Probably because the mentions of peak extraction of any fossil fuel has a tendency of coming together with arbitrary non-sequiturs like this:
"Politicians cannot possibly admit that today’s world economy is headed for collapse, in a way similar to that of prior civilizations."
If the peak oil discussion do not divorce from Apocalypse fantasizing, it will never popularize. (What is not a big issue, the public isn't a very relevant party on solving that one problem anyway, and Global Warming already takes care of getting the public's sympathy.)
Didn't we already have peak oil in the 80s? Anyway, if an analysis of the worlds respurces starts with "citizens can feel" I have a hard time taking it serious, this is about numbers, prices, distribution, transportation and the like. It is about how energy markets work to come up with prices. It is not about how people feel.
That being said, gloval energy markets are screwed up right now, Russia is doing everything they can make it worse. And it is among the asiest way to generate clicks and traffic, after all we are still somewhat in the summer whole of news cycles.
Only the US peaked, IIRC, not the world. And even then only using the specifically limited types of oil that were common before fracking, which is a relevant distinction because "are we screwed?" is different from "did this model correctly predict decline of supply of $thing?"
The good outcome is we get alternatives (I've heard someone saying "the stone age didn't end for lack of stones", that is apt regardless of the original context of the quotation). PV etc. may be that alternative, I think they will be that alternative, but nothing is ever guaranteed until it is done.
The bad outcomes are like the trees no longer on Easter Island or the phosphate mines of Nauru.
One message is "One of our most important products will become scarce, what can we do to deal with it?" Another message is "One of our most important products will become scarce, prepare for the end of everything good!"
One of those is constructive, and will get people to try to help you. The other one is destructive, and the best reaction people can have for it is to ostracize the message (and the messenger if he only has this to say).
And about the outcome, well, the destructive one is lying, because the outcome is not certain.
Efficiency is publicly discussed in my experience. Generally in the form of people suggesting it can solve all our problems (be they energy efficiency or bureaucratic efficiency) without giving much consideration to the ever-present pressure to be as efficient as possible even in the absence of serious shortages, because "scarcity" is why energy isn't already zero cost.
I would get away from the social media statements and more into research papers on this complex topic; even investor literature picked well will speak openly about pros and cons, with quantitative evidence to support it.
Big companies are effectively 'apocalypse prepping' right now.
This isn't your usual lone weirdo apocalypse prepper. These are mega corporations with the best advice possible. They are quickly enacting every method of frugality and internal rationing possible, far beyond what you'd expect from the current situation today.
They know more than us. It's probably wise to follow their lead.
That's not apocalypse, though. That's just the normal economic cycle.
If a company actually thought the apocalypse was coming, why would they buy back stock? The stock's going to be worthless, and so is the company. Use the cash to buy something that will be worth something in the apocalypse (food, bomb shelters, guns, maybe gold). If you actually believe the apocalypse is coming, buying corporate stock is a stupid response.
So I don't believe your claim that stock buybacks indicate that corporations know the apocalypse is coming. Rough economic times, sure. Apocalypse, no.
That's quite a statement to make. Though, my previous employer definitely has been intelligent about surviving recessions, and they seem to be following along your words. Got any more evidence?
a few months ago those same companies were complaining about "the great resignation" and how hard it was to hire and how they couldn't fill openings. Now they are talking about how many dead weight employees they have that they don't need
the experts giving "the best advice possible" are generally giving pretty terrible advice
“No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall economic system work.“
This is the real problem and also the lie. The people to whom the prices are “unacceptably high” are the people at the top of the pyramid who would subsequently need to pay appropriate wages. I would hazard a guess that if you took the current wages of workers which have essentially stagnated and regressed for fifty years and raised them to where they would have been had they been increasing at their pre 1970s rate, and then compared that purchasing power to where prices are at now, all of a sudden the prices of things would not seem so out of whack.
Executive suite are still getting ridiculous pay rises, investors are still getting ridiculous returns, meanwhile the same companies are continuing to try to shaft workers with below inflation pay rises. You cannot skim in this fashion indefinitely, eventually you get to the point we’re at now where the jig is up, you’ve put so much wealth at the top that it collapses the pillars holding the whole system up.
You cannot just park billions of money in ‘safe’ assets (e.g housing) like Smaug the dragon because you’re afraid of losing money. The money represents resources. If you’re not smart enough or brave enough to choose worthwhile and worthy people and enterprises, organisations etc to invest the money in then you don’t deserve to have it and it should be reallocated via the mechanisms of the market to smarter people who do. Yet the government keep bailing out failing company or bank after failing company or bank rather than letting the natural reallocation occur. And so we end up with a zombie economy that preys on the living to feed the dead.
You're making the mistake of thinking money means anything.
Economics is a thin veneer we put over thermodynamics to make accounting easier.
Whenever the thermodynamics doesn't work economics stops working either. The 1970s were a short period were thermodynamics were sub-optimal. The dark ages were a longer period.
Money is ink on paper or bits in a computer.
Neither of those things runs a tractor or lets water flow.
You're right, money don't run tractors or flow waters. But they build serious incentives for either - people won't run a tractor if the incentive is missing, or a too strong incentive might stop a water flow.
> Economics is a thin veneer we put over thermodynamics to make accounting easier.
Maybe you could link a source explaining this correlation with some examples? Otherwise, it just sounds like “higher salaries for more effort”, which is obviously false.
“Money is ink on paper or bits in a computer.
Neither of those things runs a tractor or lets water flow.”
Yes but they tell the people who have the fuel and the water where they should send it: the highest bidder.
The person who is willing to spend the most money has:
a) acquired more money than competitors through smart decisions that have added value to people who have in turn given them their money
b) decided they have a more pressing need for those resources that they will outbid the other buyers rather than wait for a drop in prices or to seek an alternative.
If the buyer does not make good use of his newly acquired resources he will soon lose money and will not be able to compete with the other buyers.
This is how the economic system is meant to allocate resources. To people who have a proven track record of making decisions with successful outcomes.
If you start bailing out failures as happened in 2007-2009 you break this fundamental allocation of resources to where they will be most appropriately used based on the historical precedent of success. And when that happens you get what we have now, which is a breakdown of the entire system.
> No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion.
I am not sure I am convinced with the author's argument. Even if we put aside how all (or most) politicians and public fossil fuel companies (who should disclose existential risks for the company) are conspiring together to lie, I don't understand what is the motivation is for all these parties to work together to lie, just to keep wages low (but if execs are getting ridiculous pays, wages for the company as a line item are perhaps still high). Wouldn't companies see an existential risk and plan ahead to try to diversify investments, rising pricing if its progressively getting expensive over the years to produce etc..
Reminds me of what a friend recently told me - Its funny how the politicians/government/bureaucracies are both incapable of doing anything useful yet also capable of world wide conspiracies.
Their plan is project an image of cool headed control to keep their power and status quo intact as long as possible. No reason to be the one to risk destabilizing things that work well for them. Even if society intentionally reorganized itself, institutions may become meaningless, ending the good times for leaders and their cottage industry the institution provides.
I don’t think it’s an intentional conspiracy, but lack of material upside (the root of power being material ownership), for powers that be to risk their power and (for some) legacy as being the one in charge when it all went sideways. Such folks do not live long after the fall.
There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy. All it needs is for the majority of people in leadership positions to act in their own self interests rather than in the interest of the people they’re meant to be representing. The outcome is the same as if there was a big conspiracy theory. It’s like having two functions, you put the same variables in, the function bodies are different, but they both spit out the same result.
Well, I suppose then I didn't understand the motive well - How does the public fossil fuel company benefit by this (its illegal to make false disclosures to investors afaik)? how do politicians across the spectrum (who keep fighting about climate change and effect of fossil fuels) benefit from this? And, just curious - on the academic front, I keep reading about effects of emissions from fossil fuel and projections for 50-100 years, why is there so little about when we run out of fossil fuels (maybe they have a motive to be quiet/lie too) but I suppose I don't see it.
One theory: Thomas Malthus was 300 years early. None of the solutions to the problem are touchable so instead nobody does anything except protect themselves and let the horror show carry out naturally. The survivors will live prosperously for a time and the same thing will probably happen again and again and again. To be clear we will never really run out of energy but we will again and again run out of compassion.
This is pretty much spot on. Javinsi is thinking too high level compared to how the executives and politicians think.
The self interested majority (not all) do not care about these problems. They can’t act on them without risking their own positions because the solutions are unpalatable to the people they rely on to maintain their stations. Subsequently these are things to be kicked down the road for someone else to address. The politician only really cares about getting re-elected, the executive about closing the latest deal. They only care about the medium to long term in as much as it allows them to keep gaining in the short to medium term.
The majority of people at this level are over 40. They likely have only 40 - 50 years left to live (we’re going with higher life expectancy because they’re wealthy). They will likely be retired in 20 to 30 years. As long as things are ok in that time frame they’re golden. Get enough money for some nice houses scattered around the world near some good golf courses. Trump is literally the archetypal representation.
Look at house prices in New Zealand. They’re literally buying property there because they think in a worse case scenario, if the entire system collapses they can just ride out the storm until it either rebuilds itself or they die of old age in relative luxury. Keyword: relative. So long as they’re still in an elevated position they do not really give a fuck if things go backwards, even for themselves.
And even if they do fail in the short term the consequences are negligible. Look at some failing companies from ten years ago and see what the CEO is doing now. Nine times out of ten they’re either CEO or chairman somewhere else or retired. You have to REALLY fuck up a la Elizabeth Holmes to fall out of favour of the ‘network’.
You even see this in fiction. When Tyrion needs Bron’s help he won’t do it for the money: he wants a castle. Bron is smart and gets the game: if he wants to escape the life of being a hired killer for good he needs to join the nobility network, not just collect a paycheck. The castle would grant him that.
Closer to home, I recently worked at a company on an application that was so slow it was bordering on unusable by the users. The engineers had been trying for years to get resources for a rebuild. Yet all the business department cared about was adding more features because they could make more money from them. This inevitably kept making the problem worse. Taking the time out to refactor the program was unglamorous and didn’t give the business department anything to show the top dogs who were clamouring for growth, growth, growth. Eventually that program will get to a point where it is unusable. The parallels with the global situation are easy to see.
I don't personally bother reading Tverberg articles, and I'm not about to start now. That being said, if we stick to just that quote, it is easy to justify.
If you have a situation where doing a thing has worked for more than 50 years years, and there is a theory that thing is suddenly going to stop working then it is a very rare person who will stand up and say or act on that politically. Large groups of humans are devastatingly evidence-driven and can't cope with simple leaps of logic like doing the same thing will get a different outcome.
So in this case, if we are about to hit peak oil and suddenly the global economy starts collapsing there is no way the politicians would sound the alarm. They'd be waiting patiently until public understanding of the matter was very high. You can see that behaviour all the way through resource problems.
Politicians can't even sell spending the same amount of money as they tax; they aren't going to try and pitch doing without energy until the crisis has well and truly hit. There is no upside for them.
The costs of extraction have nothing to do with it. It's just dysfunctional political systems that toggle back and forth between "let's ban fossil fuels", and "omg, the greedy gas companies are charging $6 a gallon!" The former caused the latter. Very little investment has been made in tapping new wells because of hamstringing by ESG virtue signaling. As a result, we're in a pickle.
The inflation we're experiencing has nothing to do with energy supply, it has everything to do with monetary, diplomatic, and fiscal policy.
I really hate it when people are spewing garbage mixed with fact.
Yes, the inflation has nothing to do with energy supply, or even price of digging it all up. The pricing of it is always driven by a plausible excuse and greed.
No, investment in tapping new wells is at an all time high, and for example has turned USA into a net oil exporter. Gas too.
Thing is, fossil fuels are not evenly distributed, nor do we want to use them to heat up the planet more. So when a major producer is cut off or decides to do everyone in, we get a price spike, and prices rarely return to baseline.
>>The people to whom the prices are “unacceptably high” are the people at the top of the pyramid who would subsequently need to pay appropriate wages. I would hazard a guess that if you took the current wages of workers which have essentially stagnated and regressed for fifty years and raised them to where they would have been had they been increasing at their pre 1970s rate, and then compared that purchasing power to where prices are at now, all of a sudden the prices of things would not seem so out of whack.
There are several things are wrong with this:
Wages have grown at their fastest rate in history, globally, over the last 30 years:
It is only in the advanced economies where wage growth has slowed. And the slowdown is much less severe than commonly believed. I personally spent years promulgating this graph all over the internet:
1. Wages are just one component of employment compensation. When the nonwage components - which have grown faster than wages - are factored in, you see the line track productivity growth much more closely.
2. Another factor creating the illusion of a growing gap between productivity and worker compensation is the use of different inflation indexes to measure productivity and worker compensation. The indexes largely mirrored each other before 1973, but diverged significantly since then, leading to inflation-adjusted worker compensation growth appearing artificially depressed compared to inflation-adjusted productivity growth.
3. Worker compensation growth has in fact slowed somewhat, and almost all of this slowdown can be explained by the commensurate slowdown in productivity growth in the US.
>>investors are still getting ridiculous returns
Investors are not getting ridiculous returns. If you look at labor's share of national income, it has largely remained the same if you exclude just one asset category: housing, where rent has increased faster than not just inflation, but income as well. See Figure 3:
And the solution to outsized gains due to housing scarcity is not to ban profiteering. It's to solve the housing scarcity problem. One study estimates that if just three cities - San Francisco, San Jose and New York - had limited the growth of their housing sector regulations to that of the median rate of all US cities, US GDP would have grown by 36 percent more between 1964 and 2009:
Exactly. Most likely as a direct response of MBA CEOs of advanced economies outsourcing manufacturing to foreign companies to increase their bottom line. Then a pandemic happens and you realise that you have no domestic manufacturers of medical equipment because government and enterprise have not fostered an environment of self sufficiency. And then academics scratch their heads and wonder why movements like Brexit gain traction. (For the record, I voted against Brexit although I am not sure how I would vote if the referendum was held again.).
> 1. Wages are just one component of employment compensation. When the nonwage components - which have grown faster than wages - are factored in, you see the line track productivity growth much more closely.
Maybe in America with its ludicrously expensive health system. In the UK with the NHS I'm not seeing anywhere near the increase in benefits to compensate for the loss in wages. And what real point is my pension when I can't afford to get on the housing ladder because my wages are too low to keep up with house price inflation? All of my pension will end up being subsumed by rent. If anything, the rise of freelance working shatters this argument because when you freelance you receive no benefits. Ask anyone in the EU who is earning decent wages and it is always the freelancers.
> 2. Another factor creating the illusion of a growing gap between productivity and worker compensation is the use of different inflation indexes to measure productivity and worker compensation. The indexes largely mirrored each other before 1973, but diverged significantly since then, leading to inflation-adjusted worker compensation growth appearing artificially depressed compared to inflation-adjusted productivity growth.
Again, I'm not buying this. If anything, most articles I read seem to use the lower CPI instead of RPI which I think is ridiculous. Perhaps the mismatch is to do with outsourcing manufacturing bases? Is productivity accurately measured? According to google:
"Productivity measures the efficiency of a company's production process. It is calculated by dividing the outputs produced by a company by the inputs used in its production process."
In an age where accountancy tricks are routinely used to minimise declared profits to shield against paying tax, are we 100% sure that the "outputs produced by a company" are accurately reflected in the statistics?
>And the solution to outsized gains due to housing scarcity is not to ban profiteering. It's to solve the housing scarcity problem.
Do not agree. Speak to any real estate agent and they will tell you that huge numbers of houses are being sold to foreign investors that then sit empty. There is zero point in building more houses if all the houses are just going to be sold to people with capital who don't even live in the country. You can build and build as much as you like but they will just snatch them up with above asking price offers fully in cash. First you have to ban people who don't live in a country for more than six months of the year from purchasing property. That in of itself might fix the problem. If it doesn't, then you need some kind of tax to make mass landlording an unprofitable business. If you don't, you just end up in the same situation where a few large companies with capital hoover up everything. You can't have an situation where a few giants effectively control everything with something as vital to survival as housing. There has to be appropriate regulation. An exponential tax on property ownership would be one such solution. And then finall...
You must be a US-of-American or at least heavily influenced by their current culture seeing how easily you pull in terms like 'white people countries' in the discourse. It was not that long ago that people from your country were taught that skin colour only goes skin deep but the current crop of ideologues have not only forgotten that lesson but turned it upside-down.
In other words, if all you can spout is racist discourse may I suggest you to do so in other places? While many good things have come from the USA this can not be said about these ideas so keep them to yourself and your comrades.
People keep carrying on about peak oil, climate change, and "corporate greed" because those are less humiliating conversations than admitting that Europe made a major tactical error in trying to sanction their primary energy supplier.
I'm not going to engage the question of whether or not it was morally or tactically correct.
This forum and the western public in general are not mature enough for that conversation. I am not having that conversation.
My statement is limited to the fact that the energy crisis is a simple and proximate result of the ongoing sanctions and not peak oil, climate change, or corporate greed.
I think you're underestimating the willingness of people to suffer financial hardship this winter to divorce themselves of Russian energy. People in the West really don't like dictators invading their neighbors, and certainly there's a long standing distaste of Russia generally.
While people are also blaming corporate greed for the price crisis, everyone is well aware that the sanctions are causing pain for both parties. There's no political or social support for going back into Putin's arms, so here we are.
You must be very confident with your calculation, as a miscalculation would empower and embolden domestic political factions that have been at the periphery of western politics for generations.
The infants, children, and frail who are most imperiled by this plan to freeze them to death on purpose don't have equal access to the internet debate over whether it's worth it to do that.
We're mature enough to know that if someone's argument is "you can't handle the truth" they should be taken about as seriously as the film I'm quoting.
Try to handle the truth that the west cannot geostrategically survive Russia becoming China's backyard. Look directly at that truth and let me know if and when you've handled it.
I mean, that sounds pretty obvious to me. I’m no geopolitical expert so I cannot picture what the world looks like in this scenario, but it would definitely be bad.
On the other hand, if the Ukraine war and related political stresses prove sufficient, we may actually see Russia split apart. That would make it so that China no longer has a single throat to choke with respect to Russia. It would likely have great knock-on effects with respect to nuclear MAD balance worldwide, since Russia has thus far been US’s largest rival there.
As a purely hypothetical, counterfactual mind game, how would you adapt your position if Russia were winning the ground war, economically stable, and firmly behind both Putin and the war?
Russia splitting apart or potentially collapsing entirely is a doomsday scenario. If you’re cheering it on then you’re living in a fantasy land and will receive a very rude and radioactive wake up call if you get your wish.
I’m not cheering it on, I’m saying it’s possible despite most people not being aware of this. And I very much do not want a nuclear war, given the death toll.
Just seems like a 2nd cold war on steroids. Not sure why the west won't be the one to survive as opposed to Russia & China.
But also, doesn't that strengthen the argument that the west must intervene? What would you rather oppose, a weaken Russia + China (not to mention a stronger NATO alliance with Finland, Sweden & Ukraine) or a stronger Russia + China?
China had a mature domestic conversation about it and decided that the proper course was to refrain from taking a side.
The Pope also made a thoughtful contribution, acknowledging that the matter is far more complicated than western media suggests, while decrying the bloodshed and calling for diplomacy.
China’s domestic conversation is limited to what The Party will permit. Calling it “mature” is…misleading at best, because it’s an incomplete, sanitized discourse under the threat of retribution for expressing the wrong sentiment.
Everybody in America who doesn't have the state department's line on the war is subject to censorship and retribution. They're just less honest about it here.
This is misleading if not outright false. Roughly half the country doesn’t have the state department’s line on war and regularly voices opinions as such. They do so without any state backed retribution or widespread media cancellation. What we do have is a strongly access-based media propaganda machine that tries very hard to push the narrative. But comparing what goes on in the US to what the conditions are in China is just invalid in almost every way.
This forum doesn’t attract a large number of people with the expertise to have the conversation. The non-western public isn’t any more mature than the western public.
Negotiate for peace. Just as the US would object to Mexico joining a military alliance with e.g., China, Russia objects to Ukraine joining a military alliance with the US. Even if you do not believe Russia when they said this is the main issue, calling their bluff would have cost nothing, but potentially saved many lives. Wars end with negotiation. Eventually these negotiations will take place. There will just be fewer Ukrainians and Russians around to witness them.
And, if NATO membership was the primary issue, this war could have been avoided if the Clinton administration had not rebuffed Russia in their request to join NATO themselves.
As to the US proposed sanctions, I suspect that if Germany had not agreed, the EU as a whole would not be participating. And, that if Merkel was still in power, that Germany would not have agreed.
Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade. They physically couldn't join NATO because they had disputed territories and the US would have kept the status quo.
This is a Neville Chamberlain argument. No I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler but the motivations of any dictator are the same. The west *tried* repeatedly to appease Putin so this claim is just patently false and proven to be so.
Let's prove:
* Invasion of Crimea was a test from Putin's side. The west tried all political options to no avail.
* Then he started a "rebellion" and again the west wasn't successful with negotiation
* Before he invaded Biden went public and explained EXACTLY what he was going to do. A smart man would have retreated. This would have humiliated Biden and might have paved the way for Trump to get back into office. But he was stupid and invaded
So no. He isn't a person to negotiate with. He's a liar who doesn't respect the agreements his country signed.
> Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade.
Even if that were true, that is not negotiation. Negotiation implies give and take. Given that the US already agreed not to expand NATO to Russia's border (honored by Bush Sr., but broken by Clinton), a good starting point to negotiation would be to agree to honor past commitments.
The vast majority of the people in Crimea (as Donbas) are Russian speaking, and voted to join Russia[1]. Part of the context leading up to the unrest in Crimea was a far-right government in Kieve that proposed policies against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens[2]. I'm not opining on Russia's actions in 2014 or today, just pointing out that things were and are a lot more complicated than the dominant narrative in the west (I was surprised to find any US mainstream news source that reported on the referendum, at all, to use as a reference).
Russia organizes fake elections wherever it invades to create a pretext of support and democracy. There's no external supervision of the elections and they have no bearing on the reality. When you have no true free speech, state TV blasting disinformation, etc. there's no real elections.
Putin repeatedly violated agreements signed by his predecessors including over Crimea with flimsy excuses like the one you're parroting.
We're talking about a guy whose opposition is all dead or in jail. You're arguing for a murderous dictator.
The only policies were the removal of requirement to teach Russian everywhere. It was a ridiculous excuse to go to war. You don't get Russian in your school let's bomb you and your neighbors. There was no Russian heritage discrimination but there was openness to the west which did make Putin nervous.
Clinton adding countries to NATO is not Ukraine's fault and has absolutely nothing to do with them. The invasion had the opposite effect on Russia and shows how stupid Putin really is because now NATO is at his door. Had he not invaded things would have been better off for him.
I'm not arguing for anybody. You obviously have very strong feelings about this subject. But, please do not attribute to me positions I have not expressed. My actual positions (as stated above):
War kills and maims people.
Killing and maiming people should be avoided.
Russia made statements about why they felt the need for war.
Taking those statements at face value would have caused no harm if they were false-- we would simply be in the same place as we are today with war.
Taking those statements at face value could have saved many Ukrainian and Russian lives if they were true and addressed.
Russia's stated concerns have not been addressed in peace negotiations, so we do not know if war could have been avoided or if the war could be brought to an end sooner.
Russians and Ukrainians are currently killing and maiming each other.
The history of the situation is complicated-- there is more than the typical western narrative encompasses.
Russia must bear responsibility for their decision to go to war. But, the US is possibly antagonistic toward negotiations. At a minimum, the US has not engaged in negotiations nor addressed Russia's stated concerns and thus threw away a potential opportunity to prevent bloodshed.
US/NATO pumping weapons into Ukraine serves to extend the conflict (and the death count) before the inevitable negotiations to end the conflict.
To summarize, I'd prefer if we made an effort to not kill people.
Russia lies. A lot. Why the hell go to the premise of taking anything they say at face value?
There are multiple steps before going to war. Putin was looking for an excuse to go to war and also tried fabricating stuff like Nazis controlling Ukraine (which has a Jewish president) because he knew this is a flimsy excuse. Repeating this nonsense gives validity to a war criminal.
> Russians and Ukrainians are currently killing and maiming each other.
No. One side invaded the other. This isn't symmetric.
> The history of the situation is complicated
No. There's a lot of noise in terms of history. But people use it to mask simple facts. A dictator invaded a sovereign nation. Killed civilians who he claims to protect.
The US isn't at fault in any way. You can't negotiate with a liar who violates agreements. Russia attacked US elections in a blatant way and explicitly instigated a policy of sabotage. There were plenty of opportunities along the way to de-escalate. But the US didn't escalate. It very explicitly stated early on that no soldiers will go into Ukraine. It made it hard for Ukraine to join NATO, etc. Putin violated the status quo.
They arm Ukraine because the alternative would be the annihilation of the country. So far the Russian forces took over areas and forced migration into Russia, killed people in the streets, etc. These are terrible people.
> To summarize, I'd prefer if we made an effort to not kill people.
This is nonsense. A lot of effort was put into that. Unfortunately, sometimes the only thing you can do is stand up and protect your country. This is what the people of Ukraine are doing. Putin isn't giving them a choice.
They have talks all the time. In the talks people literally got poisoned!
You're perpetuating a false Russian narrative that has been discredited time and time again.
Just as the US would object to Mexico joining a military alliance with e.g., China, Russia objects to Ukraine joining a military alliance with the US.
Your analogy is missing that the US forcibly annexed the Baja California peninsula, say, prior to Mexico attempting to join said alliance. Multiple Ukrainian governments prior to 2014 had said they had no intention of joining NATO. Crimea changed their mind.
I have many Ukrainian friends. They aren't Russians and don't think of themselves as Russians. Why should they priorities that language when they want to be a part of the west more than they want to be a part of Russia?
They elected a president who's policy is just that.
The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia. You might not accept those facts and claim the west is lying here. That's an option and it won't be the first/last time that happened. In terms of track record for lying, I'm going to take the west as more reliable than the east. Pretty much all my Russian and Ukrainian friends would agree to that assertion.
> The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia
By the means of democratic general elections?
They won't have to be a 'part' of Russia provided that they has observed some basic precautions, which I have listed and whose violations you are vehemently defending.
Russia guaranteed their independence. An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language. An independent country can seek other alliances. They didn't violate anything and Russia had no right to invade. There's a reason everyone sanctioned Russia and knowingly shot themselves in the foot while doing so.
About elections. It's funny that you're so passionate about elections when results suite your opinions. Yanukovych was elected by a hair unlike the current president. So you show lack of respect to democracy.
"An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language."
Tell that to Belgium, Ireland, Italy or Canada.
Ukraine is a deeply divided country and by violating ECRML they went not the Western but sub-Sakharan African way.
They shouldn't have done that. They would have their whole country, including Crimea, no war and 2x economy, if only they did not listen to western NGOs sitting on their ears like you do right now. About all of the wonderful independent rights of suppressing their own population for their language or electoral preference.
> Yanukovych was elected by a hair
Yep, so? As are most of presidents of the USA. Or Brexit.
All those countries elect leaders who decide to keep the languages they teach. A foreign country doesn't threaten them with invasion because of school curriculum. That's an INSANE argument!
Sure it's a divided country. No question. You don't bomb countries for being divided. Had Putin stayed in the Dunbas area that would have been a moderate excuse. He chose to attack the entire country and assassinate the elected president.
You sound like the people who tell a beaten wife that she shouldn't have talked back... Putin is a criminal and you're making excuses for him. He tried to take Ukraine in the gentle way by installing a puppet. When that didn't work he's trying force. Ukraine was distancing itself from Russia because of Putins policies.
You're picking small things to justify terrible HUGE things. If someone says something bad to you on the street shooting their head off would be justifiable?
Putin organized troops that were supposed to storm the capital on the first days of the war to kill Zelensky. If your insane narrative was the case then why did Putin lie about invading?
Why are Ukrainians fighting against Russia and so few are fighting with it?
There are Ukrainians who want Russian rule. That is obvious. But they are a tiny minority and elections proved it. Most of those who are interested in a Ukraine that is closer to Russia are fighting against it right now.
Europe made a strategic mistake in having an expansionary dictatorship as their primary energy supplier. The current sanctions and supply threats were always inevitable, the only question was timing (and perhaps whether it would be a NATO country under attack by the time Europe was forced to respond.)
Exactly. Years before the Ukraine war, a blind man could’ve seen what a catastrophic error it was to build an energy supply policy based on fuels coming from Russia.
It’s a really good question. Probably the answer was a mixture of (2), (3) and (4). As things stand now, Europe is going to have to answer this question right now in a hurry since reliable access to Russian gas no longer seems like a viable option. In other words: it wasn’t a choice whether Europe would need another option, but simply whether they would have to do it in a crisis mode.
Yes, it was always felt that Russian gas was risky, but diversification was done with regard to energy before everyone tried to cut emissions by using gas...
it's a brilliant move to cordon off the Carbon provider in chief, much easier than running after CO2 molecules in the air... Handling the consequences has to be done anyways, and the sooner the better. The nuke-plant turnaround will be something to behold.
The major error isn't a tactical one but a strategic one. Until recently, interest rates have been at historical lows for over a decade. Governments should have taken advantage of that to embark on massive scale investments in producing energy self sufficiency. We could have had a government funded scheme to put free solar panels on every single roof and a wall battery in every home. Then we would not be having the issues we are having right now. The majority of domestic energy use would be handled and we would only have to find the energy for industrial, which we could do with wind, solar farms and nuclear. The investment would pay for itself: if households no longer have energy bills to pay, they suddenly have a wad of extra cash each month that they will most likely spend which HMRC can enjoy taking it's VAT cut on (and most likely at 20% rather than the 5% they charge for fuel).
So why didn't we do this? The cynic in me thinks it's because despite the progress we've made, the energy companies are still the ones with most power in this world and they are desperate not to give any of it up. Embarking on a program like this would be a massive redistribution of power and wealth to the common folk. The day when there is a solar panel on every roof will happen but the energy companies will do everything in their power to prevent it. They even tried getting legislation through in America to tax households with solar panels installed to make up for their lost revenue.
Yes unless they started making their own gas out of electricity and air which is still economically unlikely even with nuclear power. The German petrochemical industry is not a small potatoes thing.
If they had built nuclear power plants even just to cover domestic use would that not have alleviated some of the pressure they’re now facing on the gas front though? Covering industrial and domestic is clearly harder than just having to cover industrial. Yes France doesn’t have as much heavy industry as Germany but they’re weathering the storm much better and I don’t think we can ignore the fact that a lot of that is to do with the fact they’re pretty much the only Western European country that’s taken nuclear power seriously. I do applaud Germany for the strides they’ve made with green energy but making nuclear illegal before they’d transitioned further along the green energy road is looking like a very bad move with hindsight.
Regardless, Russia have been in the Donbass and Crimea since 2014. That European countries and Germany in particular, have decided to increase their reliance on Russian gas since then rather than set up some serious back up plans is really rather complacent.
There's plenty of fossil fuels, even if marginal extraction costs are higher than they once were. If anything, the price is far too cheap for the negative externalities it causes.
What ecological destruction? There is more plant life by volume and leaf area on the planet now today than whenever you were born. CO2 is plant food. That's what carbohydrates are made of, H20+CO2. Warmth is generally far better for plants than freezing cold temperatures. There is no evidence of widespread ecological destruction from CO2.
The argument has always been that warming would become some runaway greenhouse effect (note, greenhouses are good for plant growth) but that has not born out.
It's 2022, crop yield is at all time human history highs right now. As shown in the satellite record, the leaf area index for plants is up 25-50% over the last couple decades across most land on Earth. See for yourself, the dark green areas are a whopping 50% increase: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
That means literally the opposite of what you think is happening. Anything that is good for the base layer of the food chain is generally good for all living things.
We do not have millions of deaths from CO2. In fact, there are billions and billions of lives that would have never existed were it not for the miracle of modern day infrastructure and transportation systems, fertilizer made from mining minerals, farming equipment that enables massive efficiency, etc and that's all been powered by fossil fuels. Basically the whole industrial revolution that ultimately ended slavery and enabled humans to be the most prosperous they've ever been on a massive scale.
> There is no evidence of widespread ecological destruction from CO2.
As long as you don't think that global warming results in widespread ecological destruction, yeah.
CO2 is responsible for global warming and global warming is responsible for widespread ecological destruction. What is there to discuss here ? Are you still at the "warming climate is not bad for humankind and the biotope it lives in" denying step ?
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas. This means that it causes an effect like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping heat and warming up the inside. This effect is important: without the CO2 that naturally exists in the atmosphere, Earth might be too cold to support human life. However, the atmosphere is very sensitive to changing levels of CO2. Even though this gas makes up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere, it can have a huge effect on how much heat the planet's surface retains.
When energy from the Sun reaches the top of our atmosphere, most of it passes through to Earth's surface, where it is absorbed. Some of this energy is re-emitted, heading back towards space. At this stage, it interacts with molecules of CO2 in a way that prevents some of it from escaping Earth's atmosphere. The trapped heat energy leads to increased average global surface air temperatures.
One reason carbon dioxide has such a big impact on global temperatures is that hotter air can hold more water vapour. Water vapour is itself a greenhouse gas, which further enhances the greenhouse effect.
While the presence of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is natural, the rising levels since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s are due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe.
Contributing factors that increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere include burning fossil fuels for heat and energy, producing some industrial products, raising livestock, fertilizing crops, and deforestation. Climate change leads to:
A warming ocean: causes thermal stress that contributes to coral bleaching and infectious disease.
Sea level rise: may lead to increases in sedimentation for reefs located near land-based sources of sediment. Sedimentation runoff can lead to the smothering of coral.
Changes in storm patterns: leads to stronger and more frequent storms that can cause the destruction of coral reefs.
Changes in precipitation: increased runoff of freshwater, sediment, and land-based pollutants contribute to algal blooms and cause murky water conditions that reduce light.
Altered ocean currents: leads to chan...
The switching between energy and fossil fuels is becoming more transparent. Energy problem? It's a high gas price problem.
You can make fertilizer from Green Hydrogen, no methane needed. It's already being produced, with lots of big projects getting built, because it has less GHG emission, though it needs to ramp up.
But that basically puts a limit on how high gas prices can go before it gets replaced for that (and many other uses).
So, hopefully the production cost of fossil fuels is as bad as they claim, because that will speed things along.
So Putin's got one last winter to try to rally the reactionaries of Europe to topple their democratic governments. I guess there's some small chance he'll succeed, but it's not going to stop China and Australia, Africa and the US rolling out renewables, so what does it actually gain them?
Ms. Tverberg seems to exclusively write panicked clickable headlines about oil and energy, dating back several years, with none of the prophecies/projections coming close to fruition. Not a lot of strong data in the article for such an extreme claim.
> We know that Revelation 18:11-13 in the Bible provides a list of a number of commodities, including humans sold as slaves, for which prices dropped very low at the time of the collapse of ancient Babylon.
(11) The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore:
(12) cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble;
(13) cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves. [New International Version]
The King James Version includes "souls":
(11) And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
(12) The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,
(13) And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
Yeah. Its complete garbage reasoning, and filled with words to elicit fear. I flagged the article because it seems like marketing trash on the level of gold bug ads.
I would like to dismiss this as just an alarmist conspiracy theory or something. Unfortunately, I have to consider the possibility that it is true, because failure to recognize or admit to the most severe problems, especially if they seem intractable, seems to be extremely common in daily life and history.
Food used to be more expensive and rents a lot lower. If the reason for rent growth was that people were able to afford it, then probably rents (excluding energy part) will go down.
The article talks about how Saudi Arabia is not reinvesting it's profits on expanding oil extraction and chalks it onto higher costs to extract said oil without any proof. Another completely valid explanation is that the Saudi govt knows they can make pretty good profits for some time if they don't increase supply
Lucky for the Saudis (and other unfriendly nations) the current regime in the US has handed them all the pricing power as the US Gov't does everything possible to hinder domestic exploration/production.
And it is not like oil goes bad when it is in ground. Much better to make more money on the cheap to extract stuff and then later some money with more costly to extract oil. Also there is consideration what to use the extra money now. If there really isn't need for it, why even get it.
I don't believe this in a majority of my brain, but the thought has crossed my mind that China's draconian COVID response is to hide their real estate collapse and other macroeconomic problems.
Their COVID response is mainly about control. for a time it was also about nationalism (look at how many people are dying in the west). At this point it’s control and a little bit of Xi not wanting to change the policy until after he has secured another term.
They recently found the largest oil fields in the world under the Golan Heights, and I don't think those have come online yet. So, I don't think we are quite at peak oil, yet.
>They recently found the largest oil fields in the world under the Golan Heights
There is no way anything under the Golan Heights comes close to the largest oilfields in the world. The Golan Heights only cover an area of about 690 square miles. The Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia is more than 3200 square miles by itself. It is around 85m thick, and with the field described in your sources being 350m the math doesn't work in your favor especially when you consider that the entirety of the formation they claim to have discovered would have to be productive over the full extent of the Golan Heights. That is unlikely especially in light of their most recent updates shown below.
The articles that I could find describing Golan Heights discoveries all use hyperbolic descriptions of oil potential combined with selected messianic prophecies of what it means for Israel and the world as relates to Old Testament scripture.
I spent 40 years in the oil and gas business including several years working on data from the Eastern Mediterranean acquired as a joint venture between countries bordering the region. This geophysical work resulted in significant gas well discoveries in the region. Oil is found with those wells as expected but not in life-changing quantities to the best of my knowledge. None of the partner countries will be self-sufficient as a result of those discoveries.
Until he died, there was a local geologist who became somewhat famous for his attempts to find oil mentioned in the Bible. His plan was to help fulfill prophecy by discovering the oil that would make Israel self-sufficient and bring about the second Temple. He worked for years spending lots of other people's money and Israel still was not self-sufficient.
The oil discovery that you refer to is not being produced today and may not even be commercial. Add to that the fact that the well(s) were drilled in territory recognized to belong to Syria and cracks form in the story.
Then you start to look at the players involved - the company is Genie Energy based in New Jersey. (from Wikipedia - this line gives a bit of historical information about their efforts)
> In November 2017, the company announced that it suspended its exploratory drilling program as the well's target zone does not contain commercially producible quantities of oil or natural gas.[23]
Their strategic advisory board has these common names (from Wikipedia)
> Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States), Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Bill Richardson (former Governor of New Mexico, ex-ambassador to the United Nations and United States Energy Secretary), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.
Frankly this looks like a great collection of right-wing evangelicals about whom this great song was written:
Thanks for the incisive response. It is good to be reminded that chaps like
> Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States), Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Bill Richardson (former Governor of New Mexico, ex-ambassador to the United Nations and United States Energy Secretary), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana
are just as prone to be taken in by wild schemes as the rest of us mortals.
You're welcome. As soon as I saw the mention of Israel having the world's largest oil field I had to dig into that. I have been reading several industry publications regularly for decades and have never seen that claim made in any of them.
The only time you see Israeli oil exploration mentioned it is usually in this same context - a relatively small operator is exploring for the oil mentioned in the Old Testament that, once it is found, will make Israel rich and no longer dependent on foreign sources and this discovery, along with other events, will usher in the second coming of Jesus. This theme is very popular and almost universally allies Jewish owner/investors funding operations in partnership with American evangelical Christians who invest or provide expertise and/or equipment.
These people are glad to associate with anything that helps Jesus find his way back. To them, Jesus already has the ticket in his cart and only needs to complete the transaction. Sufficient oil to power Israel at a level greater than her traditional enemies is seen as an inducement.
One problem is that the line between friend and enemy in that region is no longer a sharply drawn line from a fine-point pen in dark ink. It has become a fat, multi-hued crayon line over the last several decades with convenient alliances formed among those who had been traditional adversaries as neighboring nations increasingly work toward common goals.
Like I mentioned, Israel does produce natural gas now from a regional field that is also seeing development by Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, and Cyprus. Turkey also may be involved and likely would also be working to control gas produced by Greece and Cyprus. Anyway, natural gas quantities sufficient to decrease the region's alliance on supplies from Russia or other central Asian nations exist and exports of surplus gas to Europe could replace some of the gas formerly bought from Russia.
Interestingly enough, eastern Ukraine has tremendous natural gas potential so that, if it were drilled and commercialized, they could become the low-cost provider to Europe. Western companies were planning to drill and frack and then revolutions happened, territory was seized, wars are being fought.
Oil shows in Israel are less common since the geologic history makes natural gas more likely due to high thermal maturation (it was cooked off over the millenia leaving gas behind).
There is oil in and around Israel. So far though, it is not found in quantities large enough to support commercialization. That's why I replied. I needed to know whether I had missed anything important in my reading.
Start at page 11 (2010) and read backwards through the headlines, and maybe skim a bit. The message hasn't changed and the dire warnings don't match up to events years later. When things are down it looks right and when things are up it looks like hyperbole. I don't see what would appear to be actual insight and I suspect this is a shill for the oil industry. I'd like to see where she gets her money.
I hope everyone who made it to the bottom of the article ended up understanding that this person wrote a conspiratorial junk piece designed to undermine research and investment in sustainable energy sources.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadcheck the writings from Rocky Mountain Institute / Amory Lovins for less scary, more quantitative view on energy and the economy.
"Politicians cannot possibly admit that today’s world economy is headed for collapse, in a way similar to that of prior civilizations."
If the peak oil discussion do not divorce from Apocalypse fantasizing, it will never popularize. (What is not a big issue, the public isn't a very relevant party on solving that one problem anyway, and Global Warming already takes care of getting the public's sympathy.)
That being said, gloval energy markets are screwed up right now, Russia is doing everything they can make it worse. And it is among the asiest way to generate clicks and traffic, after all we are still somewhat in the summer whole of news cycles.
There are two ways out of peak oil:
The good outcome is we get alternatives (I've heard someone saying "the stone age didn't end for lack of stones", that is apt regardless of the original context of the quotation). PV etc. may be that alternative, I think they will be that alternative, but nothing is ever guaranteed until it is done.
The bad outcomes are like the trees no longer on Easter Island or the phosphate mines of Nauru.
One of those is constructive, and will get people to try to help you. The other one is destructive, and the best reaction people can have for it is to ostracize the message (and the messenger if he only has this to say).
And about the outcome, well, the destructive one is lying, because the outcome is not certain.
I would get away from the social media statements and more into research papers on this complex topic; even investor literature picked well will speak openly about pros and cons, with quantitative evidence to support it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
They know more than us. It's probably wise to follow their lead.
If a company actually thought the apocalypse was coming, why would they buy back stock? The stock's going to be worthless, and so is the company. Use the cash to buy something that will be worth something in the apocalypse (food, bomb shelters, guns, maybe gold). If you actually believe the apocalypse is coming, buying corporate stock is a stupid response.
So I don't believe your claim that stock buybacks indicate that corporations know the apocalypse is coming. Rough economic times, sure. Apocalypse, no.
the experts giving "the best advice possible" are generally giving pretty terrible advice
This is the real problem and also the lie. The people to whom the prices are “unacceptably high” are the people at the top of the pyramid who would subsequently need to pay appropriate wages. I would hazard a guess that if you took the current wages of workers which have essentially stagnated and regressed for fifty years and raised them to where they would have been had they been increasing at their pre 1970s rate, and then compared that purchasing power to where prices are at now, all of a sudden the prices of things would not seem so out of whack.
Executive suite are still getting ridiculous pay rises, investors are still getting ridiculous returns, meanwhile the same companies are continuing to try to shaft workers with below inflation pay rises. You cannot skim in this fashion indefinitely, eventually you get to the point we’re at now where the jig is up, you’ve put so much wealth at the top that it collapses the pillars holding the whole system up.
You cannot just park billions of money in ‘safe’ assets (e.g housing) like Smaug the dragon because you’re afraid of losing money. The money represents resources. If you’re not smart enough or brave enough to choose worthwhile and worthy people and enterprises, organisations etc to invest the money in then you don’t deserve to have it and it should be reallocated via the mechanisms of the market to smarter people who do. Yet the government keep bailing out failing company or bank after failing company or bank rather than letting the natural reallocation occur. And so we end up with a zombie economy that preys on the living to feed the dead.
Economics is a thin veneer we put over thermodynamics to make accounting easier.
Whenever the thermodynamics doesn't work economics stops working either. The 1970s were a short period were thermodynamics were sub-optimal. The dark ages were a longer period.
Money is ink on paper or bits in a computer.
Neither of those things runs a tractor or lets water flow.
Shouldn't it be "Economics is a thin veneer we put over thermodynamics to make trade / exchange easier"?
How do we run tractors then?
Probably with horses. Welcome to 1500. Please mind the plague.
Maybe you could link a source explaining this correlation with some examples? Otherwise, it just sounds like “higher salaries for more effort”, which is obviously false.
Yes but they tell the people who have the fuel and the water where they should send it: the highest bidder.
The person who is willing to spend the most money has:
a) acquired more money than competitors through smart decisions that have added value to people who have in turn given them their money
b) decided they have a more pressing need for those resources that they will outbid the other buyers rather than wait for a drop in prices or to seek an alternative.
If the buyer does not make good use of his newly acquired resources he will soon lose money and will not be able to compete with the other buyers.
This is how the economic system is meant to allocate resources. To people who have a proven track record of making decisions with successful outcomes.
If you start bailing out failures as happened in 2007-2009 you break this fundamental allocation of resources to where they will be most appropriately used based on the historical precedent of success. And when that happens you get what we have now, which is a breakdown of the entire system.
I am not sure I am convinced with the author's argument. Even if we put aside how all (or most) politicians and public fossil fuel companies (who should disclose existential risks for the company) are conspiring together to lie, I don't understand what is the motivation is for all these parties to work together to lie, just to keep wages low (but if execs are getting ridiculous pays, wages for the company as a line item are perhaps still high). Wouldn't companies see an existential risk and plan ahead to try to diversify investments, rising pricing if its progressively getting expensive over the years to produce etc..
Reminds me of what a friend recently told me - Its funny how the politicians/government/bureaucracies are both incapable of doing anything useful yet also capable of world wide conspiracies.
I don’t think it’s an intentional conspiracy, but lack of material upside (the root of power being material ownership), for powers that be to risk their power and (for some) legacy as being the one in charge when it all went sideways. Such folks do not live long after the fall.
The self interested majority (not all) do not care about these problems. They can’t act on them without risking their own positions because the solutions are unpalatable to the people they rely on to maintain their stations. Subsequently these are things to be kicked down the road for someone else to address. The politician only really cares about getting re-elected, the executive about closing the latest deal. They only care about the medium to long term in as much as it allows them to keep gaining in the short to medium term.
The majority of people at this level are over 40. They likely have only 40 - 50 years left to live (we’re going with higher life expectancy because they’re wealthy). They will likely be retired in 20 to 30 years. As long as things are ok in that time frame they’re golden. Get enough money for some nice houses scattered around the world near some good golf courses. Trump is literally the archetypal representation.
Look at house prices in New Zealand. They’re literally buying property there because they think in a worse case scenario, if the entire system collapses they can just ride out the storm until it either rebuilds itself or they die of old age in relative luxury. Keyword: relative. So long as they’re still in an elevated position they do not really give a fuck if things go backwards, even for themselves.
And even if they do fail in the short term the consequences are negligible. Look at some failing companies from ten years ago and see what the CEO is doing now. Nine times out of ten they’re either CEO or chairman somewhere else or retired. You have to REALLY fuck up a la Elizabeth Holmes to fall out of favour of the ‘network’.
You even see this in fiction. When Tyrion needs Bron’s help he won’t do it for the money: he wants a castle. Bron is smart and gets the game: if he wants to escape the life of being a hired killer for good he needs to join the nobility network, not just collect a paycheck. The castle would grant him that.
Closer to home, I recently worked at a company on an application that was so slow it was bordering on unusable by the users. The engineers had been trying for years to get resources for a rebuild. Yet all the business department cared about was adding more features because they could make more money from them. This inevitably kept making the problem worse. Taking the time out to refactor the program was unglamorous and didn’t give the business department anything to show the top dogs who were clamouring for growth, growth, growth. Eventually that program will get to a point where it is unusable. The parallels with the global situation are easy to see.
If you have a situation where doing a thing has worked for more than 50 years years, and there is a theory that thing is suddenly going to stop working then it is a very rare person who will stand up and say or act on that politically. Large groups of humans are devastatingly evidence-driven and can't cope with simple leaps of logic like doing the same thing will get a different outcome.
So in this case, if we are about to hit peak oil and suddenly the global economy starts collapsing there is no way the politicians would sound the alarm. They'd be waiting patiently until public understanding of the matter was very high. You can see that behaviour all the way through resource problems.
Politicians can't even sell spending the same amount of money as they tax; they aren't going to try and pitch doing without energy until the crisis has well and truly hit. There is no upside for them.
The inflation we're experiencing has nothing to do with energy supply, it has everything to do with monetary, diplomatic, and fiscal policy.
Yes, the inflation has nothing to do with energy supply, or even price of digging it all up. The pricing of it is always driven by a plausible excuse and greed.
No, investment in tapping new wells is at an all time high, and for example has turned USA into a net oil exporter. Gas too. Thing is, fossil fuels are not evenly distributed, nor do we want to use them to heat up the planet more. So when a major producer is cut off or decides to do everyone in, we get a price spike, and prices rarely return to baseline.
There are several things are wrong with this:
Wages have grown at their fastest rate in history, globally, over the last 30 years:
https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/World/2016/0207...
It is only in the advanced economies where wage growth has slowed. And the slowdown is much less severe than commonly believed. I personally spent years promulgating this graph all over the internet:
https://imgur.com/BlEiA9d
I wish someone had pointed out to me in what ways this graph is misleading. This article does a good job of doing that:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/12/22-source...
To summarize:
1. Wages are just one component of employment compensation. When the nonwage components - which have grown faster than wages - are factored in, you see the line track productivity growth much more closely.
2. Another factor creating the illusion of a growing gap between productivity and worker compensation is the use of different inflation indexes to measure productivity and worker compensation. The indexes largely mirrored each other before 1973, but diverged significantly since then, leading to inflation-adjusted worker compensation growth appearing artificially depressed compared to inflation-adjusted productivity growth.
3. Worker compensation growth has in fact slowed somewhat, and almost all of this slowdown can be explained by the commensurate slowdown in productivity growth in the US.
>>investors are still getting ridiculous returns
Investors are not getting ridiculous returns. If you look at labor's share of national income, it has largely remained the same if you exclude just one asset category: housing, where rent has increased faster than not just inflation, but income as well. See Figure 3:
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...
And the solution to outsized gains due to housing scarcity is not to ban profiteering. It's to solve the housing scarcity problem. One study estimates that if just three cities - San Francisco, San Jose and New York - had limited the growth of their housing sector regulations to that of the median rate of all US cities, US GDP would have grown by 36 percent more between 1964 and 2009:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388
Fossil fuel companies (Shell and BP at least) reaped billions USD windfall from all the issues with war.
Like I explained, the slight gap is due to a slight increase in capital's share of national income, and that is solely due to housing.
Exactly. Most likely as a direct response of MBA CEOs of advanced economies outsourcing manufacturing to foreign companies to increase their bottom line. Then a pandemic happens and you realise that you have no domestic manufacturers of medical equipment because government and enterprise have not fostered an environment of self sufficiency. And then academics scratch their heads and wonder why movements like Brexit gain traction. (For the record, I voted against Brexit although I am not sure how I would vote if the referendum was held again.).
> 1. Wages are just one component of employment compensation. When the nonwage components - which have grown faster than wages - are factored in, you see the line track productivity growth much more closely.
Maybe in America with its ludicrously expensive health system. In the UK with the NHS I'm not seeing anywhere near the increase in benefits to compensate for the loss in wages. And what real point is my pension when I can't afford to get on the housing ladder because my wages are too low to keep up with house price inflation? All of my pension will end up being subsumed by rent. If anything, the rise of freelance working shatters this argument because when you freelance you receive no benefits. Ask anyone in the EU who is earning decent wages and it is always the freelancers.
> 2. Another factor creating the illusion of a growing gap between productivity and worker compensation is the use of different inflation indexes to measure productivity and worker compensation. The indexes largely mirrored each other before 1973, but diverged significantly since then, leading to inflation-adjusted worker compensation growth appearing artificially depressed compared to inflation-adjusted productivity growth.
Again, I'm not buying this. If anything, most articles I read seem to use the lower CPI instead of RPI which I think is ridiculous. Perhaps the mismatch is to do with outsourcing manufacturing bases? Is productivity accurately measured? According to google:
"Productivity measures the efficiency of a company's production process. It is calculated by dividing the outputs produced by a company by the inputs used in its production process."
In an age where accountancy tricks are routinely used to minimise declared profits to shield against paying tax, are we 100% sure that the "outputs produced by a company" are accurately reflected in the statistics?
>And the solution to outsized gains due to housing scarcity is not to ban profiteering. It's to solve the housing scarcity problem.
Do not agree. Speak to any real estate agent and they will tell you that huge numbers of houses are being sold to foreign investors that then sit empty. There is zero point in building more houses if all the houses are just going to be sold to people with capital who don't even live in the country. You can build and build as much as you like but they will just snatch them up with above asking price offers fully in cash. First you have to ban people who don't live in a country for more than six months of the year from purchasing property. That in of itself might fix the problem. If it doesn't, then you need some kind of tax to make mass landlording an unprofitable business. If you don't, you just end up in the same situation where a few large companies with capital hoover up everything. You can't have an situation where a few giants effectively control everything with something as vital to survival as housing. There has to be appropriate regulation. An exponential tax on property ownership would be one such solution. And then finall...
Venezuela's problem cannot be reduced simply to the US being evil / the West hating brown people.
If you want to try that argument with Iran - why doesn't it work with KSA? It's more about geopolitics.
In other words, if all you can spout is racist discourse may I suggest you to do so in other places? While many good things have come from the USA this can not be said about these ideas so keep them to yourself and your comrades.
This reminds me of (spoiler alert)
"Origins" book of Dan Brown.
Handed Ukraine while paying Putin for the privilege?
There are lots of things they should have done:
* Not shut down nuclear until they had alternatives
* Reduced dependencies on Russian exports
* Invested more in clean energy and reduced regulatory barriers to green projects
Supporting Ukraine fully wasn't a mistake.
This forum and the western public in general are not mature enough for that conversation. I am not having that conversation.
My statement is limited to the fact that the energy crisis is a simple and proximate result of the ongoing sanctions and not peak oil, climate change, or corporate greed.
While people are also blaming corporate greed for the price crisis, everyone is well aware that the sanctions are causing pain for both parties. There's no political or social support for going back into Putin's arms, so here we are.
Are you sure it will be just one winter?
In general, Europe is not great at: 1. Moving fast 2. Agreeing on and completing big projects.
I guess we'll have to see if infants are freezing to death in the flats of London this winter. My guess is probably not.
We're mature enough to know that if someone's argument is "you can't handle the truth" they should be taken about as seriously as the film I'm quoting.
Try to handle the truth that the west cannot geostrategically survive Russia becoming China's backyard. Look directly at that truth and let me know if and when you've handled it.
On the other hand, if the Ukraine war and related political stresses prove sufficient, we may actually see Russia split apart. That would make it so that China no longer has a single throat to choke with respect to Russia. It would likely have great knock-on effects with respect to nuclear MAD balance worldwide, since Russia has thus far been US’s largest rival there.
I’d feel horrified, helpless and powerless, coupled with some mixture of:
- “damn, it’s a shame they couldn’t hold out for longer”
- “at least it’s not my own country”
- “my home country is just next door, so I sure hope they’ll stop at Ukraine and don’t go any further yet”
- “I’m so lucky I moved abroad and live on the other end of the continent away from all this”
Just seems like a 2nd cold war on steroids. Not sure why the west won't be the one to survive as opposed to Russia & China.
But also, doesn't that strengthen the argument that the west must intervene? What would you rather oppose, a weaken Russia + China (not to mention a stronger NATO alliance with Finland, Sweden & Ukraine) or a stronger Russia + China?
> Europe made a *major tactical error*
Your follow-up:
> I'm not going to engage the question of whether or not it was morally or *tactically* correct.
I mean, you already have.
I made my own tactical error it appears. I had a good run with this account.
The Pope also made a thoughtful contribution, acknowledging that the matter is far more complicated than western media suggests, while decrying the bloodshed and calling for diplomacy.
Negotiate for peace. Just as the US would object to Mexico joining a military alliance with e.g., China, Russia objects to Ukraine joining a military alliance with the US. Even if you do not believe Russia when they said this is the main issue, calling their bluff would have cost nothing, but potentially saved many lives. Wars end with negotiation. Eventually these negotiations will take place. There will just be fewer Ukrainians and Russians around to witness them.
And, if NATO membership was the primary issue, this war could have been avoided if the Clinton administration had not rebuffed Russia in their request to join NATO themselves.
As to the US proposed sanctions, I suspect that if Germany had not agreed, the EU as a whole would not be participating. And, that if Merkel was still in power, that Germany would not have agreed.
This is a Neville Chamberlain argument. No I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler but the motivations of any dictator are the same. The west *tried* repeatedly to appease Putin so this claim is just patently false and proven to be so.
Let's prove:
* Invasion of Crimea was a test from Putin's side. The west tried all political options to no avail.
* Then he started a "rebellion" and again the west wasn't successful with negotiation
* Before he invaded Biden went public and explained EXACTLY what he was going to do. A smart man would have retreated. This would have humiliated Biden and might have paved the way for Trump to get back into office. But he was stupid and invaded
So no. He isn't a person to negotiate with. He's a liar who doesn't respect the agreements his country signed.
Even if that were true, that is not negotiation. Negotiation implies give and take. Given that the US already agreed not to expand NATO to Russia's border (honored by Bush Sr., but broken by Clinton), a good starting point to negotiation would be to agree to honor past commitments.
The vast majority of the people in Crimea (as Donbas) are Russian speaking, and voted to join Russia[1]. Part of the context leading up to the unrest in Crimea was a far-right government in Kieve that proposed policies against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens[2]. I'm not opining on Russia's actions in 2014 or today, just pointing out that things were and are a lot more complicated than the dominant narrative in the west (I was surprised to find any US mainstream news source that reported on the referendum, at all, to use as a reference).
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to...
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/4/9/why-ethnopolitic...
Putin repeatedly violated agreements signed by his predecessors including over Crimea with flimsy excuses like the one you're parroting.
We're talking about a guy whose opposition is all dead or in jail. You're arguing for a murderous dictator.
The only policies were the removal of requirement to teach Russian everywhere. It was a ridiculous excuse to go to war. You don't get Russian in your school let's bomb you and your neighbors. There was no Russian heritage discrimination but there was openness to the west which did make Putin nervous.
Clinton adding countries to NATO is not Ukraine's fault and has absolutely nothing to do with them. The invasion had the opposite effect on Russia and shows how stupid Putin really is because now NATO is at his door. Had he not invaded things would have been better off for him.
I'm not arguing for anybody. You obviously have very strong feelings about this subject. But, please do not attribute to me positions I have not expressed. My actual positions (as stated above):
War kills and maims people.
Killing and maiming people should be avoided.
Russia made statements about why they felt the need for war.
Taking those statements at face value would have caused no harm if they were false-- we would simply be in the same place as we are today with war.
Taking those statements at face value could have saved many Ukrainian and Russian lives if they were true and addressed.
Russia's stated concerns have not been addressed in peace negotiations, so we do not know if war could have been avoided or if the war could be brought to an end sooner.
Russians and Ukrainians are currently killing and maiming each other.
The history of the situation is complicated-- there is more than the typical western narrative encompasses.
Russia must bear responsibility for their decision to go to war. But, the US is possibly antagonistic toward negotiations. At a minimum, the US has not engaged in negotiations nor addressed Russia's stated concerns and thus threw away a potential opportunity to prevent bloodshed.
US/NATO pumping weapons into Ukraine serves to extend the conflict (and the death count) before the inevitable negotiations to end the conflict.
To summarize, I'd prefer if we made an effort to not kill people.
There are multiple steps before going to war. Putin was looking for an excuse to go to war and also tried fabricating stuff like Nazis controlling Ukraine (which has a Jewish president) because he knew this is a flimsy excuse. Repeating this nonsense gives validity to a war criminal.
> Russians and Ukrainians are currently killing and maiming each other.
No. One side invaded the other. This isn't symmetric.
> The history of the situation is complicated
No. There's a lot of noise in terms of history. But people use it to mask simple facts. A dictator invaded a sovereign nation. Killed civilians who he claims to protect.
The US isn't at fault in any way. You can't negotiate with a liar who violates agreements. Russia attacked US elections in a blatant way and explicitly instigated a policy of sabotage. There were plenty of opportunities along the way to de-escalate. But the US didn't escalate. It very explicitly stated early on that no soldiers will go into Ukraine. It made it hard for Ukraine to join NATO, etc. Putin violated the status quo.
They arm Ukraine because the alternative would be the annihilation of the country. So far the Russian forces took over areas and forced migration into Russia, killed people in the streets, etc. These are terrible people.
> To summarize, I'd prefer if we made an effort to not kill people.
This is nonsense. A lot of effort was put into that. Unfortunately, sometimes the only thing you can do is stand up and protect your country. This is what the people of Ukraine are doing. Putin isn't giving them a choice.
They have talks all the time. In the talks people literally got poisoned!
You're perpetuating a false Russian narrative that has been discredited time and time again.
Your analogy is missing that the US forcibly annexed the Baja California peninsula, say, prior to Mexico attempting to join said alliance. Multiple Ukrainian governments prior to 2014 had said they had no intention of joining NATO. Crimea changed their mind.
How about not helping overthrow legally elected presidents?
They elected a president who's policy is just that.
The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia. You might not accept those facts and claim the west is lying here. That's an option and it won't be the first/last time that happened. In terms of track record for lying, I'm going to take the west as more reliable than the east. Pretty much all my Russian and Ukrainian friends would agree to that assertion.
By the means of democratic general elections?
They won't have to be a 'part' of Russia provided that they has observed some basic precautions, which I have listed and whose violations you are vehemently defending.
About elections. It's funny that you're so passionate about elections when results suite your opinions. Yanukovych was elected by a hair unlike the current president. So you show lack of respect to democracy.
Tell that to Belgium, Ireland, Italy or Canada.
Ukraine is a deeply divided country and by violating ECRML they went not the Western but sub-Sakharan African way.
They shouldn't have done that. They would have their whole country, including Crimea, no war and 2x economy, if only they did not listen to western NGOs sitting on their ears like you do right now. About all of the wonderful independent rights of suppressing their own population for their language or electoral preference.
> Yanukovych was elected by a hair
Yep, so? As are most of presidents of the USA. Or Brexit.
Sure it's a divided country. No question. You don't bomb countries for being divided. Had Putin stayed in the Dunbas area that would have been a moderate excuse. He chose to attack the entire country and assassinate the elected president.
You sound like the people who tell a beaten wife that she shouldn't have talked back... Putin is a criminal and you're making excuses for him. He tried to take Ukraine in the gentle way by installing a puppet. When that didn't work he's trying force. Ukraine was distancing itself from Russia because of Putins policies.
You're picking small things to justify terrible HUGE things. If someone says something bad to you on the street shooting their head off would be justifiable?
That's the level of excuses I'm reading here.
Crimea is the beaten wife. Ukraine is the psycho husband. Russia thinks it has to enforce the restraining order.
You are the person who thinks criminal law has no place to be in a family, including a dysfunctional one.
> assassinate the elected president
Wat
Why are Ukrainians fighting against Russia and so few are fighting with it?
There are Ukrainians who want Russian rule. That is obvious. But they are a tiny minority and elections proved it. Most of those who are interested in a Ukraine that is closer to Russia are fighting against it right now.
This can only be true if you discount people from territories Ukraine does not control but still claims.
There were only these options:
1) Use Russian gas.
2) Build pipelines via Turkey and risk different dictators.
3) Build an enormous overcapacity for LNG via sea and eat the extreme differential in prices.
4) Build nuclear power plants and generate remaining necessary gas from hydrogen reforming.
So why didn't we do this? The cynic in me thinks it's because despite the progress we've made, the energy companies are still the ones with most power in this world and they are desperate not to give any of it up. Embarking on a program like this would be a massive redistribution of power and wealth to the common folk. The day when there is a solar panel on every roof will happen but the energy companies will do everything in their power to prevent it. They even tried getting legislation through in America to tax households with solar panels installed to make up for their lost revenue.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/solar-power-...
Regardless, Russia have been in the Donbass and Crimea since 2014. That European countries and Germany in particular, have decided to increase their reliance on Russian gas since then rather than set up some serious back up plans is really rather complacent.
Certainly, it has been good for plant life: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
The argument has always been that warming would become some runaway greenhouse effect (note, greenhouses are good for plant growth) but that has not born out.
It's 2022, crop yield is at all time human history highs right now. As shown in the satellite record, the leaf area index for plants is up 25-50% over the last couple decades across most land on Earth. See for yourself, the dark green areas are a whopping 50% increase: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
That means literally the opposite of what you think is happening. Anything that is good for the base layer of the food chain is generally good for all living things.
We do not have millions of deaths from CO2. In fact, there are billions and billions of lives that would have never existed were it not for the miracle of modern day infrastructure and transportation systems, fertilizer made from mining minerals, farming equipment that enables massive efficiency, etc and that's all been powered by fossil fuels. Basically the whole industrial revolution that ultimately ended slavery and enabled humans to be the most prosperous they've ever been on a massive scale.
As long as you don't think that global warming results in widespread ecological destruction, yeah.
CO2 is responsible for global warming and global warming is responsible for widespread ecological destruction. What is there to discuss here ? Are you still at the "warming climate is not bad for humankind and the biotope it lives in" denying step ?
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/quick-questions/how-does-carb...
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas. This means that it causes an effect like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping heat and warming up the inside. This effect is important: without the CO2 that naturally exists in the atmosphere, Earth might be too cold to support human life. However, the atmosphere is very sensitive to changing levels of CO2. Even though this gas makes up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere, it can have a huge effect on how much heat the planet's surface retains.
When energy from the Sun reaches the top of our atmosphere, most of it passes through to Earth's surface, where it is absorbed. Some of this energy is re-emitted, heading back towards space. At this stage, it interacts with molecules of CO2 in a way that prevents some of it from escaping Earth's atmosphere. The trapped heat energy leads to increased average global surface air temperatures.
One reason carbon dioxide has such a big impact on global temperatures is that hotter air can hold more water vapour. Water vapour is itself a greenhouse gas, which further enhances the greenhouse effect.
While the presence of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is natural, the rising levels since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s are due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html No ecological disaster ?
Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems. Scientific evidence now clearly indicates that the Earth's atmosphere and ocean are warming, and that these changes are primarily due to greenhouse gases derived from human activities.
As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
Climate change will affect coral reef ecosystems, through sea level rise, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, and altered ocean circulation patterns. When combined, all of these impacts dramatically alter ecosystem function, as well as the goods and services coral reef ecosystems provide to people around the globe.
Contributing factors that increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere include burning fossil fuels for heat and energy, producing some industrial products, raising livestock, fertilizing crops, and deforestation. Climate change leads to:
You can make fertilizer from Green Hydrogen, no methane needed. It's already being produced, with lots of big projects getting built, because it has less GHG emission, though it needs to ramp up.
But that basically puts a limit on how high gas prices can go before it gets replaced for that (and many other uses).
So, hopefully the production cost of fossil fuels is as bad as they claim, because that will speed things along.
So Putin's got one last winter to try to rally the reactionaries of Europe to topple their democratic governments. I guess there's some small chance he'll succeed, but it's not going to stop China and Australia, Africa and the US rolling out renewables, so what does it actually gain them?
(11) The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore:
(12) cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble;
(13) cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves. [New International Version]
The King James Version includes "souls":
(11) And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
(12) The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,
(13) And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.
There is no way anything under the Golan Heights comes close to the largest oilfields in the world. The Golan Heights only cover an area of about 690 square miles. The Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia is more than 3200 square miles by itself. It is around 85m thick, and with the field described in your sources being 350m the math doesn't work in your favor especially when you consider that the entirety of the formation they claim to have discovered would have to be productive over the full extent of the Golan Heights. That is unlikely especially in light of their most recent updates shown below.
The articles that I could find describing Golan Heights discoveries all use hyperbolic descriptions of oil potential combined with selected messianic prophecies of what it means for Israel and the world as relates to Old Testament scripture.
I spent 40 years in the oil and gas business including several years working on data from the Eastern Mediterranean acquired as a joint venture between countries bordering the region. This geophysical work resulted in significant gas well discoveries in the region. Oil is found with those wells as expected but not in life-changing quantities to the best of my knowledge. None of the partner countries will be self-sufficient as a result of those discoveries.
Until he died, there was a local geologist who became somewhat famous for his attempts to find oil mentioned in the Bible. His plan was to help fulfill prophecy by discovering the oil that would make Israel self-sufficient and bring about the second Temple. He worked for years spending lots of other people's money and Israel still was not self-sufficient.
The oil discovery that you refer to is not being produced today and may not even be commercial. Add to that the fact that the well(s) were drilled in territory recognized to belong to Syria and cracks form in the story.
Then you start to look at the players involved - the company is Genie Energy based in New Jersey. (from Wikipedia - this line gives a bit of historical information about their efforts)
> In November 2017, the company announced that it suspended its exploratory drilling program as the well's target zone does not contain commercially producible quantities of oil or natural gas.[23]
The link to the article [23] cited in Wikipedia:
[23] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genie-energy-suspen...
Their strategic advisory board has these common names (from Wikipedia)
> Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States), Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director), Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Bill Richardson (former Governor of New Mexico, ex-ambassador to the United Nations and United States Energy Secretary), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.
Frankly this looks like a great collection of right-wing evangelicals about whom this great song was written:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg8B767itf0
The only time you see Israeli oil exploration mentioned it is usually in this same context - a relatively small operator is exploring for the oil mentioned in the Old Testament that, once it is found, will make Israel rich and no longer dependent on foreign sources and this discovery, along with other events, will usher in the second coming of Jesus. This theme is very popular and almost universally allies Jewish owner/investors funding operations in partnership with American evangelical Christians who invest or provide expertise and/or equipment.
These people are glad to associate with anything that helps Jesus find his way back. To them, Jesus already has the ticket in his cart and only needs to complete the transaction. Sufficient oil to power Israel at a level greater than her traditional enemies is seen as an inducement.
One problem is that the line between friend and enemy in that region is no longer a sharply drawn line from a fine-point pen in dark ink. It has become a fat, multi-hued crayon line over the last several decades with convenient alliances formed among those who had been traditional adversaries as neighboring nations increasingly work toward common goals.
Like I mentioned, Israel does produce natural gas now from a regional field that is also seeing development by Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Gaza, and Cyprus. Turkey also may be involved and likely would also be working to control gas produced by Greece and Cyprus. Anyway, natural gas quantities sufficient to decrease the region's alliance on supplies from Russia or other central Asian nations exist and exports of surplus gas to Europe could replace some of the gas formerly bought from Russia.
Interestingly enough, eastern Ukraine has tremendous natural gas potential so that, if it were drilled and commercialized, they could become the low-cost provider to Europe. Western companies were planning to drill and frack and then revolutions happened, territory was seized, wars are being fought.
Oil shows in Israel are less common since the geologic history makes natural gas more likely due to high thermal maturation (it was cooked off over the millenia leaving gas behind).
There is oil in and around Israel. So far though, it is not found in quantities large enough to support commercialization. That's why I replied. I needed to know whether I had missed anything important in my reading.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Why-We-Need-120-Oil.h...