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  1. #811
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    Deagel, which is a more extreme version of STRATFOR, a geopolitical forecaster of some renown, has updated their 2025 forecast for the economies and populations of most countries, with the west looking at a veritable Die-Off, according to their central scenario.

    This is all pure speculation of course, but it shows what would happen if some sort of major collapse of the West were to happen, with massive depopulation and outward migration in most countries.

    Do click on the link and check out the table of countries, it make for some interesting reading.

    https://www.deagel.com/forecast

    Here is the basis of their forecast:

    Disclaimer*
    In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically. This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 onwards. Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.

    After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:

    The Western world success model has been built over societies with no resilience that can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but we got the full confirmation beyond any doubt.
    The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called Great Reset.
    The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system. It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable. The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.

    The collapse of the Western financial system - and ultimately the Western civilization - has been the major driver in the forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome. As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship. The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people. Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader. The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago. So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people. It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lockdowns will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide.

    The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population. The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors but in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll. The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is overconsumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue. Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more. Not everybody has to die migration can also play a positive role in this.

    The formerly known as second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future. Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these countries won’t be able to control their own cities far less likely countries that are far away. If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along Western powers but won’t experience the brutal decline of the late because they are poorer and not diverse enough but rather quite homogenous used to deal with some sort of hardship but not precisely the one that is coming. If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will depend upon the management of their resources.

    We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now with the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well. There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming. However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one.

    The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically. The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China. Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome. Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry. Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner. Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West. It was clear then and today is a fact.

    Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead. In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030). Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lockdown in China.

    Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny. Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s. The ultimate conflict can come from two ways. A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war. A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 timeframe. A Russian sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role. The sneak first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015. There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away. Western intelligence had no clue. The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to execute a first strike over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may occur but the country finished would be the United States.

    Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given. This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated. That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events. At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up. We can see the United States claims about G5 being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris. Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation. Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.

    If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war. The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war. It does not matter. A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.

    This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions.

    Friday, September 25th, 2020

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    Silly me. I thought MAD was supposed to be a deterrent.

    Beau talks about peak oil in this one.


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    Super Moderator Wind's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    There was also an article earlier ─ I looked into posting it here, but most of the photos were protected against linking, and the article itself was incredibly long ─ regarding the Pentagon's plan to develop a new USD $100 billion nuclear weapon, rumored to be ─ and I quote ─ "50 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
    Money well spent...

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    Ecological system collapse plays a role in economic collapse. There are many debates over human effects on the land, water and air. And there is no doubt that human activities have major effects on the quality of those things, quite often deleterious.

    When colonists came to America they believed that if they cut down forests, they could reduce the wind. Hubris, for sure. What they seem to have not understood was erosion.

    The Dust Bowl of the 20s was a kind of perfect storm. Human activities and weather patterns ended up with a vicious cycle of more erosion, more dust, more starvation.

    Australia has beaucoup problems happening or yet to happen related to water diversion. The perfect storm there could be quite devastating.

    On a smaller scale, Houston Texas had a lot of development. Much of it did not take drainage into account. My friend Randy had a house for years which never experienced flooding. After the development spree, suddenly many neighborhoods were getting flooded which had never been pre-development.

    Now, bring in hurricane Harvey which dumps record rainfall in a short period of time on a human created gigantic swimming pool. Houses were covered up to rooftops.

    People can deny whatever they think climate change is all they want. They're still going to suffer the effects of human activities combined with more and more unstable weather which humans have known since I was a child was coming.

    Clearly, as we've seen here in the States, many people are A OK with death and destruction.

    They sure do keep voting for it.
    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 21st February 2021 at 12:22.

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  9. #815
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    I may have posted this before but: Once upon a time I went to an oil industry conference that featured notable speakers. I was shocked to hear one of them say 'fracking' was not going to save us. He probably lost his job the next day ...

    Hubbert peak theory
    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. It is one of the primary theories on peak oil.

    Choosing a particular curve determines a point of maximum production based on discovery rates, production rates and cumulative production. Early in the curve (pre-peak), the production rate increases due to the discovery rate and the addition of infrastructure. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines because of resource depletion.

    The Hubbert peak theory is based on the observation that the amount of oil under the ground in any region is finite, therefore the rate of discovery which initially increases quickly must reach a maximum and decline. In the US, oil extraction followed the discovery curve after a time lag of 32 to 35 years. The theory is named after American geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who created a method of modeling the production curve given an assumed ultimate recovery volume.

    Hubbert's peak
    "Hubbert's peak" can refer to the peaking of production of a particular area, which has now been observed for many fields and regions.

    Hubbert's peak was thought to have been achieved in the United States contiguous 48 states (that is, excluding Alaska and Hawaii) in the early 1970s. Oil production peaked at 10,200,000 barrels per day (1,620,000 m3/d) and then declined for several years since. Yet, recent advances in extraction technology, particularly those that led to the extraction of tight oil and oil from shale, have drastically changed the picture. A decline in production followed the 1970s peak of more than 10 million barrels. In November 2017 the United States once again surpassed the 10 million barrel mark for the first time since 1970.

    Peak oil as a proper noun, or "Hubbert's peak" applied more generally, refers to a predicted event: the peak of the entire planet's oil production. After peak oil, according to the Hubbert Peak Theory, the rate of oil production on Earth would enter a terminal decline. On the basis of his theory, in a paper[4] he presented to the American Petroleum Institute in 1956, Hubbert correctly predicted that production of oil from conventional sources would peak in the continental United States around 1965–1970. His prediction of inevitable decline has been incorrect, but the 1970 peak has yet not been surpassed. Hubbert further predicted a worldwide peak at "about half a century" from publication and approximately 12 gigabarrels (GB) a year in magnitude. In a 1976 TV interview Hubbert added that the actions of OPEC might flatten the global production curve but this would only delay the peak for perhaps 10 years. The development of new technologies has provided access to large quantities of unconventional resources, and the boost of production has largely discounted Hubbert's prediction.[citation needed]

    The standard Hubbert curve. For applications, the x and y scales are replaced by time and production scales.

    U.S. Oil Production and Imports 1910 to 2012
    In 1956, Hubbert proposed that fossil fuel production in a given region over time would follow a roughly bell-shaped curve without giving a precise formula; he later used the Hubbert curve, the derivative of the logistic curve, for estimating future production using past observed discoveries.

    Hubbert assumed that after fossil fuel reserves (oil reserves, coal reserves, and natural gas reserves) are discovered, production at first increases approximately exponentially, as more extraction commences and more efficient facilities are installed. At some point, a peak output is reached, and production begins declining until it approximates an exponential decline.

    The Hubbert curve satisfies these constraints. Furthermore, it is symmetrical, with the peak of production reached when half of the fossil fuel that will ultimately be produced has been produced. It also has a single peak.

    Given past oil discovery and production data, a Hubbert curve that attempts to approximate past discovery data may be constructed and used to provide estimates for future production. In particular, the date of peak oil production or the total amount of oil ultimately produced can be estimated that way. Cavallo[8] defines the Hubbert curve used to predict the U.S. peak as the derivative of:

    {\displaystyle Q(t)={Q_{\rm {max}} \over {1+ae^{-bt}}}}Q(t)={Q_{\rm {max}} \over {1+ae^{-bt}}}
    where {\displaystyle Q}Qmax is the total resource available (ultimate recovery of crude oil), {\displaystyle Q(t)}Q(t) the cumulative production, and {\displaystyle a}a and {\displaystyle b}b are constants. The year of maximum annual production (peak) is:

    {\displaystyle t_{\rm {max}}={1 \over b}\ln \left({a}\right).}t_{\rm {max}}={1 \over b}\ln \left({a}\right).
    so now the cumulative production {\displaystyle Q(t)}Q(t) reaches the half of the total available resource:

    {\displaystyle Q(t)=Q_{\text{max}}/2}Q(t)=Q_{\text{max}}/2
    The Hubbert equation assumes that oil production is symmetrical about the peak. Others have used similar but non-symmetrical equations which may provide better a fit to empirical production data.[9]

    Use of multiple curves

    This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008)
    The sum of multiple Hubbert curves, a technique not developed by Hubbert himself, may be used in order to model more complicated real life scenarios. For example, when new technologies like hydraulic fracturing combined with new formations that were not productive before the new technology, this can create a need for multiple curves. These technologies are limited in number, but make a big impact on production and cause a need for a new curve to be added to the old curve and the entire curve to be reworked.[10]

    Hubbert's upper-bound prediction for US crude oil production (1956), and actual lower-48 states production through 2016
    Hubbert, in his 1956 paper,[4] presented two scenarios for US crude oil production:

    most likely estimate: a logistic curve with a logistic growth rate equal to 6%, an ultimate resource equal to 150 Giga-barrels (Gb) and a peak in 1965. The size of the ultimate resource was taken from a synthesis of estimates by well-known oil geologists and the US Geological Survey, which Hubbert judged to be the most likely case.
    upper-bound estimate: a logistic curve with a logistic growth rate equal to 6% and ultimate resource equal to 200 Giga-barrels and a peak in 1970.
    Hubbert's upper-bound estimate, which he regarded as optimistic, accurately predicted that US oil production would peak in 1970, although the actual peak was 17% higher than Hubbert's curve. Production declined, as Hubbert had predicted, and stayed within 10 percent of Hubbert's predicted value from 1974 through 1994; since then, actual production has been significantly greater than the Hubbert curve. The development of new technologies has provided access to large quantities of unconventional resources, and the boost of production has largely discounted Hubbert's prediction.[citation needed]

    Hubbert's 1956 production curves depended on geological estimates of ultimate recoverable oil resources, but he was dissatisfied by the uncertainty this introduced, given the various estimates ranging from 110 billion to 590 billion barrels for the US. Starting in his 1962 publication, he made his calculations, including that of ultimate recovery, based only on mathematical analysis of production rates, proved reserves, and new discoveries, independent of any geological estimates of future discoveries. He concluded that the ultimate recoverable oil resource of the contiguous 48 states was 170 billion barrels, with a production peak in 1966 or 1967. He considered that because his model incorporated past technical advances, that any future advances would occur at the same rate, and were also incorporated.[11] Hubbert continued to defend his calculation of 170 billion barrels in his publications of 1965 and 1967, although by 1967 he had moved the peak forward slightly, to 1968 or 1969.

    A post-hoc analysis of peaked oil wells, fields, regions and nations found that Hubbert's model was the "most widely useful" (providing the best fit to the data), though many areas studied had a sharper "peak" than predicted.

    A 2007 study of oil depletion by the UK Energy Research Centre pointed out that there is no theoretical and no robust practical reason to assume that oil production will follow a logistic curve. Neither is there any reason to assume that the peak will occur when half the ultimate recoverable resource has been produced; and in fact, empirical evidence appears to contradict this idea. An analysis of a 55 post-peak countries found that the average peak was at 25 percent of the ultimate recovery.

    Hubbert's 1962 prediction of US lower 48-state gas production, versus actual production through 2012
    Hubbert also predicted that natural gas production would follow a logistic curve similar to that of oil. The graph shows actual gas production in blue compared to his predicted gas production for the United States in red, published in 1962.

    The ratio of energy extracted to the energy expended in the process is often referred to as the Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI or EROEI). Should the EROEI drops to one, or equivalently the Net energy gain falls to zero, the oil production is no longer a net energy source.

    There is a difference between a barrel of oil, which is a measure of oil, and a barrel of oil equivalent (BOE), which is a measure of energy. Many sources of energy, such as fission, solar, wind, and coal, are not subject to the same near-term supply restrictions that oil is.[citation needed] Accordingly, even an oil source with an EROEI of 0.5 can be usefully exploited if the energy required to produce that oil comes from a cheap and plentiful energy source. Availability of cheap, but hard to transport, natural gas in some oil fields has led to using natural gas to fuel enhanced oil recovery. Similarly, natural gas in huge amounts is used to power most Athabasca tar sands plants. Cheap natural gas has also led[citation needed] to ethanol fuel produced with a net EROEI of less than 1, although figures in this area are controversial because methods to measure EROEI are in debate.

    The assumption of inevitable declining volumes of oil and gas produced per unit of effort is contrary to recent experience in the US. In the United States, as of 2017, there has been an ongoing decade-long increase in the productivity of oil and gas drilling in all the major tight oil and gas plays. The US Energy Information Administration reports, for instance, that in the Bakken Shale production area of North Dakota, the volume of oil produced per day of drilling rig time in January 2017 was 4 times the oil volume per day of drilling five years previous, in January 2012, and nearly 10 times the oil volume per day of ten years previous, in January 2007. In the Marcellus gas region of the northeast, The volume of gas produced per day of drilling time in January 2017 was 3 times the gas volume per day of drilling five years previous, in January 2012, and 28 times the gas volume per day of drilling ten years previous, in January 2007.
    Growth-based economic models

    World energy consumption & predictions, 2005–2035. Source: International Energy Outlook 2011.
    Insofar as economic growth is driven by oil consumption growth, post-peak societies must adapt. Hubbert believed:

    Our principal constraints are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non growth.

    — M. King Hubbert, "Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History"
    Some economists describe the problem as uneconomic growth or a false economy. At the political right, Fred Ikle has warned about "conservatives addicted to the Utopia of Perpetual Growth". Brief oil interruptions in 1973 and 1979 markedly slowed—but did not stop—the growth of world GDP.

    Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

    David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), in their 2003 study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, placed the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million (actual population approx. 290m in 2003, 329m in 2019). To achieve a sustainable economy world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study.[22] Without population reduction, this study predicts an agricultural crisis beginning in 2020, becoming critical c. 2050. The peaking of global oil along with the decline in regional natural gas production may precipitate this agricultural crisis sooner than generally expected. Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before.

    Doug Reynolds predicted in 2005 that the North American peak would occur in 2007. Bentley predicted a world "decline in conventional gas production from about 2020".

    Coal

    Although observers believe that peak coal is significantly further out than peak oil, Hubbert studied the specific example of anthracite in the US, a high grade coal, whose production peaked in the 1920s. Hubbert found that anthracite matches a curve closely.[27] Hubbert had recoverable coal reserves worldwide at 2.500 × 1012 metric tons and peaking around 2150 (depending on usage).

    More recent estimates suggest an earlier peak. Coal: Resources and Future Production (PDF 630KB), published on April 5, 2007 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG), which reports to the German Parliament, found that global coal production could peak in as few as 15 years. Reporting on this, Richard Heinberg also notes that the date of peak annual energetic extraction from coal is likely to come earlier than the date of peak in quantity of coal (tons per year) extracted as the most energy-dense types of coal have been mined most extensively. A second study, The Future of Coal by B. Kavalov and S. D. Peteves of the Institute for Energy (IFE), prepared for European Commission Joint Research Centre, reaches similar conclusions and states that "coal might not be so abundant, widely available and reliable as an energy source in the future".

    Work by David Rutledge of Caltech predicts that the total of world coal production will amount to only about 450 gigatonnes. This implies that coal is running out faster than usually assumed.


    In a paper in 1956,[32] after a review of US fissionable reserves, Hubbert notes of nuclear power:

    There is promise, however, provided mankind can solve its international problems and not destroy itself with nuclear weapons, and provided world population (which is now expanding at such a rate as to double in less than a century) can somehow be brought under control, that we may at last have found an energy supply adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the "foreseeable future."

    As of 2015, the identified resources of uranium are sufficient to provide more than 135 years of supply at the present rate of consumption. Technologies such as the thorium fuel cycle, reprocessing and fast breeders can, in theory, extend the life of uranium reserves from hundreds to thousands of years.

    Caltech physics professor David Goodstein stated in 2004 that

    ... you would have to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering standards in order to replace the 10 terawatts of fossil fuel we're burning today ... that's a staggering amount and if you did that, the known reserves of uranium would last for 10 to 20 years at that burn rate. So, it's at best a bridging technology ... You can use the rest of the uranium to breed plutonium 239 then we'd have at least 100 times as much fuel to use. But that means you're making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous world that we live in.

    Almost all helium on Earth is a result of radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Helium is extracted by fractional distillation from natural gas, which contains up to 7% helium. The world's largest helium-rich natural gas fields are found in the United States, especially in the Hugoton and nearby gas fields in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The extracted helium is stored underground in the National Helium Reserve near Amarillo, Texas, the self-proclaimed "Helium Capital of the World". Helium production is expected to decline along with natural gas production in these areas.

    Helium, which is the second-lightest chemical element, will rise to the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, where it can forever break free from Earth's gravitational attraction. Approximately 1,600 tons of helium are lost per year as a result of atmospheric escape mechanisms.

    Hubbert applied his theory to "rock containing an abnormally high concentration of a given metal" and reasoned that the peak production for metals such as copper, tin, lead, zinc and others would occur in the time frame of decades and iron in the time frame of two centuries like coal. The price of copper rose 500% between 2003 and 2007 and was attributed by some[who?] to peak copper. Copper prices later fell, along with many other commodities and stock prices, as demand shrank from fear of a global recession. Lithium availability is a concern for a fleet of Li-ion battery using cars but a paper published in 1996 estimated that world reserves are adequate for at least 50 years. A similar prediction for platinum use in fuel cells notes that the metal could be easily recycled.

    Peak gold

    In 2009, Aaron Regent president of the Canadian gold giant Barrick Gold said that global output has been falling by roughly one million ounces a year since the start of the decade. The total global mine supply has dropped by 10pc as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further to run. "There is a strong case to be made that we are already at 'peak gold'," he told The Daily Telegraph at the RBC's annual gold conference in London. "Production peaked around 2000 and it has been in decline ever since, and we forecast that decline to continue. It is increasingly difficult to find ore," he said.

    Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970. Output fell a further 14 percent in South Africa in 2008 as companies were forced to dig ever deeper – at greater cost – to replace depleted reserves.

    World mined gold production has peaked four times since 1900: in 1912, 1940, 1971, and 2001, each peak being higher than previous peaks. The latest peak was in 2001, when production reached 2,600 metric tons, then declined for several years. Production started to increase again in 2009, spurred by high gold prices, and achieved record new highs each year in 2012, 2013, and in 2014, when production reached 2,990 tonnes.

    Phosphorus supplies are essential to farming and depletion of reserves is estimated at somewhere from 60 to 130 years. According to a 2008 study, the total reserves of phosphorus are estimated to be approximately 3,200 MT, with a peak production at 28 MT/year in 2034. Individual countries' supplies vary widely; without a recycling initiative America's supply[49] is estimated around 30 years. Phosphorus supplies affect agricultural output which in turn limits alternative fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol. Its increasing price and scarcity (global price of rock phosphate rose 8-fold in the 2 years to mid 2008) could change global agricultural patterns. Lands, perceived as marginal because of remoteness, but with very high phosphorus content, such as the Gran Chaco may get more agricultural development, while other farming areas, where nutrients are a constraint, may drop below the line of profitability.

    Hubbert's original analysis did not apply to renewable resources. However, over-exploitation often results in a Hubbert peak nonetheless. A modified Hubbert curve applies to any resource that can be harvested faster than it can be replaced.

    For example, a reserve such as the Ogallala Aquifer can be mined at a rate that far exceeds replenishment. This turns much of the world's underground water and lakes into finite resources with peak usage debates similar to oil. These debates usually center around agriculture and suburban water usage but generation of electricity from nuclear energy or coal and tar sands mining mentioned above is also water resource intensive. The term fossil water is sometimes used to describe aquifers whose water is not being recharged.

    Peak fish: At least one researcher has attempted to perform Hubbert linearization (Hubbert curve) on the whaling industry, as well as charting the transparently dependent price of caviar on sturgeon depletion. The Atlantic northwest cod fishery was a renewable resource, but the numbers of fish taken exceeded the fish's rate of recovery. The end of the cod fishery does match the exponential drop of the Hubbert bell curve. Another example is the cod of the North Sea.
    Air/oxygen: Half the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton. The numbers of plankton have dropped by 40% since the 1950s.
    Criticisms of peak oil
    Economist Michael Lynch[59] argues that the theory behind the Hubbert curve is too simplistic and relies on an overly Malthusian point of view.[60] Lynch claims that Campbell's predictions for world oil production are strongly biased towards underestimates, and that Campbell has repeatedly pushed back the date.

    Leonardo Maugeri, vice president of the Italian energy company Eni, argues that nearly all of peak estimates do not take into account unconventional oil even though the availability of these resources is significant and the costs of extraction and processing, while still very high, are falling because of improved technology. He also notes that the recovery rate from existing world oil fields has increased from about 22% in 1980 to 35% today because of new technology and predicts this trend will continue. The ratio between proven oil reserves and current production has constantly improved, passing from 20 years in 1948 to 35 years in 1972 and reaching about 40 years in 2003. These improvements occurred even with low investment in new exploration and upgrading technology because of the low oil prices during the last 20 years. However, Maugeri feels that encouraging more exploration will require relatively high oil prices.

    Edward Luttwak, an economist and historian, claims that unrest in countries such as Russia, Iran and Iraq has led to a massive underestimate of oil reserves. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) responds by claiming neither Russia nor Iran are troubled by unrest currently, but Iraq is.

    Despite his valuable contribution, M. King Hubbert's methodology falls down because it does not consider likely resource growth, application of new technology, basic commercial factors, or the impact of geopolitics on production. His approach does not work in all cases-including on the United States itself-and cannot reliably model a global production outlook. Put more simply, the case for the imminent peak is flawed. As it is, production in 2005 in the Lower 48 in the United States was 66 percent higher than Hubbert projected.

    CERA does not believe there will be an endless abundance of oil, but instead believes that global production will eventually follow an "undulating plateau" for one or more decades before declining slowly, and that production will reach 40 Mb/d by 2015.

    Alfred J. Cavallo, while predicting a conventional oil supply shortage by no later than 2015, does not think Hubbert's peak is the correct theory to apply to world production.

    Criticisms of peak element scenarios

    Although M. King Hubbert himself made major distinctions between decline in petroleum production versus depletion (or relative lack of it) for elements such as fissionable uranium and thorium, some others have predicted peaks like peak uranium and peak phosphorus soon on the basis of published reserve figures compared to present and future production. According to some economists, though, the amount of proved reserves inventoried at a time may be considered "a poor indicator of the total future supply of a mineral resource."

    As some illustrations, tin, copper, iron, lead, and zinc all had both production from 1950 to 2000 and reserves in 2000 much exceed world reserves in 1950, which would be impossible except for how "proved reserves are like an inventory of cars to an auto dealer" at a time, having little relationship to the actual total affordable to extract in the future. In the example of peak phosphorus, additional concentrations exist intermediate between 71,000 Mt of identified reserves (USGS) and the approximately 30,000,000,000 Mt of other phosphorus in Earth's crust, with the average rock being 0.1% phosphorus, so showing decline in human phosphorus production will occur soon would require far more than comparing the former figure to the 190 Mt/year of phosphorus extracted in mines (2011 figure).
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    Humans seem to be good at Bell Curves.

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    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
    Money well spent...
    It will be interesting to see how the Biden administration reacts to that. Government contracts are notorious for being tenuous and ephemeral.

    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Humans seem to be good at Bell Curves.
    In truth, they are ... nature at work ...
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    It's a minute and a half.

    He's Irish. He should probably be listened to.

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    If our Supreme Court is really acting like a shadowy cabal, collapse may well be imminent.

    Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has dramatically altered the way it decides most cases—without acknowledging or justifying this radical shift. More and more often, the justices forgo the usual appeals procedure in favor of rushed decision-making behind closed doors in what’s known as “the shadow docket.” They issue late-night opinions on the merits of a case without hearing arguments or receiving full briefing, and often refuse to reveal who authored the opinion, or even how each justice voted. The public is then left to guess why or how the law has changed and what reasoning the court has embraced. These emergency orders are supposed to be a rare exception; today, however, the court regularly uses them to make law in hugely controversial cases, including disputes over the border wall, COVID-19 restrictions, and executions. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to decide what, if anything, Congress can do to address a problem that’s spiraling out of control.

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    It's not you hon, it's us. We really have to break up.



    Humans are creating conditions that make coronaviruses and other pathogenic diseases more common and more virulent. It turns out that the proliferation of novel coronaviruses is just one more devastating consequence of the industrial decimation of the natural world.
    Like all life* forms, coronaviruses constantly evolve. In fact, they mutate with shocking speed, far faster than cellular life forms. Two mechanisms of that evolution create potentially lethal new variants. The first is point mutations, the change in one single nucleotide base. These small changes are often not significant, and coronaviruses do not readily mutate. But millions of human infections by billions of viral particles produces vast opportunities for potentially consequential changes.
    A second evolutionary mechanism produces more profound changes to viral species. Homologous recombination is the novel combination of genetic material from two similar, “parent” strains of a virus. It is more fundamental change on a larger scale. Novel pathogenic coronaviruses – such as SARS-CoV and probably SARS-CoV-2 (the name of the virus responsible for Covid-19) – arose from the homologous recombination of two viruses co-infecting a single cell. So did HIV and classical swine fever virus.
    “coronaviruses frequently undergo homologous recombination when they co-infect a host, and that SARS-CoV-2 is highly infectious to humans, the most immediate threat to public health is recombination of other coronaviruses with SARS-CoV-2. Such recombination could readily produce further novel viruses with both the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 and additional pathogenicity or viral tropism from elsewhere in the Coronaviridae.”
    One candidate to vector the next coronavirus to humans is the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). According to the new model for calculating the likelihood of novel coronaviruses, the Palm Civet is “a potential host of 32…different coronaviruses (in addition to SARS-CoV-2).” Genetic analysis has already demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to coronaviruses derived from the Palm Civet. But... it is not the Palm Civet...that poses the threat. It is the way humans interact with the Palm Civet. It is our horribly destructive relationship with wild animals that makes the Palm Civet a likely disease vector more than any part of Civet biology. The problem is us, not them.
    Palm Civets are hunted for bushmeat and, despite being wild, solitary and nocturnal animals, kept as pets. One investigation found Palm Civets widely available in wildlife markets throughout Indonesia. Most of the Civets for sale were young and in poor health, suggesting they were captured in the wild.
    Kopi Luwak is brewed from coffee cherries that have been consumed and partially digested by civets. Civets are now housed in battery cages—rows and columns of identical cages stacked upon each other—and force-fed coffee cherries. Factory farming—a nightmare for breeding infectious disease—has come for the Palm Civet. The proximity of cages, stress of conditions, and bacterial infections combine to make civet farms likely hot spots for the outbreak of pathogenic diseases.
    Palm Civets are not the only potential vector species. Other species also house several coronaviruses and are thus likely sites for coronavirus recombination to occur. Signaled out by the researcher’s model are the lesser Asiatic yellow bat (Scotophilus kuhlii) already a known coronavirus carrier, as well as the greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum)—predicted to host 68 different coronaviruses. The common hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and the domestic cat (Felis catus) are also seen as likely hosts for SARS-CoV-2 and large numbers of other coronaviruses. Worryingly, the research also found that the common pig—"the most prominent result for a SARS-CoV-2 recombination” is a likely vector.
    Deforestation and habitat destruction not only bring humans into greater contact with wild animals and any diseases they may carry, but also makes pandemics more likely.

    Research demonstrates that this happens because as humans destroy habitats, species go extinct, reducing biodiversity. Those species that survive and even thrive in such situations—think rats and bats (and some bird species)—are more likely to host the dangerous pathogens that might jump to humans.

    I remember learning about dumb things people used to do in the past. My parents would say, "They didn't know any better, honey."

    But when smart people do dumb things and ignore the consequences...

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    Mmmm one ponders why the flu around the world nearly dissappeared since CV19 arrived, did it take over the flu ? and flu unable to mutate ?, as is great to look for silver linings = children mostly got no probs with cv19 and little to nearly zip flu for them also.

    Elderly getting smashed by it unfortunately but silver lining is 94% of them had at least two pre existing health conditions, blessings upon them all and lets hope the Cuomo n co get their just deserves.

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    The flu is still around. People are wearing masks and social distancing. This is why there are so few cases of influenza.

    Even here in states where only some counties require masks, rates of infection from Covid were reduced. Rates of flu will also be reduced.

    Washing hands, social distancing and wearing masks does wonders to prevent spread of viruses. As we are now seeing.

    Of course, no one wants to live that way indefinitely. So we'll get some immunity for a while, and then another virus will pop up and we'll have to go through this again.

    I don't see the profit machines stopping any time soon, so get ready for waves of pandemic viruses. They're a comin'.
    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 28th February 2021 at 11:49.

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    The profit machines will facilitate the behaviors which lead to environmental degradation.

    It's very difficult to stop.

    So collapse will happen as the environment continues to be stressed, climate continues to become unstable, and people cannot respond because the power structures would rather continue their profits at the expense of human life.

    I feel like we had the potential here in my country to balance capitalism with smart policy and care for nature. Those were all parts of traditional Christian values, which America has predominantly been.

    But we've moved away from those values towards the atrocious prosperity doctrine, and treating capitalism like a religion. Welfare for Corporations while people cost too much to take care of.

    These dynamics can do nothing other than lead to collapse.

    A snake cannot eat itself forever.

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    Weird huh, DT ... mass psychosis indeed.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    Corrupt capitalism as it is is indeed destroying nature and our way of living. Can't people see it?

    Maybe it's deserved because of the greed? It's just sad that the innocent ones get hurt in the process too.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpMireGgxJ0

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