We'll talk tough but the simple fact is that Americans won't stand for paying EVEN MORE at the pump because of Ukraine. Thus, we continue to buy oil from Russia while shittalking them.
Never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to fuck something up.
For Biden's handlers, high gas prices are a feature, not a bug. They are all-in on climate catastrophe. Use of COVID-19 to reduce mobility (and fuel use) aligns with the same goals.
If the claimed shortage of computer chips were really the cause of manufacturing problems, would the computer CPI look so flat when remote work has been raising demand? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEE01
Remember when they locked down the world in 2020, and there were all the news articles about wildlife coming back all over the world due to fewer cars and humans staying inside?
As an old armchair economist and historian, here is an actually useful bit of wisdom: In our near future, expect wage and price controls and the inevitable shortages they bring. This has been a common feature of runaway inflation and/or authoritative governments. We have both in the USA and elsewhere. Alas, there is not a whole lot one can do as an individual, small corporation, etc. against the chance, but there are a few. The most obvious is to spend your money down as much as possible. It's not gaining value, indeed it's depreciating due to inflation well above even the officially admitted 40-year-high rates. Buy now, the services and goods you can. They will be much costlier a year or two from now. Perhaps not available at all. And your cash has lost value. Need a new car? New roof? Appliances? If you have the cash, do it now. Got room to store up canned food or other resources? Get to it. This actually is a "can't lose" investment, if you truly are buying goods and services you will need within a foreseeable future.
We live in a time where the vast majority of the populace are sheep, smug in the belief their government can do no wrong, even command that resources will magically be available at prices they set. History will, perhaps, teach consumers the hard lesson that, even if the government mandates a gallon of gas can't be more than $10, there may be none to be had at the price.
If you don't like whatever is in stock in my country, we have to wait 13 months for the delivery of a new car (Toyota RAV4 in this case). Other brands have similar deadlines, minimum 9 months up to 12 or more. Unreal!
I had this discussion. Like hiding in one's basement for two years and wearing a mask that does nothing to prevent the transmission of a virus, the response was that high prices are the result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and that it's something we must accept to support Ukraine's democracy.
Biden's intention is to deflect inflation blame onto Russia. But shell oil won't stop buying, good thing too. Gas prices already stratospheric however.
Which is actually the correct take. Gas prices are inelastic—price increases have zero effect on driving down demand in the short term. (2-3 years.) people will still drive their trucks.
What’s especially funny is that environmentalist types think that if we can make fuel prices rise, people will switch to renewables. It simply won’t happen.
Comments on your last paragraph: Your example is, indeed "funny" but needs to be fleshed out more. On the surface the argument would be true, but IF AND ONLY IF (as is the environmentalist's implicit belief) the cost of those alternatives did not also (probably) increase. That's a perfect example of the sputtering of brain cells that passes for "thinking" these days: It never occurs to these liberal arts majors that if (fossil) energy costs rise, that is because there were huge increases in its inputs (petroleum, natural gas, etc.) due to changed supply and demand. One doesn't need a degree in economics to know that these raw materials underlie essentially all modern civilization. As such, increases in them will feed into nearly all products and services, including the true costs of making, transporting and maintaining all their precious windmills, solar plants, hydrogen farms and so on.
A deeper analysis would consider other possibilities too, such as that if no other alternative existed, people might scrimp on other purchases so that they could continue paying for accustomed fossil fuel usage, or (more likely) they would simply use less and at the extreme, none at all, if the resource became too costly or simply unattainable.
Economics is, in fact, a useful field of study (As with many so-called "sciences," it rather falls short of being worthy of that name; that is but one more example of "borrowing" a venerated brand name and applying it to a shoddy product, like our mRNA "vaccines"). Its descriptive and predictive value drop quickly once you get beyond the very elementary bits like supply and demand.
I've been seeing stock advice saying personal cars will be gone , electric on demand ride subscription is replacing it , and the materials used are a new investment .
Perhaps it's calculated ...!?
Plus , there's a lot of dirt Biden doesn't want coming out of Ukraine. So another " crises" opportunity is being milked
All along the pacific coast from Seattle to LA and here in the east SF bay area they get their thought forms from NPR, and are blaming Putin as directed. There in the silicon valley, who are they blaming, Putin or Biden?
Judging from my Nextdoor feed and the odd conversation overheard at the grocery, Vladimir "Emmanuel Goldstein" Putin is responsible for everything from tooth decay to the war against Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia? Let me turn on CNN to remember correctly.
I mostly stopped talking about anything political with my neighbors a very long time ago, for fear of being run out of town just ahead of a furious mob of hysterical leftists wielding Shun tofu knives and rechargeable electric candles.
Apparently Brandon can do no wrong, but at least they are not having their children sing hymns to him like they did with Chocolate Jesus.
Haha! that's funny! in a grim sort of way - I suppose we'll be hearing about those jingoistic fuckers marching off to war like they are here. That video makes me cringe.
Doesn't matter what people will "stand for". Oil companies no longer control oil prices. They used to, but no more. It's more about Geology than trading partners.
Secretary of energy made it clear, we will not solve it since gas prices drive alternative fuel sources and green new agenda. $10 a gallon gas is perfect solution to drive electric car adoption. My wife put $90 of gas in tank for 380 miles ($5 per gallon). Or for $12 you can fully charge a tesla with at least 300 miles in 11 minutes.
Don't they call it a nudge? Aren't there some problems with electric cars though, since they're shutting down the power plants, demolishing the dams, forcing us to rely on windmills and solar farms. We won't get too far in our cars on their version of so-called green energy, which kills birds, bats and insects; just another way to nudge us back inside.
Well right now you can charge that Tesla pretty fast. If we all had Teslas that might not be so easy. No way do we have the electric capacity to charge all the cars once we get to even just a few percent more. We will need to install solar panels at a huge rate to service most of us and depend on a larger supply train to China. That's assuming we can even get the raw materials for the needed batteries.
Once a significant fraction goes to EVs, expect that you will need an authorization code to charge your vehicle, even with your own solar panel power. The car won't function without that code to collect the road taxes due. Don't pay your taxes, your car won't run. Auntie Jane will will know what you are up to as reported by your car.
I'm no expert, but read up/debated enough to reach some basic conclusions I've not seen elsewhere. They could be wrong, but I don't think too far off.
Imagine that all personal vehicles immediately became EVs. Also, the net amount of driving remains the same. Household electric use would increase by about 20%. That doesn't seem a huge jump. But what is missing in the analysis? Lots of things. In the first place, there is much wider use of fossil fuel, for commercial and other transport and energy production. All that electricity must come from somewhere. In the USA, it currently comes about 80% from fossil (mostly coal). If you want a rapid recharge of an EV you need heavy duty wiring. A typical EV can hold energy equivalent to about 3 days of a typical home's total electric usage. You could charge the EV at home on traditional house wiring, but it may need 24-48 hours to do so.
If one proposes to put rapid charge points all over, you are talking an extensive and extremely costly upgrading of the electric utility infrastructure.
Even with the best (real world) cases, to fully charge that EV requires many times what the equivalent fill-up of a liquid fueled vehicle is today. There are about 160,000 gas stations in the USA. There are but a tiny fraction as many EV charge points. They further suffer from the scarcity multiplied by longer recharge times. The EV is a white elephant if there ever was one.
Some other doubts, many having little to do with technology: How fast will that Tesla charge when there is a line of a hundred autos waiting to use a limited supply of Superchargers? Or vandals stole all accessible wiring last night (have you checked the value of scrap copper and other metals lately???) How effective will law enforcement be in deterring such crime, especially given that EVs are most popular in places that have already proven themselves sanctuaries for such criminals due to ever-more-lenient penalties?
None of the above is to say that EV or non-fossil energy could never become more widely used. It IS to claim that they are simply not economically competitive with fossil fuels under nearly any set of realistic assumptions. Government mandates to increase their usage will merely distort a free market and often ignore exogenous costs (e.g. virtual slave labor in many countries where the lithium is sourced.)
By all means buy that shiny EV and a rack of solar panels for your home. But please do some background research. There are hidden costs to all those things, and they may exceed whatever benefits you imagine you are gaining. Nothing comes for free.
The real issue "distort a free market". Solar panels for my home were cost neutral about 6-7 years ago and payback is even faster as costs fell. You can tell because the scammers are in a great position to push into the market. So the long term trend was positive for residential solar. No need to require it as part of a building code but likely a feature in premium new homes. Electric costs have been rising with inflation helping the trend. The government helped start the conversions but needs to get out of the way.
EVs are really the future for many who need private transport and would arrive steadily in a normal market. Forcing them into the marketplace creates many other issues as you describe. It also means that costs will not decline as fast as they would without government forcing the market.
The rush to the Great New Whatever, like the rush to anything, just will cost more. "Nothing comes free".
Lucky for Occidental the National Strategic Reserves were sold off at fire sale prices & fueling DoD wars with retail pricing & corp control works so much better!
"What is worth knowing, he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know; what he knows is not true. The cardinal articles of his credo are the inventions of mountebanks; his heroes are mainly scoundrels."
When will this 'peak oil' theory ever die? It is all dependent on the false presumption that technology stands still. These zero-sum-game idiots will never learn anything. Few today remember the historic Simon-Ehrlich bet:
Oh, Ehrlich is one of my favorites. His prognostications of doom exceed even Neil Ferguson.
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
~ Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.
Like Fergy, 'ole Pauly's been richly rewarded for being wrong about everything.
He is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University and President of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Very impressive.
As usual these days, accuracy takes a distant second in importance to support of the government-green-grift regime.
Only half true, Gato. The USA has large RESERVES that will never run out. Access to these reserves is, however, RATE LIMITED. Due to diminishing returns on investment it's not viable to invest sufficiently to increase production. From a logistics & engineering perspective it's simply not possible to increase USA energy extraction. Doesn't matter how much is still in the ground.
USA started with a CONVENTIONAL oil endowment larger than that of Saudi Arabia. Now it's nearly gone. What's left is UNconventional oil to which access is highly rate-limited.
the only thing preventing new, sustained record production levels is political interference.
reserves are a constantly moving target that have been rising, not falling. ideas like "divide reserves by annual use" are not meaningful analyses. use that, and we ran out of oil every year for the last 50.
Except for that oil is generated within the Earth’s mantle. Russian scientists, funnily enough, have done a lot of work on the subject of abiotic generation, which I know is still a bit of a controversial topic. Though I know firsthand of many long abandoned oil fields in western NY and PA of which the supply has now replenished. One field was located near where I used to live, claimed to be the first tapped in North America (though that seems to be a claim that’s repeated for a few other locations), where the Native locals say the oil is so plentiful that it bubbles up in their backyards and streams from time to time.
It does seems logical that there would be a point where demand exceeds the ability to extract, but given the deception surrounding the entire industry, I am not sure how anyone could assess how close we are to that as a civilization. It’s similar to the impact that pollution would have on the ecosystem… burning fuel seems like it could have negative consequences but when the data surrounding “climate change” is so obviously agenda driven, I am not sure how one can come to a firm conclusion.
Yet, to my knowledge, no one has ever shown how population (demand) can continue to grow geometrically or exponentially (more or less the same thing, for argument here) while resources (supply) grow at linear rates. Malthus and his allied pessimists may not have been wrong, but early.
It's a damn shame that we can't think ahead a hundred years or so in a pro-humanity sort of way. I'd bet we could figure out a way to not only survive but to thrive. But alas, we humans play a blame game, a must-hate someone game, that apparently the uber rich think benefits them now and in the future.
When Kamala or Jen Psaki are blabbering like ninnies it always reminds me of Miss Teen USA 2007. Now we we know even Miss S. Carolina can grow up to have a White House job!
I’d say she’s already had one and that’s what accounts for the neurological damage, but I’m sure she got the saline shot. Plus, she was already that way.
Reminiscent of Amy Klobuchar choking on Telemundo, unable to name the President of Mexico.
Or when Sotomayor said: "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators", and her comrade Breyer said "750 million cases" were reported and “hospitals are full almost to the point of maximum".
Probably my personal favorite of the genre, though, is when Rep. Hank Johnson, who services... er, I mean "serves" the people of Georgia to this day, asked a flag admiral if he was worried that Guam might get overloaded on one side and capsize:
Before every Premier League match, they clap for Ukraine then kneel for racism. The west produces nothing except Pavlovian consoom goodthink NPC virtue signaling. No real strategies or solutions to help anyone but the ruling class.
The Chinese government has banned the broadcasting of Premier League matches for that reason. Considering how deep Chinese investment is in the Premier League through advertising and sponsorship, I wonder how long it will take them to quietly change course to appease their real master. This is probably why the always politically beholden NBA appears to be dodging this topic, at least from what I've seen.
Within 2 days my 2 covidiot sisters pivoted to excoriating me about my lack of enthusiasm for Ukraine porn. They are lapping it up like high fructose cookies and cream ice cream and sucking and spewing the lies like the ciggies they wave around when not in their pie holes.
Many people have made their entire identity about fitting in with 'those' people. So when the herd moves onto Ukraine, these people are forced to follow or be without an identity at all.
I’m sure. Still it was a strange and surreal thing to actually be able to put a time frame on the pivot. See it in real time. It’s almost like someone else is manipulating their brains in tandem. Haha. 🤔. I would love to send this article to them but there is not enough renewable energy in me right now to counter the explosions. I prefer the “block this contact” button.
Thank you for this very timely article. I have long since recognized that we are passengers on a Titanic where no one is running for the lifeboats.
I've been making this argument in my circle of acquaintances for weeks, to no avail. I've accepted that I am even more on the fringe.
Edward Norton's tweet doesn't shock me. Hollywood are lining up en masse to play Leni Reifenstal to the "current thing" for the very reasons stated in this article.
Yeah and the people ignoring the sinking ship would like to prevent the rest of us not mesmerized by the gaslight show in reaching the lifeboats as well.
After decades of being lied to and gaslighted by government and its media propaganda organs, my first instinct is to call bullshit on whatever the latest narrative du jour concocted to spook the herd happens to be.
My political awakening occurred towards the end of the Vietnam War. I clearly remember watching on TV the choppers dust off the embassy with people hanging on the rails. I had schoolmates whose aviator fathers were killed there.
LBJ lied the US into that war with the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The government consistently lied about body counts and progress to garner continued support.
And they've been lying ever since, about everything.
I find it nearly incomprehensible that anyone would trust them, ever, about anything.
"The government I live under has been my enemy all my active life. When it has not been engaged in silencing me it has been engaged in robbing me. So far as I can recall I have never had any contact with it that was not an outrage on my dignity and an attack on my security."
~H. L. Mencken, From his diary, Baltimore, April 1, 1945
"And they've been lying ever since, about everything"
Longer than that. But even those who have had their eyes opened about current events (or back 20 yrs or so) still believe the narratives we're told about WWII, and all the others too.
FDR not only knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked, but intentionally orchestrated crippling sanctions that he judged, correctly, that would force the Japanese to come out swinging.
Woodrow "He Kept Us Out of War" Wilson and his fellow progressive propagandists dragged us into WWI and was the architect of the Versailles Treaty, which all but insured WWII.
"Remember the Maine" was used to rally the U.S. into the Spanish American War by blaming the sinking on the Spanish. Of course, that turned out to be bullshit.
And don't even get me started on the War Between the States.
Suffice it to say that the war was all about slavery narrative is utter hogwash as is the assertion that Lincoln "freed the slaves."
He did not free anyone, quite the opposite. Rather he started a war that killed some 850 thousand Americans, destroyed the voluntary union of the Founders, and laid the foundation for the enslavement of the population by Federal tyrants.
I leave you with these words from The Great Emancipator™:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
~ Abraham Lincoln, Debate with Stephen Douglas, Sept. 18, 1858
Based on that Professor’s bellyaching about Ron Paul’s comment and how he spends considerable class time pushing his own views, it makes me wonder how much of our ‘education’ is being indoctrinated by someone’s personal vendetta.
For a truly eye-opening account of just how monstrous Lincoln and his generals were, read *War Crimes Against Southern Civilians* by Walter Brian Cisco.
The Northern legions raped, pillaged, looted and burned their way through the South. They shelled Atlanta when it was defenseless and full of women and children, and then burned nearly all of it to the ground.
That was how they cut their teeth for the later task of largely eradicating American Indians and incarcerating the survivors in "reservations".
Thus was the Federal domestic empire forged, which was a prelude to the world empire that followed after WWII that is bankrupting our nation in every way: financially, socially, morally.
No one should be at all surprised that government schools run by government bureaucrats and unionized government employees "educate" children about how wonderful and glorious the government is.
CBS This Morning has a puff piece about Pfizer this morning. There were no hard questions just disappointment that 1/3 of the US didn’t take the jab and how disappointing that was. There were no questions about why people distrust the Feds, Pfizer etc. They talked about a yearly Covid shot like the flu shot. Ugh.
"They talked about a yearly Covid shot like the flu shot." I'm seeing a lot of "experts" nonchalantly saying that the corona vaccine is "just like the flu shot, which you take every year" as though most people take the flu shot. I was under the impression that many people don't take it. It's like they're trying to hypnotize people. "You take a flu shot eeeeeeevery year. Ignoooooore your memory. You take it every yeeeeeeear."
Meanwhile, when I hear it's like a flu shot, I think, great, I never get the flu shot, so I won't get this one either.
I’m so medically wary now that, if I ever again need stitches, I’ll either do them myself Rambo-style using lidocaine or, if I can’t patch it up because the cut is on my back or butt, I’ll take vodka, neat, for the pain. Forever done with injections (unless there’s a trusting relationship with the injector, as in, they’re my own damn husband or mother).
I can’t imagine the gargantuan betrayal of trust that‘s taken place will be healing for a loooooong time to come. In fact, I expect most medical practices and hospitals will experience a tremendous financial impact (as they should), as well as every individual who knowingly poisoned another.
I hear you on that. My husband has always been wary of medical people. I’ve been well taken care of but have become more wary since all this. Our docs don’t blink when we say we haven’t taken the Covid vax.
For most people the issue is rarely cost. It's usually "free" in the sense paid by insurance or the government. The individual should consider whether a vaccination's benefits (duh, protection against disease) outweighs possible risks to health. I believe many older vaccines pass that test, but newer ones don't. Obviously those against Covid-19 fail spectacularly. But yes, as an either/or question, the entire system has proven itself irredeemably corrupt, and only a fool would willingly take any of their products any more. I doubt I will ever take any offered immunization again, for the rest of my life.
Your comment just reminded me of Barbara Bush repeating like an automaton "I would remind people that, every single morning, we all awaken to a freer, safer world because of george bush"
Yes. We’re still getting commercials saying take the vax. Now we’re getting commercials to take the Pfizer pill. There’s no mention of side effects like there are with other drugs.
There's an upside: the USA was in many respects a much nicer nation when its population was around 100 million. We may be so again, a similar number, but quality of life yet to be determined due to too many unknowable factors.
Of course two wrongs don't make a right, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine has cost him every bit of whatever moral advantage he might have had until then.
Right on, again. The pivot has been really something to behold. Something tells me that the covidians-turned-Ukrainian-nationalists would not be painting their homes crimson and white and shouting "Roll Tide" to one another if Putin launched a 3-prong attack on the red state of Alabama, however.
It’s such an endless, relentless cringefest that I’ve found myself letting my mind wander into dangerous territory the likes of “I wonder if ignorance really is bliss?” and “could I maybe choose to be ignorant? would I be happier over yonder?” and eventually it always arrives at “everything is at such unimaginable levels of bull-fucking-shit I might just choose to be 'vaccinated' and hope that it does the job quickly.” 😡
But seriously (not that the above isn’t), i came across Gonzalo Lira recently in the screwtube, who’s a Chilean living in Ukraine, and does live-streams providing factual information on the current geopolitical bullshitism. He has a channel called Coach Red Pill (as well as the already mentioned eponymous channel) and here is a short sample:
"Governments wouldn't adopt energy policies which would result in the impoverishment of their own people and severe hardship and arrested development in emerging economics"
We'll talk tough but the simple fact is that Americans won't stand for paying EVEN MORE at the pump because of Ukraine. Thus, we continue to buy oil from Russia while shittalking them.
Never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to fuck something up.
For Biden's handlers, high gas prices are a feature, not a bug. They are all-in on climate catastrophe. Use of COVID-19 to reduce mobility (and fuel use) aligns with the same goals.
Edit: The value of used cars rocketing upwards after Biden's election is another consequence of green madness, but chalked up to something else (a vaguely explained supply chain crisis). https://publish.manheim.com/content/dam/consulting/ManheimUsedVehicleValueIndex-LineGraph.png
If the claimed shortage of computer chips were really the cause of manufacturing problems, would the computer CPI look so flat when remote work has been raising demand? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEE01
Remember when they locked down the world in 2020, and there were all the news articles about wildlife coming back all over the world due to fewer cars and humans staying inside?
As an old armchair economist and historian, here is an actually useful bit of wisdom: In our near future, expect wage and price controls and the inevitable shortages they bring. This has been a common feature of runaway inflation and/or authoritative governments. We have both in the USA and elsewhere. Alas, there is not a whole lot one can do as an individual, small corporation, etc. against the chance, but there are a few. The most obvious is to spend your money down as much as possible. It's not gaining value, indeed it's depreciating due to inflation well above even the officially admitted 40-year-high rates. Buy now, the services and goods you can. They will be much costlier a year or two from now. Perhaps not available at all. And your cash has lost value. Need a new car? New roof? Appliances? If you have the cash, do it now. Got room to store up canned food or other resources? Get to it. This actually is a "can't lose" investment, if you truly are buying goods and services you will need within a foreseeable future.
We live in a time where the vast majority of the populace are sheep, smug in the belief their government can do no wrong, even command that resources will magically be available at prices they set. History will, perhaps, teach consumers the hard lesson that, even if the government mandates a gallon of gas can't be more than $10, there may be none to be had at the price.
If you don't like whatever is in stock in my country, we have to wait 13 months for the delivery of a new car (Toyota RAV4 in this case). Other brands have similar deadlines, minimum 9 months up to 12 or more. Unreal!
Yes we will. We will pay whatever it takes to make our car go, until we can't.
I had this discussion. Like hiding in one's basement for two years and wearing a mask that does nothing to prevent the transmission of a virus, the response was that high prices are the result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and that it's something we must accept to support Ukraine's democracy.
The same morons who bought into the scamdemic & all of the draconian measures to support tyranny will believe this….
True.
https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/ill-never-forgive-the-coronamaniacs?s=w
prices were going up well before the invasion in my neck of the woods... the invasion has just opened the door for .40 cents at a time gas hikes.
LOL and what do you think Biden's poll numbers do as gas prices reach the stratosphere? THAT is why we won't stop buying oil from Russia.
What would be cool is if we had the technology to withdraw petroleum resources from shale formations.
ha ha dreamer that's crazy lol
Biden's intention is to deflect inflation blame onto Russia. But shell oil won't stop buying, good thing too. Gas prices already stratospheric however.
In two weeks you'll be wishing you could pay today's prices.
yeah i probably will be wishing i could. running outa $ quickly.
Which is actually the correct take. Gas prices are inelastic—price increases have zero effect on driving down demand in the short term. (2-3 years.) people will still drive their trucks.
What’s especially funny is that environmentalist types think that if we can make fuel prices rise, people will switch to renewables. It simply won’t happen.
Comments on your last paragraph: Your example is, indeed "funny" but needs to be fleshed out more. On the surface the argument would be true, but IF AND ONLY IF (as is the environmentalist's implicit belief) the cost of those alternatives did not also (probably) increase. That's a perfect example of the sputtering of brain cells that passes for "thinking" these days: It never occurs to these liberal arts majors that if (fossil) energy costs rise, that is because there were huge increases in its inputs (petroleum, natural gas, etc.) due to changed supply and demand. One doesn't need a degree in economics to know that these raw materials underlie essentially all modern civilization. As such, increases in them will feed into nearly all products and services, including the true costs of making, transporting and maintaining all their precious windmills, solar plants, hydrogen farms and so on.
A deeper analysis would consider other possibilities too, such as that if no other alternative existed, people might scrimp on other purchases so that they could continue paying for accustomed fossil fuel usage, or (more likely) they would simply use less and at the extreme, none at all, if the resource became too costly or simply unattainable.
Economics is, in fact, a useful field of study (As with many so-called "sciences," it rather falls short of being worthy of that name; that is but one more example of "borrowing" a venerated brand name and applying it to a shoddy product, like our mRNA "vaccines"). Its descriptive and predictive value drop quickly once you get beyond the very elementary bits like supply and demand.
I'm Florida , news said because there hasn't been a natural disaster they are not even looking for gouging.
I've been seeing stock advice saying personal cars will be gone , electric on demand ride subscription is replacing it , and the materials used are a new investment .
Perhaps it's calculated ...!?
Plus , there's a lot of dirt Biden doesn't want coming out of Ukraine. So another " crises" opportunity is being milked
Here in the Silicon Valley Oblast I just paid over $6 per gallon for premium.
Let's Go Brandon!
All along the pacific coast from Seattle to LA and here in the east SF bay area they get their thought forms from NPR, and are blaming Putin as directed. There in the silicon valley, who are they blaming, Putin or Biden?
Judging from my Nextdoor feed and the odd conversation overheard at the grocery, Vladimir "Emmanuel Goldstein" Putin is responsible for everything from tooth decay to the war against Eurasia. Or was it Eastasia? Let me turn on CNN to remember correctly.
I mostly stopped talking about anything political with my neighbors a very long time ago, for fear of being run out of town just ahead of a furious mob of hysterical leftists wielding Shun tofu knives and rechargeable electric candles.
Apparently Brandon can do no wrong, but at least they are not having their children sing hymns to him like they did with Chocolate Jesus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW9b0xr06qA
Best to watch on an empty stomach.
Haha! that's funny! in a grim sort of way - I suppose we'll be hearing about those jingoistic fuckers marching off to war like they are here. That video makes me cringe.
I can't heart your comment, but it's great.
Doesn't matter what people will "stand for". Oil companies no longer control oil prices. They used to, but no more. It's more about Geology than trading partners.
It is really about OPEC
Secretary of energy made it clear, we will not solve it since gas prices drive alternative fuel sources and green new agenda. $10 a gallon gas is perfect solution to drive electric car adoption. My wife put $90 of gas in tank for 380 miles ($5 per gallon). Or for $12 you can fully charge a tesla with at least 300 miles in 11 minutes.
Don't they call it a nudge? Aren't there some problems with electric cars though, since they're shutting down the power plants, demolishing the dams, forcing us to rely on windmills and solar farms. We won't get too far in our cars on their version of so-called green energy, which kills birds, bats and insects; just another way to nudge us back inside.
Well right now you can charge that Tesla pretty fast. If we all had Teslas that might not be so easy. No way do we have the electric capacity to charge all the cars once we get to even just a few percent more. We will need to install solar panels at a huge rate to service most of us and depend on a larger supply train to China. That's assuming we can even get the raw materials for the needed batteries.
Once a significant fraction goes to EVs, expect that you will need an authorization code to charge your vehicle, even with your own solar panel power. The car won't function without that code to collect the road taxes due. Don't pay your taxes, your car won't run. Auntie Jane will will know what you are up to as reported by your car.
I'm no expert, but read up/debated enough to reach some basic conclusions I've not seen elsewhere. They could be wrong, but I don't think too far off.
Imagine that all personal vehicles immediately became EVs. Also, the net amount of driving remains the same. Household electric use would increase by about 20%. That doesn't seem a huge jump. But what is missing in the analysis? Lots of things. In the first place, there is much wider use of fossil fuel, for commercial and other transport and energy production. All that electricity must come from somewhere. In the USA, it currently comes about 80% from fossil (mostly coal). If you want a rapid recharge of an EV you need heavy duty wiring. A typical EV can hold energy equivalent to about 3 days of a typical home's total electric usage. You could charge the EV at home on traditional house wiring, but it may need 24-48 hours to do so.
If one proposes to put rapid charge points all over, you are talking an extensive and extremely costly upgrading of the electric utility infrastructure.
Even with the best (real world) cases, to fully charge that EV requires many times what the equivalent fill-up of a liquid fueled vehicle is today. There are about 160,000 gas stations in the USA. There are but a tiny fraction as many EV charge points. They further suffer from the scarcity multiplied by longer recharge times. The EV is a white elephant if there ever was one.
Some other doubts, many having little to do with technology: How fast will that Tesla charge when there is a line of a hundred autos waiting to use a limited supply of Superchargers? Or vandals stole all accessible wiring last night (have you checked the value of scrap copper and other metals lately???) How effective will law enforcement be in deterring such crime, especially given that EVs are most popular in places that have already proven themselves sanctuaries for such criminals due to ever-more-lenient penalties?
None of the above is to say that EV or non-fossil energy could never become more widely used. It IS to claim that they are simply not economically competitive with fossil fuels under nearly any set of realistic assumptions. Government mandates to increase their usage will merely distort a free market and often ignore exogenous costs (e.g. virtual slave labor in many countries where the lithium is sourced.)
By all means buy that shiny EV and a rack of solar panels for your home. But please do some background research. There are hidden costs to all those things, and they may exceed whatever benefits you imagine you are gaining. Nothing comes for free.
The real issue "distort a free market". Solar panels for my home were cost neutral about 6-7 years ago and payback is even faster as costs fell. You can tell because the scammers are in a great position to push into the market. So the long term trend was positive for residential solar. No need to require it as part of a building code but likely a feature in premium new homes. Electric costs have been rising with inflation helping the trend. The government helped start the conversions but needs to get out of the way.
EVs are really the future for many who need private transport and would arrive steadily in a normal market. Forcing them into the marketplace creates many other issues as you describe. It also means that costs will not decline as fast as they would without government forcing the market.
The rush to the Great New Whatever, like the rush to anything, just will cost more. "Nothing comes free".
And then Russia's oil goes to China
Sure would be nice to have a big fat reserve of oil here in North America!
Lucky for Occidental the National Strategic Reserves were sold off at fire sale prices & fueling DoD wars with retail pricing & corp control works so much better!
https://web.archive.org/web/20041013054823/http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/index.html
Ha ha that's funny
USA has used about 85% of its original conventional oil endowment. USA's original endowment was bigger than that of Saudi Arabia. Gone now. Burned.
this is not remotely true.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RCRR01NUS_1&f=A
proven US oil reserves were higher in 2019 than any time in US history.
we are nothing like low on oil.
"What is worth knowing, he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know; what he knows is not true. The cardinal articles of his credo are the inventions of mountebanks; his heroes are mainly scoundrels."
~ H.L. Mencken
When will this 'peak oil' theory ever die? It is all dependent on the false presumption that technology stands still. These zero-sum-game idiots will never learn anything. Few today remember the historic Simon-Ehrlich bet:
https://www.aier.org/article/julian-simon-and-paul-ehrlichs-second-bet/
Those who ignore history always repeat it.
Oh, Ehrlich is one of my favorites. His prognostications of doom exceed even Neil Ferguson.
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
~ Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.
Like Fergy, 'ole Pauly's been richly rewarded for being wrong about everything.
He is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University and President of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.
Very impressive.
As usual these days, accuracy takes a distant second in importance to support of the government-green-grift regime.
Like
Only half true, Gato. The USA has large RESERVES that will never run out. Access to these reserves is, however, RATE LIMITED. Due to diminishing returns on investment it's not viable to invest sufficiently to increase production. From a logistics & engineering perspective it's simply not possible to increase USA energy extraction. Doesn't matter how much is still in the ground.
USA started with a CONVENTIONAL oil endowment larger than that of Saudi Arabia. Now it's nearly gone. What's left is UNconventional oil to which access is highly rate-limited.
this is also completely inaccurate.
US production was at all time highs in feb 2020.
you're falling for a luddite/malthusian pitch.
the only thing preventing new, sustained record production levels is political interference.
reserves are a constantly moving target that have been rising, not falling. ideas like "divide reserves by annual use" are not meaningful analyses. use that, and we ran out of oil every year for the last 50.
Except for that oil is generated within the Earth’s mantle. Russian scientists, funnily enough, have done a lot of work on the subject of abiotic generation, which I know is still a bit of a controversial topic. Though I know firsthand of many long abandoned oil fields in western NY and PA of which the supply has now replenished. One field was located near where I used to live, claimed to be the first tapped in North America (though that seems to be a claim that’s repeated for a few other locations), where the Native locals say the oil is so plentiful that it bubbles up in their backyards and streams from time to time.
It does seems logical that there would be a point where demand exceeds the ability to extract, but given the deception surrounding the entire industry, I am not sure how anyone could assess how close we are to that as a civilization. It’s similar to the impact that pollution would have on the ecosystem… burning fuel seems like it could have negative consequences but when the data surrounding “climate change” is so obviously agenda driven, I am not sure how one can come to a firm conclusion.
Malthusians never die, no matter how often they’re proved wrong.
Yet, to my knowledge, no one has ever shown how population (demand) can continue to grow geometrically or exponentially (more or less the same thing, for argument here) while resources (supply) grow at linear rates. Malthus and his allied pessimists may not have been wrong, but early.
It's a damn shame that we can't think ahead a hundred years or so in a pro-humanity sort of way. I'd bet we could figure out a way to not only survive but to thrive. But alas, we humans play a blame game, a must-hate someone game, that apparently the uber rich think benefits them now and in the future.
Fab statistic, do you have a source link?
If only
Politicians: I bet we can convince them to support people that literally identify as Nazis....
The media: Way ahead of you
“3 weeks ago, 95% of these people could not find ukraine on a map or name a single politician there.”
I’d be willing to bet they still can’t.
Kamala, either—although now that her handlers have explained it to her, she knows this much:
“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country.”
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1498744412586848263
When Kamala or Jen Psaki are blabbering like ninnies it always reminds me of Miss Teen USA 2007. Now we we know even Miss S. Carolina can grow up to have a White House job!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww
When I first read your comment, I thought, OMG, was Jen Psaki a teen beauty queen once?
No, she wasn't. But in middle age she certainly babbles like one.
I don’t think they have beauty contests for Raggedy Anns.
🤣🤣🤣 Classic.
You are quite brutal today madame! Carry on.
😂
My god, somebody give her a booster, quick!
😂
I’d say she’s already had one and that’s what accounts for the neurological damage, but I’m sure she got the saline shot. Plus, she was already that way.
Her first one was administered by Dr. Willie Brown, as I recall.
Reminiscent of Amy Klobuchar choking on Telemundo, unable to name the President of Mexico.
Or when Sotomayor said: "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators", and her comrade Breyer said "750 million cases" were reported and “hospitals are full almost to the point of maximum".
Probably my personal favorite of the genre, though, is when Rep. Hank Johnson, who services... er, I mean "serves" the people of Georgia to this day, asked a flag admiral if he was worried that Guam might get overloaded on one side and capsize:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q&t=1s
Just dumber than a bag of rocks.
🤣🤦♀️😬
Actually that's pretty good for Harris. She had a 50% chance of getting them in the right order, and she managed to get it right. Hooray for Kamala!!!
Teleprompter
😆
Douglas Murray's take on Kamala:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/douglas-murray-watters-harris-ukraine-russia-europe
Before every Premier League match, they clap for Ukraine then kneel for racism. The west produces nothing except Pavlovian consoom goodthink NPC virtue signaling. No real strategies or solutions to help anyone but the ruling class.
The Chinese government has banned the broadcasting of Premier League matches for that reason. Considering how deep Chinese investment is in the Premier League through advertising and sponsorship, I wonder how long it will take them to quietly change course to appease their real master. This is probably why the always politically beholden NBA appears to be dodging this topic, at least from what I've seen.
I believe the clinical term for what you describe is PCRIS (Progressive Cranio-Rectal Inversion Syndrome).
Complete mind numbing rubbish.
Within 2 days my 2 covidiot sisters pivoted to excoriating me about my lack of enthusiasm for Ukraine porn. They are lapping it up like high fructose cookies and cream ice cream and sucking and spewing the lies like the ciggies they wave around when not in their pie holes.
Many people have made their entire identity about fitting in with 'those' people. So when the herd moves onto Ukraine, these people are forced to follow or be without an identity at all.
I’m sure. Still it was a strange and surreal thing to actually be able to put a time frame on the pivot. See it in real time. It’s almost like someone else is manipulating their brains in tandem. Haha. 🤔. I would love to send this article to them but there is not enough renewable energy in me right now to counter the explosions. I prefer the “block this contact” button.
Thank you for this very timely article. I have long since recognized that we are passengers on a Titanic where no one is running for the lifeboats.
I've been making this argument in my circle of acquaintances for weeks, to no avail. I've accepted that I am even more on the fringe.
Edward Norton's tweet doesn't shock me. Hollywood are lining up en masse to play Leni Reifenstal to the "current thing" for the very reasons stated in this article.
Every famous person has been bought and paid for. They all belong to the same cult, literally and figuratively.
Where are those lifeboats? Willing to share or reserved for the few?
To paraphrase George Carlin, it's a club that we're not in.
Yeah and the people ignoring the sinking ship would like to prevent the rest of us not mesmerized by the gaslight show in reaching the lifeboats as well.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Bingo!
Everyone needs to take time to reread Section One, Chapter One and Section Two, Chapter Nine.
Otherwise the "place that knows no darkness" awaits us all.
I must be a contrarian theorist.
After decades of being lied to and gaslighted by government and its media propaganda organs, my first instinct is to call bullshit on whatever the latest narrative du jour concocted to spook the herd happens to be.
My political awakening occurred towards the end of the Vietnam War. I clearly remember watching on TV the choppers dust off the embassy with people hanging on the rails. I had schoolmates whose aviator fathers were killed there.
LBJ lied the US into that war with the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The government consistently lied about body counts and progress to garner continued support.
And they've been lying ever since, about everything.
I find it nearly incomprehensible that anyone would trust them, ever, about anything.
"The government I live under has been my enemy all my active life. When it has not been engaged in silencing me it has been engaged in robbing me. So far as I can recall I have never had any contact with it that was not an outrage on my dignity and an attack on my security."
~H. L. Mencken, From his diary, Baltimore, April 1, 1945
"And they've been lying ever since, about everything"
Longer than that. But even those who have had their eyes opened about current events (or back 20 yrs or so) still believe the narratives we're told about WWII, and all the others too.
Most definitely.
FDR not only knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked, but intentionally orchestrated crippling sanctions that he judged, correctly, that would force the Japanese to come out swinging.
Woodrow "He Kept Us Out of War" Wilson and his fellow progressive propagandists dragged us into WWI and was the architect of the Versailles Treaty, which all but insured WWII.
"Remember the Maine" was used to rally the U.S. into the Spanish American War by blaming the sinking on the Spanish. Of course, that turned out to be bullshit.
And don't even get me started on the War Between the States.
Educate us
This is one of many excellent articles on the War Between the States from the great Thomas DiLorenzo of the Mises Institute:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/thomas-dilorenzo/lincoln-cult-attacks-ron-paul/
Suffice it to say that the war was all about slavery narrative is utter hogwash as is the assertion that Lincoln "freed the slaves."
He did not free anyone, quite the opposite. Rather he started a war that killed some 850 thousand Americans, destroyed the voluntary union of the Founders, and laid the foundation for the enslavement of the population by Federal tyrants.
I leave you with these words from The Great Emancipator™:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
~ Abraham Lincoln, Debate with Stephen Douglas, Sept. 18, 1858
Based on that Professor’s bellyaching about Ron Paul’s comment and how he spends considerable class time pushing his own views, it makes me wonder how much of our ‘education’ is being indoctrinated by someone’s personal vendetta.
For a truly eye-opening account of just how monstrous Lincoln and his generals were, read *War Crimes Against Southern Civilians* by Walter Brian Cisco.
The Northern legions raped, pillaged, looted and burned their way through the South. They shelled Atlanta when it was defenseless and full of women and children, and then burned nearly all of it to the ground.
That was how they cut their teeth for the later task of largely eradicating American Indians and incarcerating the survivors in "reservations".
Thus was the Federal domestic empire forged, which was a prelude to the world empire that followed after WWII that is bankrupting our nation in every way: financially, socially, morally.
Thank you. I’m but a product of the public education system
No one should be at all surprised that government schools run by government bureaucrats and unionized government employees "educate" children about how wonderful and glorious the government is.
They should all be abolished.
CBS This Morning has a puff piece about Pfizer this morning. There were no hard questions just disappointment that 1/3 of the US didn’t take the jab and how disappointing that was. There were no questions about why people distrust the Feds, Pfizer etc. They talked about a yearly Covid shot like the flu shot. Ugh.
No more vaxes for me, forever, for anything. I don't trust any of them anymore. If my empty dance card keeps me off the floor, so be it.
Pure bloods are the cool kids with empty dance cards. No more for me either.
Im done.
"They talked about a yearly Covid shot like the flu shot." I'm seeing a lot of "experts" nonchalantly saying that the corona vaccine is "just like the flu shot, which you take every year" as though most people take the flu shot. I was under the impression that many people don't take it. It's like they're trying to hypnotize people. "You take a flu shot eeeeeeevery year. Ignoooooore your memory. You take it every yeeeeeeear."
Meanwhile, when I hear it's like a flu shot, I think, great, I never get the flu shot, so I won't get this one either.
Same here as far as not taking the flu shot or the Covid shot.
I’m so medically wary now that, if I ever again need stitches, I’ll either do them myself Rambo-style using lidocaine or, if I can’t patch it up because the cut is on my back or butt, I’ll take vodka, neat, for the pain. Forever done with injections (unless there’s a trusting relationship with the injector, as in, they’re my own damn husband or mother).
I can’t imagine the gargantuan betrayal of trust that‘s taken place will be healing for a loooooong time to come. In fact, I expect most medical practices and hospitals will experience a tremendous financial impact (as they should), as well as every individual who knowingly poisoned another.
I hear you on that. My husband has always been wary of medical people. I’ve been well taken care of but have become more wary since all this. Our docs don’t blink when we say we haven’t taken the Covid vax.
For most people the issue is rarely cost. It's usually "free" in the sense paid by insurance or the government. The individual should consider whether a vaccination's benefits (duh, protection against disease) outweighs possible risks to health. I believe many older vaccines pass that test, but newer ones don't. Obviously those against Covid-19 fail spectacularly. But yes, as an either/or question, the entire system has proven itself irredeemably corrupt, and only a fool would willingly take any of their products any more. I doubt I will ever take any offered immunization again, for the rest of my life.
I might still take the tetanus shot, though Medicare doesn’t pay for it.
Your comment just reminded me of Barbara Bush repeating like an automaton "I would remind people that, every single morning, we all awaken to a freer, safer world because of george bush"
https://videosift.com/video/Mother-of-George-Bush-Barbara-Bush-hypnosis-mind-control
🤣
it’s safe and effective
it’s safe and effective
it’s safe and effective
"Every single morning." Like some morning prayer. Only not religious, but cultish.
Yes. We’re still getting commercials saying take the vax. Now we’re getting commercials to take the Pfizer pill. There’s no mention of side effects like there are with other drugs.
Galling propaganda and tossing in a casual aside that jabs for infants & toddlers can be hoped for soon landed like a criminal indictment to my ears.
This Edward Dowd interview w Naomi Wolf inspires some hope for justice but the presstitutes should all be tossed into GITMO with the profit Pharmers.
https://rumble.com/vwfu7j-edward-dowd-explains-bombshell-fraud-charge-re-pfizer-hiding-deaths-data.html
Pharma has conned Americans.
https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/ill-never-forgive-the-coronamaniacs?s=w
Pfizer is pfucking repulsive. https://drive.google.com/file/d/16bMCKLePyTTtY_ymaxntZ_rzVNw6oOrh/view?usp=drivesdk
Settling for recurrent revenue.
There's an upside: the USA was in many respects a much nicer nation when its population was around 100 million. We may be so again, a similar number, but quality of life yet to be determined due to too many unknowable factors.
Aren’t you the optimist?🤣
You know what, if that’s the lifeboat available for the sinking ship/thinking sheep, I’m on board.
Aaron Maté wrote a balanced piece on how we got here. SFN (safe for normies). https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia
The people who grab for the levers of power don’t want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
Terrific piece. Than you for the link.
It started at least as far back as Yalta in 1945:
https://usarevolt.substack.com/p/context-why-putin-isnt-wrong
Of course two wrongs don't make a right, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine has cost him every bit of whatever moral advantage he might have had until then.
Ukraine is a distraction from the real plan, global vaccine passports: Closing All Borders for the Unvaccinated: https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/this-years-sudden-war-is-a-distraction?s=r
So Norton thinks every level of government and the political parties have been compromised by Russia, except the 2020 election?
What about China? That’s more likely.
Right on, again. The pivot has been really something to behold. Something tells me that the covidians-turned-Ukrainian-nationalists would not be painting their homes crimson and white and shouting "Roll Tide" to one another if Putin launched a 3-prong attack on the red state of Alabama, however.
It’s such an endless, relentless cringefest that I’ve found myself letting my mind wander into dangerous territory the likes of “I wonder if ignorance really is bliss?” and “could I maybe choose to be ignorant? would I be happier over yonder?” and eventually it always arrives at “everything is at such unimaginable levels of bull-fucking-shit I might just choose to be 'vaccinated' and hope that it does the job quickly.” 😡
But seriously (not that the above isn’t), i came across Gonzalo Lira recently in the screwtube, who’s a Chilean living in Ukraine, and does live-streams providing factual information on the current geopolitical bullshitism. He has a channel called Coach Red Pill (as well as the already mentioned eponymous channel) and here is a short sample:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AqYWC0psrk-yTUAgUZAzFVf-rILGB7ej/view?usp=drivesdk
He’ll probably get kicked off screwtube soon, though.
Me 3 years ago:
"Governments wouldn't adopt energy policies which would result in the impoverishment of their own people and severe hardship and arrested development in emerging economics"
2 years of covid later
"Oh yeah they totally would"
The same people who were terrified of Covid are now blithely and cheerfully risking a nuclear war. Logical thinking is evidently not their strength.
I find the apparent shift in courage quite refreshing, although I'm not sure it's genuine.
These are the “chicken hawks”. They are cowardly when it comes to their own safety, but are very “brave” about sending other people off to die.