I predict that I will enjoy these eggs and toast, drink some strong coffee and then read from a new novel in what will be a cozy and relaxing day. After that 2014 starts to get a little cloudy…
/Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot if anyone is interested. So far very readable.
I had some serious predictions about int’l affairs, but decided to omit them in favor of a prediction that is more — what’s the word? — insular, namely:
Snowden moves from Russia to Brazil; writes book; Henry Farrell reviews it in The Nation; Corey Robin reviews it in Jacobin; George Scialabba reviews it in The Boston Globe; John Quiggin reviews it in the Sydney Morning Herald; someone purports to review it at National Review Online and John Holbo writes a CT post about how dumb/terrible the NRO “review” is, generating a thread of 3,462 comments.
Hoping/predicting: economy does a little better and Obamacare is a non-issue politically speaking. Republicans continue to cocoon and lose the House in November. No military strikes in the Middle East. Hopefully Turkey weathers the storm and China/Japan relax.
The Snowden affair was pretty entertaining. If you’re a fan of conspiracy theory films like The Parallax View, here was a great conspiracy theory plot being played out in the daily newspapers, with the added frisson that it was (a) apparently true and (b) more outrageously over the top than anything a screen writer would have dared to make up. (Though Charlie Stross came close with Halting State).
Amusing as it was, I can’t help feeling we ought to be a lot more worried by it. Not just that there is much more sureveillance going on than we had previously dared believe (compare the moment in The Lives of Others when the playwright realises that yes, the Stasi really was bugging his appartment) but for what it implies for the death of democracy. On the one side, we have some combination of elected government officials trying to deceive the voters about what is going on, and/or the executive branch lying to both the voters and the politicians. On the other, you have protestors who have basically given up on protest by legal means, and are well into exploring non-legal methods of effecting political change. (Without Snowden doing something that was probably against the law, the whole affair couldn’t have happened, because the public wouldn’t have known about it. There’s a good case to be made that purely legal forms of of protest could not have been effective here). This does not bode well.
For example: another group of protestors that I know of (and who aren’t the Wikileaks crowd) I recently heard saying words to the effect of “why don’t we do something more like Occupy?” (As opposed to their previous approach of lobbying their elected representatives, which they now perceive as completely futile).
Governments worldwide will shift more rightwing. Popular protest will be (even more) suppressed. Fracking in the UK will seriously pollute groundwater. There will be (more) instances of economic attack/blackmail by means of resources owned by corporations overseas. Despite all this, people will develop new means of coping, surviving and even fighting back.
Lost access to your site after you changed your DNS records. I tried the site without the www and it worked. If your hosting company sets things up correctly, it should work both with or without www.
-The US fertility rate will remain slightly below replacement (2.1).
-Global photovoltaic installation will again surpass wind installation on a peak watts basis in 2014, as it did in 2013.
-Global photovoltaic installations will be greater than 40 gigawatts-peak in 2014. Hope: it will be closer to 50 gigawatts than 40.
-The US will retire more than 10 gigawatts of coal fired generating capacity in 2014, but US coal consumption will remain above 2012 levels due to higher utilization at remaining coal plants.
-US electrical consumption will be flat or down on 2013.
-US oil consumption will be flat or down on 2013.
-Flat domestic demand and slowing export growth will continue to pressure coal producers in the United States, Australia, and Indonesia. Expect another major coal producer forced to bankruptcy, merger, or acquisition.
-Despite new nuclear plants coming online in 2014, Chinese electrical consumption from wind power (actual TWh) will remain above nuclear.
-China’s electrical sector will remain more coal-dependent than that of any other large economy.
-A bunch of researchers will claim laboratory breakthroughs in batteries that could be commercialized within 5 years, none of which will be commercialized within 5 years.
-India will again announce ambitious electricity targets and fall well short of them.
-India and Egypt will spend more on fuel subsidies in 2014 than 2013, despite hopes to reduce them.
{ 21 comments }
max 01.01.14 at 3:42 pm
You will probably be eaten by a grue.
max
[‘It might be very nice about it though.’]
John Holbo 01.01.14 at 3:57 pm
John Holbo 01.01.14 at 3:58 pm
Hey, we can post videos in comments now? That’s kind of scary. (I didn’t predict that for the New Year.
harry b 01.01.14 at 4:00 pm
I predict that JQ will read neither of the new books about throwing a fat man off a bridge… And that I won’t either.
PJW 01.01.14 at 4:24 pm
I hope you bring back the Crooked Timber archived threads.
John Quiggin 01.01.14 at 4:27 pm
@harry Is this one of those Newcomb’s paradox things?
MPAVictoria 01.01.14 at 5:31 pm
I predict that I will enjoy these eggs and toast, drink some strong coffee and then read from a new novel in what will be a cozy and relaxing day. After that 2014 starts to get a little cloudy…
/Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot if anyone is interested. So far very readable.
LFC 01.01.14 at 6:32 pm
I had some serious predictions about int’l affairs, but decided to omit them in favor of a prediction that is more — what’s the word? — insular, namely:
Snowden moves from Russia to Brazil; writes book; Henry Farrell reviews it in The Nation; Corey Robin reviews it in Jacobin; George Scialabba reviews it in The Boston Globe; John Quiggin reviews it in the Sydney Morning Herald; someone purports to review it at National Review Online and John Holbo writes a CT post about how dumb/terrible the NRO “review” is, generating a thread of 3,462 comments.
LFC 01.01.14 at 6:36 pm
P.s.
And Chris Bertram reviews it in [well, I’m not sure exactly, but somewhere].
LFC 01.01.14 at 6:39 pm
P.p.s.
And Mao Cheng Ji reviews it in The People’s Daily.
(stopping here, don’t worry)
harry b 01.01.14 at 10:33 pm
That’s what I was thinking!
Peter K. 01.01.14 at 10:35 pm
Hoping/predicting: economy does a little better and Obamacare is a non-issue politically speaking. Republicans continue to cocoon and lose the House in November. No military strikes in the Middle East. Hopefully Turkey weathers the storm and China/Japan relax.
js. 01.01.14 at 11:13 pm
Here’s hoping comment preview comes back to CT! (Tho BTL video-linking is pretty cool.)
Peter Hovde 01.02.14 at 6:16 pm
MPAVictoria@7 Salem’s Lot is my favorite of the King novels I have read-also kudos for well founded predictions.
SusanC 01.02.14 at 7:15 pm
The Snowden affair was pretty entertaining. If you’re a fan of conspiracy theory films like The Parallax View, here was a great conspiracy theory plot being played out in the daily newspapers, with the added frisson that it was (a) apparently true and (b) more outrageously over the top than anything a screen writer would have dared to make up. (Though Charlie Stross came close with Halting State).
Amusing as it was, I can’t help feeling we ought to be a lot more worried by it. Not just that there is much more sureveillance going on than we had previously dared believe (compare the moment in The Lives of Others when the playwright realises that yes, the Stasi really was bugging his appartment) but for what it implies for the death of democracy. On the one side, we have some combination of elected government officials trying to deceive the voters about what is going on, and/or the executive branch lying to both the voters and the politicians. On the other, you have protestors who have basically given up on protest by legal means, and are well into exploring non-legal methods of effecting political change. (Without Snowden doing something that was probably against the law, the whole affair couldn’t have happened, because the public wouldn’t have known about it. There’s a good case to be made that purely legal forms of of protest could not have been effective here). This does not bode well.
For example: another group of protestors that I know of (and who aren’t the Wikileaks crowd) I recently heard saying words to the effect of “why don’t we do something more like Occupy?” (As opposed to their previous approach of lobbying their elected representatives, which they now perceive as completely futile).
MPAVictoria 01.02.14 at 7:49 pm
“MPAVictoria@7 Salem’s Lot is my favorite of the King novels I have read-also kudos for well founded predictions.”
Thanks Peter. So far I am really enjoying it!
Fred Cairns 01.02.14 at 7:57 pm
Governments worldwide will shift more rightwing. Popular protest will be (even more) suppressed. Fracking in the UK will seriously pollute groundwater. There will be (more) instances of economic attack/blackmail by means of resources owned by corporations overseas. Despite all this, people will develop new means of coping, surviving and even fighting back.
Plume 01.02.14 at 8:18 pm
In case you guys didn’t already know this:
Lost access to your site after you changed your DNS records. I tried the site without the www and it worked. If your hosting company sets things up correctly, it should work both with or without www.
Right now, it only works without it.
Matt 01.03.14 at 12:27 am
-The US fertility rate will remain slightly below replacement (2.1).
-Global photovoltaic installation will again surpass wind installation on a peak watts basis in 2014, as it did in 2013.
-Global photovoltaic installations will be greater than 40 gigawatts-peak in 2014. Hope: it will be closer to 50 gigawatts than 40.
-The US will retire more than 10 gigawatts of coal fired generating capacity in 2014, but US coal consumption will remain above 2012 levels due to higher utilization at remaining coal plants.
-US electrical consumption will be flat or down on 2013.
-US oil consumption will be flat or down on 2013.
-Flat domestic demand and slowing export growth will continue to pressure coal producers in the United States, Australia, and Indonesia. Expect another major coal producer forced to bankruptcy, merger, or acquisition.
-Despite new nuclear plants coming online in 2014, Chinese electrical consumption from wind power (actual TWh) will remain above nuclear.
-China’s electrical sector will remain more coal-dependent than that of any other large economy.
-A bunch of researchers will claim laboratory breakthroughs in batteries that could be commercialized within 5 years, none of which will be commercialized within 5 years.
-India will again announce ambitious electricity targets and fall well short of them.
-India and Egypt will spend more on fuel subsidies in 2014 than 2013, despite hopes to reduce them.
MPAVictoria 01.03.14 at 1:24 am
In case anyone is curious my predictions were dead on…
Tom Hurka 01.03.14 at 4:00 am
@Harry
Damn! I have something coming out about fat men on bridges, and I wanted you guys as readers.
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