News & Analysis
Is It Peak Water Yet? Another Phony Meme
Peak Water Debate Focuses on Asia's Water Shortage ... The concept of peak water as an overarching term for increased shortage of water supply in Asia remains contentious but it has focused attention on the growing water crisis facing many countries due, in part, to over-extraction of the precious resource. Climate change, burgeoning population growth, pollution and increased industrial and agricultural capacity put more pressure on already stretched water resources. There is a lively academic discussion on whether or not we have indeed passed a tipping point in water consumption – peak water – in the same way many experts believe we have for oil – peak oil. – WaterPolitics.com
Dominant Social Theme: The sky is falling and the Earth is drying up ...
Free-Market Analysis: As we can see from the above excerpt, another elite dominant social theme is making the rounds: Peak Water. We try to keep up with memes but we must confess we missed this one even though there are already 250,000 "Peak Water" cites on Google.
We want to take the time to document Peak Water only because it is another phony meme, no more legitimate than Peak Oil has proven to be. As we have suggested many times for over a decade, Peak Oil was an illegitimate analysis promoting one more elite scarcity theme.
There is another reason to track these memes carefully. They tell us what the power elite has in mind. In giving up, apparently, on the Peak Oil meme, the elites are signaling to us that they are moving on to a new phase of command and control propaganda.
We have an idea of what that might be. Peak Water plays into it.
But Peak Oil appears to be on the wane. The big guns are taking aim ... Here's an excerpt from a recent editorial on Peak Oil by Nigel Lawson that appeared in the UK Daily Mail.
Thought we were running out of fossil fuels? New technology means Britain and the U.S. could tap undreamed reserves of gas and oil
Thirty years ago, I was Secretary of State for Energy in Margaret Thatcher's government, and one way and another I have been a close observer of the energy scene ever since.
In all that time, I have never known a technological revolution as momentous as the breakthrough that has now made it economic to extract gas from shale.
Geologists have long known that shale — a finely grained rock created from compressed mud, which sits in layers — contains, trapped in it, massive amounts of gas, and in some cases, oil.
Dense rock: Energy companies must drill a well hundreds or thousands of feet deep to reach the layer of shale, which can be just 50ft thick.
But getting it out of the ground is a tricky business. Below the North Sea, natural gas forms in sandstone and when a drill reaches the gas, it flows out.
But shale gas is locked in dense rock. Energy companies must drill a well hundreds or thousands of feet deep to reach the layer of shale — which can be just 50ft thick — and then turn the drill sideways to bore horizontally.
Water, chemicals and sand are pumped into the hole under enormous pressure until the rock cracks, allowing gas locked up in the shale to escape and flow upwards into the well.
This process is called hydraulic fracturing — or 'fracking' for short.
Until recently, the cost of extracting the gas has been prohibitive. But the combination of two innovative technologies — horizontal drilling and fracking to release the natural resources — has changed all that ...
The dramatic news emerged a few weeks ago that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer in 2017.
America is already the world's largest natural gas producer, and it is estimated that, by 2035, almost 90 per cent of Middle East oil and gas exports will go to Asia, with the U.S. importing virtually none.
So what's changed? From what we can tell, two things: First, as we and others – who follow free-market economics and believe in their evident and obvious reality – have predicted, technology has caught up with oil extraction. It is hard to deny, these days, the ubiquity of energy and the ability to remove it.
Second, and perhaps even more important, what we call the Internet Reformation is making it difficult for the power elite to insist on scarcity memes or even to ban or hide new technologies that promise more generous energy availability.
As we've amply documented, oil supplies have been manipulated ever since John D. Rockefeller deliberately named oil a "fossil fuel" to illustrate its putative scarcity. But based on discovery of certain building blocks for oil off Earth, it would seem that oil has little or nothing to do directly with dying dinosaurs and a lot to do with what has been called "abiotic" production.
No, it is a natural process of geology, perhaps, and is certainly all around us. That it resides in prodigious quantities in shale is not surprising to us. Nor should it be to you.
As for Peak Water, this, too, is a nonsensical concept. Water is even more ubiquitous than oil.
This does not stop a sociopathic power elite that is determined to ram its scarcity memes down our collective throat. Desalinization plants and other technologies to convert water into a drinkable state are to be ignored. The ability of humans to generate increasing resources as necessary is to remain unmentioned. Instead, we read analyses such as the one from the beginning of this article. Here's more:
According to data from the World Resources Institute, EarthTrends and the Asian Development Bank, renewable water resources in Asia (excluding the Middle East) average slightly more than 4,000 cubic meters per year, while the global average is 8,500 cubic meters per year.
The extremely water poor Middle East has only 1,500 cubic meters per year and sub-Saharan Africa with about 6,300 cubic meters per year. South America gets almost 50,000 cubic meters per year.
While a rise in global temperatures threatens further water stress in the coming years, the A.D.B. believes there are other factors aggravating water scarcity.
"Likewise, over the next few decades, changes in the drivers of demand for water, including population growth, changes in dietary patterns and patterns of urbanization and economic development are likely to have greater impacts on relative regional water scarcity than increasing temperatures," Arjun Thapan, A.D.B. special senior advisor for infrastructure and water, told Ecoseed.
Population pressures, agricultural irrigation and increased industrial use of water supply push up water use in many areas of Asia and over-extraction of groundwater in relation to recharge rates has already passed recognized tipping points.
"One way in which many regions in Asia have encountered or exceeded peak water (as defined) is in groundwater use. Many heavily populated regions, including the Gangetic Plain in India and the North China Plain, currently utilize groundwater at rates greatly exceeding long-term recharge, and in this sense have already passed peak water," Mr. Thapan said.
You see? The recipe is clear. Use apocalyptic language and don't define your terms. And then, toward the end of whatever it is you're writing, admit that it's probably all gobbledygook anyway ...
However, Mr. Thapan said there is yet to be a broadly agreed upon definition for peak water, adding that certain assumptions about the global supply of a finite resource, such as oil, cannot be made about water resource ... "Water, unlike oil, is not a finite resource, at least when viewed from the perspective of a given location such as a river basin.
The article continues beyond this startling admission but do we need to? There is, in our view, a power elite devoting an inordinate amount of time to trying to install world government. Reeling from the impact of the Internet, those that constitute it are using war, economic depression and an increasingly autocratic demos to try to sustain momentum.
Additionally, they continue to propose and propagate the idea of fear-based promotions that are intended to frighten middle classes into giving up power and wealth to specially constructed globalist institutions. But they are having more and more difficulty sustaining these scarcity memes.
As we point out regularly, this doesn't stop their continuance. One of the hallmarks of a promotion is its ubiquitousness. Like a rubber ball, elite promotions spring back even when squeezed by reality.
The top elites of necessity only use the building blocks of life to frighten people. These are the most powerful tools because the absence of water, food, energy and (even) air threatens existence itself.
Thus, the elites must come up with ways to illustrate that we are running out of all these things. Lacking Peak Oil, those generating these themes are expanding the general chaos in the Middle East, pushing harder to implement "solutions" to global warming and planning, apparently, to initiate scarcities of food and water to distract people.
There is investment opportunity here for cynics and others who follow these sorts of machinations. But what was a "sure thing" in the 20th century is not such in the 21st ...
In the Internet era it is getting harder and harder for elites to control the conversation. Over time, this will have enormous consequences, ushering in both an era of hope and an authoritarian counterattack that is already underway. (When in doubt, brute force is the preferred course.) We've predicted the former and, in retrospect, are not surprised by the latter.
Conclusion: But please remember, authoritarianism is often the last gasp of a dying regime.
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Posted by monk on 12/17/12 11:54 PM
Never mind peak oil: just consider the growing demand for fresh water versus availability, as well as the energy cost needed to make it available.
Peak oil is far, far from waning. The most optimistic report on oil production, for example, shows that North American oil production will reach only 12 Mb/d in a decade, not even enough to meet current demand. And the claims about large reserves is irrelevant because that's been known from the start. The problem is the energy cost of extracting it, and with that the production rate vs. demand. And we're barely struggling to meet demand. The fact that we are now resorting to non-conventional sources is absolute proof of peak oil.
Finally, the idea that this is part of some "elite promotions" is illogical. Most of the wealth of the elite comes in the form of money, and the value of that money is maintained only with increasing production and consumption of goods. With that, global warming and peak oil fears actually work AGAINST the elite.
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Posted by Dilence Sogwood on 12/11/12 04:07 PM
To your point about horizontal drilling techniques - it is amazing supply being brought on line. The WTI - Brent spread is still huge because we have a glut of oil. Now when will the military strategy have to change? Vested interests run deep. Do the Saudis have to keep the petrodollar link if we decrease our trade with them? Vested interest run deeper!
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Posted by Dilence Sogwood on 12/11/12 04:00 PM
Oh this one is coming FOR SURE. The UN is all over it. It started years ago with a humanitarian angle in Africa where water was being restricted during conflicts and impacting the truely vulnerable. The infrastructure was laid down and can now be used by the UN elite.
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Posted by The_one on 12/11/12 01:37 PM
Well said Wrusssr!!! I love when someone posts what I am thinking before I go through all the trouble of typing a long post to a piece like this... :-)
Thanks man,
Peace
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Posted by Wrusssr on 12/11/12 04:53 AM
The 'water shortage' wail is an elite ruse that has been around awhile. It is identical to the population explosion cry that says '. . .the planet is over-populated, our resources are rapidly vanishing, millions are going to starve to death, we're almost out of oil, there's a global pandemic coming' ad infinitim.
We have six billion (+) people on the planet and enough food to feed them 2,100 calories a day; could handle another three billion, according to world food experts. The problem lies, as it always has, in getting food [read: and water] past corrupt officials, warlords, dictators, despots, and criminals of all stripes to the people who need it.
World population, according to demographers, is declining in virtually all OECD nations, and leveling worldwide with a plateau of about nine billion around 2050. At which point we will depopulate ourselves and the planet naturally if we're still able after eating genetically modified food for five decades; which is known to sterilize and harm the organs lab animals tested.
These so-called global 'shortages' are caused by elite speculators buying up and taking over prime resources such as cropland and water from both developed (Canada) and developing nations who depend on these resources to support food production for populations.
The new "tenants" put in big wells and plant 'ethanol' and other crops to export back to the purchasing country's shelves and refineries or distribution centers.
The process is aided by corrupt officials and 'gratuities' for local army muscle for evictions to drive locals off commons they have used for centuries and food prices beyond what local populations can afford; their nauralmarkets in shambles; creating 'shortages.'
Global commons such as water, prime farmland and seed are being commandeered on speculation by global financial elites to sit on and await the price rise.
Did I mention elite eugenicists view starvation as a genocide option?
The boys behind the curtain tried to use overpopulation and the CO2 exhales of humanity as one cause contributing directly to global warming, along with cow belches, cow gas, and cow patties.
All lies.
Their purpose was to install a global tax on humans at the Copenhagen climate meeting. It backfired when a hacker put all their files on line for global climate experts that had been silenced -- locked out of -- the climate debate.
Gore-type global warming hype, like over population, revealed itself as contrived lies to scare people so they (the elite) could install a 'global carbon tax' that would have been used to fund their contrived world government and 'agenda.'
Now comes water. In the Western (U.S.) states, the feds hide behind Agenda 21 and its 'Endangered' Species Act and other environmental gibberish to confiscate and claim 'ownership' of water flowing across 'their (government) land,' trying to force ranchers and livestock off their own properties.
Ranchers and farmers in the Western states have a legal right to use the water flowing across this land. Wayne Hage, a western states rancher, fought the feds more 17 years after the feds cut off the water to his ranch. A federal claims court judge ruled in his favor. A second federal judge reversed the claims court and 17 years of litigation in about 30 minutes; telling the plaintiffs to "go back and start over." The case is probably headed for the Supreme Court on certiorari.
Ranchers and farmers all over the western states are following the outcome of this case.
This is one way water shortages are created.
Cloud seeding technology, which has been used and perfected by the elites since the 1950's, is being used today to create droughts worldwide and throughout the U.S.
This is another way of creating water "shortages." Look up and follow the chem-trails. No tin hat needed.
In states with little federal 'property' elite shills and speculators are scurrying about buying up water rights and elite DST's of 'shortages' are driving global water futures up.
Did you know Libya sits atop one of the great aquifers on the planet, had tapped this resource and was food and water independent? Providing farms and equipment to those in its country that wanted to farm?
Water 'shortage' is an attempt by the elite to create, like global warming, a global fear to be followed by the need for a 'special tax' to 'fix' the problem, or some such scheme, from which they can make money off humanity.
Evil doings all.
This is how Oz and the boys behind the curtain) have operated for decades-keep the campesinos in the dark while they break out the shears.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Wrusssr, this is an excellent narrative of "secret" directed history. Thanks.
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Posted by provolone on 12/10/12 09:45 PM
Click to view link
Here in Kathmandu some geniuses want to end private water, because it 'exploits the public good'. Meanwhile the government is completely incompetent and corrupt. The municipal water supply is irregular and unhygienically brown.
If you try to interact with these guys in an honest discussion, they blame you for Vietnam(before I was born), bring in half baked communist theory (at least read Marx first), and blame free market economics for the global recession theme.
The discussion is over before it starts. For this Asian nation, engineering a water shortage only requires maintaining the status quo of misinformation and incompetence.
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Posted by dimitri on 12/10/12 02:49 PM
The memes are apparently all neatly summarized by the National Intelligence Council's "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds" report, according to a Yahoo News article today. And, yep, water shortage is one of them.
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Posted by Friend_of_John_Galt on 12/10/12 02:27 PM
I first realized that water shortage would be a new power elite scarcity meme when the cover story and most of a monthly issue of National Geographic (magazine) was devoted to the topic several years ago.
Formerly living in California, each time "the rains" were a day late or a season delivered a "dry year", there was much official blather about "drought" and "water shortage" -- justified in raising the charges to the city-based water consumers. (Most of the time the farmers, who are the primary users of water in California, did not suffer much from "water shortages" -- and some made considerable money selling their low-cost water to nearby cities where people were trying to keep their lawns green and swimming pools full. (However environmentalists have managed to squeeze off the supply of water drawn from the Sacramento delta to "protect" certain species of fish that have a tendency to commit mass suicide in the screens of the water pumps that move water into the California Aqueduct, seriously hurting orchards in the Central Valley.)
I've subsequently moved to the Pacific Northwest, where the Columbia River dumps billions of gallons of water into the Pacific Ocean ... and annual rain is typically 40-50 inches per year. There is little talk of water shortages around here.
The problem isn't so much a "water shortage" but rather that water is distributed at odds with where many people want to live. More people want to live in the desert of Los Angeles than want to live in rain-soaked Seattle. Politically, it is difficult to convince (and pay for) water development that will serve growing populations living in relatively dry climates. This is due to attitudes about "stealing water" (e.g. from Northern California -- which managed to get laws passed "protecting" the "wild rivers" that flow into the Pacific Ocean along the north coast (wasting tens of millions of gallons of water each year).) Also, the cost of developing collection systems and aqueducts to distribute water where there are users who want it tends to be prohibitively expensive, even if you could get the environmental approvals.
As the thoroughly discredited "global warming/climate change" meme refuses to die, the power elite reach out to claim additional unfounded theories that support the global warming meme -- water shortages and "super" storms (like hurricane Sandy).
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Posted by Col on 12/10/12 10:35 AM
Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Rio... all had the same goals built into their agreements, the complete banning of Future Dam & Water Storage Projects & the Destruction of existing ones, all but 15 States in the US have one Dam or another slated for Demolition.
Sure there will be water shaortages, but not from any cause they list.
The Earth is an enclosed Biosphere, Water Vapor is too heavy to bleed off into Space & Aliens aren't stealing it, Water may be consumed (by all living Organism) & secreted, sequestered or sublimated by natuaral proccessors but it is ALWAYS redistributed or deposited somewhere else.
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Posted by Craig on 12/10/12 09:46 AM
Yes, this meme has been pushed to fruition in Australia, it's mainly pushed by The Fabians society of politicians and media hacks, Labour Unions ect... Now we have massive desalination plants that cost many billions, charges for water to consumers have increased and all work is done by the Unions.
It all fits into the climate change meme...
Yet if cheaper dams were and could of been built, cheaper water for consumers to, but that would go against the global governance meme...
