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The Spike and the Peak: what future for humankind?

The Spike and the Peak: what future for humankind? thumbnail

From The Oil Drum Europe 2009
by Ugo Bardi

 

The figure above, from Robert Anson Heinlein’s “Pandora’s Box” (1952), is perhaps the first graphical representation of the concept that technology is not only progressing but progressing at an exponentially growing rate. Today, this concept goes sometimes under the name of the “technological spike” or the “technological singularity”. However, we see also increasing concerns about peak oil and, more in general, about “peak civilization”. Will the future be a spike or a peak?

The 1950s and 1960s were perhaps the most optimistic decades in the history of humankind. Nuclear power was soon to provide us with energy “too cheap to meter”, space travel promised weekends on the moon for the whole family, and flying cars were supposed to be the future of commuting. At that time, Robert Anson Heinlein, science fiction writer, may have been the first to propose that technology was not only progressing but progressing at exponentially growing rates. In his article “Pandora’s box” (Heinlein 1952), he showed the figure shown at the beginning of this text. Curve 4, with “progress” going up as an exponential function of time, is the trend that Heinlein enthusiastically proposed.

The same concept has been proposed several times after Heinlein. Robert Solow (1956) interpreted as technological progress an exponentially growing “residual” in his models of economic growth. The concept of “intelligence explosion” has been introduced by I.J. Good in 1965, that of “technological singularity” by Vernor Vinge was published in 1993, although it was expressed for the first in his novel “Marooned in real time” (serialized in Analog magazine, May-August 1986). The concept of “technological spike” was introduced for the first time by Damien Broderick in 1997 and that of “Accelerating change” by Ray Kurtzveil in 2003. In all cases, the growth of technological progress is seen as literally “spiking out” to levels that the human mind cannot understand any longer. Sometimes the term “technological singularity” is used to describe this event. The people who tend towards this view are sometimes called “extropians” or “transhumanists” and they are highly optimistic about the capability of technology to solve all of our problems.

However, over the years, we seem to have been gradually losing the faith in technology that was common in the 1950s. We are increasingly worried about resource depletion and global warming. Both factors could make it impossible to keep the industrial society functioning and could lead to its collapse. These ideas originated, too, in the 1950s when Marion King Hubbert (1956) first proposed the concept of a production peak for crude oil, later called “peak oil”. The idea that resource depletion was a critical factor in the world’s economy has been proposed many times, for instance with the series of studies that go under the name of “The Limits to Growth,” which saw the light for the first time in 1972. Today, Hubbert’s ideas are the basis of what we call the “peak oil movement”. The concept is often extrapolated to “peak resources” and to “peak civilization”, that could also be the result of the effects of anthropogenic global warming. The people who follow this line of thought tend to be skeptical about the capability of technology to solve these problems.

So, what will be the future, the spike or the peak? Will the peak destroy civilization, or will the spike take it to heights never experienced before? A first crucial question on this point is whether progress is really moving at exponentially growing rates. The answer seems to be no, at least if we consider technology as a whole. In most fields, we are stuck to technologies developed decades, or even centuries, ago. The performance of motor cars, for instance, is not improving exponentially, otherwise we’d expect cars to double mileage and to halve prices every so often. This is a qualitative observation that we can make by ourselves, but there have been studies that have examined such indicators of progress as the number of patents published every year (Huebner 2005). The result is that the rate of technological innovation is not increasing and that it may be actually slowing down. As discussed, for instance, by Ayres (2003) there is no factual ground for Solow’s 1956 assumption that the growth of the economy is mainly generated by “progress.”

Yet, there is at least one field of technology where progress is, indeed, exponentially growing. It is information technology (IT). The growth of IT can be quantified in various ways. Moore’s law is well known: it says that the number of transistors (or gates) on a single chip grows exponentially. The law has been verified for several decades and the doubling time of 24 months doesn’t show signs of abating. Perhaps less known is the explosive growth of information stored in electronic form. A study by the International Data Group (IDC 2008) shows that the number of bits stored increases by a factor of ten every five years. At present, we have a total of approximately 280 exabytes (billions of gigabytes) stored. It corresponds to about 45 Gigabytes per person on the planet. Then, the amount of information being transmitted over the internet is also rising at an exponential rate. According to Morgan Stanley (2008), we are transmitting more than 12 million terabytes per month. We have no quantitative data for how fast exactly the general concept of “Information Technology” is growing, but from the growth of its many subsections we can say that it is accelerating.

Surely, progress in IT needs plenty of resources and a functioning economy and both conditions could be at risk in the future. But the demise of civilization is likely to be a slow and complex affair; something that could span most of the 21st century or, at least, the first half of it. Can we keep progress in IT alive and well for that long? Probably yes or, at least, it should be possible to allocate enough energy to keep computers running. From the IDC study that I cited before, it turns out that we spend about 30 billion dollars per year in energy used by computers and about 55 billion dollars in energy costs for new servers. This estimate doesn’t take into account all the energy used in data processing, but it gives us an order of magnitude for the core energy costs of the computing world. Considering that the world oil market alone is a few trillion dollars per year (depending on the vagaries of oil prices), we see that we need probably no more than a few percent the world’s energy production for our computers. It is not a negligible amount, but it seems very unlikely that, facing an energy shortage, we would cut on the vital need we have for IT. Nobody should bet on the survival of SUVs in the coming years, but computers will keep working and Moore’s law could stay alive and well for years, at least; perhaps decades.

The growing performance of information technology is going to change many things in the world. Eventually, it may lead to levels of “artificial intelligence” (AI) equal or superior to human intelligence. At some point, AI could reach a point where it is able to improve itself and that would take it to superhuman, even God-like, levels. Such superior intelligence is sometimes described as a sort of technological Santa Claus bringing to humans an avalanche of gadgetry that buries forever all depletion problems. Here, however, we risk making the same mistake that Heinlein made in 1950 in his “Pandora’s box”. At the time, space travel was seen as the main thing going on and Heinlein confused needs for possibilities predicting anti-gravity devices and the colonization of planets arriving by the year 2000. This kind of mistake is similar to what Yudkowsky (2007) calls “the giant cheesecake fallacy”. That is, if you are making a cheesecake, you’ll think that a better technology will help you make a bigger cheesecake.

In the present situation, our main problem seems to be energy and the cheesecake fallacy leads us into believing that we’ll soon develop (or that AI will develop for us) a source of abundant and low-cost energy just because we need it. But even super-intelligent computers have to deal with the physical world. Maybe there are ways to create the perfect energy source: safe, low-cost, abundant and usable by humans for the sake of humans. But we don’t know whether that is possible within the physical laws of our universe.

Besides, is a limitless energy source going to stave off collapse forever? This question has already been asked in the first edition of “the Limits to Growth” of 1972, and the results confirmed in later editions. The simulations show that if you develop a technology that solves the energy problem, population keeps increasing, and collapse is generated by the lack of food and by pollution. So, you’d need more technological breakthroughs: ways of fighting pollution and of producing more food. But, in the long run, how would you cope with the forever increasing population? Well, new breakthroughs to send people to colonize the solar system and, eventually, the whole galaxy. All that is not physically impossible, but it is an ever growing, super-giant cheesecake. Is that what we really need?

In the end, our problem with vanishing resources is not that we don’t have enough gadgetry. We have a problem of management. We tend to exploit resources well above their capability to reform, that is beyond sustainability. In addition, we can’t control the growth of population. This is what we call “overshoot” and it leads, in the end, to a collapse that has often be catastrophic in the history of humankind. Humans have a short range vision that brings them to discount the future at a very steep rate (Hagens 2007). It is a result of our evolutionary history: we are excellent hunters and gatherers but very poor planet managers.

So, the real question is whether advanced IT (or AI) can help us to manage better the resources we have. And, here, the answer seems to be negative, at least for the time being. There is no doubt that IT is helping us to be more efficient but, as James Kunstler said in his “The Long Emergency,” efficiency is the straightest path to hell. Being more efficient is a way to exploit resources faster, and that may well accelerate the collapse of civilization.

Just think of a simple gadget as an example: a car navigator. When you are using it you are, in effect, taking orders from a computer that is smarter than you at the specific task of navigating in the streets. The navigator will make it faster and easier for you to travel by car from point “A” to point “B”, but will have no say on whether it is a good idea to go from A to B. Besides, if you can save some gasoline in going from A to B by an optimized route, you may decide to use it to go further on, to point C. So, the greater efficiency resulting from the use of the navigator will produce no energy saving. This is just an example of that is called the “Jevons effect” or the “Rebound effect” which often thwarts all effort to improve things by saving energy or being more efficient.

Yet, it would not be impossible to use IT in order to fight over-exploitation, and we don’t need super-human AI for that. IT can tell us where we are going and act as a “world navigator” for us; telling us how we can go from here to there, supposing that “there” is a good kind of world. The first digital computers were already used in the 1960s to simulate the whole world system (Forrester 1971). In 1972, the authors of “The Limits to Growth” used their simulations to propose ways to avoid overexploitation and keep the world’s economic system on a sustainable path. These simulations could be used as a guide for steering the world’s economic system in the right direction and avoid collapse. But, as we all know, policy makers and opinion leaders alike refused to take these studies seriously (the story of how “the limits to growth” book was rejected and demonized is told in my post “Cassandra’s curse,” Bardi 2008). So, we are still racing toward collapse; IT is just helping us to run faster in that direction.

There remains the hope that growing IT capabilities will make a difference in qualitative terms; that AI will become so powerful that it will save us from ourselves. Several years after his “Pandora’s box” article, Heinlein published a novel titled “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (1966) where he described the birth of a human-like computer that helped a group of lunar revolutionaries to take over the local government and, eventually, became the hidden and benevolent ruler of the Lunar colony. But that, just as many predictions, might be another case of the Giant Cheesecake Fallacy: the fact that we need a technology will not necessarily make it appear and – more than that – it may not work the way we think it should. A God-like AI might not be necessarily compassionate and merciful.

In the end, both the spike and the peak are strongly non-linear phenomena, and we know that non-linear phenomena are the most difficult to predict and understand. The only thing that we can say for sure about the future is that it will be interesting. We can only hope that this will not have to be intended in the sense of the old Chinese malediction.
 Cassandra’s legacy by Ugo Bardi



41 Comments on "The Spike and the Peak: what future for humankind?"

  1. makati1 on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 5:03 pm 

    “The only thing that we can say for sure about the future is that it will be interesting.”

    Accurate statement, but then, near the end of the article, out pops the word that seems obligatory for everyone these days. “HOPE!” Hope will not change the course we have locked in for humanity. It is in the hands of nature (natural laws) not man. All humans can do at this point is try to ease the pain of coming events by preparing as best we can for them.

  2. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 6:57 pm 

    Mak, and the best the chinese neighbours can do to ease the pain, is to arm them selfs to the teeths. And I think that is exactly what they are doing. It’s not gonna be pretty. It’s china against ALL their neihbours, and though China is militarily strong, I still believe that it will destroy their goodwill, influence and in the end the regional power that they initialy wanted.

    As I see it ,it’s a part of the PLA that has become intoxicated with all the new technological wonders in their hands – Just like the US neocons in Iraq when american military power seemed totally invincible. What’s the good of all these great weapons if we can’t use them, they say, whether the warbuffs are American,Russian or Chinese.

    t use them

  3. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:02 pm 

    “t use them” is editorial waste.claman

  4. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:28 pm 

    Before any lack of oil will hit us, the crisis in the South Chinese Sea will have made any prediction worthless.
    Take a look at these sites, and especially the comments.

    http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0816/c90000-9101046.html

    http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/china-strongly-warns-japan-not-to-send-sdf-to-south-china-sea

    http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0821/c90786-9103232.html

    http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0816/c90000-9101046.html

  5. makati1 on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:53 pm 

    Cloggie, that is Western thinking. “Armed to the teeth”? WHY? China can destroy the Ps with a few dozen missiles in minutes. About 5 minutes to be exact. Ditto for their neighbors. They don’t even have to put Chinese “boots on the ground” to win.

    You really need to stop swilling the US supplied ‘Koolaid’. You seem to be the propaganda poster child for the Imperial Pr4opaganda machine. It is blatantly obvious.

    China wants trade, not war. You do not get that by destroying your customer base. China already dominates Asia economically. It does not need to do so militarily. Militarily is Western thinking because they have no economies left.

    BTW: You better see how much YOU depend on China for the things you use. Read the labels. LOL

  6. onlooker on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 7:57 pm 

    This is always the story of some who believe in endless human progress and omnipotence. Yet what I see is a lost vulnerable species who wants desperately to believe its own propaganda. As others have already said you cannot fool Nature

  7. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:01 pm 

    Off course China doesn’t want war, they just want territory
    Mak, here is a list of all disputes China has with its neighbours:

    http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-05/news/44808172_1_south-china-sea-xisha-islands-paracel-islands

  8. onlooker on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:15 pm 

    “The problem with humans is that, we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technologies”

  9. makati1 on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:16 pm 

    Sorry, Cloggie, I blamed you for Claman’s statement about China. Need more coffee.

  10. Boat on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:21 pm 

    As robotics proliferate manufacturing, cheap labor will lose it’s economic punch.

  11. makati1 on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:22 pm 

    Claman, your references are more fable than fact. You really need to stop swilling that Koolaid, before it kills you. See my above comment, mislabeled to Cloggie.

    The US is trying to get a war started anywhere in the world it can to use as an excuse for the failure of the US economy and people. Only, this time it will end in mushroom clouds over your cities.

    If I were you, I would be preparing for that last event, not worrying about my decision to live here in the Ps in relative safety.

  12. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:26 pm 

    Onlooker, you are so right in what you are saying. But that doesn’t make it any better when we repeated times see great powers use their strenght to grab land and sea from neighbours. And that goes for Russia, China and the US and sometimes even for smaller states.
    China is just so obviously out on a sea and landgrab that you just have to protest.
    Read my links in former comments and you will see how these people firmly believe in their own propaganda.
    Read this list of chinese aggression against contries that have borders in common with them:

    http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-05/news/44808172_1_south-china-sea-xisha-islands-paracel-islands

  13. Sissyfuss on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:31 pm 

    If a truly superior AI was developed it would take one look at the cancer monkeys and what they’re doing to their nest and immediately start working towards our rapid demise. Heinlein was my favorite SciFi author and I have always felt like a stranger in a strange land. Grok that.

  14. Sissyfuss on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:34 pm 

    Boat,, as robotics proliferate manufacturing cheap labor will become nonexistent.

  15. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:35 pm 

    Mak, it WILL end in mushroom clouds. Just read the comments from people.cn that i mentioned above

  16. Anonymous on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:38 pm 

    How about staying on topic clantard? This article has nothing to do with ‘China’, or its military, or its non-existent plan to ‘conquer the world’, or any other red scare China fantasies you dream up there while sitting in your mobile home in the wastelands of middle merika.

    Anyhow, topic.

    Professor Bardi, is largely correct, as usual. Aside from the internet, the world operates on pretty much the same principles as it did 10-30, or 50 years ago. Even the interweb has not really revolutionized as much as is commonly believed. It just ‘computerizes’ functions and actions in the economy that used to be done by armies of clerks and middle-men. He may be correct in that we might be able to keep our computers(mostly) running, but what of it?

    Widespread use of computers hasn’t really ‘solved’ any of society’s pressing problems in any real way. I see lots of problems every day. Congestion, homelessness, unemployment, industrial spills, accidents, unhappy people, etc etc. Computers definitely are not helping make people smarter or better informed in all cases,(look at claman, plantadope, boat etc). Nor has ‘innovation’, another horribly abused word. Measuring patents to measure something called ‘progress’ is as bad as using GDP to measure something called ‘the economy’. Patents don’t measure innovation. It is is likely the case most patents are rather useless, or of marginal value at best. Put another way, # of patents issued says nothing about the quality, or utility of said patents. GDP is the same way, actions both positive and negative are measured and weighed exactly the same way.

    Fact is, most innovation, is hardly that. Its mostly rebranding or repackaging of existing ideas. ‘New and improved’, right? Nor is computer power doubling every couple years. Increases in computing power are subject to same laws of diminishing returns as anything else. Moore’s laws best days are behind it now. And even if it weren’t, its still not clear what more people expect from computers than they have at their fingertips now.

    Oh, I know, they want their cars to drive them to walmart. And the pentagon is likely hoping some genius (EU, or Asian), will invent a neural net processor so they can build Skynet.

  17. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:47 pm 

    Sissy, in a way AI has allready happened. The neocons , the american and chinese military , the Wallstreeters, russian cleptocrats – they are all highly intelligent people, but without any clue of human wisdom.
    Human Artificially Intelligence – so to speak. Or may be it’s just intelligence without humanity

  18. makati1 on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:58 pm 

    Comments? You mean the wide range like we have here or??? Like this one:

    “so with the US. The world will be at peace if US will implode so they will have a taste of what they are doing to other countries.”

    Or this one:

    “One has to differentiate the two countries: America is founded on the ashes of the natives, the African slaves and the denial of human rights principles.
    The People’s Republic of China is founded on the long heroic struggle against European colonialism and Japanese imperial brutal occupation.”

    or this one:

    ” When was the last time China went to war with another country? Please compare and contrast that with USA, UK, France.”

    Then you read Japan today and see the results of US propaganda there in the comments. The Japanese are an aggressive people, not the Chinese and they need a war even more than the US to cover their already failed country. But, I do not see a war here in the near future. Japan will sink long before they can be a danger. Ditto for the US. China has other plans, economic and financial, and will pursue them no matter what the US wants militarily, unless provoked. I would not want to go up against the Dragon and/or the Bear if I was a little eagle. lol

  19. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 8:59 pm 

    Ano, read his headline : “what future for humankind?”
    Peakoilers are sometimes so unaware of what is going on around them – just focusing on this PO. … All peak oil theories might come to nothing when the world starts fighting, and that is what is about to happen – now.
    I admit my comment was not relevant for the article, but it was relevant for the headline : What future for mankind ?
    And writing about peakoil without taking this present huge threat in consideration, is for me an evidence of somebody living in an ivory tower

  20. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 9:12 pm 

    Ano . Ugo Bardi is a good analysist – admitted.

  21. onlooker on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 9:14 pm 

    Great post Anonymous. Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns. But its more profound than that. Technology in the end is just a tool. What matters is how we use or misuse it. For example wars waged with ever more sophisticated technology doesn’t make them any less stupid or horrific. Or our ongoing assault and deterioration of Nature made possible with technology. What is needed is humanity to psycho analyze itself then maybe we can make some real progress lol

  22. claman on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 9:44 pm 

    On,looker said: ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns”.
    China is absolutly suffering from diminishing returns, and are now searching hard for new investment areas which happen to be their neighbouring countries. IT has made their labour force unemploid. They need to expand, just like the old colonial countries in europe.
    The victim will be South East Asia.

  23. Boat on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 11:01 pm 

    ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns.”

    So CHP tech and nat gas provide distributed heat and electricity at 90 percent efficiency vrs coal that did the same function for refineries at 45. Millions btu saved, millions fewer btu’ burned, significant cleaner air per btu. Then the idiots chime in with ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns”.

  24. Boat on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 11:01 pm 

    ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns.”

    So CHP tech and nat gas provide distributed heat and electricity at 90 percent efficiency vrs coal that did the same function for refineries at 45. Millions btu saved, millions fewer btu’ burned, significant cleaner air per btu. Then the idiots chime in with ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns”.

  25. Boat on Sun, 21st Aug 2016 11:33 pm 

    “Just think of a simple gadget as an example: a car navigator. When you are using it you are, in effect, taking orders from a computer that is smarter than you at the specific task of navigating in the streets. The navigator will make it faster and easier for you to travel by car from point “A” to point “B”, but will have no say on whether it is a good idea to go from A to B. Besides, if you can save some gasoline in going from A to B by an optimized route, you may decide to use it to go further on, to point C. So, the greater efficiency resulting from the use of the navigator will produce no energy saving.”

    Because you own a gadget would have you add another destination? WTF kind of reasoning is that.

  26. GregT on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 12:51 am 

    Then the idiots chime in with ” Yes technology does suffer from the law of diminishing returns”.

    That’s right Boat. All the ijiots chiming in about basic rithmtic, sciance, and stuff. What the fuck would any body know about anything, when unlike yourself, they managed to graduate grade five. Do you ever stop? Fucking moron.

  27. claman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 2:12 am 

    Boat, What do you think China’s problem is, if not diminishing returns

  28. Boat on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 5:22 am 

    I am not going to nitpick China. They are doing better now than anytime in history.

  29. makati1 on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 5:35 am 

    Boat, I wish some others would realize that fact. It is in fashion to bash China (and Russia) and the USMSM is working overtime with anti-China (and Russia) propaganda, mostly distortion and lies.

  30. makati1 on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 5:42 am 

    For all you Sinophobes…

    “When confronting geopolitical and economic interests, it is hard not to mention the two giants such as China and Russia. Both countries, as global superpowers, necessarily need to constantly balance strategic objectives, often geopolitical, with international economic cooperation. The Ukrainian coup, with the reunification of Crimea, or the construction on the “Spratly Islands” in the South China Sea, are two forward-looking examples of how geopolitical interests have become a main priority for Beijing and Moscow. The power that China has accumulated in economic terms gives it a great advantage: Western nations are unable to apply economic aggression. This leaves China free to pursue its main political objectives, such as establishing security on its maritime boundaries, enforcing national integrity, and expanding its influence and commercial facilities across the continent, without fear of incurring economic punishment. The West is already unable to sanction China let alone apply any vetoes from the private banking sector, or even worse, a possible embargo. China is the factory of the world, and any economic pressure would end up producing unacceptable losses for the West.

    After years of disagreements over Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, all that Washington managed to do was obtain an irrelevant judgment from an international tribunal thousands of miles away from the disputed area. China pursues its claims without much caring for the actions and rhetoric of the West, focusing instead on ensuring its strategic focal points.”

    Ditto for Russia:

    “The coup in Ukraine, and the subsequent reunification of Crimea, showed unequivocally how Russia’s nuclear weapons deter American aggression. The possibility of NATO actively participating in the war Kiev started against the east of the country amounted to zero, due to the conventional military power of the Russian Federation. Nevertheless in such a scenario, we cannot overlook the effect of sanctions, and the attempts of international isolation, that Russia is subjected to. Moscow, during the Ukrainian crisis, took the difficult but necessary decision to preserve its geopolitical interests at the expense of its economic interests. The stakes were too high to be able to give preference to financial calculations. Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet are fully part of the strategic deterrent that has saved the world from a possible confrontation between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. In such a scenario, even the collapse in oil prices has not affected Moscow’s decisions even as it is damaging to the Russian economy.

    Like with Iran, for Russia the choice to defend at all costs its national interests has forced a policy of “looking towards the east”. The multiple, all-encompassing agreements with Beijing have proven that Western economic power is increasingly frail and can be ignored.”

    The US is a paper tiger.

  31. makati1 on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 5:43 am 

    Ref for above quotes:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-21/multipolar-world-order-economics-vs-politics

    Worth a few minutes of your life to read.

  32. Cloggie on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 6:16 am 

    Latest EU commission brain fart (by Juncker):

    “We have to fight against nationalism, we have the duty not to follow populists but to block the avenue of populists.” He quoted former French president Francois Mitterrand as saying nationalism added to nationalism would end in war. “This is still true so we have to fight against nationalism.” (…) “Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians”. Solidarity must be given to refugees and their children”

    Translation: the EU is using migrants, sold as “refugees” (who will never return, regardles if they are recognized as refugee or not), as a weapon to destroy European nations by diluting national identities. These policies are imposed by Washington on both the US as well as EU in an attempt to eventually create a borderless world, without nations, governed by the UN and other globalist institutions and owned by the sanhedrin.

    News flash: China, Russia and eastern Europe are opting out from that scheme and meanwhile have the gravitas to give the finger to these oligarchs. Marine le Pen, AfD, Trump same story. Count in Iran, Syria, tentatively Brasil, India and likely Turkey at some point as well.

  33. JuanP on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:02 am 

    Claman, Your China bashing is extremely neurotic and infantile. Are you not an American? You should follow the following advice. “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Or do you want me to start bashing the USA again? No country in the world is more violent, agressive, abusive, invasive, and criminal than yours so shut the fuck up and look at yourself, fucktard!

  34. JuanP on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:13 am 

    Boat, Your ignorance is endless. CHP is not a new technology, not even in the USA. Thomas Edison was already using it in 1882. http://aceee.org/blog/2016/02/brief-history-chp-development-united

  35. onlooker on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:24 am 

    I am an American and this statement is true “No country in the world is more violent, agressive, abusive, invasive, and criminal than yours so shut the fuck up and look at yourself, fucktard!”

  36. Davy on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:28 am 

    Juan, Clam is a Swede.

  37. Davy on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 7:44 am 

    Well at least this board has become less Sinophile. It was just a year ago and it was all how great China and Asia where and how they were going to take over the world. We still hear this occasionally but with a whimper. It is a joke to hear the talk anymore with the constant news of how awful things are in China. You know all the Bric bank shit and the Bric photo-ops. What a crock of shit that was. The death of the dollar and the destruction of the US when China dumps all those treasuries was in every comment. I might add with glee and hate lust. The US is self-destructing but it is unclear who is self-destructing quicker China or the US. Both are better off than Europe that is already in the toilet. Russia is probably in the best position but that is not great either.

    China is going down hard and it will take the US and the rest of the world down hard. The reason the world is self-destructing so quick is China. You can’t attempt to grow 1.3BIL people to US standards and not destroy the world. The Chinese military is incompetent and bloated. It is untested with a significant amount of shoddy equipment. It is gaining fast on modern militaries but like its society it will never make it to that truly rich standard before it collapses. China got to the race to riches too late. To be fair to China they are just joining the rich world ‘s band wagon of rape and pillage of our wonderful world. Sinophiles are just as bad on this board as Sinophobes in my opinion. Just more of the blame, complain, and hate that is so rampant here.

  38. Anonymous on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 10:23 am 

    ROLF, the exceptionalist says hes happy the board is becoming less sinophile. Maybe, maybe not, who cares either way? But it certainly has its quota of sinoPHOBEs(gotta have somebody to deflect attention away from amerikas crimes right?). We all know who the real enemy when is when it comes to raping and pillaging our wonderful world, the amerio-zionist NWO and its incompetent and bloated uSraeli military. You cant attempt to grow 320 million fat, ignorant corn-fed americans to civilized standards so why bother trying.

    China’s Pivot to World Markets, Washington’s Pivot to World Wars…

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/chinas-pivot-to-world-markets-washingtons-pivot-to-world-wars/5541802

    “China is advancing to global economic superiority by borrowing and innovating the most advance methods of production, while the US degrades and debases its past immense productive achievements to promote wars of destruction.”

    “In large part this is the result of their failed policies. Western economic elite have increasingly relied on short-term speculation in finance, real estate and insurance, while neglecting their industrial base.”

    “Led by the US, their reliance on military conquests (militaristic empire-building) absorb public resources, while China has directed its domestic resources toward innovative and advanced technology.”

    Right now, the uS is waging economic wars against Russia, Iran, China and others, while simultaneously threatening and implying *actual* war if it doesn’t get its way. The day will come when the uSraeli savages will not be able to afford to wage ANY form of war, and will be forced to expend their remaining power battling its own underclasses at home. Blacks\Mexicans urban poor, prison populations for the uS, dispossessed palestinians for the jews. Its not clear they will even be able to win those fights, but the day of reckoning for the uSraelis and its globalist NWO is coming.

    China and Russia and others, long subject to endless uS harassment and attacks, will just watch and offer their condolences, maybe even offer official assistance in some form.

  39. Davy on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 10:35 am 

    Typical extremism and immaturity of a youthful outspoken anti-American. I would not expect anything less. I have yet to read anything balance out of him concerning issues or his psychological condition.

  40. roccman on Mon, 22nd Aug 2016 2:12 pm 

    Tolstoy in War and Peace claims:

    The two greatest vices are idleness and superstition.

    The two greatest virtues are energy and intelligence.

    Now look at this:

    http://www.genie.com

    do you feel yourself being synch’d into the hive yet?

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