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Eric Arthur Blair

ERIC A BLAIR is the nom de guerre for a scientific/medical philosopher living in one of the Hegemon's satrapies known as Airstrip Three (not quite the Belly of the Beast but Belly Adjacent and fully propagandised). After the unprovoked invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on US lies, he realised his pathetic lifetime attempts to do good were useless, indeed meaningless, compared to the monstrous mass murders and mayhem perpetrated by the Evil Empire. This raised the question as to whether one can claim to be a good person without actively opposing evil, and what form such opposition should take. That can only be answered by each individual for themselves. From each according to their abilities. He is currently pursuing enlightenment while chopping wood and carrying water...

IT’S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID Part 6: Peak Oil / Petroleum depletion—

by Eric Arthur Blair
written by Eric Arthur Blair Approx 15 Mins • Watch / read
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IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID

Part 6: Peak Oil / Petroleum depletion—
Part 6A: Oil origins and geology, Conventional and Unconventional Oils

Deepwater Horizon leaking, as seen from space.

Part 6A: Oil origins and geology, Conventional and Unconventional Oils

by EAB, November 2025

Note: LTO = light tight oil /// EROEI = Energy Returned over (divided by) Energy Invested – a unitless ratio

I was pondering the best approach to debunking the ill-founded (indeed, downright disingenuous) arguments of the Peak Oil / Petroleum depletion deniers and decided on the following sections:

A) Outline the origins and geology of Petroleum and the difference between Conventional and Unconventional Oils

B) Explain the Hubbert curve, proper understanding of “Peak Oil”, and the geophysical behaviour of conventional oilfields

C) Explain why unconventional shale LTO extraction in the USA is a scam

D) Post common “gotcha” type arguments made by Peak Oil deniers and explain why they are downright wrong or are using misleading “straw man” misrepresentations.

E) Highlight a couple of information-rich third-party presentations and explain the terms and concepts used by them for the layperson.

Part 6 A: The origins and geology of Petroleum and the difference between Conventional and Unconventional Oils

In a nutshell:

Conventional Oil is (relatively) easy* to extract and refine, hence it is sometimes termed “cheap” oil, however, that “cheapness” no longer applies on the far downslope of the Hubbert curve. A better definition of “cheap” oil is high EROEI oil (which, in essence, is conventional oil before, at and just after peak production). The geology of conventional oil is uniform worldwide (source/parent rock below, porous rock reservoir containing oil, impermeable anticline cap rock on top).

Unconventional Oils are difficult to extract and/or refine and are hence “expensive” (low EROEI) and in most cases are NOT economic to extract without the application of the scammiest scams in the history of scammery accompanied by outrageous environmental vandalism and abominable human rights abuses. Their geologic configurations vary and their means of oil extraction and/or refinement can be extraordinarily difficult, for example:

  • Deep water oilfields (exemplified by the disastrous Macondo field remembered by the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in 2010) have standard conventional field geology, but due to their extreme depth, are difficult to get at (eg the oilrig may float on the surface of the water 3 km above the seabed and the oil pocket sits another 5 km under the seabed).
  • Arctic ocean oilfields may have conventional field geology but have mostly proved unviable. Various attempts were made, especially by the Russians, but mostly failed because rampaging icebergs particularly during winter storms demolished the rigs. Some polar output exists but is small.
  • Shale oil extraction is literally like getting blood out of a stone.
  • The tar sands of Canada are dispersed and are essentially sand mixed with solid bitumen in that cold climate. They either need topsoil removal, then mechanical excavation and transportation by massive specialised energy hungry machinery (diesel powered) or, alternatively, “in-situ” extraction by even energy hungrier steam + chemical injection (usually using natural gas - or even worse, dirty coal or filthy tar residues - to boil water to create the steam)
  • The extra-heavy crude of the Orinoco basin is viscous but “can be made to flow” in the higher temperatures of the Venezuelan tropics; however, refining is very costly due to major contamination with sulphur and heavy metals. This is what pundits refer to when they say that “Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world”. Yet the Orinoco basin was never deemed a particularly desirable spot until oil from the conventional “easy” oilfields peaked, then declined (eg Maracaibo oil peaked in the middle of last century). Harvesting and refining that extra-heavy crude will absolutely lead to horrific environmental eco-devastation and likely extermination of any forest dwellers.

The origin and geology of Conventional Oilfields:

Extensive scientific research from many disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, paleontology, etc) has determined, beyond any shadow of doubt, where and how crude oil (and gas) in conventional oilfields were created.

We know petroleum originated primarily from marine plankton in shallow, stagnant seas during supergreenhouse warm epochs, mostly during the Mesozoic (the time of dinosaurs – 70% of petroleum), Cenozoic (20%) and Paleozoic (10%) eras multiple millions of years ago.

Due to near equalisation of temperatures between low and high latitudes of the supergreenhouse Earth (the poles were tropical and dinosaurs thrived among the lush vegetation of Antarctica), ocean and sea currents were weak. Plankton that proliferated in shallow seas died, sank to the seabed and their partial decomposition depleted the oxygen in the water resulting in failure of aerobic decomposition of the remainder (most) of the plankton. Over time, the plankton were covered by sediment, buried, and compressed. Eventually, deposits became ever deeper and hence were under more intense pressure and were anaerobically “cooked” by heat radiating from the Earth's core. The complex molecules of the oldest deposits were mostly “broken up” or “cracked” into the simplest hydrocarbon of all, single-carbon methane (CH4), and these deposits became the natural gas fields. Of course, methane fields always contain some longer-chain gases (ethane, propane, butane, pentane) and some amount of (lighter fraction) liquid petroleum as well, and should properly be termed gas/oil fields. Younger fields contain mostly longer-chain hydrocarbons ranging from liquids to tar, although they also contain some gases and hence should properly be termed oil/gas fields.

None of those hydrocarbons could be easily harvestable were it not for some quirks of fate that affected a MINORITY of those dead plankton deposits. This involved the subsequent deposition of porous rock precursors that became limestone or sandstone in the layer above the parent or source shale rock housing the hydrocarbons, and fortuitously above the porous rock, an inverted dome (anticline) of impermeable material, generally clay clay-based cap or seal rock. Tectonic movements caused vertical cracks in the source rock, resulting in the oil from that deepest layer being pushed upwards under high pressure into the porous “reservoir” pocket, displacing water / saline that may have originally filled those pores. The oil and gas were prevented from dispersing away by the impervious anticline cap rock.

These conventional oilfields were the original “low hanging fruit”, the easy pickings that fuelled industrial civilisation ever since the first well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by “Colonel” Edwin Drake (not actually a Colonel) in 1859.

That was 166 years ago, and we can be pretty certain that before the second century is up, before 2059, that our oil-based industrial civilisation and OUR OILCONOMY WILL BE OVER, done, ended, kaput...either because we will have run out of economically extractable oil or because we will have cooked ourselves to near extinction (climate collapse of all major bread baskets) on the Greenhouse Earth that we have caused.

Actually, the latter is now practically certain, and the former is fast approaching.

Because of the unique geological structure of conventional oilfields, the use of decades-old seismic technology (exploding dynamite at multiple surface locations while monitoring sound waves reflected back to the surface) has long enabled 3D mapping of conventional fields with great ease ALL AROUND THE WORLD (akin to using ultrasound waves to create a 3D image of a heart or a foetus in the womb). This is why we know FOR CERTAIN that ALL large, easily extractable oil pockets in all geographically accessible locations around the world HAVE BEEN FOUND.

The Peak of DISCOVERY of conventional oil occurred waaaaay back in 1964 and despite ups and downs (substantial upward bumps with Siberia, Prudhoe Bay, Cantarell and North Sea Oil), the overall trend has been relentlessly downwards, with new discoveries now asymptotically approaching ZERO.

Note: the famous “Growing Gap” graph above was created around 2008 with speculative future discoveries shown in yellow, and overall, the trend to zero remains valid.

Here is a graph of conventional discoveries up till 2016, the latest I could find:

We are now living off historical deposits parked in the bank with no interest accrued and no new earnings, and when those savings are gone, we will go COLD TURKEY (unless...more about that later).

SOME PERSPECTIVE:

According to my DuckDuckGo A I search, there are “more than” 25,000 oil and gas fields in total around the world (another search said the total was around 50,000) with 1,500 of them being designated as Giant or Supergiant fields which represent less than 6% of total oilfields (1,500 divided by 25,000), and those major fields provide 94% of our oil.

What does that mean? It means that if we discover another 23,500 “normal” sized oilfields TODAY, those will supply less than another 6% of our current oil needs which, in technical jargon, is termed “bugger all”.

Take home message: “normal” sized oil field discoveries are of no importance, our oilconomy requires the discovery of new GIANT conventional oil fields which by their definition, by their size, are the easiest to discover seismically but...

THERE ARE NO MORE CONVENTIONAL GIANT OILFIELDS TO BE FOUND in any accessible locations and anybody who disputes this, such as the “drill baby drill” MAGAs, are simply dumb, baby, dumb. I will later explain the drilling paradox, which HAS PROVEN IN REAL LIFE that no amount of money thrown at any drilling frenzy will EVER tap any sizable economically extractable oil ANYWHERE.

Note that current global oil consumption is reported as 100 million barrels per day. That means if a brand new giant oilfield with 500 million barrels of economically extractable oil is found, it will last the world just five days!

THE GAME IS OVER, IT IS DONE.

Footnote:

*Despite the remote offshore location prone to vicious storms, North Sea Oil is considered conventional oil. The Troll A rig, built onshore in Norway in 1995, was the largest, tallest and heaviest structure ever to be relocated from building site to final site, the tow across the sea lasting seven days. It is around 470 metres tall with the platform sitting 170m above sea level and concrete legs extending down 300m below sea level to sit on the seabed. This is considered the “easy to get” oil!!!!!

Two versions of this historic achievement—

Deep water UNconventional oil requires floating rigs that are roughly kept in position by cables anchored onto the seabed and more precisely positioned by engine-driven propellers guided by GPS which obviously need continuous energy feed. The seabed may be 3 km under the platform, and the oil well may be perhaps another 5 km below the seabed. Obviously, humans cannot dive 3 km deep, and all work at the seabed is done by remotely piloted vehicles. When the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in 2010, the result was catastrophic. An unimaginably humongous layer of heavier-than-water tar was deposited on the seabed. Floating tar and thick oil killed fish, sea mammals, and seabirds. Toxic detergents ILLEGALLY applied to disperse the oil, killed everything in the vicinity. Fishermen lost their livelihoods. BP tried squashing and smushing all manner of detritus down the wellhead to try to contain the blowout (kitchen sinks, shopping trolleys, dead cats – I exaggerate only slightly), and it was several MONTHS before the flow appeared to be stemmed. Of course, we must take their word for it that they were “successful” in capping the well; it is entirely possible the outflow stopped of its own accord due to declining well pressure. Gotta love advanced technology.


ADDENDUM: ANOTHER BP DEEPWATER HORIZON TYPE OF DISASTER IS ALMOST CERTAIN.

Even the corrupt mainstream media (see below) reported on this crucial question, but arrogant greed emboldened by ignorance and stupidity (embodied in the Trump regime), brushed aside the facts.

Oil floats on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico around a work boat at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 2, 2010.

BY NBC NEWS / May 2020
One offshore-drilling safety regulation that was put in place after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and rolled back by the Trump administration last year required oil companies to test emergency devices known as blowout preventers that are designed to seal off the flow of high-pressure oil and gas from a well. In 2010, it was a failure of this mechanical valve that caused oil to continue spewing from the Deepwater Horizon's Macondo well months after the initial explosion.

Obama appointed Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, in 2010 to serve as a member of the commission to investigate the root cause of BP's Deepwater horizon oil spill. In a 398-page report, the commission found that systemic failings throughout the oil and gas industry contributed to the disaster and that existing systems of government oversight were inadequate.

In response, the Obama administration crafted new regulations for offshore drilling aimed at avoiding the types of mechanical failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

The commission also issued a series of recommendations to Congress to improve safety and reduce the risk of future spills, but Boesch said lawmakers largely failed to act on the report's guidance.

"All the recommendations we made to Congress for things they could put in statutes related to safety and reorganization — they were never done," he said.

And in recent years, Boesch has watched as Obama-era rules have been dismantled. The Trump administration's revisions did not entirely eliminate the safety regulations, but the rules were relaxed.

"They have to do with the margin of safety," Boesch said. "The revisions give more flexibility to come closer to the edge of what that safety cliff is. They didn't destroy the improvements that were made, but the message it sends out is that safety may be less important."

Yet, one small positive consequence of the accident was that it resulted in the largest environmental damage settlement in U.S. history. The criminal and civil fines resulted in more than $16 billion being dedicated to environmental restoration of the Gulf Coast. Some of the money that has already been allocated has helped scientists better understand biodiversity in the Gulf and how the many creatures that populate the region have been affected by the oil.

"We didn't have a great baseline before, and that was part of the challenge," said Muth of the National Wildlife Federation. "A lot of what has been going on for the past 10 years is not only trying to measure the effects on organisms, but also to get a better sense of how the whole system operates."

Still, experts caution that without sweeping changes, accidents like the Deepwater Horizon spill are just waiting to happen. And given the role that the oil and gas industry plays in accelerating global warming, those changes should ultimately be a shift away from fossil fuels, according to Boesch.

"From a climate change perspective, we know we have to stop using these hydrocarbons," he said. "So the question should not be: How do we lower the risk of a blowout next year? The question should be: How do we decarbonize the world, and what does that off-ramp look like?"

TIME Magazine, another major capitalist misinformation tool, also somehow reported on this dangerous subject, but, as can be seen, to no avail, since the US government is not run in the public interest.

The Trump Administration Is Rolling Back Offshore-Drilling Regulations

By Amy Gunia

The Trump Administration on Thursday announced plans to loosen offshore-drilling regulations that were put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to prevent another disaster.

The new rules — one of which will reduce testing requirements for safety devices called blowout preventers — were announced by former oil lobbyist and acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and detailed in a 289-page plan, according to the New York Times. A malfunctioning blowout preventer was one of the leading causes of the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, which caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history. 

The changes reduce the amount of live data that operators are required to provide onshore monitors and the amount of safety test reporting that they must provide to the Interior Ministry, the U.S. government department responsible for the management of public lands and natural resources. The legislation also removes the requirement for the Interior Department to externally verify safety operations and equipment used by offshore drillers, according to the Times.

The document also said that the changes will save the oil industry $824 million (!!) over 10 years, according to the Times.

Many of the changes were requested by the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association and lobbying group, the Times reports.

“The Trump administration, in other words, wants to hand over responsibility for industry safety to the very entity the commission warned against entrusting with that responsibility,” said Bob Deans, a spokesman for the advocacy group the Natural Resources Defense Council, according to the Times.

Many of the regulations being relaxed were implemented during former President Barack Obama’s administration based on the recommendations of a government committee that investigated the causes of the Deepwater incident, which spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil before it was finally stopped.

Environmental groups expressed their concern.

“The well control rule was one of the most important actions we took in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. If the Trump administration’s final rule weakens these protections, it will put workers, waters and wildlife at needless risk,” environmental non-profit Earthjustice said on Twitter.

U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed to open more U.S. water to offshore drilling, but his plans have been delayed. In late March, a federal judge in Alaska dismissed his 2017 executive order reversing Obama-era moratoriums on drilling in the Arctic.

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IT’S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID— PART 4: A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

by Eric Arthur Blair
written by Eric Arthur Blair Approx. 7.5 Hrs • Watch/ read
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IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID

Part 4 : A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

INTRODUCTION

The Western narrative that Japan initiated war against the USA in 1941 by a sneak attack on Pearl Harbour is Hollywood propaganda. It was, in fact, triggered by the USA, which had imposed oil sanctions on Japan.

Japan was certainly a brutal imperialist aggressor, having invaded northern China to create the puppet state of "Manchukuo" in 1931 and having killed, exploited and enslaved millions of Chinese and Koreans for resources and lebensraum.

The Nanking massacre by the Japanese (TGP ai). Japan's imperial army broke records for sickening cruelty.

The one resource that limited Japanese ability to mine all other resources and to maintain and expand their empire was petroleum. China's largest oilfield is Daqing in Northern China, however that was not discovered until 1959. In 1939, Japan imported 80% of its oil from the USA. For various reasons, not necessarily all noble, the USA cut off its oil exports to Japan. For their part, the USA was well aware this would force Japan to confront the USA and hence drag the USA into WW2 against Japan and its Axis ally Germany. The US oil sanctions forced Japan to source oil from elsewhere and the most logical location for them was Indonesia, the so-called Dutch East Indies at that time. The Japs knew invading Indonesia would require prior seizure of British Malaya and cause confrontation with the Allies, yet they felt they had no choice. They knew the industrial capacity and resource base of the USA was many times larger than Japan and they could not possibly win a long term military conflict, however in desperation they hoped that an airstrike against the three Pacific aircraft carriers based in Pearl Harbour would give them an early military advantage and once they secured the Indonesian oilfields, they could sue for peace with the USA.

According to some revisionists historians, FDR knew —in fact may have deliberately provoked—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a way to unify the country behind the war against the Axis powers.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, all three US aircraft carriers, the kingpins of Pacific power projection for the US, just "happened" to be away at that time, hence were untouched by the raid. Many historians believe that Roosevelt had ample foreknowledge of the Japanese attack, that it was NOT a surprise attack, that it was engineered for a convenient time the USA knew their carriers would be out of port and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen to force the USA to join the war. It has also been argued that the true puppetmasters behind it all, who were interested in instigating worldwide war-for-profit, were the US bankers ("all wars are bankers wars"). Such an argument is utterly compelling if you "follow the money" and ask Cui Bono? regarding these world events.

IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID.

Fast forward to 2012 when Obama declared his "Pivot to Asia". This Orwellian term was far from benign and China was well aware that the real aim of the USA was to turn its gunsights on China to prevent its rise. If the USA could not compete on a level playing field, its default mode was to resort to sabotage of perceived competitors, whether economic or subversive (colour revolutions, sponsorship of separatist terrorists, etc) or military. The fact that the USA subsequently placed 60% of its entire military assets in the Pacific theatre, based in three concentric "island kill chains" surrounding China (US doctrinal language), validated China's concerns.

China began its "Belt and Road" initiative (BRI) in 2013, which would involve establishing transcontinental land and maritime routes, initially between China, Central Asia, West Asia and Russia. The Western narrative that China's BRI was a form of Imperialist expansion is Hollywood propaganda.

China stopped being an expensionist empire in 221 BCE. During the Ming voyages involving thousands of ships to South East Asia, India and Africa which began in 1405 almost a century before Columbus; China, despite having gunpowder and cannons, never attacked any States, they only sank a few pirate ships, then unilaterally chose to retreat into isolation for centuries, which led to their eventual stagnation and weakness. What was the 2013 BRI all about? The Chinese say it is all about "win-win" trade, which is true to a degree. To them, trade is the way to wealth. The big picture aim of the CPC, as stated by them, was to achieve "moderate prosperity" for all Chinese, which they are now well on track to delivering, having lifted 800 million out of poverty the past few decades. Such prosperity requires resources and China is in fact quite poor in most resources, making trade absolutely essential for them, especially oil importation, which is necessary for their industry and mass agriculture. Despite Daqing, China was actually very poor in domestic petroleum compared with oil rich USA, Russia, Central Asia (Caspian area) and West Asia and the latter three were perceived as important oil exporters to China.

China was and is under no illusion that the USA will eventually NOT attempt to curtail its access to oil to obstruct its rise. How so? Most oil exports to China are shipped by tanker. China uses around 16 million barrels per day, and a single VLCC can contain as many as 2 million barrels, meaning that just 8 VLCCs can supply China's entire requirements each day. Cut those off, and the lights go out in China. Maritime oil deliveries go through various choke points, the most important being the Straits of Hormuz, Bab Al-Mandab, the Malacca Strait and the Sunda Strait. Hence, it was of utmost importance that China establish alternative oil supply routes that could bypass those choke points. That is, I believe, one of the major reasons Xi Jinping embarked on the BRI.

Other ways that China could reduce its oil vulnerability was to electrify as much of their land transportation systems (high speed rail, metros, electric cars, buses and trucks) as possible which would be powered by non-oil, non-gas energy (hydroelectricity, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, etc). Of course, a major motivator to shift from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles was to eliminate the hazardous smog in Chinese cities, which proved to be spectacularly successful, but oil dependence reduction was equally important. Was establishing a new dominance in the electric car market important? Yes, but oil dependence reduction was equally important. Was reduction of carbon emissions important? Yes, but oil dependence reduction was equally important.

IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID.

A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

The scope and ambition of this title are so vast (it could easily occupy 50 essays) that I will provide only a big picture overview using summary bullet points and flow charts. I have included a few links that validate the assertions in the summaries.

In a nutshell:

– China makes things (ask any China trade partner); the USA breaks things (ask any Iranian, Syrian, Libyan, Iraqi, Palestinian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Cuban, VENEZUELAN, etc, etc).
– The Chinese economy is a real, productive economy; the US economy is a fake
(financialised), parasitic (sucks blood from the rest of the world and ordinary US citizens) economy.
– The Chinese banking system is publicly owned and works for the people; the US banking system is privately owned and works for the bankers.
– The Chinese political system involves democracy at grassroots (municipal) level and meritocracy at the top; the US political system enshrines legalised bribery (Citizens United ruling), oppression by militarised police (de facto abandoning posse comitatus - "Portland is burning down every night so we must send the National Guard in",  blah blah), and overall Kleptocracy. Various studies, eg from Princeton/NW university, showed unequivocally that the USA is an oligarchy (all political decisions favour corporations and the super rich) and not a democracy (no political decisions favour the people).
– Legitimacy of governance is achieved by delivery of real benefit to ordinary people - the Chinese government had > 90% approval rating according to Western surveys, eg by Harvard, which reflected real-world outcomes, eg, rising life expectancy, low cost of living, etc.
https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/studies-show-strong-public-support
Meanwhile, Trump now has a net negative 11% approval level, accompanied by falling life expectancy, rising cost of living, etc.

DE FACTO U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Here is my summary of de facto US foreign policy* as described by Professor Michael Hudson, with some input from John Perkins of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" fame. It is entirely based on hard evidence, is easily digestible, easily remembered and easily repeatable for those who wish to spread the truth. (*AKA the US economic model as the principal unprincipled global parasite, perpetrating predatory usury, protection racket extortion and plunder on other countries). These are the steps:

1. POLITICAL CAPTURE of the foreign country -

Using various tactics on a sliding scale of escalation:

- bribery/blackmail of existing leaders if already corrupt or corruptible (eg Javier Milei of Argentina, all current Western European leaders). If not feasible then...

- perversion of political / electoral process to manufacture consent for the installation of the selected

US poodle (eg, Marcos Jr in the Philippines). If not feasible then...

- lawfare using corrupt courts and judges to exclude undesirable socialist leaders (eg Lula and Dilma of Brazil) or exclude undesirable Russian-leaning popular election candidates (eg Romania, Moldova in 2024). If not feasible then...

- CIA assassination of elected leaders (many many examples.... may include wholesale slaughter of millions of people AKA the Jakarta method). If not feasible then...

- colour revolution /coup d'etats (which may also include assassination of leaders eg Allende). If not feasible then...

- Direct US bombing (eg Libya) or US invasion (eg Iraq). If not feasible then...Long term economic sanctions / trade blockade of countries (eg DPRK, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria)

2. Once political capture is achieved and PUPPET POODLES are installed, 

—they institute PRIMARY PRODUCTION POLICIES to prevent food sovereignty and instead promote cash crop production for cheap export to USA. Dependency on the USA for grain imports is imposed. Also prevent establishment of high-value industries and instead promote the extraction of unrefined raw materials for cheap export to USA.

3. Institute PREDATORY LOANS (denominated in USD, of course),

to fund PREPOSTEROUS PROFITEERING PROJECTS conducted by US contractors which will NOT BENEFIT THE ORDINARY POPULATION (eg, hydroelectric dams to provide electricity to only the richest comprador suburbs = bribery for loyalty of the 5th columnists), for the US to pursue perfidious price gouging.

4. Apply PROTECTION RACKET EXTORTION,

pretending to provide security against one or more external bogeymen or domestic terrorists (often created and funded by the USA eg, Israel or ISIS). This involves sale of overpriced, underperforming US weapons (why? because...interoperability!) and the establishment of US military bases in that foreign country, preferably funded by that foreign country itself eg, Qatar.

5. PLUNDER: When predatory loans from the IMF or World Bank inevitably default,

then enforce austerity on the foreign populace to cut national expenditure and sell off natural resources / natural monopolies (eg, national electricity and water grids) at rock bottom prices to US interests eg, Blackrock or Blackstone or other blackguards, for asset stripping or to pursue price gouging RENTIER parasitism. Then issue new loans from IMF or World Bank to pay off the old loans, thus further increasing the national debt of the foreign country, and when that inevitably defaults, enforce another round of austerity and asset selloffs, then issue new loans to pay off old loans, thus further increasing the national debt, and when that inevitably defaults.... rinse and repeat, you get the idea.

In summary, remember the 5Ps of US foreign policy, practiced by the most egregious PARASITE NATION in human history:

  1. - POLITICAL CAPTURE
  2. - PRIMARY PRODUCTION POLICIES pursued by the PUPPET POODLES
  3. - PREDATORY LOANS from the IMF or World Bank in USD for PREPOSTEROUS PROFITEERING PROJECTS
  4. - PROTECTION RACKET EXTORTION
  5. - PLUNDER and penury perpetrated on the populace

All of the above are enabled and facilitated by US PROPAGANDA (via US media eg, VOA, and US governmental "non"-governmental organisations, eg NED, USAID), which nauseatingly bloviate that the US is promoting freedom and democracy abroad, when it is in reality imposing economic slavery and autocracy on foreign countries.

Orwell would be so proud.

Links from a Geopolitical Economy substack reader ChatterX:

How to Overthrow a Government: The US Color Revolution Playbook:

youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGlZDKjTtM

Every Leader The US Has Assassinated:

youtube.com/watch?v=lM_p4QhuBVE

US has launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798: 

"When Plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in society, over the course of time they will create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it"—-Frederic Bastiat

Commentary from Prof Richard Wolff:

youtube.com/shorts/h-6Bo4DupHg

DE FACTO U.S. DOMESTIC POLICY

Here is my summary of de facto US domestic policy* as described by Professor Michael Hudson and other experts, eg, Prof Radhika Desai, bank auditor Lena Petrova.

These are the steps:

1. POLITICAL CAPTURE of all the pillars of power in the USA by CAPITALIST BIG MONEY: the Presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the military, police, judiciary, media, intelligence agencies, etc.

Who are the CAPITALIST BIG MONEY players who therefore control the Deep State?

They range from traditional private banking cartels to investment/hedge fund managers and private equity Vulture Capitalists, to modern-day Tech Bro Mafia. These are the puppet masters behind the curtain, the wizards of Oz.

Capture is done by:

- legalised bribery of all decision makers in all sectors (exemplified by Citizens United court verdict

that there is no limit to monetary contributions to political campaigns)

- blackmail of "leaders"is more covert but undoubtedly equally pervasive and the public can only be guessed at how truly widespread it is by the refusal of TPTB to release the Epstein files

- assassination of inconvenient Deep State opponents is also more commonplace than we know, from the famous cases of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, etc to lesser known targets such as journalist Gary Webb, who exposed CIA drug crimes and who the CIA claimed committed suicide by shooting himself in the head TWICE.

- Elections are entirely rigged to ensure any candidate with any chance of victory is always a pawn of capitalist big money. Whoever you vote for, you always get John McCain. In the two-party, first past the post, electoral college system, the only two candidates allowable are both corrupt pawns of Big Money. Each party has mechanisms to ensure presidential nominees can never again be democratic choices of the people eg, JFK, but will always be Big Money Pawns, eg the super delegate voting system within the DNC, which in 2016 and 2020 prevented Bernie Sanders from becoming the "Democratic" party nominee. Other tactics ensured Jill Stein was denied ballot status in many states and could never reach anywhere near 5% threshold vote.

2. Consent to be ruled is manufactured by PROPAGANDA

3. Once political capture is achieved and PUPPET POODLE POLITICIANS are installed, they institute POLICIES OF PREFERENCE OF THE PARASITES OVER THE PRODUCERS so the parasites can railroad through their self-serving policies to the detriment of everyone else. This explains the widening wealth inequality, worsening living conditions of ordinary people and crumbling public infrastructure in the USA.

4. The basic agenda of Capitalist Big Money is to CHASE the HIGHEST FINANCIAL RETURNS possible irrespective of any adverse consequences to ordinary people or the environment, dismissively termed "externalities". Much of this involves fraud, eg stock market manipulations (eg share buybacks to create Ponzi pyramids, then shorting those stocks just before pulling the plug and when asset prices crash, buy assets back at rock bottom prices. This is similar to what happened with the GFC of 2008/9).

It must be emphasized that the disciplines of political science (both domestic and foreign policy analyses) and economics are artificial divisions, and are so intertwined they must be considered one and the same discipline (described by Prof Desai as Geopolitical Economics)

Where were, are and will likely be the highest financial returns of the past, present and future?

- Bank usury
- War profiteering via the MIC
- Fossil fuel profiteering- Financialisation and Privatisation of everything (the RENTIER PARASITIC ECONOMY AKA "FIRE" SECTOR as coined by Michael Hudson) which inevitably leads to - Deindustrialisation

- The other major rentier sector today is called Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis, the establishment of digital monopolies in money grubbing rentier / advertising / propaganda digital platforms, eg PayPal, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Air BnB, etc.

- The biggest aspirational rentier enterprise on the US Techbro agenda is digital AGI, requiring heaps of super-high-end chips by NVIDIA, and LLM by software companies like "Open" AI (=closed AI) costing multiple $billions and using shitoads of energy. This US enterprise was vampire-staked and zombified by the advent of China's DeepSeek, truly open AI (=completely free) using a handful of mediocre chips and a pittance of energy and costing less than $6 million.

- The above have led to the USA spending far beyond its means for decades, now with $38 trillion in public debt, $20 trillion in private debt, multiple other unfunded liabilities (pensions, veterans' benefits, welfare, etc) amounting to many trillions, an obscenely overvalued stockmarket (more than $30 trillion), ONE QUADRILLION of illusory IOUs in derivatives, etc, etc. This is US debt and shares that can NEVER be redeemed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ywGmYj_S0

- The US stockmarket is an everything bubble that WILL collapse, however we just do not know exactly when. Even quisling stooge countries know this fact eg Japan, which responded to the Trump tariffs in April and consequent US stockmarket decline by selling off US TBills, which is the opposite of what always happened in the past (countries always bought US TBills in response to US stockmarket declines). This shows that the Global Majority is losing confidence in any US debt securities they may hold, quite apart from the fact that the USA could steal their gold or US denominated sovereign funds at any time. It is only a matter of time before the Global Majority get rid of such debt based US "assets" and Ponzi shares, which will mean the end of the US debt based financialised fraudulent economy.

5. US Capitalist Big Money is therefore now in the process of "grabbing anything that is not nailed down" (quote from Michael Hudson) and working out how to default on their debts while preserving their personal assets and maintaining control over US monetary policy and public finances. Hyperinflating the existing US dollar, then completely abolishing it by transitioning to one or more crypto-based programmable and surveillable CBDCs are possible strategies.

THE USA WILL GO BANKRUPT, COLLAPSE AND BREAK UP (Judge Andrew Napolitano), which is exactly what the USA tried to do to Russia, now on an economic rise and civilisational resurgence. Talk about Karma.

Judge Nappy also refers to specifIc situations in which the US Deep State has coerced, threatened and likely blackmailed US decision makers to do the bidding of Capitalist Big Money, in keeping with the model I outlined above on US domestic policy.

Alex Krainer, financial and geopolitical expert: "All wars are bankers wars":

How US Empire works

NOTE: CLICK ON IMAGE FOR BEST INSPECTION OF DATA.

This essay is already waaay too long, so I shall end it here.

With regard to details about China's domestic and foreign policies I recommend these links:

A. Carlos Martinez:

B. Jerry Grey has lived in China for decades and rode a pushbike several times North to South and East to West:

Socialism is just better, scientifically

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IT’S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID— Part 5: THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF ENERGY IN ECONOMIES

by Eric Arthur Blair
written by Eric Arthur Blair 18 minutes read
Giant mining machinery
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IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID

Part 5: THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF ENERGY IN ECONOMIES or: ENERGY PHYSICS FOR THE AVERAGE IDIOT (but incomprehensible to sub-average idiot economists)

[Note: I fortuitously completed this essay #5 before essay #4 (which will be on the dialectical comparison between the geopolitical economies of China and the USA), so I am posting this first.]

Parts 1 to 4 focus on geopolitical economics, which are social “sciences” or more accurately pseudosciences, because hypotheses cannot be proven in the same way that [we do in] the hard sciences. Physics, Chemistry, Biology can prove their postulates using real-world empirical measurements, observations, hypothesis formation and experimentation to validate or refute theories.

Neoliberal/neoclassical economics in particular, despite being steeped in recent decades in fancy next-to-incomprehensible mathematical equations conjured up by necromancers and celebrated by a fake Nobel economics prize (= Bank of Sweden prize for liars and Empire apologists), has been shown to be repeatedly wrong (yet “coincidentally” always benefits the rich, especially them bankers). This has resulted in economics being called for at least a century the “dismal science”, but of course, as Yanis Varoufakis says, economics is not a science at all. It is simply dismal.

Prof. M. Hudson

Nevertheless, because our physical and mental well-being are related to achieving modest material wealth, we still need to find some way to rationally investigate economics, the study of how material wealth is created, and there are some brilliant luminaries (NON-Neoliberal/neoclassical) we must listen to, especially Professor Michael Hudson.

TRUTH

The greatest contribution to the world by Western civilisation was the scientific method, which supposedly guided the Enlightenment. The Needham paradox raises the question as to why the scientific method did not arise in China (which had been technologically far ahead of the rest of the world for most of human history), especially because the Chinese seem to take to the scientific method like ducks to water. It was the scientific method that propelled meteoric Western technological advances, especially in weaponry, which enabled the West to bully the rest since 1600 CE in particular. Today, the West has largely descended into Endarkenment, with abandonment of the principles of objective scientific enquiry and refusal to accept objective facts, exemplified by their widespread denial of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) which was first identified in 1896 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. In China, there is simply no debate that AGW is real and is dead serious, and if we are not serious about it, we will all be dead.

Some basic concepts first. Lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, PR “experts” and other professional liars assert that there is no such thing as Truth, only what they can persuade you to believe is truth. They are self-serving sociopaths and mind polluters.

The spectacular success of the scientific method to deliver technological advances which have lifted much of humanity out of poverty and vastly improved the quality and longevity of our lives is undeniable. Robustly built climate climate-controlled dwellings and offices and shopping centres; rapid transportation systems; supply chains and industries to mass produce affordable commodities to benefit households (kitchen and laundry and entertainment appliances, etc), uncountable medical and surgical advances, etc. All those material benefits derive from scientifically proven paradigms which WORK (reproducibly and reliably, over and over) in the real world, thus proving the FACT that OBJECTIVE TRUTH EXISTS. If scientific paradigms were incorrect and did not reflect the Laws of Nature in the real world, then the technologies built from them would simply not work. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS THE ONLY RELIABLE WAY WE HAVE OF IDENTIFYING OBJECTIVE TRUTH.

This is NOT THE SAME as saying we can achieve ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Indeed, science itself has mathematically and experimentally proven that ABSOLUTE TRUTH CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED (principally via Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the three-body problem).

Nevertheless, we can achieve a high approximation of reality, of objective truth, which has enabled all the fields of hard science to be validated in real life beyond any doubt whatsoever.

If a lawyer or politician or lobbyist or PR “expert” disputes this point with you, you must tell them to stop using their cellphones and computers because they work using technology based on science. You must tell them to never seek a scientific medical diagnosis if they ever get ill, because such an opinion, based on objective examinations, investigations, measurements and scans can never be 100% absolutely truthful, it may only be correct 90% of the time. Hence they should go to a Voodoo doctor or snake oil peddler instead, because one “truth” is as good as another, right?

Can we apply the scientific method (=method of sceptical enquiry using validated facts and rational analysis) to our daily lives? Can we discover objective truth for ourselves? YES!!!

How do we know a paradigm is true? It is based on the comprehensive collection of irrefutable facts, application of unassailable logic, and is UNFALSIFIABLE. Furthermore, it is the best explanation for a situation and the best foundation for predicting outcomes.

Of all the fields of hard science, Physics has been described as the King of sciences, because of its spectacular success and also the fact that chemical processes are dependent on the laws of Physics.

Furthermore, biological processes are dependent on chemical processes and hence ultimately dependent on the laws of Physics. The Laws of Physics cannot be argued with (certainly not by lawyers and other jackasses) because they have been proven by painstaking scientific investigation to be objectively correct. Gravity exists, well approximated by Newton's Laws and later refined further by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The Laws of Physics are completely different from the laws of humans, which were subjectively created by humans, frequently to benefit those who created those laws (eg, laws enabling slave ownership, Jim Crow and apartheid laws, etc., etc).

ENERGY

Open any high school Physics textbook and you will find their definition of energy as "the capacity to do work". That definition needs further elaboration, outlined below.

The vast majority of economists are blind to the absolute requirement that energy is necessary to run ALL economic activities, EVERY single activity, bar none. Those majority economists apply false thinking: if your iron ore input into a smelter drops by 10%, your iron ingot output will similarly drop by 10%. Fair enough. But most go on to believe that energy is just one commodity among many, just one input among many other equally important inputs (labour, land, capital, infrastructure, raw materials, enterprise etc) that are fed into an economic activity and if the monetary cost of the energy input represents, say, just 10% of the total input costs of the entire activity, and if you lose the input of that one commodity, your output will drop by just 10%.

It is obvious to any average idiot that if you lack the energy to run things, then nothing can happen, everything grinds to a halt, your output becomes zero. Energy is the sine qua non without which no economy can function, no activity can occur. Unfortunately, most economists are stupider than the average idiot. Here is an anecdote about a United Nations Environment Program economist who said that "if we need more energy, we can simply make it by combining capital and labour".

(See around 6 min 20 sec)

That sub-average idiot economist held the belief that economists can violate the first law of thermodynamics (energy can neither be created nor destroyed), another basic concept found in any high school Physics textbook.

Energy (like matter) can be neither created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. This is known as the law of conservation of energy, which means the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant, even though it changes its form, like when chemical energy in food is converted to kinetic energy and heat in the body, as explained by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
  • Transformation, not disappearance:
    When energy is "used," it doesn't vanish.Instead, it changes from one type of energy into another. For example, a car engine converts chemical energy from fuel into the kinetic energy of motion, and also heat energy and sound energy.
  • Energy is conserved:
    In any energy transformation, the total energy before and after the change is equal. The total amount of energy in the universe is considered to be constant.

This sub-average idiocy is reminiscent of a delusional meme from the late Julian Simon, erstwhile economist from the University of Maryland, who wrote,

“...we will never run out of copper because "copper can be made from other metals.” The letters to the editor jumped all over him, told him about chemistry. He just brushed it off: “Don’t worry,” he said, “if it’s ever important, we can make copper out of other metals.”

From: Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy (transcript).

http://theoildrum.com/node/7343

“Professor” Simon shared a supernatural mindset held by pre-science "philosopher stone" transmutation warlocks and sorcerers, pure hocus pocus.

I will later interpret the real meaning of the famous Ehrlich-Simon wager, which Ehrlich lost not because he was wrong, but because of his failure to clarify and incorporate in his bet the difference between price and (true) cost. If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then surely the non-descructibility of energy means that we will always have that energy forever and we will always have the capacity to do work forever? That idea is obviously incorrect; there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine and hence we need to examine more closely what it means to be able to do work, which is based on the ability to harness energy GRADIENTS.  It is true that energy cannot be destroyed, however in harnessing any source of energy (or converting one form of energy to another), the energy progressively disperses as heat and becomes ultimately unusable for practical purposes. This is the second law of thermodynamics, also called entropy, which many physicists regard as the most inviolable law of Physics of all (even the "flow" of time may depend on entropy). All concentrated high-energy sources ultimately get dispersed as heat, which is nothing more than molecular agitation (Brownian motion).

If you have water at 120 degrees Celsius that is pressurised within a tank, that represents stored energy. If you release it through a valve to the atmosphere, thus turning it into steam (which occurs because of the heat and pressure gradients between the inside and outside of that tank), you can use that steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. However, within the confines of that tank of pressurised water of 120 C, inside that tank, it is not possible to do any work because there is NO ENERGY GRADIENT INSIDE that environment. Hence, the "capacity to do work" is NOT the same as energy, the capacity to do work is dependent on ENERGY GRADIENTS.

Husbands & Wives

What are energy gradients? If a boulder sits atop a hill, it has potential gravitational energy and if it starts rolling downhill that potential energy is converted into kinetic (=mechanical) energy and heat (from friction with the ground and even the air). We harness gravitational energy gradients with hydroelectric dams, when water from a high point flows downhill and rotates turbines which convert mechanical to electrical energy. Similarly, winds blow due to atmospheric pressure gradients (created by sunlight, which differentially heats land and sea) and we harness that kinetic energy to turn windmills to generate electricity.

Where does the electricity from nuclear power stations come from? It comes from steam turbines driven by heat generated by uranium rods. Where does the heat generated by uranium rods come from? From a critical mass causing accelerated radioactive decay, from nuclear fission, derived from what physicists term the "strong nuclear force".

Where did certain heavy elements get their ability to radioactively decay and hence generate heat? Such heavy radioactive elements were created in the unimaginably intense explosions of supernovae (indeed all elements heavier than iron originate from supernovae).

How did certain stars go supernova? Core collapse or binary star supernovae ultimately occur due to the interplay between the fusion of lighter to heavier elements and intense gravitation. Both the weak and strong nuclear forces are the mechanisms from which nuclear fusion originates.

Solar panels convert sunlight (electromagnetic photons) to electricity and that sunlight ultimately comes from nuclear fusion.

So here is the insight I give to you that my high school Physics teachers never gave to me: all energy sources originate from the four fundamental forces of nature (gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force) which ultimately all degrade and eventually disperse as heat. When that heat is dispersed uniformly throughout a hugely expanded universe sometime in the looooong (>>100 trillion years) future, we will no longer have any energy gradients, there will be no capacity to do work. That will be the heat death of the Universe.

Let us now come back to Earth and to time scales more relevant to navel-gazing human beings, AKA egocentric hairless apes, back to our selfish preoccupations with economies and wealth creation.

Economies and wealth are fundamentally dependent on our ability to harness concentrated energy sources. The more concentrated and more abundant the energy sources, the greater our ability to generate wealth (= have easy access to a wide variety of high-quality goods and services).

All fuels are energy sources but not all energy sources are fuels.

What do I mean? Sunlight is an energy source but is not a fuel. Diesel is a fuel we can describe as “bottled sunlight” because it is chemical energy that originated from the photosynthesis of plants (marine microalgae) that were fossilised. We can use diesel to run a car. Some cars use LPG (propane) as a fuel.  We can use electricity from sunlight to charge batteries to run an electric car, however by convention we do not describe those batteries as a fuel source, but as an electrical storage medium.

Most of us think of fuel as stored chemical energy. However, we also call uranium rods “nuclear fuel” which represents stored physical (not chemical) energy. So perhaps a reasonable working definition of a fuel is a gas, liquid or solid containing chemical or physical energy which can be used for untethered transportation.

What do I mean by “untethered”? That is best explained by conversely using examples of tethered transportation: trains powered by electrified third rails, electric buses or trams powered by catenary wires, San Francisco trolleys pulled by understreet cables.

The idea that fuels, which are chemical or physical stores of energy, enable untethered transportation, helps us differentiate between stationary energy generators (hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants, solar and wind farms, coal or natural gas or nuclear power stations) and mobile energy generators (the engines of untethered vehicles, including nuclear-powered ships and submarines).

It is true that huge advances in batteries and electric motors have today enabled untethered transportation for light(ish) vehicles over long(ish) distances, but we are still unable to use battery-powered machinery for the heavy industrial requirements mentioned above (nor long-distance aviation) and are unlikely to ever be able to do so.

Certain untethered specialty machinery is indispensable to run our industrial civilisation eg, giant coal hopper trucks, similar massive trucks for other mining activities (1), agricultural machinery to plow, sow, harvest crops and spray pesticides/herbicides over millions of hectares. They all run on diesel (or jet fuel for cropdusters), for which we have no replacement so far. When petroleum depletes, industrial-scale mining and agriculture will no longer be possible, and billions will die (unless...more about that later...).

Giant mining machinery

Different fuels are not interchangeable, and even fuels within the same category may not be interchangeable. What do I mean? It is obviously impossible to run your car with nuclear fuel rods. What about the category of liquid hydrocarbon fuels? Well, try putting petrol in your diesel engine or cold diesel in your Molotov cocktail. Piston engine light planes are designed to run on avgas (=leaded petrol) but turboprops and jet engines run on low sulphur kerosene (mostly jet A1).

The latter is crucial when it comes to long-distance passenger jets and military supersonic jets, for which nothing other than jet fuel is an option. When petroleum depletes, such jet aircraft will no longer be possible (unless...more about that later...)

Different fuels per chemistry

The energy applications of gas/petroleum fractions are, in monetary terms, actually less valuable than their chemical feedstock uses to make various material products (eg, methane for nitrate fertilisers, ethane and naphtha for plastics, other fractions for the production of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides etc, etc.)

It is essential to understand the qualities of the different fractional distillates of petroleum (and gas) and their different and specific roles, in order to understand how they are able to generate a wide variety of high-quality goods and services for us = wealth.

Petrol-derived fuel products

Our addiction to fossil fuels WILL undoubtedly, indisputably, certainly kill us all due to our locked-in dependency, which will be followed by inevitable “cold turkey” withdrawal, combined with catastrophic global warming (2), unless we transition off fossil fuels.

Our survival depends on the 7F principle: Fight For a Fully Fossil Fuel Free Future.

The “drill baby drill” ideologues are dumb, baby, dumb. 

"Drill, Baby, Drill!"—Sarah Palin, a true believer in this moronic posture, like Donald Trump and his coterie of short-term thinking, greedy and ignorant sycophants.

Do you get that, Trumpty Dumpty, you narcissistic prostitute of the fossil fools? That is a rhetorical question; all evidence shows that he is genuinely a faaarking moron, along with his execrable obsequious retinue of sycophantic boot-lickers who have absolutely no clue.

So-called “renewable” energy electrical generators are fossil fuel extenders and not fossil fuel replacements. Nevertheless, we absolutely need to build those fossil fuel extenders as our methadone program, as a bridge to buy us time to completely get off fossil fuels.

A decade ago, I believed the situation was hopeless, however new technological breakthroughs from China offer optimism for me, a person who used to distance myself from the technocornucopians who believed that “somehow” in unspecified ways, using blind faith without any real evidence, that humanity (and the rest of sentience) could be saved.

There are now specified ways based on good evidence, albeit preliminary. Glimmers of hope that humanity may not go extinct (3) and may even maintain complex industrial civilisation and achieve even greater wealth in the future. Not a certainty, but at least a slim possibility.

More about that later...

If you are USAnian however, you are screwed.

Upcoming:

- A message to the Peak Oil / Petroleum depletion deniers: you are scientifically illiterate liars and fools and

- EROEI and net energy or A message to the fossil fools: it takes energy to get energy, you damn fools

and even more to come...

Footnotes:

1. Interestingly, the mind-bogglingly huge giant coal excavator machines run on electricity. This gives us hope that it may be possible to electrify the entire process of mining, ore transportation, smelting, processing and manufacture of final products. However, until we can clearly prove that we can make renewable energy generators using 100% renewable (or nuclear) energy throughout the entire mining, transportation, manufacturing and distribution chains, the prospect of global industrial collapse consequent to petroleum depletion remains. In China, many photovoltaic manufacturing factories are now being powered by electricity from solar PVs.

Excavator

2. Recent hurricane Melissa affecting Jamaica generated winds of 295km/hr, never before experienced in history and impossible to reach that severity without the existence of human-induced global warming.

3. Avoidance of human extinction does not preclude the probability of the die-off of billions of people this century; indeed the latter is practically certain. Optimal planetary carrying capacity is unknown (dependent on the quality of life afforded to each individual among other factors) but given the guaranteed climate catastrophe mediated ecosystem devastation that is certain to occur, a total human population of 300 million in the few remaining livable less-devastated climate pockets may well be optimistic. I personally believe that mass migration to a thawing Antarctica is inevitable and will be the only way humans can survive on the surface of a world more than 3 or 4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.

Whether we resort to becoming troglodyte Morlocks is another question*. Whatever the case, it will be necessary for long-term human survival that all sociopaths and psychopaths be culled from all populations. Krony Kapitalist Kleptocrats (who are mostly sociopaths and psychopaths) may clutch their pearls in horror and call my views fanatical pro-tree hugging socialism. I call my views reality-based pro-survival.

*BTW, HG Wells' portrayal of Eloi as light-skinned and Morlocks as dark skinned is the exact opposite of what reality-based biological mechanisms would induce.

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IT’S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID Part 4 :  A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

by Eric Arthur Blair
written by Eric Arthur Blair Approx 5.75 Hrs • Watch / read
Jap stack on Pearl Harbor
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IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID

Part 4 :  A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

By EAB, November 2025

INTRODUCTION

The Western narrative that Japan initiated war against the USA in 1941 by a sneak attack on Pearl Harbour is Hollywood propaganda. It was in fact triggered by the USA which had imposed oil sanctions on Japan.

Jap stack on Pearl Harbor

Japan was certainly a brutal imperialist aggressor, having invaded northern China to create the puppet state of "Manchukuo" in 1931 and having killed, exploited and enslaved millions of Chinese and Koreans for resources and lebensraum. The one resource that limited Japanese ability to mine all other resources and to maintain and expand their empire was petroleum. China's largest oilfield is Daqing in Northern China, however that was not discovered until 1959. In 1939, Japan imported 80% of its oil from the USA. For various reasons, not necessarily all noble, the USA cut off its oil exports to Japan. For their part, the USA was well aware this would force Japan to confront the USA and hence drag the USA into WW2 against Japan and its Axis ally Germany. The US oil sanctions forced Japan to source oil from elsewhere and the most logical location for them was Indonesia, the so-called Dutch East Indies at that time. The Japs knew invading Indonesia would require prior seizure of British Malaya and cause confrontation with the Allies, yet they felt they had no choice. They knew the industrial capacity and resource base of the USA was many times larger than Japan and they could not possibly win a long term military conflict, however in desperation they hoped that an airstrike against the three Pacific aircraft carriers based in Pearl Harbour would give them an early military advantage and once they secured the Indonesian oilfields, they could sue for peace with the USA.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, all three US aircraft carriers, the kingpins of Pacific power projection for the US, just "happened" to be away at that time, hence were untouched by the raid. Many historians believe that Roosevelt had ample foreknowledge of the Japanese attack, that it was NOT a surprise attack, that it was engineered for a convenient time the USA knew their carriers would be out of port and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen to force the USA to join the war. It has also been argued that the true puppetmasters behind it all, who were interested in instigating worldwide war-for-profit, were the US bankers ("all wars are bankers wars"). Such an argument is utterly compelling if you "follow the money" and ask Cui Bono? regarding these world events.

IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID.

Fast forward to 2012 when Obama declared his "Pivot to Asia". This Orwellian term was far from benign and China was well aware that the real aim of the USA was to turn its gunsights on China to prevent its rise. If the USA could not compete on a level playing field, its default mode was to resort to sabotage of perceived competitors, whether economic or subversive (colour revolutions, sponsorship of separatist terrorists etc) or military. The fact that the USA subsequently placed 60% of its entire military assets in the Pacific theatre, based in three concentric "island kill chains" surrounding China (US doctrinal language), validated China's concerns.

China began its "Belt and Road" initiative (BRI) in 2013, which would involve establishing transcontinental land and maritime routes, initially between China, Central Asia, West Asia and Russia. The Western narrative that China's BRI was a form of Imperialist expansion is Hollywood propaganda.

China stopped being an expensionist empire in 221 BCE. During the Ming voyages involving thousands of ships to South East Asia, India and Africa which began in 1405 almost a century before Columbus; China, despite having gunpowder and cannons, never attacked any States, they only sank a few pirate ships, then unilaterally chose to retreat into isolation for centuries, which led to their eventual stagnation and weakness.

What was the 2013 BRI all about? The Chinese say it is all about "win-win" trade, which is true to a degree. To them, trade is the way to wealth. The big picture aim of the CPC, as stated by them, was to achieve "moderate prosperity" for all Chinese, which they are now well on track to delivering, having lifted 800 million out of poverty the past few decades. Such prosperity requires resources and China is in fact quite poor in most resources, making trade absolutely essential for them, especially oil importation which is necessary for their industry and mass agriculture. Despite Daqing, China was actually very poor in domestic petroleum compared with oil rich USA, Russia, Central Asia (Caspian area) and West Asia and the latter three were perceived as important oil exporters to China.

China was and is under no illusion that the USA will eventually (not) attempt to curtail their access to oil to obstruct their rise. How so? Most oil exports to China are shipped by tanker. China uses around 16 million barrels per day and a single VLCC can contain as many as 2 million barrels, meaning that just 8 VLCCs can supply China's entire requirements each day. Cut those off and the lights go out in China. Maritime oil deliveries go through various choke points, the most important being the Straits of Hormuz, Bab Al-Mandab, the Malacca Strait and the Sunda Strait. Hence it was of utmost importance that China establish alternative oil supply routes that could bypass those choke points. That is, I believe, one of the major reasons Xi Jinping embarked on the BRI.

Other ways that China could reduce their oil vulnerability was to electrify as much of their land transportation systems (high speed rail, metros, electric cars, buses and trucks) as possible which would be powered by non-oil, non-gas energy (hydroelectricity, solar power, wind power, nuclear power etc). Of course a major motivator to shift from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles was to eliminate the hazardous smog in Chinese cities, which proved to be spectacularly successful, but oil dependence reduction was equally important. Was establishing a new dominance in the electric car market important? Yes, but oil dependence reduction was equally important.Was reduction of carbon emissions important? Yes, but oil dependence reduction was equally important.

IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID.

A DIALECTICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS OF CHINA AND USA

The scope and ambition of this title is so vast (it could easily occupy 50 essays) that I will provide only a big picture overview using summary bullet points and flow charts. I have included a few links which validate the assertions in the summaries.

In a nutshell:
– China makes things (ask any China trade partner); the USA breaks things (ask any Iranian, Syrian, Libyan, Iraqi, Palestinian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Cuban, VENEZUELAN, etc, etc).
– The Chinese economy is a real, productive economy; the US economy is a fake (financialised), parasitic (sucks blood from the rest of the world and ordinary US citizens) economy. – The Chinese banking system is publicly owned and works for the people; the US banking system is privately owned and works for the bankers.
– The Chinese political system involves democracy at grassroots (municipal) level and meritocracy at the top; the US political system enshrines legalised bribery (Citizens United ruling), oppression by militarised police (defacto abandoning posse comitatus - "Portland is burning down every night so we must send the National Guard in" blah blah) and overall Kleptocracy. Various studies eg from Princeton/NW university, showed unequivocally that the USA is an oligarchy (all politcal decisions favour corporations) and not a democracy (no political decisions favour the people).
– Legitimacy of governance is achieved by delivery of real benefit to ordinary people - the Chinese government had > 90% approval rating according to Western surveys eg by Harvard which reflected real world outcomes eg rising life expectancy, low cost of living etc. https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/studies-show-strong-public-support

Meanwhile, Trump now has a net negative 11% approval level accompanied by falling life expectancy, rising cost of living etc.

DE FACTO U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Here is my summary of de facto US foreign policy* as described by Professor Michael Hudson, with some input from John Perkins of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" fame. It is entirely based on hard evidence, is easily digestible, easily remembered and easily repeatable for those who wish to spread the truth.

(*AKA the US economic model as the principal unprincipled global parasite, perpetrating predatory usury, protection racket extortion and plunder on other countries). These are the steps:

1. POLITICAL CAPTURE of the foreign country -
Using various tactics on a sliding scale of escalation:
- bribery/blackmail of existing leaders if already corrupt or corruptible (eg Javier Milei of Argentina, all current Western European leaders). If not feasible then...
- perversion of political / electoral process to manufacture consent for the installation of the selected US poodle (eg Marcos Jr in the Philippines). If not feasible then...
- lawfare using corrupt courts and judges to exclude undesirable socialist leaders (eg Lula and Dilma of Brazil), or exclude undesirable Russian-leaning popular election candidates (eg Romania, Moldova in 2024). If not feasible then...
- CIA assassination of elected leaders (many many examples.... may include wholesale slaughter of millions of people AKA the Jakarta method). If not feasible then...
- colour revolution /coup d'etats (which may also include assassination of leaders, eg Allende). If not feasible then...
- Direct US bombing (eg Libya) or US invasion (eg Iraq). If not feasible then...Long term economic sanctions / trade blockade of countries (eg DPRK, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria)

2. Once political capture is achieved and PUPPET POODLES are installed, they institute PRIMARY PRODUCTION POLICIES to prevent food sovereignty and instead promote cash crop production for cheap export to USA. Dependency on the USA for grain imports is imposed. Also prevent establishment of high-value industries and instead promote extraction of unrefined raw materials for cheap export to USA.

3. Institute PREDATORY LOANS (denominated in USD, of course) to fund PREPOSTEROUS PROFITEERING PROJECTS conducted by US contractors, which will NOT BENEFIT THE ORDINARY POPULATION (eg hydroelectric dams to provide electricity to only the richest comprador suburbs = bribery for loyalty of the 5th columnists), for the US to pursue perfidious price gouging.

4. Apply PROTECTION RACKET EXTORTION pretending to provide security against one or more external bogeymen or domestic terrorists (often created and funded by the USA, eg Israel or ISIS). This involves sale of overpriced underperforming US weapons (why? because.... interoperability!) and the establishment of US military bases in that foreign country, preferably funded by that foreign country itself eg Qatar

5. PLUNDER: When predatory loans from the IMF or World Bank inevitably default, then enforce austerity on the foreign populace to cut national expenditure and sell off natural resources / natural monopolies (eg national electricity and water grids) at rock bottom prices to US interests, eg Blackrock or Blackstone or other blackguards, for asset stripping or to pursue price gouging RENTIER parasitism. Then issue new loans from IMF or World Bank to pay off the old loans, thus further increasing the national debt of the foreign country, and when that inevitably defaults, enforce another round of austerity and asset selloffs, then issue new loans to pay off old loans, thus further increasing the national debt, and when that inevitably defaults.... rinse and repeat, you get the idea.

In summary, remember the 5Ps of US foreign policy, practiced by the most egregious PARASITE NATION in human history:
- POLITICAL CAPTURE
- PRIMARY PRODUCTION POLICIES pursued by the PUPPET POODLES
- PREDATORY LOANS from the IMF or World bank in USD for PREPOSTEROUS
          PROFITEERING PROJECTS
- PROTECTION RACKET EXTORTION
- PLUNDER and penury perpetrated on the populace

All of the above are enabled and facilitated by US PROPAGANDA (via US media eg VOA, and US governmental "non"-governmental organisations eg NED, USAID), which nauseatingly bloviate that the US is promoting freedom and democracy abroad, when it is in reality imposing economic slavery and autocracy on foreign countries.

Orwell would be so proud.

Links from a Geopolitical Economy substack reader ChatterX:

How to Overthrow a Government: The US Colour Revolution Playbook:

youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGlZDKjTtM
Summary

The video provides an in-depth analysis of the “Colour Revolution Playbook,” a strategy frequently employed by the United States to orchestrate regime changes in foreign countries under the guise of promoting democracy. These colour revolutions typically begin with disputed elections and mass protests, often appearing as grassroots democratic movements but are in reality heavily influenced, funded, and directed by foreign actors, primarily the U.S. The playbook involves a systematic sequence of tactics, including economic warfare, propaganda, funding opposition groups, organizing protests, employing force, and consolidating power under a U.S.-friendly regime. Historical examples such as Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and Libya illustrate how these tactics have been used over decades to destabilise governments that resist U.S. interests.

Economic sanctions and embargoes are used to cripple economies and create public dissatisfaction. Media control and propaganda amplify anti-government narratives to justify intervention and delegitimize targeted regimes. Opposition groups are funded, armed, and trained to act as the vanguard of regime change, often with little genuine popular support. Mass protests and demonstrations are organized or manipulated to simulate popular uprisings, while covert operations and intelligence agencies work behind the scenes to neutralise loyal security forces and political opposition. Once the government is toppled, the U.S. supports the installation and consolidation of a compliant regime to secure American geopolitical and economic interests.

The video also discusses U.S. policy toward Iran, detailing a Brookings Institution report outlining multiple strategies for regime change, many of which have been implemented through sanctions, propaganda, and covert support for opposition groups. The Russian post-Soviet era is analyzed to show how Western-backed oligarchs and economic shock therapy devastated the economy and society while consolidating wealth and power. The U.S. approach to Venezuela demonstrates the use of sanctions and support for opposition leaders to destabilize the Maduro government. The consequences of these interventions often include prolonged instability, weakened governance, and increased suffering for ordinary citizens.

Finally, the video critiques the hypocrisy of U.S. claims to promote democracy and human rights, highlighting how these interventions often violate international law and undermine local institutions. It notes that targeted countries increasingly resist U.S. influence by strengthening regional alliances and developing alternative economic and security arrangements, contributing to the emergence of a multipolar world order. The video concludes with a call for awareness of these covert operations and the possibility of a better, more just global system beyond imperialist interventions.

Every Leader The US Has Assassinated:

youtube.com/watch?v=lM_p4QhuBVE

US launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798:

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions-1991/

"When Plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in society, over the course of time they will create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it" -Frederic Bastiat

Commentary from Prof Richard Wolff:

youtube.com/shorts/h-6Bo4DupHg

DE FACTO U.S. DOMESTIC POLICY

Here is my summary of de facto US domestic policy* as described by Professor Michael Hudson and other experts, eg Prof Radhika Desai, bank auditor Lena Petrova.
These are the steps:

1. POLITICAL CAPTURE of the all the pillars of power in the USA by CAPITALIST BIG MONEY: the Presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the military, the police, the judiciary, media, intelligence agencies, etc.

Who are the CAPITALIST BIG MONEY players who therefore control the Deep State? They range from traditional private banking cartels to investment/hedge fund managers, and private equity Vulture Capitalists, to modern-day Tech Bro Mafia. These are the puppet masters behind the curtain, the wizards of Oz.

Capture is done by:
- legalised bribery of all decision makers in all sectors (exemplified by Citizens United court verdict that there is no limit to monetary contributions to political campaigns)
- blackmail of "leaders" is more covert but undoubtedly equally pervasive, and the public can only guess at how truly widespread it is by the refusal of TPTB to release the Epstein files, etc.,
- assassination of inconvenient Deep State opponents is also more commonplace than we know, from the famous cases of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, etc to lesser known targets such as journalist Gary Webb who exposed CIA drug crimes and who the CIA claimed committed suicide by shooting himself in the head TWICE.
- Elections are entirely rigged to ensure any candidate with any chance of victory is always a pawn of capitalist big money. Whoever you vote for, you always get John McCain. In the two party, first past the post, electoral college system, the only two candidates allowable are both corrupt pawns of Big Money. Each party has mechanisms to ensure presidential nominees can never again be democratic choices of the people, eg JFK, but will always be Big Money Pawns, eg the super delegate voting system within the DNC, which in 2016 and 2020 prevented Bernie Sanders from becoming the "Democratic" party nominee. (NOT that Sanders was or is a truly reliable"progressive". The man is, after all, a social democrat, a sheepdog in the service of the same establishment interests, albeit speaking a more "radical" language.—Ed).  Other tactics ensured Jill Stein was denied ballot status in many states and could never reach anywhere near (the coveted) 5% threshold vote.

2. Consent to be ruled is manufactured by PROPAGANDA

3. Once political capture is achieved and PUPPET POODLE POLITICIANS are installed, they institute POLICIES OF PREFERENCE OF THE PARASITES OVER THE PRODUCERS so the parasites can railroad through their self serving policies to the detriment of everyone else. This explains the widening wealth inequality, worsening living conditions of ordinary people and crumbling public infrastructure in the USA.

4. The basic agenda of Capitalist Big Money is to CHASE the HIGHEST FINANCIAL RETURNS possible irrespective of any adverse consequences to ordinary people or the environment, dismissively termed "externalities". Much of this involves fraud, eg stock market manipulations (eg share buybacks to create Ponzi pyramids, then shorting those stocks just before pulling the plug and when asset prices crash, buy assets back at rock bottom prices. This is similar to what happened with the GFC of 2008/9).

It must be emphasised that the disciplines of political science (both domestic and foreign policy analyses) and economics are artificial divisions, and are so intertwined that they must be considered one and the same discipline (described by Prof Desai as Geopolitical Economics)

The Dollar, Gaza, and Marxist Analysis of Capitalism’s Violent Global Decline — with Radhika Desai

Jay Shapiro - Dilemma Podcast

Aug 12, 2025 The Dilemma Podcast
Political economist Radhika Desai offers a Marxist reading of today’s global crises — from Gaza to the dollar’s fragility. We unpack why she believes capitalism has reached its monopoly stage, why it cannot function without imperialism, and how those contradictions shape everything from U.S. foreign policy to BRICS. Gaza becomes a stark example of how imperial systems maintain power, revealing the collapse of Western moral authority and the violent logic built into capitalism itself. FREE DOWNLOAD (thanks to Knowledge Unlatched) Capitalism Coronavirus and War https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.5...

Where were, are and will likely be the highest financial returns of the past, present and future?
- Bank usury
- War profiteering via the MIC
- Fossil fuel profiteering

- Financialisation and Privatisation of everything (the RENTIER PARASITIC ECONOMY AKA "FIRE" SECTOR as coined by Michael Hudson) which inevitably leads to...

- Deindustrialisation
- The other major rentier sector today is called Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis, the establishment of digital monopolies in money grubbing rentier / advertising / propaganda digital platforms eg PayPal, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Air BnB etc.

- The biggest aspirational rentier enterprise on the US Techbro agenda is digital AGI, requiring heaps of super-high-end chips by NVIDIA, and LLM by software companies like "Open" AI (= closed AI) costing multiple $billions and using shitoads of energy. This US enterprise was vampire- staked and zombified by the advent of China's DeepSeek, truly open AI (=completely free) using a handful of mediocre chips and a pittance of energy and costing less than $6 million.

- The above have led to the USA spending far beyond its means for decades, now with $38 trillion in public debt, $20 trillion in private debt, multiple other unfunded liabilities (pensions, veterans' benefits, welfare etc) amounting to many trillions, an obscenely overvalued stockmarket (more than $30 trillion), ONE QUADRILLION of illusory IOUs in derivatives, etc, etc. This is US debt and shares that can NEVER be redeemed.

- The US stock market is an everything bubble that WILL collapse, however we just do not know exactly when. Even Quisling stooge countries know this fact, eg Japan, which responded to the Trump tariffs in April and consequent US stockmarket decline by selling off US TBills, which is the opposite of what always happened in the past (countries always bought US TBills in response to US stockmarket declines). This shows that the Global Majority is losing confidence in any US debt securities they may hold, quite apart from the fact that the USA could steal their gold or US-denominated sovereign funds at any time. It is only a matter of time before the Global Majority get rid of such debt based US "assets" and Ponzi shares, which will mean the end of the US debt based financialised fraudulent economy.

5. US Capitalist Big Money is therefore now in the process of "grabbing anything that is not nailed down" (quote from Michael Hudson) and working out how to default on their debts while preserving their personal assets and maintaining control over US monetary policy and public finances. Hyperinflating the existing US dollar, then completely abolishing it by transitioning to one or more crypto-based programmable and surveillable CBDCs are possible strategies.

THE USA WILL GO BANKRUPT, COLLAPSE AND BREAK UP (Judge Andrew Napolitano), which is exactly what the USA tried to do to Russia, now on an economic rise and civilisational resurgence. Talk about Karma.

Judge Nappy also refers to specific situations in which the US Deep State has coerced, threatened and likely blackmailed US decision makers to do the bidding of Capitalist Big Money, in keeping with the model I outlined above on US domestic policy.

Alex Krainer, financial and geopolitical expert: "All wars are bankers wars":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrX9PHssBlo

  How US empire works

This essay is already waaay too long so I shall end it here.  With regard to details about China's domestic and foreign policies, I recommend these links:

Carlos Martinez:

Jerry Grey has lived in China for decades and rode a pushbike several times, North to South and East to West:

Socialism is just better, scientifically—

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THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF ENERGY IN ECONOMIES or: ENERGY PHYSICS FOR THE AVERAGE IDIOT

by Eric Arthur Blair
written by Eric Arthur Blair 18 minutes read
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Eric A. Blair (EAB)
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IT'S THE OILCONOMY, STUPID

Part 5: THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF ENERGY IN ECONOMIES or: ENERGY PHYSICS FOR THE AVERAGE IDIOT (but incomprehensible to sub-average idiot economists)

[Note: I fortuitously completed this essay #5 before essay #4 (which will be on the dialectical comparison between the geopolitical economies of China and the USA), so am posting this first.]

By EAB

Parts 1 to 4 focus on geopolitical economics, which are social “sciences” or more accurately pseudosciences, because hypotheses cannot be proven in the same way that the hard sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) can prove them using real-world empirical measurements, observations, hypothesis formation and experimentation to validate or refute theories. Neoliberal/neoclassical economics in particular, despite being steeped in mathematical equations conjured up by necromancers and celebrated by a fake Nobel economics prize (= Bank of Sweden prize for liars) has been shown to be repeatedly wrong (yet “coincidentally” always benefits the rich, especially them bankers). This has resulted in economics being called the “dismal science”, but of course, as Yanis Varoufakis says, economics is not a science at all. It is simply dismal. Nevertheless, because our physical and mental well-being are related to achieving modest material wealth, we still need to find some way to rationally investigate economics, the study of how material wealth is created and there are some brilliant luminaries (NON-neoliberal/neoclassical) we must listen to, especially Professor Michael Hudson.

TRUTH

The greatest contribution to the world by Western civilisation was the scientific method, which supposedly guided the Enlightenment. The Needham paradox raises the question as to why the scientific method did not arise in China (which had been technologically far ahead of the rest of the world for most of human history), especially because the Chinese seem to take to the scientific method like ducks to water. It was the scientific method that propelled meteoric Western technological advances, especially in weaponry, that enabled the West to bully the rest since 1600 CE in particular. Today, the West has largely descended into Endarkenment, with abandonment of the principles of objective scientific enquiry and refusal to accept objective facts, exemplified by their widespread denial of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) which was first identified in 1896 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. In China there is simply no debate that AGW is real and is dead serious, and if we are not serious about it we will all be dead.

Some basic concepts first. Lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, PR “experts” and other professional liars assert that there is no such thing as Truth, only what they can persuade you to believe is truth. They are self-serving sociopaths and mind polluters.

The spectacular success of the scientific method to deliver technological advances which have lifted much of humanity out of poverty and vastly improved the quality and longevity of our lives is undeniable. Robustly built climate controlled dwellings and offices and shopping centres, rapid transportation systems, supply chains and industries to mass produce affordable commodities to benefit households (kitchen and laundry and entertainment appliances etc), uncountable medical and surgical advances etc.

All those material benefits derive from scientifically proven paradigms which WORK (reproducibly and reliably, over and over) in the real world, thus proving the FACT that OBJECTIVE TRUTH EXISTS. If scientific paradigms were incorrect and did not reflect the Laws of Nature in the real world, then the technologies built from them would simply not work. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS THE ONLY RELIABLE WAY WE HAVE OF IDENTIFYING OBJECTIVE TRUTH.

This is NOT THE SAME as saying we can achieve ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Indeed, science itself has mathematically and experimentally proven that ABSOLUTE TRUTH CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED (principally Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the three body problem). Nevertheless we can achieve a high approximation of reality, of objective truth, which has enabled all the fields of hard science to be validated in real life beyond any doubt whatsoever.

If a lawyer or politician or lobbyist or PR “expert” disputes this point with you, you must tell them to stop using their cellphones and computers because those work using technology based on science. You must tell them to never seek a scientific medical diagnosis if they ever get ill, because such an opinion, based on objective examinations, investigations, measurements and scans can never be 100% absolutely truthful, it may only be correct 90% of the time. Hence they should go to a Voodoo guru or snake oil peddler instead because one “truth” is as good as another, right?

Can we apply the scientific method (=method of sceptical enquiry using validated facts and rational analysis) to our daily lives? Can we discover objective truth for ourselves? YES!!!

How do we know a paradigm is true? It is based on the comprehensive collection of irrefutable facts, application of unassailable logic and is UNFALSIFIABLE. Furthermore, it is the best explanation for a situation and best foundation for predicting outcomes.

Of all the fields of hard science, Physics has been described as the King of sciences, because of its spectacular success and also the fact that chemical processes are dependent on the laws of Physics. Furthermore, biological processes are dependent on chemical processes and hence ultimately dependent on the laws of Physics. The Laws of Physics cannot be argued with (certainly not by lawyers and other jackasses) because they have been proven by painstaking scientific investigation to be objectively correct. Gravity exists, well approximated by Newton's Laws and later refined further by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The Laws of Physics are completely different from the laws of humans which were subjectively created by humans, frequently to benefit those who created those laws (eg laws enabling slave ownership, Jim Crow and apartheid laws etc etc).

ENERGY

Open any high school Physics textbook and you will find their definition of energy as "the capacity to do work". That definition needs further elaboration, outlined below.

The vast majority of economists are blind to the absolute requirement that energy is necessary to run ALL economic activities, EVERY single activity, bar none. Those majority economists apply false thinking: if your iron ore input into a smelter drops by 10%, your iron ingot output will similarly drop by 10%. Fair enough. But most go on to believe that energy is just one commodity among many, just one input among many other equally important inputs (labour, land, capital, infrastructure, raw materials, enterprise etc) that are fed into an economic activity and if the monetary cost of the energy input represents, say, just 10% of the total input costs of the entire activity, and if you lose the input of that one commodity, your output will drop by just 10%.

It is obvious to any average idiot that if you lack the energy to run things, then nothing can happen, everything grinds to a halt, your output becomes zero. Energy is the sine qua non without which no economy can function, no activity can occur. Unfortunately, most economists are stupider than the average idiot. Here is an anecdote about a United Nations Environment Program economist who said that "if we need more energy, we can simply make it by combining capital and labour".

That sub-average idiot economist held the belief that economists can violate the first law of thermodynamics (energy can neither be created nor destroyed), another a basic concept found in any highschool Physics textbook. (ABOVE VID: Pay close attention around 6:00 mins.)

This sub-average idiocy is reminiscent of a delusional meme from the late Julian Simon, erstwhile economist from the University of Maryland, who wrote “...we will never run out of copper because “copper can be made from other metals.” The letters to the editor jumped all over him, told him about chemistry. He just brushed it off: “Don’t worry,” he said, “if it’s ever important, we can make copper out of other metals.”  [ From: Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy (transcript). http://theoildrum.com/node/7343 ]

“Professor” Simon shared a supernatural mindset held by pre-science "philosopher stone" transmutation warlocks and sorcerers, pure hocus pocus. I will later interpret the real meaning of the famous Ehrlich-Simon wager, which Ehrlich lost not because he was wrong, but because of his failure to clarify and incorporate in his bet the difference between price and (true) cost.

If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then surely the non-descructibility of energy means that we will always have that energy forever and we will always have the capacity to do work forever? That idea is obviously incorrect, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine and hence we need to examine closer what it means to be able to do work, which is based on the ability to harness energy GRADIENTS. It is true that energy cannot be destroyed, however in harnessing any source of energy (or converting one form of energy to another), the energy progressively disperses as heat and becomes ultimately unusable for practical purposes. This is the second law of thermodynamics, also called entropy, which many physicists regard as the most inviolable law of Physics of all (even the "flow" of time may depend on entropy). All concentrated high-energy sources ultimately get dispersed as heat, which is nothing more than molecular agitation (Brownian motion).

If you have water at 120 degrees Celsius that is pressurised within a tank, that represents stored energy. If you release it through a valve to the atmosphere thus turning it into steam (which occurs because of the heat and pressure gradients between the inside and outside of that tank), you can use that steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. However, within the confines of that tank of pressurised water of 120 C, inside that tank, it is not possible to do any work because there is NO ENERGY GRADIENT INSIDE that environment. Hence the "capacity to do work" is NOT the same as energy, the capacity to do work is dependent on ENERGY GRADIENTS.

What are energy gradients? If a boulder sits atop a hill, it has potential gravitational energy and if it starts rolling downhill that potential energy is converted into kinetic (=mechanical) energy and heat (from friction with the ground and even the air). We harness gravitational energy gradients with hydroelectric dams, when water from a high point flows downhill and rotates turbines which convert mechanical to electrical energy. Similarly winds blow due to atmospheric pressure gradients (created by sunlight which differentially heats land and sea) and we harness that kinetic energy to turn windmills to generate electricity.

Where does the electricity from nuclear power stations come from? It comes from steam turbines driven by heat generated by uranium rods. Where does the heat generated by uranium rods come from? From a critical mass causing accelerated radioactive decay, from nuclear fission, derived from what physicists term the "strong nuclear force".

Where did certain heavy elements get their ability to radioactively decay and hence generate heat?

Such heavy radioactive elements were created in the unimaginably intense explosions of supernovae (indeed all elements heavier than iron originate from supernovae).  How did certain stars go supernova? Core collapse or binary star supernovae ultimately occur due to the interplay between the fusion of lighter to heavier elements and intense gravitation. Both the weak and strong nuclear forces are the mechanisms from which nuclear fusion originates. Solar panels convert sunlight (electromagnetic photons) to electricity and that sunlight ultimately comes from nuclear fusion.

So here is the insight I give to you that my high school Physics teachers never gave to me: all energy sources originate from the four fundamental forces of nature (gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force) which ultimately all degrade and eventually disperse as heat. When that heat is dispersed uniformly throughout a hugely expanded universe sometime in the looooong (>>100 trillion years) future, we will no longer have any energy gradients, there will be no capacity to do work. That will be the heat death of the Universe.

Let us now come back to Earth and to time scales more relevant to navel-gazing human beings AKA egocentric hairless apes, back to our selfish preoccupations with economies and wealth creation.

Economies and wealth are fundamentally dependent on our ability to harness concentrated energy sources. The more concentrated and more abundant the energy sources, the greater our ability to generate wealth (= have easy access to a wide variety of high quality goods and services).

All fuels are energy sources but not all energy sources are fuels. What do I mean? Sunlight is an energy source but is not a fuel. Diesel is a fuel we can describe as “bottled sunlight” because it is chemical energy that originated from the photosynthesis of plants (marine microalgae) that were fossilised. We can use diesel to run a car. Some cars use LPG (propane) as a fuel.We can use electricity from sunlight to charge batteries to run an electric car, however by convention we do not describe those batteries as a fuel source, but as an electrical storage medium.

Most of us think of fuel as stored chemical energy. However we also call uranium rods “nuclear fuel” which represent stored physical (not chemical) energy. So perhaps a reasonable working definition of a fuel is a gas, liquid or solid containing chemical or physical energy which can be used for untethered transportation. What do I mean by “untethered”? That is best explained by conversely using examples of tethered transportation: trains powered by electrified third rails, electric buses or trams powered by catenary wires, San Francisco trolleys pulled by understreet cables.

The idea that fuels, which are chemical or physical stores of energy, enable untethered transportation, helps us differentiate between stationary energy generators (hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants, solar and wind farms, coal or natural gas or nuclear power stations) and mobile energy generators (the engines of untethered vehicles, including nuclear powered ships and submarines).

It is true that huge advances in batteries and electric motors have today enabled untethered transportation for light(ish) vehicles over long(ish) distances, but we are still unable to use battery powered machinery for the heavy industrial requirements mentioned above (nor long distance aviation) and are unlikely to ever be able to do so.

Certain untethered specialty machinery are indispensible to run our industrial civilisation eg giant coal hopper trucks, similar massive trucks for other mining activities (1), agricultural machinery to plow, sow, harvest crops and spray pesticides/herbicides over millions of hectares. They all run on diesel (or jet fuel for cropdusters) for which we have no replacement so far. When petroleum depletes, industrial scale mining and agriculture will no longer be possible and billions will die (unless...more about that later...)

Different fuels are not interchangeable and even fuels within the same category may not be interchangeable. What do I mean? It is obviously impossible to run your car with nuclear fuel rods. What about the category of liquid hydrocarbon fuels? Well, try putting petrol in your diesel engine or cold diesel in your Molotov cocktail. Piston engine light planes are designed to run on avgas (=leaded petrol) but turboprops and jet engines run on low sulphur kerosene (mostly jet A1).

The latter is crucial when it comes to long distance passenger jets and military supersonic jets, for which nothing other than jet fuel is an option. When petroleum depletes, such jet aircraft will no longer be possible (unless...more about that later...)

The energy applications of gas/petroleum fractions are, in monetary terms, actually less valuable than their chemical feedstock uses to make various material products (eg methane for nitrate fertilisers, ethane and naphtha for plastics, other fractions for the production of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides etc etc.). It is essential to understand the qualities of the different fractional distillates of petroleum (and gas) and their different and specific roles, in order to understand how they are able to generate a wide variety of high-quality goods and services for us = wealth.

Our addiction to fossil fuels WILL undoubtedly, indisputably, certainly kill us all due to our locked- in dependency which will be followed by inevitable “cold turkey” withdrawal, combined with catastrophic global warming (2), unless we transition off fossil fuels. Our survival depends on the 7F principle: Fight For a Fully Fossil Fuel Free Future.

The “drill baby drill” ideologues are dumb, baby, dumb.

Do you get that, Trumpty Dumpty, you narcissistic prostitute of the fossil fools? That is a rhetorical question, all evidence shows that he is genuinely a faaarking moron, along with his execrable obsequious retinue of sycophantic boot lickers who have absolutely no clue.
So-called “renewable” energy electrical generators are fossil fuel extenders and not fossil fuel replacements. Nevertheless we absolutely need to build those fossil fuel extenders as our methadone program, as a bridge to buy us time to completely get off fossil fuels.

ABOVE: A FOX News clip (Jan 13, 2015) celebrating Alaska politician Sarah Palin's Trumpian cry, "Drill, Baby, Drill!", the hymn of ignoramus-short-term thinkers. Trump, of course, continues to sing the same idiotic mantra. (Rupert Murdoch's Fox network empire represents the power of the Trumpian wing of the capitalist elites fighting for global primacy. However, intra-elite competition and even "war" between billionaire factions never results in anti-capitalist, pro-public interest policies.—Ed)

A decade ago I believed the situation was hopeless, however new technological breakthroughs from China offer optimism for me, a person who used to distance myself from the technocornucopians who believed that “somehow” in unspecified ways, using blind faith without any real evidence, that humanity could be saved.

There are now specified ways based on good evidence, albeit preliminary. Glimmers of hope that humanity may not go extinct (3) and may even maintain complex industrial civilisation and achieve even greater wealth in the future. Not a certainty but at least a slim possibility.
More about that later...

If you are USAnian however, you are screwed.

Upcoming:

- A message to the Peak Oil / Petroleum depletion deniers: you are scientifically illiterate liars and fools, and
- EROEI and net energy or

A message to the fossil fools: it takes energy to get energy, you damn fools and even more to come...

Footnotes:

  1. Interestingly, the mind bogglingly huge giant coal excavator machines run on electricity. This gives us hope that it may be possible to electrify the entire process of mining, ore transportation, smelting, processing and manufacture of final products. However until we can clearly prove that we can make renewable energy generators using 100% renewable (or nuclear) energy throughout the entire mining, transportation, manufacturing and distribution chains, the prospect of global industrial collapse consequent to petroleum depletion remains. In China, many photovoltaic manufacturing factories are now being powered by electricity from solar PVs.

  2. Recent hurricaine Melissa affecting Jamaica generated winds of 295km/hr, never before experienced in history and impossible to reach that severity without the existence of human induced global warming.

  3. Avoidance of human extinction does not preclude the probability of the die-off of billions of people this century, indeed the latter is practically certain. Optimal planetary carrying capacity is unknown (dependent on the quality of life afforded to each individual among other factors) but, given the guaranteed climate catastrophe mediated ecosystem devastation that is certain to occur, a total human population of 300 million in the few remaining livable less-devastated climate pockets may well be optimistic. I personally believe that mass migration to a thawing Antarctica is inevitable and will be the only way humans can survive on the surface of a world more than 3 or 4 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial times. Whether we resort to becoming troglodyte Morlocks is another question*. Whatever the case, it will be necessary for long term human survival that all sociopaths and psychopaths be culled from all populations. Krony Kapitalist Kleptocrats (who are mostly sociopaths and psychopaths) may clutch their pearls in horror and call my views fanatical pro-tree hugging socialism. I call my views reality based pro-survival.

    *BTW, HG Wells' portrayal of Eloi as light skinned and Morlocks as dark skinned is the exact opposite of what reality based biological mechanisms would induce.

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