I got nothing…
Found a good copy if Koyaanisqasti.
Have not watched it in 30 years
For most scary I’d nominate India and Pakistan. They are both grossly overpopulated and pressed for resources, and nuclear armed. Although they are estimated to have “only” about 40 nukes in total, their small regional exchange would have global impact.
Some years ago modeling was done of climate effects from the soot in the stratosphere 40 burnt cities would kick up in the mushroom clouds. Apparently it would cause growing season frosts. The study projected this would lead to at least 1 billion starving worldwide.
A stressor of that scale could have all kinds of other effects. And that’s just one fairly mild scenario. I hope we don’t see any bad scenarios, but it seems the odds are rapidly increasing.
This is a bit dark. I’d rather see Kunstler’s world, with eco green wood gas tractors, which seem to have evaded the awareness of writers and policy makers.
This discussion calls for some Leonard Cohen…
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I guess we do not need more links to other great relevant songs.
That is a very very good choice along with everybody knows…
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In the early 70’s we had a gas embargo nation wide, just over night the gas station started rationing fuel out 5 gallons of fuel per customer, if you needed more fuel you had to go to a different gas station or if you knew the person attending the pump, you could slip him a couple of green backs and he would fill you up with more gas. Now with the modern pumps this will not happen.
This also happen durning World War 2, you had gas coupons for fuel. Again in the 70’s this was a test to see what the Amercan people would do. I had to lock my fuel tank with a locking cap.
2008 a gas price hike to almost $6.00 a gallon happen, again a test to see what would happen. This put us into a recession and caused the stock market to taking a nose dive. The petro dollar, has side affects on this nation and the world. By the way this is the Bankers that control everything running these tests, they make lots of money running these tests.
Now to our present day, a War in the Middle East breaking out, because some one is stopping our oil flow to our country, and bingo the Bankers making more money here. And we are again for the third time in less then 80 years killing mankind for the black oil gold. They could just rise the price of fuel to what most of the European people pay out for their fuel right now. That is probably what will happen first, then will come the rationing and long lines at the gas stations. If we at war most of the people will bow down the the Bankers that are making all the monies. Not Me I have a gasifier truck.
We that have wood/char gasifier vehicles will see our hard labor pay off from building and the sweat from our brow making fuel This will become a blessing. These vehicles will become worth their weight in GOLD sort of speak.
I think it would be wise to have 2 or 3 of these vehicles around ready to sale to the highest bidder. Of course the police could just ask you, that they need these vehicles. And also if you could make more for them. I’m sure they could surquestor the parts and supplies you will be needing to build them. Heck they might even give you protection from the other harmful people out there.
I do know that the law enforcement have their own fuel supplies stocked up in case of a national emergency and that they are pumping out of this supply all the time to keep it fresh and they are not all located in one place. But it will not last for a long extended time. The best thing you could do is work with your police and law enforcement agencies. Get to know them. Let them know how can I help if this kind of emergency ever happens.
A charcoal running vehicle would be more practical. Easier learning curve. People could make charcoal and sale it or barter with it. A new type of monies, the charcoal dollar, instead of the petro dollar. Oops the Banksters are loosing monies now.
Just say here, anything could happen, good or bad.
Bob
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Bob at this point the police will go for electric vehicles. Fast acceleration over a 300 mile range is possible and there are all kinds of ways to make electricity. Combine that with the fact that Tesla has a factory to make them and the polic would all rapidly have a model 3 or some other high acceleration electric vehicles. Just a decade ago for sure your wood truck would have been I’m their sights but not today there is a viable commercial option.
That Cohen guy, is pushing himself to the darker side. I see he has a cigarette in his hand. We know that smoking causes cancer and to me, that is the worst way to die. Death by car crashes, heart attacks, or over dossing are all quick compared to the long slow death from cancer. No wonder he sings (?) about the dark side.
Bob you may be right that the banks cause our lack of oil at times, but I do believe the one in the 70’s was caused by the oil cartel of the East, with holding their oil from the market to get the price to rise. At the time we had oil of our own, but it was cheaper to buy from the East.
That fuel that the law enforcement has stocked up must be at a refinery in Chicago, because our local police get their gas at local stations or from the State Highway Departments pumps whose gas is trucked in.
There was a time when you could know your emergency services and at the spur of the moment, you could volunteer your help. My father owned a fuel truck that he delivered fuel to homes. When the fire department got called out to a large fire, they call my dad to volunteer his truck to haul water. Now days they all have their own equipment including “pumpers” to haul water. And the rules and regulation for being part of a service organization are so strong, that they will NOT let you offer help
And then there is the wonderful world saving “electric car” and maybe add in the “self driving” vehicles. If Korea or someone else gets a bur under their saddle, we won’t have time for all the “stuff” that is in the pipe line. Add to that that our electrical grid is old and we are getting rid of nuclear plants and coal fired plants, and wind farms and solar are in no way able to pick up the slack, those cars will be almost useless if and when they get built without a strong “electrical system”.
I am just going to live my life NOW and let the future bring what may. My hair has all turned gray from worrying so there is nothing gained for me to worry about any more. TomC
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I try to keep my finger on the pulse of the economy by reading <40> hrs a week. I wrote at my blog a couple of years ago showing the decline in rural areas. Can’t find the post now. Here is an update.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-20/rural-america-verge-collapse
The floods in many parts of the world will severely reduce food production.
http://iceagefarmer.com/map/
You can well imagine what will happen when the price of food goes way up. No, it won’t be the farmer who gets any of the higher prices. Food prices go up 2.65 a year. Grain prices have been falling for 81 months. Our food supply is controlled by just 10 conglomerates. This cartel can set prices anywhere they want. The farmers are being squeezed by increasing costs in inputs. They are going bankrupt in record numbers.
The weather patterns are changing. Calif. is flooded and Washington is parched.
Global patterns of crop production losses associated with droughts …
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/
They are using thousands of torches in Italian vineyards to keep the grapes from freezing. There are new weather records being set continuously. Blame it on the sun. Read , Suspicious Observers…
FED GOV = Federal reserve = junk bond market = frackers
The frackers have lost $208 billion producing oil that is such poor quality that it is exported.
During Great depression I, 44% of Americans lived on a farm. 5.1 million starved to death. Leading up to Great Depression II, only 1% of Americans live on a farm.
I live in the city but, have a rural property to run off to. I have a woodgas truck that needs to be dialed-in. I have a propane engine ready to go into my old Chevy truck if needed.
If you do a good read of the recent elections in Indonesia, you will see that “somebody” ( I suspect Soros) bussed in troublemakers to start riots in Jakarta. I expect the same thing to happen here for the next election.
The president of Indonesia was re-elected and all heck broke loose. You might watch, The Year of Living Dangerously…
ALL of this is related to runaway automation.
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I can only assume this was talking about a problem for this scenario to occur.
I am not worried. What I am saying is just the opposite and adding actual logic…
There have been jokes about the different era of people lives like " if you remember the 60s you weren’t really there… " or the 70s was the " me " decade the 80s " Greed is good ".
The 2010s might be remembered as the decade of insecurity and anger I think.
Or maybe the post truth decade.
Hard to say.
I noticed this and thought it strange because its not a very notable movie.
However my Google powered Youtube recomended videos has this films trailer highlighted before I read your post.
Could just be a fluke, but it does me wonder about stuff
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YouTube will also read memos and stored documents on your phone, and seems to be reading text and correspondence.
I swear I have had creepy suggestions after phone conversations, or conversations near the phone.
Don’t worry, big brother says he’s a great guy…
Sigourney Weaver was pretty hot in that movie. It was set in the time of Sukarno and Suharto. Indonesia is an example of a country where the people are real excitable. Pakistan is much the same. In the West, people don’t go crazy near so fast. All bets are off when all this crop destruction jacks up the price of energy and food.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-25/heres-proof-how-cpi-underrepresenting-food-inflation-40
The spring of our discontent is related to;
The bankers have been able to create 846% price inflation since 1970.
The worker has only been able to get 643% wage inflation. Over time, we just slip away.
10 U.S. states have more people on GOV assistance than they have working. GOV debt is going up faster than exponentially.
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it was the other way around. He referenced China while talking to Japan… Personally I kind of like the way we are taking the heat for serving the arrest warrant. Harper would of caved in a week. Not Harper would have lasted a day…
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I would rather be the mouse trying to share a bed with one Elephant than a mouse trying to avoid being stepped on by two quarreling Elephants.
In a speech to the Washington Press Club in March 1969, Pierre Trudeau said:
“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Crazy world:
How many people can you put on mount Everest before you ruin the place?
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agreed but one elephant is next door the other thousands of miles away…
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Trying to find the right caption for these two…
In any event distance does not matter anymore in today’s economy.
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I know that western Canadian farmers are going rather pale now that China is halting imports of canola and soybean. An average harvest will mean break even. Not a good gamble, and seed is planted now.
I know where we figure in the elephant pic.
Farmers will be going broke. Economists and big wheels call this “consolidation”… I see it more as the destruction of the culture that founded our communities, and further back, our civilization. They talk in Canada about “cultural genocide”. Meanwhile the entire rural culture has been destroyed on the altar of money, while no one cared. It’s nasty business to mine the land so they can eat in Asia. Middle men like the Richardsons and Cargill would have it no other way. Buy more iron they say…
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Does “post technological” basically mean “post petroleum” in this context?
I don’t think there will ever be a truly “post technological” era,. Technology, like everything else will adapt and change to changing economic forces of supply and demand, just like it has for thousands of years. We may or may not run out of one thing or another (like white rhinos), but we’ll always be technological.
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As I understand it, Everest is covered with debris from thousands of past climbers.
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Well if you are looking back thousands of years the argument of technology not being lost is proven wrong by the fall of the Roman empire and the beginning of the dark ages. The entire reason they where call dark ages is because of the collapse of the modern technology of the Roman empire.
Honestly our dependency on technology has made that more likely not less in many ways. More and more often we depend on large centralized data storage centers. Lose those centers or even just lose access to them and we will lose most of our technology. As a controls engineer who built key equipment for manufacturing hard drives in the 90s wafer cleaning platforms which were laser based very new technologies at the time. I can assure you our technology is dependent on knowledge held by a very small percentage of our global population. Most of those people are heavily dependent on computerized data storage not actually knowledge. Back in the 90s we entered the age of electronic research. It changed things and made us very dependent on our electronics and our ability to connect electricity. I honestly don’t think it would take very long to watch our society fall apart on the same scale as the dark ages after the fall of Rome. Just look around yourself and ask ok if this broke could I build it from scratch or even from the resources in my own town or state? You will rapidly find that the answer is no on more things than you realize. The cellphone I am typing this on is a great example I know for a fact that it is beyond the resources of my town to make it simply because we don’t have the facilities or skills to make the touch screen interface on the surface. I suspect the skills are located within my state to make it but not the facilities that would be required. I also suspect in a generation or two those skills would be largely lost.
I have witnessed the lose of tech skills just over the last couple of decades working in automation. When I was in college in the 90s people learned assembly language and understood basic machine logic. When I was interviewing people at the end of my career as a controls engineer those where skill harder to come by. Sure you don’t need them to build a website but someone has to update the compiler those people need to understand low level code. More and more in the software world we are standing on the shoulders of giants. A lack of understanding of the low level logic is key to most of our computer bugs.
The last project I did as a controls engineer I worked with some very high end software engineers who had come out of the 3D virtual environment development world and where working in real time controls. They where handling the linux interface side to my motion controller. I designed a very simple handshake to exchange data between the two processors and proved it worked with two of my motion controllers running the code exchanging data between them. The linux implementation of it failed they had a team of 10 engineers who couldn’t figure out how the data was getting corrupted. Honest I am not making this up the entire handshake only consisted of 5 lines of code. But the issue was the software engineers didn’t understand how the underlying operating system actually handles multi threading of different applications. Something we all take for granted it has happened in the background since windows 3.11. Anyway when I showed them the error in their setup and explained why it did just what they where seeing as random errors the software team was shocked and said this will effect all of our code on the project we have to go back and change how we handle data exchanges across the board. That experience left me wondering how long our engineers can continue to stand on the shoulders of giants while building new technology. At some point a lack of understanding of the foundation will cause the entire structure to fall.
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I think you are on to something there. Computer control is all so new historically I dont think we have had a good quality failure to understand its limits and where robustness must come before speed. I like to think of it as the first 50 years of steam technology. Imagine all the seal failures, explosions, death and destruction that must have occurred to bring about the safety equipment and operating restrictions we now take for granted. We are in the wild west days of computerization which will someday be followed by a shaking out of crap that does not work…
My two cents
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