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World crude oil extraction reached an all-time high of 84.6 million barrels per day in late 2018, and production hasn’t been able to regain that level since then.
Oil prices have bounced up and down over the ten-year period 2014 to 2024 (Figure2).
In this post, I show that changing oil prices have had varying impacts on production. Recently, lower prices seem to be associated with lower production because extraction has become less profitable for producers. A temporary spike in oil prices does little to raise production. The view of economists that crude oil extraction can continue to rise indefinitely because lower production leads to higher prices, which in turn leads to greater production, is not true. (Economists also believe that substitutes can be helpful, but this is not a subject I will try to cover in this post.)
[1] World crude oil production has not regained its level prior to the Covid restrictions.
According to EIA data in Figure 1, the highest single month of crude oil production was November 2018, at 84.6 million barrels per day (mb/d). The highest single year of crude oil production was 2018, when world crude oil production averaged 82.9 mb/d. The last 24 months of oil production have averaged only 81.7 mb/d of production. Compared to the year with the highest average production, world oil production is down by 1.2 mb/d.
Furthermore, in Figure 1, there is nothing about the world production path in the last 24 months that gives the impression that oil production will be surging upward anytime soon. It merely increases and decreases slightly.
World population continues to grow. If economists are to be believed, oil prices should be shooting upward in response to rising demand. However, oil prices have not generally been increasing. In fact, as of this writing, the Brent crude oil price stands at $69, which is lower than the recent average monthly price shown in Figure 2. There is concern that the US economy is going into recession, and that this recession will cause oil prices to fall further.
[2] OPEC oil production seems as likely as other source of production to be influenced by price, since OPEC sells oil for export and can theoretically cut back easily.
One thing that is somewhat confusing about OPEC’s oil production is the fact that the membership of OPEC keeps changing. The data the EIA displays is the historical production for the current list of OPEC members. If former members left OPEC because of declining production, this would be hidden from view.
Based on the EIA’s method of displaying historical OPEC oil production, the peak in OPEC production occurred in November 2016, at 32.9 mb/d. The highest year of oil production was 2016 at 32.0 mb/d, with 2017 and 2018 almost as high. Average production during the last 24 months has been 29.2 mb/d, or 2.8 mb/d lower than the 32.0 mb/d production in its highest year. Thus, recent OPEC production has fallen further than world production, relative to their respective highest years. (World production is down only 1.2 mb/d relative to its highest year.)
[3] An analysis of OPEC’s production relative to price indicates that patterns change over time.
Prices have changed dramatically between 2014 and 2024. I chose to look at prices versus production during three different time periods, since these periods seem to have very different production growth patterns:
- January 2016 to November 2016 (rising OPEC production)
- December 2016 to April 2020 (falling OPEC production)
- May 2020 to May 2024 (rising and then falling OPEC production)
These are the three charts I created:
During this initial period ending November 2016, the lower the price of oil, the more OPEC’s Oil production increased. This approach would make sense if OPEC was trying to keep its total revenue high enough to “keep the lights on.” If some other country (such as the United States in Figure 7) was flooding the world with oil, and through its oversupply depressing prices, OPEC didn’t choose to respond by cutting its own production. Instead, it seems to have pumped even more. In this way, OPEC could make certain that US producers weren’t really making money from their newly expanded supply of crude oil. Perhaps the US would quickly cut back–something it, in fact, did between April 2015 and Nov. 2016, shown in Figure 7 below.
During this second period ending April 2020, prices plunged to a very low level, but production didn’t change significantly. It is difficult to change production levels in response to a specific shock because the whole system has been set up to provide a certain level of oil extraction, and it takes time to make changes. Other than that, prices didn’t seem to have much of an impact on production.
In this third period ending May 2024, OPEC producers seem to have been saying, “If the price isn’t high enough, we will reduce production.” Figure 6 shows that with higher prices, the amount of oil extracted tends to rise, but only up to a limit. When prices temporarily hit high levels (in March to August of 2022–the dots over to the right in Figure 6), production couldn’t really rise. The necessary infrastructure wasn’t in place for a big ramp up in production.
Perhaps if prices had stayed very high, for very long, maybe production might have increased, but this is simply speculation. Oil companies won’t build a lot of extraction infrastructure that they don’t need, regardless of what they may announce publicly. I have been told by someone who worked for Saudi Aramco (in Saudi Arabia) that the company has (or at one time had) a lot of extra space for oil storage, so that the company could temporarily ramp up deliveries, as if they had extra productive capacity readily available, but that the company didn’t really have the significant excess capacity that it claimed.
[4] US oil production since January 2014 has followed an up and down pattern, to a significant extent in response to price.
Figure 7 shows three distinct humps, with the first peak in April 2015, the second peak in November 2019, and the third peak in December 2023.
In the first “hump,” there was an oversupply of oil when the US was trying to ramp up its domestic oil supply of oil (through tight oil from shale) at the same time that OPEC also increasing production. The thing that strikes me is that it was OPEC’s oil supply in Iraq that was ramping up and increasing OPEC’s oil supply.
The rest of OPEC had no intention of cutting back if the US was arrogant enough to assume that it could raise production of both US shale and of Iraq with no adverse consequences.
Looking at the detail underlying the first US hump, oil production rose between January 2014 and April 2015 when production was “stopped” by low prices, averaging $54 per barrel in January through March 2015. The US reduced production, particularly of shale, since that was easy to cut back, hitting a low point in September 2016. The combination of growing oil supplies from both the US and OPEC led to average oil prices of only $46 per barrel during the three months preceding September 2016.
Eventually OPEC oil production peaked in November 2016 (Figure 3), leaving more “space” available for US oil production. Also, oil prices were able to rise, reaching a peak of $81 per barrel in October 2018. World crude oil production hit a peak in November 2018 (Figure 1). But even these higher prices were too low for OPEC producers. They announced they were cutting back production, effective January 2019, to try to further raise prices.
During the second hump, US oil production rose to 12.9 mb/d in November 2019. The oil price for the three months preceding November 2019 was only $61 per barrel. Evidently, this was not sufficient to maintain oil production at the same level. The number of “drilled but uncompleted wells” began to rise rapidly.
Drillers chose not to complete the wells because the initial indications were that the wells would not be sufficiently productive. They were set aside, presumably until prices rise to a high enough level to justify the investment.
Figure 7 shows that the US oil production had already started to fall before the Covid-related drop in oil production, which began around April and May of 2020.
[5] The rise in US oil production since May 2020 has been a bumpy one. The peak in US oil production in December 2023 may be its final peak.
The rise in oil production since May 2020 has included the completion of many previously drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells. There has been a trend toward fewer wells, but “longer laterals,” so the earlier wells drilled were probably not of the type most desired more recently. But these previously drilled wells had some advantages. In particular, the cost of drilling them had already been “expensed,” so that, if this earlier cost were ignored, these wells would provide a better return to shareholders. If production was becoming more difficult, and shareholders wanted a better return on their (most recent) investment, perhaps using these earlier drilled wells would work.
There remain several issues, however. Currently, the number of DUCs is down to its 2014 level. The benefit of already expensed DUCs seems to have disappeared, since the number of DUSs is no longer falling. Also, even with the addition of oil from the DUCs, the annual rise in US oil production has been smaller in this current hump (0.8 mb/d) than in the previous hump (1.4 mb/d).
Furthermore, there are numerous articles claiming that the best shale areas are depleting, or are providing production profiles which focus more on natural gas and natural gas liquids. Such production profiles tend to be much less profitable for producers.
I think it is quite possible that US crude oil production will start a gradual downward decline in the coming year. It is even possible that the December 2023 monthly peak will never be surpassed.
[6] Oil prices are to a significant extent determined by debt levels and interest rates, rather than what we think of as simple “supply and demand.”
Debt bubbles seem to hold up commodity prices of all kinds, including oil. I have discussed this issue before.
It seems to me that all the manipulations of debt levels and interest rates by central banks are ultimately aimed at maneuvering oil prices into a range that is acceptable to both producers of crude oil and purchasers of crude oil, including the various end products made possible through the use of crude oil.
Food production is a heavy user of crude oil. If the price of oil is too high, one possible outcome is that food prices rise. If this happens, consumers become unhappy because their budgets are squeezed. Alternatively, if food prices don’t rise sufficiently, farmers find their finances squeezed because they cannot get a high enough return on all of the required farming inputs.
[7] The current debt bubble is becoming overstretched.
Today’s debt bubble is driving up stock prices as well as commodity prices. We can see various pressures around the world associated with this debt bubble. For example, in China many homes have been built in recent years primarily for investment purposes, rather than residential use. This property investment bubble is now collapsing, bringing down property prices and causing banks to fail.
As another example, Japan is known for its “carry trade,” which is made possible by the combination of its low interest rates and higher rates in other countries. The Japanese government has a very high debt level; it cannot withstand more than a very low interest rate. There is significant concern that this carry trade will unwind, an issue that has already been worrying world markets.
A third example relates to the US, and its role of holder of the US dollar as reserve currency, which means that the US dollar is used heavily in international trade. Historically, the holder of the reserve currency has changed about every 100 years, in part because the high demand for the reserve currency allows the government holding the reserve currency to borrow at lower interest rates than other countries. With these lower interest rates, and the need to pull the world economy along, there is a tendency to “spur asset bubbles.” But an asset bubble is likely to have a debt bubble propping it up.
My previous post raised the issue of the economy today being exposed to a debt bubble. There has been excessive borrowing in many sectors of the economy that have been doing poorly. Commercial real estate is an example, as witnessed by many nearly empty office buildings and shopping malls. People with student loan debt often delay starting a family because they are struggling with repayment of those loans.
If any or all these bubbles should burst, there could be a swift downward fall in oil prices and commodity prices, in general. This could be a major problem because producers would tend to leave the market, and world GDP, which depends on energy supplies of the right kinds, would fall.
[8] Oil is an international commodity. Disruption of demand by any major user could pull prices down for everyone.
China is the single largest importer of oil in today’s world. Its economy seems to be struggling now. This, by itself, could pull world oil prices down.
[9] We don’t often think about the fact that oil prices need to be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers.
Economists would like to think that oil prices can rise endlessly, allowing more oil to be extracted, but history shows that this is not what happens. If there are too many people for the available resources, wage and wealth disparity tends to increase, leading to many more very poor people. Lots of adverse things seem to happen: the holder of the reserve currency tends to change, wars tend to start, and governments tend to collapse or be overthrown.
[10] Simply because crude oil is in the ground and the technology seems to be available to extract the crude oil doesn’t mean that we can necessarily ramp up crude oil production.
One of the major issues is getting the price up high enough, and long enough, for producers to believe that there is a reasonable chance of making money through a major new investment. The only time that oil prices were above $100 for a sustained period was in the 2011 to 2013 period. On an inflation-adjusted basis, prices also exceeded $100 per barrel in the 1979 to 1982 period based on Energy Institute data. But we have never had a period in which oil prices exceeded $200 or $300 per barrel, even after accounting for inflation.
The experience of 2014 and 2015 shows that even if oil prices rise to high levels, they do not necessarily remain high for very long. If several parts of the world respond with higher oil production simultaneously, prices could crash, as they did in 2014.
There is also a need for the overall economic system to be available to support both the extraction of and the continuing demand for the oil. For example, much of the steel pipe used by the US for drilling oil comes from China. Computers used by engineers very often come from China. If China and the US are at odds, there is likely to be a problem with broken supply lines. And, as I said in Section 8, disruption of demand affecting even one major importer, such as China, could bring demand (and prices) down significantly.
[11] Conclusion.
The crude oil situation is far more complex than the models of economists make it seem. World crude oil supply seems to be past peak now; it may be headed down significantly in the next few years. Central banks have been working hard to keep oil prices within an acceptable range for both producers and consumers, but this is becoming increasingly impossible.
We live in interesting times!
Illegal smuggling of refrigerant gases into Europe continues as the climate crisis worsens
Illegal climate-wrecking super-pollutant refrigerant gases are still being smuggled into Europe, EIA’s latest research shows
https://eia-international.org/news/illegal-smuggling-of-refrigerant-gases-into-europe-continues-as-the-climate-crisis-worsens/
Five years after our Climate team first revealed a widespread European illegal trade in hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) climate gases, a new investigation has revealed that significant levels of trafficking persist
And the evidence suggests that black market traders and traffickers are becoming more sophisticated and adapting their tactics to evade detection.
These guys must have really high I.Q.s
People don’t like to have to replace devices to use the new refrigerants. If the inexpensive, old refrigerant is available, they will buy it.
Thank you for the new post, but given the trend, it seems the next post will be around 10/10-15, just missing the Big Circus Day of Nov 5.
I am not sure I have anything to say about November 5.
Perhaps writing after the results are known will not be all bad.
and anyway neither the economy nor the physics care about Nov. 5.
My impression is that there will be no clear victory.
Another impression I have is that they will make another trick to Trump and he will be excluded and put in a corner.
Maybe there could be some riots after this exclusion, but they will find a way to calm everybody down and accept Kamala, maybe with a fake attack by Iran or Russia on American territory.
“Let’s put aside our differences, we must fight the enemy of American people!”
Having said that, whoever will be the winner, again my impression is that we can expect more wars in the future either with one or with the other.
I seldom watch Mike Adams over at the Health Ranger but he made an interesting point that the “results” of the Nov 5 election could be delayed because the USPS just somehow won’t be able to deliver all those the mail-in ballots in a timely fashion. This will give the Deep State time to figure out how many more Kamala mail-in ballots and in what states /jurisdictions are needed to give Kamala the presidency.
The mail-in ballot scam will have to be more drawn out and scattered than in 2020, as people will be watching ballot dump boxes more carefully on Nov 5.
So I would not be surprised if they have to move inauguration day back another month into Feb 2025.
I don’t believe in the conspiracy theory about the election being stolen. If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the Presidential election leaves the Electoral College process and moves to Congress.
Do you right wingers ever read the Constitution? Go read the 12th and 20th amendments to the Constitution. It spells out in the 12th amendment that Jan. 20 a new President must be inaugurated, in the 20th amendment the House and Senate pick a president and vice president if one does not get 270 electors. They just can’t move around the inauguration day to whenever.
You MAGA people scream about the constitution but know nothing about it.
The main problem I see for Trump is that it seems to me that the postal votes have not been organized differently and in a more accurate way than in the past, and also that the voting machines and their software have not been modified with something more accurate and easy to be checked and monitored than in the past.
So, I don’t know if Trump and his advisors left these key aspects on purpose or becasue they didn’t understand that the previous problem that they experencied can happen again…
Ozone Hole Worse than Ever for Last Three Years
4,387 views · 19 hours ago…Paul Beckwith
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWLS1vM8mk&t=612s
1987 the Montreal Protocol was agreed upon to ban CFCs (chloro-fluoro-carbons) and other halons that chemically reacted with ozone in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere).
Destruction of the ozone meant that more of the Sun’s ultraviolet rays (uv) could get to the surface harming all living things below the hole.
The Montreal Protocol was ratified and went into effect in 1989. It is often touted as a success story on action to protect the environment and planet.
Think again… Huge size…
For the last three years (2021, 2022, and 2023) the ozone hole has been bigger than ever. It has reached record levels of size.
Long duration…
It is starting over Antarctica in August and running through to late December (near record durations).
Intense ozone hole depth…
Ozone depletion has reached record levels, letting record high amounts of uv to hit the planet below. Oops. Not good…
And we thought international agreements would actually fix the 🙄 Problem
Sure all CFCs ended production and no loopholes were allowed, never mind there are under the radar factories in places in the Far East that smuggle freon.
Also the substitute for it isn’t as harmful to the planet …from what they say.
But we’ll worry about BS IQ levels…please
As always, there are other opinions, such as this one, from a guy who works or worked for Du Pont. By the way, I don’t have a dog in this race, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act like Norman and accuse me of agreeing with everything quoted below. In Norman’s case it’s OK because he’s family—the senile old uncle who we try to hide in the backroom when the vicar comes to tea or the J Witnesses turn up on the doorstep. 🙂
Debunking the Myth of Man-Made Ozone Depletion
Richard F. Cronin, April 30, 2020
The ozone “hole” is really just a thinning. Ozone is produced by solar radiation at stratospheric elevations converting O2 to O3. Ozone is therefore not produced during the polar winters and is at its lowest level in the polar springtime. It recovers during the sunlit summers.
In 1958, Eugene Parker developed a theory showing how the Sun’s hot corona — by then known to be millions of degrees Fahrenheit — is so hot that it overcomes the Sun’s gravity and generates the solar wind, a stream of free protons and electrons (plasma) moving at speeds up to 1.8 million miles per hour.
A year later, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 detected solar wind particles in space, and in 1962 the observations were confirmed by NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft.
The solar wind is deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field but such protection does not extend over the polar regions. Ozone production varies from summer to winter but ozone is continuously ripped off. Due to the vigorous circumpolar winds (Antarctica’s polar vortex), the atmosphere above Antarctica is largely confined. Any ozone produced in mid-latitude regions does not bleed into the stratosphere over Antarctica. Therefore, the thinning of the ozone is generally most pronounced at the South Pole.
The polar vortex of the Arctic wanders due to the different geography and topography, so mid-latitude ozone does bleed into the Arctic. In the winter of 2019-2020 the northern polar vortex remained very stable and provided the same isolating conditions as the Antarctic.
The Arctic was particularly cold, setting record low temperatures in northern Greenland. On March 12, 2020, NASA observers were alarmed about the record loss of ozone over the Arctic.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-reports-arctic-stratospheric-ozone-depletion-hit-record-low-in-march/
On April 24, 2020, observers of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed that the Arctic ozone layer had rebounded and observers were equally “surprised” and relieved.
https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tech/2020/04/26/ozone-layer-hole-over-arctic-closes-confirm-scientists.html
In 1957, the British Antarctic Survey conducted balloon sampling of Antarctica’s atmosphere with a Dobson Spectrophotometer. These measurements gave the first clues that there was a seasonal thinning of the ozone layer.
This was the basis for Molina & Rowland’s 1974 paper about the destruction of ozone by chlorine or bromine. It was just assumed that the chlorine and bromine in the Antarctic atmosphere came from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), yet it is known that a great number of chlorine and bromine compounds are emitted from volcanoes — such as Antarctica’s Mt. Erebus (see link).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231015304246 Routine monitoring of Antarctica’s ozone layer began in earnest in 1985 (J.C. Farman, et al) and continues today. The seasonal waxing and waning are well documented.
The 1974 paper by Molina and Rowland was strictly a modeling effort, drawing on modeling by others. No observations, not even a lab hood. The solar wind did not blow thru their model nor did they have volcanoes in their model. They did not have the downdrafts from intense rain storms.
Molina and Rowland developed the premise of a “one dimensional vertical diffusion model with eddy diffusion coefficients” — entirely based upon assumed values. That is, Molina and Rowland stated that the CFCs, which are 1.4 to 3.7x heavier than air, just go straight up. In fact, any CFCs released at the surface just stay down here. Moreover, Molina and Rowland stated that the CFCs are not soluble in water so rainwater would not scrub them out of the air. Big deal. Intense rains bring downdrafts. CFCs and several organics adsorb on dust particles as well as aerosols.
https://unep.ch/ozone/pdf/stratopheric.pdf
Some of the actual statements in the paper from Molina & Rowland: “Calculations of the rate of photolysis of molecules at a given altitude at these wavelengths is complicated by the intense narrow band structure in the Schumann-Runge region, and the effective rates of vertical diffusion of molecules at these altitudes are also subject to substantial uncertainties.”
Please read the entire section on ‘Photolytic Sink’ in their paper. It’s all unmitigated bunkum. Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize for their pronouncement about CFCs and ozone destruction. The cash award for the Nobel Prize is approx. $900,000. The Nobel Prize can also serve as an excellent door stop or shim for a wobbly table. Furthermore, Dr. Gordon Gribble of Dartmouth has catalogued thousands of naturally occurring chlorinated and brominated compounds, including CFCs emitted by volcanoes and large wildfires — even though it was claimed that CFCs are strictly man-made.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Naturally%20Occurring%20Organohalogen%20Compounds%20-%20A%20Comprehensive%20Update%20Gordon%20W.%20Gribble https://www.sciencenews.org/article/worst-wildfires-can-send-smoke-high-enough-affect-ozone-layer
It is known that Mt. Erebus delivers CFCs in trace amounts over Antarctica. Likewise, the volcanoes of Iceland deliver CFCs into the Arctic. These heavy compounds just drift back down although there is always a trace equilibrium presence. The Montreal Protocol to replace CFCs was established in 1987.
All nations self-report and nobody can audit anybody. All of the original Freons@R are still produced in China and sold around the world. The specific location is known from downwind sampling over the Pacific Ocean.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02109-2
You can also buy any of these original refrigerants on eBay or Amazon.
https://www.ebay.com/p/1232730084
But Whoo-Hoo !! We have won the war on Chlorine and Bromine !!
Now onto the war on Carbon !!
If you declare war on elements of the Periodic Table, you gonna lose.
I have some experience with ozone. https://htyp.org/design_to_cost
Skylon Ozone damage (NOx)
Some of you know that in 2014 I asked people at NOAA to look into the potential ozone damage from up to a million Skylon flights per year. There is no point in solving the carbon and energy problem with power satellites if the cost is a billion cases of skin cancer.
They put a lot of effort into modeling the problem, hundreds of hours of supercomputer time on the models, writing a paper and getting it through peer review. I really appreciate what they did. [It was the only time they knew about where a serious research project had been suggested by an ordinary citizen.]
The paper is available online at
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016EF000399
Short answer: the damage to the ozone is not a showstopper for the hydrogen burning Skylon.
[Not so sure about the methane burning StarShip, the models have not been run yet. The ozone damage mostly come from the NOx from reentry.]
There’s a Reason Why The Ozone Hole Will Keep Opening Up For Decades Environment 14 September 2024
ByLaura Revell et al., The Conversation
https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-reason-why-the-ozone-hole-will-keep-opening-up-for-decades
But the hole will continue to open each year for at least another four decades because of the long lifetimes of gases emitted last century.
You can read the details in the link above
Took two evenings to watch “Ben Hur.” Towards the end Charleton Heston gives Christ a drink of water on His way to the cross. Roman soldiers were less than helpful.
What dawned on me was Christianity is still going strong; pun intended, the wheels came off the Roman Empire.
Pontius Pilot earlier when speaking with Heston discussed the dangers of an idea to the Roman Empire posed by Christ.
Some ideas work, some seem to have legs.
If stories are to be believed, a former head of the KGB restored/helped the Russian Orthodox Church. The Collective West is now engaged in a struggle for the resource mentioned in this post; it has as its intellectuals those who see religion as a superstition. Interesting to see who gets the real power, oil helps in that endeavor.
World is a strange place.
Dennis L.
maybe Pontius ‘Pilot’ had something to do with 9/11
Clever,
Dennis L.
no conspiracy should be left unspread dennis
He did leave his mark in a mountain in Switzerland,
https://youtu.be/e0S4j3XEfMw?si=uvHLMWT4GQwsqtt2
which traps tourists in the town of Luzern, Switzerland’s greatest tourist trap.
Funny
Roman Empire never died
It is now called the Papacy.
Look, look, over here, it’s the ‘wicked’ Russians/Chinese, the Papacy or the W.E.F..
Don’t look over there at the plutocrats and the M.I.C., there’s nothing to see?
“A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did
exist, he would have to be abolished.”
-Mikhail Bakunin
Disagree strongly.
A good boss knows how to build teams and does the worst job of all, fires a very nice person who can’t do the job.
People instinctively know this. Weekly services give hope, and help all work better as one in service of something greater than themselves. The other direction is narcissism.
“Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin[a] (/bəˈkuːnɪn/ bə-KOO-nin;[4] 30 May 1814 – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, social anarchist,[5] and collectivist anarchist traditions. Bakunin’s prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe. ”
Wikipedia.
This guy was a loser and probably is one of the reasons people sometimes cover toilet seats with paper before sitting.
Dennis L.
At least he did not preach unicorns in the sky or mythical starships.
kul,
You miss he point. In part I am making a public bet, time will tell.
Here’s to a cubic mile of Pt.
Dennis L.
Totally agree oil has peaked, it has been peaking for many years and viewed at a given scale, peaks are evident.
Starship is being held up for a launch by FAA, certain other players are agreeing this is a good idea, they too are wealthy, but not as wealthy as some.
Musk transitioned to manufacturing, cars for example. He is trained in physics and seems to learn very rapidly. He works at production, not finance.
We may have a window of opportunity to reduce pollution and avoid horrible suffering through the oil downturn. There are those who would rather profit in the near term; see the spokesperson for the FAA defending bureaucracy.
Man’s future is on earth, not space, the resources are in space, full time solar is in space; solar is fusion in action with a proven technology.
Interesting times, Starship is ready to go, we need a cubic mile of Pt.
Dennis L.
It took 50,000 gallons of water to put out Tesla Semi fire in California, US agency says
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/took-50-000-gallons-water-223422500.html
July 2023: “Alt-Media Is In Shock After The BRICS Bank Confirmed That It Complies With Western Sanctions”
https://korybko.substack.com/p/alt-media-is-in-shock-after-the-brics
May 2024: “The bank complied with all sanctions on Russia and we expect it will continue to do so without disrupting its operations.”
https://disclosure.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/type/HTML/id/3168604
It will be interesting to see how this matter develops over the coming year or two. Imagine being a founding member of something and they freeze you out. It kind of puts a damper on the claimed independence of these new institutions.
Perhaps the payment system is more flexible than we thought.
The future of the world comes to Africa .
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/14/zimbabwe-orders-cull-of-200-elephants-amid-food-shortages-from-drought
I know China was trying to reduce the number of pets people owned, for the same reason. That was a while back.
This is the first time I saw someone else say raising interest rates is to defend the currency rather than lower inflation:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/09/prince-alexandr-nevsky.html#disqus_thread
>> In the west, they play the monetary policy game where everyone else has to lower rates before the US. This is made in order to maintain status quo, the US being the strongest, of the poor bunch.
>> Since 2021 it has been different. The west cannot go to ‘zero’ interest rate policy because the demand of their currencies has dropped. They kept interest rate higher not due to inflation or employment (which are fake data anyway), but because they had to defend currency value from completely collapsing under de-dollarization events (the Euro will collapse before the USD since it’s a Mini-Me if the dollar and EU is economically destroyed).
>> Now they are screwed, because, on one hand they can’t lower rates for pre-mentioned reason, on the other hand, the economy is so screwed any way you look that it will become much worse without cuts.
It seems like I have said that raising interest rates was to allow the US$ to rise to the top among currencies. If the US lowers interest rates, it tends to make oil more affordable by other countries. The US loses some of its advantage.
“. . . oil prices should be shooting upward in response to rising demand.”
Because we are living in a fully controlled, fully owned, fully manipulated, and fully propagandized world, we are living not just in the “Fog of War” but the “Fog of Everything.” Almost everything should be behaving in ways they are not supposed to.
As far as “peak” oil goes, fracking is a lie. Fracking is not, as is being advertised “opening new worlds of vast untapped resources.” Sarcasm, yes. However, I am sure somebody has said this in whatever fever they were told to feel at the time they were told to say it. I am that confident in the use of quotation marks. What fracking is, is scrapping the barrel from wells that were pumped out long ago.
Nothing to really do here. “Things will go on until they cannot and then they will stop.” Or put another way: ““When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”― Jean-Claude Juncker.
Interesting post! I observe in many discussions the understanding, that reality does not behave as expected because it is being manipulated. The idea, that the underlying model might me false is not taken into account.
So if you think 2min about something and a very basic rule does not apply, there is a scapegoat – of course, everyone is free to assume that!
In the case of prices for scarce resources, there are simpler answers. If you imagine the classical potatoe market, where prices go up the less supply falls. Is this without any price limit? Will people pay 1 Mio dollar before they buy cabbage or rice instead?
The problem of enery prices is, that they are a lever to gain a raise in productivity. In the moment the price is higher than the revenue from the productivity surplus, this lever won’t work.
The appraisal of the US-fracking was a marketing campaign to rise investment money. Generally media do NOT tell you “the truth” or “control the government” but they write, what they are paid for.
If you cannot understand that a car cannot be served as potatoe puree and cannot be eaten, it might damage your health, if you need years to understand it. If you cannot understand that media don’t tell the truth or control the government you might damage yourself during the years you need to understand it.
We have entered the era of Degrowth. In Degrowth every human is a useless eater. The value of humans sink dramatically. If you reduce population the equation resource per capita will grow.
It is not a bad thing to kill onesself with a bad decision, you make the way free for another, a child perhaps.
For me there is a fundamental error in the manipulation idea: Let’s say, that family x, who controls the oil business, has the power too deceive all, while abiotic oil is filling the caverns of fracking in the moment they are pumped out: how would you stop family x to kill you?
In the German critical movement, there is a standpoint to say, Peakoil will never occur because it is based on the concepts of Malthus, who was a bad character, and later on ideas being paid by the club of Rome, which is connected to Rothschilds. People, who argue like that have often one or two academic degrees. Do you get my point?
If you try to understand this topic by underlying fundamental natural or logical laws or by manipulation of very powerful men, leads to the same consequence: you won’t have the same energy available in future.
What do you do with this insight?
It is hard to believe people cannot figure out the obvious. One issue is a major problem:
“In Degrowth every human is a useless eater. The value of humans sink dramatically. If you reduce population the equation resource per capita will grow.”
This is a difficult problem to get around.
unfortunately a lot of people expect our current civilisation will sustain itself with a few tens of millions of people
that really is the crazy part
as those who insist that we will ‘adjust” to a different climate pattern, –hot or cold–, and just ”carry on” with just a minor inconvenience.
8 bn people will not ”adjust”
they will engage in wars of denial.
that will ”adjust” our numbers down to a sustainable level, but we will not have ”civilisation” because you can’t sustain it with drastically reduced numbers.
My guess is that it would far easier to adjust to a different climate pattern than to adjust to a “zero carbon” economy or to a drastically falling population.
Norman, I don’t know anybody who thinks our current civilization will sustain itself with just a few tens of millions of people. Perhaps Keith? But he isn’t “a lot of people.”
But if the population plummets, some sort of civilization may come out of the decline, depending on how hard our current civilization hits the bottom of the canyon after going off the Seneca Cliff.
On the other hand, something may turn up to keep the decline slow and gentle enough for you to hang onto your pension from the Prudential. Stranger things have happened.
Civilization is like climate, an amorphous term. Do we have the same civilization now as we did in Victorian times. Is European civilization the same as Chinese civilization? Or how about Japanese civilization? Is civilization defined by social etiquette or trustworthiness, or the ability to read books, or the number of genders allowed or the amount of technological progress, or by the prevailing religious and philosophical outlook?
I wish Sir Kenneth Clark was still around to tell us. Although like your good self, he spelt Civilization with an “s” and not a “z”.
civilisation is our ”now”……
i dont think you would call it civilisation if you were sitting on a roman bench lavatory with your doings washed into the nearest stream.
you ”know differently”
and you would resent things being other than they are now.
stop and think of the sheer complexity of our modern sanitary system—for a start.
read up on the same arrangements prevailing in the London ”rookeries” in the 1800s.
civilisation itself could well be defined by ”fresh water in”–and ”wastewater out”.
without those you have no civilisation,–Romans, Chinese–whoever, were all faced with the same water and waste problem….they had ”civilised” living for an elite few…They used slaves to take their crap away and deliver fresh water.
trust me–it wasnt like you see in roman epics.
the great London sewers used 300 million bricks, in the 1870s.—because london was drowning in it s own filth.
how did they do that?
in coal fired kilns and steam powered transport and pumps.–using more coal.
all that is just straightforward information you can check for yourself.
but i suppose its less mentally challenging to dream up conspiracies.
As I said, I wish Sir Kenneth Clark was still around, Norman. He would have put you and your word salads in your place by noting that Rome in the first century AD probably smelled better than London in the 18th, and explaining that the “bum scraper” stick that some antiquarians say the Romans passed from one person to another at their bathhouses was the very essence of civilization.
It is from the Romans that we inherited the idiom, “to get the shit end of the stick.”
The Romans had lavvies with streams of water flowing beneath 24/7 so you didn’t have to pull the chain to flush your mess away.
They also built viaducts hundreds of kilometers long to carry water from places where it was abundant to places where it was needed, and some of them are still in use today.
how did they do that?
Without coal fired kilns or steam powered transport or pumps.–using no coal at all?
The Romans were civilized back when the Pagett family were dumping in the woods, wiping their arse upon the grass, and covering themselves with pig fat and wode.
All that is just straightforward information you can check for yourself.
lol tim
you really are desperate to score verbal points arent you.—your fanciful description of my ancestors, no doubt described your own,
utterly childish. (are you trying to fill the vacant space left by eddy??)–it was always vacant event when he was in it. you are headed the same way.
a Roman aqueduct might be 50 miles or more long, and were truly awe inspiring feats of civil engineering.
and of course slave labour in many respects.
it’s called energy input.
the point you choose to ignore is that they functioned purely on natural forces–rainfall and gravity.
and Roman citizens still had to fetch water from the aqueduct delivery points.
as to flushing away—you can check on the state of the Thames in the 1800s. The Tiber must have had the same problem.
Coal steam and pumps allow water to be pushed uphill. That is your difference.–obviously hard for you to grasp.—
that is called energy input too,–but it is derived from fossil fuels.
Bazalgette’s system cleaned London. other cities followed suit.
Check the pumping stations at Crossness.
and do stop flailing around under word-weight.
you are out of you depth.
Well Norman, we may share a few ancestors. Perhaps we should ask Gregory Clark about that?
I was wrong about the length of Roman aqueducts and wrong to call them viaducts. Thanks for pointing that out.
The longest one was the Aqua Marcia, completed in 144 BC, which had a total length of about 91 kilometers (56 miles).
My main point in mentioning Roman aqueducts is that their existence demonstrates that using fossil fuels is not a prerequisite for making millions and millions of bricks or building huge infrastructure projects.
I could go on to bore you with details of the Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Great European Cathedrals, the Taj Mahal, and other amazing feats of architecture from well before the Industrial Revolution. Would you like me to do that, Norman? Just say the word.
You were wrong to claim that Roman aqueducts functioned purely on gravity and rainfall.
Actually, although the aqueducts predominantly functioned through gravity, the Romans also developed or utilized several techniques to raise water against the force of gravity or manage its flow at certain points. For instance:
Siphons:
In some cases, th Romans used siphons to navigate valleys or uneven terrain. Siphons could carry water downhill, allowing it to rise again on the other side.
Water Wheels and Pumps:
At certain locations, particularly in urban areas, water wheels and pumps—including piston pumps and chain pumps— were used to lift water to higher elevations or to distribute water through the aqueduct system.
Archimedes Screw:
A screw-shaped mechanism that could lift water when rotated, the Archimedes screw was in widespread use in the ancient old word. While not widely documented in Roman aqueducts, it was known and used in various applications, including to help fill reservoirs and tanks that supplied aqueducts, particularly in places where or at times of year when available water was scarce.
tim
i know perfectly well that water powered pumps were in use on the thames in the 1600s, to lift water into cisterns which then flowed back down through conduits to a few households.
water powered pumps are powered by gravity (duh)
because the rivers that power them flow downhill (duh again).
if we asked keith nicely, he would tell us the falling water volume necessary to lift a certain water volume.
i would guess the energy input loss would be around the 90% mark, depending on how high you wanted it.
these were too insignificant to affect anybody very much
i could, if was as young as i think i am, spend a few weeks/months hacking at a oak tree with a hand flint axe, till it fell over. ( i have some pieces of flint–they cut up meat very well)
during that time, i would need food input from somwhere, every day.
or
i could cut down a hundred trees with a chainsaw in the same time.
(the fuel/energy input is in the fuel tank of the chainsaw btw.).
now do you see the point i’m trying to make.–i sometimes think i should ask dennis’s advice on pulling teeth.
that is where our civilisation comes from.
” Siphons”
Inverted siphons. They used lead pipes which could cope with the pressure at the bottom.
Lifting water was done, but it was rare.
Norman,
You don’t believe the Bible is the word of Almighty God, and more specifically, you don’t believe along with Isaac Newton and Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh that the human race is only about 6,000 years old, I take it?
No, me neither. I think our ancestors go back a lot further than that.
Their numbers were not so large, but that wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage for them, as their world would have felt a lot larger and a lot less crowded than ours does. And the limits they would tend to run up against were not precisely the same as the ones we face.
One limit that they would have pressed up against constantly was, as you are fond of pointing out, the amount of energy they were able to put to use. They had from the start human, and later, in much of the old world, draft animal muscle power, and they a bit of solar, wind and hydro power, geothermal in places, as well as the power of fire, which they put to work to help them cook and keep warm, as well as to ward off predators and, in some cases, to provide fertile ground for agriculture or to clear forests.
All through the ages, there was always plenty of energy laying around for the taking, including in the form of combustable hydrocarbons and fissionable isotopes, but until the time of the Industrial Revolution, our ancestors didn’t have the technology or the knowledge or perhaps the imagination to be able to make much use of the former or any use at all of the latter.
There are still a lot of hydrocarbons around, although they are harder to extract than what we previously extracted, and these days we have reservations abut using them, although that doesn’t stop us as a species from continuing to use them. At the same time, we lack the technology or the knowledge to be able to access these hydrocarbons affordably—which is another way of saying that it isn’t worth the bother we would have to go to to exploit them.
There are also a lot of fissionable materials (such as some uranium and thorium radionuclides) and—in terms of the potential for useful energy to be extracted—a lot of fusionable materials (such as tritium) out there just waiting to be exploited. And there is a lot more geothermal potential, space-based solar, asteroid mining, and also sorts of things that not even Dennis or Keith may have thought of—imagine that? The sky’s not the limit! The Universe is our oyster. Now, all we have to do is prise open the shell. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Imagination is a key here. Any progress we make and our ultimate survival depends on the power to use our imagination wisely in order to identify potential ways of doing things and to avoid potential disasters.
Keith and Dennis have imagination in abundance. Whereas you have almost none. I think that’s why you can so confidently laugh at their schemes and dreams like a blind man laughing at people who point out things such as rainbows or the full moon because to a blind man these things are meaningless.
But the future survival and progress off humanity to whatever type of civilization it manages to reach will depend entirely on the efforts of people like Keith and Dennis, who use their imagination wisely, creatively, and productively, and on people like Kulm, who will see to it that society is organized in a way that facilitates survival and progress. The Normans of this world have nothing to contribute apart from their Eeyore function of warning everyone else that anything they attempt is bound to all end in tears.
I think we need multiple views. There does seem to be a substantial chance of something very bad happening, but there are a lot of people working to try to figure out something that will work.
wish all that was worth an eyeroll tim
keep taking the logic tablets
they might help you to understand that space elevators and asteroid mines won’t work
and pt doesnt come in cubic miles.
but if thats the future you expect, who am i to deny your fantasy?
They won’t work if you are an Eeyore, obviously. But they might work if someone like Trump starts a Manhattan Project and puts Keith in charge of it as Chief Executive Oppenheimer and with Dennis as his deputy and gives them the sort of budget now going into the Ukraine War effort.
While both space elevators and asteroid mining face significant technological, engineering, and economic challenges, they present fascinating possibilities for the future.
Continued research and development in materials science, robotics, and space travel will be crucial to making these concepts more practical in the coming decades.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard that some Eeyore or another had rolled their eyes and claimed that something couldn’t be done or was totally impractical. And these folks included experts, by the way.
In the early 1800s, for instance, rail travel was a rather slow affair. But as trains became faster, and experts began to warn of the detrimental health effects of rail travel. “Brain trouble” and “vertigo” were cited among the many perils of this new mode of transport. In 1823, scientist Dionysius Lardner reportedly said, “Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
In the 1880s, for instance, Thomas Edison was working on a direct current (DC) power source while Nikola Tesla, was working on alternating current (AC) power source, which he surmised would allow greater amounts of power to be transmitted over larger distances. Edison maintained that Tesla’s AC was too dangerous to ever be of any use, saying, “Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.”
In 1903, Henry Ford asked his lawyer, Horace Rackham, to invest in his automobile company. The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advised Rackham against investing in Henry Ford’s motor vehicles. “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty,” he reportedly said.
In 1934, Albert Einstein was reported as saying, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
In 1943, Thomas Watson, president of IBM, was quoted as saying, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” At the time, the vacuum-powered adding machines were gigantic, so it was a reasonable assumption that nobody would want one in their home.
Tunis Craven was a US Navy officer who had assisted in developing radio communications and was twice appointed to the Federal Communications Commission. Following the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellites, in 1961, Craven reassured the commission that, “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.”
In 1977, Ken Olsen, founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, said, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Martin Cooper was a researcher and executive at the Motorola who invented the first handheld mobile telephone. However, even Cooper seemed to undervalue the enormity of his invention. He was quoted in 1981 as saying, “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.”
And this is fun! In 1903, the Eeyores at New York Times predicted that airplanes would take 10 million years to develop.
Lastly, according to books like Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clark and Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel by Wily Ley, many scientists and engineers misunderstood the physics enough to claim that space travel was impossible or impractical in reaction to discussions of the theories of Goddard, Oberth, and other space travel pioneers in the early 20th century.
For example, Clarke mentioned an article denying the practicality of space travel by Richard V. D. W. Wooley, who became Astronomer Royal in the UK in 1956 and told reporters that space travel was “utter bilge”. After the first Sputnik the next year a famous cartoon showed him being shown around a space center and being told “…and then, Dr. Wooley, the satellite will penetrate utter bilge.”
youve been at the cut n paste again tim
your insurance company wont pay out for self inflicted injury
That is a good quote:
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
British politicians never lie.
But they have been known to be economical with the truth.
See the red trendline . Seems more like 82 mbpd in 2025 and not 85.4 mbpd .
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0cb77f_b98d2375356f48bfaa6fa55dc62b6ef8~mv2.png
True. The pattern is no longer rising in the way people have hoped.
Latest from Norway.
The inexorable turning point
More than half of the petroleum resources on the Norwegian continental shelf have been produced, and in all scenarios the Norwegian Continental Shelf Directorate expects production to fall after 2025. However, high exploration activity can slow down the fall significantly.
https://geo365.no/det-ubonnhorlige-vendepunktet/
In 2025, production will be the same as it was in 2006, and after 2025 it will decrease. The increase in resources is not large enough for production to be maintained, said Kjersti Dahle, director of technology, analysis and coexistence in the Swedish Submarine Directorate when she presented the 2024 Resource Report .
The message from the Swedish Continental Shelf Directorate is the same as before – production on the Norwegian continental shelf will fall towards 2050, and high exploration activity is necessary to slow down the decline in production.
Below the latest report from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate
https://www.sodir.no/en/whats-new/publications/reports/resource-report/resource-report-2024/?print=2&
Norway is now also considering to opening up the area surrounding the Lofoten for oil exploration and (hopefully) extraction.
They expect to find aroun 700 millions barrels of petroleum (mid case) or 2 billion barrels (High case). Not much on a world scale, but enough to obtain more money to sustain the Norwegian paradise.
https://geo365.no/vil-apne-nordland-vi/
The Conservative Party’s parliamentary group stated in May that they want to open exploration for oil and gas in Nordland VI. Now the party has put forward the first draft of the new party programme , and it states that the Conservative Party will carry out an impact assessment with a view to reopening Nordland VI. In addition, they will “assess Nordland VII and Troms II and in particular assess the consequences for biological diversity and vulnerable ecosystems.”
Most of Nordland VI has since then been open for exploration, but has in practice been closed for political reasons (since 2001).
In the years 2007 – 2009, the Swedish Shelf Directorate collected 2D and 3D seismic in parts of the sea areas Lofoten, Vesterålen and Senja and published a report in which they summarized our knowledge and calculated the resource potential.
“. . . the Norwegian Continental Shelf Directorate expects production to fall after 2025.”
But most likely, in the current political and media environment, production may fall, but it just won’t be reported on.
Just a side bar: “More than half of the petroleum resources on the Norwegian continental shelf have been produced . . . .”
Actually, “extracted” is the word you should have used. Using crude oil as an example, “produced” is what you get after what has been extracted has been “refined” into whatever product you are going for.
Some crude oils cannot produce the kinds of products one might desire — like various grades of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel.
It is easier for me to believe that Norway will find some more gas than very much more oil. Oil seems to be fairly abundant, but difficult to transport. The question is whether the consumers can afford the transported natural gas. Also, can the gas be sufficiently high-priced to be worth its cost of extraction? An awfully lot of historical natural gas production has been a byproduct of oil production.
Summery: Oil exports of OPEC+ members, Brazil, Norway, and the US have been decreasing recently. Also, global commercial oil inventories have been decreasing. Yet, oil prices remain relatively low. Why? Below is an explanation (with 6 charts)
https://anasalhajjieoa.substack.com/p/global-oil-supplies-are-decreasing?r=1vkp2k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
What does this writer say? I don’t want to subscribe.
Gail , his conclusion .
Conclusion
If OPEC+ is reducing supplies along with Brazil, Norway, and the US, and commercial inventories are declining, why are oil prices declining?
The answer is China. The impact of China’s weak economy on oil demand is larger than all the decreases that we have seen recently. Figure (5) shows China’s crude imports. The decrease in imports is larger than all the decreases in supplies mentioned above. For example, crud eoil imports last month were 1.23 mb/d lower YoY. The situation is worse when we add the impact of the US and India oil demand in both is below earlier expectations. However, any increase in Chinese economic growth or a decision to refill Chinese inventories will push oil prices higher.
This post by Gullem ( Beamspot) is the best I have across on renewables , subsidies and bankruptcies .Peeling an onion at a time . Spanish use google translate .
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/el-efecto-ribera-aspectos-economicos
My exchange with him .
Ravi Uppal
Ravi’s Substack
sep 12
Gustado por Guillem
Thanks Gullem . On the subject of electricity I would appreciate your views regarding ” The Olduvai Theory ” . What is the status in today’s situation ? Did it get derailed/delayed just like Jeffery Brown’s Export Land Model because of shale ? Greetings
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Guillem
sep 12
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In my opinion, the idea in itself is more or less right.
But the timming is not.
My humble opinion is that it looks like the reverse of the Seneca Cliff.
Since electricity costs skyrocketed, demand is not growing as fast, or it is even fading, like it is happening right now in Spain.
That means that the infrastructure can cope with the demand, and proper maintenance will keep it working.
So, no grid colapse, and limited blackouts.
The whole Ribera Effect is about limited, controlled and contracted blackouts.
On next chapter, I will try to rescue the older interruptibility planning, with much more power contracted (at higher prices), and compare with the current one (AFAIK, from about 2.2GW or even more, in front of 609MW actual).
The result is that such contract must be revamped (like the idle power had been increased, and will be even more).
The issue in this case is costs… due policy (that is the reason why next chapter will be about policy, that is also regarding costs… and votes… and society).
Shale, on the other hand, certainly derailed ELM, but in this case I wonder if the real reason is that the Dollar is the reserve currency, that allow for money printing the excesive costs of the Shale technology, at the expenses of the whole World.
That fits with the fact that Shale is not working outside USA. If other countries begin to print with their own currency to finance the ruinous fracking, they will have high rates of inflation, up to hyperinflation.
That is what lies behind the topic of government spending.
Public debt and money printing didn’t solve the problem.
That is the problem.
Interesting point about fracking only working with US money printing. Also, other countries not able to reproduce fracking success because they are not as able to print money. I believe that having lots of oil and gas pipeline already in place helped as well.
We live in the world of extremes. He ate 4 kg beef daily:
https://people.com/bodybuilder-illia-golem-yefimchyk-dies-at-36-8711976
I’m going to guess it had more to do with the massive amounts of steroids than his diet as such.
I am myself carnivorish, but 4kg is a lot of phosphorus, plus all those proteins in excess get turned into ammonia which taxes liver and kidney. i would not be shocked if excess meat was a contributing cause.
Could have been blood poisoning from all those tattoos.
How many boosters did he have?
Better diet, less steroids, more normal routine would help. I don’t think body builders have long life spans, under any condition.
Women want to have babies with bodybuilders
Long life span is not the goal, of steroid use while bodybuilding, out-competing other males for mates by displaying greater fitness IS the goal.
Looks like the nuke war is baked in.
yup just like what was said last month, and the month before…
and the month before…
and the month before…
anyway, it’s only WW3.
it’s nothing to worry about.
We’re still in the period of the phony war — or should that be the smartphony war? Things will change. But first the people have to be psychologically prepared by means of a catalyzing event such as an even newer Pearl Harbor, or credible video footage of Putin’s Wagners sneaking around the small towns of the Midwest and eating people’s dogs and cats.
you mean that isn’t true tim?
surely people don’t just start rumours like that?
*womens’ not women’s
No, you were grammatically correct first time.
“Women” is the plural of “woman” and”women’s” is the orthodox possessive form of the plural.
How Oil Barons Steal From Their Truckers | Ft. John Russell
The prices they pay truckers to truck frac sand has dropped in half since 2014 (from 1000 dollars to 500 dollars) according to the YouTube video, truckers are also forced to wait many hours to unload unpaid. Alot of the people doing these jobs were Hispanic, a few were White and African American. I would love to see white middle class boomers who hate immigrants to go get treated like this for a day.
I expect that part of the problem is that oil prices are far too low to pay truckers reasonable wages for their services, including waiting times.
I know that before World War I, coal prices were way too low in the UK. Workers tended not to get paid enough. There got to be strikes by employees and lockouts by employers, complaining about the not-enough-to-go-around problem.
Going to war seemed like a good idea. It would provide as least as good pay.
The establishment is wedded to the status quo
See a very influential economics pundit debunk whether the modern welfare state is unsustainable.
Can We Afford the Welfare State?
Posted on September 13, 2024 by Yves Smith
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09/can-we-afford-the-welfare-state.html
I really don’t understand the Establishment. On one hand they demand we make radical changes to our energy use and diet because they aren’t sustainable but on the other hand, the modern welfare state is completely sustainable if taxes are raised on the rich.
How can people hold these conflicting views? I’d develop a mental disorder thinking that everyone can have a nice standard of living and requiring radical changes to energy consumption and meat consumption.
If we are past peak production, with annual production decreasing, and oil may be used up completely by the 2050’s as some predict, it is difficult to see how a welfare state can be maintained until 2044.
Very clear: “You must conserve so that I may continue to live lavishly.” You don’t become a mainstream pundit unless you espouse the media owners’ views.
if a person somehow thinks that money, not resources, is the problem, then it is easy to assume that the welfare state can continue. It always seems possible to print more money.
The attack on the US by importing millions of low IQ and criminals is not being opposed by “the deep state”. Are they really doing this just for cheap labor? Cheap gardeners and nanny for the intelligence and military community?
nope
they just come to the usa for pet food
the don said so
Just saw a video of a Haitian sucking blood from a live cat and the cat screaming. They believe it gives them magical powers.
Don is bowing out, he wants to live. Enjoy WW3.
lololol ed
by now there must be 000s of videos of haitians eating dogs and cats—even canaries.
yummy
Hati is where “Zombie” culture started. The word is actually spelled “Zombi” just like Hati. Part of the whole voodoo goth stuff.
They have a huge zombie festival every year too. \
More voodoo Norman. Get used to it. My gardener did a rain dance in front of my window yesterday. Naked. He didn’t mow the lawn. My wife likes him though, he’s from Nigeria.
Please do not bite. I’m tired.
but did it rain?
Currencies in the US, Japan and Europe. Bombs in Ukraine. Stones in Gaza. Sperm in Africa. So, yes.
Like i said, i’m tired.
Yes if you count him peeing on the flowers.
This is the most Hilarious comment posted on
ourfiniteworld. You Win The Internet!
Of course not. dilution of social fabric, cheap labor, and the ability to play one race against another all play roles. de facto the resistance in the US is white catholics. Even diluting them with Latin catholics is useful, as they experienced their church as the in group and the out group respectively.
The total population of the US needs to keep growing if schools are to continue to have students and if there is to continue to be a market for new homes and new cars. US population is not growing fast enough without the added immigrants. It helps, too, that the immigrants are low wage. The immigrants the US has gotten in the past (from Mexico, Central and South America) have tended to be assimilated in the US pretty well in the past, too. They have tended to be hard working. Their culture isn’t too different from the US.
We should reduce our energy use and use of fossil fuels. Din’t see how that meshes with continued population growth from any sources.
The problem is that economies of scale work in the direction of encouraging growth. Shrinkage works in the direction of ever larger overhead. Governments and other overhead expense tend to disappear.
“Shrinkage works in the direction of ever larger overhead. Governments and other overhead expense tend to disappear.”
I don’t understand. Does shrinkage correlate with more overhead or less?
Government is a form of overhead for the overall system.
If the overall system starts to shrink, it becomes impossible to maintain roads and railroad tracks. Fewer homes are needed. Less tax revenue is collected. Maintaining the whole system becomes impossible. The complexity that was previously possible will no longer be possible.
Depends, but generally overhead increases for a shrinking company
It’s the smart ones that are coming to the United States.
That does not mean I am in favor of them coming illegally.
Why would a STEM worker need to come into a country illegally? Most countries would love to have more STEM workers since highly intelligent people are scarce.
You must nit have dealt with a federal agency and its red tape lately.
The legal process to legally enter the United States can take years to get permission to enter, if the applicant is ever legally approved. Lots of restrictions to overcome to qualify for approval. Legal entrance is limited, difficult and sometimes impossible.
Gail, Oil Price posted your latest and that’s how I found it…
Tongue in cheek..
No One Wants To Make Cars Anymore
https://www.theautopian.com/no-one-wants-to-make-cars-anymore/
What could you possibly do if you don’t make “cars” in the normal sense? You could make software! Automakers were huge on the idea of getting into the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) game, but that hasn’t panned out as initially hoped.
When I say “no one” wants to make cars I’m being a little hyperbolic. There’s one country that wants to make cars and, in fact, needs to make cars: China. Don’t worry, China is here to help.
Same link page
Former European Central Bank President and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi celebrated his 77th birthday yesterday by releasing a 69-page report (nice)
European Leader: We Are ‘Stuck In A Static Industrial Structure’
Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or
develop new growth engines. In fact, there is no EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period.
This lack of dynamism is self-fulfilling.
As EU companies are specialised in mature technologies where the potential for breakthroughs is limited, they spend less on research and innovation (R&I) – EUR 270 billion less than their US counterparts in 2021. The top 3 investors in R&I in Europe have been dominated by automotive companies for the past twenty years. It was the same in the US in the early 2000s, with autos and pharma leading, but now the top 3 are all in tech.
The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.
Of course, nothing regarding the other issues…we just have to be creative
Chris MacInitosh, a contributor to Doug Casey’s International Man who hypocritically has enjoyed the benefits of the financialization parasitic class himself nevertheless points out the four pillars of a positive productive class of citizens, namely those who are engaged in :
1.) farming
2.) mining
3.) manufacturing
4.) transportation
In contrast, parasites who gravitate towards government, banking, and law have created a parasitic control system with
1.) fraudulent monetary (fiat currency) system, i.e the FED
2.) fraudulent media (censorship)
3.) fraudulent legal system (no rule of law)
4.) fraudulent electoral system ( a pure “democracy” instead of a Republic – with fraudulent mail in votes from parasites )
Without the above 4 requirements, we have nothing to work with to address the onslaught of challenges of population, demoographics, natural resources, energy, debt, etc.
https://internationalman.com/articles/heres-why-the-worlds-comfort-class-is-so-far-removed-from-reality/
Running short of resources in Europe has inhibited growth in new ideas and new growing companies for a long time, I am afraid.
The US has done a lot of financial modeling, but it is financial modeling as if growth can continue forever. It is incorrect financial modeling. It gives the idea the financial system will continue forever, but it is hard to see that it really will.
I read in the last day or so that the big problem inhibiting new companies is regulation. Perhaps AI can reduce overhead.
I would say that it looks like the legislation you are describing was written with the intent to limit the formation of new companies. Perhaps, the big established companies don’t want more competition.
The purpose of credentialism is to constrain the supply of white collar labor.
AI will not eliminate barriers to entry. It will be another barrier. It will reject new LLCs based on keywords or phrases not made public.
The system is working exactly the way the lawmakers have intended it to.
“the intent to limit the formation of new companies.
I doubt it. Legislation is seldom that coherent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41488865
I don’t know enough about this to make much of a comment. It does seem likely that the AI revolution will be very far advanced before the US puts regulations on it. The EU regulations may keep AI development out.
jiripospisil 5 days ago | next [–]
> Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth. Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European.
> Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or develop new growth engines. In fact, there is no EU company with a market capitalisation over EUR 100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years, while all six US companies with a valuation above EUR 1 trillion have been created in this period.
> The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.
> For example, we claim to favour innovation, but we continue to add regulatory burdens onto European companies, which are especially costly for SMEs and self-defeating for those in the digital sectors. More than half of SMEs in Europe flag regulatory obstacles and the administrative burden as their greatest challenge.
My thought is that regulations are put in place (by the self-organizing system) to keep out things that cannot really work in the first place. This is why Europe has applied so many regulations to companies operating there.
At least in some cases, the regulations are not enforced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stresa%E2%80%93Mottarone_cable_car_crash
“he problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.”
Assuming you’re talking about the manufacturing of physical goods:
I would say that it looks like the legislation you are describing was written with the intent to limit manufacturing in Europe. Everyone including you seems to be in collective denial of this.
This is very similar to the educational system in America bemoaning the declining enrollment of men at colleges while at the same time openly discriminating against them in the name of promoting higher female pay.
None of this is coincidental or an accident. Decisions were made to prioritize services over manufacturing and female employment over male employment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBDbfCcCeHk
The new OpenAI release beats smart humans in math and logic. This is a powerful tool as long as technology lasts and we might have the singularity before oil runs out. I know that seems farfetched, but if there is unknown physics that can help us, this could find it. Or it could simply empower those who own it to disempower and enslave the rest and make resources last longer (a la kulm) until the singularity does occur.
so if I ask this thing how long it took to cr*mate bodies in A8schwitz, given the historically confirmed facilities and time per body, it will not answer 78 years 24/7? what will it say? there was a relativistic time dilation?
??????????????
Maybe start with something more along the lines of… how much fuel would be required to have a manned space craft reach the moon and return.
But, its a good point. When does AI provide trusted results? It is, after all, a black box with bias based on who ever feeds it data.
humankind lives by burning stuff
we are a carbon based species—therefore we must consume carbon to live–one way or another.
if you dont believe that try eating rocks for dinner, season them with sand of you like.
there isnt going to be any new physics to save us—painful i know—get used to that idea
It won’t save us, but it may save *them*. The chance is nonzero.
From Plato to AI — are we loosing our mind ?
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2024/09/from-plato-to-ai-are-we-losing-our-minds.html
Comment section ;
Throughout my career, I’ve had a great deal of exposure to the learning process, particularly for specialized knowledge. Some skills are definitely acquired along the way, and we get better with practice. Conversely, if we understand that we can best do without the mental gymnastics, we stop doing the work in our heads, and that skill atrophies, At one time, I could perform some fairly complex financial calculations in my head, but coming back to it now, it would take some time to regain that skill.
Today we have a lot of tools for that sort of thing, and people who formerly kept those skills are surrendering them, especially for more mundane tasks. There are also somewhat stricter legal requirements. For example, I was in a bank recently, talking about mortgage payments. the bank officer went to his computer to create a payment schedule, When I pointed out that I just wanted a “ballpark” payment amount, he pointed out that they are no longer allowed to provide informal quotes, everything MUST be done via an approved program to calculate this.
I noticed this effect perhaps over 30 years ago. If everyone relies on computers for this sort of task, after a short time, only a small minority will still know how to do this, or understand how these things work at all. Organizations become heavily reliant on such people when a transaction or a whole process doesn’t fit a fairly standard mold, as defined by a set of approved programs. Moreover, those who don’t really know what these tools are doing are more subject to errors, and are less creative, which translates into being less competitive. I call this sad state, where a few knowledgeable individuals keep huge organizations dependent by default, an “inverted pyramid”, an inherently unstable condition.
Writing is valuable; it allows us to integrate the knowledge of those that lived before us. I think of writing as freeze-drying knowledge. It’s all there, but it requires someone to assimilate that and re-animate the dry words and symbols back into understanding and insight, and re-embodied as one or more skills, Only then can the contribution of the original author can be appreciated and applied to the challenges at hand.
Finally, we have the advantage of the fruits of more than one person’s labor here. A typical student of Physics, for example, now has the life work of the greatest and most insightful researchers at his fingertips, something almost none of the predecessors can claim. This is an essential property of integrating our understanding so that progress can be made.
In a century or so, we will be in a much better position to assess how AI has contributed to that knowledge base. I am skeptical, and we are still in the early days of including AI in these activities.
Kids who grow up with calculators probably don’t learn to do math well. Kids who grow up with AI can expect that AI will do a draft of more of their assignments. What happens when electricity goes out and batteries die? We won’t be able to do the most basic processes.
Good reason to keep the power on.
“In a century or so, we will be in a much better position to assess how AI has contributed to that knowledge base. ” Without access to astronomical amounts of energy, far more than they are using now, or that is being used on Earth, I doubt they will add anything to that knowledge base. The history of Physics is the history of humans using more energy to discover more of the rules of the physical world. The Hardon Collider…space probes…smashing atoms together at very high speeds to find out what they are made up of…exploring the universe in detail all require more energy than what we used to make discoveries in the past.
Rather than opening up possibilities, AI will probably be used to make people conform to what the leaders want.
” When I pointed out that I just wanted a “ballpark” payment amount, he pointed out that they are no longer allowed to provide informal quotes, everything MUST be done via an approved program to calculate this.”
Conforming doesn’t require the ability to think for one’s self or creativity, it just requires obedience.
Elon has PV and batteries and the Texas sunshine to run his AI.
we burn fuel to stay alive
there is no ”unknown physics” to help us.
not that repeating it will shift entrenched certainties—i just keep saying it in case anyone else is slipping towards such thinking
“we burn fuel”
On another list I recently worked out how much sunlight falling on crop lands is used to grow food. It is about 1000 times the energy humans use for everything else.
i thought sunlight was at the rate of 100 watts per sq metre
other than that–maybe its time we stopped growing food
Gail has shown charts that say humans use less than 4 barrels of oil per capita per year (this jives with 8 billion people and 30-36Gb per annum depending on which measure of liquids is used). Each barrel has 6 GJ energy. So a human uses 24 GJ per year of oil. Oil is ~1/3 of primary energy use, so ~75 GJ are necessary per human.
Meanwhile, 1 square meter of solar energy is ~1000 Joules/s * 365 days * 8 hours * 3600s/hour = 10GJ
So each human needs energy from 7.5 square meters of sunlight. Since solar panel efficiency isn’t 100%, adjust the above number accordingly.
> The average member of the human race already consumes 300X this amount
> of primary power 24/7. (20 TW divided by 8 billion.) The average
> member of the developed world consumes an order of magnitude more than
> that. (20 TW divided by a billion.)
Thinking about this, 20 TW does not include the sunlight energy used to grow food.
There are about 50 million square km used for food. The peak is close to a GW/km^2 and the average is perhaps 1/3 GW/km^2 making the solar energy input for growing food ~20,000 TW or 1000 times the accounted energy use.
Hmmm.
“We consider that Easter Island was a microcosm which provides a model for the whole planet. Like the Earth, Easter Island was an isolated system. The people there believed that they were the only survivors on earth, all other land having sunk beneath the sea. They carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The results was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash. A crash on a similar scale (60% reduction) for the planet Earth would lead to the deaths of about roughly 100 times the death toll of the Second World War. Do we have to repeat the experiment on this grand scale? Would it not be more sensible to learn from the lesson of Easter Island history, and apply it to the Earth Island on which we live?
About twenty years ago, a group of businessmen and computer specialists known as the Club of Rome attempted to model by computer the future of all those which included continuation of the present trends of economic expansion and population growth led to the same result. A rapid decline of resources was accompanied by a peak in pollution as population continued to soar. When resources became scarce around 2020, however, pollution (and economic activity) declined, followed by a sharp population crash. If this kind of model has any veracity, it should also apply to the Easter Island situation. The overall conclusion seems fairly clear; the Club of Rome model works.
https://imgur.com/a/scbyNsU
If there is any hope, it is surely in the idea that we must change our religion. Our present gods of economic growth, science and technology, continuously rising standards of living, and the virtues of competition – deities that we consider all-powerful are like the giant statues on Easter Island platforms. Each village competed with its neighbors to erect the largest statue. Platforms were constantly replaced with more grandiose ones. More and more effort went into the resource-consuming and time-consuming, but pointless, carving, moving and erecting.
What we need to do is throw down our economic Moai.
Will we the “Earth Islanders” have the sense to change in time before our skyscrapers come tumbling about our ears? Or is the human personality always the same as that of the person who cut down the last tree?..”
– Easter Island: Earth Island (Bahn 1994)
What I find weird about the Easter Island story is the opposition to the idea that there ever was a population crash.
It seems that there is a pervasive, religious like belief that low tech people live in harmony with their environment, that they don’t do such things as overpopulate. How they avoid this is not stated.
There may be divergent human group, the San of southern Africa who actually do (or did) live in harmony with their environment. But they have (or had) the lowest birth rate of any people ever studied.
Perhaps people in very adverse climates didn’t have a problem with overpopulation. But, mostly, the superior intellect of humans allowed population to grow to a point where their population exceeded resources.
The one example of people that don’t have an overpopulation problem is the San. Not sure what you would consider adverse climate but as far as I know, the far north natives pushed the local resources.
many nomadic societies generally maintain stable populations due to several common factors.
The most important is because they have a nomadic lifestyle: It is difficult to keep increasing your numbers when you are compelled to be on the move much of the time and unable to store up much of a surplus from nature.
And as a nomad, you are on the move all the time because there aren’t enough local resources to allow you to remain in one place year round. The only other option is usually to starve in place.
Perhaps Gregory Clark could examine this and tell us how their genes make people nomadic rather than their environment or their social system?
Stable population requires the death rate and the birth rate to the same over some time frame.
There is (or was) a tribal society in South America where 60% of the adults died in inter-tribal violence. This kept the population stable.
Nomadic peoples can’t cope with short interval births because the kids up to about 5 years old must be carried. The San women nurse a long time. This keeps them from having children at more than the replacement rate. They have been forced into settlements in recent decades (to clear out where they lived I guess). It will be interesting to see how being forced in sedentary living affects the birth rate.
I don’t know enough about the Sami demographics some of which are nomads.
The Sami have not been selected for alcohol resistance.
Gail,
I read an article within the last 2 weeks which concluded that the commonly held understanding that Easter Island had overshoot and collapse might not be true.
I also wanted to ask how to comment about your articles. I can reply to comments but I can’t see how to add a new comment at the top level. I didn’t see a button or link to leave new comments.
I enjoy reading your posts every month. I have questions for you.
You have to scroll way down to find the “leave a new comment” window.
If the comment doesn’t show up, you might press the refresh screen button to see if it does.
You have made a few comments, already, so being new shouldn’t be a problem.
Yes, Keith, I too find it funny people think native Americans were all peaceful when in fact they did war, took slave, crippled slaves so they could not escape.
If the physics and chemistry permits, engineers can solve a lot of problems, such as diesel.
Mine mouth coal is around $20/ton. Renewable power is close to free at times of overproduction. A ton of carbon vaporized in steam will make about a little over half a ton of synthetic oil. That’s about 4 bbl of oil.
So the cost of synthetic diesel would be around $5/bbl for the coal and something between $8 and $16/bbl for the capital cost. The syn plant and refinery need to be near an empty gas field to cope with the intermittent nature of renewable energy.
Eventually someone in the oil business will realize this. The concept of combining coal and excess solar/wind to make diesel has just escaped main stream thinking.
Whether or not renewable power is close to free (in value) at time of overproduction, it took a lot of resources to build the renewable energy devices and the transmission to take them away. Also, these devices depreciate rapidly, so more of them need to be added constantly.
Modeling has been done as if renewable power will all be useful. If only, say, half of it is useful, the overall system needs a much better payback during the time it is useful.
If there is no demand for renewable power and it has to be curtailed, nobody profits.
Synthetic diesel could pay a cent or two for power that is in excess of demand and everyone would profit.
You can do this making hydrogen out of water, but the cost of the electrolytic cells is so high (they are full of platinum) that the economics just fails to make sense.
Electrolytic cells take about 50 MWh to make a ton of hydrogen.
Without being sure, I think the capital cost of electrically heating coal in steam will much less than electrolytic cells.
Also, heating coal takes about 7.5 MWh to make a ton of hydrogen, close to 7 times better.
But you do have to have an empty gas field so you can run the expensive and hard to start F/T plant full time.
If you want an example, look up the Crow Creek story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
Keith, Africa did not have an overpopulation problem until Europeans colonized several areas and tried to “improve” their way of life.
The Bantu expansion was due to a group, originally from the Cameroon area, having a
population growth with (for that era) better farming technology. This happened a long time before Europeans moved into Africa.
Africa is where people evolved and so did our parasites. Women had to have a high birth rate to maintain any population in the face of high levels of disease. The overpopulation problem of Africa would go away if they gave up “western” medicine.
China’s expanding single women population
https://youtu.be/qL-n3yR2bX8?si=OOoZvDgih7LxuKOT
Not a problem. There was always a shortage of men with good genes.
Arranged marriages and restricting women’s rights can hide this but not eliminate what women want.
Tim Watkins latest part 4 of his ongoing series .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/09/12/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-four-power-down/
This is a very good essay. Near the beginning, Tim Watkins says:
Later, it says,
But then the mixed model squeezes out too much. Then Watkins point out how air transport is starting to fail, as is rapid rail transport, and even maintenance of the roads for busses. Eventually, government will need to fail as well.
Read a decent article by BBC , for free or course, about the UK rail system. What it didn’t mention was the decline in the population of humans outside of London and other major cities in England as a contributing to the train system’s financial woes. No one can understand why maintenance has been put off and why workers are over-worked. This reminds me of a few transportation systems in America with nearly identical problems.
The BBC understands the refinery – the oldest in the UK – is currently losing around $500,000 (£383,000) a day and is on course to lose around $200m (£153m) in 2024.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3gwkkk4mo
Scotland’s only refinery closure .
Unable to compete with those with in lower wage countries. The refineries in lower wage countries are probably more modern, and more efficient for this reason as well.
I don’t understand this. Labor in a refinery is small. The 250,000 bbl/day refinery I worked in had (as I recall) around 600 people in it. If they averaged $100/day, that’s $60,000
The only way I can see for a refinery to be losing $500,000 a day is for them to be buying crude, refining it and selling the products for less than what it cost to make them.
(CNN)
“Russia will be ‘at war’ with NATO if Ukraine long-range missile restrictions lifted, Putin warns”
(Ukraine has no long-range capability, it will be available only with Nato’s supplies)
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/12/europe/putin-warns-nato-missiles-hnk-latam-intl/
(NTV.DE)
Poland PM: “Tusk on Putin’s threats: “Do not attach undue importance”
(scroll down the news flow on the link below)
http://www.n-tv.de/politik/14-20-Pistorius-haelt-Freigabe-weitreichender-Waffen-fuer-voelkerrechtlich-gedeckt–article23143824.html
Will we consider Putin a funny buffoon, like Tusk suggest to us?
Talk is cheap. Until Putin nukes something in the west, yes we will consider him to be a buffoon.
I am not interested in testing out this idea.
I try to watch and read all of Putin’s speeches that Kremlin.Ru posts official transcripts of. In September or October of 2021, Putin stated in a speech (paraphrased) ‘We, Russia, have concluded that the West will not stop until they have conquered and dismembered Russia. Russia now has an unstoppable military advantage over the West. They will eventually catch up, so….;
He then looked into the camera and shrugged.
In 2003 or 2004, The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada, the leading national newspaper at the time, posted a letter to the editor from Putin as the leader of Russia. In this letter he declared ‘unconventional war’ on the ‘wolf.’ This was after the US had invaded Iraq.
In the letter Putin stated that (paraphrased): ‘The Wolf is hungry, the Wolf is eating, and the Wolf wants to keep eating. The Wolf will eventually come for us. Although we regret what will happen to the population of the countries of the Wolf, you voted for them.’ I interpreted this as Russia saying that the Fascist element in the West knew that they needed Moar Oil and that eventually they would come for Russia’s oil.
I cut that article out and used to show it to people to prepare them for where we are today. Less than a year after that letter to the editor was published, an interview with the Russian general tasked with massively expanding Russia’s military presence and capability in arctic warfare came out. The article began by quoting the Russian general: “Wars these days are won decades before they are fought.” That was about two decades ago.
While America was training its troops, & changing its war fighting culture, to deal with desert small arms combat, Russia was building the very systems in the Arctic they now threaten the US with.
Putin and Russia are using the always cry wolf tactic. They are repeatedly ‘implying’ but never stating, red lines to fool the sheep into actually stepping over a real red line so they can hit the West with a ‘brutal’ (Official Tass translation of the actual word used by Rybakov) response while maintaining their alliances with the global majority who support them or abstain.
I suggest you make sure you have enough food to get through this coming winter.
Neptune7
To commemorate 9/11 this year, here’s a portion of a 2017 interview with 9/11 researcher author and former flight attendant Rebekah Roth. I had never heard of her until listening to this, as I have not been following 9/11-related matters very much in recent years.
Rebekah’s take is that there were real airliners involved, but they were diverted to an airbase and all those phone calls were made from the ground and were scripted. Rebekah explains why we can be fairly sure they were scripted. One reason is that multiple callers used the same phrase “people of Middle Eastern appearance,” which nobody would have used colloquially in 2001, or indeed today. Also, multiple callers referred to themselves as “an air hostess,” which is not the usual US term. Those people are “flight attendants.”
Rebekah is adamant that no “people of Middle Eastern appearance” highjacked any planes that day. And indeed, at least 10 of the alleged hijackers whose identities were borrowed by the FBI were still alive at the time of this interview.
Listening to this was very nostalgic for me, as I heard a lot the same info repeatedly during the first decade after 9/11.
Rebekah Roth continues to answer questions about 9/11, her books, research and the freedom of information act data. Additional information is available at this site: https://www.rebekahroth.com/
”no aircraft involved that day, they were diverted”—shesssh tim, you never give up.—always a new angle.—i wish i had your imagination, but not your gullibility.
anybody–anyquote, will do for repetition.
amazing holograms then,
perhaps they were radio controlled model kits, but full sized, with crash dummies inside, and crisis actors outside in the street, getting covered in dust.
mustve cost a lot in dry cleaning bills.
Where dyou audition for crisis acting—is there a crisis actors drama school?—i need to know these things.
if all these crises are faked, then it follows that crisis actors need to be trained and hired.
Is Amelia Earhart still alive, and now the oldest lady in Japan? (you can check that out)
any thoughts on Lincoln’s assassination?
Hit ler’s suicide looked a bit iffy to me too.—any thoughts on where he might be now?–maybe had rejuvenation therapy, and plastic surgery and disguised himself as a Russian president???
he had a thing about invading ukraine, hard to give it up—might explain a lot.—no wonder poland is worried.
Springtime for hit ler and germanyyyyy—winter—for poland—and france–te tum te tum.
and dont forget all those 000s of climate crisis actors, all over the world.
and the millions of covid death-fakers.
and the makeup for monkey pox must take hours.
meantime—ROTHFLMAO.
For those not of english mother tongue, this is what “bilious” looks like.
you a conspironut as well drb?
have you caught up on Laura Loomer’s greatest hits drb?
makes eddy look like raw beginner
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgzQXJGhGKfrnWclBPVkcqWhsJmhR
https://mail.
forgot to add the link drb
I think we managed to trigger poor old Norman into a “bilious” attack there, drb, combined with an attack of “diarrhoea”—you know?—that condition in which faeces are discharged from the bowels frequently and in a liquid form.
Unable to focus either his eyes or his brain, he can’t seem to grasp that I was only introducing the research, speculation and opinions of former flight attendant Rebekah Roth, who since she claims she only missed being on one of the 9/11 flights by 10 hours, and knew some of the victims personally, probably has a rather bigger dog in this race than Norman, who’s only interest seems to be to defend the official narrative at all costs.
I haven’t expressed an opinion on who specifically “dun” 9/11 and how and why it was “dun”—apart from that it was obviously an inside job in some respect. But it is the greatest whodunnit off our times. To get to the truth, a new regime would have to take power and then waterboard a few of the main suspects, and I don’t expect that to happen under anyone’s watch.
Despite that, I think it’s important to keep probing, exposing contradictions and distortions, examining new rabbit holes, peeling away the layers of the onion of deception, and generally calling out the lies that from the substance of the official narrative. I do this in the same spirit of fun that I try to tackle crossword puzzles.
Norman hates peeling onions. For some reason, they make him cry. Perhaps he needs some churching? Or at least some moral lecturing?
Here is a moral lecture of sorts delivered in 2005 by David Ray Griffin, who died last year. Although he was probably wrong or mistaken on many points, and he could be described as “a limited hangout”because he doesn’t hang out any further than the confirmed record allows, this it’s still well worth listening to as a reminder or a refresher course in 9/11. Also, the facts he cites and the implications of America’s quest for global dominance are as relevant today as they were when David spoke them.
9/11 and the American Empire — How Should Religious People Respond?
” planes were flown into buildings on 9/11.”?
Modelled?
” . . . videos not fake, but somethings about the planes were fake . . . “?
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=291&part=1&gen=3
“people of Middle Eastern appearance” and “an air hostess” are litteral English translations of French “personnes d’apparence moyen-orientale” and “hôtesse de l’air”. As to why French native speakers would have clumsily scripted those, the answer is likely to be the large number of French born Israelis in Mossad.
That’s an interesting observation.
I remember “air hostesses” or “air stewardess” being the preferred terms in the UK up until the end of the 1970s, and “flight attendant” sounding like an Americanism back then.
I’m not sure when “flight attendant” became the official term in the US, but while searching online, I discovered that ” In 1990, George H.W. Bush, who was president at the time, proclaimed July 19 as “Flight Attendant Safety Professionals’ Day” to commemorate the contributions flight attendants had made to the airline industry and the development of aviation.”
there used to be a few idiots who stowed away in the wheel bays of airliners
usually ayrabs
they might have done it
I was thinking about the biggest milestones of the modern society. I would say they are abandoning animals for do domestic fertilizer production and abandoning coal use for domestic heating. Both of them are carbon related and both of them are about stored energy in carbon. The cow manure or coal are simple batteries that need.no.otber devices, except for the oxygen all around.
Now when we have only.complex devices which are locally unsustainable. That simplicity of the past is lost.
Good points. We keep going for the complex systems for storing energy. But the simpler ones are more sustainable.
A passive house, the use of simple electric devices like electric blankets and efficient cheap fans for the ventilation with a simple heat exchanger is more sustainable than relying on complex heat pumps. Who will come to repair a heat pump when the populations are ageing? Combining it with little wood burning is enough. Keep it simple, otherwise the costs will kill you prematurely.
If the electricity is off, it is off. If one of the fancy triple pained windows breaks, there will be no replacement. I have a hard time believing that a passive house is sustainable.
You are right, but it is still more sustainable than a big device with a lots of electronics, electric circuits, pipes, coolants etc.
US exports have been falling for nine months and Europe is in danger . Quark in Spain .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/09/las-exportaciones-de-petroleo-usa.html
Good comment by this guy (google-translated):
>> Dicapriode September 12, 2024, 1:59 PM
There are the two great elements of rupture for the system, the fall in oil production and the end of the world dominance of the dollar. As for the first, I am struck by how the developments in the plans of the western liberal elites of Agenda 2030 coincide with the analyzes of the fall in oil production around that date, if some plays by the western system fall earlier, too they advance. And as for the second, if the end of the western dollar is carried out, it would have to pay for imports without the printer paper and competing with the rest under equal conditions. It is extremely serious, since in the plans of the western globalist system the resources of the rest of the world are part of its inventory of personal use and enjoyment through currency control. Casus belli against the Brics? The mob never took the noes well.
Yes, a very perceptive comment. People in the west will have to pay for imports on an equal basis with others. This will be a problem.
This is a very interesting article. Quark pulls together a lot of things. Quark points out the oil exports are falling, even though the fundamentals suggest that this shouldn’t be happening. Perhaps the falling imports are related to trying to refill the strategic petroleum reserve.
Also, the low prices we see seem to represent the bearish view of the “paper” oil market. The physical oil market continues to need crude supplied. Something is not quite right.
This is amusing if not precisely on target.
Artificial Arguments: Intense dialogues with AI chatbots reduce beliefs in conspiracies
H. H. Thorp & B. Bago and J.-F. Bonnefon & T. H. Costello et al.
New tools for manipulation. What’s not to like? Like Yuval Harari says, “humans are hackable animals”.
AI can pop conspiracy-thinking bubble
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems could give us a way out of our least favourite pastime: arguing with conspiracy theorists. Researchers paid participants to spend a few minutes interacting with a chatbot designed to debunk false information, and found that the bot’s detailed responses shifted people’s thinking, a change that lasted for several months. “[AI models] have been trained on the Internet, they know all the conspiracies and they know all the rebuttals, and so it seemed like a really natural fit,” says psychology researcher and co-author Thomas Costello. The hard part might be convincing people who are deeply entrenched in conspiracy theories to engage with systems designed to contradict them.
(from Nature briefing)
sounds like another conspiracy to me Keith
“In our modern age, with its advanced technology and its emphasis on speed and impatience, it is hard to understand how prehistoric people could spend vast amounts of time and hard manual labor on carving, transporting and erecting huge stones, whether they be the megaliths of Western Europe or the Rapa Nui statues. On the other hand, it can be argued that in prehistoric times – and particularly on a small, isolated island – there was little else to do, and stone carving became a ruling passion; in 1786 La Perouse reckoned, perhaps somewhat optimistically, that three days work in the fields annually was all that each islander needed to do in order to obtain food for the year, while in the 1860s the Missionary Eugene Eyraud reported that the islanders did no real work at all. A day’s exertion assured them of a year’s supply of sweet potatoes. The other 364 days of the year were spent ‘walking about, sleeping and visiting’. They made their own entertainment in those days! ”
-Easter Island: Earth Island (Bahn 1994)
Interesting observations. Human population began near the equator, where food was available with little work, nearly year around. It was only as more effort was expended and the benefit of animal labor, burned biomass, and fossil fuel was added that humans moved to less hospitable climates.
A heating planet may not be all bad. In warm climates, less heat is needed.
its not a matter of heating or cooling–hot or cold
all species, including us, and our food sources, have evolved to live in harmony with prevailing conditions—as they are here and now.—not as they were 5m years ago.
we cannot change that.
a couple of degrees hotter will disturb that harmony—its already happening.
the polar vortexes will move, they affect our weather at lower latitudes.–that is already happening.
that in turn affects food supplies.—that has already happened.
in extremis people fight over food, and migrate to where they might get it.—that is already happening.
there is only one reason for war—resources.—food is the ultimate resource.—why dyou think putin wants ukraine?
none of this is opinion, its out there available to check, by anybody.
The prevailing conditions are always changing.
We cannot change that.
It was a couple of degrees Centigrade hotter in temperate to polar regions just 6 to 8 thousand years ago, and 5 to 10 degrees Centigrade cooler less than 20,000 years ago.
Species adjusted. Or species didn’t. Whatever.
a couple of degrees hotter will disturb that harmony—blah blah blah!
the polar vortexes will move, they affect our weather at lower latitudes.–blah blah blah!
that in turn affects food supplies.—blah blah blah!
in extremis people fight over food, and migrate to where they might get it.—blah blah blah!
there is only one reason for war—resources.—blah blah blah!
why dyou think putin wants ukraine?—blah blah blah!
none of this is opinion, its all blah blah blah!
There, fixed it for you.
as you’re good at fixing
fix 8 billion people shifting back 8000 years
or 20000 years, to 10c cooler
then i can say—tim fixed it for me.
but keep blah’ing
it’s what you do best
And of course, it was considerably colder than now during the Little Ice Age around 300 years ago. Huge areas of arable uplands were converted to sheep farming in the north of England back then because it was no longer possible to grow grain there—blah, blah, blah.
And the Romans abandoned Britain during a previous downturn in temperature. But what kind of agriculture was being practiced in those days. Archeology can help answer that one (written by Marijke van der Veen, FSA is a Dutch archaeobotanist and Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester):
What are the possible reasons for the increase in bread wheat from R3 to M1? Considering that bread wheat today is the most widely grown in the world, why did it take so long to reach this position? Free-threshing wheats, including bread wheat, have been found sporadically in Britain and north-western Europe from the Neolithic onwards, but bread wheat only became the main wheat crop in England in the early medieval period.
In the past, archaeologists often proposed external factors, such as climate or migrating people, as explanatory mechanisms for observed changes, but both can be ruled out in this case. There is thought to have been a climate downturn, especially after a cluster of volcanic eruptions in ad 536, 540 and 547, with the interval between ad 536 and 660 described as the Late Antique Little Ice Age,Footnote51 but this is viewed as unlikely to have affected lowland agriculture in England,Footnote52 though it may have affected parts of the north-west and north. In fact, a downturn in climate would, if anything, have resulted in a preference for spelt rather than bread wheat, since the former is as tolerant of colder conditions and more tolerant of wetter conditions than bread wheat; hence, spelt is still grown today in Switzerland and upland areas of southern Germany. Thus, a deterioration in climate cannot explain the switch we observe.
The 5th and 6th centuries mark the period when Germanic groups—in uncertain numbers—migrated to England from northern Germany and Denmark, but this cannot explain the rise in bread wheat either. Firstly, bread wheat was already being cultivated in England before the influx of new peoples; by the late Roman period it was present at c 50% of rural sites, though in low frequencies of just 20%, as seen in all regions (Figs 4 and 5). Secondly, bread wheat was not a regular crop in the regions from where the Germanic groups originated. A survey of the archaeobotanical literature from northern Europe indicates that barley was, instead, the principal cereal, accompanied by oats and/or rye in most regions; wheat is rare throughout. Where it was grown it tended to be emmer, as attested in parts of Schleswig-Holstein, around the Ems estuary, and the Frisian coastal region, but it was never a major crop. In many parts of northern Europe local climate or soil conditions did not favour the production of wheat, thus making it a more expensive crop to exploit. Bread wheat, while rare, had some local presence. Wheat, and bread wheat in particular, may have represented a special crop in these regions, perhaps regarded as a luxury and consumed only at certain occasions.Footnote53 Thus, while the incoming migrants did not bring bread wheat, their elites might have encouraged its production once in England.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00766097.2022.2129753#d1e183
your cut n paste finger must be getting RSI Tim
8 billion people is not sustainable on planet Earth longterm because sustaining it requires mechanized farming and transport, processing and storage systems powered largely by hydrocarbons and the use of petrochemical fertilizers.
We are not going to have access to sufficient hydrocarbons for much longer. And there are no practical alternatives that can fill the gap for 8 billion consumers.
This reasoning holds true regardless of the weather or climate we experience.
Incidentally, in 2015 we had an unusually cool late summer in my local area of northern Kyoto. I checked the records and found there were no days in September when the temperature topped 28ºC and some when the maximum was 21ºC.
This year, by contrast, there have been no days in September when the temperature hasn’t topped 35ºC and no nights when it fell below 24ºC.
So this September is an average of about 10ºC warmer than September 2015 was.
By your reckoning, Norman, we should all be dead around here because of how on Earth are we supposed to adapt to such drastic changes in temperature.
According to your logic, the trees should all be withered with brown leaves. The ducks and herons should be dead and floating upside down in the ponds with their webbed feet in the air. The corpses of the bears, boars, deer and squirrels should be scattered along the grass verges where they dropped dead from exhaustion.
But out in the real world, none of this is happening. Instead, everything is proceeding much as it always does. Animals seek shade, and plants conserve water as best they can, and enough of survive for life to continue for another year—a year that may be hotter, or cooler, or drier, or wetter than this year, with or without a polar vortex that visits Texas.
The animals and the plants just make the best of what each day and each year brings. It’s only humans like you who continually whine and gripe and grumble and complain about things that don’t matter, blah, blah, blah.
too daft to answer tim
other than to say–too daft to answer
“why dyou think putin wants ukraine?”
none of this is opinion, its out there available to check, by anybody”
So, are the plans by U.S. NATO to overthrow the local governments in Russia and Venezuela. The U.S. has history of being hostile to any country that is in control of it’s oil resources.
The U.S. has covertly supported separatist movements in China. The Free Tibet thing, the recent Hong Kong protests~~just old “white” colonial powers trying to re-establish dominance. These are policies I’m sure you support.
The $ price of copper is dropping, even as silver spot increases, while Cu inventories in China are increasing. A sign of a slowing global economy. Demand destrution for oil with subdued oil prices.
Low copper price sounds like a problem, too! Production will fall.
Fast Eddy writes about China’s overcapacity problem and the resulting deflation in the prices of exports on his sub stack account, yesterday:
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/overcapacity-and-price-wars
Overcapacity and Price Wars
China’s deflationary spiral now entering a dangerous new stage
obviously much too well written to be his prose.
he does link the Source at the end.
https://chinaworker.info/en/2024/09/08/45934/
a copy and paste Substack!
so lame.
copypaster commenters eventually grow up to be copypaster substack content providers.
On the other hand, it was kind of FE not to burden his readers with his own writing.
Wait until he publishes three posts using that same single link.
agreed.
i’ve never been good with numbers
“For capitalism, deflation is a more serious sickness even than inflation. It is harder to get rid of deflation. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, reducing the capitalists’ will to invest ”
Stop posting propaganda from the Pentagon.
It may be preferable to pay people to make what is not needed and maintain a sense of self a compared to hand out money for doing nothing.
Dennis L.
Once the low-hanging fruit gets picked and production of the basic necessities of life is made efficient, governments or far-seeing monopolies have to gradually increase subsidies for risker and risker (low-likelihood of success) ventures if they are to maintain employment and innovation.
In concrete terms, once you get food production and cars and primary resource extraction taken care of, it increasingly makes sense to branch out into things like biomedicine, AI, DARPA moonshots, etc.
China needs to get the moon base going so it can build solar power satellites to power the whole world with clean cheap energy.
nah, FE didn’t write that. It’s just some unattributed rubbish copied from an anti-China propaganda website.
He’s probably hoping to get picked up by ZH for boosting his substack.
chinaworker.info/en/2024/09/08/45934/
the crash is coming it only makes sense that China would be the instigator my gut feeling is for September to be the crash.
https://www.rt.com/news/603941-color-revolution-medicine-for-west/
This article says the world is going to change. But it does not say how and it completely ignores energy depletion. Gail RT needs an article from you.
The subtitle says: “The US and Western European establishment know how to interfere and influence elections abroad, which is why they fear what’s happening now.” I am afraid that might be right.
Years ago, I did a handful of interviews on RT. But nothing at all recently.
Wind and solar are not really providing added electricity. So now some people are back to looking at added nuclear:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/data-center-power-needs-pushing-oracle-consider-next-gen-nuclear-power-larry-ellison-says
I would worry about both security and fuel supply. Maybe and maybe not.
Nuclear works until it doesn’t and then it is a terrible mess apparently being indifferent to various cultures.
Russia, Japan, and he US come to mind.
Nuclear requires access to a significant amount of fossil fuels, access to a significant amount of materials from other countries, and a conscientious temperament among its people.
The U.S. had access to a significant amount of fossil fuels significant amount of fossil fuels, and access to a significant amount of materials from other countries.
There’s a reason why high-tech is called high tech.
There’s a reason why nuclear reactors are still considered high-tech after many decades of existence.
Lets empty every country with an average IQ less than 85 by taking them ALL into the US. That will be 500 million low IQ new settlers.
When will the killing begin????
When does the Permian roll over????
🙂
That is not going to happen.
Dropping low IQ settlers into an enemies nation is a cheap way to do war.
Why does America refuse to defend itself. Mexico, China, Russia, Japan, Korea, KSA have strict immigration laws that the enforce.
but do you want to live in any of those places?
China yes, Mexico yes, Japan yes, KSA hell no.
best of luck
Tim what do you say will we make it in Japan?
You are not part of the tribe and per biology, blood is thicker than water.
It is something we don’t like to contemplate.
Dennis L.
Ed, that’s an interesting question. Some of “us” do very well. Others throw up when they see the sashimi moving on the plate and quickly head off home.
Seriously, Japan has always been a conservative society with a small “c”. That’s why the Japanese generally make such good corporate workers. Compliance, conformity and consensus come natural to them. They are not very opinionated and don’t display a lot of emotion in the workplace. For those who can’t manage that, there’s always a seat by the window or their own private office that used to be a boom cupboard.
These days, it’s also an aging society, in which the majority are wary of change and more than a little nostalgic. They will not go out of their way to accommodate people who can’t or don’t want to fit in with the way things are usually done. But they will accept people who make an effort to fit in and who don’t make too many demands on others.
Currently about 3% of the population of Japan are foreign residents, which is more than 3 million people. About 63,000 of them are from the USA, 49,000 from India, 19,000 from the UK, 14,000 from France, 10,000 from Russia, 8,000 from Germany and 5,000 from Italy.
There are over 820,000 Chinese, 565,000 Vietnamese, over 430,000 Koreans (mostly South Koreans), as well as 322,000 Filipinos and 52,000 Taiwanese.
There are also a lot of other places in East and Southeast Asia where some Westerners manage to live and enjoy themselves. Godfree Roberts comes to mind. He was living in Thailand for years, but I notice he is now reporting his address as Shanghai.
Dennis, in Japan, blood is a lot thinner than it is in a lot of other “tribes”.
Their society places a strong emphasis on formal familial affiliations rather than on blood ties. Until very recently, families without male offspring routinely adopted sons from among their more distant relatives or even non-relatives, or a daughter’s husband was adopted and became the family’s son and heir, so the family’s lineage didn’t always pass own the male line.
The important thing was to continue the family as a social and economic unit—tied to the land or to a trade or profession. Also, someone has to continue the thing in order to tend the ancestors’ graves.
There were a lot of “clans” in Japan in days of yore, it’s true. But the place was based on a feudal system that was less about kinship and more about land and allegiance. “Which family to you belong to and whose vassal are you?”
Interesting!
On my father’s side, we have had regular family get togethers for years. When a new member wants to join, we have had (sort of silly) “voting in” ceremony for those who would like to join. If someone is going to get married, they introduce the prospective partner, and people vote on who can join. We have had various ones join who are not blood relatives. For example, the mother of a married-in spouse, who would like to be part of the activities, but who has few living relatives. Our get togethers are near the family grave site, which we visit most times we get together. History of the family is emphasized. We have a monthly newsletter, and Zoom calls for the older cousins.
Switzerland has low immigration, but they also have no oil reserves or capable military (maybe the latter is a plus if times get hard, no?).
“or capable military”
I don’t think that is the case. Swiss would likely put up an awful fight if someone tried to invade.
Because the leaders of the nation dont represent the legacy citizens and institutions. Loose immigration policy along with relaxed law enforcement and the corporate and family welfare state leads to agitation and demoralization of productive, law abiding legal citizens. When citizens take matters into their own hands the illegitimate leaders use this behavior as an excuse to enforce censorship and hate crime laws. The only solution I can see is for the US economy to collapse to the point that the illegals want to return to their home countries.
The majority of the paternal side of my family abandoned the City in the 1980s moving to the suburbs and they were part of the farm market, banking and church leadership since the late 1800s. Its not safe to walk the streets or venture out of downtown after dark. My high school had a demographic shift whereas the children of inner city families moving into the district were picking fights with the other kids and parents were fighting. Illegal immigrants from countries may not just fit into categories of race and class warfare but also struggle with assimilation. Dont rule out a geographical solution, move your family where you are safe and welcome the sooner the better. No one is coming to save you.
Please, please, tell me where that is. I will move the moment I see a nation that protects its borders and will take me and my wife.
Haha, if youre in upstate NY that might be as good as it gets during a collapse scenario unless you have $$ to buy a sailboat which is what a couple of my friends have done in recrnt years. I wish I had an easy fix.
maybe the mrs.
you have no chance
sorry
My wife gets sea sick so we will skip sailboats. Will consider Vermont. Craftsbury Common for example. We spent part of our honeymoon at a inn there.
That part of Vermont is quaint. We stopped at Glover on our way to Bread and Puppet festival in the late 90s. There are some nice lake beaches and boulder lined deep swimming holes in around the artist colony.
“I will move the moment I see a nation that protects its borders”
You could move to North Korea, they protect their borders.
Gail, from your article and all the comments I’ve read, I don’t see any discussion regarding governmental impositions as a causative facto. Here in the U.S. , perhaps the U.K., and perhaps others, that may be keeping oil production from expanding in the name of “Clean Energy”, or as I call it, “Dirty Green Energy”. Does that not play into the equation?
That is a good question. I think that sanctions are, to some extent, used in an attempt to keep oil prices up and save oil for later. I think that perhaps Iran sanctions have saved some oil that might have otherwise depleted. Venezuela needs a higher price to make its very heavy oil worthwhile extracting, so I am doubtful that is sanctions have had any impact.
We hear about people concerned about the climate stopping one pipeline from Canada. But later I read that this pipeline wasn’t really needed. The capacity was really available elsewhere, by reversing the direction of a pipeline. The issue was just as much unnecessary expenditure as anything else.
The system itself tends to make changes in a way that saves some oil for later. The collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union allowed quite a bit of Russian oil to be saved for later.
There are more advanced techniques that can be used for oil (or coal or natural gas) extraction, but generally these are more expensive. For example, the world has a whole lot of very heavy oil. If it is heated and refined, it can be a valuable resource. But we can’t get the price up high enough, for long enough to make very much heating of heavy oil worthwhile.
When it comes to coal, I wonder if better techniques might make more coal available later. We hear about how terrible coal is for the environment, but it seems to me to be as much a “sour grapes” rationalization for not being able to get it out and ship it economically as anything else. If the climate does change a little, it may make the coal in Alaska more accessible for extraction and use.
Thanks for wonderful summaries. Knowing what can’t be done saves time trying to do it.
The two wealthiest men in the world are Bezos and Musk; both are looking at space.
Both have very interesting lives.
Bezos has four biological children, Musk twelve.
Our oil data and summaries seem to be backward looking; it would be nice to be more forward looking.
Once upon a time in a lecture room, long, long ago, “Oil DrumDays” a Canadian economist predicted $300 oil. He sometimes after wards lost his job as I recall.
Warren has sold much stock, has been, perhaps still is a large purchaser of oxy.
Dennis L.
Great work Gail!
I think the world’s problem with oil are like imaginary tire shortage.
Imagine one day in a puff of smoke all the tires of the world were missing. And there was no way to manufacture anymore. All the materials were ruined.
What would we do?
All the cars, trucks and planes that move everything need them.
We would have to figure out some way to replace them with something else. And different ways to transport things without them. A tank for example doesn’t use tires.
And I’m just using this as total imaginary situation. But this basically what the world is up against. So, to speak.
a tyre wears itself out on the hard road surface
a tank track wears out the road surface itself
i realise you are just using comparative examples, but we have evolved wheels and tarmac alongside oil usage and increased speeds—previiously we had cartwhheels, befor that log rollers.
We have nothing else…no one has invented the hoverboard yet
no one has invented a propulsion system for cheap common use other than burning oil.
(you cant generate electricity without consuming hydrocarbons along the way)
nice pair of Freudian typos Ernest.
Funding ways to love with less energy use.
at my age i can go with that
There is good metal in cars that can be forged into other stuff.
You need lots of heat to do any melting of metals. Our forests tended to be cut down, even with a small population and a little use of metals. I wouldn’t count on a huge amount of fancy reuse.
sorry—it cant
the steel in a car body panel is not the same steel as might be used, say in an axe
to make one into the other requires sophisticated metallurgy
ultimately the only thing a fuel-less car is useful for is a chicken coop
and then theres rust
Your writing here is always fantastic, sharp, and insightful. I am no expert on oil price, but as far as I am concerned, everything is finite, especially oil. we have only a short window to build out infra-structure for the post-oil period.
p.s. how come oilprice.com does not produce any work like yours here ?
Oilprice.com may possibly copy this article, but they will give it a different name.
They have some regular writers. I think I am one of the ones they use occasionally.
I look at things differently than other people do.
I write the substack series “Petroleum Resource Depletion”. I don’t believe the global crude & condensate production rate has declined yet. Excluding U.S. & Canada, the rest of the world is on decline, though the rate of decline is not yet sufficiently severe to cause the world total to decline. I believe U.S. tight oil production rate will peak in 2025-2027. The more important question is the decline rate of tight oil production. I tend to believe in US tight oil production profile symmetry. If this is correct, the decline will be severe. On the other hand, there could be a plateau. It is difficult to predict at this moment with confidence the decline rate. If the profile is symmetrical, then what went up fast will go down fast. If this happens, it will be hard for governments and industry to dismiss.
Look at the shape of the tight oil production “humps.” They go steeply up, and when prices go down, they go steeply down. I am afraid that tight oil production will decline. in 2025. This is only a few months away now. With the rest of the world in decline, we have a problem.
It is the “size of the ‘tap'” that determines the maximum amount that can come out at a time. The size of the tap is determined by investment. In recent years, investment has been down. It is this lack of investment that seems likely to lead to the decline. Of course, any innovation that can truly help the overall extraction rate work the other direction. Perhaps someone will come up with innovations–this could help things come out better than we expect.
What makes you pick 2025? The fact that US tight oil reserves are about half depleted (IIRC)?
Gail, I had similar ideas. That’s why I wrote this post
OPEC 12 peak 2016-2018
https://crudeoilpeak.info/opec12-peak-2016-2018
Thanks for the link.
I was thinking about looking at different combinations of OPEC countries, but I ran out of space and time for that kind of analysis.
Affordability is a double edged sword. Especially in the last cycles of a finite world.
If oil is affordable, we extract a lot. Then it isn’t available for the future. So we are worse off in the long run.
How does Libya and Venezuela fit in. Do they have production capacity on hold?
Venezuela definitely needs a higher price. I don’t know about Libya. A higher price would help it, also, I would expect.
Look at the production profiles in my latest post on the OPEC peak (link further up in the comments)
Matt has very nice graphs in the post.
Welcome back Gail! Enjoy your travels.
From my limited perspective the world econony is becoming more synchronized. It’s tough everywhere. In the past nations or regions were asynchronous. The USA was booming and Europe was stuttering, or China was growing fast and the USA was not, and so on. Now we are all coalescing on inflation, low or negative growth, rising debt and even political uncertainty. The declining low cost energy thesis best explains this for me. While I don’t welcome the forthcoming tribulations, part of me is very happy to see the erosion of senseless material consumerism. Thank you, Gail.
I agree that the economy is more linked together now. We seem to sink of swim together.
Gail, while travelling, please contemplate your advice to parents of elementary school age children in America that may follow and understand your thesis. Where should parents direct their kids education? High school STEM or forget the whole thing, learn to use hand tools and become Amish?
Ownership! Own farms, own factories, own plumbing companies, electric companies, etc.
This is a good question. We really don’t know what is ahead. Should children be learning hunting and gathering skills, or primitive farming skill, or taking STEM courses? Should they be studying to be actuaries?
The world is changing so much that it is not obvious what is the answer. Even the Amish depend to a significant extent on today’s infrastructure and technology.
been saying that for years
without the protection of civilised infrastructure the amish would not enjoy the priviliges of a ”simple life”
What’s ahead is certainly unknown, but what anyone needs can be figured out and then applying this knowledge to getting these basic needs.
This is what real prepping is about, survival, not ‘gadgets’ to be preserved from the current system.
There is a tier of requirements (it has a name but I’ve forgotten it).
Goes something like air, water, food, shelter, etc.
So first, how would your make sure you had air?
Give it some thought and you may conclude that your high rise apartment or even the city are not places to be, so seek a more favorable environment (now).
Same approach for other requirements.
It will soon be apparent that you will be much better off if you can store useful items from todays technology.
Not the useless toys to supply electricity, light, communications etc, but more like axes, knives, bows and arrows, other tools and materials.
The more important thing is knowledge on how your predecessors managed.
For example, Reading of the early days (mid 1800s) where I am, the settlers build homes from the local timber and they used only split timber for all parts ( no saws or axes for the common man – too expensive) .
They didn’t even have steel hammers but used a local very hard wood to fashion suitable hammers.
(Don’t ask me how they shaped them. I don’t know, and I have stocked a couple of good steel hammers).
Find that tree and you don’t have to try melting a car body to make a hammer head.
Lots to learn and need time to put learnt things into practice.
Just one more overriding matter.
I have been prepping for over twenty years and gleaned a lot of information and saved a lot of useful materials, but Nature is taking its course.
Now in my eighties, I can’t run or climb the steeper hills, collect large amounts of firewood etc.
So I am, in effect, an ex prepper who may survive a little longer (after the collapse) than the average ‘ignorant’ (saying that nicely) person.
But that’s the way it goes.
Everything is so complex!
Thank you & happy travels.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/527775/what-the-energy-shortage-shows-about-future-power-supply
As sad new zealand dies all kinds of energy debates are raging.
Adern has destroyed the country and many are leaving. The donkey shut down fossil fuel exploration.
Disaster.
We should be funding ways to love with less energy use. Increasing production of energy is going in the wring direction.
Better to prepare for lower oil supply.
I’m sorry that’s so much nonsense. The oil and gas producers were not finding any amounts that were worth extracting, so blaming Ardern is just partisan rubbish. If any government is ruining New Zealand it’s the current government with their totally unnecessary Austerity programme. Large numbers leaving has only been happening in the last six months.
Large numbers leaving NZ in the last six months.
Would that be Fast Eddy and his followers?
certain to be
without eddy they lose their (fake) life support system
and would have to live in a numberless society.
but i bet the girls down at the clinic miss him.
the ones he yells at—(in his head)
Lol. Clueless.
Sad new zealand is a textbook case of how not to run a country. Hordes of immigrants now from Calcutta, Wing Ping, Angeles City and every other sh*thole on the planet.
This week it was revealed sad new zealand’s national emblem, the kiwi, is also an immigrant; from Australia (a first world country).
Austerity is the only option other than negative real interest rates.
There is no hope for this dangerous and broken land.
All who can are leaving including the donkey succubus Adern.
Ram raiding is the new golf. Videos abound. Young entrepreneurs standing up for their families. No jobs pay a living wage anymore.
Big companies shutting down in sad new zealand. This is a video explaining the energy problems they face:
https://youtu.be/q4uyhq5s3e4?si=AB3Id8uze9l7ecnh
Curiously, the reporting entity is a what is left of TV3 which went bust as well.
The young are leaving. The third worlders are coming.
Food unaffordable for many. They have to steal to survive. Homies will bust a cap in your a*se if you try to stop the looting. Car jacking a popular activity now.
“Adern”
Muh, we need age limits!
Generation Z NOW!
*sorry, can’t leave em haning
Regarding Oil6Gas exploration in New Zealand
Why political endorsement of the oil and gas industry won’t bring back the majors straight away
https://geoexpro.com/why-political-endorsement-of-the-oil-and-gas-industry-wont-bring-back-the-majors-straight-away/
Even if a discovery is being made, the question then becomes how to get it to market. The infrastructure for this is simply lacking in most parts of New Zealand, and one isolated find will therefore require to be of significant size in order to meet the economic threshold to make it.
“Even without other issues on the radar, a very real question is why would you explore for stuff that for CAPEX & OPEX costs will be $30 / boe and more, never mind finding cost, when more than enough is dotted around a score or so countries that can do it for $25 / boe or less from stuff already found?” Dave Waters, Paetoro Consulting
The second aspect is political. Even though the political wind may now be in favour of exploration, what will the status be after the next general election? This is all far from certain. Energy companies will be much more reluctant to make a decision to enter a country when political winds can change with every individual election. The timeline required for finding and developing hydrocarbon resources is just way longer than one electoral cycle.
Based on these observations, it seems unrealistic when the New Zealand government expects a big upturn in the market as a result of changes in legislation. The industry needs much more to come back. A long-term view on oil and gas exploration and development is thereby paramount. Geoscientists can help convey that narrative, as they are aware of the uncertainties with regards to what is there, and the length of time that is often involved from discovery to first oil.
The current market structure for electricity isn’t right. Electricity is really needed 24/7/365, but the system isn’t set up to get generation of this type. The strange way the system works incentivizes wind and solar, but the system cannot run on these alone.
Recently, my electricity distribution company in Slovakia sent me a cheque for EUR 30 and an explaining letter, because on one day 2 months ago they did not meet the standards for the quality of the supplied electricity.
Seems to be all about the Permian, ie how much more potential growth?
Some companies believe they still have unmapped Tier 1 acreage.
I am doubtful about the unmapped Tier 1 acreage. Most very good acreage has been found.
oil isnt the problem—we will never run out.
finding ways to use it that people can afford is the problem.
and if we can’t afford to use it, it will stay in the ground,—then it will be wages that dry up
not oil.
Yes but we will probably have irregular fluctuations in price and supply ; I don’t think that it will go in a linear direction
Another great post!
Thanks! I am traveling, so I put the post up at a strange time. I will still try checking back, but I may be a little irregular for the first few days.
“I may be a little irregular for the first few days.”
Metamucil 🤓
Adult beverage.
Clever.
Dennis L.
My wife found that joke somewhere.