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Some of my frequent commenters know that I recently returned from a visit to Southeast Asia. In this post, I would like to present a little energy-related information about this part of the world. Most of my information is from published energy reports, but a little is from my visit to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I have included these countries in my Southeast Asia totals, plus Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and (to the extent I could find the data), amounts for a few other small countries included in the grouping used by the United Nations in its “Southeast Asia” grouping.
While Southeast Asia shares most of the energy problems of the rest of the world, it seems to me that this region is somewhat better placed to handle the energy shortfalls that lie ahead than many other regions. Southeast Asia’s warm, wet climate is helpful, as is its supply of coal, particularly in Indonesia. Many of the people in this part of the world are used to living in cramped quarters–three generations in a large one-room home, for example. Abundant forests provide a renewable source of energy. Religious traditions help provide order. These factors may work together to allow the economies of these countries to continue to some extent, even as much of the rest of the world pushes in the direction of collapse.
[1] Southeast Asia is finding it must import ever-larger amounts of oil to meet the needs of its growing economies.
Figure 1 shows that Southeast Asia produces a little oil itself. This oil production (blue line) reached a peak in 2000 and has fallen since then. Such a pattern is common among the countries of the world–oil production starts falling once the easily extracted oil is removed.
Southeast Asia’s oil consumption (orange line) has generally been growing. Up until 1993, the area produced enough oil for its own needs. More recently, Southeast Asia’s oil needs have been met through increasing imports of oil. Thus, Southeast Asia has been a net importer of oil for over 30 years. With reduced travel related to Covid in 2020 and 2021, there was a dip in consumption and imported oil in these years. By 2023, however, consumption was back above 2019 levels, and imports were higher than in 2019.
[2] Natural gas production in Southeast Asia reached a peak in 2015, and it has been declining ever since.
The situation with natural gas production is similar to that of oil. Southeast Asia’s natural gas supply reached a peak in 2015, and it has been falling ever since.
Figure 2 shows that once natural gas production (blue line) began to decline, Southeast Asian natural gas consumption (orange line) started to flatten out and even decline a bit. Natural gas exports began to decline, as well, beginning more than a decade before the peak in production was reached. Some of the natural gas exports are liquefied natural gas exports, under long term contracts. These cannot easily be cut back because of inadequate production.
Today, in many parts of the world, there is high demand for natural gas to balance out electricity generated by wind and solar. Southeast Asia, which has a declining supply of natural gas available for export, cannot provide much natural gas to help the countries dealing with this intermittency problem. But, as we will see, Southeast Asia itself seems to have mostly stayed away from wind and solar. This is a plus.
It seems likely that both oil and natural gas extraction within Southeast Asia will continue to decline. This is a worry for the future.
[3] Southeast Asia’s coal supply has been growing, helping to support its industry and exports.
Coal production is still growing in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia being the primary source of production.
A recent report says that coal production in Indonesia in 2024 increased by 7.1% over production in 2023, showing that growth in coal production continues. Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are all importers of coal, much of which likely comes from Indonesia.
[4] Southeast Asia’s per capita energy consumption has been rising, due to increasing coal consumption and the addition of other types of energy, made possible by fossil fuels.
Hydroelectricity seems to be the single largest category of “All Other” energy supply. Building dams to produce hydro-electric power has been made possible by the availability of coal to produce concrete and steel.
Another major category of “All Other” seems to be the burning of wood chips.
A third category of “All Other” energy production is geothermal power. Both Indonesia and the Philippines generate electric power using geothermal energy. Geothermal works best when a country has volcanic mountains that can provide the high temperatures required. Southeast Asia seems to have more than its share of volcanoes.
Wind turbines and solar panels seem to be relatively little used in this part of the world. Nuclear does not seem to be used at all in this part of the world.
This combination of All Other energy supply seems to be more stable than the more common “wind and solar” version of All Other energy supply. Also, nuclear electricity now seems to have a uranium supply problem, as I discussed in a recent post. It is a high-tech solution that poor countries, such as those in Southeast Asia, are likely to have considerable problems trying to emulate.
[5] Southeast Asia has multiple advantages that allow its population to get along with relatively little energy, if fossil fuels become less available.
As mentioned in the introduction, the mild climate of Southeast Asia allows people to get along without heating or cooling their homes. In fact, homes don’t need to be very substantial if they don’t need insulation. They can easily be rebuilt with local materials.
On our trip, we saw several one-room homes in which up to three generations lived together. Of course, people everywhere would like fancy homes with lots of rooms, indoor bathrooms, and heating and cooling. But these things require fossil fuels, both to initially build and to maintain. If people can learn to live in very modest housing, it greatly reduces the fossil fuel energy needs of an economy.
It seems to me that if the world is heading in the direction of not enough fossil fuels, Southeast Asia is a region that can get along without much harm, even on less fuel than is available today. Farming seems to be done with little use of fuel, right now. Many families are used to living in shared living spaces. Daily markets, selling meat, including live chickens and ducks, seem to be common.
Based on my calculations, the per-capita energy consumption of Southeast Asia is about half that of China and about 21% of the US’s average per-capita energy consumption.
Economies in warm, wet climates have an advantage because agriculture can be done year-around. Without fossil fuels, Southeast Asia would not be able to support as large a population as today, but it seems likely that these countries could still support a substantial, if lower, population. The Garden of Eden mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Bible seemed to have some of the characteristics of Southeast Asian countries today. If “warm and wet” was a solution in the early days, it may be a solution in the future.
[6] Southeast Asia has nowhere near the scale of energy supplies to replace China, with its huge industrial output.
China’s electricity production in 2023 was 23.0 times its electricity production in 1985. Southeast Asia’s electricity production in 2023 was 12.8 times its electricity production in 1985. Thus, China’s growth rate has been close to twice as fast as Southeast Asia.
While China’s rapid growth has been impressive, it is very hard to maintain. Southeast Asia’s slower growth curve, which is still somewhat rising, would seem to be easier to maintain. If it does start to fall, it will hopefully be a slower fall.
[7] Indonesia, which is part of Southeast Asia, is a world leader in coal production.
Coal tends to be an inexpensive source of heat and electricity and is essential in making steel. The industrial revolution around the world was started with the use of coal. Coal is still used heavily in manufacturing. While the wealthy countries of the world talk a great deal about carbon dioxide and climate change, the poorer countries of the world–including those in Southeast Asia–continue to use coal, to the extent it is available.
Worldwide, China is number one in coal production (93.10 exajoules), according to the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy. India is in second place, with production of 16.65 exajoules. Indonesia is close behind in third place, with coal production of 15.73 exajoules. The advantage that Indonesia has is that its population (281,000) is much lower than that of India (1.4 billion), so that its coal-benefit relative to population is much greater than that of India.
I don’t think that we know how long coal production will continue to grow. Theoretically, how long production will continue to grow is tied to the amount of coal reserves, but it is questionable whether today’s published reserve numbers are very useful in determining the quantity available at a price customers are willing to pay. The 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy report shows quite low coal reserves for Southeast Asia, and quite high coal reserves for the US, Russia, and Australia. This same report has a note at the top of the page showing coal reserves that says, “The methodology and timing of updating reserve numbers is under review.” The authors of the report seem to be saying, “Expect big revisions of these reserve numbers in the future.”
[8] People of Southeast Asia seem to have a tradition of being hard working and co-operative.
One report describes the work culture of Southeast Asia as “Community oriented, with respect for seniors, and flexibility.” The same report indicates that maintaining a calm demeanor and not showing anger in public are important in countries like Thailand and Indonesia. The article indicates that smiling plays a critical role in communication, keeping the interactions positive.
My husband and I were impressed by how happy the Buddha figures seemed to be.
Religions seem to help provide a safety net for the poor. Working as a priest gives an option for income for those who would otherwise be unemployed and are willing to study.
[9] The world economy, including Southeast Asia, is already beginning to encounter oil shortfalls. One way they affect the economy is through less growth in long-distance tourism.
There is a temptation to believe that the tourist trade will grow, allowing the economies of Southeast Asia to grow at the same time. However, it is becoming apparent that this doesn’t necessarily work well in a world struggling with inadequate oil supplies.
We saw many examples of buildings, including entire resorts, that had been started and apparently abandoned. In particular, Cambodia seemed to have many buildings that were started as Chinese investments. We were told that these structures had been left without being completed, in or around 2020.
The northern part of Vietnam seemed to be experiencing some of the same difficulty. This partly completed building is from Da Nang, a coastal city in what was formerly North Vietnam.
[10] We will have to wait and see how things really turn out.
Southeast Asia seems to be able to feed an awful lot of people with its rice fields and fish farms, operated with very little fossil fuel input.
There are a lot of pieces of the story we don’t understand. Without enough oil, people may need to stay closer to home. But quite a few people in warm, humid climates may be able to get along, for quite a while, with very modest living arrangements.
I can’t believe this will be built:
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/safe-global-thermonuclear-warfare-musk-unveils-deal-build-underground-high-speed
Safe From “Global Thermonuclear Warfare” – Musk Unveils Deal To Build Underground High-Speed Transportation System In Dubai
Isn’t this just a subway?
I don’t think of subways as high-speed, but perhaps they could be.
I was about to ask that. And of course high speed subway is very energy expensive, due to all that accelerating and stopping, plus it breaks down a lot more often. Moscow’s subway is the best in the world, but it goes up to 70 km/h tops, to limit maintenance. It is possible that the UAE has seen the Saudis partial success in surreptitiously selling Treasuries to pay for extravagant projects, and want to get a piece of the pie.
High speed is incompatible with a system that has short distance between stops. It implies high acceleration, which is uncomfortable for passengers and requires high power. Also, most subway lines aren’t straight. Going fast on a curved track creates shearing stresses that wear out rails quickly. So high speed is not desirable for a subway, even if there are ways that it could be done.
Good points!
Something is not good if you are considering price caps or rationing.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/EU-Considers-Temporary-Cap-on-Natural-Gas-Prices.html
I agree. LNG is horribly expensive to produce and ship to where it is needed. If the price is not high enough, Europe will not be able to buy the natural gas.
They know it is past peak .
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/12/chevron-global-layoffs
I would agree. Laying off 20% of world employees is huge!
I have been impressed with Chevron over the years. They were the ones who took me and several other bloggers to Ecuador to see the shakedown that Ecuador was trying against them. Chevron has had a more diverse portfolio than other big oil companies. They were aware of the peak oil problem, it seemed to me.
Dimitry Orlov has a free post. US debts’ upcoming debt tsunami warning.
https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/285ba7eb-5a7e-4f78-a102-21948b554073?isFromFeed=true
I haven’t checked the numbers, but it looks to me as if Dmitry Orlov does a fine job on this post. He says,
Later:
It seems to me that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would need to be cut greatly, as well. They are huge programs. But cutting them will hurt incomes greatly. Citizens will not react well to such changes. Or the government could send the programs back to the states. That will results in the same effect as Orlov forecasts–the US disintegrating into individual states, or perhaps regional groupings.
It appears worse than that; we not only have demographic problems, we have vastly great differences in abilities. Look at phots of SpaceX, what I assume is the control room; it should be obvious.
It concerns me how this will be reconciled.
Dennis L.
YES!, YES!, YES! this is a issue Americans can not admit.
China has systematized the issue
Tier 1 (一线城市): These are the most developed and influential cities, typically including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
New First-tier Cities (新一线城市): These are emerging cities with growing economic significance, such as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Suzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing, Changsha, Zhengzhou, Dongguan, Qingdao, Shenyang, Hefei, and Foshan.
Tier 2 (二线城市): These are well-developed cities with substantial markets.
Tier 3 (三线城市): These are developing cities with potential for growth.
Tier 4 (and lower): These are smaller cities with basic infrastructure
It is not just these factors but also things like wheelchair bound, disabled, stupid, mental illness.
One of the early SpaceX lunches had a black female trying to read out the large numbers but she had no education on how to read large numbers. It was highly embarrassing. Thank God they now use literate/numerate whites.
Do you have any links to photos of this kind? The NASA photos I found were of missiles only.
“0:30
first of
0:31
all not that I even want to go into this
0:34
whole thing about the debt because it
0:36
doesn’t even exist the 36
0:39
trillion all that is is the total amount
0:43
of dollars created by the US government
0:48
since 1776 or 1778 whenever you want to
0:53
uh you know started until now which has
0:58
not been drained Away by taxes so that
1:00
is 36 trillion worth of
1:03
dollars that the global non-government
1:07
owns those are dollars being held
1:10
because the government spent 36 trillion
1:14
more than it took away in taxes so that
1:17
was a gigantic or an injection or a
1:20
transfer not inject transfer of $36
1:25
trillion to the
1:27
non-government globally that that is
1:30
part of the assets that we own not
1:34
owe so it’s all been paid for so that’s
1:37
number one number two what’s this thing
1:40
and he didn’t elaborate on what this
1:43
thing was that they
1:45
found that suggests that hey maybe the
1:48
debt is not as big as we thought
1:50
probably what he found is that
1:53
government agencies hold some of that
1:57
debt okay that’s part of their Holdings
2:01
uh intragovernmental debt and the FED
2:04
owns a big chunk of it
2:06
too so
2:08
like this has been known for freaking
2:13
decades”?
There are all kinds of things for which there is no debt on the balance sheet. The US will bail out banks, even though the FDIC has practically no money, for example. The US guarantees a lot of loans for very questionable companies in the renewables business, as another example.
Hmm so we should just wipe out all mortgages for people.. and student loans. If what this guy says is true then I’m pissed that they have been making me pay taxes!!!bring out the pitchforks !!!
” If anything, Trump just walked back his plans of ending the war swiftly after announcing that no ‘peace plan’ would be presented at the upcoming Munich conference, but rather instead Hegseth and Kellogg would be sent to “listen to what European partners have to say” before the US presumes to finalize any kind of plan.
This is clearly a step back rather than forward, and the desperate meaningless Putin conversation was likely the patch-up job meant to give the appearance that Trump’s big brawny peace initiative was still proceeding.”—-Simplicus
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/double-decker-special-hysteria-ignites?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=157032149&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Simplicius wants the war to go on since he will return to be a nobody when the war ends.
No kul.
He has ten grandchildren, they are all fairly good looking. All of us are temporal. No matter what your feelings are towards him, he has had a remarkable life. Sometimes it concerns me the envy shown here towards others.
Have a good day,
Dennis L.
Whether he has grandchildren or not is not relevant to this. No one cared about Simplicus befire the war and no one will do again after the war.
I did not know he had 10 grandchildren so there is no envy.
And you have praised your ‘national heroes’.
Simplicus believes that Trump “spun” his achievements in the phone call as more than they really were. This tends to be the pattern of many politicians.
We don’t really know at this point. Let’s wait and see.
I think Putin wants to fight a low key war of attrition not only to preserve Russian manpower and to minimze the unpopularity of war back home, but also to slow walk the SMO so as not to alarm the West by advancing too quickly like a juggernaut that is coming for the Baltics, Poland etc.
He also wants to give the appearance that peace is just around the corner, when he knows deep down that Russia will never be able to trust the West to any kind of “deal” whether a “cease fire,” a “freeze” in the conflict, or even a so called “permanent resolution” which would satisfy Russia’s need for secure borders and an end to NATO encroachment and encirclement. The pace of this war actually keeps Russia at a better level of readiness than a peace plan with a backing off of Russia’s state of readiness. The truth is Russia will never be able to relax its guard. Yet it wants nto keep its economy as strong as possible so that it will be able to carry the parasitic load of this war. It’s the lesser evil of two bad options.
Simplicius is correct. Putin has to quietly decide how much land he will need to provide a buffer zone. He doesn’t want to have to take more than he needs because he doesn’t want to incorporate non-Russians if he can help it. But a slow advance as he takes village by village doesn’t generate as much alarm as a massive, crushing invasion. A lot of the public still think Ukraine can still win this war or that Russia will fail. Putin wants to keep that perception as long as he can.
I had thought that Russia might be coerced into a “deal” but only if it was economically backsliding from the sanctions, especially with the restictions on shipping its oil. But this does not appear to be the case at least for now.
I don’t know what they will do, but I think that the sanctions actually work to Russia’s benefit in that it forces domestic investment by an elite who generally prefer to strip-mine Russia of its natural resources. If the USA was smart, they would unilaterally remove sanctions, whether or not they manage to get some concessions in return.
Putin is fighting the war according to Clausewitz; you fight to destroy the enemy’s army and equipment. Territorial gains can be made later when there is no defence left.
This is surely true. So ending this war is really difficult. I note that Kellogg was replaced by a tribesman to talk to Putin, to improve odds. But long term one can expect low level guerrilla, russian strikes on european industrial military infrastructure, and other unpleasant things.
Sure. But the US has an interest in getting out of Europe. There will be bean counters in Washington who will say that Russia got more than the US. But if you are getting something (savings, the elimination of a festering wound, ability to pivot to the Pacific, time to rebuild your military) when you have few or no cards to play, how is that a bad deal? Note I do not agree that all those projects can happen (specially rebuilding the military), but in a place like DC they have currency.
” The Russian readout of yesterday’s Trump-Putin call says:
Donald Trump spoke in favour of stopping the hostilities as soon as possible and solving the crisis peacefully.
In turn, Vladimir Putin pointed out it was necessary to eliminate the root causes of the conflict.
Trump wants a ceasefire, Putin wants more. ”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/ukraine-the-beginning-of-the-end-which-is-yet-far-away.html#comments
How about moving NATO back to 1990 boundaries?
How about Chinese peace keepers stationed in the nations the west encroached on after 1990?
How about Chinese military observers in NATO operations buildings?
I agree that the situation is less clear than it seems, but at this point I think on the contrary, that US and Russia will probably find a settlement concerning the war in Ukraine.
I follow with interest either Simplicius or John Helmer, in my view the first one, let’s say, is close to FSB positions, the second one, let’s say, is close to CIA positions.
In this article Simplicius probably wants to warn US that Putin is ready to go on to make war if US will not really close the hostilities. It is a sort of warning: ‘be serious. Be aware that I will go on enlarging my army’.
Regarding my position above, I think that US and Russia will find a solution, because Trump has understood that the war could go on for too much, without gaining much more.
For US it is already a good result, Europe is weak now and on the path of deindustrialization.
The equivalent of the old Berlin wall will just be moved some hundreds of kms more on the east side, with Europe out of the new Silk Road from China to Europe, the one that was supposed to pass through Russia.
For Russia, it could be a good deal if Ukraine will be out of Nato, with less territory on its side.
With Chinese troops positioned to monitor the situation together with some other international troops on the border with Russia.
Additionally, Russia will not have anymore sanctions and will work with other Countries except Europe, but paradoxically maybe with US yes 😀
For Europe it has been one of the most stupid things of history.
But there is nothing we can do now for Europe, in fact it has NOT understood anything lately, starting from Covid, vaccines and the reason why they were released (the first one), and introduced (the second one).
They sing our songs all around the world
We have the greatest culture ever.
Watching a basketball game last night and saw FEMA commercial said “Build an emergency box and make a plan” with your family.
This is doomsday prepper s***
WATCH: New video shows U.S. Navy fighter jet crashing into the San Diego Bay earlier today
https://x.com/BNODesk/status/1889857627586437599
Fast Eddy may be right on this one.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I visited a few sites that were interested in prepping, in some way, back when I first started writing about energy shortages. I also tried to grow a few things myself.
I realized quickly after I got involved with doing this that there was no way that these “solutions” would work, at least the way I saw them being done. They would set up operation 20 miles from the nearest grocery store / place they could get provisions of any sort. How well was this going to work? They would encourage people to move in who could make their living from anywhere, but they didn’t really have enough focus on growing enough food for the group. They wanted the latest energy savings gadgets. Even organic food needed fresh water to water it, composted manure or other supplements, and sprays to keep diseases away.
The best book I’ve seen on a successful survivalist life Is “Prosperous Homesteading” published by Club Orlov Press and written by Greg Jeffers. It’s a memoir of a man coming from city life to set up on a remote farm in Kentucky with a wife and 6 sons. They live a hard and precarious life requiring the full time labor of all the family members. The man ends up admiring his Amish neighbors with their larger and more secure community.
What Gail witnesses in Southeast Asia was whole regions living lifestyles similar to the North American Amish, only without as much need for wood heat.
I think there are now better agricultural paradigms than what the Amish deploy. Permacultural type practices like food forests, syntropic silvo-pastures, regen ag in general, although needing broad acreage and whole communities to set up and manage, are far less labor-intensive in the long run.
All of the fancy bew schemes need fossile fuel
Although i do not have too much exoectations over the inbred Amish, all of tgem being genetic siblings.
US Intelligence Suggests Israel Is Trying To Drag Trump Into Preemptive Attack On Iran
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-intelligence-report-suggests-israel-trying-drag-trump-preemptive-attack-iran
Yes I believe this is the story that no one is calling yet… US will attack Iran by next year. Just negotiating it with Russia now…
Russia would benefit from destruction of middle east oil production. Destruction of middle east oil production would help keep oil prices high in the face of a coming global depression.
Russians might think that destroying Middle East oil production would keep prices high, but I am not sure that that is the way it really would work. It might just tend to push the whole system toward collapse because of lower oil supply. Of course, if another country could take over later, they might (in theory) extract bypassed oil supplies.
Attack them with what, then do what when Iran cuts off all oil exports from all countries through the Persian Gulf? The US will do nothing. Its day is done.
A preemptive attack doesn’t seem too likely to me. It seems like too much could go wrong.
“seems like too much could go wrong.”
Ask Putin about it.
Ben Christman dead at 21 as tributes pour in for Ohio State football star
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/ben-christman-dead-at-21-as-tributes-pour-in-for-ohio-state-football-star/ar-AA1yVgvO
Bet he was an anti-vaxer. Ohio is big time unvaxxed.
“Bet he was an anti-vaxer. ”
Possible, but I would not bet on it being a vaccine preventable disease that got him. Dying in your apartment sounds more like drugs but who knows.
On the other hand, flu has been brutal this year. Still, none of the common viruses are likely to kill the young and healthy.
All I can tell you,” replied Driesell, “is that Leonard’s only vice is ice cream.”
Gatlin was similarly unaware of any drug use.
“I’ve been out with Lenny many, many times and the thing that hurts me the most is that I never saw him touch drugs before. Never,” says Gatlin.
“So, to ‘know’ him and then to see what happened was something that I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. I don’t think I ever will because I never saw that side of him.”
Bias consumed alcohol and cocaine deep into the night, before he decided to lie down. The other three in the room thought he had passed out from partying. A couple of minutes later he started violently twitching.
Bias was having a seizure.
The 911 call was made by Tribble at 6:31am, distraught with fear and disbelief.
“This is Len Bias. You have to get him back to life. There’s no way he can die,” Tribble, himself heavily under the influence, said to the emergency operator.
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” the operator replied as Tribble repeatedly brought up Bias’ name.
Gatlin, in the dorm next door, was woken shortly after by the phone.
“My mother called and said that she’d had a dream, and something was wrong,” he says.
In the last of his four years playing for Maryland, he was named a consensus first-team All-American. Two days after being selected by the Boston Celtics with the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft, Bias died from cardiac arrhythmia induced by a cocaine overdose. He was only 22 years old and you would think it was a lesson to be learned….dashed the hopes of lots of folks
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/polar-vortex-forces-eia-hike-2025-us-natgas-price-forecast-20
Polar Vortex Forces EIA To Hike 2025 US NatGas Price Forecast By 20%
This should not be a surprise, with the aggressive quantity of LNG production that is being built, and the flat (or down) total natural gas production in the US. Of course, at $4 per MMBtu, the energy cost is only equivalent to $24 per barrel of oil. In some sense it is still cheap. The natural gas industry has wanted higher prices. Part of the time they have been closer to $2 per MMBtu (or Mcf).
Abiotic? I have a hard time trusting bp since lost horizon(almost like Atlantis)
https://www.upstreamonline.com/field-development/bp-surprised-by-recharging-us-shale-oil-reservoirs/2-1-1778058
…establish Eagle Ford as a model for sustainable energy development.
https://energiesmedia.com/eagle-ford-shale-output-hits-record-high-in-south-texas/
In any case we have a lot to worry about in 2100s.
We don’t extract anywhere near 100% of the oil and gas from reservoirs, and researchers are always working on ways to get more out, so the production surprises often seem to be to the upside, especially if prices are high enough for more investment. Quite often these new techniques are more expensive.
The first article is talks about wells recharging. It is behind a paywall, so I didn’t find out more about it.
The second article is called, “Eagle Ford Shale Output Hits Record High in South Texas.” When a person reads the article, it becomes clear than oil output is down, while natural gas output is up. From an economic point of view, this is terrible for the producer. Oil is generally the money maker; natural gas comes along from the ride. It is oil that is essential. Natural gas is hard to ship and store; its price (in the US) tends to be low. $3 per Mcf natural gas is equivalent to $18 per barrel oil; no one wants that.
This article is a January 2025 article. Why does it start out with, “South Texas energy production reached unprecedented levels as Eagle Ford shale operations hit a new production record in 2023?” At this point, it seems like 2024 production should be discussed.
EIA does put out estimates by play. You have to download them. Eagle Ford is a relatively small play. Eagle Ford seems to be doing OK in this analysis, but it is just one small piece of the oil and gas story.
I think you tend to jump on any piece of the oil and gas story as potentially good news. A person really has to look at the overall picture.
It seems they are talking about gas production, or perhaps some combined oil+gas barrel-equivalent metric. Oil is clearly down since the peak in 2015.
Look at the bottom 2 charts:
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/eagleford.pdf
Yes, they’re just PR articles.
Yes, just groping for contrarianism but I wouldn’t be surprised by rationing usa 70s style (it beggars belief the growth since then and how even highly educated can’t see the risk)
But the top graph says everything and it would be astounding if it plateaued for 10 years (like the current all world liquids)
Question everything, the EIA, the new AI, this blog;
Turn on, tune in, then drop out?
I should read Socrates
I have been surprised at how much new technology has been able to do.
There are many things that we don’t know that we think we know. We assume the future will be like the past. That is only partly true. The question is, “How much like the past? When and how will things change?”
From another list I read:
> The rest of this century? The way AI is advancing, the fact that by the end of THIS YEAR Sam Altman says the best computer programmer in the world is going to be an AI and AIs are going to start improving themselves, the world is going to be unrecognizable in 10 years, perhaps less than 5. Compared with that existential crisis, sending a man to Mars seems a bit prosaic. It’s bizarre that in the recent presidential debates in the US the word “AI” is not mentioned once, it would’ve been more appropriate if that had been the only topic they debated on.
>
If oil holds out another 5 years, the concerns about energy expressed here may seem quint.
Another quot and my reply.
> I’m slightly more conservative on the timeline. Remember that you do
90% of the work in 10% of the time but then you spend the remaining
90% of the time to do the remaining 10% of the work.
That was the old metric, before self improving AIs took over.
This is all lies. There are plenty of youtube videos showing that efficiency gains from programming using ‘AI’ are far far lower than claimed.
“efficiency gains”
I sort of doubt that you use any of the AIs on a regular basis.
I have caught them hallucinating a few times, but generally, they improve my speed of working on things substantially.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/vp-vance-threatens-europe-over-chinese-open-ai-models.html#more
He [Vance] says he’ll ensure that American AI dominates (“the United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way”).
The US sees AI as a weapon to be restricted to US government and its friends.
Modi says he will have an AI in ten months.
Everyone wants an AI that waves their gang colors.
They also plan to be the best nation at those 64 critical technologies. And indeed in 2003 they were number 1 in 57 of them. But now regrettably it is China which is number one in 59 of them. If deepseek is better, this will be a further disadvantage for the West, aplified by the fact that Vance and co. will prevent its use.
I discussed world events with a friend (USA) and he repeated tropes about the Chinese only being able to copy, not innovate. Obviously this is incorrect, but it is a good reference point for the worldview of the average American.
Evolution is unkind to idiots.
“will prevent its use.”
Right, in the US. What good does that do?
Restricting use doesn’t work very well.
” Modi says he will have an AI in ten months. ”
Modi is all hot air . Exaggeration is his sole talent . Illiterate . Has never given a press conference ex-tempore in 10 years and cannot do a speech without a teleprompter . Ignore .
surely there is someone in bangalore that can put together a quick and dirty neural network?
“deepak seek”
drb , AI is killing the IT sector in India . The low level and easy work is taken over by AI . Mass firings . Small startup’s that wanted to work as sub contractors to the Big Boys shutting down . Nothing is coming out of Bengaluru .
https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/infosys-fires-trainees-fail-internal-evaluation-fist-job-it-sector-layoff-125021000595_1.html
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/more-than-90000-it-employees-already-lost-jobs-in-2024-many-now-facing-silent-layoffs-2556335-2024-06-21
So what Ivan predicted is coming to pass. The low level IT jobs are disappearing and with them a significant fraction of the Indian economy.
Economic contraction in the sector blamed on ‘AI’.
I don’t agree. IT in Moscow is booming, as is in other Russian cities. At least in Moscow there is now no discernible difference in salary cmp the USA.
The decline of the human species consists in the fact that initially they searched for the energy. But ended up searching for the jobs, i.e. labor.
It is no wonder that the adoption of Christianity as the self-sacrifying religion preceded the rise of atheism: the humans lost belief that there is a free energy above that which is readily available. Searching for some other energy is not energy efficient.
Humans always had to search for food. They found that cooking food provided more digestible food. Also, using heat made sharper stone tools. So heat energy, even above what was available from burning biomass, was terribly important.
We do have to work for this energy; this energy isn’t free. And the energy, itself, can take away jobs, especially jobs based on the strength of human workers.
It is convenient to believe that a good god would provide us with all of the energy products we like, but this doesn’t seem to happen after a point. Perhaps this is what you associate with the rise of atheism. God doesn’t really give us what we need/want. There must be no god.
The economy behaves in a strange self-organizing way; there must be some Higher Power behind it. But the whole system doesn’t act the way we would expect. Hence, the confusion.
“There must be no god.”
Yet.
it’s occurred to me, that early man would hang meat up in caves out of the reach of dogs.
that would put meat inconstant smoke, and could have been the start og cooking meat, because it would improve the taste no end
“out of the reach of dogs.”
Cooking dates back at least a million years, dogs to something around 15,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog
A sense of proportion could be invoked.
i stand corrected
my logic was misplaced
You weren’t “wrong” IMHO. When you said dogs, you meant creatures that have four legs and go woof woof. They hadn’t been domesticated yet, but their dog-like ancestors were around, and early people would have had to keep them from the door.
The genus Canis has a history going back at lest 2 million years, so undoubtedly there would have been lots of canines hanging around in the vicinity of human groups on the lookout for something to eat. People would have had to hang the stuff high to keep it safe from them.
Wikipedia is usually good on this kind of thing, because it isn’t very political:
“The genus Canis (Carl Linnaeus, 1758) was published in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae and included the dog-like carnivores: the domestic dog, wolves, coyotes and jackals. All species within Canis are phylogenetically closely related with 78 chromosomes and can potentially interbreed. In 1926, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in Opinion 91 included Genus Canis on its Official Lists and Indexes of Names in Zoology. In 1955, the ICZN’s Direction 22 added Canis familiaris as the type species for genus Canis to the official list.”
If there is less and less jobs with adequate wages, fighting for them becomes completely useless.
The death spiral of the deflation and mounting debts collapse everything.
The rising complexity (regulation) reflects the presence of more and more limits that prevent the expansion, i.e. the growth.
There is very little point in most average people applying for a job now. Chances of getting it are just too low to be worth the effort.
God is only 80/20, the 20 works very well, the 80 is left behind.
Self organizing that way.
Dennis L.
Nothing can replace Oil to keep the wheels running industrial civilization, not Wind or Solar. Green energy is not green and that needs to be emphasized. It is alternative energy because there is not clean about Wind and Solar.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/how-many-more-ridiculous-green-energy-projects-will-fail
“How Many More Ridiculous Green Energy Projects Will Fail?”
Bullet points:
1 – Birds Fry Every Two Minutes
2 – Calculating the Number of Dead Birds. There are 525,600 minutes in a year.
3 – New Jersey Reaps the Wind, Again. It’s not just solar. Also note that Shell just backed out of a wind-energy project despite huge subsidies.
4 – A Mountain of Unrecyclable Waste. The Institute for Energy Research notes Broken Windmill Blade Closes Nantucket Beaches
5 – Massive Wind Graveyards. Wind turbine blades are made from fiberglass, or fiber reinforced plastic, and cannot be recycled.
6 – How Many Birds are Killed by Wind Turbines?
6a – (How many sea mammals are directly or indirectly harmed or killed by wind farms out in the ocean, a lot? my emphasis)
7- Economic Reality
7a – Q: How Many More Ridiculous Green Energy Projects Will Fail?
A: All of them, unfortunately not fast enough. And none of them should have been approved in the first place.
‘Renewables’ have been and are only additive to energy consumption/production. They have not replaced oil/gas/coal one iota.
Quite true. The way that renewables tend to be used is to produce electricity, with a FF powerplant (usually a gas turbine or coal burning plant) providing backup. The RE source can marginally reduce fuel consumption in the FF powerplant. But even that modest benefit must be weighed against the heavy embodied energy of the RE powerplant, most of which ends up being provided by fossil fuels.
“They have not replaced ”
They could though. If you use the 1850s trick of evaporating carbon in steam, you get about 4 times as much energy out as the intermittent energy you put in. The syngas can be stored and burned later or made into liquid fuels.
And it gets rid of plastics before they become microplastics. It is, however, only a temporary solution since it is almost certain to be left in the dust.
Is it worth doing? Maybe.
The amount of complexity needed to make these big changes is hard to measure. Adding complexity always seems to require additional energy use.
Added complexity is very difficult to support because of the many chains of inputs required. We cannot provide the resources to make the whole system work, even if looking at only a small part of the system, it looks like the approach would work.
“require additional energy use.”
Certainly this one does, making the trash from LA into diesel takes 30 GW of intermittent solar.
“many chains of inputs required.”
We could farm the whole thing out to the South Koreans. They recently built a blast furnace that large.
The hard question is if it is worth doing given the rapid advances of technology. It used to be that an industrial facility would last decades. Not obvious that something constructed today will last even one decade.
Kris DeDecker of Low Tech Magazine makes the point that 80-90% of the cost and embodied energy of offgrid RE systems are in the inverters, charge controllers and batteries.
His suggestion: Use renewable energy without storage. Adjust energy usage to match supply. There are ways that this could work in practice, but it implies a very different way of life to the 9-5 existence that we have gotten used to in industrial fossil-fuel world.
He also suggests, where possible, avoiding energy transitions. Use the wind to raise mechanical power and sunlight for heat.
Thus, use wind to pump water to an accessible place, for animals and humans. Sounds like a 19th century idea.
Using sun for heat is usually counter-productive. The time we need heat is in winter. There is little solar electricity in winter. Even in summer, the electricity generated is far too early in the day, relative to the need to cool homes in the evening, and cook dinner.
If the western world had refrained from allowing energy policy to be dominated by impractical leftwing political idealists, we would have a fleet of fast breeder reactors by now. Electricity would be cheap and peak oil would be a less serious concern. But we allowed idiots and men in tiny hats to dominate our political systems. The result was mass immigration, windmills and globalism. Finally, it looks as if the adults are back in charge in the US and hopefully Europe too.
lol
the wealthy want only to increase their wealth at the expense of everyone else
as to fossil fuels—–
coal was a few feet under the ground, and released colossal amounts of energy via steam.
that led directly and specifically to oil—which supplied vastly more energy than coal—and so pushed humankind to even more energy consumption and production.
to infer that this was some kind of political process is absurd in the extreme—–
it was a money grab, plain and simple.—cheap surplus energy was converted into money
the politics of wealth—such as the characters standing behind king don admiring his new clothes, came later.
” oil—which supplied vastly more energy than coal”
The International Energy Agency defines one tonne of oil equivalent (toe) to be equal to:[1]
1 toe = 11.63 megawatt-hours (MWh)
1 toe = 41.868 gigajoules (GJ)
1 toe = 10 gigacalories (Gcal) – using the international steam table calorie (calIT) and not the thermochemical calorie (calth)[2]
1 toe = 39,683,207.2 British thermal units (BTU)
1 toe = 1.42857143 tonnes of coal equivalent (tce)
Oil does proved a little more energy per ton than coal, but that’s not why it displaced coal.
oil displaced coal because you dont need to shovel it
Too late now, even assuming they would have worked.
It has been said many of the western leaders are former high school class presidents. Sounds about right.
Dennis L.
We often hear economic arguments for sinking fertility, but I think Oswald Spengler had it right over a hundred years ago:
“And then …there suddenly emerges into the bright light of history a phenomenon that has long been preparing itself underground… — the sterility of civilized man… That which strikes the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the notion that the family and the name may be extinguished, has now lost its meaning.… Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for their existence… When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard “having children” as a question of pro’s and con’s, the great turning point has come. For Nature knows nothing of pro and con…. When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At that point begins prudent limitation of the number of births… The father of many children is for the great city a subject for caricature…. At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up for a while.”
To my own point:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/12/china-marriage-statistics-plummet-record-low
are you aware that pipelines are not straight? And also are full of bitumen deposits here and there so that the capsule will get stuck? piggings (cleaning capsules) have already been in used for a long time. the friction can be made really small if the capsule is near buoyant, and with it the transportation costs.
Well I know that, but I’m not sure that Oswald Spengler did.
I was answering Peter.
Thanks. I think radius of curvature would need to be limited in capsule pipelines to prevent clogging. But in water filled pipes, solid deposits won’t be a problem. Putting the pipes underground should prevent freezing.
There are ammonia pipelines too.
Once women are in the workforce, and daycare for even one child costs as much as what most women earn (especially after expenses related to the job are counted), then people start wondering whether having a second or third child makes sense.
Going to school for many years makes the process of having multiple children more difficult. Partly, the couple is starting later in life to have children. Also, the couple is pickier about what kind of care the child will have outside of the home. The mother may have more lost income, if she takes time off.
So, over and over, we see that it is the immigrants and less-educated people who have several children.
except most immigrants are male 18-34 working in canada, and military aged/non-working in everywhere else. and their TFR also collapses one generation later if they do breed.
Freight pipelines.
https://youtu.be/PK3CQ_mXYDM
This was a seemingly good idea that promptly went nowhere. I suspect that the capital costs and sheer complication involved in digging up streets to bury the required pipes would make this a major project with a lot of capital cost. Also, the project shown is a miniature railway running through a pipe. People will rightly ask why we should do that instead of making greater use of existing railways?
That said, I have always been curious about the idea of hydraulic capsule pipelines. These would ship freight in floating capsules or barges, carried through pipes by flowing water. Kind of like canal boats without drivers. If a mechanical windmill can be used to pump the water that carries the capsules, then this form of transport could be very sustainable. The pipes could be made from concrete, plastic, cast iron or clay lined stone culverts. The wind pumps would be made from stone, rammed earth, adobe and wood. The main downside of this technology are that it would also be quite slow. But in a world where oil production is declining, hydraulic capsule pipelines would allow goods transportation to continue cheaply, without need for oil products.
This idea was put out 8 years ago, I see, but it hasn’t been put into practice.
If the cost-benefit ratio were really favorable, I expect someone would fund it. But it has big up-front costs, and it is quite inflexible. The freight can only go from point A to point B, with little alternatives. If something changes in the city, something different will be needed. And the upfront cost is likely to be large.
There isn’t going to be any freight, apart from all the multiple other reasons why ‘freight pipelines’ could never work.
transporting ”stuff” doesnt make money
its what you do with stuff after its transported that makes money.
(after youve absorbed the transport costs)
This reference discusses coal log pipelines.
https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA0038223X_2226
This involves mixing coal with a binder and compressing it into cylindrical logs that can then be pumped down a water filled pipeline slightly wider than the logs themselves. These pipelines are used to transport coal from mines to powerplants. The reference notes that energy costs due to friction are about 25% greater (i.e 1.25x) than pumping water alone.
This suggests to me that capsule pipelines could be a very energy efficient means of moving freight, comparable to rail or ship. In a world without oil this could be used to distribute goods at a fraction of the energy cost needed to deliver by truck. But it will be relatively slow. Coal log pipelines move at about 3 m/s.
this would be the cheapest form of transportation. I estimate a cost of 0.01 MJ/kmTon (or less), compared to about 0.04 for ships and about 0.3 for trains. The main source of friction is viscosity of the liquid at the log pipeline interface, and even for oil it is not so big. But the capsule needs to be neutrally buoyant, so it needs to contain some air, since the vessel is metal and coal is heavier than any liquid.
I used the Darcy-Weisbach equation, for a smooth concrete pipe, some 2m in diameter with mean flow velocity 3m/s. I assumed a perfectly straight pipe and assume that the capsules are neutrally bouyant and represent half the total volume being pumped. Water temperature is 10°C.
Answer: 0.01875MJ/t-km. Which is about half of the energy consumption of shipping or rail.
There are lots of unanswered questions. Such as how the capsules would be handled at the end of the pipe.
we mostly agree. It needs to be seen if the liquid also needs transporting (that is, a live pipeline) or if it just there for the buoyancy. There is no chance that rail is at the level you state. It is 0.2 in Russia and 0.3 in places which have hills like Europe. You basically state a number which would not allow trains to climb hills.
So realistically, factoring in the effect of curves in the pipes, large diameter capsule pipelines would be 10x more energy efficient than railways. This is something that looks like it really could be powered using a combination of intermittent renewables. This could ship the freight of an entire industrial nation using a few hundred MW of power.
The main downside is that this would also be 10x slower than railways. Maybe that won’t matter very much.
I don’t know if the water used would have other uses at the end of the pipeline. I suspect it would be recycled and used to send empty or full capsules in the other direction. I’m not sure if the water will be pure or salt water. The later is less prone to freezing, but it would increase corrosion problems.
Whether or not the liquid is pumped or the capsule is pushed through it? I have seen different concepts proposed. If the pipeline is used at high utilisation, then pumping will be more attractive. I think the capsule pipeline concept is only desirable if it remains technically simple. For example, if each capsule must be fitted with propulsion, then we introduce a lot of complexity and cost into the design. Better to simply have pumping stations every 50km or so and keep the capsules as strictly dumb fliating containers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohave_Power_Station
Used a similar idea, a coal slurry pipeline.
and if you put the producers near the north pole, and the consumers at the equator
everything could flow downhill—easy
then of course, you could fill antarctic with people, who would keep warm with all the surplus stuff flowing down to them from the equator.
I should get the Henson prize for physics for this bit of humanity-saving.
The ruble has been strengthening since Trump took office and the stock of Russia’s largest bank has been increasing. I think politically connected financiers try to trade events before they happen, which makes me wonder whether peace in Ukraine might be closer than we think. Fingers crossed.
It is possible that also increased volume of trade in rubles with India, iran and other BRICS countries played a role. Iranians are buying rubles due to the favorable exchange rate fixed by their bank.
rather embarrassing to have to point it out drb
but
your cyclist is pedalling forward while facing backwards
always as well to check sources before posting debatable material
what is so embarassing? the INSTC is starting up. all part of a normal development. I do think the iranian central bank will soon float it. they go by trial and error a lot.
we all need an iranian trick cyclist
Of course you come from decades of indoctrination. It is normal since Iran used to be a BP playground. I visited a car part factory near Tehran. The metal stamping machines were from the 1980s, and made in Germany, with indigenous control cards. But the metal cutting machine was a 5-axis laser CNC machine made in Iran. a Friend in Italy made millions selling metal cutting machines all over the West, and they do not compare.
They have hypersonics of course, which the West does not have. Be careful in engaging these guys, since it seems that you are hitched to the Trump train whether you want it or not.
Iran has a better economy than the UK, it seems to me.
It seems Putin and Trump spoke today and Trump is making more noises about ending the war. So the economic signals are indeed related to political events. If it does come to a close, I will be happily surprised.
This is the related zero hedge link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-has-lengthy-highly-productive-call-putin-immediately-end-war
The ruble/dollar rate is irrelevant and does not represent anything real since the currencies are not traded. It’s like a digital display on an oven that’s disconnected from the thermostat.
Peace in Ukraine will come when Russia wins the war with all its demands met which doesn’t look close. I’m hearing nonsense about ‘peacekeepers’ from Europe being based in Ukraine and Ukraine being supplied with more weapons after a ceasefire.
I believe this is false, like many of your other comments. As long as some chain of currency pairs connects the dollar and ruble, there is an exchange rate.
The currencies are not traded against each other as a pair and the two economies are separated. Russia does not need dollars and the US does not need rubles.
It’s pointless to quote such meaningless figures, especially when it comes to the outcome of the war.
So what, the USD is the most-traded currency, and serves as a good proxy for a currency basket.
It looks like we’re not going to get any coherent details from Norman about this Supreme Court Judge who was bought—which judge, who did the buying, when, why, how, how much?
And it looks like we’re not going to get any more information this bulldozing of the Constitution, either.
But everybody, stay tuned to this station for further details! If Deep Throat give Norman permission to blab, this could develop into something really big that could go viral.
In the meantime, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been stripped of all her Canadian honors on the grounds that she isn’t a real Indian.
Her Oscar should be safe though. The reason they give people Oscars is for good acting. And Buffy has put on a very credible performance as an Indian for longer than Yul Bryner played the King of Siam or Harrison Ford played Indy Jones.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2025/02/11/oscar-winning-canadian-singer-buffy-sainte-marie-stripped-of-honors-after-allegedly-lying-about-indigenous-heritage/
Due to the Samantha Power’s case, there will be a lot of investigating. But the prior administration was as clean as a whistle, specially members of the Biden clan. they never bulldozed the constitution.
All kinds of new ideas from Donald Trump:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-may-be-russian-someday-trump-says-while-floating-he-wants-500bn-rare-earth
“unfettered access to rare earth minerals.”
Not rare. The name is a historical accident. The problem is that processing them out out of ore makes a lot of pollution.
That agrees with what I have heard.
The term rare earth was coined when an unusual black rock was unearthed by a miner in Ytterby, Sweden, in 1788. The ore was called “rare” because it had never been seen before and “earth” because that was the 18th-century geological term for rocks that could be dissolved in acid.
Ironically, the US-based company that has seems to have the biggest stake or claim on the rare earths of Ukraine is called BlackRock.
“claim on the rare earths of Ukraine”
In the US, Mineral Peak is a large deposit.
There are no rare earth deposits in Ukraine.
The 17 rare earth metals are as follows:
lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), lutetium (Lu), scandium (Sc), and yttrium (Y).
you sound like Tom Lehrer
you sound like Tom Lehrer
I don’t know who that is but I’m becoming irritated with hearing about imaginary rare earth metals and the associated conspiracy theories.
Thus I explained exactly what is and is not a rare earth. I can’t see how that is unreasonable.
google tom lehrer—the periodic table—utter brilliance
“utter brilliance”
It wasn’t an insult to compare your element listing to Tom Lehrer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer but I am not surprised you didn’t pick up on who he is. There are not too many of the current generation who know, though my daughter insisted on “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” for the father-daughter dance at her wedding (and I had to learn how to waltz) . Not long ago he put all his songs in the public domain.
i know perfectly well wo lehrer is
i assumed others would google him if interested
I have liked Tom Lehrer songs, too.
“The surprising reason the world is hitting peak oil demand faster than anyone thought”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8dKioOrLs8
“Global demand for oil will peak by 2030, and then decline. These estimates continue to be revised forward, as crude oil demand is being destroyed at a faster rate than expected.
“The electrification of transportation systems is the primary driver. But by far the biggest destroyer of oil demand is the booming sales of electric bikes and scooters. E-bikes take twice as much oil off global markets as electric cars, trucks, buses, and trains–combined.
“And it’s not just in Asia. In North America and Europe, millions of electric bikes are sold every year, and almost all of them are displacing ICE-powered vehicles, instead of traditional bicycles.”
I suppose this largely concerns such as US-fracked light oil (for making such as gasoline) — but what about SMD (sweet middle distillates) oil, for such as diesel & kerosene (jet fuel)?
“as diesel & kerosene (jet fuel)?”
We know how to turn syngas into diesel, it is done on a fairly large scale.
Making syngas from trash, coal, or biomass and intermittent energy can be done as well.
Will we? Hard to say. LA would need about 30 GW of intermittent power to convert al the trash into diesel. The process has the added advantage of getting rid of all the plastics in the waste stream.
More on plastics in brains today.
Quite right David. If consumption of gasoline drops but demand for other oil products does not, it leaves the world with a disposal problem. Any redundant gasoline would end up being burned in gas turbines to generate electricity. So instead of burning gasoline in vehicle engines, we would burn it in power stations to charge vehicles. Which sounds like a comedy.
One thing that isn’t mentioned that likely has a larger effect on gasoline demand is demographic ageing. China, Japan and Europe are ageing out, with fewer young people than old people. The Chinese population has likely been shrinking for about 10 years now. Japan hit its demographic turning point in the 90s. Europe isn’t far behind. So the sections of the developed world that have the highest oil consumption per capita are shrinking. And their oil demand is shrinking along with their numbers.
I think it is rising wage disparity that is leading to peak Demand. In fact, we are past “Peak Demand” for crude oil. Crude oil consumption peaked in 2018. Crude oil consumption per capita peaked in 2017.
Lower oil supply shows up as young people not being able to get jobs that pay well. And home prices too high for almost anyone to afford. Oil consumption falls by switching from eating beef to chicken for meat, or by eating less meat in total. The economy gets “hollowed out” without our even thinking about it.
In my view there is no such thing as “peak demand”. There is only peak supply in that supply remains limited to that which is sufficiently efficient to extract that consumers will be willing to trade time/effort (money) to those engaged in the extraction. Within that bound (what can be provided efficiently), which asserts itself even before EROI limits, oil is extracted and all of it consumed. As oil gets more difficult to extract and thus the oil industry demands a higher fraction of goods and services, people prefer to spend less on non-essentials than to trade away more time/effort (money) to those oil producers to receive non-essentials.
In other words, it’s not that demand declines, it’s that producers require an ever higher fraction of goods and services from the non-oil sector, and consumers are not able to meet those demands with positive economic payoff (a time/effort/value-judgement), so the difficult-to-access oil doesn’t get extracted until a technology comes along whose inputs are less economically valued than the outputs.
How about demographics?
Old people move more slowly and they are less productive and they do not self replicate on a regular schedule.
Economics is biology, in part we may be leaving that behind.
Dennis L.
You are right. Demographics are not on our side, either. There are fewer children.
We get our “GDP” from fixing broken old things, rather than starting totally new projects.
VDL calls for the end of NATO which also means the end of EU . Good riddance to bad rubbish .
https://www.sharghdaily.com/Section-world-219/969869-eu-von-der-leyen-calls-for-alternative-to-nato
The world economy seems to be rapidly changing!
Most of us wouldn’t have imagined that the world could start adjusting this rapidly. Of course, this thought is still at the idea stage now.
Still think we have 20 years?
“20 years?”
No, 5 to AGI, possibly longer for full molecular machine nanotech.
But I sure can’t see it taking longer than Ray’s estimate 20 years ago of 2045.
I don’t think I ever said we did have 20 years.
There will always be some fraction of population that can live without fossil fuels. Disproportionately, they will live in temperate, wet parts of the world.
I can’t see her staying if NATO ends. She is 100% a NATO creature.
VDL , Kallas and Rutte are binging on Valium .
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/trump-tells-ukrainian-war-party-that-the-game-is-up.html#more
Natural gas prices, from LNG, are now up at nosebleed levels in Europe. Perhaps the amount in storage wasn’t really enough, everywhere.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-Oil-Demand-Could-Rise-As-Natural-Gas-Soars-to-100-A-Barrel-Equivalent.html
Trump on Palestinians
I’m really very curious to see if Arab key allies of US will kneel down to their lord Trump (i.e. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt) or they will demonstrate that their words and their public opinions have a minimum value to be respected.
Today, after his meeting with the King of Jordan, Trump has went on and on saying that Palestinians will go to those Countries and everybody will be happy.
Although those Countries have always been saying ‘no’ to any additional refugees camp.
King Jordan said that he will take a common position together with the other Arab Countries.
If Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will accept they will demonstrate that their words have no value and that they are slaves of US.
We will see.
“Trump, Jordan’s King Abdullah meet amid Gaza resettlement plans
“We’re going to take it, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it,” Trump said of Gaza.”
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2025/02/11/trump-to-meet-jordan-s-king-abdullah-ii-as-he-mounts-pressure-on-gaza-resettlement-plan
An interesting detail was that to a specific question made by a journalist about the biblical right of Israeli people to own, rule and live on all that area (including Gaza and West Bank), he said yes.
The great problem of Christianity, in my view, it is in fact that the disciples insisted to introduce the bible together with the gospels to the followers of Jesus.
Sorry for this point, I don’t want to offend anyone.
In my view the bible is a specific book created and tailor-made to keep together a specific ethnic group on a specific historical time (that now has expired).
In fact Ialso think that that ethnic group should be on the contrary helped by the others to not take that book litteraly.
But if Christians support Jews in taking litterally that book, it is going to be a tragedy for both.
I don’t see a good thing from these latest developments that unfolding in the Middleast.
The Middle East Eye is saying
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-set-host-emergency-arab-summit-palestinian-displacement
“Middle East Eye learned in early February that Jordan is ready to declare war on Israel in the event that Netanyahu attempts to forcibly expel Palestinians into its territory.”
I suppose that there are other Arab states that would support such an effort.
90 days is what Prof Bardi gave him before his BS will be dismantled . All new administrations have a ” honeymoon” period when that is over that is when the real action begins . This is the era of instant gratification . I know because I have seen students banging the desks because it was taking their laptops 30 seconds extra to download/ upload . April is not so far .
Gail, is there a technical term for intermittency latency? That is the typical time between intermittent energy events (sunny days or windy days), or perhaps the 99% probability time interval below which two events are recorded. Other may interject if you know the answer.
I don’t know.
The huge problem is that demand is not steady throughout the year, week, or day. In general, demand is lower at night, on weekends, and in the spring and fall of the year, when the weather is mild. Fossil fuels can be stored and used to match the time of day, week, and year when electricity supply is needed.
Wind and solar add a whole new dimension of unplanned irregularity to the system. Clouds come over, hot and cold fronts come along, and solar electricity comes much earlier in the day than people tend to use electricity. Wind and solar often are not generated geographically close to the system. (Fossil fuel systems have historically been positioned to limit the need for long-distance transmission to emergencies only.) This sets up the need for a huge amount of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure to be built. Because of the intermittent nature of wind and solar, these lines are typically only lightly used.
With the addition of wind and solar, the whole operation of the grid must be modified to work around the strange behavior of wind and solar. The total cost of the system is raised considerably.
drb , the answer is no and also there is no cure for this problem . Physics rules .
“no cure”
Storing synthetic fuel works just fine, reasonable cost as well. The problem is that technology is changing so fast that it’s not clear that the problem can be solved before it is fixed some other way.
Everyone knows how to make moonshine. That can be done everywhere, with a wide range of biomass. Even children could watch the run as they do schooling.
If this could somehow be distilled or coaxed into diesel via some process (it can’t), then society could probably continue indefinitely.
But, its fun to imagine a world powered by alcohol.
Huh…
“A patented process for converting alcohol into jet fuel or diesel is being developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). This process involves using a single-step chemical conversion to convert biofuel (ethanol) directly into a versatile chemical called n-butene, which can then be further refined into diesel fuel or other industrial lubricants. The process is more efficient and reduces emissions of carbon dioxide by using renewable or recycled carbon feedstocks.”
https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/faster-and-cheaper-ethanol-jet-fuel-horizon
Maybe some hope for this yet. Good time to get into copper stills!
“If this could somehow be distilled or coaxed into diesel via some process (it can’t), ”
It can. Try here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethyl_ether
Hk , are you Donald Rumsfeld reincarnated ? 😁
” There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
You missed the punchline!
“And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”
Rumsy definitely had a sense of humour.
“There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Donald Rumsfeld got this right. Consider the knock on effects of cell phones.
We know some things like by the end of this year AI will most likely be better than any human programmer. But what the large scale effects will be is a mystery.
You might appreciate the curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
The long form of the curse includes “May you come to the attention of important people” and the worst is “May you get what you want.”
They eat less beef and more pork in Argentina
https://robbreport.com/food-drink/dining/argentina-beef-consumption-pork-1236140747/
From the report:
There are eating more pork instead.
This link shows where people eat a lot of meat, and where they eat very little. People in India, much of Southeast Asia, and most of Africa eat very little meat per capita. People in the US, Australia, Mongolia, and Spain eat a lot of meat per capita.
https://www.statista.com/chart/16889/total-per-capita-meat-consumption-worldwide/
Another article I see says that Hong Kong, Iceland, and Macao eat a lot of meat per capita, also. These are relatively smaller areas.
The US’s meat consumption per capita rose between 1961 and 2007, then shrank, reaching a low point in 2014. This indirectly is a “demand for oil” effect. Poor people tend to eat less meat. The chart also shows that there has been a shift away from beef to poultry. Poultry uses fewer resources per kilogram of meat.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa
Interesting but incomplete info. I spent of order 16 months in Japan over 13 years. They eat more eggs than in the USA, and 50+kg of fish per person, so meat is not the whole story. Also lots of yogurt, surely they use bacteria which break casein (I am all for a variety of animal foods). Interesting how they divert every little scrap from the fish industry to their flock of chickens. Difficult to improve efficiencies there.
Poultry is an aggressive eater like goats: they turn grassland into bare ground easily. Better to keep them on a compost pile.
Thanks drb for additional comment.
That kind of diet, cooked in other ways, is similar to the kind of diet followed by Ancient Greeks.
It is even sometimes touched in mithological (or better to say religious) tales.
I think also also Etrurians, Phoenicians, Romans use to eat with similar ingredients.
And maybe slightly better than Japanese diet.
Ingredients of various kind of meat, even bear (and no religious restriction on pork or wild boar, in fact they didn’t have problems with water), fish, cheese, yogurt.
Honey for sweet.
Cereals, mainly barley.
Olive oil for dressing.
Cabbage, onion, garlic, lentils, chickpeas, beans, sage, mint, thyme, savory and oregano.
Figs, almonds, apples, pears.
Wine
Surely, Japanese are on the first place now in terms of optimization.
And eggs
I looked for a comparable “fish and seafood” exhibit I could put up. I don’t find exhibits that I liked.
Japanese women tend to have long life expectancies. Japanese men, with all of their smoking, have shorter life expectancies than the women.
I know that when various lifestyles are compared for life expectancy, ones that include fish, eggs and yogurt tend to do well, comported to vegan (weight is often too low) and the Standard American Diet, which leads to pretty awful results.
Gail, a very good friend of mine started a vegetarian diet (so everything except any meat) for a couple of years.
She lost around 15% of her weight and then also had thyroid problems, till she was convinced by her family to introduce back meat.
She slowly recovered.
Now she eats meat regularly but not much, she told me 2 or 3 times a week.
To come back to normality she took integrators for some months.
I cannot imagine what could have been happened if she had chosen a vegan diet.
Just for some ancient reference, in Greek mithology (also called ancient Greeks’ religion) it said that gods accept to take bones and grease and leave meat to humans after any animal sacrifice, because they didn’t eat meat, but they ate ambrosia and nectar, something supernatural not for humans.
Zeus actually accepted, but it was a trick made by Prometeus about which he was aware of.
But I don’t want to go too long.
The only point I want to make is that also those stories gave some sort of indications on what to do in order to survive as better as possible.
Thanks Gail for that.
In my view, Mongols are probably, at the moment, the ones who import less meat than the others (of the key group of consumers) and destroy less resources in the process.
Ulan Bataar now
https://youtu.be/Vb0uaRbBlCs?si=7EtIr-oOmcWFsJ41
Half of all Mongolians live in Ulan Bataar, the only size of any size there, and they also fell into consumurist lifestyles.
The gers, or yurts, are the equivalent of RV living in USA . Richer people live in Soviet-built houses and poorer people live in yurts.
Sorry, there is no escape from consumerist lifestyles anywhere on earth now, as even the poorest jungle people in Laos got addicted to instagram.
I wonder whether all of the debt incurred to build these buildings will really be paid back with interest.
Thank you Kulm.
Yes, I’ve seen recent videos on that city.
That city is about 1.6 M people and Mongolia 3.4 M on a territory which is, I think 6 or 7 times the one of Italy, who has 60 M people.
They still have some time maybe to see others in worse conditions.
But you are right, they have been introduced in the terrible modern circle of consumption, grow, debt etc.
“7:39 intelligence collection USAID is a CIA front that’s just the way it is that’s
7:45 the reality of the world and I’ve been calling it out from from the get-go”?
The US has been trying to shape the rest of the world in the direction it wants for a very long time, since at least the 1960s.
No wonder Scott Ritter has not been well liked by many people in power.
Perhaps that was a function of the elites whom I have heard described as former high school class presidents.
It is not sophisticated, but minding our own business and building the best society possible seems a more reasonable goal than venturing abroad: WWI, WWII, Korean War, Viet Nam War, Afghanistan War, several projects in Iraq.
The problem with using resources at home is less grift for the grifting class. That is part of gdp.
Dennis L.
or you know BE RESPONSIBLE and don’t baby BOOOOOOOOOOM.
“Few countries across the world are as dependent on US foreign assistance as Haiti. Last year, I published a book, Aid State , that details the long-term, damaging political ramifications of foreign assistance in Haiti; how aid circumvented the democratic process, eroded sovereignty, undermined local businesses and government, and served more as a benefit to US special interest groups than to the local population. “?
https://www.blackagendareport.com/where-does-money-go-look-usaid-spending-haiti
It seems like Michael Hudson write about this issue, or things closely related to this issue.
The “aid” really helps provide a market for US farmers. It makes it hard for farmers in Haiti or any other country receiving aid to compete with a price of $0. Farmers find that they have to find other employment, or get government aid.
If countries are sold on “investments,” funded by debt, in things like roads, wells, and ports, the investments often don’t provide the claimed benefit for the country receiving the aid. They really provide a market for US companies. Also, the interest goes to US bankers, and impoverishes the poor country. If the local currency drops relative to the US$, the debt becomes even harder to repay.
I had posted a recent clip of Siem Reap, the town where Angkor Wat is, and how it looked like back in 1930s when nobody wore shirts and a lot of the denizens were barefoot, and only whites rode vehicles.
The people of Siem Reap, not all of them tourists, waste a lot of energy having fun. Cambodia was, and is, and will be, never relevant for civilization. Its people have nothing to do with the people who built Angkor Wat, who were Hindus unlike the Cambodians now who mostly have Buddhist background, and disappeared a long time ago (nobody in that region bothered to leave records until 1800s)
Six-Seven billion people , who are unlikely to add anything to civilization, consumed too much resources for nothing.
I often stand against the cornucopians here, but I do not hate their ideas. If we had 50 years we would have made it. But we don’t have 50 years because globalization led to all these people wasting too much irreplaceable resources.
Electric Vehicle is a good idea. But that means infrastructure has to be built on every corner of the earth , and I wonder whether that is worthwhile.
What is the purpose of giving these people godlike technology? Just more wastage of resources for nothing.
Without the complete cessation of consumption in the Third World and the bottom 75%-90% of the First World, all these future contraptions are just talk, not feasible.
The WSJ has an article about how in India, people today in professions that require an education flaunt their wealth by the way they adorn their vehicles. They get stickers, indicating that their car has special privileges. Or the may even get a flashing red light and siren, so as to get the right of way. This doesn’t sound too different from what you are talking about with respect to the 1930s in Cambodia.
https://www.wsj.com/world/india/india-new-delhi-caste-system-drivers-5af533c9
India Has a Caste System—for Drivers
Lawyers, journalists and other members of the country’s educated class say their jobs entitle them to special treatment on the road; ‘Rich brats’
Whether or not people like Kulm’s prescription for limiting consumption among most of the world’s population, I think there is no escaping it. The people running the world (who Norman doesn’t believe exist) have decided that time is running out and so it must be done, and “it” means not just drastically reducing living standards, but drastically reducing the global population too. This is, in essence, what The great Reset is all about.
“You Will Own Nothing and You Will Be Happy” is not just a prediction and a promise, it is also a warning and a threat.
These days, if you are not considered to be making a positive contribution to the system, the system’s controllers would prefer you to be dead. It’s nothing personal, but they see you as a drain on the resource base, a waste of space, and a useless eater.
Regardless of what the stories seem to say, people aren’t Returning to the Office (RTO). They are still working from home (WFH).
I would point out that we really don’t have the fuel for the large amount of commuting required for everyone to commute to work.
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/02/10/there-hasnt-been-much-if-any-reduction-in-wfh-in-over-2-years-despite-all-the-hype-about-rto/
There Hasn’t Been Much if Any Reduction in WFH in over Two Years, Despite the Hype about RTO
by Wolf Richter • Feb 10, 2025
Hopes that Return to Office will bail out the office sector of CRE seem premature: Data on office attendance and Working from Home.
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/US-office-occupancy-kastle-2025-02-10.jpg
So the plan was exterminate all the office workers with numerous vaccinations and replace them with Ai this would have solved all problems in respect to diminishing returns, so now what are they planning?
A planned financial collapse and then a new system of financial ways to run a society to be introduced probably using cryptocurrency .
????
exterminate is too strong a word. it was more about reducing consumption. The vaccines killed 17M according to Rancourt et al., but they were not specifically directed at office workers.
you could be joking—-
in case you’re not—societies function on surplus energy
not currencies
I started working from home in 2003, about 3 days a week. It was great. I could have a large garden, be in the sun at midday during the growing season, and of course save a ton of time. Obviously people will fight tooth and nail to preserve that.
What initiatives like this fail to appreciate is that a lot of relocation took place during the Covid saga. We have people from all over the country in our team now, some due to relocation, others due to being able to recruit people who lived over an hour away from the office.
It can’t go back to how it was unless companies fire everyone who is over an hour’s drive from the office and re-hire people with the same skillset in the immediate area. There has been talk of more working days in the office for the last 6 months but it is yet to materialise.
Another factor is the cost of travel, some simply can’t afford to commute 5 days a week. 2 days in the office appears to be the optimum number.
I suspect some companies have also reduced office space to keep the bills down. If everyone was to return would there even be enough desks for the workforce?
What I see as a double tendency in Italy is that
1) in public officies, directors are pushing for people to work at home some days, even if it has no sense for some kind of jobs.
I have many friends who are reporting that.
My impression is that Iitalian rulers, on this aspect, are aware of the incredible amount of Oil wasted for commuting.
At the same time they cannot fire public employes because it is too difficult to do it.
Therefore they try to save money where is possible for the Country in general.
2) On the contrary, for private jobs, companies have asked lately to come back to work places to employes, but still with some ‘smart working’ days at home.
On this case, maybe, the objective is to ask to come back to work in order to be productive and efficient.
Who don’t want to come back (often elder people), better !
He/she will be fired with negotiating deals and the company will be able to substitute him/her, if really necessary, with a younger person with the new low level contracts.
EU leaders are worse than Nero . Hope the current stocks hold out this winter .
”The TTF, the European benchmark for gas prices, had strong gains in January with a 12.5% increase, reaching $16.2 per mmbtu by month-end. TTF price gains were driven by the halt of Gazprom supplies through Ukraine after the expiry of the 5-Year transit deal between Russia and Ukraine and cold weather conditions. As a result, gas inventories declined at the highest pace seen in recent years. Gas stockpile levels dropped to 53.59% of capacity by January 1, compared to 70.17% in 2023 and 72.10% in 2022 . ”
https://agsi.gie.eu/
My impression is that the European winter has mostly been warm.
That should help natural gas supplies hold out, for this year.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-january-2025-was-warmest-record-globally-despite-emerging-la-nina
January here was 15C above average (if by average we mean this century. Last century, 20-25C above average).
You don’t need much fuel for heat if it is that warm.
Here in Belgium the weather has been extraordinary . Very long cold period and rain combination since September . Day time temps between 2-8 degrees centigrade and rain . No sunlight . Result the maize and winter wheat harvest was a crash . So was hay . Fields are water logged . Vegetables are in the market but mainly from the green houses . Uptick in Vitamin D supplements , my chemist says . Same situation in Netherlands where I have contacts . From what I am gleaning is that the AMOC is becoming weak and going wayward .
no change to AMOC..
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/new-study-argues-amoc-has-not-declined-in-the-last-60-years/
Update .” “Inventories are only 49% full compared with 67% at the same time last year,” ING’s commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey said. ”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-Oil-Demand-Could-Rise-As-Natural-Gas-Soars-to-100-A-Barrel-Equivalent.html
Copy/paste from TAE . Collateral damage .
” A side effect of the USAID debacle is that an astronomical number of financial transactions, and contracts to buy, sell, or settle are going to be incomprehensibly disrupted by failures of money to actually flow to the recipients who previously expected payment to be made on time.
Even thinking about that much complexity makes me bleed from my ears, but suffice it say that the commercial legal system is about to become inundated with virtually unsolvable conflicts, conundrums and lawsuits.
I can’t picture the consequences of such a complicated debacle, except to say that it will be unprecedented in size, scope and range. ”
The question is whether the result will be like popping a balloon or like slowly letting the air out of a balloon? We can hope the result will be a slow slide, but it could be very disruptive.
Banks and regulators for banks will do what they can to keep the system going.
Kurt Cobb thinks it will be good if Musk succeeds .
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2025/02/why-musks-access-to-u-s-treasury.html
A forecast I can believe, about US home prices:
https://adamtaggart.substack.com/p/special-report-home-prices-set-to
Adam Taggart interview of Melody Wright
Home Prices Set To Decline 9% Nationally This Year | Melody Wright
Then fall even farther for several more years
https://youtu.be/68_S7BnVhJ4
”What we face is not a financial accounting problem as much as biological accountability. ”
OR
How a monkey fight brought down the electricity grid .
Enjoy from Sri Lanka .
https://indi.ca/monkeying-around/
Nice post, by a person from Sri Lanka who has been living the energy crisis.
An excerpt:
EIA says Sri Lanka has no oil production.
It seems to be chronic that island areas without fossil fuels need to keep FF imports coming, to keep their grid power & transport working — if such as wind/solar power are feasible, when/where are they working, solo?
“no oil production.”
75 years ago (gack) Hal Clement wrote the story Needle. It was a good story, The setting was beyond oil where they mowed tropical vegetation and made hydrocarbons out of it by fermentation.
Would this work outside of fiction? Maybe, have not worked the numbers.
Such ideas were widely hoped-for back in the 1900s — but, what happened to them in practice?
A close example to this that was tried was algae modified to poop oil. Almost the same as what you are thinking. From a search:
“Craig Venter, a pioneer in genetics, has been working on using synthetic biology to produce oil from algae. His company, Synthetic Genomics, has been collaborating with ExxonMobil since 2009 to develop algae that can produce gasoline and diesel fuel.”
This has been in development for a very long time, and I have read nothing about them in what feels like decades. I suspect its not possible because of the chemicals needed to keep the algae happy, might be as energy expensive as diesel (by volume). If the algae requires a narrow temperature range to produce, additional environmental control systems will be needed.
I think the problem is that the algae got infected with something. In any case, it did not work. Mowing a forest, and making it into charcoal and then syngas would work, at least it would not have this problem.
“mixture that is collected”
If you throw them all in a reactor heated with electricity from PV, it does not matter, all of them will react with steam and make syngas. Even PVC.
I am closely watching the evolution of Reunion Island, a French department in the Indian Ocean. The goal is indeed to reach 100% renewable, but the cost is enormous, it requires the weight of a great power, for a population and an island of small size. But it is obviously possible, technically, it remains to be seen whether it is economically possible in other places.
This is a link to an article about Reunion Island’s plans.
https://reuniwatt.com/en/industry-news/energy-autonomy-a-challenge-for-reunion-island/
Reunion Island on the road to energy self-sufficiency by 2030
If you read the link, you will discover that it is not energy self-sufficiency that is hoped for, but 100% electricity produced from sources other than diesel and coal.
Regarding coal, they say, “Thanks to biomass imports, these scenarios will also lead to the elimination of coal.” Importing biomass to use as a substitute for diesel is fraught with peril. The process of importing biomass likely requires diesel fuel. The volume of biomass is likely to be much higher than the coal. And depending on these imports, long-term, is iffy.
Reunion Island will still be using diesel for many purposes, including delivering goods to the island, and for most agricultural purposes, I would expect. The plan doesn’t stop the need for diesel imports; it just stops the need for burning diesel to make electricity.
Of course, they will have to import all of the devices used in this new approach, and they will need to keep replacing these devices, as they wear out quickly. They just relying on a different set of imports, as I see the situation.
I have a direct source. The article is not very accurate.
It is the St.Helens of France. Where uppity Vietnamese Kings who rebelled against France ended their days.
OK , another “if”, thrown them in a reactor…
Whatever….it is literally everywhere now because of this shale camel pee gas that the corps has to find something to do with it….littered everywhere, especially nature parks, playgrounds, beaches, canals ,
Everywhere here in Florida..doubt not very much would ever be thrown in a reactor..
Plastic is in everything btw, cloths, food wrappings, tea bags, coffee filters, ect ect, cleaning aid literally everything and everywhere..
Adding fuel to the fire . Mr B . 13 min read .
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/averting-collapse-is-no-longer-profitable-3a27bc4a27f7
I think that this is a great post. It points out what we have been talking about recently: Borrowing money makes money, when new infrastructure is put in. But later on, the big problem is decline, and the need to replace/upgrade whatever has been built. Actually doing this work does not help the system produce more goods and services than before (except through the flawed accounting of GDP). The extra cost needs to be taken out of the system somewhere–wages, or profits, or new investment. As we have discussed, government accounting does not handle this.
B ends the article by saying:
In fact, the collapse is first of all a process which ends in an event.
Will someone please switch off the lights on the way out
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/09/sizewell-c-becoming-another-british-white-elephant/
They will never learn .
https://ieefa.org/resources/new-uk-data-sends-nuclear-warning-australia
The first article is about a nuclear plant proposed for the late 1930s in the UK, called Sizewell C. The estimated cost, even at this time is extremely high (40 billion British pounds), and likely to go higher as work goes on.
The second one is an article called “New UK data sends nuclear warning for Australia.” If costs seem to be this high for the UK now, it is likely that the real cost will be a whole lot higher.
I would point out that we don’t really have the uranium for such projects. Of course, Australia is a major place where mining is done for uranium. But upgrading the ore is still likely to be a problem.
Australia news .
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/02/australia-has-no-manufacturing-future/
Any country that commits to climate change alleviation, carbon capture, solar/battery supply chains and green steel….is a dead man walking.
Australia is dead…just like New Zealand. They just do not fully realize it yet.
It shall not be too long before we add them to the collapsed nations list.
Unlikely Sizewell C will ever be completed.
The Cold War was also fought like a third grader.
The correct strategy would have been let USSR take over these tinpot countries, let it handle the peoples there, and make it collapse faster since these countries would have been a net sink and USSR was not that good building infrastructure in warmer climates.
I argued with a professor in a second string university in England about strategies of Great War. He argued all these casualties were justifiable, since it helped to win the war. I argued what was the meaning of all these deaths , and he said victory was better than anything else. His surname, like that of the late Oxford Ph.D Robert Firth, did not yield any notable figures before 1914, showing he was one of the ‘winners’ of such casualties since lines who had nothing to do with getting doctorates began to get them since universities had to admit peoples from class not belonging to the traditional university going classes, and after a century of that we all know how UK has ended up.
The same argument could have been made for this. USA and its allies wasted valuable resources to combat the ‘Soviet threat’, a propaganda which worked on the gullible public but was complete BS for those on the know, on Third World Countries.
Allende’s economics were failing in Chile yet the US backed coup which got rid of him made a group of people a permanent enemy of the West, which is one of the many examples of the failings of Cold War politics which hurt Civilization in the end.
With the soviet model as being the standard, these peoples of the world would have settled with crappy cars one at every 20-50 households, and would have consumed much, much less resources than what they are doing now.
What did winning the Third World do for USA ? Nothing. USA had no interest on Vietnam, which was France’s problem. And JFK had killed the only guy who might have a shot of holding the North Vietnamese because of a silly photo of a monk who burnt himself to death. (One of the monk’s disciples, Thich Nhat Hanh, preached peace and harmony with the communists but he chose to fly to Paris just before the Viet Minh takeover in 1975.)
Vietnam wasted too much resources which led to the end of the space program which never recovered.
Abandoning the third world to the Soviets would have gained maybe 50 years to complete the advance to the next stage of civilization, instead of having to do everything within 21 months from now.
21 months from now..?
Midterm in usa
If trump loses his term is effecively over
Despite of the opinions of the British patriots, who are still unrepentant on the harm it did to Europe while Hindus are encroaching around them, I still stand with the opinion that the Wrong Side won the Great War.
Since the only colonials who fought for the Central Powers were a few hundred Askaris in what is now Tanzania, CP owed nothing to the colonials and would have nothing for them if it did win.
Meanwhile the Entente had to recognize the claims of USA, Canada and the Anzac countries. Except for a few learned class in USA it was not considered to be part of the West, more like an outpost; the same to the Dominion of Canada , a name used until 1960s (meaning that Canada was not really a country), and the ANZAC colonies who were not considered to be part of the West back then, let alone the colonials who tasted civilization for the first time.
All of these people began to aspire for better life, read higher rate of consumption, and after a century we all know how it ended up.
Globalization occurred too soon. A centuries of keeping the colonials down would have ensured that all these contraptions the cornucopians are claiming would have had their chances under the sun. Instead all of these resources were used to better the lives of the colonials, now called the Third Worlders, better than before.
Keeping them down would have been infinitely a better strategy, something learned a century too late after too much resources were consumed for , I have to say, nothing.
I believe England should have stayed out or came in on the side of Germany. Lots of bad decisions led to the war. .
the cause of the Anglo-German war is above all the Baghdadbahn which put the United Kingdom in a position to lose control of Iraqi and Persian oil, at a time when the British coal industry was there and the British navy had switched to fuel oil.
Agree with pat on this. War broke out in Europe, but the first troops the British dispatched(Dorset regiment) went straight to Basrah, soon to be followed by masses more. The whole war was planned long in advance in London(original discussions took place in 1895). Anyone that believes it was because of an assignation, just look up how common they were then throughout Europe and ask why nations would destroy themselves over a nobody being dispatched in a far from uncommon way.
And now who owns the Commonwealth,?
The British made the Hindus Great again.
“And now who owns the Commonwealth,?”
The corporation, as they did back then. The house always wins.
“The British made the Hindus Great again.”
No, we destroyed a thriving civilisation and any greatness they achieve will be despite our actions.
It’s heartwarming to read your open deference to a people you clearly consider superior, but no matter how high you rate them, they like the rest of us, as you well know, are about to smash head first into the resource wall. That means the same outcome for all of us, unless someone learns to conjure stuff out of thin air(we both know a man that is willing to sell that dream).
@Fitz
The reason I have followed this idea for so long is because of the unrepentant British patriots, most of them coming from the class the Duke of wellington would have called the ‘Scum of the Earth”, praising their deeds which destroyed any chance humanity had and let the English speaking barbarians in the former colonies have a say on civilization.
The Hindus were down and out. They were ruled by the Mughals who were Muslims, and the Mughals were already in decline since around 1700.
I have read E.M. Forster’s A passage of India. In the original version, conceived before the Great War, the Indian was going to be convicted and put to death.
However, after the Great War, it was no longer cool to treat someone from India as an uncultured brute so the conclusion was changed, and at the end the Indian, many years later, refuses the offer of the Englishman to make everything up. (It is different from the movie but I have actually bothered to read the actual book.)
The Central powers would have hit the resource wall later but since in that timeline the rest of the world did not waste as much resources as it did actually, we would have gained at least a century, probably two, before the wall hit to reach the next level of civilization, unlike now when the wall is 21 months away.
Who needs schools and all those debts, I want to be a farmer:
https://youtu.be/bliGIWwIn28?si=R5Fh8ZDv9OpYrh7-
This young lady from Australia doesn’t seem to understand how the system works. As long as there is a government, she will have to pay taxes on any property. The weather is quite variable. In most parts of the world, if food needs to be grown locally, it also needs to be stored until it is needed. Extra food needs to be set aside for lean years. She needs to be part of a larger system that supports her.
This video shows the other side: that the education requires too much energy and with advancing AI you are completely discouraged to pursue jobs requiring university education.
Expensive food adds another level of rejection of complexity.
You have a lot of debt and inadequate wages, competing for daily bread in the ageing populations.
Your decision is easy: I want to eat.
Thanks! But I think she needs to band together with others, to make her plan work. I’ll admit I didn’t watch the whole video.
What to do when the human world becomes unsustainable? The state, municipality want taxes, the energy companies want money for their energy, the grocery stores want money for food. But none of them provide you adequate wages. You are simply priced out of the human world.
The human society becomes unattainable as it, actually, provides you nothing. The human society becomes a club that requires a membership fee that you can not afford.
An increasing share of the world’s population is running into this difficulty.
CIV simply regresses to an equilibium
“becomes unsustainable?”
It might already be that way.
One argument for the fall of the Roman Empire is that they spread so much lead around that it knocked enough IQ points off the population to have made them too stupid run the empire. (Recent article in Science.)
We might be doing something similar with microplastics, it’s not clear how much of a problem we have, but there was a recent article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1 that stated the average human brain has almost as much microplastics in it as a plastic teaspoon. That was quite a surprise to me. Thinking about why, brains are largely fat (insulators for axons) and plastics stick to fat. Tiny particles are going to stick harder.
Is this a problem, if so, how serious? If it is serious, is there anything we can do about it?
I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t sound good.
I believe that more than 150 causes of the fall of the Roman Empire have been identified, of which just one would have been enough.
no organised society can outlive its energy base for long
the energy base of the roman empire was slave labour
oil or slaves—run out and your energy support is gone
“Like all empires, the Roman one carried inside the seeds of its own destruction: the limited amount of its mineral resources. Roman gold and silver were used to pay not just for the legions but also for expensive commodities coming from China that the Empire couldn’t produce in its territory. As long as the Romans could keep producing precious metals, the amounts lost to China to pay for silk and spices didn’t matter so much. But that couldn’t last forever, and the mines’ production peaked during the 1st century CE. From that moment onward, the Empire was bleeding gold. In a couple of centuries, the impoverished Empire couldn’t pay any more for its huge military apparatus. It could only collapse, and it did. It started sliding downalong the “Seneca Cliff” in the second century AD, disappearing forever by the 5th century AD.”?
https://olduvai.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/It-Bears-Repeating.Volume-2-2.pdf
Only the Western Empire disappeared in the 5th century AD. The Eastern one soldiered on until 1453, when the Ottomans took over.
The Ottomans were quite popular with the subjects they acquired from Byzantium, as they demanded much less free labor and lowered taxes on the peasantry.
In the Balkans, Christian peasants could even avoid paying taxes to the Ottomans by converting to Islam, which is why most Albanians and Bosnians did.
we took the collective decision to turn the planet into a cash asset
unfortunately our planet has other ideas
I completely agree.
With all taxes and bureaucracy, the fact of simply working and living in Italy it is like trying to keep up with a luxury Club membership.
With all the documents and requirements that one needs to be compliance with, it would be necessary to have a secretary to follow all that.
(Bloomberg)
“Trump Plans to Unveil 25% Steel, Aluminum Tariffs on Monday.
President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum.”
I would say that Trump’s drastic turn in US policies may convey different conclusions, but first of all it conveys a sense of dramatic urgency…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-09/trump-plans-to-announce-25-steel-aluminum-tariffs-on-monday
(Financial Times)
“Trump vows to cut billions of dollars from US defence spending.
President says ‘fraud and abuse’ at the Pentagon will be the next target of cost-cutting by Elon Musk.
Donald Trump said he would seek to cut billions of dollars from the Pentagon budget as the next big target in the effort led by Elon Musk to slash spending by US government agencies.
In an interview on Sunday, Trump backed Musk’s cost-cutting push through the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” even as it faces growing setbacks in federal courts and allegations from Democrats that it is exceeding its powers. ”
https://www.ft.com/content/5800607b-f1fd-48a6-b90c-c79b25552e75
It is a full FT article given for free by the newspaper.
At least in my area.
Beginning to make some sense. Trump will use plans Musk’ plans to form the budget he presents to congress greatly reducing appropriations for certain agencies. That could make dome headway in reducing expenditures that that the people who voted for him want.
our conomic system can only sustain itsel;f by increasing economic activity, year on year
if it stops or reverses, the system will collapse
mid 2020s anyone?
It is really difficult to repay debt with interest in a shrinking economy.
and our current economic society is based on incurring debt to finance some kind of future
this is what makes collapse certain.
Laying off thousands of people is not going to boost the economy. Musk is a charlatan he made his money from government handouts and making electric cars that people don’t need. Maybe the money can be redistributed to more efficient spending
Laying off thousands will somehow bring “demand” down so that the economy will shrink to match the supply of resources that are available. As awful as this is, this seems to be what is needed as the world bumps against resource limits.
The world’s bubble of added debt feeding ever larger financial demand will only lead to inflation, if the resources aren’t really there.
Somehow, the world economy needs to shrink back. The US is the major leader in the financial world. It makes sense that the US takes the first steps in shrinking back.
The political leaders that convinced us the covid vaccines and shut downs would save the world are just as much of a problem as the religious priests who took advantage of the altar boys. It is increasingly clear that medicine, food production, and many other areas are now being focused in ways that benefit the wealthy owners of the companies dominating these fields, rather than the long-term health of citizens.
Citizens are not being told that the current system cannot continue. Some new system is needed, that is less resource intensive. Population likely needs to be lower.
” Somehow, the world economy needs to shrink back. ”
How ? How much ? 10% or 50% . I read a comment somewhere that you want 10% degrowth then as an experiment donate 10% of your income every month to an organisation of your choice that you think uses the money productively . You will discover the pain in a very short period of time . Degrowth/shrinking debunked . It cannot / will not be done . Collapse is the only way out .
yup
unfortunately, people get fed and housed to the standard they have come to expect by ”the economy moving forward”
when the economy shrinks back, this will no longer be possible—no ifs buts or maybes.
when this happens, civil unrest is certain.
when that happens, king don will ”take emergency civil powers” to suppress civil disorder.
when he does that, he will not surrender it.
he is already talking about getting elected for a third term.
he is already bulldozing the constitution—–a minor detail about elections won’t concern him 4 years from now
can you outline in specific terms how exactly he is bulldozing the constitution?
the supreme court has ruled that he has legal immunity from any act carried out as president
the constitition makes it clear that he does not, and was originally set up as such to prevent it happening.
king don himself installed the current supreme court—that alone bulldozes the constitution.
at least one member of the supreme court was bought—i must assume others were too.—i have that on a personal authority that did not come through any source of mass media, conspiracy theories or opinion of idiots. —and one thing i dont do on ofw is indulge in bs.
the president himself has sold his office to the highest bidder—how could you expect anything else—I hope you are not entertaining the notion that he hasn’t sold it?
That too is against the constitution.—Nevertheless, thats what has happened.
you can go on admiring the emperors clothes—nothing i can do about that.
$250m–a bargain wouldnt you say? back of the sofa small change for the richest man in the world who intends to become the first $trillionaire.
And you’ll be contributing to that.—along with millions of other gullible people—lol
congratulations.
The only way to take back the nation may be marshal actions. That is as much as can be said on a public internet post.
as i’ve said elsewhere
soldiers follow whoever pays their wages
if soldiers dont get paid—they go self employed.
check your history books on that one, dont take my word on it.
Bulldozing the constitution baby! Such a shame, that document was written precisely for resource depletion times by clairvoyant people. Fortunately bulldozers run on diesel, so he will have to stop at some point.
I am glad you do not”indulge in bs” here. Parsing it like a Bill Clinton statement, it is because it is not indulging, but rather your moral fiber that makes you do so, despite all the catcalls.
at least one member of the supreme court was bought—i must assume others were too.—i have that on a personal authority that did not come through any source of mass media, conspiracy theories or opinion of idiots. —and one thing I don’t do on ofw is indulge in bs.
Unless you divulge the source of your claim and we the people find it credible, we can only assume that indulging in bs and conspiracy theory is precisely what you’ve done here.
Everyone reading this should be able to see clearly why this is logically so.
Why should anonymous “personal authorities” quoted by you “trump” anonymous “blokes down the pub” quoted by anyone else?
presidential immunity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsm1tKCD7RA
as to sources tim—to divulge that would break a confidence going far closer than you might imagine. (i never ever go down the local pub.)
much much much closer than your sources for faked moon landings—or any of your other fakereies.
incidentally tim—i happened to come across your mentor’s substack the other day.
big notice on it—-”If you believe the moon landings happened, you are not welcome here”
confidence or what??
the supreme court has ruled that he has legal immunity from any act carried out as president
Pray tell us when they did that. Quote the ruling and the date?
I’m assuming this is yet another example of the bs you never indulge in here, but I’m willing to be schooled as I am not a constitutional scholar or an expert on Supreme Court decisions.
As far as I know, there are two key rulings on presidential immunity:
Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982):
The Supreme Court ruled that a president is entitled to absolute immunity from civil damages for actions taken while in office that fall within their official duties. This means that a president cannot be sued for damages for actions related to their official functions.
Clinton v. Jones (1997):
The Court ruled that a sitting president does not have immunity from civil lawsuits for actions taken before taking office or for unofficial conduct. This case involved a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton and clarified that the president could be held accountable for personal actions.
Factoid: Trump didn’t install any of the judges who made either of those rulings.
Tim, what got me was that “one” mrmber of the SC was bought. One? for real? This month the sun will rise to the East at least once.
i write about what i know about
i know about one—i don’t make up stories about the rest
As your video states, Norman: “The justices said for the first time that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts and no immunity for unofficial acts.”
This was six months ago, and it was news to me, as I don’t follow US current events as closely as I might. Thanks for enlightening me on it.
Not exactly earth-shattering though, is it? I had assumed that this was the case since as far back as I could assume such things. This was merely a clarification of what had been the status quo position prior to the avalanche of political prosecutions against Trump.
You interpret that as: “the supreme court has ruled that he [Trump] has legal immunity from any act carried out as president.”
But it is far broader. Every US president has legal immunity from any “official” act carried out as president.
That includes Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, all of whom are de facto war criminals in many people’s books. As for dead presidents, the matter is academic, but Truman had legal immunity from prosecution for destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Johnson and Nixon had legal immunity for all the death and destruction that their official acts caused in Indochina.
Take away factoid: While many US presidents have faced significant scrutiny and political consequences for their actions, there has never been a criminal prosecution of a US president for official acts taken during their presidency.
incidentally tim—i happened to come across your mentor’s substack the other day.
big notice on it—-”If you believe the moon landings happened, you are not welcome here”
Incidentally, Norman, while it is not difficult to come across someone’s Substack while browsing, you are under no obligation to enter the site, especially if you don’t get on with the owner.
My own position on the moon landings is that while they look fake, and there was undoubtedly a lot of fakery involved in the media presentation, there is also plenty of reasonable evidence that passes “the smell test” that they did actually occur.
Nothing absolutely irrefutable either way though. So we can all believe what we like, or remain uncommitted, sitting on the fence, until further developments enlighten us more.
While the Apollo program may have been genuine, the Challenger disaster was definitely faked. There were no astronauts aboard when the thing disintegrated. It could well have been an insurance fraud , as could he Titanic disaster and the WTC controlled demolitions on 9/11 and the warehouse fire that destroyed 50 years British modern art including Tracy Emin’s bed and all those coat-hangers. I’m told there’s a lot of insurance fraud about?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/may/27/thebritartfire.arts1
i imagine there’s good money to be made as an astronaut crisis actor—particularly those who volunteer to get dead in the process
never knew the challenger was fake though
have added it to the list
personally, i would have thought they would have timed the challenger flight to coincide withe WTC collapse
woulda saved a lot of conspiracy time dontcha think?
remind me to ask you about your source material—much more lurid than mine.
hope eddy doesnt find out youre wavering the moonloonery thing tho.
About Challenger, the first clue is that six of the seven astronauts who supposedly died have living “lookie-likeys” with the same or very similar names.
But don’t go down this rabbit hole without carrying a long ball of twine so you can find your way back to sanity.
https://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2395059&hilit=challenger+astronauts&sid=d7db1ebf6993163bee80dd60ce26ebfa#p2395059
Gail you have said yourself that the economy is like a bicycle;it can’t go backwards. Shrinking the economy would collapse it.
But perhaps slowly, not all at once. We don’t have resources to maintain the current economy.
Paula White has been put in charge of religion at the White House
she’ll have you back in the 13th century in no time
When a person visits different countries, it is amazing how widespread religion is. It is part of the order that helps secure a small safety net for the poor. It also adds in some built in curbs on the consumption of limited resources. It acts as a way of passing along “best practices” to the next generation. It is a whole lot cheaper than trying top-down regulation by a government.
With the advent of fossil fuels, it looked like governments could handle all problems. Economies could grow to the moon. Past limits on resources were no longer relevant. Pensions could be promised to everyone, as well as almost free healthcare. Historical “best practices” no longer mattered.
But now it is becoming apparent that the world economy can no longer grow. Government promises cannot be kept. Governmental excesses must be dismantled. The world really needs the benefit of some voluntary control measurers like “religions” since governments do not have all of the powers that, in the recent past, they have claimed to have.
Here is my favorite russian folk singer pedaling backward. Cheers! there will be some ingenuity during the decline.
That is true, or at least that is the most widely accepted theory. But more voters voted to reduce the type of spending being done. Those voters thinking, I believe, is that paying people to for non-production, or even counter productive work should be stopped. There are better ways to spend that money to recirculate it. Repairing infrastructure and investing in new infrastructure snd research are some ways
Building resorts in Gaza, in case you were wondering, would not be a good way. Neither is continuing to fund the Ukraine War, if I may stray slightly off topic.
Not free here.
Stories of implosion
The Slovak musician Marian Curko, whose brother was a cannibal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matej_%C4%8Curko), is reported missing after a quarrel with his wife:
https://spravy.pravda.sk/domace/clanok/740412-hudobnik-marian-curko-je-nezvestny-pohadal-sa-s-manzelkou-v-noci-jej-poslal-sms-ktora-ju-vydesila/?utm_source=pravda&utm_medium=hp-box&utm_campaign=shp_3clanok_box
Nice family. They upheld western values very well. Cost of freedom would say Ursula.
Slovakia was much better under the Habsburgs
Habsburgs? Now there are only Vietnamese with their nail studios.
Kulm, I have to be honest and say I feel a pang of shame whenever you indirectly remind me that I am from a country that helped destroy the Austro-Hungarian empire for a fistful of coal. Which incidentally stopped coming as soon as WWI was over.
Woodrow Wilson really screwed up that region of Europe beyond recovery so the Czechs and Poles could have their shitty countries which immediately became failed states.
On a scale of One-to-Bitcoin: Indoor Marijuana Ops Are Consuming a Staggering Amount of Energy
Indoor marijuana growing operations in the U.S. use more energy than all outdoor agriculture combined.
The high energy consumption is due to lighting, temperature control, and the current legal framework requiring in-state production.
Despite awareness of the issue, no significant action has been taken to reduce the marijuana industry’s energy footprint.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Indoor-Marijuana-Ops-Are-Consuming-a-Staggering-Amount-of-Energy.html
Wow! I have never run across this issue before. Growing marijuana indoors using an amazing amount of electricity. One of the links in this article is to another article that says:
I suppose this increase in marijuana use is related to the large number of people who are in pain, even with the US’s amazing spending on health care. (Or course, there is an underlying problem of many people whose bodies are extremely inflamed, thanks to eating a lot of over processed food and not getting enough exercise.) The indoor marijuana growing is, in some sense, an attempt to fix our medical problems.
It surely means electrical energy, so it is meaningless as agriculture runs on diesel.
America has no culture, no values, no direction. America is thieves seeing who can steal the most the fastest.
The president wants a TRUMP tower on the beach in Gaza.
Not clear what Elon wants.
Europe has nothing and does not know it. Time for Russia, China, US to loot the museums of Europe. The gold does not matter China owns the factories of China, Russia owns the factories of Russia, US well is owned by the dictators of the middle east. Gold can only buy you something if you are in a market society. We are at the guns and bullets and nukes stage.
You have finally realized that USA is not part of the West anymore.
Russia was never part of the West. The Eastern board of USA was part of the West, but not those from the West of Appalachians.
A lot of the people in USA were descended from the losers of various revolutions in 19th century, and their only wish was to f’k Europe’s traditional power structure, something they have succeeded.
Putin made Russia, which was never a Western country but the Westerners having been fooled by people like Turgenev(whose surname, ironically, suggests a Tatar ancestry) who acted like a Westerner and had the misconception that Russia was part of the West, back into an Asian country.
Musk , like his father, will act like a typical African oligarch. Prior to Mandela the South African mining magnates acted, and to this day act, as their own monarchs. Musk’s father was a smaller fish among them but the habit remains with him.
The Eastern board of USA was part of the West, but not those from the West of Appalachians.
What about those who are actually from in the Appalachians?
I hope you will give them your seal of recognition. It wasn’t all The Waltons, you know. Here’s Jean Richie, the great grandmother of the American folk revival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IMDd-o1_78
Norman, you can’t say this song is off topic. The subject is coal mining.
She is not even a footnote as far as civilization is concerned.
This song could be described as Jean Ritchie’s pièce de résistance—her tour de force—from her magnum opus, here album of the same name: None But One.
She was a damsel with a dulcimer, and this is folk music, but very civilized as far as folk music goes.
Very nice.
(and no wonder USA energy is all being used to grow weed)
Electricity, not total energy.
Zerohedge reports:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/usaid-funded-massive-global-state-propaganda-news-matrix-nearly-billion-people-reach
USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, Extending ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ To Billions Worldwide
Elon Musk’s summary: “USAID pressured advertisers to boycott any media that
was not left-wing!”
Incredible amount of money.
This is a link to an interesting chart, taken from inside the above mentioned article.
Thanks for the info.
https://datarepublican.com/expose/?eins=943027961
And also this is interesting
https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1886555469096833258
One comment is that USAID was started by executive order, and it can be ended the same way.
I thought this was a good article about plastic recycling:
https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/recycling-makes-plastic-pollution-worse
Recycling makes plastic pollution worse
There is lots more in this article.
Microplastics for many years have already found there way into the food supply.
I’ve read that much of the “microplastics” in the oceans is little cigar-shaped pieces of tire material which have washed into the seas — I’ve also read that about half of the sea life of the mid-1900s is gone (these critters get their oxygen from the water, so they “breathe” this all the time).
David , I have been in know about the tire particle problem since long . The problem is now accentuated with all the Tesla ‘s etc that are heavy and tire wear is even faster . Reason for a next directive to wear face masks ? 😁
That’s good pollution, silly. Not like the bad pollution from diesel.
Thanks Gail, this an aI overview
Scientists estimate that only about 9% of the world’s plastic is recycled. The remaining plastic ends up in landfills or in nature.
Why is plastic recycling low?
Cost: Collecting and sorting plastic is expensive.
Types of plastic: There are thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together.
Flexible packaging: Lightweight, multi-layered packaging is difficult to recycle because it’s often contaminated with food waste and expensive to separate into recyclable parts.
Examples of low recycling rates
In 2021, the US recycled only about 5% of its plastic waste.
In the UK, it’s estimated that just 22% of PET is recycled.
In 2018, the recycling rate for PET bottles in the USA was 29.1%.
I’m believe I read the industry knew this BEFORE promoting the idea of recycling their product but went ahead to give the illusion of environmental safe and sustainable product, which it clearly is not in the long run.
Unfortunately, in our modern day living, it would be very difficult to exist without it in our society
“The remaining plastic ends up in landfills or in nature.
In the last few weeks California has gone to compost-able fruit and vegetable bags.
The trash to diesel conversion destroys all the plastic.
OK, until then we’ll just continue as we are…
In Japan they burn all plastics that can not be recycled, for electricity. I think that is the best use for it.
Burning of plastics has also been done in Europe, I believe. It is the US that has come up with the idea of “recycling” something that is close to being a waste product of the oil and gas industry. If it is not made into plastics, it is a very low-valued product.
Maybe so, but there is no free lunch
AI Overview
Learn more
Yes, burning plastic is bad for the environment because it releases toxic chemicals that pollute the air, water, and soil. It also contributes to climate change by producing greenhouse gases.
Environmental impacts
Air pollution
Burning plastic releases toxic chemicals, particulate matter, and acidic gases into the air.
Water pollution
Residue from burning plastic can contaminate soil and groundwater.
Climate change
Burning plastic releases greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which contribute to climate change.
Corrosion
Gases released from burning plastic can corrode metal siding and damage paint on buildings.
Health impacts
Respiratory health
Burning plastic releases toxic chemicals and particulate matter that can harm respiratory health.
Developmental problems
Exposure to toxins released by burning plastic may cause developmental problems in children.
Cancer risk
Exposure to toxins released by burning plastic may increase your risk of developing cancer.
” there is no free lunch”
Long list of reasons not to burn plastics.
Reacting plastics with steam and heat from intermittent renewables doesn’t release any toxins and the syngas you get out of the reactor can be used for lots of things plus you can store it for a season.
Can it be done before technology changes entirely? I just don’t know.
I have heard before that burning plastic is a problem for the environment.
I suppose if we are desperate enough for carbon to burn, we may still include plastic. Separating mixed “recyclables” is horribly expensive. Paper and cardboard really is recyclable, if it is clean and separate from the plastic.
“burning plastic is a problem for the environment. ”
It depends on the plastic. Milk jugs are not a problem to burn, burning PVC makes really nasty chemicals.
Doubt if it these will be separated among all the mixture that is collected
you lost me at “climate change”. But release of toxic chemicals is strongly dependent on burn temperature. A central facility near a city will emit a lot less per kg of plastics. and no particulate matter is emitted.
From what I know burying plastic is the best solution. Snd banning of are at least severly limiting future production.
With Trump opening the JFK files, I had thought about JFK’s decisions in 1962.
He had just read a stupid book called The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, how the Great Powers plunged into the Great War in 1914.
Forgetting that the Great War destroyed Europe and made lowlives such as his own father into positions of power, JFK refused to escalate, and Khrushchev backed down.
There were a couple mini crisis where the Soviet sub commanders refused to fire nuclear missiles.
I have to say that the world would have been a much, much better place if they did, although it would have been bad for USSR.
At that time the missiles in Cuba lacked to cause damage in the north, east or west o USA. Only the territories under what had been the Confederate States of America had been in danger, and at that time the loss of it , while painful, was not fatal.
USSR and its allies would have gotten more advanced nukes as a return gift, ending their regimes once for all. China might have been left alone but if it screwed around nukes it would have gotten h bombs at Peking, Shanghai and Chungking.
That would have killed civil rights, vietnam (who would have cared about a little corner of south east asia), the Sixties , the third world (no one would have had any aid to give to there), etc and would have kept civilization alive for at least 2 more centuries.
Nostalgia for missed chances of nuclear armageddon is misplaced Kulm. The future is bright for guys like you. See if you can move as far away from London as you can if you want to fully enjoy the experience.
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-techno-utopian-myth/
It just kind of amazes me, how people can’t figure out that technology is subject to diminishing returns. That is, eventually you just bump your head into limits, beyond which further investment becomes pointless. And oftentimes, as you approach those limits, you start fooling yourself, by hiding the costs from yourself.
I never needed this grand narrative of colonizing the whole universe and building Dyson spheres around the stars, because I never bought into the smaller narratives that were pushed on me either. I always recognized our society as inherently dysfunctional, rather than in need of the next technofix. You don’t fix this way of life by sending the brown people back to their own country, or figuring out how to power a chatbot with a nuclear fusion reactor. The rot goes much deeper.
Got this from a link posted at Fast Eddy’s blog.
I always love to rain on the party of the cornucopians, who seem to be more detached from reality every day as it slips away from their imaginary world.
>How does it do that? At least in part through funding this techno-utopian myth. The purpose of nuclear fusion research is not to build a nuclear fusion reactor. The purpose of nuclear fusion research is to convince you that our problems can still be solved.
I don’t think the cornucopians here will answer this since it does not go along with their narrative, but whether they want to admit or not will not have an iota of effect as long as the world is concerned.
“The purpose of nuclear fusion research is not to build a nuclear fusion reactor. The purpose of nuclear fusion research is to convince you that our problems can still be solved.”
I think this quote is right. Also, the narrative about our worst problem being climate change, and that we can fix climate change with wind and solar, is another way of attempting to reframe our problems in a way that appears to be solvable.
I think we have underestimated AI. The energy will go more to it and less to the average human. Things will change a lot in 4 years
Until it exhausts what is remaining of the energy resources
AI will kill off the unnecessariats. But not those who actually run things
It so appears that those who actually run things are Chinese. If there is one thing this Deepseek saga taught the world, and it is something me and others have known for a long time: the so called western intelligentsya is a bunch of debauched chews giving orders to armies of H1B indian guys, desperate to get a green card. The end result is not really great of course. it is far more profitable for the poor indian to suck up to the debauched and advance far enough into the ranks to get the damn card.
Think Schmidt or Brin for examples. Truly bright guys, like Andreessen of Netscape fame (this was not just another browser, this used to be the only one), were explicitly ostracized during the run up to AI becoming a thing, for fear of giving out-groupers power. The Skype lesson, where for several years they were unable to control peer-to-peer communications, and had to eventually print 3 billions to give to some Baltic guys, had been learned. No more free entry into the business for out-groupers.
So the guys who run things in the West do in fact act like the elites in any declining power, eating their seed corn and letting China get an insurmountable technological lead. Russia also has an insurmountable tech lead in weaponry. Kulm is one of the few who cling to the notion that effective elites come from race, even though it’s been generations since they would let middle class guys like Watt or Fermi advance to the top. The rest of us see that it comes from better social organizations.
In my view, if India decides to collaborate with China, (Russia has already no problem to do it with both) and if the rich monarchies of Middleast decide to collaborate with those three nations and to have no fear of Iran (leaving US and Europe alone, who consider Arabs culturally inferior), US, Europe and their little baby Israel will lose their arrogant and imperious supremacy in one day.
My impression is that the world might be ruled in a wiser way.
I would only be concerned if ancient Greek philosophy and mithology went lost, but with Russia in the group, maybe not.
Student , too many ” if’s ” . Forget it . India and China working together is a pipedream . The Chinese occupy 36 ,000 sqm of Indian territory . No politician in India can even start a dialog until this is solved . Period .
What is exactly the importance of that territory?
It is mainly mountain, if I’m not wrong.
Water resources?
drb ” to armies of H1B indian guys, desperate to get a green card. ”
Correct . All are fooking high caste Brahamins who practice racism in their homeland that would put the racism in USA and Europe to shame . India is now well on it’s way to become a fascist theocracy but it will have an economic collapse before it reaches there . Already 90% are now classified as poor as per ” Income per capita ” definition . The problem is that they now are the grease that lubricates the IT systems in the West . Try driving without mobil/transmission oil and you will know what I am talking about . FUBAR .
It is not important from resources POV but an issue of National Pride for the Indian government . If they concede they will loose elections and power . India lost a war against China in 1962 and if the govt surrenders this land to start a dialog they will be seen by the public as losers and be kicked out of power . Politics .
I see, so it seems that if India doesn’t close the issue peacefully with China, it makes the interests of its previous-century colonizers, who apparently are still exploiting India.
No one is exploiting India, Student. They have no resources. They mildly exploit BRICS allies by playing footsie with the USA, while a bunch of worthless rupees ends up in Moscow with no way to get rid of it.
China, been collapsing any day now for god knows how long, but had time to run a small side project and blow 100s of billions of bloviating bs out the water.
Russia, a gas station endlessly teetering on the brink, now leading the world in military tech, but forget ai and winning wars, Eeyore will claim Mars for the greatest nation in the universe soon, real soon, just another trillion(or 3). No way Russia has a side project to compete with that.
https://m.vz.ru/photoreport/1313495/
Invention certainly appears to thrive amongst cohesion. The way things are going, with Iran yet again in the sanctions cross hairs, I’m half expecting them to announce a giant leap in nuclear technology and a cure for cancer.
Bullseye , drb .
Some might say hindsight is 20/20, but any fool could see that giving independence to those who had no stake in civilization was perhaps not a very good idea.
I said SE Asia had a pop of 60m in 1900, 200m in 1950 and 700m in 2025. If Colonialism continued it would have half of its current pop and perhaps its denizens would not be consuming as resources as the denizens of Siem Reap (the town where Angkor Wat is) are doing now.
Keep the poor and the less advanced down, monopolize all fruits of advances to the worthy, and leave nothing for those who do not deserve it. With such measures we would have time to build all the contraptions for the future.
With the Hordes, now seeing Trump is unable to enforce half of what he had claimed, about to close in the cornucopians still dream a future they would never have, but would have been possible if their granddads showed a bit less valor and judged continuing to rule the colonies and extracting their resources was a better long term option.
This is a story relating to loss of privacy in the UK:
https://headlineusa.com/report-apple-ordered-to-provide-govt-access-to-all-user-data-on-the-cloud/
Report: Apple Ordered to Provide Gov’t Access to ALL User Data on the Cloud
‘The access sought by the UK “has no known precedent in major democracies.”…’
My speculation: With the use of AI, perhaps the UK might be able to figure out some things from all this data. Or maybe not. But it is a worrying trend.
One major concern noted in the article:
As is well known, good and bad guys are just created by narratives. Even some members here cling to them.
We have learned from experience that those who claim to be good guys (say, Joe Biden and family, or the medical profession) can be terribly focused on their own financial interests, even when the conflict with what would seem to be the best interests of most citizens.
You are so diplomatic Gail. They are both of them fucking rackets.
The British political establishment are undeniably bad guys. Rotten and evil. A plague upon the British people and the world.
You have to ask yourself why the chews of Russia and the chews of the Empire ultimately parted ways. I think widespread ped*philia and sat*nism and even worse stuff played a role. The local ones are normal guys in that respect.
“But it is a worrying trend.”
It’s a trend where governments from around the world are clamping down on what its citizens can say and do. It is why governments want access to user data since the digitized and lobotomized more-ons are glued to and allow their electronic devices to control their lives.
The governments see the writing on the wall that the current system is collapsing due in part to unaffordable and lack of access to cheap energy. The USA is currently sitting at $36 trillion in debt with $1T in interest payments due each year. If you add other liabilities the USA is probably on the hook for over $100 trillion in debt. *That is totally unsustainable*
How do you go bankrupt? A little at first, then all of a sudden.
The governments want to move to digitized currency and eliminate paper currency. That’s their plan. Trump said NO but that doesn’t mean when he is out of Office the new government might try again to introduce a US digital dollar. The Biden Admin was 100% for a digital currency because that gives them full control over The Plebs. Getting access to The Plebs data helps them identify the potential troublemakers. Because there is a 100% guarantee that when the global system does implode, The Plebs will be at the ready with their Pitchforks and Torches, crashing the Castle gates.
There really won’t be enough to go around in future years. Many people won’t be able to get an adequate share. How that will be handled in practice is a major question. Digital currency would allow those in control to pick winners and losers.
ANOTHER PLANE CRASH YESTERDAY!
UPDATE: U.S. Coast Guard says no survivors in Alaska plane crash, 10 killed – ADN
https://x.com/BNONews/status/1888013084033200565
Over/under 5 will crash this week.
They would need another explanation for the bodies coming back from Ukraine.