases, the greenhouse forcing effect increases, as you see in the figure below (Hansen 2011).

In this figure, forcings are measured in terms of W/m2 (watts per square meter), as it is generally done in climate science. Unfortunately, it is a kind of unit that doesn’t convey a feeling of the magnitude of what we are doing to our planet. A few watts per square meter are approximately equivalent to a single Christmas light, and that doesn’t look worrisome. But, if you take into account the effect on the whole planet (510 million km2), then the overall forcing is gigantic: from Hansen’s figure you obtain something like 1500 TW (terawatts, or trillions of watts) for greenhouse gas forcing and around 500 TW for the net forcing.

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

Tag Archives: resource crisis

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

China’s economic slowdown could be a key trigger of the coming global financial crisis, but one of its core drivers — China’s dwindling supplies of cheap domestic energy — is little understood by mainstream economists.

Post navigation

Latest Posts