The premise is Norway suspends oil extraction completely, intensifying an energy crisis in Europe. In response, Russia invades and occupies Norway to force them to keep extracting oil, with the implicit support of the EU.
What do you mean inspect possible futures through science fiction - none of that stuff is real! /s
Stories, when well done, explore interesting concepts and can teach us about how some actions may turn out - yes a lot of writing is lazy and stupid these days, but it's hardly justified to write off all of fiction because of that.
> yes a lot of writing is lazy and stupid these days
This is backwards; if you want to see characters taking entirely unmotivated actions, Grimm's Fairy Tales is a great place to look. Modern writing is a lot more concerned with justifying what the characters do than traditional stories are.
That said...
> Stories [...] can teach us about how some actions may turn out
True stories can. Fiction feels exactly the same, but it doesn't tell you how the action turns out - it tells you how the narrator decided the action should turn out. This is often unrelated to what would happen in reality.
I think the 'US did it for the oil' has always been just a pithy jab at the US more than the truth. Looking at what actually happened it looks like Ahmad Chalabi lied to enough people (even after being labelled as an unreliable source by the US intelligence agencies) to convince the US to get involved in his life long goal to get him and the Shiites back into power in Iraq after being forced out by Saddam's Baath party and the Shia faction it represented.
Interesting, I didn't think the US trusted people like Chalabi to that degree. Since watching Game of Thrones it's looked to me like it was a personal feud between two oligarchical families that had a falling out.
He'd been working on it for decades in exile trying to convince the US to back rebellions in Iraq then trying to get the US to depose Saddam itself. Of course there's rarely a single reason anything involving a whole government decides to do something but I think it'd be ridiculous to not say Chalabi was one of the big factors leading to the US invasion of Iraq. Another potential is the fact that the Bush family might have felt like they had unfinished work there from the first invasion where the US stopped short of deposing Saddam over Kuwait.
Oil, family business, getting strategic military bases oriented towards Iran, China, and Russia, wanting to really break America of "Vietnam Syndrome". It's all there!
For the same reason the US occupied Afghanistan for two decades, destroyed Syria and toppled Libya. An attempt to strip Russia's influence out of the Middle East and wider region as a continuation of the eternal great powers conflict. The US has been conflicting with China across Asia, battling over influence, for decades in a similar way.
One of the highest ranking and most decorated generals in US history - four star general Wesley Clark - is on public record stating that this is the exact reason we did it, as told directly to him by his pals in the Pentagon as the plans were being put into action and before we wrecked Syria or Libya (both of which were on the list to come next).
Now the US is leaving Afghanistan and guess who is stepping into the regional great power void: Russia. And there's George W Bush now saying we shouldn't leave Afghanistan, he doesn't want the US to cede regional influence to Russia. Globalist warmongers are gonna be globalist warmongers.
Oil is a very distant consideration next to military dominion and regional influence/control. If the US wanted Iraqi oil, Saddam would have sold it to the US by the millions of barrels per day at any time the US wished it. Hell, Saddam would have sold it under the table at a steep discount. It was very obviously not about the oil. Oil is merely one of many strategic items on the board. Sometimes I think the warmongers in DC prefer the false "they did it for the oil" premise, it's preferable to the truth, that we smashed the US fiscally and got thousands of our soldiers killed, to spar with Russia over influence. But that's the same exact reason we invaded Vietnam, we weren't there for oil either, we were there for the influence/control over the region. We're also not all over Eastern Europe for the oil, either; again, it's the power conflict with Russia.
> Now the US is leaving Afghanistan and guess who is stepping into the regional great power void: Russia. And there's George W Bush now saying we shouldn't leave Afghanistan, he doesn't want the US to cede regional influence to Russia. Globalist warmongers are gonna be globalist warmongers.
Don't we also have an obligation to support our allies? I don't think we should have become involved in Afghanistan in the first place, but after we've been there for nearly 20 years, encouraging the Afghans to fight against the Taliban, I'm not happy that we're leaving our allies to die. (Just as we did in Vietnam.)
> guess who is stepping into the regional great power void: Russia
Russia is a spent force. It's population and military are aging, its resources are stretched; it's more a nuisance than a menace. (This is fine. Britain was, too, after WWII.)
China is the real threat in the region, and it's likely moving into the vacuum. (For reasonable reasons. The Taliban can help secure their western border.)
It never worked out and it was only a rally cry for internet folk. We are not Russia.
> "Iraq's sector has remained state-owned and state-guided, and US companies have been forced to compete in open licensing rounds. Various efforts by US Administrations (including the current Trump Administration) to engineer bilateral negotiations and to promote US company interests have come to naught."
In the show, Norway had also designed a thorium reactor and were going to share the plans for free. They announced that and that they were shutting down the oil wells at the same time. Russia's main goal was to stop Norway from sharing the reactor design, because that would reduce Europe's dependence on Russia for energy.
In reality Norway is the Saudi Arabia of the north, but with fantastic PR. Really, the best PR that money can buy. Bill Gates/George W Bush level PR, but for a country.
They're going all out on going green in every part of society.. except for not stopping pumping oil from the sea bed and then selling it to people for the purpose of combusting it and releasing the co2 into the atmosphere.
The sad thing is that it seems to work really well for them.
Giant kudos to Greenland for resisting this way and showing the norwegians how to do this.
In a sense then, Norway is a microcosm of all human civilization. Since the early days of humanity we've burned trees, peat, whale oil, petroleum, whatever we could, side effects be damned. And for most of that time, there's been no sustainable plan to move away from such consumption. At least Norway is now using their oil wealth to try to plot an alternative course forward. We're not there yet, but at least they're not pumping oil today AND acting like pumping oil is the future as well.
I disagree - it isn't just in recent times that dumping waste into waterways that people consume has been discouraged. For most of human history we've been ignorant on how we're hurting ourselves through pollution, but as we've learned how harmful pollution can be we've worked to minimize it. Dying and leather curing was, for a large part of history, about the most toxic thing you could do and so those facilities were usually forced away from the most dense population centers - and sewers have been a thing for a loooong time.
I think the first time folks realized that sending smoke up into the air might actually be harmful is when London started having ash clouds from industrialization, but that's just one sort of pollution.
Humanity actually has a pretty good record for cutting in and regulating things that they know are harmful.
Using oil to fuel your pivot off oil, economically or directly for energy, strikes me as the most sensible use of oil for any nation.
What's upsetting is how much of the oil burned so far, and continuing to be burned today, is completely frivolous and unnecessary. To still be carrying on this way when we still haven't pivoted from fossil fuels as a species, given clear evidence we're headed for global climate disaster, is completely asinine.
We need something like a carbon tax something fierce, it needs to be cost prohibitive to fly across the country by jet for a weekend change of scenery and some instagram selfies.
I'm not familiar with the series, my opinion comes from my time working in the industry. Based on what I saw there I do not believe that any profitably-extractable reserves will be left unexploited simply because their current owners decide to take them off the market, too many powerful interests have too strong an incentive to change any such policy one way or another.
Buying plastic crap from amazon, commuting to office work every day, SUV's, eating too much meat, flying halfway accross the globe for a business meeting or vacation. It all still happens (though Corona proved how much if that was not needed) , and all is frivolous. And all will stop when the oil runs out, or would be greatly reduced if the oil price is set at say 10x the current level
I was just thinking the other day about how much flying for business meetings is done for the point of having somewhere to fly to. It’s purely a lifestyle thing dressed up as some kind of necessity.
A high-ranking coworker of mine is flying out to NYC for a meeting next week. This is a guy who’s been working from home since covid started. Why all of a sudden does he need to fly anywhere? Why can’t another zoom call work?
If and when we have full-fledged businesses on the moon corporate execs are going find a reason to fly there too, just to tell people that’s what they’re doing.
I agree, it's easy to be complicit, and I think it counts. I personally have stopped all of the activity you mention, and I used to do quite a bit of it.
That's what happens when policymakers don't consider the effect on people's livelihoods.
The moral of the story: if you add a carbon tax, don't let it push large numbers of the population downward on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Nobody who loses their job due to climate change policy will give a shit about the planet, unless/until they get another job.
98% power comes from renewable energies. Quite impressive.[2] They were in 13th place last year for oil production and about the same as Saudi Arabia if you look at per capita oil production. Per capita they are on par with most middle eastern countries.[3] Only difference is they fund their country via the oil fund not some monarch kleptocracy family.
> Only difference is they fund their country via the oil fund not some monarch kleptocracy family.
This is not the case though. The government for the first time ever withdrew funds from the fund in 2016 while the fund has been around since the 70s
In general oil is really important for the governments budget but not through the fund but taxation instead (both the companies and the highly paid workforce)
Stretching that analogy quite a bit, I'd say Norway is more like a drug producing cartel that has gotten really rich from selling drugs to the rest of the world, but is now half-heartedly trying to stop because they've grown a conscience, but at the same time the hunger for money is so much stronger.
So they're using their riches to at least make it appear that they're really good, conscious people.
I am definitely biased but I’d still want to ask this:
Why is this ”good PR” and not just doing the sensible for the time being? A day will hopefully come when they will feel like they can stop extracting because of no more need.
Right now most countries have been slower than Norway in modernizing. France is a glowing uranium beacon of hope in emission free electricity but even it has been slower in modernizing the car fleet for example.
The richest reasonably sized country in europe? They also don't spend the oil riches directly but put them in a huge wealth fund, it's around $1.3T, and it holds more than a percent of all global stocks and shares. I'm pretty sure they will be all right.
I'm not sure that Norway is special in any way. I think the western democratic countries just all hold each other in high esteem and don't criticize each other on underlying issues such as this. You could say the same for a lot of issues - Germany, UK, Sweden etc, high profile but big arms producers and exporters etc.
IMO, it's cheap to reduce these to "it's all the same."
Norway manages their oil wealth better than any country manages their wealth. Structurally, their actually prepared for oil ending. They use the cash to provide social safety nets for their citizens. Besides that Norway is quite decent on democratic freedoms, rights and such.
Saudi Arabia is politically medieval. Oil and everything else is owned by the monarchy and aristocracy for their benefit. They rely on religion and tribalism to buffer political rights or social change of any kind. Etc.
Sure. You can reduce every country to their sins and declare that all are equally wretched. Usually, this is cynical viewpoint made up of whataboutisms exonerating anything because everyone and everything is bad.
Wouldn't Russia rather Norway stop pumping oil so the EU buys more energy from Russia? What is in it for Russia? I don't really know much about this, genuinely curious.
I won't wade into the entire "suspend oil expoloration" issue but find it lacks a bit of credibility when a territory of 57,000 people that receives an annual subsidy of $540 million promotes this under the guise of renewability and sustainability. The entire existance is essentially a non-renewable consumption.
I don't think you understand how significant the move is to them in sacrifice.
The untapped reserves are likely worth factors of ten more than their yearly aid from Denmark. They could have used whatever they found to force the issue of independence they've insisted, year by year, they want from the Kingdom. Imagine using that wealth to build out a Norway-in-miniature.
The very first citation in Wikipedia's Petroleum explorations in the Arctic page [1] states that, "Greenland is believed by some geologists to have some of the world's largest remaining oil resources." It goes on to cite a US Geological Survey that found its waters could contain up to 110 million barrels of oil.
So yes, I believe that qualifies as a huge self-sacrifice.
Interestingly, not all denizens of the Arctic (or near-Arctic) feel the same way. I (accidentally, by acquisition) found myself working for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, a company owned by the Iñupiat people of the northernmost part of Alaska. They're the ones pushing to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and nearby areas. They're the ones who pulled out of the Alaska Federation of Natives when the AFN declared a climate emergency.
I ended up leaving the company, in no small part because I disagreed with their oil exploration policy, but it is interesting to see how some of the Alaska Natives, despite seeing their surroundings warming faster than the worldwide averages, despite (or maybe due to) infrastructure crumbling due to permafrost thawing, they're saying "yep, we need money, so we need to drill for more oil for the world to burn".
> seeing their surroundings warming faster than the worldwide averages, despite (or maybe due to) infrastructure crumbling due to permafrost thawing
put yourself into their shoes - all that happens to them because somebody is making huge money while they aren't getting anything, and they can't stop it from happening. Given that, it hard to blame them for wanting at least some of those money.
I've thought about a it a lot. I definitely see some sense to ASRC's stance. Last I heard they're providing an ~$8k/year dividend to each of their shareholders (every Iñupiat tribe member). That certainly does some good. They also give out scholarships and do other beneficial things.
There'd be less money for all of that if the oil work stopped. I understand that that's problematic.
On the other hand, I believe the government contracting side of ASRC's business has grown at a faster pace than the oil side. I'd sure prefer to see them make a stand and pivot into less damaging areas than oil exploration and extraction. But yeah, I do get why they do it.
"Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped - would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money?"
Its not like being born native american makes you automatically forever eco-friendly living in sync with nature etc.
Draw of money is strong one, and its also very easy to fool oneself into wanting more to do something for community now and let long term issues be solved later/by next generation.
Or pure greed, politics, power etc. which is something all tribes and nations have in some way.
See also: The Navajo Nation, which laments environmental destruction and climate change on its reservations, but is buying up mines in Wyoming to export coal to China.
There are ton of hypotheticals being thrown around here, but'll point out it's easy to suspend oil exploration when
> No oil has been found yet around Greenland
The people of Greenland would probably _not_ be so thrilled if there was a number on this like "$1mm per Greenlander is being turned down". But because there's no actual oil on the table yet, and no dollar signs on it, it's relatively easy to stick to principles.
right up until the they do discover oil and then the companies come in, cities are set up, massive amounts of people get employed, the money will flow and it will be Western North Dakota all over again.
Group of climatist fanatics manages to make lives of the rest of the Greenlanders miserable - that's certainly a reason to celebrate! It's not about whether it helps, but whether it coerces and punishes.
In terms of by how long that postpones CO2 PPM hitting some higher number, it's probably around 25 minutes.
They're not losing anything by doing this, so honestly I'm more reading this as hedging their bets and they'd just resume prospecting if they need the money
And going for a purely carbon-producing perspective, stopping uranium mining (unless it would have been very damaging for the environment) is a loss, since uranium is used to produce carbon-neutral electricity. Though it's easy understand locals not wanting any on their island, after the US shenanigans during the cold war.
I'm not against stopping exploiting fossil energy to fight climate change per se but I am worried that this is a pointless and self-destructive efforts if it is not done by all polluting countries; notably China and India.
Per capita doesn't matter, it's the total, and China and India has a growing middle class and 2.5B people combined and counting and are known, especially China, for their utter lack of environmental regulations or proper enforcement thereof.
Land without drilling is a tar pit. Gasoline is free in countries that drill. Solar costs are down because they count replacements as something new, big government subsidies, and slave labor. You still need to mine for rare earths.
78 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadThe premise is Norway suspends oil extraction completely, intensifying an energy crisis in Europe. In response, Russia invades and occupies Norway to force them to keep extracting oil, with the implicit support of the EU.
Stories, when well done, explore interesting concepts and can teach us about how some actions may turn out - yes a lot of writing is lazy and stupid these days, but it's hardly justified to write off all of fiction because of that.
This is backwards; if you want to see characters taking entirely unmotivated actions, Grimm's Fairy Tales is a great place to look. Modern writing is a lot more concerned with justifying what the characters do than traditional stories are.
That said...
> Stories [...] can teach us about how some actions may turn out
True stories can. Fiction feels exactly the same, but it doesn't tell you how the action turns out - it tells you how the narrator decided the action should turn out. This is often unrelated to what would happen in reality.
For the same reason the US occupied Afghanistan for two decades, destroyed Syria and toppled Libya. An attempt to strip Russia's influence out of the Middle East and wider region as a continuation of the eternal great powers conflict. The US has been conflicting with China across Asia, battling over influence, for decades in a similar way.
One of the highest ranking and most decorated generals in US history - four star general Wesley Clark - is on public record stating that this is the exact reason we did it, as told directly to him by his pals in the Pentagon as the plans were being put into action and before we wrecked Syria or Libya (both of which were on the list to come next).
Now the US is leaving Afghanistan and guess who is stepping into the regional great power void: Russia. And there's George W Bush now saying we shouldn't leave Afghanistan, he doesn't want the US to cede regional influence to Russia. Globalist warmongers are gonna be globalist warmongers.
Oil is a very distant consideration next to military dominion and regional influence/control. If the US wanted Iraqi oil, Saddam would have sold it to the US by the millions of barrels per day at any time the US wished it. Hell, Saddam would have sold it under the table at a steep discount. It was very obviously not about the oil. Oil is merely one of many strategic items on the board. Sometimes I think the warmongers in DC prefer the false "they did it for the oil" premise, it's preferable to the truth, that we smashed the US fiscally and got thousands of our soldiers killed, to spar with Russia over influence. But that's the same exact reason we invaded Vietnam, we weren't there for oil either, we were there for the influence/control over the region. We're also not all over Eastern Europe for the oil, either; again, it's the power conflict with Russia.
Don't we also have an obligation to support our allies? I don't think we should have become involved in Afghanistan in the first place, but after we've been there for nearly 20 years, encouraging the Afghans to fight against the Taliban, I'm not happy that we're leaving our allies to die. (Just as we did in Vietnam.)
Russia is a spent force. It's population and military are aging, its resources are stretched; it's more a nuisance than a menace. (This is fine. Britain was, too, after WWII.)
China is the real threat in the region, and it's likely moving into the vacuum. (For reasonable reasons. The Taliban can help secure their western border.)
> Russia is a spent force. It's population and military are aging
> China is the real threat in the region
> "Iraq's sector has remained state-owned and state-guided, and US companies have been forced to compete in open licensing rounds. Various efforts by US Administrations (including the current Trump Administration) to engineer bilateral negotiations and to promote US company interests have come to naught."
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
They're going all out on going green in every part of society.. except for not stopping pumping oil from the sea bed and then selling it to people for the purpose of combusting it and releasing the co2 into the atmosphere.
The sad thing is that it seems to work really well for them.
Giant kudos to Greenland for resisting this way and showing the norwegians how to do this.
Maybe kidding.
I think the first time folks realized that sending smoke up into the air might actually be harmful is when London started having ash clouds from industrialization, but that's just one sort of pollution.
Humanity actually has a pretty good record for cutting in and regulating things that they know are harmful.
What's upsetting is how much of the oil burned so far, and continuing to be burned today, is completely frivolous and unnecessary. To still be carrying on this way when we still haven't pivoted from fossil fuels as a species, given clear evidence we're headed for global climate disaster, is completely asinine.
We need something like a carbon tax something fierce, it needs to be cost prohibitive to fly across the country by jet for a weekend change of scenery and some instagram selfies.
You are shifting the blame from the entitity who pumps to oil up from the sea bed to the entity which combusts it. Why?
The oil must flow. Look at Venezuela if you believe otherwise.
Norway getting invaded because they removed 2% of the global oil supply is not realistic.
Surely Norway sells its oil to nations manufacturing the very things Norway requires to build its green future.
My problem is with frivolous waste of oil and the externalized costs of its use being placed on future generations enabling such waste.
How so? Would people not stop polluting voluntarily if it's so frivolous?
Instead, there are protests like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
A high-ranking coworker of mine is flying out to NYC for a meeting next week. This is a guy who’s been working from home since covid started. Why all of a sudden does he need to fly anywhere? Why can’t another zoom call work?
If and when we have full-fledged businesses on the moon corporate execs are going find a reason to fly there too, just to tell people that’s what they’re doing.
The moral of the story: if you add a carbon tax, don't let it push large numbers of the population downward on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Nobody who loses their job due to climate change policy will give a shit about the planet, unless/until they get another job.
Or was it just going into some pension fund for underproductive bureaucrat?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-sweden-electricity...
98% power comes from renewable energies. Quite impressive.[2] They were in 13th place last year for oil production and about the same as Saudi Arabia if you look at per capita oil production. Per capita they are on par with most middle eastern countries.[3] Only difference is they fund their country via the oil fund not some monarch kleptocracy family.
[2] https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/renewable-energy...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_pro...
This is not the case though. The government for the first time ever withdrew funds from the fund in 2016 while the fund has been around since the 70s
In general oil is really important for the governments budget but not through the fund but taxation instead (both the companies and the highly paid workforce)
So they're using their riches to at least make it appear that they're really good, conscious people.
Why is this ”good PR” and not just doing the sensible for the time being? A day will hopefully come when they will feel like they can stop extracting because of no more need.
Right now most countries have been slower than Norway in modernizing. France is a glowing uranium beacon of hope in emission free electricity but even it has been slower in modernizing the car fleet for example.
Norway manages their oil wealth better than any country manages their wealth. Structurally, their actually prepared for oil ending. They use the cash to provide social safety nets for their citizens. Besides that Norway is quite decent on democratic freedoms, rights and such.
Saudi Arabia is politically medieval. Oil and everything else is owned by the monarchy and aristocracy for their benefit. They rely on religion and tribalism to buffer political rights or social change of any kind. Etc.
Sure. You can reduce every country to their sins and declare that all are equally wretched. Usually, this is cynical viewpoint made up of whataboutisms exonerating anything because everyone and everything is bad.
The untapped reserves are likely worth factors of ten more than their yearly aid from Denmark. They could have used whatever they found to force the issue of independence they've insisted, year by year, they want from the Kingdom. Imagine using that wealth to build out a Norway-in-miniature.
So yes, I believe that qualifies as a huge self-sacrifice.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_exploration_in_the...
I ended up leaving the company, in no small part because I disagreed with their oil exploration policy, but it is interesting to see how some of the Alaska Natives, despite seeing their surroundings warming faster than the worldwide averages, despite (or maybe due to) infrastructure crumbling due to permafrost thawing, they're saying "yep, we need money, so we need to drill for more oil for the world to burn".
put yourself into their shoes - all that happens to them because somebody is making huge money while they aren't getting anything, and they can't stop it from happening. Given that, it hard to blame them for wanting at least some of those money.
There'd be less money for all of that if the oil work stopped. I understand that that's problematic.
On the other hand, I believe the government contracting side of ASRC's business has grown at a faster pace than the oil side. I'd sure prefer to see them make a stand and pivot into less damaging areas than oil exploration and extraction. But yeah, I do get why they do it.
Draw of money is strong one, and its also very easy to fool oneself into wanting more to do something for community now and let long term issues be solved later/by next generation.
Or pure greed, politics, power etc. which is something all tribes and nations have in some way.
> No oil has been found yet around Greenland
The people of Greenland would probably _not_ be so thrilled if there was a number on this like "$1mm per Greenlander is being turned down". But because there's no actual oil on the table yet, and no dollar signs on it, it's relatively easy to stick to principles.
right up until the they do discover oil and then the companies come in, cities are set up, massive amounts of people get employed, the money will flow and it will be Western North Dakota all over again.
They have managed small scale recovery, but nobody here is very confident deep ocean mining of clathrates will ever be economic.
In terms of by how long that postpones CO2 PPM hitting some higher number, it's probably around 25 minutes.
be the world's largest polluters
increase pollution while the USA works very hard to decrease it
oppose the USA through war and genocide because of cynical win at all cost marxism
and then get a pass by starving billions.