Usa Systems Catastrophe

Katrina aftermath: http://pesn.com/2005/09/11/9600163_Katrina_Oil_Aftermath/ . If this is to be believed, the catastrophe is occurring right now. 15% of US distillates and 50% of natural gas supply are cut for the forseeable future. To put this in perspective, the Arab Oil embargo cut something like 7% of US distillates and no natural gas. Natural gas is used for 1/2 the US's winter heating, of course, but also to generate nitrate fertillizer which the US relies on for domestic food production, and as the country's main industrial and peak-load power supply. And we can't import the stuff - there's no port or shipping infrastructure for that.

No problem because America is rich enough to afford a big jump in food, plastic, manufacturing and heating prices? Check out America's exponential debt curves at http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat-a.htm#component . Now (3 weeks post Katrina) housing prices have jumped at the highest rate in 26 years while there's been a 10% drop in new housing sales and a record slump in consumer confidence. Keepa dancin', Greenspan, keepa dancin' ...

On the bright side, the last surviving American won't have to bother turning out the lights.

The arctic icecap is half the thickness it was in 1970. The last 2 US elections were outright stolen. The broadcast media have been monopolized and lobotomized. 1/3 of amphibian species that lived in the US in the 20th century are extinct. Fish stocks in the Atlantic have been decimated. Sea-levels are forecast to rise 20 feet in the next century. Last summer 4.5 million acres of Alaska were burned in the country's worst ever forest fire.

Domestic debt levels in the US have been rising by about 8% per annum, compounding, since 1997. Oil prices have gone up almost 300% - circa end 2005 - and show no sign of ever going down again. Net domestic savings are at zero. Over 10% of the people live below the poverty line. Over 7 million are in one or another form of detention. Government services have been slashed across the board, as have civil liberties. Credit card use at petrol bowsers is up 30% over 2004. The USA is literally running on fumes.

Now thanks to Katrina approximately 20% of the country's oil imports have been disrupted for a period of weeks. The strategic reserve must be used to offset this, placing the country at the mercy of (real or not) PeakOil pricing. The economic ripple effect will hit consumers hardest about Christmas, which is also when heating price bills will come home to roost. Since bankruptcy has been effectively illegalized, defaults leading to an inevitable wave of loan foreclosures will trigger a lenders' fire sale on property. Once that bubble bursts foreign investment will flee like rats leaving a sinking ship. The dollar tanks and the wheels fall off.

Y2K6 ...

If you think so, buy yourself a lot of PUT options and get rich. Otherwise, PleaseMoveThisToTheAdjunct.

PUT options are a fine idea. But I DisregardTheAdjunct.

All of the above have an effect on humans but not all may be attributed to man-made factors. Forest fires are a natural phenonema and nature has adapted them into the life cycle of forests. The lightning strikes that cause forest fires are less attributable to man-made factors such as global warming than the frequency or size of large scale storms such as Katrina.

Um, a million square miles of Siberian permafrost have thawed. Current projections say there will be no arctic sea ice by 2100 - the first time that's happened in a million years. That's no lightning strike.

But anyway it doesn't matter. The key catastrophe above is the debt crisis. Everything else could be fudged around. But once the housing bubble goes, with no domestic manufacturing base, no skilled workers, and no economic reserves, the only way to revive the USA is to declare oil wars against Venezuela and Iran, draft all the kill-crazy gamers, and take the oil by force.

What really sucks is it would have been so easy, back in 2000, to head this problem off at the pass. Kyoto, algae-based biofuel infrastructure, and tax incentives for building insulation is all it would have taken then. Failure to take these steps is the man-made factor. Too late now.

Katrina and New Orleans

I heard a quote on the radio this a.m. (02-Sep-05) from an officer from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who stated in June 2004 that the levies were sinking and that the ability to raise them was there except that more federal funds were required in order to get the work done. A couple of days ago, Bush said "We didn't anticipate that the levies would be breached".

But people have known the drainage was messed up for over 100 years, and they didn't have to wait on federal funds. Local funds spend just as well.

See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050902/STORMPSYCHOLOGY02/International/Idx for an interesting piece on the social breakdown.

The news is full of tales about the toxicity of the floodwaters in the city from decomposing biomass and spilled petrochemicals. They are pumping this water untreated into Lake Pontchartrain. From what I can see on the map, there is an open channel between Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. "... the drainage is messed up ..." doesn't quite cover it. Is there a wider environmental disaster in the works?

Maybe not. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07lake.html

What do you call it when a system's behavior changes fundamentally? The US isn't what it was, and never can be again. Its people have lost their democracy, prosperity, world influence, environmental health, and ability to think for themselves. We're not looking at a slow decline here - the thing's crashing.

What an interesting assertion.

The US isn't what it was ... Well, yeah. France isn't what it was. Nor is Germany. Which of the several "what it was" instances do you desire? WildWest? USA? FDR's vision? LBJ's GreatSociety??

I agree that it "isn't what it was" but I probably have a different rollback point from the one you're thinking of.

... environmental health ... Unlike, say, Brazil's rain forests. Unlike, say, the African landscapes.

... ability to think ... Well, there's a shock. The educational systems have been taken over by the Prussian model. Thinking isn't high on the list. Conformity is. Happily, the rest of the world knows what's best for the USA and will freely dispense advice. The advice, of course, is that we need to conform to their ways ...

Yes, I favor a rollback. Let's see ... we didn't have income tax prior to the 1920s, there's a good rollback point. There was a time when members of Congress didn't receive a lifetime stipend of more money than 99% of the citizenry makes, there's another good rollback point. There was a time when families were well-bonded, there's another good rollback point. There was a time when the quality of scholastic output was world-class, and there's another really good rollback point. There was a time when people were responsible for their actions -- not a bad rollback point.

Oh, wait, those are conservative values. Dammit. I guess we're just doomed.

For some definition of conservative

Yes. For some definition. I seem to recall a definition of "liberal" that included, in essence, that "people should be left alone by the government." This concept now seems to have migrated to the "conservative" value set.

For any given fundamental point, I find that "liberals" and "conservatives" actually agree. No liberal that I've ever talked to would admit to wanting to pay more taxes. No conservative I've ever talked to would admit to wanting his free speech curtailed. And so on.

The politics of it, however, seem to require that one side accuses the other of planning to do dire things that threaten one or more core values. The actuality of it is that the people in power don't give a damn. The number of members of Congress that still care about anything beyond their own popularity, power, influence, and "legacy" is very (vanishingly) small.

Presidents come and go. Congressmen come and (mostly) stay. Appointees and bureaucrats stay until they die. Presidents don't write the laws. They can reject some and sign others and wield some influence over whether and how some will be written. They can lead, but a bad relationship with Congress can effectively neuter them. So they compromise.

But "experts" and "advisors" wearing the mantle of academia and/or of science and medicine have constant, unrelenting input into the system, its workings, and the thinking of those entrusted with hands-on execution of policy. And if your experts and advisors are full of crap, then 4 or 5 decades later you find yourself with layers of corrupt and useless bureaucracy and vital systems that no longer work.

You want to fix the system? Ferret out the false priesthood of experts whose ex-cathedra pronouncements of half a century have spiraled us down to this sub-basement of ignorance and apathy. Hang them. Burn them. Drown them. Oh, and for each of them, take out two lawyers.

Replace the institutionalized stupidity of "it's-not-working-so let's-throw-more-money-at-it and do-more-of-the-same" with the kind of metrics-conscious management that grants sooner-rather-than-later visibility to things that are broken beyond any rationalization.

Yes, choose presidents that can lead and have morals and principles. Yes, vote for your Congressmen as though they might one day wind up actually being your president (remember Gerald Ford?). But above all, see to it that the advisors and experts know what works and drown/burn/hang the ones selling snake oil.

I guess that qualifies as a rant. Sorry.

You want a rant? GeorgeBush's opposition to teaching evolution in schools is a direct indicator of how seriously US companies take the GlobalWarming phenomenon. If they didn't believe they were warming the globe, they wouldn't be telling their man in the Whitehouse to teach little children that "those scientists hate God".

If the scientist are wrong about evolution, then gee maybe they are wrong about those other nutty things they say. Like the Gulf of Mexico is 5 degrees warmer than it should be.

The USA has another GulfWar on its hands - except this time the enemy is Parent Nature. --PhlIp

AugustZeroFive

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