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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!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_panic_cases
My favourite example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_laughter_epidemic
This sentence caught my eye:
“There is much historical evidence to prove that emotional upheavals associated with hysteria occur whenever a people’s cultural roots and beliefs become suddenly shattered” -Benjamin H. Kagwa”
Surely, social media would intensify such phenonema. Social media has been around for about 14 years give or take.
That was the explanation give for the rise of serial killers in the 1960s onward, white men unglued by social change.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
The global population has gone up 5.5% since 2018.
Oil extraction has gone down 1.5% since 2018
Therefore oil extraction per capita has fallen by more than 6.5% in 6 years.
Whn we think of BAU ending we perhaps make the mistake of thinking that it will end for all people, or all people in one particular country, at a particular time.
The truth is that just as according to Mackay people recover their senses one by one falling a period of collective madness, so BAU is ending day by day for many people but not for all. Anyone living in the US, the UK, or Western Europe can look around them and see that for many millions BAU is clearly in the past.
Prosperity is like a sandcastle a child has built on the beach. As the tide comes in it will not be overrun all at once, but be nibbled away bit by bit over a period of time.
We commenters here probably all still have dry feet.
tr. dr all the pagers in the Hezbollah land have exploded at once
https://youtu.be/ZCvWucOwPAQ?si=Ipk8rsyBwOEr5T3I
Who are using pagers now? It is an old tech and that is vulnerable
It is possible, or probable, that all the smartphones of the world could explode at once, and that will be a worse disaster than 1000 hydrogen bombs exploding.
As I understand your comment, you are asking a question:
“It is possible, or probable, that all the smartphones of the world could explode at once,”
I don’t think so. If nothing else, too many kinds of phones, with too many operating system. There is little other than the battery that might explode in the phone.
Instructions can be written onto the firmware to force the battery to charge in a way that leads to it exploding.
There are only two real operating systems–android (U.S. based and works with the U.S. government and Ios–also another product of a U.S. company). That’s why computer technology is so appealing to leaders—they can be remotely controlled and weaponized if necessary.
I think the blog was down when this story surfaced. If not, I apologize for re-post
Canadian government warns country to prepare for new virus far worse than COVID
“The Canadian government has issued advice warning citizens to prepare for a hypothetical new virus that could lead to food and fuel disruptions.
The Centre for Occupational Health and Safety rolled out a second edition of their Flu and Infectious Disease Outbreaks Business Continuity Plan Handbook.
The guide provides information for employers on what to prepare for in the face of another pandemic.
In the new edition, released in June, they focus on a ‘hypothetical virus’, that they warn could trigger further disruption that Covid-19.
It states that ‘based on trends from past pandemic flu, there may be a higher average number of illness and deaths in age groups different than what we typically see during annual flu seasons.'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13743409/canada-warn-prepare-new-virus-worse-covid.html
It’s the job of governments to prepare for foreseeable events. Plus, with the advent of recent technology, barriers to designer bugs are dropping.
” barriers to designer bugs are dropping” The weaponized Anthrax that was sent in envelopes to various important figures in American society was traced to a laboratory in the U.S.
All the rogue, anti-NATO regimes engage in cyberattacks, use chemical warfare, and develop bioweapons but never NATO. NATO has the moral high ground. NATO is good. All the other countries that are not part of NATO are evil and would do anything to win.
Right, Norman?
As I was saying…
https://thecradle.co/articles/no-one-is-safe-the-global-threat-of-israels-weaponized-pagers
The “Canadian Government’ is a totalitarian communist cesspool.
Anything they promote can be understood to be the epitome of evil.
I heard this from a very informed source.
Cesspools do have some drawbacks; require frequent pumping, potential leakage and contamination and a short lifespan. When dealing with sewage these are concerns but when considering corruption they appear to be features.
Cro- did your comment get moderated? I guess the word for underground container for the temporary storage of liquid waste and sewage is a bad word.
Volkswagen is considering laying off 15,000 employees, Dacia 11,000. Turbulence begins in Europe .
https://forococheselectricos.com/2024/09/volkswagen-dacia-despido-empleados.html
perhaps younger Europeans should seriously consider emigrating.
“Four thoughts on Eurosclerosis
Europe is losing the productivity race. Can it get back in the game?”?
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/four-thoughts-on-eurosclerosis?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=35345&post_id=148983247&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nm2q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s really unfathomable how cutting off your supply of cheap energy impacts industrial production. Is there a correlation there somewhere?
Still, as compensation at least German tanks are in Kursk again.
Latest update from Steve Kirsch on Alexis, plus video from the bedside with her family.
Norman, you won’t want to miss this. I expect it will be a nice chuckle for you.
Or perhaps you could point out the crisis actors to us?
https://x.com/stkirsch/status/1836170354160734278
This is why I was writing to children’s charities in the UK from 2021. Even the manufacturers of the lipids stated that they were research materials not suitable for human use. But… but… safe and effective…
Correction: I’ve read below that this wasn’t from the covid shot.
i never chuckle at the physical discomfiture of others—congentital daftness maybe, but only when its self inflicted with choice of otherwise being open.
i have never intimated crisis actors are part of anything—only pointed out that they. are a figment of conspiratorial imaginations.
I’m sure you will recognise that label.
there is in fact no such thing as a crisis actor.
if you choose to bring the concept into adult discussion—refer to paragraph 1 above
As for your first paragraph, that’s very good, Norman. I’m glad to hear it. We wouldn’t want you dropping down to Fast Eddy’s level, now would we?
As for your second paragraph, I happen to think you’re wrong there—the crisis actors walk among us almost every time there’s a theatrical psyop afoot, IMHO. It’s not a filament of my imagination.
You can google “crisis actors” and find lots of in-yer-face “proof”, including ads recruiting actors for crisis drills in places like Craig List. Also, there are tons of videos of the most obvious poor actors pretending to be victims or relatives of victims talking with “the reporter on the spot” and either overacting or showing inappropriate emotions. It’s all there in plain site if you want to see it.
But “Monkey No See” is a very common strategy for getting on in the world. I don’t blame you for pretending you can’t see what’s staring us all in the face. You are in the majority and humans are selected by evolution to try to be in the majority just as herd animals are selected to try to remain in the herd. I can’t criticize you for being no better than you have the potential to be. Keith too. Both mavericks in small ways, and in your own minds, but very much creatures of the herd. Both of my brothers are the same, as are most of my friends. I get frustrated sometimes because I expect more from you all, but that’s totally my fault, because I have no right to expect you to be more than you have the potential to be.
Is this the same crisis actress playing two different characters? Or is it two different crisis actresses who went to the same crisis actress academy? I think the same person from the voice and the overall atmosphere she projects, although the teeth and hair are obviously different.
https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=83H6RW57X6WR
‘filament’ of my imagination
i like that
“At the Boston Marathon in 2013, behind the barriers where spectators were standing, two ‘explosions’ went off – 210 yards and 14 seconds apart. The event was reported in the media as a terrorist attack allegedly killing three people, injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who allegedly lost limbs. This film provides proof that the entire event was a carefully planned hoax using crisis actors and various other operatives. The film exposes how such hoaxes are ran and managed. In relation to terrorism events globally, it is important because from around the 2012/2013 time period, fabricated terror incidents switched from real deaths to incidents using hoaxed deaths, sometimes known as ‘phantom’ terror. Subsequent hoaxed terror attacks, ie after 2013, have been carried out in places with poor oversight, such as on bridges, within controlled areas inside buildings, or in more remote locations. This is why this film is so important because it comprehensively captured the event, and shows how these kind of attacks are staged. It is essential to carry the knowledge gained from this attack when considering all subsequent terror attacks.” ?
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=303&part=1&gen=2
Or could it be two different people, who both actually lost love ones in gun shooting tragedies?
The question I am asking could be rephrased as, do these two performance have the ring of authenticity?
A four-minute report on conditions at her hospital from Liz Churchill, one of only three unvaxxed nurses working there.
“I’m one of 3 people that didn’t take the vaccine at this hospital…and you wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen…I don’t even use the washrooms here…I go home…”
https://x.com/liz_churchill10/status/1835665832359109076
Turbo Cancer out of control; that will be via the jabs immuno suppression ingredient.
Diabetes up…multiple medications.
Heart issues going great guns…
Kidney issues up the wazzoo…
Pnuemonia soaring..
Skin issues
Bleeding back of eyes
Strokes through the roof…
In 16 years has never seen people die like this.
The ones who failed the Cov IQ test are hooked to the cult of the needle.
Vexxes are a business with profits.
Medical system won’t be able to cope.
What is needed is a Health System; but this has been crushed by biggy bizzyness.
If one has a reasonable amount of friends and relatives in Italy, that is the exact list of problems that people are suffering lately, with a frequence never seen before.
The more one is covid vaccinated the more one can risk to suffer the above.
Statistics go on without dividing groups from vaccinated and unvaccinated and all media talk of general bad conditions of people due to various reasons…
Hypocrisy; safe and effective.
‘So I think we need to uncover all of the connections and make it very clear that you could vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-09-17/hillary-maddow-we-need-criminal-penalties-misinformation
But the exceptional country will interfere at will.
Last time a country was so evil it was dismembered into smaller parts. We can only hope.
This is Hillary Clinton being interviewed by Rachael Maddow. Hillary said,
Good luck on trying to indict Russian or Chines people.
How about indicting Hillary? Just imagine how much cable TV could earn from televising her trials behind a paywall.
The precedent of prosecuting a former President has been well and truly set with Trump, and in the interests of fairness, equity, and diversity, not to mention justice, there is a pressing need to extent it to former First Ladies.
A generation ago, I remember the late word-savvy columnist William Safire characterized Hillary Clinton as a “congenital liar.”With “congenital” defined as “having by nature a specified character.”
Here’s how he began his New York Times column of Jan. 8, 1996:
“Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.
“Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.”
Was William unfairly smearing the poor woman? Very possibly. How would I know? The treatment she was subjected to since the 1990s was in some respects similar to what Donald Trump has had to put up with since 2016, albeit in a much milder fashion.
I haven’t heard of anybody taking actual potshots of Hillary, although there was a story that someone attempted to assassinate Hillary Clinton during a visit to Israel when she was secretary of state in 2012. However, the hatred, disgust and bile directed in Hillary’s direction is every bit as strong as that directed at the Donald, and to some extent that level of acrimony may seem irrational to those who don’t share it.
Disgust and bile originate in the guts rather than the brain. The response to the object of aversion is visceral rather than cerebral and could be considered as Pavlovian. Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HDS) is a real thing, just as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is. And if Kamala Harris makes it into the White House, you can be certain there will be a major outbreak or even a pandemic of Kamala Derangement Syndrome (KDS). All three conditions are similar to rabies, and may be the same pathology set off by different triggers. Nobody is sure whether there is a virus involved or if the entire condition is caused by watching too much television.
“Nobody is sure whether there is a virus involved or if the entire condition is caused by watching too much television.”
It’s the magic that encompasses both. We’ve been dragged away from long established myths and magic(sometimes known as religion) that were the foundation of our mysticism and had it replaced with corporate jargon and tall tales that flip 180° in the blink of a headline(or 360° if you’re Kamala, who according to the headlines is provoking joy in the population and we all know that a headline has more meaning to the faith based, than the evidence of their own eyes).
“Propaganda namely does not really operate through “information” in the rational-propositional sense. Propaganda and especially the modern spectacular mode of digitized mass society explains the kinds of assent we’re seeing in the above examples precisely because it ritualistically operates on deeper levels of the psyche, infused with our modern myths and individual attachments, and in a context of social and existential deprivation, to reproduce and recreate the states of mind that characterize infantile and submissive assent. This is not achieved “merely through information”, through a person’s encounter with data, just like the states of consciousness and modes of social integration that characterize the behaviour of cult members cannot simply be brought about through the transmission of factual information.
We do not get the perception that Kamala Harris will save democracy and that she “brought joy back to this country” simply through the transmission of propositional content or factual information. We do not get this character or mode of assent (which would be more appropriate in the cultic or liturgical context) through normal forms of communication.
But we get it through propaganda, which in every sense of the word is helpfully understood as a modern form of narrowly powerful ritual magic that operates through the transmission of complex patterns of (non-physical) intentions.
And all of this has been so much more naked in the years since covid.”
https://shadowrunners.substack.com/p/kamala-magic-and-propaganda?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The young as usual were aware, but who pays any attention to the young.
https://youtu.be/hBlQNrC6Wkw?feature=shared
The experience could be described as paradise 😉
https://youtu.be/MHCuRmSGAis?feature=shared
democracy has nothing to do with politics
we’ve only had some kind of democracy about a century (depending where you live)
democracy is the child of excess
remove our excess and democracy will starve to death
there—thats your future prophesied.—with absolute certainty.
I’m afraid you are right. The level of surplus energy determines the kind of government a country can have. As energy availability recedes, many governmental organizations are likely to disappear completely. Candidates include World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, European Union. Central governments are also at risk.
Well done Norman, you are correct, although what I or Johan wrote had absolutely nothing to do with that.
The bit you have latched on to was describing the delusion of those that repeatedly bleat whatever the headline says with no thought or reason(4 years of Mueller for what?). As you have just pointed out, it makes little to no difference which imbecile gets the pretence of picking the scenery, as the destination is preprogrammed.
Understanding that should free up a fair bit of time for some people, although for those that need the made up hobgoblins to fear/blame, do continue, it’s rather amusing, although probably not so much after the next couple of steps on that journey, so they may need to fixate on that imaginary scenery and that will leave no time for reality to rear it’s ugly head. I’m expecting the trigger of our demise to be something like panic Tesla buying by the middle class, in a last ditch attempt to believe the renewable dream, as the reality of renewables evaporates their whole future in front of their eyes. We’ll go down as we rose, like demented mad men, believing we’re creating paradise by destroying it.
Try reading it Norman. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the mirage of democracy and everything to do with us, our connections and collective triggers.
Neither. It is in our DNA. An inherited personality trait.
Just to make an example, CNN and others are freely visible in Russia, RT and others are not freely visible in US.
Under this reasoning that Russia is succesful in modifying people thoughts in US, they don’t realize that there is also the consequence, that is that Russians are very good in modifying people’s thoughts in US and US people are very ingenuous, to say it politely.
And that happens although Russian television in English is not visible in US..
While Americans are very poor in modfying people’s thoughs, in fact Russians go on appreciating Putin although they watch CNN and others, freely.
Do they realize that with this reasoning they are also admitting their scarcity?
My impression is no.
“So, I think it’s important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016.”
Still trying to spread that lie is she. Mueller ended up charging exactly no one with election interference or anything related. 4 years of wall to wall repetition, but not a single grain of evidence for the alleged crime.
“They’re not going to be going to a country where they can be extradited or even returning to the United States, unless they are very foolish.”
That’s what you thought Hillary and so believed that no one would challenge your lies, you fool. Unfortunately you aren’t as smart as you think and when the IRA employed US lawyers that asked, as is their right, for disclosure Mueller dragged it out as long as he could and then dropped the case, as there was nothing to disclose. No evidence to back the claim after 4 years and millions spent. As one of the FBI agents famously emailed to his colleague “there’s no there, there”, but still the msm faithful repeat the lie without ever knowing how idiotic it makes them look.
So Aug, 2018 may turn out to be the date after all. I’m sure there are still surprises everywhere why the 3-5% decline rates didn’t kick in then, but perhaps they will starting soon?
There seem to be an awfully lot of different sources and types of oil production. Some are still rising at the time others are falling. This is why we tend to get a flat plateau for quite a while, before the real drop in production occurs. We seem to be on a fairly flat plateau for coal production as well.
sure lots of wells likely decline 3-5% per year, no big deal.
mostly offset by production from new wells.
so world production is holding up in the 80+ mbpd range.
and that’s black goo crude, it doesn’t include NGLs which raise “total liquids” to about 100 mbpd.
(NGLs are less valuable than black goo crude, no big deal, they are still used at about 20 mbpd worldwide because they have some value.)
US + Canada refines about 20 mbpd, yes 20 mbpd of black goo crude!
US about 18 and Canada about 2.
the US produces so much diesel, about 5 mbpd, that it internally only uses less than 4 so exports over 1 mbpd.
these diesel numbers are 2023, so an energetic person could update this to mid 2024 by looking at EIA numbers.
world crude oil production is still going great.
of course decline MUST happen, and it should be soon, probably later this decade.
it’s nothing to worry about.
I am currently working on translating educational materials for use in training engineers who are designing and building (as well as servicing) new gasoline and diesel engines, mostly for agricultural machinery.
It’s a big company, and they pay good money, so I have no doubt this business is legit. Investment is still going into gasoline and diesel engines and this will continue for at least a few more years.
BAU tonight baby!
you write manuals too tim?
mazin
Needs must, Norman. Needs must.
Translation and editing, mostly. And a bit of copywriting. Nothing too creative.
Business reports, press releases, newspaper articles, video narrations, speeches by key speakers at events, academic papers, art exhibitions, tourism brochures….. all sorts of things.
I once used to translate the speeches given by Japanese Prime Ministers at international meetings and summits—back when the G7 was the G8—often working late into the night so that the English versions would make it into the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Daily Telegraph, etc. by the next morning.
That was a lot of fun, because up to a certain point I got to put the official words in the PM’s mouth. I could play around with the tone and choose the adjectives and verbs to some extent. That particular gig ended rather abruptly when Mr. Abe took over as PM in 2006. He brought in his own team, who hired a different agent.
But I still have plenty of more humble but useful work. And I can’t quite retire yet, because there are people who need me. Nobody else does it as well as I do, they all say.
For instance, when a Japanese company needs to terminate the employment of a high-status foreigner or end a contract with them, they can’t just say, “You’re fired!” They need a tactful, respectful, regretful letter that explains to the person why it is impossible for them to continue the relationship. Just like you would explain to a girlfriend you needed to dump!
There are not too many people on this side of the Pacific who can word stuff like that these days. So they come to me. I may have prevented some minor wars with my diplomatic manner, and I’ve certainly averted a number of nasty lawsuits.
for once I am genuinely impressed Tim
ive always enjoyed creating stuff, I used to write and illustrate simultaneously…one always gets a kick out of presenting something really well.
always found too, that someone new always brought in new people.
now i do it as a retirement hobby–industrial history mainly. but folks still seem to like it.
(plus stirring on OFW of course)
never been any good at languages though.
Thank you Norman. I too am impressed with your work on the Industrial Revolution, and also with your ability to keep up a conversation and roll your eyes at your age.
A majority of people I know who in their late eighties are in second childhood, a coma, or are profoundly deaf.
My humble ambition is to avoid joining them and retaining the full use of my grey matter as well as my muscles, both of which tend to atrophy if we don’t keep exercising them. In this, you are an inspiration and a role model to me.
Cape Cod, playground for the rich and famous…seems they need to provide upgrade to living the good life with BAU..
Massachusetts gets $1bn to replace ‘obsolete’ Sagamore Bridge
https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/massachusetts-gets-1bn-to-replace-obsolete-sagamore-bridge/
The state is continuing its search for funds to replace the other bridge to the famous holiday destination, the Bourne Bridge, which is also 90 years old.
The island of Cape Cod has around 229,000 permanent residents, but the population can swell to 5 million during summer.
The two bridges are the only fixed links to it and both are graded “functionally obsolete”, requiring frequent maintenance.
When they opened in 1935 they were intended to handle a combined million vehicle crossings a year. They now handle 38 million.
‘Funding will be critical’
Last month’s $933m award follows a federal grant of $350m in March this year for the bridges’ replacement programme.
“We’ve never been closer to rebuilding the Cape Cod bridges than we are right now. This funding will be critical for getting shovels in the ground,” said Healey.
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren called the latest award a “billion-dollar home run”.
As Jay Hansen and Malcom Forbes once observed..” Those who have the gold, make the rules”
Malcolm even had that hang above the bed he slept in..
” As Jay Hansen and Malcom Forbes once observed..” Those who have the gold, make the rules”
The full quote is ” Those who have the gold, make the rules but the one who has the gun can steal the gold ” 😉
Actually, the follow up is those who own the gold are well supplied with guns, hired or owners of the means of their production.
Jay, in an interview, once reflected during the Irish potato famine the storage warehouses were full to the brim and outside were the starving poor crowds unable to access because armed military were protecting their contents from those unable to purchase.
Likely to witness the same again, real stock up on tuna cans
they say the future is unpredictable
but human nature is entirely predictable
lay one on top of the other–and both are entirely predictable
“They” are wrong, then.
Prediction is easy.
Accurate prediction, not so much.
I’d say to predict very general trends is often very easy, hence the praise for the Limits To Growth Models from 1971, calculated with very limited power then compared to now, numbers about the economy fed in very general.
When it comes to detailed predictions, that’s a whole different story.
The behaviour of the mass of the human populations across time seems to be indeed VERY predictable as you say it is.
The behaviour of an individual human being not at all, every group and society always produces its outliers, sometimes those who invent or do something revolutionary.
Unfortunately I forgot the name of the law I was taught even at University – the more a model is made to resemble reality closely (the more detail and complexity) the more useless it actually becomes!
regards,
Curt
the single indivual is usually irrelevant—its the masses who follow him that are the predictable menace
Brave AI tells me:
===
Bonini’s Paradox
The observation that “as a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable” (Bonini’s paradox) reinforces the idea that excessive complexity can render a model useless. This paradox highlights the trade-off between model fidelity and understandability.
Curt, I’m not sure of the name of that law either.
But your comment reminds me of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect—The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing newspapers as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about.
There is also the aphorism “All models are wrong, but some are useful”.
There is an interesting (well, I thought so) Wikipedia article discussing that one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
As an actuary, I worked with models a lot. The basic model is, “The future will look like the past.” In a finite world, this basic model gets a person into a lot of trouble.
The preliminary list for countries that will be favored for “values refugees” seem to include USA, UK, Australia, EU, Japan. No mention of Canada and NZ, though I think they will be in it once the list is published. I do not think another small, nuclear, Western, hyper-imperialist country will be in the final list though. At 6:55
I visited Russia a few years ago. The nice photos this movie shows are real. Russia’s drawbacks are
1. Very cold climate.
2. Long distances for transit; limited roads, not necessarily in good shape.
3. Lower standard of living than the US.
There is a learning curve for learning Russian, I expect. We were surprised to figure out that some words are quite similar to English, if a person understands the difference in the alphabets.
Anglo-Saxons (that is ancient Germans/Scandinavians tribes), Baltics and also Slavs belong to the nordic group/branch of the Indoeuropeans languages.
Then if one also sum the words taken from ancient Latin (made in the middle-age), the words in common are many.
The choice made to use another alphabet was an ancient /political one, as also the Armenians created their own alphabet.
There is a very interesting book on the Indoeuropeans tribes and the first colonization of Europe called ‘The Indoeuropeans’ by Francisco Villar, who is a Professor of Linguistic in Spain.
There is also archeological background explained.
https://www.amazon.it/indoeuropei-origini-dellEuropa-Francisco-Villar/dp/8815127062
And let loose ” The Dogs of war ” . Breaking .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hundreds-wounded-dead-beirut-after-israel-remotely-detonates-hezbollah-pagers
According to the link:
This looks likely to cause even more Mideast problems. No fun for any president.
“even more Mideast problems”
What amazes me is that they did it again . Ten or 20 years ago, Mosad caused an Islamic leader’s phone to act up. He sent it in for repair and it came back with half the battery replaced with explosives.
They called him on his phone and bang!
They got away with it again.
It is likely that they exploded the battery in the pager.
But this is game changing event.
Israel just weaponized wireless communication.
Not only does your phone track you, spy on your communications, list out your contacts but now it can kill, injure, maybe set your house or car on fire.
Something for the anti genocide folks to keep in mind.
Israel has a tool in your possession that they can use against you. And you should assume that there is an AI compiling lists of the people who think Israel is bad.
The telecom industry should have a giant problem on their hands now. It will be interesting to see if this gets swept under the table.
They just need to order only Chinese technology. I don’t know why they have to take all these risks with Whatsapp and western pagers.
I don’t trust the Chinese either.
I think the problem is the batteries.
And the only solution is hard wired control in the battery itself that shuts itself down at a set temp. Or maybe a different battery chemistry that can not explode or catch fire.
>> It is likely that they exploded the battery in the pager.
From what I’ve read it was actual explosive, not a battery fire. If that is true, at some point they interdicted the shipments.
That makes sense to me.
I don’t know whether this article from the WSJ is related:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-allies-make-the-case-for-firing-israeli-defense-minister-c745ecc8
Netanyahu Allies Make the Case for Firing Israel’s Defense Minister
Sacking Yoav Gallant would remove the anchor of Israel’s crucial relationship with the U.S. and a fierce advocate of a cease-fire in Gaza
This story is all over my little corner of the web just now. Google “Alexis Lorenze” for more details.
Young lady went into hospital (UCI Irvine) because she has a blood disorder called PNC. They decided to shoot her up with three different jabs—meningitis, pneumonia and tetanus—all at the same time. The doctor said in order for her to receive treatment for her PNC she needs to be up to date with her shots.
After the vaccines were administered, she turned purple, went blind in both eyes, vomited, got a splitting unrelenting headache, massive swelling, and more. “They keep telling me it’s not from the vaccines.” She says she had to beg for water or a warm compress, which were denied, inexplicably.
“They’re trying to kill me,” she cries.
[Warning: graphic images]
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/alexis-lorenzes-life-hanging-in-the
On my last visit to the US, in 2021, I noticed how aggressive they were in pushing vaccines. When I turned down the covid one, they pushed really hard for the shingles one and even started preparations despite my refusal. I could have beaten them up, since they were two women, but of course that would lead to trouble, so I just went away cutting short any discussion.
This push on vaccinations is also present in Italy.
They are presenting on all media the new launch of the winter season about flu and covid vaccines, updated 2024/25.
In my view, this represent the example of how much greedy has become our economic system in which we live in.
It is like a snake so hungry that has started to eat its on tail.
More like industrial output is starting to decline and expendable people need to be culled so there is more to go around.
Israel is not administering Polio vaccines in the Gaza because they value the life of people there.
You don’t hear too much about the vaccine status of migrants in America and Europe, that is because our leaders want that part of the population to increase.
Perhaps this is the way we will get today’s use of healthcare down.
People will hear enough horrible stories of bad results from vaccines. They will decide to stay away from treatment entirely, instead of perhaps dying from the bad effects of vaccines or prescription medicines.
and people will get hysterical over all vaccinations
stop having MMRs
then a mother will get, say, Rubella while she’s pregnant.
and her baby will be born blind.
welcome to the world of conspironuts.
Norm, I’m with you Buddy, us 0 negative blood types got to stick together to make more room.
Heart Disease
Of the eight main blood types, people with Type O have the lowest risk for heart attacks and blood clots in the legs and lungs. This may be because people with other blood types have higher levels of certain clotting factors, which are proteins that cause blood to coagulate (solidify).
Glad I got jabbed…I’m safe and effective
Mike, Type O does seem to be advantageous for avoiding a slew of diseases including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and some cancers. Medical opinion would agree with you on that.
And I’m happy about that because I’m O negative too. No added A, B or + factors for me.
People in groups A, B and AB seem to have better outcomes for a number of diseases including cholera, plague, and gastrointestinal outbreaks caused by E coli O157. And according to one study, the major variations observed in ABO blood groups in different parts of the world were due to the epidemics that have occurred in the past.
But all in all, being Type O provides significantly better protection against so many ills that we can afford to revel in our good fortune. It seems a shame to go and spoil it all by messing around with that wonderful immune system God or evolution gave us and the workings of which we (and I mean the immunology research community–not you and me personally) still don’t begin to understand.
I’m not trying to put anyone down—apart from Norman, who needs taking down a peg or two. Without going into the gory details and beating around the bush, I’m just preaching the gospel that, in general, we don’t need to inject anything to strengthen our immunity and that the less needles get stuck into us, the less the damage done.
I am going with JJ Couey’s advice which he simplified so that the even guy at the gas station can understand it:
“Intramuscular injection of any combination of substances with the intent of augmenting the immune system is dumb!”
I am going with JJ Couey’s advice which he simplified so that the even guy at the gas station can understand it:
“Intramuscular injection of any combination of substances with the intent of augmenting the immune system is dumb!”
Same here, brother!
I am type O negative. My reaction to colds and the flu has been a lot different from other types. Not as acute but longer lasting.
Well, at least Alexis is fully up-to-date with HER shots!
Here she is on video and also a “before” picture of how pretty she was before her run-in with the
medics.
https://thecanadianindependent.substack.com/p/watch-a-woman-has-taken-to-social
It might not be a bad idea if they did get a bit hysterical, although I would prefer to see them remaining calm, righteously angry, resolute, and determined to prevent the woeful destruction of human life and health that are resulting from vaccination programs.
Norman, have you any idea at all of the number of babies born damaged, or not born at all, because their mums got jabbed while pregnant? Or the number of kids suffering allergies or developing autism from injections?
Of course not. Doesn’t happen in your world.
As they say in the Orient, “Monkey no see. Monkey no hear. Monkey no speak.”
Welcome to the world of hypocritical gaslighting katagelasticists.
Norman, what incentive do the Davos crowd have to keep you alive? You’re old and retired . You’re a drain on resources. They would rather replace you with a young Haitian immigrant. At least that immigrant contributes to the economy. Give you a vaccine or not give you a vaccine, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if the vaccines help your immune system to fight viruses or they don’t work at all. You are a liability. All the services that allow you to stay alive are considered an “entitlement”. You are “entitled”. You are not considered “deserving”.
“bad effects of vaccines”
Or they did from the disease.
Who among the readers would refuse rabies vaccine if you were bitten by a rabid animal? It may be improved now, but that particular vaccine had bad side effects. On the other hand . . .
Tim definitely would.
Fauci is working for the rabid dogs defence league you see
How dare you speak for me, Norman!
I can speak for myself on that.
Actually, I definitely WOULD take a full course of rabies shots IF I was bitten by a rabid pro-vaxer or a wokester foaming at the mouth with Trump derangement syndrome. 🙂
But, living in Japan, I am unlikely to be exposed to either of those dangers. Also, I am happy to report that Japan is rabies free. The last rabies cases among humans and domestic animals in Japan were reported in 1954 and 1957, respectively.
Also, bear in mind that rabies is not on the regular recommended vaccine schedule in most places where the disease is not endemic unless you are a vet.
Moreover, the risk of infection following an exposure to a rabid animal is considered to be about 15%, but it varies (from 0.1% to 60%) depending on the exposure factors of the bite. So getting bitten by a rabid animal and not starting on a course of rabies shots is like playing Russian Roulette. The risk of vaccine injury from a course of rabies shots is apparently much lower than from leaving potential rabies untreated. So, logic dictates taking the shots in the appropriate circumstances.
But every injection is potentially lethal, even if it’s only a million to one, so they are not safe; they are dangerous and risky. Just because you ran across a busy road and were not hit by a car, it doesn’t follow that running across a busy road is safe. It may be the best course of action if you are being chased by a hungry lion or a angry man with a machete, or in order to run into a burning house on the other side to try to save child screaming from a second floor window—but it would be foolish to make a habit of doing it without good cause.
COVID-19 injectables are a different matter entirely. Anyone who took jabs for COVID-19 was bamboozled into allowing themselves to be poisoned for no good reason IMHO. If you haven’t developed symptoms of debilitating disease from them, congratulations!—you have been damn lucky so far. If you want to keep taking more, well, I hope your luck holds out. But at the end of that road, I’m afraid all that awaits you is a Darwin Award.
“The risk of vaccine injury from a course of rabies shots is apparently much lower than from leaving potential rabies untreated.”
That should be the case for any and all vaccines.
Yes, it should be. But is it? And how could you tell anyway?
If you are not actively looking for evidence to the contrary, you will never find it.
Damage due to disease is commonly identified and openly admitted. We can agree on that, surely?
“I had smallpox as a child and I still bear the scars.” “He’s never been the same since that bout of pneumonia.” “Following an attack of pancreatic disease, she developed type II diabetes and later went blind.” That sort of thing.
But damage due to the injection of substances that provoke immune response is commonly denied, concealed, evaded, and explained away as something unrelated by doctors, authorities and mass media stenographers. Can we agree on that too?
Given this atmosphere, these conditions, this environment, IF vaccines are causing more damage than they are preventing, HOW are we going to learn about that?
When any researcher who reports finding vaccine damage is likely to face career suicide and persecution, as happened to the late Dr. Andrew Moulden and Dr. Andrew Wakefield?
Just mention their names, and I expect Trollin’ Norman will be salivating at his keyboard as he rushes to smear and ridicule them.
Why would you take a rabies vaccine after getting bitten by a rabid animal? It would take around 2 weeks before your body developed antibodies from the vaccine. Same thing with the tetanus shot. Honestly, how do you people think the immune system works?
“It would take around 2 weeks”
You are roughly correct. However,
“The time period between contracting the disease and the start of symptoms is usually one to three months but can vary from less than one week to more than one year.[1] The time depends on the distance the virus must travel along peripheral nerves to reach the central nervous system.”
Because the virus is relatively slow, the vaccine can get the immune system ahead of the virus in most cases. The Wikipedia article is informative.
“Vaccination after exposure, PEP, is highly successful in preventing rabies.”
The official narrative on this is that rabies is one of those sneaky viruses that can hide in your body and then suddenly strike you rabid months, tears, or even decades after the initial scratch or bite.
No less an expert than the Great Pasteurizer himself also reported on cases of “false rabies” in which people who imagined they had the disease went on to develop the symptoms and some even died as a result.
So, according to Pasteur, all the classic symptoms of rabies up until hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, and even death can be induced psychosomatically by auto-suggestion.
And he also came up with a figure of about 15% of people who get scratched or bitten by rabid animals eventually going on to develop the disease. 85% are unaffected.
Again, I am by no means well-read on this subject. It’s just one more scary story we were told and we never questioned it up to now. If I was bitten in the throat by a rabid raccoon or fruit bat while walking through the woods at night, what would I do? I’d better research this some more before that sort of encounter happens.
You’ve got to love those official narratives. Normies are so trusting. And so easy to scare.
Vaccines work prior to infection, Genius.
Vaccines and antibiotics put selective pressure on microbes in ways that are unpredictable.
The biggest deterrent to pandemics is low population density.
Favoring policies that are identical to industrial livestock farming but for people is setting humans UP for an infinite amount “pandemics” down the line.
Norman and Keith really are the same. The favor more complexity to solve problems caused by complexity.
If vaccines work, than so must solar panels work as a replacement for fossil fuels.
“ways that are unpredictable. ”
That’s just silly. The literature on antibiotic resistance goes back almost to the introduction of penicillin. It is *highly* predictable..
“caused by complexity.”
Possibility the biggest jump in complexity in human history was farming. If you want to continue farming, fertilizer is a required added complexity.
nope
keith is much better at arithmetic than i am
But it is easy for Kieth’s arithmetic to inadvertently leave out little pieces that make a big difference to the final outcome. I think real world examples are needed, too. Taxes paid to the government are very important, for example, or big projects will fail. If the need for enough profit to pay taxes to the government is left out, the calculations will be misleading. Interest on borrowed money is another important consideration, if there is an investment today, with payback later.
“inadvertently leave out ”
What I do here is not business plants or formal papers. I still have the spreadsheets from analyzing solar power satellite projects. Long out of date, but if someone wants to see them and is not bothered by a business plan that spends $60 B before making a profit, ask.
You don’t need to worry about taxes until the project is making money.
Profit from power satellite construction made trillions of profit on the excel sheets. IF it did not, there would be no point in the project. The hard part is getting the cost down to where the project makes money from a highly competitive product.
“Interest on borrowed money”
Peaked in the power satellite model around $5 billion per years (IRRC).
The idea of EROEI comes from “in and out” analyses, such as used in Limits to Growth modeling. Such a model needs to consider all parts of the economy, not just the ones that are convenient to model. It also needs to look at particular time frames–in and out during the second half of 2024, for example. Resources become increasingly constrained, so a greater and greater share of the resources need to be used, simply for resource extraction.
Burning a fuel now is in many ways far better for the economy (because of the immediate benefit) than a very much delayed benefit, which may or may not actually arrive. Building devices that will be used over a long period requires paying bankers and others interest.
Electricity requires an electricity grid, and continuous upkeep of the road system to allow access to the electric grid. It does not function with electricity alone–it very much depends on the oil parts of the system. We don’t pave roads with electricity, for example.
Trying to look at electricity, or a single type of electricity, by itself, is an exercise doomed to failure. Today’s economy can only exist as part of our fossil fuel-based system.
Governments are one part of the system that can’t be left out. Governments provide roads, schools, and many other important functions.
“Such a model needs to consider all parts of the economy, not just the ones that are convenient to model.”
You need to be sensible in what you include in a model, especially rough preliminary models. For example, I ignore the energy input for constructing rockets for two reasons, first it is small compared to the rocket fuel and second because the energy cost is divided over perhaps 100 flights. That would not be the case with expendable rockets, but we don’t need to consider that because the economics is ridiculous.
Likewise, you can ignore the energy cost of the power satellite hardware because it is small compared to the cost of lifting it to orbit and also small in comparison to the energy it delivers.
Payback time is a useful metric. Existing renewables energy paybacks are in the year range. Most of the energy invested in a power satellite is the fuel needed to lift it to orbit. The payback time is around 66 days. Even if you include the energy in parts and a proportionate energy that went into building the rockets, the payback is not going to be pushed out by more than 10%. For rough analysis, that’s good enough.
It if fails the rough analysis, there is no point in further consideration.
I think you over estimate the cost of maintaining the electrical grid. Granted it is high, see the videos of the guys crawling out of helicopters who replace spacers on very high voltage lines. But the spacers last at least 40 years.
“Today’s economy can only exist as part of our fossil fuel-based system. ”
That’s true. But we are mostly talking about the future economy which will have to get along without fossil fuels but will have technology advanced over the present. Can we get along without fossil fuels? Ask engineers.
The science cult members will jab on never allowing the truth of the vile vexxines to shake their worship of the false idols of ‘medicine.
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/376/bmj.o702.full.pdf
Science is a lost cause; antibiotics are the flagship of a disasterous fight against nature that has been doomed from the start.
We are at the Copernicus stage of the scientific method where the vested interests fight tooth and needle to save their rotten corpse against mounting evidence of the hgreater harms hidden within.
Science should restrict itself to inert structures, not living systems.
The gain of function research will be the dead-end of the road.
I think there is a lot of merit in that line of reasoning, Gail.
I’d say it applies to roads here in the UK, in addition to the NHS. The local roads are abysmal and getting worse! There is also the issue that the local councils are broke and have to prioritise spending.
Norman will not believe it
Matters not on believing or not believing at this stage,
We all know the end game if we’ve been here for a time.
Oh, this is for Gail
EnergyChart: Coal Consumption by Region (1965-2023)Published 1 day ago on September 16, 2024
By Bruno VendittiGraphics/Design:Sam Parker
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rise-in-global-coal-consumption-by-region-1965-2023/
In order to meet consumption demand, global coal production also reached its highest-ever level in 2023.
Over 8.7 billion tonnes of coal were mined, equal to about 179 exajoules worth, with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for nearly 80% of global output. This activity was concentrated in Australia, China, India, and Indonesia.
China alone was responsible for just over half of total global production
China is by far the largest consumer of coal, accounting for 56% of the global total, with 91.94 exajoules in 2023.
It is followed by India, with 21.98 exajoules, and the U.S., with 8.20 exajoules. In 2023, India exceeded the combined consumption of Europe and North America for the first time.
Regionally, North America, Europe, and even the Rest of World have seen a decline in coal consumption since the 1990s. The Asia-Pacific region, however, has made up for this demand and more, with consumption soaring since about the year 2000.
The big issue is that world coal consumption is practically flat between 2013 and 2023. On a per capita basis, it is way down. This is a big problem. The easy (and cheap) to extract coal is gone. The world has been able to grow its manufacturing (including steel and concrete) using cheap coal.
Looks as if the BRICS are well positioned to take the BAU Baton from the West…
BRIC by BRIC, de-dollarization only a matter of time
Speculation mounting BRICS to announce a gold-backed trading currency to break the greenback’s hold on global finance
https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/bric-by-bric-de-dollarization-only-a-matter-of-time/
by Jan Krikke
September 17, 2024
At a campaign rally in Wisconsin, US presidential candidate Donald Trump stepped up his America First campaign earlier this month by vowing to impose 100% tariffs on goods from any nation that shifts away from the dollar.
We live in desperate times…
War drums are beating
I expect he will roll his eyes.
I wonder if he thinks it’s a hoax and that the woman has done this with makeup to get attention?
What’s your diagnosis, Dr. Pagett? Hysteria? Morgellons? Munchausen syndrome by proxy?
bet it was some psycho “DO GOODer” doc or nurse who jabbed her!
Stay the hell away from those places.
A new hotspot for war devolping . Ethiopia vs Egypt .
https://www.dw.com/en/could-egypt-and-ethiopias-tensions-escalate-into-a-war/a-70211192
Serious observation . Copy/paste .
The matter is very serious because it pits a country of Arab ethnicity and Muslim religion against a country of black ethnicity and mostly Christian and animist. In addition, there are 7 or 8 other countries affected. If a war were to break out, it could involve Muslim countries that would support Egypt with African countries with black populations that would support Ethiopia. About 10 countries in the mess and several affected probably in the Middle East, which is lacking in that area. Be careful because a high-ranking Egyptian military officer did not rule out bombing the Renaissance Dam if Ethiopia cuts off the water that Egypt believes should reach them. I suppose Ethiopia would do the same with the Aswan Dam. In short, a terrible military conflict.
Involving two BRICS countries, if I can add.
Possible, but they might have a bit of trouble ‘getting at each other’, since Sudan lies between them.
Ethiopian dams reducing the flow of the Nile.
The cost-benefit analyses for those dams would not have included the costs for Egypt. surprise, surprise…
Not enough water to go around. Another finite world with too much population problem!
without water—egypt will die
ethiopia is taking control of thier water—they will use it to grow food, while eygpt will starve
war is certain
Agree 100%
It’s exactly the same as the US protecting “their” oil that happens to lie under the Midle Eastern countries, Egypt will protect “their” water that happens to come from Ethiopia.
Just another resource war, humans can’t help themselves
Maher vs Peterson on Overpopulation
Peterson: “The earth is not finite. No limits to agriculture . etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/overpopulation/comments/1fi5u2n/maher_vs_peterson_on_overpopulation/
You can’t explain to a moron that he’s a moron because he’s a moron.
Also the guy touts himself a carnivore. There is surely no way to feed beef to 8B people using 5B hectares of ag. land. He is not just a moron. He is a pitiful human been with no conscience courage or intellect.
If a person has a fancy degree and can speak well, he/she will find a way to get his/her ideas out.
He’s also paid quite handsomely as a kind of faux-resistance Border Collie. I think his selling-out has contributed to his mental destabilization.
Norway news . Only can get the headlines .
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-09-17/norway-krone-slide-leaves-oil-rich-stavanger-feeling-squeeze-nok-usd?srnd=homepage-europe&sref=f2E6A62x
Some parts of the article:
” the krone’s weakness is a key factor preventing the Norwegian central bank from following most of its peers in cutting interest rates.”
Norway needs high interest rates because its currency keeps sinking, relative to other currencies, presumably because of its shrinking oil supply, with Sverdup Oil Field now reaching the point where advanced measures are needed to keep the field from decline. Full decline is expected shortly.
Also:
““When you don’t know how the currency will do or how long the high rate will stay, there is a high risk for us and for the customer — so they wait,” he said. “We are all waiting to understand what it is that’s going on.” In the meantime, it’s just sent out notice of temporary lay-offs to 21 of its 200 employees.”
High interest rates make costs for businesses high. They tend to squeeze out marginal companies. The US has been able to add an increasing amount of government debt to (temporarily) offset the impact of high interest rates, but Norway doesn’t have this ability.
Later the article says:
“Norway’s krone has lost almost 18% against the euro and is down about 20% versus the US dollar since the beginning of 2022 when its latest bout of weakness began, although its slide has been under way for about a decade. No one is entirely sure why; Norges Bank Governor Ida Wolden Bache conceded last year that the central bank was among those to have been surprised by the slump.”
Economists always have the story wrong. They think that as oil supply falls, oil prices will rise. It doesn’t work that way. I tried in my post to explain why oil prices didn’t stay high. High prices for even three years encouraged production of both tight oil from shale formation and previously undeveloped oil from Iraq. But adding both at once to the system led to collapsing prices.
Also:
China refineries file for bankruptcy .
https://x.com/Big_Orrin/status/1835937988997435802
This is a symptom of consumers not being able to afford the high price of goods made with oil. The margin for the refiners goes down, and some refiners go out of business.
I know that China now has a similar problem with coal. Coal prices are too low. This will tend to cut back coal production, and some coal fields close.
China seems to have a similar problem with too many solar panels for the world market. Many Chinese solar businesses are failing. Prices cannot stay high enough for manufacturers.
I never looked at the 2020 recession as a recession with all the economic stimulus
the non-existent elder put in the economy. I also never looked at it as a recession because the world voluntarily chose to reduce economic activity.
From wikipedia
COVID-19 recession
“The recession and the accompanying 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war led to a drop in oil prices; the collapse of tourism, the hospitality industry, and the energy industry; and a downturn in consumer activity in comparison to the previous decade.[20][21][22] The 2021–2023 global energy crisis was driven by a global surge in demand as the world exited the early recession caused by pandemic-related lockdown measures, particularly due to strong energy demand in Asia.[23][24][25] This was then further exacerbated by the reaction to escalations of the Russo-Ukrainian War, culminating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2022 Russian debt default.”
“Debt in 2019 was 50% higher than that during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.[37] Economists[who?] have argued that this increased debt is what led to debt defaults in economies and businesses across the world during the recession.[38][39] The first signs of trouble leading up to the collapse occurred in September 2019, when the US Federal Reserve began intervening in the role of investor to provide funds in the repo markets; the overnight repo rate spiked above an unprecedented 6% during that time, which would play a crucial factor in triggering the events that led up to the crash.[”
“According to a 2021 study, only 7% of the decline in economic activity was due to government-imposed restrictions on activity; the vast majority of the decline was due to individuals voluntarily disengaging from commerce.”
And I I thought a large increase in the death rate and a voluntary reduction in economic activity was a trigger for the 2020 recession.
To be fair they also blame the Orange Man’s tariffs, which the Biden administration decided to keep.
You know, it’s easy to say many leaders are nihilistic deep down and don’t have any core principles except wanting to advance…but I refuse to believe they are that simple.
.
I assure you many leaders in the West are nihilistic. Feel free to make a list of those who are not.
The strange response in 2020 was the way the self-organizing economy reacted to many stresses simultaneously:
1. Oil supply was already down, especially on a per-capita basis. Peak oil came in 2018. Oil for long distance transport of goods and services was already badly stretched. But even oil for transport to work was badly stressed.
The changes in 2020 helped greatly to relieve this oil shortage on a temporary basis. Airline fuel was especially cut back. So was oil used in making new vehicles or all kinds. Oil used in commuting to work dropped greatly. People stopped going to church as much, worshipping online instead. Some of these changes have “stuck.” We don’t necessarily see all of the changes. Many of the flight cuts have been in Asia and Asia Pacific, for example.
2. The US financial economy was already badly stressed in 2018. This was especially noticed in the “repo market,” which few people noticed. Printing a huge amount of debt would bail out the US economy as well as the economies of many other “advanced” nations. Temporarily student loan payments, and allowing renters to stay in their homes, even if they could not pay the rent, also helped. The money printing enabled inflation, but it also enabled many businesses to stay open that would otherwise have collapsed.
A recession occurred, but it was not as “bad” as a normal recession would have been, because of the big bail out attached.
3. The pharmaceutical industry has been the source of huge investments in recent years, but the industry has had great difficulty getting adequate returns. Mandating a vaccine was indirectly a way of pumping money into the pharmaceutical industry. Fauci was closely affiliated with the pharmaceutical industry. Asking Fauci’s opinion assured a “mandate the vaccine” response. The US CDC was supported both financially and with new employees by the pharmaceutical industry, so it would go along. The World Health Organization was heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so it could sway results as well.
4. The healthcare industry has gotten terribly bloated in recent years. The scare of Covid-19 got the healthcare industry to make changes–offer online care instead of only office assistance, for example. Quite a few people left the healthcare industry. At the same time, many elderly people could see that they could be trapped in their care home for months at a time, if they chose to move to one of these homes. This decreased the number of people seeking care at one of these homes.
5. I decided to look at UN estimates of population growth, to see what impact the UN thinks recent changes have had.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Population-Growth-Trends-UN-2024-Estimates.png
The big impacts of Covid-19 seem to be where vaccines were most used, suggesting that they were of doubtful benefit. I have not tried to separate out the impact of immigration. This would make a big difference as well. Population growth for the US grew less rapidly in 2020 and 2021, but picked up again in 2022 and 2023.
The “More Developed Regions” would presumably include Europe, Japan, and several other areas, besides the US. Its population growth dropped in 2020 and turned negative in 2021. It has since started inching back up again.
I expect that this impact on population is less than what you were imagining.
Gail Tverberg says:
September 17, 2024 at 10:53 am
“The changes in 2020 helped greatly to relieve this oil shortage on a temporary basis. ”
I had a feeling that was the case back then. There were articles floating around on the internet about how the lockdowns were good for carbon dioxide emissions.
meaning
‘it helped conserve fossil fuels for a little while.
Conspiracy theorists were predicting climate related lockdowns in the future based on those articles highlighting the effect of the lockdowns on carbon dioxide emissions and the other articles about the lockdowns reflecting a “new normal”.
I’m not sure if the non-existent elders would try to implement another global lockdown campaign since the last one weakened the system. It takes resources to implement and enforce new rules and we aren’t sure how much there is of those things to do that.
I expect that there will be a different excuse for people to stay at home next time. Perhaps, “We need to fight a war against ________, and we need to conserve resources for that war.
“voluntarily chose”
Good analysis.
James Kustler’s take on the current US presidential situation:
https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/beep-beep
Chris Martenson has a 55 minute youtube discussion on a similar topic. I haven’t had a chance to look at it myself.
https://youtu.be/5hUrlsqBWgM
Martenson feels that the media is partially to blame for the assassination attempt. Mr Routh seemed to be an unstable fellow. He was likely looking for attention. The media had not denounced the first assassination attempt. Instead, they made it sound like Trump brought the first assassination attempt on himself.
All of this needs to be adequately investigated. Martenson doesn’t see any particular involvement of government organizations.
Presidential ‘race’ is what is at stake. A smiling partial Asian girl vs a old white angry man. A clear and present danger. The prison guards are watching. MS13 on the south, Vikings on the north. Crypto’s on edge, carrots on wedge. Blue hair, red dots. Islands and hot spots. Golf courts, Nvidea shorts, that’s where i live, up up in the air.
Whether USA remains USA, or it becomes Tamil Nadu.
https://youtu.be/Z5jCt0jUuhI?si=i4ObNgKEF_y9Xl2f
I am sure that if Kamala Haris becomes President, the United States will NOT turn into India. If Kamala Harris was a white man, you would say anything like that, this is just Birtherism reborn.
The problem the world faces right now is OIL DEPLETION, you know what this blog is about. The racial makeup of the next President of the United States has nothing to do with that fact.
Right, and that is an engineering question.
Ms. Gopalan grew up speaking Tamil, raised by Tamils and thinks like a Tamil.
How do Tamils think differently than everyone else?
“How do Tamils think differently than everyone else?”
They are not white and they do not speak high German, or even rudimentary English, so clearly inferior to the deluded, self appointed master race. As with the cult of the needle, there’s no getting through to these narrative knuckle draggers. Good luck trying.
“They are not white and they do not speak high German, or even rudimentary English”
I thought this comment was funny because my maternal grandfather came from Germany and spoke Low German (He was from Schleswig-Holstein). I think English is more closely related to Low German than High German because the Angles which settled England are from Schleswig-Holstein
She’s going to “snatch the patents”!
“I have the wiiiiill to do it!”
Kamala Harris plans to “snatch the patents” from companies.
There are many websites that say that this quote was taken out of context.
https://www.fox43.com/article/news/verify/government-snatch-patents-based-on-prices-verify/521-640f4c64-65f1-4b23-9bb8-43c1c8952a74
This clip comes from C-SPAN coverage of a 2019 town hall in Iowa when then U.S. Senator Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic nomination for president.
But here’s what the clip leaves out.
“A lot of drugs, prescription medication, was born out of federal funding for the research and development for that drug. Your taxpayer dollars,” Harris said. “So, for any drug where they fail to play by our rules and if that drug came about because of federal funding for what’s called R and D, research and development, I will snatch their patent.”
So perhaps it is not quite a bad as it sounds.
Thanks for the added context. I wonder what she means by “our rules”.
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky?
It does not matter since those drugs do absolutely nothing for human health. so this is a big nothingburger. she claims she can do nothing cheaper.
Maybe they do things like that in Tamil Nadu.
Tamil genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_genocide
This is what your type of thinking leads to.
I imagine this was during a different period of “not enough to go around.”
This is spot on. Gail, a must read for you.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-great-stagnation
Thanks! I am not sure I would come to exactly the same conclusions B does, but the top tiers have definitely come out ahead.
“Knowing that we have built our entire global civilization on finite, non-renewable materials, it makes no sense to dream about delaying the inevitable end hoping that human collaboration will somehow save an inherently unsustainable system. Instead, it would be high time we turned our focus, energy and collaboration towards returning to an agrarian, local, low-tech economy as decently and as quickly as possible. Having such scared, technutopian, clueless elites advised by bankers, however, I’m not holding my breath.”
Sums it up well.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bad550a-fc15-4e5c-8a34-77dd1dcc72d0_1000x523.png
…… nice graphic
This heavy front-end material use is a big problem. It also needs to be repeated frequently.
I expect the material use for all of the transmission infrastructure required for electricity is omitted in this chart, as well. This would particularly affect the energy approaches distributed as electricity. Wind, solar and hydro are typically not near where they are used. They disproportionately use this transmission.
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Boeing has big problems after attempting to make a fuel-efficient jet.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/boeing-strike-may-spark-chaos-across-supplier-network-significant-spending-reductions
Boeing Strike May Spark Chaos Across Supplier Network As “Significant Spending Reductions” Imminent
There are an awfully lot of Boeing jets in use. If Boeing has major problems, or goes bankrupt, I wonder about getting proper replacement parts for planes currently in operation.
Is Boeing “too big to fail”?
Domino theory . Vendors to Boeing .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-09-16_12-05-29.png?itok=rZsLI6fX
Boeing has a huge number of connections. It can’t fail without bringing down others.
They are a major aerospace defense contractor, so I would have to say they are “too essential to national security to fail”.
Money has big problems after attempting a more efficient output. After losing its growth ‘n greed potential, the druids added copper into gold and silver coins. When the ‘price’ of copper went higher and higher, they turned to the kitchen sink. And after that to digital tokens to spunge up excess liquidity the druids created in the first place. Efficiency, too, has limits. That is when they start calling it complexity.
“druids”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson#Druid_prank
https://www.leparisien.fr/resizer/6SL91g3kLMld4ZAoRb4iKf6lpz8=/932×582/arc-anglerfish-eu-central-1-prod-leparisien.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BGYQ3ZJAIYOWEQMAZLTMK7L7F4.jpg
Romantics Keith. Or Roman Tricks.
Very good btw, thanks. Did you know ‘btw’ is the major tax where i live? Value added taxes. Well, what comes up, must come down. Oh, my misstake. As the value goes down, the value added taxes go up. Ahh, those druids never give up.
Is Boeing “too big to fail”? Not sure, but they are trying to fail pretty hard!
I’ve thought about some final comments of the last blog post.
E.g.
“There are a few things in the world which some people want to deny but cannot escape from.
1 all the good things are owned by the elites
…
Mass protests? no chance. They will be eliminated by the best anti-riot weaponry out there, drones spreading poison gas over the crowds
…”
A lot could be stated about such line of thoughts.
But I think the best reply for this is following citation:
“You don’t see the world as it is, you see the world as you are.” (Mooji)
I should add that “you don’t see how the world could develop if you are constantly worried about your possessions, standing, power and influence”.
I wrote it.
The chief tenet of the British Ruling Class was the maintenance of the Status Quo, which is why I put my sig as Kulm the Status Quo. Kulm , I saw that place name in a book and thought it was cool, without any meaning.
And the elites will do whatever they can, with no holds barred, to maintain the things you have pointed out and the tech gap between the elites and the rest is so large that the rest have no chance.
Overwhelmed Greece is trying to make tourism more expensive — here’s how it’ll affect you
By Fox News Published Sep. 12, 2024, 10:44 a.m. ET
Greek officials are planning to impose a tax for cruise ship visitors during the peak summer season, according to Reuters.
The tax would be 20 euros ($22) for visitors cruising to Santorini or Mykonos.
From January to June, more than 11 million travelers visited Greece, bringing in about $7 million in travel receipts, according to the Bank of Greece.
“Greece does not have a structural overtourism problem… Some of its destinations have a significant issue during certain weeks or months of the year, which we need to deal with,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said during a press conference, according to Reuters.
Last year, 209,300 Americans visited Greece, according to the Bank of Greece.
“Cruise shipping has burdened Santorini and Mykonos and this is why we are proceeding with interventions,” Mitsotakis added
Greece is not the only European country that grapples with overtourism.
The European Parliament stated that “the effects of overtourism are potentially severe and both natural and cultural heritage sites are at risk of losing their appeal as desirable tourism destinations due to it,” according to its report titled “Overtourism: impact and possible policy responses.”
Hmmm, looks as if there is such a thing as too much of a good thing..
The people of Greece are Turks who decided to side with the Brits.
However, for the people at the Foreign Office, they were just another tribe of Turks, which is why they let the mess in Cyprus continue to exist.
Thanks a lot for your new article.
“The crude oil situation is far more complex than the models of economists make it seem.”
Or simply it is too complex for the comprehension of some economists (and also politicians).
Gail, How do you differ from Doomberg’s opposite view?
I am afraid I haven’t listened to much of Doomberg. I presume the assumption that is made is the standard one: oil and natural gas prices will rise, and we will be able to extract a great deal more, as a result.
Are you thinking of a particular Doomberg video?
I think this is the podcast DQ might be referring to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOYA0J0m3Wg
@ 06:15
technology efficiency will offset any potential shortages @ 17:10
“Doomberg Embarrasses Himself
January 14, 2024|Art Berman”?
https://www.artberman.com/blog/doomberg-embarrasses-himself/
This looks like a good analysis by Art. One thing he says is
I hope Keith is looking at this. Making diesel from left-over energy produced originally by wind turbines and solar panels looks like an expensive operation, regardless of how it is done.
“awful economics”
Pearl was poorly managed and cost a lot more than Oryx which cost around a billion dollars. Written off in ten years, $8/bbl.
“almost a 100-fold increase.”
Volume is not the correct way to compare a gas and a liquid.
“By adding a lot of energy in the form of electric power.”
Nope. The F/T uses CO and hydrogen. They partially oxidize (burn) the NG to make CO and hydrogen.
“No free lunch. . .”
For certain. The F/T process loses about 23% of the energy in the CO and H2 making long chain hydrocarbons. Getting the heat out to keep the process cool enough is a big hassle (lots of steam pipes).
“EROI of GTL is about 1:2”
Methane is 891 kJ/mol. 62.5 mol/kg so a kg would be 56 MJ. A kg of diesel is 43 MJ/kg, The energy loss is less than 2 to 1.
“expensive operation”
On a per bbl basis, it would be 1/7th the cost of a ton of coal, 3 MWh/7 for electric power, capital for equipment to make syngas and around $8 capital cost for the F/T and cracking refinery. The capital equipment for making they syngas will be multiplied by the inverse of the fraction of the time it is being used. If you have an empty gas field, the F/T plant can run all the time.
The capital cost of the electric heated coal gasifiers and the fraction of the time they have power to operate are not well understood.
“
It would be good to have information on how the system really operates.
I did not try to figure this out because I have not had proper training in this. But even people who think that they have the training seem to make a lot of mistakes. This is why any idea like this is usually tested at small scale and gradually ramped up, to see how the economics really work out.
“how the system really operates.”
I have been following this topic for more than a decade. I can go into inordinate detail on the chemical reactions and catalysts involved.
” lot of mistakes”
Might have been. The impression I get was graft and incompetence.
“tested at small scale ”
For Oryx, the Sasol engineers had built a plant in South Africa. The input was coal, but the syngas was fed into an F/T reactor similar to the Oryx one. Beyond the F/T reactor the rest is almost identical to an ordinary refinery.
The US has a syngas plant that is used to make natural gas rather than use it to make diesel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Gasification_Company
I can’t pull up his name now, but I knew (through chat) the engineer who took a shipload of low grade North Dakota coal to South Africa which they tested in the Sasol plant. It worked fine and that determined the gasifiers they used.
It is not a particularly efficient process. They burn a substantial fraction of the coal to provide heat for the reaction that makes hydrogen.
It would seem like natural gas would be a lot easier to make than diesel.
“easier to make”
Both are done on an industrial scale.
“technology efficiency will offset any potential shortages” is another popular delusion.
More complexity will save us.
“popular delusion”
Delusion implies false. I don’t see how anyone can be so certain about the future. I can’t.
There are diminishing returns to added complexity. This is our big problem.
“diminishing returns”
I can think of no examples or theory why this should be the case.
Any references?
when the first oilwells were sunk, the returns were 100 to one, they were simple holes in the ground.
now the wells are far more complex–drilling sideways fracking anf so on
the returns are less than 20 to 1
The wheel was invented very early. It is amazingly useful.
Dams for rivers were invented very early. They are also amazingly useful.
Stoves that burn wood or oil were invented very early. They are very helpful.
We keep making little enhancements on basically excellent old ideas, but the return on our investment isn’t as high. Doing things like preventing pollution, or making a process more efficient, typically takes a fair amount of work, but doesn’t necessarily have as high a return. New clothes washers, refrigerators, and practically every other appliance are known for breaking down much more quickly than the old durable models.
Joseph Tainter wrote “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” back in 1990. One of his major points is that there are diminishing returns to added complexity.
“preventing pollution, or making a process more efficient, typically takes a fair amount of work, but doesn’t necessarily have as high a return. ”
LA air does not choke you now. I can remember when it did. It did take a lot of effort to get pollution under control. I think that particularly one had a high rate of return.
“diminishing returns”
Not always. Electronic ignition in cars is more complicated than points in a distributor but there are not many of us left who changed or adjusted points. They also reduce the need to change plugs.
A little over 20 years ago I dumped about a cubic meter of data sheet books. The complexity of the servers and all the elements involved in the internet is way, way more complicated than ink on paper but it sure reduced the load of technical manuals I needed to haul around. I consider this a good tradeoff.
I don’t think that the decreased reliability of appliances is due to increasing complicity. It;s the MBAs telling the engineers to design products that don’t last very long. You can get a commercial washer that will outlast the owner.
Thanks for the post Gail.
It would be good (although virtually impossible) to know ‘net’ oil production, defined as:
Total oil production minus the energy cost of that oil production.
We know that this must be falling more sharply than ‘gross’ oil production, since we are now well into the era of diminishing marginal returns.
Furthermore, we meed to take account of the declining quality of much the oil – Berman is good on this – such that oil production is expressed not in terms of barrels, but in terms of the energy made available. Not all barrels of oil are created equal.
Summing up, in an ideal world we would like to know:
Number of BTUs from oil production – Number of BTUs required for that oil production
= Real physical value of oil production
There are thus three processes at work:
1. Falling level of gross production.
2. Increasing energy cost of gross production per unit of gross production.
3. Declining energy quality (effective energy content) per unit of gross production.
One could 4. also include the export land model!
https://archive.org/details/oil-exports.-34odt-1/Oil%20exports.100odt.odt%287%29.pdf
Saludos
el mar
The thing I don’t like about “net energy” is that fact that, whenever possible, an oil company will use lower-priced energy in the stream for extracting oil. For example, the oil extraction system will use steel pipe, made with coal, imported from China.
There are also timing differences, which make a huge difference. If the energy must be spent very early (building wind turbines and solar panels, for example), it incurs are great deal of interest costs which are left out the equation. Also, we never get to a point where we can use wind and solar to make these devices. And the short lifetimes of these devices is never put into the equation. Nuclear, coal and natural gas have longer lifetimes. Shale oil seems to have a short lifetime.
“The thing I don’t like about “net energy” is that fact that, whenever possible, an oil company will use lower-priced energy in the stream for extracting oil. For example, the oil extraction system will use steel pipe, made with coal, imported from China.”
Sure, ‘net energy’ is difficult to measure, and probably impossible to measure accurately, but conceptually it must exist, and we have all sorts of indications that it must be declining.
..and of course that coal imported from China was mined using diesel and transported using bunker fuel.
Around 60% of global energy is non-oil, but it is not produced ‘alongside’ oil, but rather ‘on top of’ oil, in the sense that coal. gas, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind are a ‘derivative structure’ built using oil, and, in a similar fashion to financial derivatives, they will be forced to contract as the base is becomes increasingly troubled.
Net energy needs to be measured in each year, or each month. It is the energy out, in that month, minus the energy in, in that month. For all wells in operation. Or all wind turbines in operation.
We don’t do this. In fact, we can’t figure it out. All of our debt obscures what is going on.
Yes, I agree.
However, in order to appreciate this influence we do not need to measure it so accurately. It is instead sufficient to know the direction of the trend, together with a rough idea of the rate of change.
In some ways it is analagous to a company trying to measure its profits, or even whether it is making profits at all. In fact it makes sense to think of ‘net energy’ as profit, and to think of falling net energy therefore as falling profits for us all.
Just as inflation and centrally planned interest rates distort reasonable measures of real company performance per annum, so they also render it even more difficult to measure net energy. This is an accounting problem. Nevertheless, we know that on average oil extraction is getting ever more expensive in energy terms, because of the increasingly challenging locations from which oil must be extracted.
I know that you place a great deal of emphasis on the importance of a clearing price for oil, that is low enough for consumers and high enough for producers – and justifiably so. However, my hunch is that this price is probably more correctly expressed in terms of energy itself – ie Joules/BTUs – rather than in dollars.
Moreover, I don’t think that regarding estimates of future oil extraction it is as simple a matter as saying that oil will be extracted as long as more energy is gained on a net basis. Well before this point is reached the opportunity costs (in energy terms) of oil extraction will exceed the potential gain – ie oil extraction itself will face increasing competition from all of the other current systems which have to be maintained in order for extraction itself to continue.
Having said all that, yes, ‘net energy’ is virtually impossible to measure, but like many things in life,which are difficult to quantify, it is extremely important.
I think that the issue is that net energy varies greatly, depending upon whether the oil is heavy (and sour), rather the light, without too many impurities. EROEI is now too low on the heavy sour oil, but this is precisely the kind of oil we need for diesel and jet fuel. I think this our current problem.
The light stuff, including natural gas liquids and natural gas itself, comes out relatively easily. But the stuff is relatively less useful. Furthermore, It needs storage facilities and end-to-end pipelines. If shipped across the ocean, it needs special ships that use a lot of fuel.
Natural gas, and probably a major part of natural gas liquids, are burned as fuel for electricity. (Or they are used to make plastics. Part of natural gas liquids can be added to gasoline in winter, but storage is needed for this.)
If natural gas is used for electricity, there is a major energy requirement for the grid and grid upkeep, as well as the pipelines and other pieces. Not to mention the transport by special ship. There is even fuel used to keep natural gas moving through pipelines.
“heavy sour oil,”
There is no problem refining heavy sour oil, but you do need a refinery that is set up to deal with it. The refinery I worked at near Houston was that sort. It had 4 or 5 cokers to deal with the bottoms from an oversized vacuum still and a large capacity fluid cracker plus substantial units that pulled sulfur out of the stream.
“added to gasoline in winter”
True, winter gasoline is about 40% butane.
“to keep natural gas moving through pipelines.”
Pipe Dreams
The turret vent blower sucked away the acrid smoke from the previous shot. The loader pulled down the handle and the just-fired base plate and electric primer fell out. He hit the knee switch and the ammunition door opened.
“Sabot!” the tank commander’s voice snapped through the earphones over the muted whine of the tank’s turbine engine.
The loader hit the release tap and pulled out a sabot round by the base. He flipped it around and shoved the cardboard cased round into the chamber. The breechblock came up; the loader looked to be sure the ammunition door had closed, lifted the arming handle, and said, “Up” into the intercom.
Moving the sights away from the tank he had just wrecked, the gunner centered the M1A2’s 120 mm smooth bore cannon on the next Iraqi tank.
The laser rangefinder indicated the T72 was 2735 meters distant in a grove of palm trees.
The gun firing pounded their ears. The aftermath felt like they had stuffed their ears with cotton as 68 tons of tank rocked back on its treads.
The discarding sabot round left the tank’s main gun at nearly a mile a second. The aluminum and plastic spacers that kept the 25 mm round centered in the barrel fell off in the first hundred meters. The armor-piercing, depleted uranium round arrived 2 seconds later–with devastating effect.
“Turkey shoot.” The tank driver said over the intercom. “You think there’s anyone in those ‘72s?”
“Only one way to be sure.” The commander replied. “Sabot!”
After blasting the turret off the last tank, the Abrams started down the road toward Baghdad, leaving behind 30 pounds of depleted uranium, nearly pure U238, that had formed the long, lethal sabot rounds. (Post action analysis confirmed the driver’s suspicions. With all the air strikes, the crews for the three T72 tanks were not foolish enough to sit in the parked tanks.)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oklahoma operation center
Winter came early and hard. Summer had been freakishly hot, and had given way to snow early in the fall with hardly a noticeable transition. The company’s weather forecasters were predicting a bitter cold snap in late January. Lucky Pipelines was drawing all the gas it could from wells thousands of miles distant, and packing their pipelines to the Northeast.
Herman Horst, a 45-year-old, nearly white-blond, baby-faced German had immigrated too late to speak English without an accent. His younger partner, Eric Kovarno, had Eastern European antecedents he never mentioned to Herman.
Lucky’s management felt its pipeline controllers should be in uniform, but in the interest of saving a few dollars, they stopped with the shirt. This offended Herman’s German sense of orderliness. While the rest of the controllers dressed in jeans, Herman bought, and faithfully wore, matching khaki trousers to his short-sleeved shirt with the embroidered company logo. (The company didn’t spring for winter shirts, but it stayed warm in the control room.)
Watching a “supervisory control and data acquisition” (SCADA) terminal on a pipeline was almost all the time on a par with watching ice melt.
The high point of a 12-hour shift was usually eating lunch. The only thing that made this lunch (a tasty pastrami on sourdough sandwich his wife had made, a Twinky, and some grapes) different from the thousand before it was Herman dropping a grape. The grape rolled under a cabinet where Herman could not retrieve it and was on the road to becoming a raisin.
To understand what happened to break the boredom (besides Herman’s dropping a grape), you need to go back a number of years to a plot (if you can dignify it with the term) where some would-be terrorists engaged in a fantasy about blowing up the fuel pipeline to JFK airport. They probably could not have blown up an outhouse with a box of dynamite and instructions in four languages. However, thanks to the FBI’s PR department, it made the news around the world.
A Palestinian petroleum engineer (his name was Muhammad, but that’s not distinctive) had apprenticed in Nigeria on pipeline engineering. He was working for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia when he read the story and decided he should talk to an imam about it. Muhammad was closer to an atheist than any kind of Muslim, but his hatred for Israel and the US for the damage done to his family was enough to overcome his distaste for talking to a puritanical Wahhabi sect imam.
The Wahhabi imam Muhammad visited wrote a letter that eventually reached into the high ranks of al-Qaeda. An educated, insanely fanatic agent of al-Qaeda who was using the name “Ahmed” that day traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet Muhammad. They spent a few hours talking in a coffee house. Muhammad was not entirely happy with the meeting, but the agent promised not to reveal Muhammad’s name.
Through the thick tobacco smoke, Muhammad explained that electric current kept pipes from rusting. Power supplies for this current were located along pipelines at 10-km intervals. Electrodes were buried a km or two away at right angles to the pipeline. The electrodes were made of material such as carbon or titanium that did not corrode. The pipelines connected to the negative side of DC power supplies and plated positive metal ions back on the pipes in places where breaks in the tar and paper or plastic layers put the pipe in contact with corroding ground water.
The al-Qaeda agent sat through the technical explanation wondering why he subjected to a boring exposition. He knew about Muhammad’s family background and expected a more political discussion. Eventually Muhammad reached the point.
“If you reverse the leads on a cathodic protection system, the metal will corrode all the way through the pipe causing leaks and disastrous failures.”
The bemused agent asked, “Is this better than blowing up the pipe with explosive?”
“How long does it take to patch a hole in a pipe?”
Having had experience blowing up pipelines in Iraq and Chechnya, Ahmed replied, “A day, a few days.”
“How long would it take to fix a thousand leaks in a pipeline?”
Ahmed was no fool. He sat quietly for half a minute turning the concept over in his mind then said, “I see. So what does it take?”
“Open the power supply box and reverse the two wires. Or cut the wires outside the box and reverse them.”
“How long before the pipe breaks?”
“A year, possibly a bit longer.”
There was a long silence in the drifting cigarette smoke. They each took a sip of the thick sweet coffee. Finally, the Ahmed said “The right people will be informed. You will not speak of this meeting.” Ahmed departed to wherever al-Qaeda agents go.
You can’t say reversed cathodic protection was an entirely new problem for pipelines. A long time in the past, before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was set up, a major gas pipeline on the Arizona-California border ruptured under a campground, blowing out a hole more than 100 feet in diameter and killing a dozen campers. The gas had roared out of the ruptured pipe for a minute or two before encountering an ignition source, possibly a fleeing camper who tried to start his pickup. That lit off a flame more than 500-feet high. The radiant heat fried the campers like moths in a candle flame.
The investigation eventually determined the reason the pipe failed was an accidentally reversed cathodic protection power supply that had caused parts of the pipe in contact with ground water to corrode and fail. Under pressure from the CIA, the NTSB doctored the report blaming the incident on internal corrosion from water condensing inside the pipe and ran down to a low spot. The pipeline company settled the lawsuits with the camper’s relatives before their lawyers could ask the right questions. The consequences of reversing leads on a $50 DC power supply were mostly lost to the rest of the pipeline industry for legal and security reasons. It turned out (on the night Herman lost the grape) to be an expensive lesson not to have learned.
That night the op center was “packing,” raising the pressure along a thousand miles of gas pipe. Packing pipelines in anticipation of a cold snap had been common practice for well over 60 years. It cost extra energy to compress natural gas to 900 psi from the summertime pressure of 500-600 psi, but it close to doubles the capacity of a pipeline for a short time. Herman and the computers behind the SCADA terminals were watching the pipeline pressure creep up a few pounds per hour.
The pipeline rating was 1100 psi, hydrostatically tested to that pressure when new. Pumping it up to 900 psi should have been safe. However, this time a hole about 1/8th inch in diameter blew out of an electrically corroded weld. There wasn’t a lot of rust in the pipeline even after 50 years, but the flakes of rust abraded the hole in the weld already thinned by electrical corrosion.
The gas pipeline construction included burying it in sand; fall rains had waterlogged the sand. The gas rapidly blew the water out of the sand under the frozen surface layer, lifting the fill over the pipe a few inches. A cross trench provided a path of least resistance, and a hundred yards down the trench it was crossed by a water line trench that provided entrance to the basement of a house. The wet sand would have filtered out the mercaptan odorant, not that it would have mattered, since pipeline gas doesn’t have it and nobody was home to smell the gas.
Two hours after the leak started, the concentration in the basement of the nearby house reached the explosive level, and, with a little help from a pilot flame in a water heater, the building blew up. The local gas connection was broken and set on fire. Before the fire department could respond to reports about a house blowing up, the hole in the pipeline, eroded to better than an inch long, abruptly fractured all the way around the pipe. The ground lifted in a giant bubble, and the 36-inch pipe packed with 900-psi gas erupted with a roar. The escaping gas dug a hole, fifty feet wide and 200 long. The roar shook the ground so hard seismometers a hundred miles away picked up the signal.
A minute and fifty seconds after the pipe ruptured the gas-air mixture reached the burning flame from fire in the house the leak had already blown up and ignited the gas with a boom and a roar heard for miles. The flame shook the ground so hard seismometers in several states picked up the signal. The flames were over 500 feet high and around 200 feet wide at the base.
The house that had blown up was the closest one to the pipeline. Current codes would not permit houses that close, but back in the 1950s people worried more about nuclear war than pipeline ruptures. About 500 feet away on the other side of the pipeline there were newer apartment buildings. The people inside saw night become day and searing heat came through the windows facing the fire.
The apartment residents grabbed babies, pets, cash, and keys. The more organized ones grabbed papers and photographs and got out before the curtains burst into flame. Most of them ran out in nightclothes.
The residents moved and saved the cars parked in the shadow of the apartment building. The ones on the side toward the towering flame were already smoking, as were the closest leafless trees. The plastic covers on the bumpers of these cars melted and formed puddles on the pavement.
Herman had finished his Twinky and was wondering if he should try to retrieve the grape when his SCADA terminal started beeping at him. This was not a good sign. According to SCADA, a compressor station some 4 miles down the pipeline from the break was reporting low suction pressure. The compressor station was unattended, as it had been since the early sixties.
“Eric, there’s a problem with the New River compressor station.” They watched numbly as the station, over a thousand miles away, sent messages it was starving for gas and going into emergency shutdown. Low gas pressure caused the turbo compressor to speed up to the limit point. The one-way valve at the compressor station slammed shut, but that didn’t have any effect on the towering gas flame.
Herman and Eric had only a limited view of what was going on. The nearest flow monitoring station was 40 miles upstream. It had not yet seen the pressure drop and increase in velocity from the rupture. Herman called the countrywide gas dispatcher to alert her something was wrong.
Twenty minutes after the rupture, fire and police were as close as they could get to the intense radiant heat of the flame. The fire department set up and showered cooling water on the apartment buildings and houses that hadn’t already burst into flame.
By 45 minutes after the rupture, refugees and gawkers who were roasting on one side and freezing on the other were wondering why the pipeline company had not shut off the gas. The pipeline maintenance crew was having a bad night trying to do just that.
There were no remote controlled power shutoff valves on the pipeline because an analysis back in the 1990s had shown the expensive valves were unlikely to ever reduce the cost or loss of life in a rupture. The nearest valve on the upstream side was only about a mile from the break. The last valve test was almost a year ago, but that wasn’t the cause of their anguish.
The valve had a motor on it operated by gas pressure vented through the motor. That close to the ruptured end of the pipe there wasn’t enough pressure in the pipe to run the valve closing motor, and closing a 36-inch valve by hand was a nearly impossible task. It took 350 turns on a 4-foot hand wheel. As the valve seated, it generated increasing resistance from the rising force against the downstream side of the valve seat by the gas flow.
So Mark and Eddy, the pipeline maintenance crew who had been called out on that bitterly cold night, worked up a sweat trying to close the valve by hand for nearly an hour before they gave up on the halfway closed (and now stuck) block valve. They called in and told Herman they were moving to the next valve upstream of the rupture.
There weren’t any houses nearby this time. They left their truck idling with a spotlight on the valve so they could see what they were doing. There was enough pressure here to operate the valve closing motor.
Unfortunately, the gas velocity in the pipeline was high from gas flowing out the rupture, and when they closed the valve, the pressure from converting the velocity into pressure broke another corroded weld not a hundred yards upstream from the valve. Mark and Eddy ran as hard as they could into the light wind from the northwest and were outside the fireball when their idling truck ignited the gas cloud. They both had cell phones. Upwind about a half-mile and over the roar of the new fire Mark was able to call pipeline ops.
“Ops center, Herman Horst.”
“This is Mark Davis. Eddy and me closed the block valve at milepost 1121. Soon as we did, the gas line blew up a hundred yards upstream of the valve. We ran and got away before the sky lit up like day. You’re gonna have to get other guys to close the next valve upstream ‘cause our truck is sitting right under the fuckin’ fireball.”
He paused, seriously out of breath.
“And soon as you get it done, get someone out here at milepost 1121 to pick us up ’cause soon as the fire goes out we are gonna freeze our asses off out here!”
After about ten minutes of watching the flame and walking around the towering fire, Mark called Herman back.
“Ops center, Horst.”
“Hey, Herman, this is Mark again. We’re walking down the pipeline road to where county road 25 crosses it. You located someone to close the block valve at MP 1102?”
“Not yet, haven’t been able to rouse anyone, too many on vacations where it’s warm.”
“Eddy had an idea to call a cab, but why don’t you get a sheriff deputy to pick us up at the county road and we can get him to take us down to the next block valve.”
Herman had a page full of scribbled New River emergency numbers by now so it took him only a few minutes to get in contact and have a patrol car dispatched.
The deputy didn’t have any problem finding them, not with 500-foot fire lighting up the woods for the second time that night.
“Sorry about the hard plastic seat back there,” he said. The hard back seat of a patrol car brought back a load of bad memories to Eddy. Too many bar fights. Mark, glad to be out of the cold, directed the deputy to the next block valve almost 20 miles away as the pipeline goes and more like 30 over roads. The deputy put the flashing lights on and hit up 100 mph over the country roads. Mark yelled at him.
“Slow down damn it! You’ll get us all killed and that won’t get the valve closed.”
The deputy said something hard to hear through the plastic that protected the deputy from drunks spitting on him. Asked to repeat it, he said he knew the roads just as he hit a bump and the car’s bounce banged Mark and Eddy into the roof. (There were no seat belts in the back seats.) He slowed down to about 70 and apologized.
The first fire burned another half hour before the pipe ran out of gas. The new fire burned a little over an hour before Mark and Eddy could get the next upstream valve closed. Before they did, freaked-out pipeline engineers called out of bed told Mark and Eddy to put a pressure meter on the upstream side and close the valve slowly enough to keep the pressure from rising above 850 psi.
They were out of range of a cell tower at MP 1102 so the sheriff dispatcher patched the instruction through the deputy’s radio.
“You mean screw in the pressure gauge we keep in the truck?” Eddy asked sweetly. Puzzled at the question, the pipeline engineer answered in the affirmative.
“We’re out here with a fricking gate key and our bare hands. The truck and our gauges are under the fireball at MP 1121!”
There was a hurried discussion on the other end.
“Any tools at all?”
The deputy had an X-type lug wrench in the trunk of his patrol car he used to change tires for good-looking women. One of its sockets happened to fit the 3/4-inch pressure set nut on a blow-off valve on the upstream side of the block valve.
“OK, back the adjustment nut off four turns. That should take it down to about 850 psi. Then close the block valve half way then in steps of an inch watching for the pressure relief valve to start opening. When the blow-off opens just a bit, wait a minute or two until it closes before you make another step closing the block valve. And for god’s sake, don’t have any sources of ignition around! If you have to use a flashlight don’t turn it off.”
Mark and Eddy acknowledged, sent the deputy and his patrol car up wind, and managed to close the block valve without tripping the blow-off valve or rupturing the pipe again. By the time, they finished another Lucky Pipelines truck was close, so they only had to spend 15 minutes sitting in the uncomfortable (but warm) back seat of the patrol car.
By early morning, gas transmission was affected all the way back to the wellheads. Herman, Eric and de Silvia, their shift boss, had the dubious distinction of being on shift for the only double break in pipeline history. Two pipeline ruptures indicated something was terribly wrong. Perhaps it was an attack on infrastructure.
However, the pipeline ruptures didn’t look like an attack. Attacks should happen at places where the pipeline went above ground, and both ruptures were underground. Puzzling.
Starting before daylight repair crews were at both scenes of smoking ruin. They cut out the damaged pieces and replaced them with spare pieces of pipe left along the pipeline every few miles when the pipeline was constructed. A team of failure engineers examined the damaged pieces. The engineers were horrified to see a pit a few inches from the broken weld almost eaten through from the outside. Stan Bowman, one of the failure engineers, borrowed an old analog meter from a phone repair crew that was replacing cable burned up in the first fireball.
Stan stuck a positive probe in the dirt and touched the pipe. The meter pegged below zero. He reversed the leads and read almost a volt.
“Oh shit, the pipe is positive. No wonder it ruptured.” Like most of his profession, he had heard vague rumors of what had caused the pipeline under the campground to fail years before. Stan and his boss, and his boss’s boss, a company vice president, went to Washington a week later and spent a bad couple of days explaining cathodic protection to DHS and FBI agents who had forgotten what a metal ion is if they ever had known.
It horrified all three of them that the people who were in charge of keeping people and infrastructure safe had so little knowledge of the underlying physical reality.
Over dinner one evening with Angel Dilante, the one FBI agent in the group who understood more than guns and catching bank robbers, Stan groused, “It would be interesting to see the SAT math and science scores of these DHS managers.”
Angel commented. “A few years ago a particularly annoyed FBI agent who I won’t name did that.”
“And what did he find.”
“It was sad. The right half of the bell curve was seriously depressed. And when you look at the schools they attended—a lot of them got in on alumni preferences.” Angel took a thoughtful bite of his medium rare steak.
“There was a time right after WW II where the best and the brightest went into government service. That lasted until the Vietnam War in the late ’60’s when government service became unpopular. After that the best and brightest went into industry, high techs, the Dot Comms and some of them got filthy rich.” He went on:
“Government has had to make do with lazy high-paid second-raters trying to regulate people who are in many cases way smarter than they are. They’ll never catch up. The ones who just show up for work get cost of living increases. The ones who make their bosses look good are promoted. Those who suggest the real world problems need a different solution that involves work are made to feel unwelcome. You can only be booted out if you are convicted of a felony or don’t show up for work for a long time. A company staffed with employees who think like those who work for the government would go out of business.”
“You’re the most technically astute of the whole group of people we’ve been trying to brief. How come you’re in the government?” asked Stan’s boss.
“I’m in it for the adventure.”
Stan looked skeptical. Angel continued.
“My dad was one of those who got filthy rich. I don’t have to work. Management knows it. I get shifted around to interesting high tech cases, like this one. If I don’t, they know I’ll quit.”
Perhaps because they didn’t want to admit critical infrastructure had been under an undetected attack for at least a year, or perhaps because nobody wanted to try to explain cathodic protection to the press, DHS tried to put the incident under seal. They hinted it was an accident, while at the same time issuing urgent orders to the pipeline companies to inspect their cathodic protection circuits. Dozens more reversed wires turned up. The real story leaked to the press over the next three weeks, the final installment being about the suppressed California campground incident. The lawyers for relatives petitioned the court to reopen the case. The press vilified the previous head of DHS saying it was the worst decision since Katrina. Then someone noted the decision had predated DHS being set up and the stories had to be retracted.
The FBI determined from the cut marks on the wires that only two cutters were used on the cathodic protection circuits. Only a few were subverted by reversing power supply wires inside the box; apparently, the seldom-opened padlocks were too hard to pick. The cut marks were of no use in identifying the people who reversed the wires. Several hundred interviews of people living near the cathodic protection points yielded only that the last one was older than six months, a date consistent with the tarnishing of the cut wire surfaces and the depth of metal eaten out of the pipes.
Direct damage was about as expected, $80 million to patch the pipe and pay for the trashed cars and burned out apartments. It took a lot more money running “smart pigs” down the pipelines, replacing the questionable pieces, adding remote current and voltage meters to the cathodic protection circuits and adding to the SCADA programs.
Fourteen months after the double rupture a mouse discovered and nibbled on Herman’s raisin. The same day the National Transportation Safety Board came out with this:
Findings
1. The following were neither causal nor contributory to the rupture or its aftermath: over pressure of the pipeline, external damage to the pipeline through excavation or other activities, and internal corrosion nor was the interruption in or loss of supervisory control and data acquisition system communication. Transient pressure after closing the block valve at MP 1121 probably contributed to the second rupture and fire near that location.
2. Lucky Pipeline’s Line B ruptured in two places because of severe external corrosion causing a reduction in pipe wall thickness to the point the remaining metal could no longer contain the pressure within the pipe.
3. The corrosion of Line B at the rupture sites was almost certainly caused by a reversal of the cathodic protection circuit by parties unknown at some time in the previous 18 months.
4. Had Lucky Pipeline put in place a program to monitor the cathodic protection voltage, this reversal would have been found when it happened.
5. Federal pipeline safety regulations did not provide adequate guidance to pipeline operators or enforcement personnel in monitoring cathodic protection circuits against intentional manipulation. The Pipeline safety board has issued emergency regulations requiring monitoring of cathodic protection circuits.
6. A previous incident with fatalities occurred where an accidentally reversed cathodic protection was the probable root cause. The decision at that time by DHS predecessor organization to keep the probable cause of this pipeline incident out of the public record and to take no steps to implement monitoring of cathodic protection resulted in direct costs exceeding $80 million dollars and indirect costs due to the shutdown of Line B. Inspection and repairs to other pipelines exceeded a billion dollars. NTSB is simultaneously releasing a corrected report regarding the suppressed analysis of the previous incident.
Probable Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause of the January 23, 20xx, natural gas pipeline ruptures and subsequent fires near New River, Pennsylvania, were due to a significant reduction in pipe wall thickness due to severe external corrosion. The severe external corrosion occurred because parties unknown had reversed the cathodic protection circuits on this and other pipelines, and Lucky Pipeline’s personnel failed to detect this reversal. The decision of Federal agencies to suppress the analysis of a previous cathodic reversal incident probably contributed to this incident.
Keith, I haven’t read this one yet.
I’m waiting for it to come out in paperback.
I agree with you on this.
“Around 60% of global energy is non-oil, but it is not produced ‘alongside’ oil, but rather ‘on top of’ oil,”
Perhaps the statement needs to be expanded a bit:
The under structure of our economy runs on diesel and jet fuel. Diesel and jet fuel make up a small share of our energy supply, say 20%. We are desperately trying to move to other types of energy, but this is especially difficult in the transport sector. Everything else is derivative on having sufficient fuels for our heavy equipment.
Total oil produced 84 mbpd
Shale , NGL , NGPL , biofuels etc is 16 mbpd .
Real crude 65-68 mbpd max .
Energy density;
“While propane generally costs less than diesel or gasoline, it has a lower energy density. Diesel has an energy density of 35.8 megajoules per liter (MJ/L), and gasoline has an energy density of 34.2 MJ/L). Propane, however, only has an energy density of 26 MJ/L, almost a third less of that of diesel and gasoline.”
In general higher density fuels contain more energy per litre .
Yes, trying to put it simply for those who argue on your explanations, it is necessary to find quickly and easily alternative affordable machineries (than current ones) capable to run with other fuels or other kind of energy.
Or alternative affordable fuels that run on our current machineries (than the current fuels we are currently using), like for this list (not complete)
– truks for transportation of goods for population (from food, beverage, to any kind of stuff)
– tractors and all farm machineries to produce food for population
– airplanes and elicopters for travels and trasport of goods (including military ones)
– tanks and all army vehicles for menacing or doing wars
– many types of ships for transportation of goods (from food, beverage, to any kind of stuff) and also transportation of people.
These alternative machineries need to be built quickly.
Or these alternative fuels need to be delivered on the market quickly and easily.
Whatever the solution will be (different and affordable machineries or fuels) it will need to be delivered in the amount sufficient to substain the current level of population with the current level of needs that the population currently have in the world.
Right! It doesn’t look like we have time to develop much in the way of new technologies. We need a way to keep the current system going, and that will lead to needing fuels that work in the current system, or with only very minor changes.
new technologies
At least the trick of making diesel out of coal, steam, and PV needs very little development. The basic chemistry dates back to the very start of the industrial revolution.
It will take investment and right now all the venture capital is pointed away from physical systems.
unfortunately keith—”investment” is another word for money
and money is just a token of energy exchange.
so energy must be expended….to get hold of more energy.
as things stand, our return on that energy investment is reaching the point of being not worth the effort.
This is choice.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/uk-high-court-revokes-permit-first-coal-mine-30-years
From the article
>> “We have to leave fossil fuels in the ground”
Do you suppose it’s a strategic decision to use others’ resources first, or is it an ideological decision driven by a green agenda outlook?
Or maybe they don’t want to expose the fact that there is less coal in the ground than they would have you believe.
It’s the Saudi Aramco smokescreen thing.
When Aramco started selling shares I took it as an indicator that time is running out.
Agreed!
It seems to be the way the self-organizing system works. Perhaps, some fossil fuels will be left in the ground for later use by a different (later) economy that uses total fossil fuels more sparingly.
It may be that a later economy can make use of them. A surprisingly large share of fossil fuels are left behind because we are lacking in cost-effective technologies for removing a greater share.
Often, there are higher-cost technologies (such as melting heavy oil with heat) that would be available with higher prices. But they don’t work with lower prices.
Spring festival 2034 is an extra happy event this year the first 15TW of solar power satellites are on line powering all tier one cities.
The remnants of US and EU continue to fight Russia. The ROW continue the blockade of North America and Europe.
The new settlers in America have control of 60% of the land area.
And the new settlers have turned it from the world’s biggest breadbasket to the world’s biggest basket case.
Also, in the recent referendum, 78% of the citizens of Alaska have voted to rejoin Russia. Their biggest concern was to protect themselves from being annexed by the People’s Republic of Kanada, ruled by President Justine Fidelita Trudeau, whose personal pronoun is ella.
Since your time machine has taken you there, can you please tell me China’s birth rate in 2034?
Oil Net Short For First Time in History
By Julianne Geiger – Sep 13, 2024, 4:30 PM CDT
Brent crude oil is currently priced at $72.14 per barrel, showing a slight increase of $0.17 (+0.24%) for the day. However, behind this small rise is a much larger story unfolding in the oil markets.
According to energy investor and market commentator Eric Nuttall, the financial demand for oil, known as “net length,” has dropped to its lowest point in history. Essentially, “net length” refers to the difference between the number of investors betting oil prices will rise (long positions) versus those betting they will fall (short positions). When net length is low, it means there is a reduced belief that prices will increase.
What’s even more striking is that, for the first time ever, the paper market for Brent crude is “net short.” This means there are now more investors betting that oil prices will fall than those expecting them to rise. This is significant because it’s rare to see such pessimism in the market, especially when physical global oil inventories are falling at a rate of about a million barrels per day.
Yes I have been saying for months that there is no inflation we are heading to a depression
Sam,
Maybe, but insurance is up, services appear up, real estate taxes are up.
Don”t know, there has been inflation, don’t have a clue going forward.
Gut feeling, down secondary to a lack of liquidity. For the US government, if they print, hyperinflation then deflation. Timing is a bitc…
Dennis L.
Not hard to figure out. Real economy contracts. Nominal prices up at the same time. Occasionally and only for brief periods, prices for certain good may fall, but the overall trend is up for any multi-year interval.
The world’s problem is that we can’t keep prices high enough for producers. Production and prices look like they are both headed down.
This is a strange world, compared to what economists have assumed. People cannot afford to pay a high cost for food. Oil is heavily used in food production and transport.
that’s why interest rates will start coming down now because Jeremy Powell will think to himself inflation has dropped too far. After all he being a trained economist would likely assume that the economy is behaving strangely it needs lower interest rates.And so the cycle repeats itself once again and inflation goes up again.
AFAIK Powell is not an economist. He is a lawyer who happened to work in Finance for most of his career – which is actually worse.
That seems to be the liquidity problem. I keep good records, spend consistently on the same basic items and services, it is tighter this year than last year.
Dennis L.
Still time for fun, a song for the cats.
mr kittlez is funny
(Reuters)
“Trump safe after multiple shots fired near his Florida golf course”
What is happening?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-is-safe-following-gunshots-his-vicinity-says-campaign-2024-09-15/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-safe-after-shooter-ak47-reportedly-targeted-former-pres-while-golfing-secret
“Nothing Will Slow Me Down” – Trump Reacts After Being Reportedly Targeted By Shooter With AK47 While Golfing, Secret Service Returned Fire
What is strage of this attack is the use of an AK47 style rifle on american soil, while in US one can easily buy an american rifle, such us (just to name one) a Remington rifle that is definitely better and extremely precise…
Unless one wants to find a reason for that…
Who benefits?
From a successful assassination?
The Dems, Kamala Harris, all those cat-eating Haitians, everyone in the Deep State that fears a return of Trump, possibly Zelensky or Putin or Xi.
J.D. Vance if he wants to run for President.
Melania and the Trump boys would benefit from the will and the life insurance.
From an unsuccessful assassination attempt?
Trump himself, the Republicans, the great majority of the US population who will be able to benefit from his return to the White House, all those Trump haters like Whoppi Goldberg, Bill Maher, Robert De Niro and our Norman who will continue to have an Trump as an Emmanuel Goldstein character to satisfy their obsessive need for a hate symbol upon which to focus their irrational ire, pour out their bile, and achieve temporary catharsis.
This scene says it all, IMHO.
Why did Trump give the sec of labor Job to the Miami DA that let Jeffrey Epstein Walk?
Why did they remove the silent “J” from Melania’s first name? Was it to make it sound more “merican”?
And why did Trump let his daughter marry the son of a convicted felon who did hard time? (Charles Kushner)
Good questions!
1. Don’t know. Why DID Trump give the sec of labor Job to the Miami DA that let Jeffrey Epstein Walk?
2. It couldn’t have been it to make it sound more “merican” because the ‘J” was silent in any case. Could it have been in order to make it spell more like it sounds to Americans, or indeed, to Western Europeans? Because I understand the “J” was dropped when she started working as a model in Paris, well before she met the Donald.
3. That can only be a subject of speculation. It could have been because Ivanka is a strong-willed lass who does what she wants. It could have been a marriage of connivance between the offspring of two fabulously well-to-do members of the New York elite. It could have been because Trump wanted to marry her off so he could have her room at Mar-a-Lago as a spare billiard room and young Kushner was the only man willing to wed her.
Do you have any thoughts on the above?
Greek Economy: Greeks Now the Second Poorest in Europe
By Dimitrios Aristopoulos
https://greekreporter.com/2024/09/14/greek-economy-second-poorest-europe/
Greek people are now officially the second poorest in Europe. Real wages steadily fell through 2022, according to the latest OECD data, dropping 30% from pre-crisis levels.
Greece’s economic growth vs. declining purchasing power
The Greek government boasts about Greece’s economic growth, which is higher than the Eurozone average. However, Greek citizens remain at the “bottom of Europe” in terms of real purchasing power. Despite the ongoing economic recovery, Greeks are becoming poorer. The situation may worsen over time. Currently, Greece is often compared to Bulgaria in terms of purchasing power.
While the Greek economy’s upturn has slightly raised living standards compared to the EU average, this improvement is minimal. It has not lifted Greece from its position as the poorest country in the Eurozone.
It is worth noting that until 2009, Greece’s GDP per capita was close to the EU average. However, since then, 10 countries have surpassed Greece in living standards. Now, Greek people rank as the second poorest in Europe, only ahead of Bulgaria.
The gap between Greece and Bulgaria is shrinking rapidly. As a result, it is not unreasonable to expect Greece to soon become the poorest country in the EU. This prediction has sparked heated debate in Greek politics.
As a result, the Greek economy is still about 19% smaller than it was in 2007. Meanwhile, the EU economy has grown by 17% during that time.
Poverty among young people
The poverty statistics in Greece are alarming. Other data confirms the difficult conditions for Greek citizens. In 2023, the Greek economy grew by 2%, but poverty did not decrease. According to ELSTAT, 26.1% of Greek men and women were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2023. This equals about 2,658,400 people. The poverty rate in 2022 was 26.3%.
Great place for expatriates to retire to, cheap cheap…sarcasm
Don’t worry too much, we’ll soon all be in the same company soon enough
I don’t know what list of European countries underlying this analysis. I know that in terms of energy consumption per capita, Greece is nowhere near the bottom. Greece’s energy consumption per capita is 106.7 in 2023. There are a whole lot of countries with lower energy consumption per capita. These include:
Croatia 90.9
Cyprus 91.7
Hungary 89.7
Italy 101.0
Latvia 79.1
Lithuania 87.8
North Macedonia 57.9
Poland 100.3
Portugal 92.6
Romania 64.1
Turkey 81.6
Ukraine 60.4
United Kingdom 102.6
“Other Europe” 97.3
Interestingly, Bulgaria’s energy consumption per capita is higher than Greece’s. It is 107.3 giga-joules per capita in 2023.
IIRC, Greece uses a lot of oil in its energy mix. This is a very high-priced fuel. With all of its islands, at one time Greece was even using oil to provide electricity to its islands.
It is possible that this analysis comes off of the World Bank analysis of “Purchasing Power Parity” “GDP per capita.”
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?most_recent_value_desc=true
Scroll down, and this sheet lists the countries in descending order by purchasing power parity.
Greek has had shippers of oil, major industry. Per Copilot, 8% of Greece’s GDP is shipping oil; probably conventional oil. If that is declining as Gail says, fewer barrels to ship, profit is made at the margin, margin shrinking.
Yup, oil, always the oil problem. Now if they had some Pt, well, that may be a brighter future for them.
Dennis L.
Greece doesn’t have coal, or much coal. In fact, it doesn’t have much in the way of fossil fuels that it produces. It needs to import every kind of energy. Wind and solar don’t do much except reduce the amount of fossil fuels that need to be imported to produce electricity. In a way, Greece is like Hawaii, with all of its islands. Wind and solar never replace fossil fuel on islands, unfortunately.
the greeks are a perfect lesson to those who insist we can sustain a modern society without fossil fuels
Nothing of the sort. It is consuming more FF than Italy, Hungary, Poland or the UK. But it is less rich. I think it is what Gail suggests, they have to buy very expensive energy.
There may be things we don’t understand. The CIA Factbook for Greece says, regarding illicit drugs:
This activity may or may not get into GDP.
The article also says:
” 1,289,013 estimated refugee and migrant arrivals (January 2015-March 2024)” But the country’s total population is elsewhere given as 10,461,091. This sounds like a very disproportionate number of refugees and migrants.
The country is described as “possessing an archipelago of about 2,000 islands.” This sounds like a horrible problem for efficient transport of goods and electricity.
How is it a lesson?
They never implemented a transition to renewable energy.
You must be thinking of Germany.
America to produce energy for all mankind: 1 billion cubic feet of hydrogen and 1 million tons of ammonia
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/america-to-produce-hydrogen-and-ammonia/6176/
Exxon Mobil is at the forefront of hydrogen fuel production in America. The company built a hydrogen refinery in Baytown, Texas, and the goal is to produce 1 billion cubic feet of hydrogen for domestic use and for export. Exxon is committed to keeping the carbon emissions at its hydrogen facility low. However, the company uses a natural gas reforming process to make hydrogen, and there are some greenhouse gas emissions as a result.
Working with a company called Air Liquide, Exxon plans to reduce its carbon footprint while increasing the production of hydrogen and ammonia, which is used to transport clean hydrogen. Air Liquide is bidding to build oxygen production facilities, and Exxon would also be able to use its partner company’s pipelines.
Hydrogen is currently the best clean energy option for the industrial and transport sectors
Much of the planet’s daily energy needs could possibly be met by solar and wind power. However, the heavy industrial and transportation sectors probably won’t be able to run off of clean electricity. Giant transport ships and other industrial equipment and machines will need a clean fuel source to maintain production. Hydrogen may be the best option for these sectors.
Exxon Mobil has been in the oil and gas industry for a long time, but the company wants to move toward a sustainable future for the planet. To do that, Exxon is investing in hydrogen production so that it can sell clean hydrogen fuel to transportation companies and for other industrial uses. With the help of companies like Air Liquide, Exxon hopes to see hydrogen become a key source of clean fuel in the near future.
Despite having to work with restrictive regulations in America, Exxon Mobil wants to move forward with hydrogen production at its refinery in Baytown, Texas. The company will continue to rely on natural gas reforming to produce hydrogen, but there are plans in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the refinery to keep it designated as a low-carbon facility. That way, Exxon can help the world embrace the benefits of hydrogen fuel without adding to the climate crisis.
Did I miss something bhere…oh yes, the one cubic mile of Pt..
Utter nonsense, of course, keeps the barnyard animals from stirring up panic,
As Fast Eddy would clip about us all.
H from CH4 as a transition, use fuel cells for transportation, fuel cells are already used in forklifts, no batteries to charge. Exxon has smart people, they have to look ahead.
Starship to solar system, a cubic mile of Pt.
Solar/wind to make H which can be stored, need Pt to hydrolyze water, use sea water, desalinate with solar first of course, can be done on an intermittent basis.
Pt for fuel cells.
A clean, green future with huge amounts of pollution dumped in Jupiter. Musk might have the spaceships, looks like the robots are coming. Earth was made by God in one day for man. Well, that is the story and I like stories.
Damn the negative narcissists and nihilism, march forward; if it is a cliff, pack a parachute. There is no downside, if it doesn’t work you have the satisfaction of seeing the glee of all the doomers telling you it wouldn’t work. You can make them happy at last and Norm can tell me he knew it wouldn’t work.
And for you pessimists, a first approximation of the cubic miles of Pt in the solar system is 1.117×10^7 cubic miles. We only need one cubic mile for a start. Copilot did all the work. It isn’t that much we are asking for. Yes, I asked it to exclude the sun in the mass of the solar system. The sun can make its own Pt if need be
We already know where not to look earth, been there, done that.
Dennis L.
I’ll get more het energy from between my cheek flaps than these schemes being peddled…just another way to.milk the money teain
I am afraid you are correct.
Seriously Dennis???
CH4 to H2 and then use in a forklift etc… is a massive loss compared to just burning CH4 in a forklift engine.
You can not be blind to this.
Famous influencers are dropping like flies: Why?
https://youtu.be/rwCG-3H4zEM?si=9ReT3zQHyUb-f92T
They are addicted to a horrible drug called “Likes”. The first hit is usually not fatal, but after several thousand, a regular normal person can soon transform into something called an “influencer”. Before long, they start dabbling in all sort of toxins in order to then sprinkle them into consequent hits of “likes”.
It’s a horribly destructive cycle, and too late for the young adults of today. If there is any hope for the next generations, parents need to inform their children about the dangerous nature of “Likes”.
Interruptions by the commercials where unremarkable people want to convince you to buy their equally unremarkable
product or service is considered as an economy. 😉
I’ve given this beautiful comment a “Like” but I hope it isn’t going to lead you to down the road to ruin.
This guy has 200k subscribers covering a single topic. Fast Eddy should take a hint on the way to monetize and drop his substack. Come to think of it … maybe that is Eddy.
its the jab they died of heart attacks the damage from the mrna and their job caused this just anotherr ‘Darwin Award’.
“Covid-19 vaccination required”
Some places still require that people who work with them take the latest boosters.
Made me go –hmm . Copy/paste .
A modest reflection. In his book “World War II told for skeptics”, Juan Eslava Galán summarises quite well in a few paragraphs what was one of the main reasons for Germany’s defeat in the war.
I think it is worth including the text to capture the parallel with the faulty direction we are giving to technological development at present:
“Superiority in engineering, instead of being
an advantage, turns against Germany: they have created too many models of
weapons for the same function (up to two thousand models of vehicles), which
complicates the supply of spare parts and makes manufacturing more expensive.
Towards the middle of the conflict, the German army had no less than
four hundred and twenty-five different models of aircraft, one hundred and fifty-one
brands of trucks and one hundred and fifty different motorcycles with the consequent
variants in production. With so much variety it was difficult to
mass produce. Too late they realised the error and simplified the
weapon models (only five aircraft models, only twenty-three vehicle models,
only one anti-tank model), but the enemy’s superiority in the
manufacture of simple and effective weapons had already won the battle.
A lot of engineering and a lot of expense for little product: the eternal
German weakness. This excess would continue until Speer took over
the Armaments Ministry in 1944 and rationalised production.
Another problem is that these weapons are equipped with
unnecessarily complex mechanisms, prone to breakdown in the adverse
conditions of the battlefield. In addition, the designs suffer from
haste. They uselessly squander their dwindling resources on the
development of effective weapons (engineering at the service of fantasy) that it is
doubtful they will be able to use before the enemy crushes them.
The Germans are losing the war with weapons from the 1930s and
are still persisting in designing those from the 1950s and 1960s that they will never
use. The enemy, more sensible, manufactures weapons from the 1940s, those
necessary to win the war, without any fuss: few models and reliable ones.”
Indeed, “engineering at the service of fantasy.”
As we already know that history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes, as Mark Twain warned, even today we are so dazzled by the illusion that “star” technologies provide us (especially AI, quantum computing, nuclear fusion and renewable energies, among others), that we are unable to perceive the limitations they have when it comes to fostering a model of society capable of overcoming the challenges that lie ahead.
In addition, this “magic” also does not allow us to see how crucial it would be to rationalize and reorganize current resources to move forward: to act with what we have here and now and understand that not everything is about growing and innovating in technology at all costs.
The example of the train comes to mind. Perhaps it would be more advantageous to optimize and invest in the maintenance and remodeling of the current infrastructure, redefine the routes of commuter and medium distance trains to reach the greatest number of points possible for the benefit of the transport of people and goods and leave the use of road vehicles for the “last mile.” That, instead of wasting huge resources on the “showcase” of high speed, which I doubt has any other function than to attract tourism by any means.
Once the Soviets choked the fuel supply to the German war machine, it was never able to recover.
How is that for rhyme?
“[Hitler] said that the raw materials and agriculture of the Ukraine were vitally necessary
21:13 for the future prosecution of the war. He spoke once again of the need of neutralising
21:19 the Crimea, ‘that Soviet aircraft carrier for attacking the Rumanian oilfields.’ For
21:24 the first time I heard him use the phrase: ‘My generals know nothing about the economic
21:29 aspects of war.’ Hitler’s words all led up to this: he had given strict orders that
21:35 the attack on Kiev was to be the immediate strategic object and all actions were to be
21:40 carried out with that in mind. I here saw for the first time a spectacle with which
21:46 I was later to become very familiar: all those present nodded in agreement with every sentence
21:52 that Hitler uttered, while I was left alone with my point of view.” Guderian, P200. But Guderian is wrong and is alone in his point of view because, as Hitler says, he
22:02 doesn’t understand the strategic and economic aspects of the war. And the best part is, Halder is actually awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in
22:13 1961 for helping the US Military in their historical research. So yes, Halder and his cronies paint a completely biased picture of the war, blame Hitler for
22:23 bad decisions even though they weren’t, . . . “?
This is a great YouTube channel for WW2 history.
WWII occurred at the time Germany hit peak hard coal. That is related to running short of oil now.
Current US weapons seem to presuppose that we need high-tech expensive weapons, exclusively, even if we cannot afford very many of them. This doesn’t help if we are trying to fight the Houthis from Yemen, as they are trying to block passage in the Red Sea.
The Germans focused on the excellence of their weapons, not mass production. Hence, they would grind down all the welded seams on a Tiger tank to render it smooth and seamless. Meanwhile, Russia was mass producing tanks with rough welds showing and moving on to defeat Germany. On the eastern front, for each artillery piece the Germans lost, they could only replace it with one, due to shortages and inability to mass produce the weapons. Needless to say, the Germans eventually had few artillery to fight the Russians with.
Not having any oil also hurt!
I’ve developed a website that features an interactive page allowing users to explore oil production across different countries. A key feature is the ability to group or exclude countries to gain deeper insights into global production trends.
For instance, by excluding the five largest oil-producing countries https://peakoilchart.com/peak-oil-chart?category=4&excluded=236.182.195.40.106 we can see that global peak oil occurred in 2006, followed by a gradual decline. Removing two more countries https://peakoilchart.com/peak-oil-chart?category=4&excluded=236.182.195.40.106.31.45 reveals an even sharper decline.
Thanks! I am guessing that the amounts you show are from the US EIA reports, which is where I got my numbers. In your first link, the group of countries you are showing with respect to your crude and condensate production are for the sum of all of countries in the world except these countries (the world’s largest producers):
-The United States
-Russia
-Saudi Arabia
-Canada
-Iraq
You remove China and Brazil in your second link.
Are you saying that readers can do the same thing, or is this something that only you can do?
It is this big group of countries whose production peaked back in 2006.
You use a larger group (all countries) for your All Liquids summation.
Super easy to use. Just click on a nation and it moves to the other group. Albert nicely done.
Thanks!
I’ve just finished the website, it has been online for a few days. All the data is taken from the eia.gov website. In the two lists next to the chart, countries can be added or excluded, and you can group the oil production of any countries. Besides this chart, there are also charts on gas, coal, and electricity. For example, in this chart https://peakoilchart.com/gas/production?tab=chart&excluded=236.182.105.45.40.180.13.195.167.15.3.228 to highlight the decline in gas production, I excluded 12 countries from the total.
Thanks!
Awesome Job on Website. Very User friendly. Thank You.
Playing around on your site. Without the USA the rest of the world is producing the same amount of conventional oil/condensate as in 2005, that is wild.
Well done , sir .
Hello Albert.
I am quark from Spain. I would like you to give me permission to publish any graph obtained with your interesting application. A cordial greeting.
Hello Gail and other followers of Our finite world. I have been following you for many years, although I had not registered until now.
Congratulations on your extraordinary work for so many years.
Quark: Welcome. I am glad you like my work.
Thank you all for your kind words and for the interest you’ve shown in the application. I’m glad to hear that it’s useful and helpful in your work.
Quark, you have my permission to use the graphs generated by the application as you see fit.
Thank you very much Albert
Years ago Lester Brown would produce a yearly State of the World booklet.
Not sure if it’s still being produced, but remember from one issue it was documented once a nation undergoes “Industrialization” in Modern BAU, what is usually happens is prime farmland is taken to develop because of its convenience…
Apparently, even in so called fully developed mature economies, the show goes on, we can’t help ourselves…you know, we like to poke fun on Fast Eddie, but he’s not too far off the mark …
https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2024/09/12/lennar-buys-jmc-groves-goulds-miami-dade.html
Lennar buys 39-acre farmland to build nearly 100 homes
Lennar has been one of the largest developers in the region in recent years, as it’s one of the few places in the county with enough vacant land to build single-family home communities.
Lennar buys ranch land in Texas for 300-home neighborhood – South Florida Business Journal
Family sells nearly 800 acres of farmland in Miami-Dade
Lennar buys 75 acres to build over 200 homes
I didn’t look up any further, but seems it probably the same in China and other developing countries…remember it occurred in South Korea from State of the World.
Yes, we are very high I.Q. folks running things…prime farmland..who needs it?
This is proof that the system follows purely physical laws. MPP full steam ahead, and damn the citrus for our children.
Oh, yes, great example of MPP, can’t wait till these folks pull bark off the trees and lawn grass to eat when their EVs aren’t charged and if they were, empty shelves at WalleyWorld.
That were hot home, great lexson
A deeper look into this video shows what may be imminent. Ironically,
It is the older people who are by necessity the new freeloaders/looters in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b0QrJu_ykg
Yet on the other hand, I took notice of this ZeroHedge post about how chicken prices may be decreasing.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/attention-consumers-us-chicken-supplies-growing-quicker-expected-prices-slide
more fake data?
I looked at some of the Chinese video. I didn’t notice that the video explained much about why the elderly people were grabbing for food. My impression is that the retirement ages are quite young, but that the pensions are not generous. This may leave many elderly people with not enough money for food.
We saw an earlier report of large common eating areas being set up to feed elderly people, in China. I wonder if very much of this is really being done. If not, elderly people could be in need of food.
The chicken supplies article seems to be related to an earlier culling of some chickens for some sort of illness.
5 days ago Eric Prince says Venezuela is about to change history on Sept 16:
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/venezuela-il-fondatore-di-blackwater-minaccia-maduro-il-16-settembre-cambiera-la-storia/
Today Venezuela announces capturing foreign individuals, some active military, with weapons in a plot to kill Maduro:
https://www.rt.com/news/604052-venezuela-us-serviceman-arrested-terrorist-plot/
More violence against leaders.
Oil Net Short For First Time in History
According to energy investor and market commentator Eric Nuttall, the financial demand for oil, known as “net length,” has dropped to its lowest point in history. Essentially, “net length” refers to the difference between the number of investors betting oil prices will rise (long positions) versus those betting they will fall (short positions). When net length is low, it means there is a reduced belief that prices will increase.
What’s even more striking is that, for the first time ever, the paper market for Brent crude is “net short.” This means there are now more investors betting that oil prices will fall than those expecting them to rise. This is significant because it’s rare to see such pessimism in the market, especially when physical global oil inventories are falling at a rate of about a million barrels per day.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Oil-Net-Short-For-First-Time-in-History.html
This would seem like a foolish bet unless you think.
Another pandemic is coming with lockdowns and such.
Another global recession like 09 (or worse)
We have reached peak demand (near term)
>> Another pandemic is coming with lockdowns and such.
Another global recession like 09 (or worse)
All available resources need to go towards training AI models. Crush the little people like you and me. Kulm was right.
Peak demand or peak supply . Copy/paste from POB .
HHH
Ignored
09/15/2024 at 7:35 am
Saudi oil exports are down 930,000 barrels per day to 5.42 million barrels per day as of June of this year.
They have said due to a lack of demand from Asia.
Or is it lack of supply? Demand goes down when supply is cut. Economic activity decreases due to the cut in oil supply.
If the oil is made available I assure you it will be bought and used towards some activity somewhere.
Banks will lend money to someone who will use that energy as long as the energy is available.
We are heading into a situation where the big three oil producers/exporters are all having declining oil exports.
And no it’s not bullish for oil prices. Because demand tanks due to lack of supply.
It’s a good thing there’s a stout electric grid available for all these EV’s being manufactured. As if that’s the least of their worries.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bid-global-dominance-beijing-builds-ev-factories-africa
China is starting to manufacture cheap EVs in Africa, close to the source of many of the minerals needed to manufacture EVs. Then sell them, even in poor countries of the word.
A major detail is where will the electricity to power these EVs will come from?
Saying it all in one sentence is a great skill:
“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.”
I nominate that sentence to be carved on the tombstone of Western Civilization.
Neptune7
Glad you like it. Unfortunately, most people cannot image the sentence to be true.
The interest in oil shortages ebbs and flows with the price of oil. If oil prices are high, then there is quite a bit if interest in oil shortages. If the price of oil is low, people think you must be a bit crazy to be talking about inadequate oil supply.
At some point, now perhaps, synthetic oil becomes less trouble than pumping the gunk out of the ground.
synthetic oil will require energy be contained within its structure or chemical composition
as energy cannot be ‘created’–where exactly will that energy come from?
You should get outside once in a while and note the sunshine.
I was surprised recently that the sunlight coming down on crop lands is around 1000 times as much as the energy humans are said to use.
lol keith
you took it
i was waiting for the ”’sunshine” comeback
sunshine has given us all the greenstuff that covers the earth right now.
300 m years ago, give or take, the same process was going on.—the greenstuff, grew, fell over and decayed….no harvests you see.
in some places that sequence went on for millions of years—and provided our oil coal and gas fields—but you already know that—just skipping over the essentials there.
which brings us to now—the sun is still doing its thing, delivering energy more or less at the same rate….ie the same rate that built up the oilfields and accumulated our energy store.
we can no doubt ”calculate” that our sun can deliver all the need—trouble is, we have to collect it.
aye–there’s the rub.
the theories exist for that energy collection and conversion.
and no doubt you can quote them verbatim.
trouble is, we do not possess the means to collect the volume of energy we require.—that requires a level of industry at a scale we do not possess—much like your space elevators, satellite mining and whatnot.—all great in theory.
i get out a lot—it gives space for reason and clarity. —and i rarely know where my calculator is.
How China has ‘throttled’ its private sector
https://www.ft.com/content/1e9e7544-974c-4662-a901-d30c4ab56eb7
Subtitle: “Venture capital finance has dried up amid political and economic pressures, prompting a dramatic fall in new company formation”
A chart shows these new businesses have practically fallen to zero.
Venture capital is a very inefficient way to use energy. Specially when they produce just apps and AI applications.
What do you want them to do, lose all their money by investing in renewable energy and nuclear energy?
Or maybe you want them to give it all away to asteroid mining.
Lord knows how much money they have lost on finding a cure for cancer.
I don’t want them around. their time has passed. China is right.
Do you think politicians are going to do a better job of allocating resources than venture capitalists?
At least some apps went on to be profitable.
What is the Chinese government investing in that is profitable?
EVs?
the government should at least state the goals. diesel-less agriculture for example.
Sunday music church from Slovakia: https://youtu.be/9a9rZQ10OPc?si=sZOMlqj3XAgDk9Am
One of the comments was, “Priest for the desolate.”
The point is that the authors of the remix spotted the food topic in the language of this priest and used it in their video music clip. Undoubtedly, the Holly Communion is the core of the catholicism, as food quality and supply deteriorates. Bread from heaven is appealing.
The given catholic priest engaged himself in supporting certain political ideas and parties, which made him a figure of controversy and object of humor in Slovakia.
“Undoubtedly, the Holly Communion is the core of the catholicism, as food quality and supply deteriorates. Bread from heaven is appealing.”
Tell me about it. I just purchased crackers made four years ago from a supermarket. They taste stale.
The idea of eating human flesh and pretending it is bread and wine still has not gained any new appeal, however.
“Dezolát” is currently used in Slovak in the meaning of “somebody who is spreading disinformation”.
However, sometimes the topics of disinformation contain the true information value.
Turkey has the second largest growth in terms of millionaires ( Taiwan first) . Examples are ” Turkey hosts six unicorn companies (startups valued at over $1 billion).
These are: Peak Games, Getir, Dream Games, Hepsiburada, Trendyol and Insider (an AI tech company not related to the media company Insider Inc.).
What can go wrong ?
I have a friend from Pakistan. He says people here always ask him. “What’s a Muslim country that isn’t all strict like sharia ”
He always says; “Turkey”
What is Turkey doing wrong exactly ? Those businesses will disappear when no longer viable without too mush gnashing of teeth. In America, every time a large business fails, certain people think some crime was committed and that the workers deserve to keep their jobs.
It is fantastic that the new ideas in computing technology lead us closer to collapse: the machines will have all resources and we will be dying of cold and hunger.
https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/japan-to-start-building-1st-zeta-class-supercomputer-in-2025-1000-times-more-powerful-than-todays-fastest-machines
” In 2023, computer experts predicted that a zeta-class machine built using current supercomputer technologies would require the equivalent energy to the output of 21 nuclear power plants, computing news website HPCwire previously reported.”
Cry
“My main concern is that the substantial cost to develop and run AI technology means that AI applications must solve extremely complex and important problems for enterprises to earn an appropriate return on investment (ROI). We estimate that the AI infrastructure buildout will cost over $1tn in the next several years alone, which includes spending on data centers, utilities, and applications. So, the crucial question is: What $1tn problem will AI solve? Replacing low-wage jobs with tremendously costly technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology transitions I’ve witnessed. . . .
The bigger question seems to be whether power supply can keep up. GS US and European utilities analysts Carly Davenport and Alberto Gandolfi, respectively, expect the proliferation of AI technology, and the data centers necessary to feed it, to drive an increase in power demand the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a generation, which GS commodities strategist Hongcen Wei finds early evidence of in Virginia, a hotbed for US data center growth. “?
https://indi.ca/content/files/2024/07/Goldman-Sachs-AI-Report.pdf
The US has not seen an increase in electricity supply since we started adding wind and solar. Europe has the same problem. They drive up costs and make the system less reliable.
We are now figuring out how to ramp up natural gas or nuclear to electricity production up. AI “needs” more electricity than seems to be available. EV autos do as well.
Only a guess:
Data is fairly easy to store, renewables are intermittent, store the results, throttle system to synchronize with available electricity. Perhaps add/subtract number of processors.
Dennis L.
They shut down two nuclear power plants in my region and now we are importing electricity from somewhere thousands of miles away. They are trying to go 100% green.
The human brain uses 20W. We have some room for improvement with AI.
A fitting marvel much like the Easter Island statue possibly all that will be left once civilisation collapses
You complain too much. after all this comes from the West, which is a superior political and economic system.
stop watching repeats of terminator
it isnt real
Techno-Bushcraft for AI Pests:
3″, #7 birdshot for drones
deadfall and swinging log traps for bots
Quaze DSTOW bait station
China has dived in with electric vehicles, but has discovered there isn’t enough electricity available to charge them when the weather is hot and there are other demands on the electric grid.
On we go, real life — well worth a view.
The Chinese will be headed back to the bicycle, if we can even have those in a post peak oil world.
Can you even make a bicycle without fossil fuels?
Probably Not.
Ive started pondering a series I would call “Aluminum World”. It’s just about the most common metal there is. It can be readily smelted out of rocks with just wood heat fire. Ideally, it would need to be an alloy for durability. Casting and manufacturing can be achieved just with electricity. Hopefully, this infrastructure would remain serviceable for the foreseeable future with mush lower levels of fuels. Im thinking hydro mostly.
I suspect that this would be how small cars and bicycles would be manufactured so that we had some semblance of civilization. Water, heat, and some form of automated transportation could remain possible.
I hope you are correct. Some bicycles and a few vehicles would be better than nothing.
“readily smelted out of rocks with just wood heat fire”
That’s not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_process
I was in an aluminum smelter a long time ago. They actually do use wood, 20 foot long saplings. When a bubble forms under the anode they burp the cell by running one of these long poles into the cell.
The cells operate at about 5 volts. There are typically 160 cells in series. The current in older smelters was around 125,000 amps. More recently they use 250,000 amps.
It is absolutely possible with blast furnaces, but this is obviously not the way we default to smelting metals today.
Not all wood is created equal. There is a much higher BTU in Arbutus vs say Hemlock for example. Any wood used requires seasoning for two years. Lower BTU wood could first be converted to charcoal.
There are many solutions which require just a bit more determination to make work, so long as we stay in the realm of known physics.
realm of known physics.”
Your problem with trying to aluminum out of rocks is chemistry. You simply don’t get aluminum metal out of any fire.
Okay, a few complex steps to extract alumina from bauxite. Apparently, this is the only realistic way to extract something which can be turned into aluminum. Looks like we would have to stay with recycling aluminum in furnaces.
unfortunately we live in a ferrous world
look around where you are now
try to find an everyday object that doesn’t have ferrous metals somewhere it its production and/or structure.
iron is part of everything we have and do.
ferrous world
Iron is a lot simpler to make than aluminum. We have been making iron for 3000 years and aluminum for about 100.
i cant wait to try out an aluminium axe
(made from recycled drinks cans, naturally)
oh–and the recycling machinery itself made from recycled drinks cans
or aircraft wings
or something
Re. aluminum, extracting it from bauxite is energy intensive, but fortunately the world is a wash in beer and soft drinks cans, siding, window panes, aircraft skins, and cheap saucepans, which can be recycled much more easily, and with a declining population, demand for the metal should fall.
R. iron, Kermit and Fozzie answered this one.
Electricity of the type needed to smelt electricity is difficult to make. It needs to be available around the clock. Wind and solar are inadequate for this purpose.
“inadequate”
That’s true for current industrial processes. However, engineers have not been tasked with making processes compatible with intermittent electricity. Can it be done? Probably, but I don’t know for certain.
wheels dont give you civilisation…….
its having the necessary surplus energy to turn those wheels (and what you do with them) that gives you civilisation.
“wheels dont give you civilisation”
I think there are historians who would disagree with you.
i see your point Keith
but previous ”civilisation’ had wheels, but moved by muscle, animal or human.
that puts a limit on it, because you have to buy or enslave muscle, so it is restricted to a priveleged few.
we have enjoyed a century of almost universal wheels—hence civilisation for all.
as ive tried to point out, roman living was not as you see it in movie epics.
“enjoyed a century”
More than 20 centuries of wheels. Roman roads that old have ruts from wagon wheels.
Incidentally, spoked wheels are higher tech than you might think. FT (Ted) Cloak did an amazing web page long ago on making wheels and inspired much of the early work on memetics.
Inventions coming faster and faster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions
we havent had 20 centuries of powered wheels—other than through muscle.
with unpowered wheels, living standards remain static….the horse and cart economic system.
by powered wheels i mean any kind of rotary motion.
200 years ago we learned how to control steam at way above atmospheric pressure.
our current existence depends on explosive force being converted into rotary motion.
youll see what i mean by thinking away from roads and tarmac.
It is wheat and other grains that give you cities, according to “Against the Grain” by James C. Scott.
Grain represented storable energy that could be taxed and that could be used in cities. Electricity’s number one problem is that it is not very storable. Its number two problem is that it is not edible. In fact, it has only secondary uses in food supply.
wheat in quanity represents surplus energy.
the more you have, the more can be accomplished.
with surplus grain you can buy muscle power—and move more wheels.
but the speed is still only a walking pace, and that limits the size of cities…. because food still has to be brought in—the bigger the city, the more food you need, so cities reach size limits.
that changed when we attached engines to wheels—an entirely different level of civilisation
I agree.
“only secondary uses”
I am not sure of that in modern times. Decades ago John Deere did a study of energy use in the agriculture chain and concluded that cooking in the home was the largest factor. To the extent electricity supplies cooking energy it is a big factor.
Not to run down the importance of grain. The collapse at the end of the Bronze Age seems to have been an exceptional drought. The drought may have extended into India since civilization collapsed there as well.
as well to bear in mind too that the pyramids were built with the surplus energy stored in grain.
pyramid workers were paid largely in food.
“Wheels don’t give you civilization”
My Inca great great great great grandfather would have said, “You’re right there, Norman!”
The Incas were very civilized, but they never invented or used wheels until the Spanish brought them the benefits of cultural diversity.
Perhaps wheels wouldn’t have been a lot of use to them with all the steep ground they lived on. What kind of gradient can you ride a bicycle or push a wheelbarrow up?
“never invented or used wheels ”
I don’t think that is entirely true, I think they use wheels on children’s toys. Though I may be mixing this with the Aztecs.
Long ago I spent time in the mountains of Peru, good point on wheels not being so useful there.
yup
gotta hand it to the incas for being highly civilised
they made their gods happy by sacrificing children.
Excellent video. Perhaps the Chinese ban on bitcoin miners was about more than just capital flight.
The US may now account for half of global bitcoin mining, accounting for between 2 to 3 percent of grid capacity. A lawsuit has blocked further data collection.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364
Interesting; at about the same time the narrator is talking about temperatures exceeding 40 deg C there is footage of a well wrapped lady kicking at the snow on the ground (3.20ish).
The IOT is looking to be a flash in the pan.
Electricity is to be the Achilles heel of the great reset.
The future will be either cold, calculating, without emotions, and so efficient that there will be no crumb remaining for anyone,
or
it will be chaotic, back to the dark ages.
There is no in between.
Starships or not, all the gains will be monopolized and there will be nothing, nada, for those who do not belong.
I would put it
There will be an in group and all others will be the out group. The in group will promote and protect the in group.
Ed, the monetary plane gave the in group its current powers. The physical plane is another game. A game that is way more difficult to manipulate, a game that is more in balance with nature. The stock to flow ratio will change dramatically. Former Fed chief Yellen could still participate though, as a ballet dancer at one of the parties. I’m in.
most definitely chaos the elders will take this to the extreme they would have another plan they tried plandemic but failed so they move on to next plan ask yourselves this question why has one of the elders built bunkers at all his residences.
I don’t think much of “the elders” or maybe I am one of them.
However, if things to off the tracks, it won’t be the first time. That happened in 1177 BC and was (I think) due to a wide area and lengthy drought.
because he can afford to.
it has nothing to do with being an elder
there are NO elders….just people with more money than you or me—or most people.
not that bunkers will do you any good
as Mr Hit..ler would confirm
Maybe he’s just trying to protect his pets at all his residences from the Haitian hordes?
https://x.com/KurtSchlichter/status/1833497270974878159
I see it as being mire like the Middle Ages. It was not chaotic, there was a social structure. Humans by DNA form themselves into organized groups with a procedure to make decisions and work together. The groups will be small and have conflicts with each other. But organized enough to survive.
medieval society was totalitarian
either your fuedal lord or the church controlled your life in the absolute sense—even to what style and quality of clothes you wore
No, medieval society wasn’t totalitarian.
You are out of your depth.
_NO_
The future will be
(1) cold, calculating, without emotions, … (with probability x_1)
(2) chaotic, back to the dark ages (with probability x_2)
(3) BAU for some more years (with probability x_3)
(4) nice for some, sad for others (with probability x_4)
(5) less materialistic, physically challenging but more satisfying (with prob. x_5)
(6) foo (with probability x_6)
…
(n) bar (with probablity x_n)
(n+1) we didn’t thought about this
…
(n+m) we didn’t thouth about all of that either.
Isn’t this obvious?
If you don’t think this way, read for instance Rapoport, Zadeh, Korzybski.
Was reading about this sort of thing over 20 years ago. Peak oil, how the Arabs were pumping seawater into their oil reserves to force out the last bits of oil, how Pemex was on the decline to be out of oil around 2020, North Sea oil was almost finished. The only thing I believe about oil anymore is that the easy oil is nearly gone, but it seems there is plenty of hard to reach oil left for a hundred years at modern consumption rates. No disrespect to the author, just my view based on what I read and my capacity to think critically.
The problem is that we cannot get the price up high enough, for long enough, to get the difficult to extract oil out. Early models of economists said that with $300 per barrel oil, we could easily get the oil out. We have had enough experience now to figure out that we cannot get the price nearly that high.That is our problem.
Western “petro dollar” crude oil is sold at auction, & refiners don’t bid more than they hope to profitably recover from the sale of their products — so, “affordability” tends to keep crude oil prices low enough that, with increasing costs of extraction & transport, due to depletion, crude oil extractors don’t expend the resources needed to keep up the crude oil supply ( https://oil-price.net/ , https://davecoop.net/seneca ).
There is a big upfront cost of extracting oil. Unless oil companies are pretty certain that oil prices will be high enough, for long enough, they won’t spend the money to extract resources that they cannot see a clear path to getting a good return from.
I have been reading recently that Warren Buffet has been pushing occidental to do stock buy backs to push up stock. Eventually they will need to raise prices or stop pumping. I don’t understand how this could happen if you need oil you will sacrifice everything to keep pumping . What do expect for people to sit and die without a fight? Gail has been predicting eminent collapse since 2011. Go back and read her 2013 posts. Oil can and will rise higher….we will have boom and bust
But buybacks to push up the price of stock still doesn’t make more easily extractable oil. It is the heavy oil especially that has trouble getting the price high enough. The US doesn’t have too much of this. It has come more from Canada (oil sands), Mexico, and Russia. It price doesn’t rise high enough to cover the more expensive cost of extraction and refining, plus the taxes needed by governments to maintain their systems.
I am sorry that I am not very good at predicting the timing on how this will all work out. It looks like everything will crash immediately, but then things continue to stick together. Most people don’t recognize that the Covid-19 shutdowns and flight cancellations seem to be connected with oil shortages. These shutdowns saved a huge amount of oil, but no one connects them with hiding oil shortages. The fact that many people continue to work remotely continues the oil savings. And there have been big cutbacks in some international flights, especially in Asia, but these are generally not obvious to people in the US and Europe, where the majority of my readers live.
There really are changes taking place, we just don’t recognize them. The fact that many in the younger generations are too poor to buy vehicles (plus oil and insurance for the vehicles) is related to oil shortages, also. The fact that they many young people are too poor to start families also saves a whole lot of oil use.
“It looks like everything will crash immediately”?
Is a crash likely when, according to David, ‘ . . . the US refinery output of diesel is about 5 mbpd, and that the US uses “only” 3.7 mbpd so the other 1.3 mbpd of diesel is exported’?
Pay us no mind, everything is fine …
Proven reserve
Everything’s fine
Purchasing power parity
As perpetual bonds deserve
Their own reality
In due time
mad suppose chicken was $60/kg and beef was $250/kg and using 1kwh of electricity was $4.. that is what hard to reach energy means. tell me what everyone is going to do?? eat bread for $30 a loaf?
Why not? You already have young urban professionals that spend twenty dollars on a small salad for lunch.
In fact, if we could get them to pay $300 for a loaf of bread that could subsidize the cost for the uneducated and unskilled population.
Why should anyone work when we can just print more dollars?
money has almost no value in and of itself. It is the products produced with human labor levered by the surplus energy of fossil fuels that has value. I suppose you could burn your banknotes to keep warm and turn gold and silver into jewelry. I do know gold and silver have some use in electronics, but at the end of the day you can’t eat precious metals or fiat.
No fossil fuels and very few humans in outer space. There are trillions of dollars of value in colonizing space because we have all this amazing technology that can be deployed there.
“There are trillions of dollars of value in colonizing space because we have all this amazing technology that can be deployed there.” I don’t believe space colonization is possible. Remember we are Human animals that need habitat. We have the technology to go to space and visit a short time, like in the Apollo moon landings, we don’t have the technology to go there permanently. I know if you lived on the moon or mars, you would have to live underground, or you would die of radiation poisoning. We don’t know how to produce food in space efficiently either.
We almost certainly could colonize space with technology no more advanced than the middle of the last century. I suspect we will not because the singularity is so close. However,growing food in space is something I know about.
https://htyp.org/design_to_cost#Space_Farm_Paper_from_1975
Read the paper and ask question if you want.
space cannot be colonised with 1000 year old chinese technology
which is what we use to get ”off earth’
“space cannot”
Unfounded opinion. You have not worked the numbers, I have though I expect my assumptions are far to pessimistic.
number working can prove almost anything Keith.
we lift off earth with reactive forces–which is how the chinese powered fireworks 1000years ago
different combinations of chemical compounds–agreed, but the end result is the same….we go up in reaction to thrust down.
explosive forces.
someone, somewhere may be working on anti-gravity in a barn somewhere, but until he/she announces it with demos—i’ll base my opinions 1000 yr old chinese technology.
far too much effort input, for far too little return output.
“1000years ago”
So what? We had the wheel maybe 4000 BC. Still works.
“far too much effort input, for far too little return output.”
So you say without a shred of evidence. We may not every do power satellites for other reasons, such as the scale of investment is too high, but a power satellite will repay the energy needed to lift the parts to orbit in a little over two months.
Want to see the calculations? I think I posted them here before.
Remember, the output of the satellites needs to go house to house. We are not maintaining the grid very well now. Maintaining the grid is a fossil fuel function today.
Somehow, all of the solar panels need to be made, generally with coal, in China and shipped to the US using oil. This whole manufacturing and delivery system has to stay together to work.
“Maintaining the grid is a fossil fuel function today.”
I presume you are talking about the fuel needed to run the maintenance trucks. Can you think of any reason they could not be run on lithium batteries?
“solar panels”
There are reasons to use thermal cycles in power satellites. But your point is essentially correct, things have to hang together for any of this to work. Will they? Don’t know, but there is a vast amount of corrective action being taken all the time.
and while i respect your ability with numbers keith
”singularity” is hogwash
“hogwash”
News today is about AI testing at the 120 IQ level. Not bad for something that young.
i think my IQ at 11 was about that level—not that it did me much good—but ultimately hard to say.
but at that age i could think.–i still can.
AI is NOT an independent entity….”it” cannot think in the sense humans do..
to use the desciption “it” is to create a concept of reality—when there is no ”reality”.–there is no physical ”it”.
any more than bitcoin is a reality.
but AI is taking on a form of reality in peoples minds—now the concept is that AI can actually carry out physical acts on its own account.—it can’t.–no matter what your mathematics tells you.
This is where fantasy really kicks in—AI cannot carry out ANY physical act without human intervention to make it happen. (tell me otherwise?)
AI is not going to intervene to ”save” humankind—yet we hear such utter BS.—it has become ”fact”.
any more than my brain can make things happen without the intermediary of my arm or leg or whatever.
i can ‘think’ this script (intelligence?)—but my finger makes it happen.
“cannot think in the sense humans do..”
Have you spent any time interacting with an AI? First time I did was to discuss a story I wrote 18 years ago about an AI with one. Very strange. I knew this was coming for a long time but it is still a shock to be conversing with an AI. The exchange is
posted on the Extropian mailing list which is open. If you can’t find it and want to, let me know. If AIs are not intelligence, they do a darn good job of simulating it.
(tell me otherwise?)
There are lots of people using AI to operate robot bodies.
“AI is not going to intervene ”
At this stage AI is a tool, a very powerful tool.
But while it would be a shock, it would not be a surprise if AIs were to take charge in the not so distant future.
//////There are lots of people using AI to operate robot bodies.////
AI is functioning to aid the function of something it did not of itself create.
you have a conversation with something that reacts to your voice—ie a mechanical /electronic object not created by AI itself
this is the point i’m making.
someone with your level of intellect is fooled into thinking that AI is a physical entity
no wonder millions are deluded into thinking AI has physical properties
it is REACTIVE
It is not PROACTIVE—and never will be.
Intelligence, is in many respects like energy
Of itself, it is capable of nothing
“fooled into thinking that AI is a physical entity”
I know what I am dealing with. I asked if you had any experience talking to an AI. And while they are certainly implemented in physical hardware, they are more software and are spread out over many data centers.
“not PROACTIVE—and never will be.”
Would you consider the programs that run the high frequency stock trading systems to be proactive? They are not AIs, but I would not be a bit surprised if someone put an AI in charge of stock investing.
It’s hard to keep up.
AI is an advanced version of Wikipedia. It echos back what many people think they know. When it comes to problematic issues, like limits to a finite world, it will tell people what mainstream media is telling people.
“it will tell people ”
Have you tried such a conversation? I have not. last time I talked to the free AI that comes with Skype, it surprised me by asking questions.
What project would you suggest to improve the future of humans?
Copilot, 12:43 PM
That’s a great question! There are many projects that could significantly improve the future of humanity. Here are a few ideas:
1.
Renewable Energy Development: Investing in solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources can help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, combat climate change, and create a sustainable energy future.
2.
Clean Water Access: Developing technologies and infrastructure to provide clean drinking water to underserved communities can drastically improve health outcomes and quality of life.
3.
Education for All: Creating accessible, high-quality education platforms, especially in developing regions, can empower individuals and communities, leading to economic growth and innovation.
4.
Healthcare Innovation: Advancing medical research and healthcare technologies, such as telemedicine and personalized medicine, can improve health outcomes and make healthcare more accessible and affordable.
5.
Sustainable Agriculture: Promoting sustainable farming practices and developing new agricultural technologies can ensure food security and reduce the environmental impact of farming.
6.
Climate Change Mitigation: Projects focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting biodiversity, and developing climate-resilient infrastructure can help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
7.
Space Exploration: Investing in space exploration and technology can lead to new discoveries, inspire innovation, and potentially provide new resources and habitats for humanity.
Which of these areas interests you the most? Or do you have another idea in mind?
Keith
I persevere because of your level of intellect
“When I last talked to AI”—bothers me, because there are millions who think/believe the same way.
have you considered that you are having a conversation with a power station, at best—or at worst a solar panel/ wind turbine.??
that’s what it comes down to.—and what i find truly scary, on behalf of the human race.
Let me know when you find a power station or a solar panel that will hold a conversation.
when you converse with AI, and the power goes off, your AI interchange ceases…might be a battery backup–but you get my drift.
hence—you have been conversing with a power source.
the power station converses with you through human intervention….not ”of itself”.
When you converse with a human, and the power goes off, you can continue your conversation in the dark..or until one of you goes to sleep.
That’s twisting the common use of words beyond reason.
the power station transmits electricital energy
a human being allows that energy to be converted into a form of signals that manifest as coherent speech
you respond to that speech
the AI part reacts to your voice sounds, and talks back to you
you then, are conversing with a power station—NOT an aware entity.
and it never will be an aware entity—clever, yes, but thats all it it is
electrical impulses from an inert source
it bothers me that people think otherwise.
” respond to that speech”
I have never used the voice interface but this is immaterial
“conversing with a power station”
Power stations have been around a very long time. Never had one respond to my typing before the AIs came along.
“it bothers me that people think otherwise.”
It bothers me (slightly) that there are people who think humans are special and magical. They are not, they are animals and at a deeper level vast collections of molecular machines.
Keith
The real value of ”stock” is entirely dependent on human beings working of producing goods and services.
literally nothing else.
that ”value” fluctuates through the thought processes of human beings—but it can be no more that fluctuation over periods of times.
If some kind of “AI” decides that the ”value” has changed. unless people on the ground have physically done something to affect that change—the ”value” will not actually change at all, other than in the very short term
and then it will revert to ”reality”—ie the number of cars actually leaving the factory or whatever.
if AI decides to raise stock prices—it can only work until people figure out that whatever their stock is in—-is not backed up by physical goods and services.
AI then, is serving itself, for no actual future purpose, except to go on serving itself.
Then, AI in that context becomes BS.
Because perpetual motion machines do not work…..which you already know.
“It’ll be fun,” they said.
“You’ll be over the moon,” they said.
I don’t understand your comment.
My so-called humor, I’m afraid.
Over the moon = very happy
vs.
Over the moon = out among the planets and asteroids beyond the Earth-Moon system
It was an attempted pun. An idiom with two meanings plus irony in the form of a reference to happiness in a situation that I would expect to be characterized by unhappiness.
I don’t think people living in space for long periods will be very happy, all in all. I can imagine myself going up there and being really depressed because I can’t go for a walk in the park or even leave the pressurized capsule without a spacesuit, even on Mars.
“I can’t go for a walk”
That’s the reason I am not enamored about Mars. But try here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_settlement
you miss the point
50 years ago, the concept of paying 30k for a car, or 250k for a small house was ludicrous for the average buyer.
now its normal
why?
because our economic system now function on debt, where we collectively pretend that energy costs the same as it did 50 years ago….and still delivers the same surpluses as it did 50—100 years ago.
this why collapse is certain.
because nothing can function in a state of infinite debt.
particularly when we call infinite debt infinite growth.
and no–i can’t put a date on it–only to say, for some its already happened, and no one–even elders like me, will be exempt.
this hard to reach oil will cause a financial crash a permanent depression we are very close to entering what Hubbert referred to as a technological decline so hopefully it wont be that bad
in fact maybe all the current technology is accelerating us into a technological decline and we are not aware of it.