The Dull Static

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by td0s in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Neo-Colonialism, Peak Oil

≈ 172 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Dark Mountain Project, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Mass Die Off, Mike Ruppert, Neoliberal Capitalism, Paul Kingsnorth, Peak Oil, Uncivilization

Originally posted at: Prayforcalamity.com

The flowering dogwoods are in bloom. Along the country lanes, the pink petals have already exploded into ephemeral radiance and begun to wither and fall from the branches of the Jane Magnolia trees. For me this means no longer having the agonizing luxury of hours to sit and write. After six months of bi-weekly essays, I feel I have expressed much of what had become balled up and cluttered in my mind, and now it is time to ruminate in the garden once again.

I named this blog, “Pray for Calamity,” because there are several major crises converging which threaten human civilization, and there are no existing structures capable of mitigating them. Democracy, capitalism, neo-liberal globalization; they are all incapable of undertaking the work necessary to avert cataclysm. The paradigms of thought and approach which are almost hardwired into the modern mind at this point, need to be scrubbed. Of the remaining, solvable ecological crises, which may not include climate change, there is no tool available to attend to them that comes from the conventional tool box of legal, lawful pursuit. These ecological crises, which range from topsoil depletion to tree extinctions to massive die off of oceanic life, cannot be remedied without a fundamental shift in the thinking of the people in the civilized world. If people do not begin to perceive the world as a living entity, interconnected, conscious, and with intrinsic value beyond how it can be carved up and sold, then it is only a matter of time until the human race begins to suffer on a massive scale due to their callous disregard for the other beings with whom they share this planet.

And then there are the political and economic and resource depletion crises as well.

Changing our minds, changing how we think, is physically speaking one of the easiest things we can do. However, when our egos and our identities are wholly interwoven with an idea or an ideology, changing our way of thinking and discarding the old ideas, can be the hardest thing we are asked to undertake. If our physical reality changes, this can create a rip in the threads that stitch our view of ourselves with a dogma or a paradigm. So I await calamity because the egos of the civilized have hardened their hearts and deafened their ears, and until those in the first world middle class feel the gnawing pain of persistent hunger and the fear of deafening uncertainty, they will refuse to consider that maybe everything they have been taught to believe about themselves and their collective destiny, is abjectly wrong.

—

“We’re many generations overdue for a revolution, in our thinking. I’m not talking about blood and violence although I’m afraid thats already happened. I’m talking about a revolution that’s probably the hardest kind, the kind that takes place within the human soul and the human mind. To be able to tear everything down, throw everything out, and start with a completely fresh piece of paper and say, ‘OK, how do we solve this problem?’”

Mike Ruppert said that in the documentary “Collapse.” While by no means a perfect man, Mike was a good person, and did his best to tell the truth as he knew it. He shot himself two weeks ago. He left many insights like this one as gifts for us.

People who become aware of the depth of the problems facing humanity at this juncture in time, often seek answers. They want to know what we need to do. Some suggest we need a revolution. Some suggest we need to take to the hills and hide on personal homesteads, to perhaps form communities of these homesteads and just hold on white knuckled through the bottle neck of collapse. Then there is Paul Kingsnorth of the Dark Mountain Project, who speaks of the difference between problems which are to be solved, and predicaments which are to be endured.

“What do you do,” he asked, “when you accept that all of these changes are coming, things that you value are going to be lost, things that make you unhappy are going to happen, things that you wanted to achieve you can’t achieve, but you still have to live with it, and there’s still beauty, and there’s still meaning, and there are still things you can do to make the world less bad? And that’s not a series of questions that have any answers other than people’s personal answers to them. Selfishly it’s just a process I’m going through.” He laughed. “It’s extremely narcissistic of me. Rather than just having a personal crisis, I’ve said: ‘Hey! Come share my crisis with me!’

Kingsnorth was recently interviewed by the New York Times. As a long time environmental activist who years ago lost faith that there is much we can do to “save the planet,” he decries the false hope sold by mainstream environmentalist groups. With friend Dougald Hine, Kingsnorth wrote the “Uncivilization” manifesto, on which The New York Times writes:

“Uncivilization” was firm in its conviction that climate change and other ecological crises are predicaments, and it called for a cadre of like-minded writers to “challenge the stories which underpin our civilization: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality and the myth of separation from ‘nature.’ ”

On this matter I think Kingsnorth and Hine are right on the mark. We will never weather the predicaments before us, let alone solve what problems remain solvable, if we refuse to take an honest look at who we are, where we are, and just what the hell we are doing. I think this is a meditation that would benefit revolutionaries and those hiding in the hills alike. We must ask if civilization is something we are even interested in continuing. We must ask what it is we value most and whether or not the lifestyles we are cordoned into are even in line with those values. We must ask what it means to be human. And if we are to trust any of our conclusions, we must first find a way to step outside of everything our culture has programmed us to believe.

—

Civilization is a power structure. It is a rejection of natural law in favor of the control of those high on social hierarchies. Civilization is the domestication of nature and people alike. It is the creation of a once regional, now global farm where the multitudes of humans are livestock, restricted by the borders of various owners, and subjugated and exploited for the extraction of the surplus values generated by their labor. Non human life forms and entire ecosystems are subjugated likewise, and as this control apparatus is now world wide and hell bent on growing in scale year over year, life itself is at risk. Simultaneously, this architecture of domestication and control has blunted the souls of the humans it dominates, and like house pets, the great many people have been declawed and broken. This is the existential portion of the crisis we face. The meaninglessness of life on the inside. The dull static of the best case scenario, where those in the first world yearn for the life of tepid, safe predictability offered by the owner class, should only one produce enough without question or complaint. We are a wretched bunch who fetishize our oppressors and spew vitriol at insurrectionaries who would in trying to shake us loose even for a moment, dare make us late for work.

Navigating circumstances beyond our control in which masters are hostile to us, constantly maneuvering to exert more control over our lives as well as to extract more value from us even in our imprisonment or death; most people are surviving, not thriving. Merely jockeying through a preset condition of work and fee schedules has muted the potential of our species. What has been throttled cannot be measured in discoveries or inventions, but in the satisfaction of individuals and communities to thrive on their own terms. To be fully actualized and autonomous creatures. To witness the assembly line life of modern man is to suffer a snuff film.

If we are to rescue our own hearts and our minds, if we are to save the last embers of burning wildness in our souls and to break the tethers that bind our thinking to suicidal paradigms, then we must uncivilize. Like Buck in “The Call of the Wild,” we must seek to undomesticate ourselves, no only to survive the realities of the world into which we are being thrust, but because to be a house mutt lying bored at master’s feet is to barely exist at all.

—

So what does any of this really mean? What are the steps, the actions to undertake which will align the force of our arms with the rhythms of our hearts? Do we fight or do we flee? Or do we stand upon the hill and bear witness until the fire consumes us? Or is there perhaps some combination of all; a time for rebellion, a time to tend our gardens, and a time to merely sit and say goodbye?

Certainly, if people seek a recipe for action that can maintain society in a form even remotely similar to its present incarnation, then I offer nothing. If what people desire is a map of the future from which plans can be derived and survival assured, I have none. I think maybe it is time to give up on maps. Maybe it is time to just be in the territory for a while. Maybe it is time to give up on human words and to leave the electronic buzz of the internet and to set foot on soil and rock. If domestication is the product of being in the domicile, in the house, then perhaps what we need is to step outside. If the stories we have been told for generations have poisoned us; if these myths about the greatness of the lines on maps and the men who ruled those patchwork lines have only served to make us slaves to abstractions, engendering in us a self righteousness and a malice towards all that isn’t of our hands and seeding in us a fear of what lies outside comfortable walls, then perhaps it is time to go and to hear some different voices. To hear some new stories. Maybe, lost in the ballad of crowing frogs and moaning trees we can crumple up what is written before us and find a blank piece of paper, and on it we will write of our sadness and our fear. We will admit our weakness in the face of all that we have made and we will scratch out our apologies and our gratitude.

Then we will collect up everything that we think the future needs to be given, and we will carry it within us to barricades and to garden gates, to jail cells and to barn bays and to graves. We will find the fire that will make tomorrow worth struggling towards, in that dark, when we are bent and cold heaps of hungry, smoke smelling bone and sinew beneath taught and blackened skin. The madness of the world will grow raw, and real. Privation and awfulness will bloom, and we will endure it.

Do the Math of Peak Oil and Convince Yourself

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Hans Zandvliet in Peak Oil

≈ 82 Comments

A Step-By-Step Plan to
Calculate Hubbert’s Curve

Ing. Hans Zandvliet, April 2014

Table of Contents
Do the Math of Peak Oil and Convince Yourself
Table of Contents
Introduction
Download and Organize CDIAC Data
Methodology of Calculating Hubbert’s Curve
Do the Math!
Back to Our CDIAC Database
Defining the Linear Trend Line
Calculating Hubbert’s Curve
Matching Hubbert’s Curve with Historical Data
Combining Hubbert’s Curve and Historical Data in a Graph
Conclusions
Recent Developments
Bibliography

Introduction

Until Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère published their paper The End of Cheap Oil in 1998 (Campbell & Laherrére, 1998), the petroleum geologist Marion King Hubbert (1903 – 1989) was all but forgotten, including his correct forecast – back in 1956 – of the US’s peak of oil production in 1970 (Hubbert, 1956). In their paper Campbell and Laherrère warned that:

“Barring a global recession, it seems most likely that world production of conventional oil will peak during the first decade of the 21st century.”

It took another 12 years, but eventually the oil production optimist par excellence, the International Energy Agency (IEA, of the OECD countries), also had to admit the undeniable in their World Energy Outlook of 2010 (IEA, 2010):

“Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68–69 mb/d by 2020, but never regains its all‐time peak of 70 mb/d reached in 2006, while production of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and unconventional oil grows strongly.” (emphasis added)

Since Campbell’s and Laherrère’s paper, the peak of global oil production has been studied and commented on intensely. Centre stage in the debates has been Hubbert’s peak-oil calculation. However, in order to calculate Hubbert’s curve, one needs to have reliable petroleum production data and this is precisely the biggest problem. Oil reserves and production data of many countries and oil companies are kept secret, so one has to circumvent those obstacles by piecing together national import and export data from all countries in the world. Doable for a petroleum geologist, but not for an ordinary college student.

And this is a pity, because ordinary people cannot verify what the experts say about the timing of the peak of global oil production. The entire calculation remains a kind of magical mystery in which to either believe or not. The calculation itself is not the problem; any college student with a bit of affinity for mathematics should be able to do these calculations. The lack of reliable data is the problem.

Download and Organize CDIAC Data

Fortunately there is a fairly accurate solution to this problem, freely accessible to the general public. It’s not direct petroleum production data, but a closely related proxy: carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels. On the basic assumption that burning one barrel of petroleum will always produce roughly the same amount of carbon-dioxide, it doesn’t really matter whether one calculates the peak of global oil production or the peak of global carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels. The unit and vertical scale of the curve will be different, but the general shape of it and the timing of its peak will remain the same.

This database of carbon emissions from fossil fuels has been put together by CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre), which “[…] has served as the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since 1982.” So, CDIAC is not some kind of obscure website with dubious and poorly documented information, but an authoritative source used by climate scientists.

So, let’s go and take a look at CDIAC’s website: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/. On CDIAC’s home-page, in the pull-down menu “Data”, click “Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions”. Now, click “Global, Regional, and National Annual Time Series (1751-2010)” on top of the list on this page. Here you can choose between national, regional and global data. It’s worthwhile to have a look at some national data (like those of the U.K.), imagine the work to get these data together from historical archives and appreciate the magnitude of this database. (By the way, for the interested, it’s a nice cross-check to use the U.S.’s national emissions data to calculate the U.S.’s peak of oil production back in 1970.) For the purpose of this article, we click “Global” emission data. Now you can choose between three data formats: “Graphics”, “Digital Data (ASCII, Fixed Format)” and “Digital Data (ASCII, Comma-Delimited)”. Choose the third option and open the data file (presented in CSV format) with Excel. Now save the CSV-file as an XLS-file (or XLSX-file) in a map of your choice. Additionally, going back to the “Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions” page, click “Preliminary 2011 and 2012 Global & National Estimates” to update your database with two more years. This only requires a bit of copying and pasting of a few numbers between two Excel sheets.

You now have a database of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels running from 1751 until 2012. The data differentiate between solid (like coal and peat), liquid (predominantly petroleum) and gaseous (mainly natural gas) fossil fuels. Row number 1 contains the headings of the table, but they are very long. For convenience, rename them to something shorter, like “Year, Total, Gas, Oil, Coal, Cement, Flaring and Per Capita” (cells A1:H1). Row number 2 mentions the source of the database. Copy this information away to somewhere on the right side of the table and use row 2 to mention the units of the data (million metric tons of carbon [Mt C] for all columns, except the per capita data in column H (after 1949): metric tons of carbon [t C]). Your Excel sheet should now look like this:

Methodology of Calculating Hubbert’s Curve

This article follows the explanations of Kenneth S. Deffeyes’ book Beyond Oil, the View from Hubbert’s Peak (Deffeyes, 2005). Deffeyes is a geologist and was a colleague and friend of Hubbert when he started his career at the Shell Research Lab in Houston, back in 1958. He wrote this book with the intention of explaining how Hubbert’s curve is calculated, so in this sense my article is not that novel. However, my aim is to get more into the details of how to actually do it, step by step, by means of an (Microsoft Office 2007) Excel sheet and (which I think is novel indeed) CDIAC’s carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels.

Marion K. Hubbert discovered a peculiar pattern in oil production data, which allowed him to make a fairly accurate estimate of the amount of oil “yet to be discovered”. This almost sounds like a contradiction of terms: how can you know how much oil you are going to discover in future decades? Still, Hubbert discovered a linear trend in historical oil production data and a linear trend can easily be extended into the future. The following graph shows the pattern of oil production that Hubbert discovered:

The vertical axis represents the oil production of a certain year divided by the cumulative oil production up to that year (“P” stands for annual oil production and “Q” means cumulative oil production). The horizontal axis represents the cumulative oil production in billions of barrels.

Every dot represents the data of one year. At first the cumulative production is still little, so the quotient of P/Q gives relatively high outcomes (the blue dots in the graph). But the cumulative oil production keeps rising steadily, so the outcome of the quotient P/Q trends downward. Most importantly, from 1983 onward the dots start to line up fairly close to a straight line (the red dots in the graph) and form a linear trend (the black line in the graph).

If we extend this linear trend line until it reaches the horizontal axis, we can get an idea of the ultimate recoverable amount of oil. Upon reaching the horizontal axis, the quotient P/Q becomes zero, meaning that the annual oil production has become zero and no more oil can be produced. Therefore, this point indicates the total cumulative oil production at the end of the age of oil. Once you know how much oil you can ultimately produce, you have the key to calculate the future trend of annual oil production.

Do the Math!

In mathematical terms, the equation of a straight line is very simple:

Where “b” is the y-value where the line intersects with the y-axis. In other words, the y-value when the x-value is zero.

The “a” indicates the inclination of the line. When two points on the line are known, this inclination can be calculated as follows:

Or, the difference in y-values divided by the difference in x-values of the two known points. A negative outcome means the line slopes downward from left to right.

So, if we can define this linear trend line, we can calculate the future trend of oil production and to quote Deffeyes: “Since we want to estimate likely future trends, nothing beats a straight line on a graph.” No cooked up magic added, just straight forward mathematics.

First we translate the mathematical terms into oil production terms, taking the intersections of the trend line with the x and y axes as the two known points:

With these translations, the mathematical formula becomes the following oil production formula:

Or simplified:

To calculate annual production data, you’d like to know “P”, not some incomprehensible quotient “P/Q”. This is easily achieved by multiplying both sides of the equation with “Q”:

To define “b” and “Qt”, we will make use of Excel’s linear trend line option. Then we will come back to this formula.

Back to Our CDIAC Database

Time to roll up some sleeves, because now we’re starting to elaborate our Excel calculations. First, insert two new columns (E and F) to the right of the column with carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels (D). Merge cells D1, E1 and F1, rename cell D2 into “P [Mt C]”. Name cell E2 “Q [Mt C]” and F2 “P/Q”. Your Excel sheet should now look like this:

The cumulative emission data are easily calculated by adding the emission data from the present year to the cumulative emission data of the previous year. Of course, 1751 doesn’t have a previous year in this database, so here (cell E3) we enter “0”. In cell E4 enter the Excel formula “= E3 + D4” and copy it down to all cells of column E (cells E5 till E264).

Petroleum was not yet discovered in 1751, so everything is still zero. As from 1870 the first emission data from liquid fossil fuels appear in the database. For convenience, you can split the window (menu tab “View”) to keep visible the heading of the table. Go to cell F122 (of the year 1870), enter the Excel formula “=D122/E122” and copy it down to the rest of column F (cells F123 till F264). Your Excel sheet (as from 1870) should now look like this:

Defining the Linear Trend Line

From the menu tab “Insert”, select the graph type “Scatter with only Markers” and a blank window opens up to design a chart. From the menu tab “Design” (“Chart Tools” are only visible when you select the chart window), click the button “Select Data” and a dialogue box opens. Click “Add” (under “Legend Entry (Series)”) and yet another dialogue opens in which you can type a name for the data series and the range of x-data and y-data. Under “Series Name” type something like “P/Q (1900-2012)”. I suggest making the graph as from 1900, because initially P/Q values start at 1, so the vertical scale becomes very large and the final and most relevant values between 0.04 and 0.02 become barely visible. For your x-data select the values E152:E264 and for your y-data select the values F152:F264. With some layout editing, your graph could now look like this:

Below a value of 0.04, you can see the dots lining up in a roughly linear way. When you move the cursor over the first dot just below the 0.04 line, an information box shows the coordinates of this dot: “Series “P/Q (1900-2012)” Point “55,931” (55,931, 0.0389)” Looking up these data in the table and you will find that they belong to the year 1983. So, as from 1983, the carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels start to line up in a linear way.

Before we can let Excel calculate a linear trend line, we first have to make a second graph of the 1983-2012 data. Do this in exactly the same way as the former graph, but only select the 1983-2012 data. Your graph should now look like this:

Of this second graph (of red dots) we let Excel calculate a linear trend line. You could calculate it yourself (the WikiPedia page “Linear Regression” will tell you all you need to know), but it’s very tiresome work and too farfetched for this article.

From the “Chart Tools” select the menu tab “Layout”, click the “Trendline” button, select “More Trendline Options” and select the “P/Q (1983-2012)” series. In the “Format Trendline” dialogue box, select the “Linear” type of trend line. At the bottom, tick the selection box “Display Equation on Chart” and close the dialogue box. You now see the linear trend line as a thin black line in your graph, together with its mathematical equation.

To improve the precision of this equation, right-click on it and from the quick menu that pops up, select “Format Trendline Label”. Now format the numbers of the formula as “Scientific” with two decimals (more decimals will only give a false impression of high accuracy). In this case scientific numbers come in quite handy because the P/Q-numbers are very small and the Q-numbers very large (so, don’t bother about them and let Excel do the job). Brightening up your chart a bit, your graph should now look like this:

Now we have the values for “a” (-1.84·10-7) and “b” (4.74·10-2) and we can convert the mathematical trend line formula into our carbon emissions formula by changing “y” into “P/Q” and “x” into “Q”:

Annual emission data follow by multiplying both sides of the equation with “Q”:

We can now calculate the ultimate amount of carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels at the end of the age of oil (Qt). This is when P = 0:

So let’s solve this equation:

Calculating Hubbert’s Curve

Now we can calculate Hubbert’s curve of CDIAC’s carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels. First we not only want to calculate our Hubbert’s curve up to 2012, but through the end of this century, so we have to extend column A to 2100. The quickest way is to enter the Excel formula “=A264+1” in cell A265 and copy this formula down to the cells A266 till A352.

To the right of column F (with the P/Q data) we insert two new columns G and H. Merge cells G1 and H1 and type something like “Hubbert Oil”. Something similar you can do with cells D1, E1 and F1, naming them Historic Oil. In cell G2, write “P [Mt C]” and in cell H2 “Q [Mt C]”. Your table (as from 1870) should now look like this:

We need to put the values of “b” and “Qt” somewhere in the sheet. I put them in the following cells:

Cell M265: “b [P/Q]”
Cell M266: “4.74E-02” or “0.0474” (same value, different formats)
Cell M267: “Qt [Mt C]”
Cell M268: “258,000”
Cell M269: “Q-1870 [Mt C]”
Cell M270: “1” (for the time being, later you will see why)

In cell H122 enter “=M270” (To check, this is Hubbert’s cumulative emissions in the year 1870). Since the calculation of cumulative emissions remains the same, copy cell E123 to the cells H123 till H352.

We have to be careful now, because we’re going to use Q to calculate P and P to calculate Q, which results in a circular reference. However, given the right settings, Excel can easily deal with that. Click the Office button in the top-left corner of Excel and click the “Excel Options” button (bottom-right). Now click the “Formulas” button (top-left) and activate “Enable iterative calculation” (top-right). Usually it’s not necessary to tinker with the maximum amount of iterations and change. Leave the Excel Options by clicking “OK”.

Now we’re going to use the formula we arrived at on page 4 (repeated here, for convenience):

In Excel-format, enter in cell G122:

The dollar-signs mean that the row-numbers of these cells don’t change when the formula is copied. This is necessary, because M266 and M268 are the two numbers “b” and “Qt”, which occupy one fixed cell. Copy cell G122 down to the cells G123 till G352. Your table should now look like this:

You can see I gave the cells E264 and H264 a bold and blue format to let them stick out. Likewise I made cell M270 bold and red. It’s handy to do the same.

Matching Hubbert’s Curve with Historical Data

So what do we have now? We have a Hubbert’s curve (for sure, if you copy it down another century), but it’s not yet matched with the calendar years of historic emission data. To imagine what needs to be done, we need to move our Hubbert’s curve horizontally across the chart, until it best fits with the historical data. The most acurate way to do this is to adjust the initial value of cumulative emissions in 1870 (we set it to “1”, for time being) such that Hubbert’s cumulative emissions in 2012 equal the historical cumulative emissions of that same year (that’s why I marked them blue and bold for comparison).

Now finding this match is a matter of changing the value “1” of cell M270 and seeing what happens. To avoid having to scroll up and down between 1870 and 2012, I placed this adjustment cell at M270, while H122 uses M270 as its starting value (now you see why).

So, give it a try and change cell M270 from 1 to 10. You should now see that the blue cell H264 has increased from 984 to 9,498. So, we’re heading in the right direction, but we’re not there yet. Try 100 instead of 10. H264 has now increased to 70,639. It seems we’re half way now, so let’s try 200. H264 is now 110,198, so we’re getting there. Say, 250? H264 = 124,157. M270 = 300? H264 = 135,637. That’s just a tad too much! M270 = 299? H264 = 135,427. Still a tiny bit too much. M270 = 298? H264 = 135,217. For the record: M270 = 297? H264 = 135,006. So, 298 is a much closer match than 297: M270 = H122 = 298! We have matched Hubbert’s curve horizontally with the historical emission data.

Now, curious in which year Hubbert’s peak occurs? Look at the annual emissions of Hubbert’s curve in column G. In which year does it reach its highest value? In 2010!

Combining Hubbert’s Curve and Historical Data in a Graph

From the tab menu “Insert”, select a 2-D line graph. From the Chart Tools select the menu tab “Design”, click the button “Select Data” and click the button “Add” (under “Legend Entries (Series)”). In the dialogue box that opens up, enter as a “Series Name” something like “Hubbert’s Curve (1870-2100)”. Select the data cells G122 till G352. You can now see you have added a legend entry, but you still have to edit the “Horizontal (Category) Axis Labels”. So, click on the “Edit” button and select the cells A122 till A352.

Now add a second data series of the historic annual emissions of cells D122 till D264 (Chart Tools -> Design -> Select Data). However, select as its calendar series the same range of years as the Hubbert’s curve (1870-2100): cells A122 till A352. After tidying up a bit, your chart should look like this:

Conclusions

Based on CDIAC’s global data of carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels (i.e. predominantly petroleum) and Marion King Hubbert’s method of calculating the oil production curve, we have arrived at a theoretical emissions peak of carbon from liquid fossil fuels (i.e. oil production peak) in 2010.

Compared to earlier forecasts of oil-geologists and other experts using Hubbert’s methodology, the calculations based on CDIAC data get quite close to the mark. Most of these experts (like Collin Campbell, Jean Laherrère, Kenneth Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons) forecast peak-oil between 2005 and 2010, so the CDIAC data turn out to be a fairly reliable source for this purpose.

Theoretically, we’re already 4 years past the peak, although historical data still show growth. This is very well possible for a limited period of time. Given the frantic drilling and fracking spree we’ve seen since about 2007, it’s not even surprising. Extraction methods have improved as well over the last decade or so: horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, deep-sea drilling, more accurate 3D soundings of geological formations, etc. The much higher oil price has also made it worthwhile to drill for harder-to-get oil. So, the ultimately recoverable amount of oil has increased indeed (though I don’t know by how much) and this is not (yet) reflected in the historical data.

Recent Developments

Since a few years, there has been a lot of talk that there are so much fossil fuel reserves left that we can only responsibly burn about one third of them (leaving two-thirds in the ground) in order to keep global warming below 2°C (IEA, 2012). This also implies that the shares of fossil fuel companies are over-valued by up to 80% (Carbon Tracker, 2012; Carbon Tracker, 2013). However, there are several caveats against this analysis:

The reserves are based on stated reserves of fossil fuel companies and governments, but we don’t know to what extent these reserves are overstated. Of the OPEC-countries it’s quite obvious that (for political motives) they overstated their reserves dramatically between 1987 and 1990. The sudden jumps in stated reserves were not accompanied by announcements of newfound oil fields. Also, it doesn’t add up that oil reserves have remained virtually constant during decades of high rates of oil production and low rates of new discoveries:
Source: own compilation of U.S. Energy Information Administration data
(EIA, 2013)
It’s not the amount of fossil fuel reserves that counts; it’s the rate at which they can be extracted. The big oilfields with high quality and easy to get petroleum are mostly depleted. We are now looking for ever smaller fields in ever harder to reach locations, like the ocean floors and the arctic. When it’s ever harder to get the oil, this will result in a slowdown of the rate of extraction (i.e. going down the other side of Hubbert’s curve).
The Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) has already gone down seriously. The EROEI is an analysis of how much energy it takes to produce fossil energy (produce materials and operate machinery needed to construct the facilities to drill for oil and get it to the market, like drilling rigs, pipelines, oil tankers, refineries, etc.) and how much energy you get from all this. The EROEI used to be 100:1 in the 1930s – 1950s. Talking about tar sands the EROEI is already down to something like 5:1. This means that for every 5 barrels of oil (equivalent) one has to be invested into getting it, 4 are left as “profit”. Once it takes one barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil, there won’t be any profit left and it’s pointless to continue. Actually well before this point (say 2:1) because an oil company needs to sell at least some oil to pay for the investments in wages and equipment.
The cost of oil extraction is already such that the oil price has to be above $100/barrel in order to be profitable. On the other hand, how high a fossil fuel price can the world economy afford in order to function healthily? We’ve seen the world economy crash into the Great Recession in 2008, when the oil price soared to $147/barrel (I daresay it wasn’t exactly a housing bubble…) and the price is again hovering around $100/barrel. No wonder economic growth doesn’t want to pick up! Oil consumption simply responds to the economic law of supply and demand. When oil gets too expensive, people will turn to cheaper alternatives and oil consumption goes down (the other side of Hubbert’s curve) just the same.

So there are many ways to look at peak-oil (environmental, geological, economical, social, etc.). One way doesn’t exclude the other, so I surely don’t want to contribute to infighting between peak-oilists and environmentalists. Both are right and allies to the same cause: we have to think hard and take swift action to create a sustainable way of living in harmony with the world wide web of life on our planet, in order to prove that human intelligence was not an evolutionary error.

Bibliography

Campbell, Colin J., and Jean H. Laherrère. “The End of Cheap Oil.” Scientific American 278.3 (1998): 78-83. Print. Download at http://josiah.berkeley.edu/2007Fall/ER200N/Readings/Campbell_1998.pdf

“Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.” (CDIAC). Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Website http://cdiac.ornl.gov/

Global Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. CDIAC. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Website http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2010.html

The Crisis of Civilization. Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. Dead Dean Films, 2011. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMgOTQ7D_lk

A Crude Awakening. Dir. Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack. 2006. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qGM9ypR-UI

Crude Impact. Dir. Jennifer Jandak Wood, James Jandak Wood, and Joanne Shen. 2006. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvyDH8-y-AE

Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. Print.

Hubbert, M. King. Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Houston: Shell Development, Exploration and Production Research Division, 1956. Print. Download at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf

International Energy Statistics. EIA, 2013. Data. Download at http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=57&aid=6&cid=CG9,&syid=1980&eyid=2013&unit=BB

Unburnable Carbon – Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble? Rep. Carbon Tracker. 2011. Print. Download at http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/07/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2.pdf

Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets. Rep. Carbon Tracker. Print. Download at http://carbontracker.live.kiln.it/Unburnable-Carbon-2-Web-Version.pdf

World Energy Outlook 2010, Executive Summary. IEA, 2010. Print. Download at http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/weo2010sum.pdf

World Energy Outlook 2012, Executive Summary. IEA, 2012. Print. Download at http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/weo2012sum.pdf

Overpopulated by Homo Colossus

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 118 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Derrick Jensen, Environmental Collapse, Gross Inequality, Overconsumption, Overpopulation, Poverty, Social Unrest, Wage Slave, William Catton

Do citizens of industrialized, consumerist nations have the moral authority to lecture the world about overpopulation, singling it out as the root of all the world’s problems? William Catton coined the term Homo colossus to describe those living in the industrialized world whose consumption of resources is disproportionately greater than those in the so-called undeveloped world:

In his book Endgame, Derrick Jensen points out that the argument of overpopulation becomes rather meaningless unless it is framed within the context of consumption levels:

If we take a look at who is actually pushing the environment to collapse according to their consumption levels, it becomes clear by the numbers that the real planet destroyers are not the teeming masses of the Third World, but industrial civilization’s energy gluttons driving their SUV’s, checking their stock portfolios on the internet, and wagging their finger at the huddled masses who have been corralled into megacities because globalization wiped out their indigenous means of subsistence:

…What is immediately apparent from Chart 1[above] is that the 10 percent of the world’s population with the highest income, some 700 million people, are responsible for the overwhelmingly majority of the problem. It should be kept in mind that this is not just an issue of the rich countries. Very wealthy people live in almost all countries of the world—the wealthiest person in the world is Mexican, and there are more Asians than North Americans with net worth over $100 million. When looked at from a global perspective, the poor become essentially irrelevant to the problem of resource use and pollution. The poorest 40 percent of people on Earth are estimated to consume less than 5 percent of natural resources. The poorest 20 percent, about 1.4 billion people, use less than 2 percent of natural resources. If somehow the poorest billion people disappeared tomorrow, it would have a barely noticeable effect on global natural resource use and pollution. (It is the poor countries, with high population growth, that have low per capita greenhouse gas emissions.22) However, resource use and pollution could be cut in half if the richest 700 million lived at an average global standard of living.

Thus, we are forced to conclude that when considering global resource use and environmental degradation there really is a “population problem.” But it is not too many people—and certainly not too many poor people—but rather too many rich people living too “high on the hog” and consuming too much. Thus birth control programs in poor countries or other means to lower the population in these regions will do nothing to help deal with the great problems of global resource use and environmental destruction… – link

By far, the wealthy have the world’s largest environmental footprint :

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the carbon footprint of the top quintile is over three times that of the bottom. Even in relatively egalitarian Canada, the top income decile has a mobility footprint nine times that of the lowest, a consumer goods footprint four times greater, and an overall ecological footprint two-and-a-half times larger. Air travel is frequently pegged as one of the most rapidly growing sources of carbon emissions, but it’s not simply because budget airlines have “democratized the skies”–rather, flying has truly exploded among the hyper-mobile affluent. Thus in Western Europe, the transportation footprint of the top income earners is 250 percent of that of the poor. And global carbon emissions are particularly uneven: the top five hundred million people by income, comprising about 8 percent of global population, are responsible for 50 percent of all emissions. It’s a truly global elite, with high emitters present in all countries of the world.

In the post Earth to Humans: “Get Off Your Merry-Go-Round Ride to Extinction”, I quoted a well-reasoned article by Devon G. Peña who explained the self-serving and hypocritical stance taken by the capitalist industrialized nations regarding the issue of overpopulation. The root causes driving mankind to extinction are completely sidestepped:

…In climate change debates, overpopulation arguments serve to delay making structural changes in North and South away from the extraction and use of fossil fuels; to explain the failure of carbon markets to tackle the problem; to justify increased and multiple interventions in the countries deemed to hold the surplus people; and to excuse those interventions when they cause further environmental degradation, migration or conflict.

As such, population theory is far more than a theory or a principle. It is above all a political strategy that obscures the relationships of power between different groups in societies, whether these be local, national, global, while at the same time justifying those political relationships that allow certain groups to dominate others structurally, be they men over women, property owners over commoners, or ‘us’ over ‘them’. The “too many” are hardly ever the speakers, they are always the Other.

This partially explains why those considered to be surplus are not those who profit from continued fossil fuel extraction but those most harmed by it and by climate change…

As was shown in the post The Biophysics of Civilization, Money = Energy, and the Inevitability of Collapse, GDP and money are tied to energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and our economic model and profligate way of life are on a collision course with catastrophe. Realistic solutions require dealing with the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Geoengineering, carbon trading schemes, and GMO’s are technocapitalist solutions to climate change. Focusing on overpopulaion ignores the socio-economic system behind all the exploitation and destruction.

…It is not surprising, however, that a worsening climate situation is often attributed not to continued fossil fuel extraction but to too many people. Whenever global environmental crises, Third World poverty or world hunger are at issue, whenever conflict, migration or economic growth are discussed, economists, demographers, planners, corporate financiers and political pundits (at least in the North) frequently invoke overpopulation.

Over 200 years ago, at a time of immense social, political and economic upheavals and deprivation in England triggered by the enclosure of common lands and forests on which peasant livelihoods depended, free market economist Thomas Malthus wrote a story about how nature and humans interact. The punch line was his mathematical analogy for the disparity between human and food increases. Harnessing politics to mathematics, he provided a spuriously neutral set of arguments for promoting a new political correctness – one that denied the shared rights of everyone to subsistence, sanctioning instead the rights of the “deserving” over the “undeserving”, with the market as arbiter of entitlements. The poor were poor because they lacked restraint and discipline, not because of privatisation. This is the essence of the overpopulation argument.

Today, a range of industries use the same argument to colonise the future for their particular interests and to privatise commonally-held goods. In agriculture, for instance, the talk is of extra mouths in the South causing global famine — unless biotechnology companies have the right to patent and genetically-engineer seeds. With respect to water, growing numbers of thirsty slum dwellers are held to threaten water wars — unless water resources are handed over to private sector water companies. And in climate, the talk is of teeming Chinese and Indians causing whole cities to be lost to flooding through their greenhouse gas emissions — unless polluting companies are granted property rights in the atmosphere through carbon-trading schemes and carbon offsets. These are the tools of the main official approach to the climate crisis that aims to build a global carbon market worth trillions of dollars.

Two centuries ago, Malthus was compelled to admit that his mathematical and geometric series of increases in food and humans were not observable in any society. He acknowledged that his “power of number” was just an image — an admission demographers have since confirmed. And for over 200 years, his theory and arguments — that it is the number of people that cause resource scarcity — have been refuted endlessly by demonstrations that any problem attributed to human numbers can more convincingly be explained by social inequality, or that the statistical correlation is ambiguous. Malthus’s greatest achievement was in fact to obscure the roots of poverty, inequality and environmental deterioration. The “war-room” mentality generated by predictions of scarcity-driven apocalypse has always diverted attention away from the awkward social and environmental history of discredited policies and projects – a more important focus of study.

Frequently left out of discussions about tackling malnutrition, hunger, starvation and famine, for instance, are the maldistribution of the world’s food supplies, skewed access to land, trade policies, the hazards of devoting land to agrofuel or carbon offset production, unequal access to money to buy food, and commodity speculation.

If over one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, it is because water, like food, flows to those with the most bargaining power: industry and bigger farmers first, richer consumers second, and the poor last, whose water is polluted by industrial effluent, exported in foodstuffs or poured down the drain through others’ wasteful consumption… – link

And of course we can always wash our hands of everything by saying humans, driven by base biological urges, are inherently aggressive, selfish, and hierarchical by nature. We can blame our fossil fuel consumption on the optimal foraging theory and the lethal mutation of higher intelligence. We can excuse our self-destructive behavior on account of evolutionary blind spots such as faulty human brain circuitry with its numerous cognitive biases and inability to perceive long-term threats like climate change. We can say that “complex global human systems” are beyond anyone’s control and therefore cannot be altered or stopped. In other words, we can rationalize inaction and put forth many reasons for why we are helpless as our manmade economic system speeds toward the cliff, but as the masses see the system for what it really is, the facade becomes harder and harder to maintain. The mantra of business-as-usual is becoming a curse for most, and if continued on for much longer will most certainly be a death sentence for all.

A Time of Seamless Black

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Peak Oil

≈ 111 Comments

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Age of Climate Chaos, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate $tate, Depression, Eco-Apocalypse, Michael Ruppert, Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Security and Surveillance State, Suicide, The Elite 1%, Vandana Shiva

Humans live on hope and without it they fall into depression, oftentimes taking their own lives. In ‘The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception‘, optimism bias is said to be a defense or coping mechanism for survival. Most turn to religion for the ultimate hope of an afterlife nirvana. Voluntarily and unflinchingly holding one’s eyes open to the searing light of reality is an unnatural act for humans. For many, simply dealing with everyday life and the stress of surviving the concrete jungle is enough to drive them to despair, madness, and suicide. Whether they realize it or not, any normal person taking in the full scope of the multiple crises we face is surely prone to depression to some degree or another. I am now finding that I have to periodically distance myself from blogging on these subjects because it’s affecting my personal relationships as well as my mental/physical health. Suicide is on the rise in the modern world:

Death on the Farm:
…Since that crisis, the suicide rate for male farmers has remained high: just under two times that of the general population. And this isn’t just a problem in the U.S.; it’s an international crisis. India has had more than 270,000 farmer suicides since 1995. In France, a farmer dies by suicide every two days. In China, farmers are killing themselves to protest the government’s seizing of their land for urbanization. In Ireland, the number of suicides jumped following an unusually wet winter in 2012 that resulted in trouble growing hay for animal feed. In the U.K., the farmer suicide rate went up by 10 times during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, when the government required farmers to slaughter their animals. And in Australia, the rate is at an all-time high following two years of drought.

Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S.:
From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives.

Why Suicide Has Become an Epidemic–and What We Can Do to Help:
…We know, thanks to a growing body of research on suicide and the conditions that accompany it, that more and more of us are living through a time of seamless black: a period of mounting clinical depression, blossoming thoughts of oblivion and an abiding wish to get there by the nonscenic route. Every year since 1999, more Americans have killed themselves than the year before, making suicide the nation’s greatest untamed cause of death. In much of the world, it’s among the only major threats to get significantly worse in this century than in the last…

…This year, America is likely to reach a grim milestone: the 40,000th death by suicide, the highest annual total on record, and one reached years ahead of what would be expected by population growth alone. We blew past an even bigger milestone revealed in November, when a study lead by Ian Rockett, an epidemiologist at West Virginia University, showed that suicide had become the leading cause of “injury death” in America. As the CDC noted again this spring, suicide outpaces the rate of death on the road—and for that matter anywhere else people accidentally harm themselves. Somewhere Ralph Nader is smiling, but the takeaway is darkly profound: we’ve become our own greatest danger.

This development evades simple explanation. The shift in suicides began long before the recession, for example, and although the changes accelerated after 2007, when the unemployment rate began to rise, no more than a quarter of those new suicides have been tied to joblessness, according to researchers. Guns aren’t all to blame either, since the suicide rate has grown even as the portion of suicides by firearm has remained stable.

The fact is, self-harm has become a worldwide concern. This emerged in the new Global Burden of Disease report, published in The Lancet this past December. It’s the largest ever effort to document what ails, injures, and exterminates the species. But allow me to save you the reading. Humankind’s biggest health problem is humankind…

That last article I quoted above, from a mainstream periodical, has more truth written between the lines than its author even realizes. Humans are their own worst enemy and perhaps the rise of suicides across the globe is a reflection of our ecocidal culture, one that values money over life and reduces everything to a financial statistic. Capitalism is the most pervasive religion on the planet today. Most living at the end of modern history have adopted the ruling elite’s belief system which says that all problems can and will be solved via the “free market” and human ingenuity, but as one Indian philosopher of the 21st century wisely observed:

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.” ~ Vandana Shiva

People are a reflection of their environment, and so it is in the waning days of industrial civilization and predatory capitalism that many will no longer have the will to go on. From an interesting obituary written by a friend of Michael C. Ruppert:

…I look at Ruppert’s life, his hard struggle, his victories and his short-comings. I wish we were closer in his final couple of years. I loved him. I say the following with love. I say the following because I don’t want to know any more great truth-loving writers to die this way. If you have a drinking problem, hit a meeting. Reach out. It worked for me, to stop flailing about, running from city to country to city, always moving, thinking a big move is going to change things. Get centered. Pray and meditate. Be still.

Something snapped in Ruppert sometime later in that decade, after the book. He moved to Venezuela, in rushed effort to seek political asylum from the Chavez government. Ruppert probably wasn’t anti-imperialist enough for their tastes, at least not in a leftist way. Oh, and the CIA/DIA family background probably didn’t help.

I wept. I felt rage today. I was mad at you, Mike, going out this way. It was too similar to Gary Webb, to Jim Hatfield the Bush biographer. I don’t want this pattern. Tell me it’s not the fate for writers of deep truth, to die, alone, shooting their brains out, because they went deep and hard after the invisible forces, the slithering stag. The hunter became hunted by the dragon.

No. Mike will be remembered for his discipline, his writing, his development of a critical paradigm. Our society is stronger for the deep analysis. In the same way that Ruppert investigated Gary Webb’s death, it’s up to us now to do the scientific and careful analysis of the crime scene. To pick up where he left off, and wake up to a new view of the matrix…

In their search for the truth, perhaps some travel too far down the rabbit hole of civilizational and environmental collapse to ever escape its malignant shadow; it consumes them like a cancer. A copy of Ruppert’s suicide letter can be read here. His research and thinking lead him to the inner sanctum of dark revelation and the unsettling details of civilization’s trajectory. The vaporware dreams of a technological utopia will most certainly go up in smoke as social unrest and resource wars consume the nations of the world in an age of climate chaos. The evil genius of mankind will be revealed in evermore lethal and destructive ways to kill his fellow man. And waiting in the wings of industrial civilization’s collapse is the toxic and radioactive tsunami from an aging fleet of nuclear reactors dependent on a functioning electric grid. Humans are capable of great acts of compassion and selflessness as well as great acts of cruelty and violence. The system rewards sociopathic behavior at the expense of the health of the whole. Ignoring such stark realities won’t change our odds for survival.

RIP Michael C. Ruppert, Feb. 3, 1951- April 13, 2014

Full Documentary of ‘Apocalypse, Man’:

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Who lives, Who Dies in a Never-Ending Energy Crisis

12 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil

≈ 117 Comments

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Alice Friedemann, Barbara Demick: Nothing to Envy. Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Cuba, Ecological Overshoot, Energy Descent, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, North Korea, Peak Oil, The Elite 1%, unwashed public

Empires take what they want, first through diplomatic and economic pressure, then through the use of jackals and mercenaries, and finally with the shock and awe of military might dressed up with the appropriate propagandistic slogans of rescuing a resource-cursed country from its now out-of-favor dictator. ‘Regime change’ has become an acceptable TV euphemism for overthrowing governments. However, when those foreign oil taps start to run dry, important environmental regulations in the homeland get reinterpreted and scaled back in order to open up resources that once were thought of as undesirable. The elite systematically cannibalize their own societies while at the same time extracting massive profits by shredding the social safety net, criminalizing poverty and dissent, stripping away environmental protection, and gutting scientific research. In order to protect their ability to loot the commons, the elite circle believe it is more advantageous to keep the masses ignorant about the true extent of the planetary crisis their policies have created. If science gets in the way of “progress”, then it is summarily dismissed by outright denial, defunding, and deletion from public records as Apneaman points out:

…the gutting of Environment Canada by the Harper gang was an effective strategy in silencing scientists whose research was causing “sufficient embarrassment”. It was not violent, but they are just getting started. Then there are the non violent environmental protesters who are being sent to prison. Could you imagine that 20 years ago? Just getting started. As the benign dog points out, when the dollar hegemony slips even further it won’t be just the government and the rich looking to silence the critics. Does anyone one here really think people like the neo-cons are going to give up the reserve currency status without a fight?

For those countries who are located down low on the totem pole of energy wealth such as North Korea, the coffers of the State are filled by criminal activity of a more mundane variety such as drug smuggling and currency counterfeiting:

North Koreans began to produce meth in “big state-run labs.” The Los Angeles Times reports that narcotics investigators said the North Korean government controlled the production of meth and opium, as well as other drugs, in the 1990s in order to bring in “hard currency” for Kim Jong Il, the late North Korean leader. The government was engaging in the drug trade in order to save and improve its economic state as a nation. I do not by any means agree with the actions North Korean government chose to take. Instead of tending to its people’s health issues, it chose to spread life-threatening drugs throughout the world. In such a heavily government-dependent political system, the people have no hope to turn to a government official and ask for help. Individuals and families turned to the drug in times of desperation, leading to many North Koreans becoming fervent methamphetamine addicts. This situation is devastating and should not be overlooked. According to CNN, a majority — two-thirds to be exact — of the North Korean population has used methamphetamines. It is reportedly accessible in restaurants and has “become the drug of choice of high-ranking officials and the police.” http://www.centralfloridafuture.com/opinion/north-korea-s-meth-addiction-could-spell-disaster-for-us-1.2853884#.U0jHJyhRY20

It is no secret that North Korean diplomats and embassies are self-financing. In fact, they are profit earning and they must remit funds back to Pyongyang. While this means that DPRK diplomatic relations are not a drain on the treasury, as is typically the case with other countries, it does mean that the DPRK’s official representatives are more likely to make headlines for their business dealings rather than political statements. http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/11/22/dprk-diplos-arrested-for-smuggling-again/

Liu had been convicted of conspiracy and fraud involving millions of dollars made not by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing but by counterfeiting presses in a foreign country, presumably North Korea. The quality of these “supernote” forgeries is so high that he’d managed to pass enormous quantities through the electronic detection devices with which every Vegas slot machine is supposed to be equipped. The prosecutor was asking the judge to give him close to 25 years, and in the end Liu would receive more than 12. Liu’s crimes threatened not only the integrity of America’s currency but the very fabric of international peace. They were part of a vast criminal enterprise believed to be controlled by the North Korean state, set up and used to finance its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. All of this, intelligence analysts say, is coordinated by a secret agency inside the North Korean government controlled directly by “the Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, himself. The agency is known as Office 39. (Given the opacity of anything inside North Korea, experts differ on whether “Office” should be “Bureau” or even “Room”—and they also suspect that the number itself may change.) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/09/office-39-200909

Cuba and North Korea are two interesting examples of countries that are both energy poor but also very different on the sociopolitical spectrum. Cuba appears to be closer to an ideal model for how energy descent should be handled, and North Korea is a much more frightening view of how things are run by a tiny, coddled elite. What follows is a review by Alice Friedemann of “Nothing to Envy. Ordinary lives in North Korea” written by Barbara Demick…

North Korea and Cuba were the first countries to lose oil, the lifeblood of civilization. Since we will all share that fate, it’s interesting to see what happened, though keep in mind that how severe the consequences are will depend on the carrying capacity of the region you’re in, how much civil order can be maintained, and the effectiveness of the leaders in power (i.e. see “Lessons Learned from How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” that compares California to Cuba).

There are enormous differences between the fates of Cuba and North Korea. Cuba had many advantages — a benign climate with year-round rainfall where three crops a year could be grown, a culture of helping one another out, and Castro prevented middlemen and speculators from charging astronomical amounts for food. For a detailed understanding of what happened in Cuba read this Oxfam analysis.

North Korea couldn’t be more opposite – a cold mountainous nation with only 15% of its land arable, and dictators so crazy and cruel they’re almost unmatched in history. North Korea might be the only nation with more prisoners per capita than America. There are many kinds of prisons, from detention centers to hard-labor camps, to gulags where your children, cousins, brothers, sisters, and parents would also be sent to for a crime you committed for generations to come. About 1% of the population– 200,000 people –permanently work in labor camps. The threat of these prisons has made it impossible for organized resistance to happen.

It’s hard to escape, and if you do, then your relatives end up in labor camps. Other nations aren’t keen on refugees – South Korea fears a collapse of North Korea and being overrun by 23 million people seeking food and shelter, and China has their own problems with 1.2 billion poor people.

The consequences of peak energy in North Korea are worse than what’s likely to happen initially in America, though some regions of the United States are likely to suffer more than others. On the other hand, when times get hard, group-oriented cultures that depend on a large network of people tend to do better than highly individualist cultures, which is as you can learn more about in Dmitry Orlov’s Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century.

The only good aspect I could find about North Korea was that the women there are less repressed than in the past. A century ago Korean women were so completely covered in clothing that the Taliban would find no faults. In one village north of Pyongyang women wore 7 foot long, 5 feet broad and 3 feet deep wicker hat constructions that kept women hidden from head to toe. Perhaps even more than Muslim women, Korean women were imprisoned in family compounds and could only leave at special times when the streets were cleared of men. One historian said that Korean women were “very rigidly secluded, perhaps more absolutely than women of any other nation”.

After the Korean War ended, North Korea lost most of its infrastructure and 70% of its housing. It was amazing that Kim Il-sung managed to create a Spartan economy where most were sheltered and clothed, had electricity, and few were illiterate. Grain and other foods were distributed as well. In autumn each family got about 150 pounds of cabbage per person to make kimchi, which was stored in tall earthen jars buried in the garden so they would stay cold but not freeze and hidden from thieves.

North Korea became utterly dependent on the kindness of other countries for oil, food, fertilizer, vehicles, and so on.

What happens when the oil stops flowing?

In the early 1990s North Korea suffered a double blow at a time when they were $10 billion in debt. China wanted cash up front for fuel and food while at the same time the Soviet Union demanded the much higher price of what oil was selling for on world markets.

The nation spun into a crash. Without oil and raw materials the factories shut down. With no exports, there was no money to buy fuel and food with. Electric plants shut, irrigation systems stopped running, and coal couldn’t be mined. The results were:

Power stations and the electric grid rusted beyond fixing
The lights went out.
Running water stopped so most went to a public pump to get water
Electric trams operated infrequently
People climbed utility poles to steal pieces of copper wire to barter for food
There were few motor vehicles
And few tractors, farming was done with oxen dragging plows

Hunger struck, which made people too exhausted to work long at the few factories and farms that were still surviving.

Oil is liquid muscle. One barrel of crude oil (42-gallons) has 1,700 kilowatts of energy. It would take a fit human adult laboring more than 10 years to equal one barrel of oil.

Perhaps this is why many nations have had no choice but to rely on muscle power after an economic crash or during a war, which means putting many people to work on farms. After the energy crisis, North Koreans over 11 were sent out to the country to plant rice, haul soil, spray pesticides, and weed. This was called “volunteer work”. Now that they couldn’t afford to buy fertilizer, every family was expected to provide a human bucketful of excrement to a warehouse miles away. The bucket was exchanged for a chit that could be traded for food.

Like Mao’s crazy schemes, North Korea’s dictators lurched from one mad idea to another — one day it was goat breeding, the next ostrich farms, or switching from rice to potatoes.

Food staples were grown on collective farms, and the state took the harvest and redistributed it. The farmers weren’t given enough to survive on, so they slacked on their collective fields to grow food to survive on, making the food crisis even worse. In the end, it was people in cities with no land to grow their own food on who ended up starving first. Every year, rationed amounts of food went down.

People were told the United States was at fault, and propaganda campaigns encouraged Koreans to think of themselves as tough, and that enduring hunger without complaint was a patriotic duty, and kept everyone’s hopes up by promising bumper crops in the coming harvest. The Koreans deceived themselves like the German Jews in the 1930s, and told themselves it couldn’t get any worse, things would get better. But they didn’t.

Worse yet, instead of spending money on agriculture, the defense budget sucked up a quarter of the GNP. One million men out of 23 million people were kept in arms – the 4^th largest military in the world.

The only place to get food became the illegal black market, where prices were terribly high, sometimes 250 times higher than what the state used to sell food for.

Natural disasters made harvests even worse – in 1994 and 1995 Korea was struck with an extremely cold winter and torrential rains in the summer that destroyed the homes of 500,000 people and rice crops for 5.2 million people.

People began picking weeds and wild grasses to stretch out meals, as well as leaves, husks, stems, and the cobs of corn. Children can’t digest food this rough and could end up in a hospital, where doctors advised the rough material be ground up fine and cooked a long time. It wasn’t long before malnutrition led to increasing numbers of people with pellagra and other diseases. Hospitals soon ran out drugs and other supplies.

Who died?

The rest of the article is at:

http://energyskeptic.com/2014/book-review-of-nothing-to-envy-ordinary-lives-in-north-korea/

Let’s Get Critical

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by td0s in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Environmental Degradation

≈ 235 Comments

Tags

activist, Albert Camus, Alberta, anarchist, Anti-civ, Captain John Brown, critique, Derrick Jensen, forest defense, fossil fuel, HL Menken, Hypocrisy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Monte Belo Dam, moutain top removal, Niger Delta, Tar Sands Blockade

Cross Posted from Prayforcalamity.com

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

HL Menken

To criticize the status quo is to invite volley after volley of personal criticism back in your own direction. I am sure this has likely been the case for a very long time, and I believe this may be partly due to the way in which humans learn through pattern recognition, as well as how the architecture of the human brain physically lays neural pathways to build understanding. Thus when an idea too astray from the usual is presented to the human mind, there is a high chance of a negative reaction because the new pattern is far too asymmetric for the current set of neural pathways to incorporate. That, or the derogator is a bored and obtuse malcontent with nothing better to do than shit all over other people on the internet.

I often write about the exploitation inherent in the model of civilization itself, and how this organizing framework which is dominant on the planet now is entirely unsustainable and will necessarily collapse catastrophically. This is some level nine stuff. By this I mean that if you have not been initiated, if you haven’t read about this topic or all of the feeder topics that lead to this conclusion, it would likely seem extreme. Thorough understanding of an issue requires prerequisite knowledge. We get to where we are by having been where we were, even philosophically and intellectually. Because my topics of critique often surround the civilization paradigm, its parts, and alternatives, I often receive flak from people which either demonstrates that they do not fully understand the gravity of the issues, or which merely indicts me as complicit in civilization’s crimes. The former generally comes in the form of people arguing that technology will remedy all of the converging crises faced and created by civilization. The latter is far more frustrating, as it is usually some pathetic attempt at a “got’chya!” moment where someone tries to defeat my greater thesis by pointing out my use of a computer or some other trapping of civilization. “Hypocrite!” they cry.

The hypocrisy claim is everywhere you find people critiquing any facet of the status quo. Antiwar activists who protested the Iraq war were called hypocrites for using gasoline. Occupy Wall Street participants were called hypocrites for using Apple products. My friends in forest defense have been called hypocrites for using paper. As an anti-civ anarchist I have been called a hypocrite for everything from having moved into a house during the winter, to having gone to the hospital when after forty hours of labor at home with a midwife, my partner was physically exhausted and wanted access to drugs so she could sleep. Every time these criticisms are leveled, it becomes a major energy suck to explain exactly how nonsensical they are. I would like to here dedicate this essay to shredding the “hypocrisy” argument once and for all, so it can forever be linked to by activists and social critics of all platforms and stripes, who neither have the time nor energy to swat at the many zombie hordes who become agitated when new ideas are presented to them which run counter to the comfortable patterns that they are used to, and who then proceed to scream “hypocrite!” in place of an actual counter argument.

—

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Hell is other people.” Despite my anti-civ analysis, I am no misanthrope. Civilization is a system of organization, a power arrangement in which a small few control the many. Using their power, these few exploit the lands and beings around them so they can grow their power and comfort at the expense of others. Industrial civilization takes this paradigm full tilt and is wiping out habitat and species at a mortifying rate. Understanding this does not cause me to hate my species, but rather to be eager to help them understand why we must pursue new organizational methods. Still, the uphill battle of convincing fellow humans, especially those who are net beneficiaries of this destructive and exploitative set of arrangements, can be at times an infuriating engagement. Of course, this is not because I need people to immediately agree with me, but if they don’t, I do prefer they focus on challenging the content of my statements as opposed to nit picking the content of my life.

In “The Fall,” Albert Camus wrote, “Everyone insists on his innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven itself.” I believe that it may be this personal insistence on one’s innocence which leads people to quickly cry “hypocrite!” at those who critique the status quo. Because we are all mired in this paradigm, when it is critiqued, some individuals feel that the critique is of them individually, likely due to a personal identification with the system. Thus critiques become personal attacks against which they must defend themselves. “If the system is guilty, then I am guilty, and I’m not guilty!”

The need for personal innocence runs deeper. If a critique against an overarching paradigm such as a government, capitalism, or civilization itself seems irrefutable, this can invoke in some a certain need to then utilize this new information as part of their own personal ethos. The problem here, is that this will mean that person will feel compelled to act accordingly with this information, and the actions required may seem difficult, uncomfortable, or frightening. For instance, if you’re told that capitalism is exploitative because employers retain the surplus labor value generated by their employees, and you happen to be a business owner, this new understanding will mean one of two things: either you rearrange the operating model of your business to fairly compensate your employees for their labor, effectively making them cooperative partners, or you change nothing but must go through life recognizing that you profit off of the exploitation of others. Here, your internal need to perceive yourself as innocent, or at least to believe yourself a good person, will run counter with your open acknowledgement that you exploit people for a living. What to do then to keep the ego in tact?

If the action required to fall in line with the new ethos created by accepting new information is too hard, too uncomfortable, or you just don’t want to do it, you must justify inaction. Justifying inaction will be achieved possibly by denying the veracity of the new information. Like most capitalists in this scenario, you could convince yourself that your entrepreneurial and risk taking spirit give you the right to take the surplus labor value generated by the people you employ indefinitely. Of course, the justifications are endless.

In some cases though, if the new information received cannot be deflected through argument or justification, and the need to preserve one’s picture of their innocence is too great, then calling into question the character or behavior of the information’s purveyor can also suffice. For instance, if an activist is working to halt fossil fuel extraction for the myriad reasons that such a halting would be beneficial, it can be difficult to disagree with this activist on a purely argumentative level. How could you? Deny climate change? Deny ozone killing trees? Deny the death and destruction from Alberta, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Niger Delta? On an argumentative level, you’d be wrong every time. However, you could call into question the activist’s use of fossil fuels, thereby deflecting the conversation, and basically insinuating that, as Camus also wrote in The Fall, “We are all in the soup together.” Because hey, if we’re all guilty, then none of us are guilty, am I right?

In the fall of 2012, I was in Texas working with the Tar Sands Blockade using direct action tactics to shut down construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On the side of a highway north of Nacogdoches, I sat with some friends as our comrades were perched on platforms fifty feet in the air with their support lines tied to heavy machinery, effectively making the machines unusable lest their operators not mind killing these young people. There were a surprising amount of supporters for rural east Texas, but of course, there were plenty of people who made sure we were aware of their disdain for us. One such person passed by, slowed down, and said “I bet you used a pick up truck to get that stuff out here.” In his mind, this was a real zinger. I replied, “Of course we did. Why wouldn’t we?”

There are a slew of reasons why this man’s comment contained zero validity as a critique of our action. For one, the gasoline we used did not come from that as of yet unfinished pipeline. Also, though I wouldn’t, I could claim to be against tar sands bitumen, but not conventional crude. But really the truth is that anti-extraction activists are making what economists would even defend as an intelligent bargain; using X amount of fossil fuels to prevent the extraction of a million times X. Of course I would use a tank of gasoline to prevent the daily extraction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of barrels of bitumen. Not only am I seeking a massive net gain for the ecology of the planet, I am also not using any more fossil fuels than I would have used had I gone to work that day anyway.

In the same vein, it is not hypocrisy to write a book about the ills of deforestation. Though it may be printed on paper, it has the potential to affect policy which will then lessen the total amount of deforestation. Not to mention, the loggers are going to log and the publishing company is going to publish. Using those resources to ultimately dismantle that destructive activity is actually the best use for them. So no, the person who posts on the internet about the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas isn’t a hypocrite. They are cleverly utilizing the paradigm’s resources to expose its flaws to the light of scrutiny, in the hope that the consciences of people will be stirred to ultimately upend the paradigm itself. This is, in fact, the most ethical use of the resources generated by destructive industrial activity.

Using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house is to be encouraged.

—

It feels ridiculous to even have to lay this out, but the “hypocrisy” barb is flung far too often and dismantled far too little. What’s worse, is that hypocrisy in this regard isn’t even being understood correctly. According to wikipedia:

“Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of “hypocrisy” in Rambler No. 14:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.

Thus, an alcoholic’s advocating temperance, for example, would not be considered an act of hypocrisy as long as the alcoholic made no pretense of sobriety.”

This being understood, we can unequivocally state that a forest defense activist who prints pamphlets about saving tracts of woodland is not a hypocrite, unless they also claim to never use any forest products. Sure, there is a reasonable expectation that people who see a social ill will do their best to avoid adding to that ill, but sometimes the requirements of society horseshoe people into activity even they do not appreciate because the alternative options are worse or non-existent. Of course, this is where detractors will still claim that if an activist wants to save the forests, that they should cease using anything made from trees because consumer demand is behind all economic activity. Ignoring the obvious benefits of the trade off between printing five hundred pamphlets to save five hundred acres of woodlands, I think further disemboweling of this notion about consumer choice activism is also necessary.

Derrick Jensen writes about how he got in an argument with a man who accused him of being just as responsible for deforestation as Weyerhaeuser because he used toilet paper:

“Here, once again, is the real story. Our self-assessed culpability for participating in the deathly system called civilization masks (and is a toxic mimic of) our infinitely greater sin. Sure, I use toilet paper. So what? That doesn’t make me as culpable as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser, and to think it does grants a great gift to those in power by getting the focus off them and onto us.

For what, then, are we culpable? Well, for something far greater than one person’s work as a technical writer and another’s as a busboy. Something far greater than my work writing books to be made of the pulped flesh of trees. Something far greater than using toilet paper or driving cars or living in homes made of formaldehyde-laden plywood. For all of those things we can be forgiven, because we did not create the system, and because our choices have been systematically eliminated (those in power kill the great runs of salmon, and then we feel guilty when we buy food at the grocery store? How dumb is that?). But we cannot and will not be forgiven for not breaking down the system that creates these problems, for not driving deforesters out of forests, for not driving polluters away from land and water and air, for not driving moneylenders from the temple that is our only home. We are culpable because we allow those in power to continue to destroy the planet. Yes, I know we are more or less constantly enjoined to use only inclusive rhetoric, but when will we all realize that war has already been declared upon the natural world, and upon all of us, and that this war has been declared by those in power? We must stop them with any means necessary. For not doing that we are infinitely more culpable than most of us—myself definitely included— will ever be able to comprehend.”

He continues:

“To be clear: I am not culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper. I am culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper and I do not keep up my end of the predator-prey bargain. If I consume the flesh of another I am responsible for the continuation of its community. If I use toilet paper, or any other wood or paper products, it is my responsibility to use any means necessary to ensure the continued health of natural forest communities. It is my responsibility to use any means necessary to stop industrial forestry.”

I believe it is dangerous to convince people that their only power is in their purchasing decisions, because this relegates people to being mere consumers, not active citizens, let alone autonomous beings who define their own struggles, explore a diversity of tactics, and experiment to find new and effective measures for countering power. It also reduces all of society to nothing but customer transactions. Doing so ignores the power people have to protest, blockade, persuade, legislate, and sometimes, to overthrow. Would advocates of consumer choice activism stand by the idea that American revolutionaries should merely have boycotted tea, stamps and British products? Would they advocate that these revolutionaries should have instead of smashing windows, burning buildings, and fighting back against the crown have instead started their own competing tea trading companies? How about American slavery? Was the real solution that abolitionists and free blacks should have started competing fiber plantations in the north, hoping to push slave produced cotton out of business? Should we brand Captain John Brown a hypocrite for not wearing fair trade worker owned flax linen pants when he raided Harper’s Ferry seeking weapons with which to start a slave revolt? Preposterous!

Fighting against a behemoth industry that is interwoven into the state apparatus and has insulated itself as a central pillar of day to day operations is not something easily done. For one to claim they know exactly how to win such a fight is audacious. When it comes to the extraction industries, there is a large buffer where no matter how much the public cuts their consumption, the state will offset their financial losses through subsidies and purchases. The US government will happily buy discount oil for the fifth armored division after a civilian boycott lowers the price. Because of this, all forms of resistance are welcome and necessary, and it should be understood that attacking such a monolithic industry requires people hammering away, figuratively and literally, on every possible front. If it takes two million barrels of oil to power the cars and trucks necessary to organize the ten thousand strong blockade that cripples the refinery complex at the Port of Houston, well hell, oil well spent.

—

Those who demand lifestyle purity of anyone who ever raises a critique of any facet of the status quo are creating a double bind paradigm of hypocrites and extremists so to establish two camps into which they can then package critics in order to isolate and ignore them. The hypocrite camp is obvious. By misdiagnosing via a false definition someone who is against civilization as a hypocrite because they use electricity to write their thoughts online, these detractors can in their own minds, suggest there is no reason to take the critique seriously. But suppose the anti-civ critic did achieve lifestyle purity. Suppose that they lived in a wigwam in the woods that they constructed themselves from branches and deer hides. Imagine that this person walked to the center of town every weekend in haggard clothing they had pulled from thrift store dumpsters and then this person stood on a bench to shout about the ills of industry and hierarchy. Is it likely that this person would be taken seriously? Of course not! They would be labeled an extremist. Passersby would write this person off as insane before listening to argument one. There is no middle ground in this double bind, and that is the point. Those who would cry from the wilderness about the death and the misery that civilization brings will forever be stripping more and more from their lives in a futile effort to gain recognition, to be valid in the eyes of those who called them hypocrites, until one day they are branded as lunatics, if they are not unheard and unseen, exactly as their detractors want them to be.

On this, we should remember too, that there are people who have achieved this lifestyle purity. They are the tribal peoples around the world who never have been drawn into the net of civilization. They are the global poor who do not benefit from the burning of coal or the sinking of copper mines. And their voices consistently go unheard. In fact, their voices are almost ubiquitously silenced. What do the defenders of the status quo say to the Kayapó, Arara, Juruna, Araweté, Xikrin, Asurini and Parakanã peoples who are fighting the construction of the Belo Monte dam which threatens their survival? What do the defenders of the status quo say to the animals and plants who have been nothing but victims in the story of human progress? There is no inconsistency in their lives. No iPhone to scoff at, no power tool, no window fan. What is the excuse for denying their right to live? What is the excuse for exterminating them and pretending it isn’t happening? Why is it OK to deny their pleas?

Analysis and critique precede action. Without first understanding a system and describing its flaws, it will never be repaired or replaced. To assert that one must excise themselves from a system prior to criticizing it is asinine, especially so when the system being criticized is a global power structure with tentacles in almost every geographical region. Such assertions if considered legitimate would render critique impossible. They are also so implausible as to essentially be nothing more than a dismissal of critique, a backhanded way of saying “Shut up!” To be sure, the horrors of the dominant culture always have required a silencing of those it would make victims, so such behaviors amongst the denizens of civilization should come as no surprise, but they have never been and will never be intellectually or academically valid.

If you are in a prison, eating the food from the cafeteria does not mean you accept being a prisoner. Likewise, if you are a prisoner and you detest the prison and the system that put you there with every fiber of your being, you are not a hypocrite for allowing the prison doctor to treat you. Navigating life in a system of dominance, violence, and control is difficult and miserable, and if you have any designs to resist, whether to organize others on the inside with you to demand improvement of conditions, or to dig a tunnel and to escape, staying well fed and healthy in the mean time will be necessary for your success. While you fight, while you resist, use what you must to survive, especially in light of the fact that not doing so will not bring down the walls around you.

—

With the ever worsening issue of climate change, on top of the issues of political rot, net energy decline, and economic sclerosis, there will be more and more critique and analysis of exactly how societies are breaking down and what people should do in response. With this will come wave after wave of nonsense rebuttal to muddy the waters. At least when the defense of the status quo defers to indicting the behavior of the critics themselves, we can likely presume that their critiques are probably accurate, or at least that the status quo defender has no legitimate argument. For if the detractor had a legitimate counter analysis, they would present it. Attacking the messenger is behavior of the beaten. If I say “we need to abolish fossil fuels because they cause too much ecological damage” and someone responds “but you use gas in your chainsaw,” they have not displayed that my statement is untrue. In fact, there is a tacit admission that what I am saying is true, they just want to drag me down into the muck as if I’m not already standing in it.

Yes, I am knee deep in the shit of global industrial capitalist civilization. Yes, circumstances have me dancing from rock to rock, trying to avoid participating in the destructive protocols of the dominant culture, and obliging to where it makes strategic sense to do so. Most people understand this. Most people understand the nuance between having and living an ethic in a complex world which leaves little to our individual control. Those who would deny this reality in order to deny your point are a nuisance at most. Hell is not other people, just other people in the comments section on the internet.