Brilliant metaphor. Hereโs another one- in nature a snake often becomes hungry and looks for any easy prey. It sees its own tail and starts to eat it. As it gets deeper and deeper into its gullet and gets stuck there because of its backward pointing teeth, it chokes and dies.
I think you are over presuming the issue of burning fossil fuels causing climate change. The jury is still out on this one and probably will be for a while. Earth has been warmer before the burning of fossil fuels. According to ice samples, warming preceeds the rise in CO2, so cause and effect are being reversed by the MSM. Don't jump on the climate change narrative.
And I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but you keep making the same error, like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa and my apologies for being a hypocrite as I speak only one language and you probably at least two.
Europe has already GONE through its red giant phase in the 19th century, or passed its red giant phase, etc.
But I won't knitpick anymore. You have nailed it on the issue of arctic exploration, EROEI, etc. We are nevertheless on a slow doom loop. Most of us just don't realize it or want to accept it.
Sure, the planet has been warmer before, dinosaurs roamed the Arctic 66mn years ago. How do you think that's going to workout for Homo sapiens? The jury is NOT out on GHG caused climate change. You must have been absorbed by Climate: The Movie propaganda. Scientists that deny caused anthropic climate change are invariably non-climate scientists captured by right wing "think" tanks. And your better instincts should have been followed in not being a grammar Nazi. Sigh, read this and think about whom the climate change deniers are. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/noxious-disinformation-climate-the
It is well established that burning fossil fuels causes global warming - now known as climate change for the politically correct. You don't have to accept it of course, but it is like standing on a highway and not accepting that a car will run you down if you don't move.
Sure it is. It is also well established that sheep are able to believe any kind of bullshit as long as it comes from someone perceived as being an authority. Sheep don't think. They just take almost anything as it is and then regurgitate it while pretending they have a working brain. How many doses of the safe and effective injections did you take?
Tell us you're a m0r0n without telling us you're a m0r0n. Obviously the ivermectin and bleach injections has got you homebound and commenting on blogs instead of hunting up the child trafficking dens in pizza parlor basements as your prophet originally directed.
"M0r0n"... I see, trying to beat the algos... Your whole fucking pathetic existence controlled by them like the little moronic sheep that you are. As I said, go get injected with that safe and effective magic serum. The idiots I am working with are all over injected and always complain that they are ill all the time. From one flu to the next influenza. It's pure joy to see where their stupidity and trust in psychos took them. I hope you are in the same situation stupid little sheep.
A better question...Why does it attract people who know nothing about science or natural history? The climate record is well established through the ice cores....,
The cooling trend we are seeing in Europe is part and parcel of the slowing down of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). The ice core research in the Arctic and Antarctic has shown that Ice Ages can come on in as fast as 5-50 years. The current "blob" in the North Atlantic south of Iceland indicates a slowing down of the AMOC. So you have the phenomenon of global warming melting the Greenland ice sheet and the resulting cold fresh water slowing down the AMOC underwater vortices. This brings on a resumption of the last Ice Age because without the AMOC and its attendant substreams - like the Gulf Stream - Europe cools to its natural state of glacial and periglacial conditions. [Like the climate the Neandertals had for 200,000 years.] I was teaching this in classes twenty years ago fer chrissakes. Never forget that we STILL live in the Pleistocene. The nice little blip of the Holocene we have enjoyed for the last 12,000 years is on its way out. So, yes we are experiencing a cooling trend that will result in resumption of the last Ice Age. And YES, this is BECAUSE of global warming. This is settled science. You don't have to believe it. The Pentagon did a report on this in 2004.
Yes, the Milankovich cycles have something to do with this, but the driver is still global warming caused by heat and emissions. Don't forget that the heat produced by 8.4 billion humans is a significant factor to global warming too. This amount of heat introduced into the atmosphere is equivalent to another oil producer the size of Russia (11.3 million barrels per day).
Indeed, the geological record shows that CO2 increases long after warming, not before...and btw, it was 3* warmer than today 8,000 years ago, when apparently no SUVs were running around, and in fact, there were hardly any people on the planet....
*Nitpick. And while yes, the earth has been warmer, the issue is less the temperature and more the gradient. We can rise or descend fifty feet (or 15 meters, if you prefer) just fine if the slope is gentle. But if it is a sheer face, we are going to go splat. The change we are currently observing is happening on a very, very steep gradient. Therein lies the danger.
Only the moronic sheep that love their injections use only fans to seel their bodies to other idiots. You have some overly injected whores over there. Your sheep little brain would love them so much. You'll be in good company, that of sheep taken to the slaughter. Now, fuck off.
A very good exposition of the current polycrisis. Allow me to expand on the following sentence.
"Industrial economies must consume energy in an exponential manner in order to compensate for the steady loss of cheap and easy-to-get minerals they need for maintaining their inner equilibrium."
I suggest that people consider not only the exponential increase in energy (acceleration of the rate of energy consumption) but also the exponential increase in the exponential increase (acceleration of acceleration). In calculus, this is the move from the 2nd derivative (acceleration) to the 3rd derivative (acceleration of acceleration or "jerk"). There are higher levels too, for example the 4th derivative being called "snap." This is not a math lesson, but rather an attempt to point out the basis of what I call the hypercomplex society. The US has become a hypercomplex society because not only is the rate of consumption and financialization accelerating; it is accelerating at an accelerating pace. What this means is that the US cannot manage contraction like the complex societies of Germany and France for example. It will instead implode and collapse rather than contract. Scorching the surrounding economies and societies it interacts with like a Red Giant. The comparison is apt.
You are very right about the US wanting to secure Canadaโs heavier crude, and with the Alberta Premier offering fealty to Trump as his Useful Idiot it could get ugly. However, under our constitution, no Province can unilaterally declare independence, a position reinforced by the Supreme Court of Canada August 1988 ruling. With the expansion of the TMX pipeline, we now have the ability to significantly increase oil exports to Asia.
Well written! The Arctic is just a very difficult place to drill in, not just because of the cold (which can reach -75-80 F) but because of violent storms, which require the evacuation of every platform..Chevron lost 7 billion drilling offshore Alaska, got no oil...and Alaska is much more convenient than Greenland....Your point about the shortage of heavy crude is spot on...The problem for the US government is that if it costs $125-150 Bl for oil, which it ultimately will if these prospects are developed, the economy will roll over and die...
You need to start including and addressing the other profound, irreversible(?) decline to modern society. Its dumbing down. The average IQ of Western Societies has been declining for almost 30 years, if not longer. Why that is is an entirely different discussion. But one strong component to the decline is that smart people are having far less kids than dumb people. This is why we now have an explosion of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and MAGA cultists. Ingesting cattle wormer and bleach while declaring vaccines are "From Satan", along with voting into office a sexual-predator-felon-pathological sociopath traitor with dementia because "he'll lower the price of eggs"....All are powerful indications of the curtain of profound stupidity that is descending on the United States.
I'm curious if you have a response to Art Berman's latest post. I'm a bit surprised and a bit confused, as he seems to have changed his tune. This is the person that in recent years has been often referenced in support of oil depletion concerns.
One year ago (Dec. 2023) he told Nate Hagens that " ...the real jaw-dropper in the study, I guess, was looking at US production today, it's declining at a very precipitous rate, and the shale plays, again, the average well performance is declining at a really concerning rate. What that says is we're heading back to where we were in the 1990s and early 2000s, unless I've got something very, very wrong. In other words, the unconventional plays bought us about a decade or a decade and a half, and now we're probably looking at something. Well, nothing's ever the same as it was, but a situation that's potentially similar to when we were worried about peak oil the first time around."
His new post (Jan. 21, 2025) - Lazy Thinking: How Memes Get Oil All Wrong
โReserves are constantly changing, not fixed, and depletion isnโt as straightforward as many believe. Yes, Peak Oil will happenโfinite resources eventually run out. But itโs not happening anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, and possibly not for a few more decades. Climate change and economic challenges, including the Great Simplification, pose more immediate threats than Peak Oil.
There are nearly 2 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves worldwide, with about the same amount in technically recoverable conventional crude resources (Figure 1). At current consumption rates, thatโs 60 years of oil thatโs for sure at todayโs pricesโplus another 70 years that is probably there but may require a higher price to become viable. Then, add another 80 years from tight and heavy oil, and maybe a century from NGLs (natural gas liquids). Even with a skeptical take, itโs hard to argue thereโs not enough oil to get us to whatever cliff civilization is headed forโwhether in 5 years or 50.โ
I read Art Berman's latest as alot of word salad. "Define "Today's Prices." Today's Prices" have been extracting fracked shale hydrocarbons at a net loss for the entire fracking time frame. What's more mysterious is his separating the "Great Simplification" and "The Cliff" from oil supply. "We have enough oil to get us to whatever cliff civilization is headed for" makes no sense whatsoever when the cliff is the end of cheap liquid fossil fuels. This seems to be an effort by him to placate some unseen benefactor.
He's flat out saying that there is enough hydrocarbon liquids of all types to last us another 310 years at the current rate of consumption. That's B.S., easily shown to be B.S. by quickly found references, and would be something some MAGA/Club for Growth weasel would spew. So is he looking to get on the MAGA grift now?
No he isn't, "Art Berman on January 23, 2025 at 5:19 pm: There are many different world reserves estimates. They are all wrong but provide the same general perspective that the world is not on the verge of running out of oil. Each of the years of supply that I noted was separate but obviously consumption is parallel and not serial. Use 75 years of supply and you will not be too high or too low."
What he says in his post and what he says in that response are two entirely different things. His originally post is purposely written poorly and is read that the reserves add up one after the other. This is pointed out to him several times in the comments. When you read his responses to those comments you realize what he's actually doing. It seems Art Berman no longer wants to be associated with "Oil production is moving into permanent decline and as a result modern civilization is over."
No they aren't: series adding would get a the 310 year figure, c/w parallel giving the 75 year figure. Further in support of the 75 year figure, he writes: "Reserves are constantly changing, not fixed, and depletion isnโt as straightforward as many believe. Yes, Peak Oil will happenโfinite resources eventually run out. But itโs not happening anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, and possibly not for a few more decades."
In any case, depletion time scales will be dictated by consumption rates, all other factors being equal.
Further still, "peak" refers to an estimated half way point in quantity remaining, not how much can be physically or economically extracted: in other words it's complicated!
Our world is collapsing, and with it - industrial civilisation, industrial agriculture, and the global economy. However, before it ultimately implodes, there will obviously be significantly increased efforts to sustain the #unsustainable. Aside from the inevitable geoengineering of course, for the empire of the USA, this means an effort to expand its energy-hungry tentacles further afield - and this puts producers of heavy oil in its crosshairs. The risk of major, catastrophic, international conflict has never been greater. Dangerous daysโฆ.
I would add an observation to to your last point about Trump's Power Politics:
I would suggest Trump has already done the informal deal with Putin and Xi to allow the carve up of the World's countries and economies; Greater America from Panama to the Artic, Europe for Putin to add to Russia if he can, and Asia for Xi, including Taiwan and Korea.
But the notable feature of all historic periods of power politics is constant wars, and as the Republicans have snuck in a national conscription law, I would say America will be triggering conscription and starting wars with its neighbours very soon.
If I were a young American male, say 17 to 25, i'd be looking up foreign university and college courses and heading abroad right about now!
Brilliant metaphor. Hereโs another one- in nature a snake often becomes hungry and looks for any easy prey. It sees its own tail and starts to eat it. As it gets deeper and deeper into its gullet and gets stuck there because of its backward pointing teeth, it chokes and dies.
Capitalism is definitely eating itself.
I think you are over presuming the issue of burning fossil fuels causing climate change. The jury is still out on this one and probably will be for a while. Earth has been warmer before the burning of fossil fuels. According to ice samples, warming preceeds the rise in CO2, so cause and effect are being reversed by the MSM. Don't jump on the climate change narrative.
And I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but you keep making the same error, like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa and my apologies for being a hypocrite as I speak only one language and you probably at least two.
Europe has already GONE through its red giant phase in the 19th century, or passed its red giant phase, etc.
But I won't knitpick anymore. You have nailed it on the issue of arctic exploration, EROEI, etc. We are nevertheless on a slow doom loop. Most of us just don't realize it or want to accept it.
No the jury isn't out on that one๐คก
Sure, the planet has been warmer before, dinosaurs roamed the Arctic 66mn years ago. How do you think that's going to workout for Homo sapiens? The jury is NOT out on GHG caused climate change. You must have been absorbed by Climate: The Movie propaganda. Scientists that deny caused anthropic climate change are invariably non-climate scientists captured by right wing "think" tanks. And your better instincts should have been followed in not being a grammar Nazi. Sigh, read this and think about whom the climate change deniers are. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/noxious-disinformation-climate-the
It is well established that burning fossil fuels causes global warming - now known as climate change for the politically correct. You don't have to accept it of course, but it is like standing on a highway and not accepting that a car will run you down if you don't move.
Sure it is. It is also well established that sheep are able to believe any kind of bullshit as long as it comes from someone perceived as being an authority. Sheep don't think. They just take almost anything as it is and then regurgitate it while pretending they have a working brain. How many doses of the safe and effective injections did you take?
Tell us you're a m0r0n without telling us you're a m0r0n. Obviously the ivermectin and bleach injections has got you homebound and commenting on blogs instead of hunting up the child trafficking dens in pizza parlor basements as your prophet originally directed.
"M0r0n"... I see, trying to beat the algos... Your whole fucking pathetic existence controlled by them like the little moronic sheep that you are. As I said, go get injected with that safe and effective magic serum. The idiots I am working with are all over injected and always complain that they are ill all the time. From one flu to the next influenza. It's pure joy to see where their stupidity and trust in psychos took them. I hope you are in the same situation stupid little sheep.
Nonsense...in fact, we are in a slight cooling trend...
Only if you start with Fahrenheit and then switch to Celsius.....J F C Why does this blog draw out the mentally ill idiots?
A better question...Why does it attract people who know nothing about science or natural history? The climate record is well established through the ice cores....,
The cooling trend we are seeing in Europe is part and parcel of the slowing down of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). The ice core research in the Arctic and Antarctic has shown that Ice Ages can come on in as fast as 5-50 years. The current "blob" in the North Atlantic south of Iceland indicates a slowing down of the AMOC. So you have the phenomenon of global warming melting the Greenland ice sheet and the resulting cold fresh water slowing down the AMOC underwater vortices. This brings on a resumption of the last Ice Age because without the AMOC and its attendant substreams - like the Gulf Stream - Europe cools to its natural state of glacial and periglacial conditions. [Like the climate the Neandertals had for 200,000 years.] I was teaching this in classes twenty years ago fer chrissakes. Never forget that we STILL live in the Pleistocene. The nice little blip of the Holocene we have enjoyed for the last 12,000 years is on its way out. So, yes we are experiencing a cooling trend that will result in resumption of the last Ice Age. And YES, this is BECAUSE of global warming. This is settled science. You don't have to believe it. The Pentagon did a report on this in 2004.
Yes, the Milankovich cycles have something to do with this, but the driver is still global warming caused by heat and emissions. Don't forget that the heat produced by 8.4 billion humans is a significant factor to global warming too. This amount of heat introduced into the atmosphere is equivalent to another oil producer the size of Russia (11.3 million barrels per day).
it's nitpick
Indeed, the geological record shows that CO2 increases long after warming, not before...and btw, it was 3* warmer than today 8,000 years ago, when apparently no SUVs were running around, and in fact, there were hardly any people on the planet....
Actually it doesnt really matter what caused the increase of temperature.
The problem is how much adaptated our civilization is to what the average climate used to be during the last 10 000 years
And the lack of any practical options to stabilize and/or bring it back to its optimal state.
And then what the consequences will be...
*Nitpick. And while yes, the earth has been warmer, the issue is less the temperature and more the gradient. We can rise or descend fifty feet (or 15 meters, if you prefer) just fine if the slope is gentle. But if it is a sheer face, we are going to go splat. The change we are currently observing is happening on a very, very steep gradient. Therein lies the danger.
You always have to throw in that climate change bullshit. Are you sure you are not a club of rome satan worshiper psycho?
There you are, being a m0r0n again in public. Don't you have some Only Fan's accounts to send money to?
Only the moronic sheep that love their injections use only fans to seel their bodies to other idiots. You have some overly injected whores over there. Your sheep little brain would love them so much. You'll be in good company, that of sheep taken to the slaughter. Now, fuck off.
Can't we all just be friends?
The star metaphor is brilliant indeed. Love the two world wars as coronal mass ejections!
A very good exposition of the current polycrisis. Allow me to expand on the following sentence.
"Industrial economies must consume energy in an exponential manner in order to compensate for the steady loss of cheap and easy-to-get minerals they need for maintaining their inner equilibrium."
I suggest that people consider not only the exponential increase in energy (acceleration of the rate of energy consumption) but also the exponential increase in the exponential increase (acceleration of acceleration). In calculus, this is the move from the 2nd derivative (acceleration) to the 3rd derivative (acceleration of acceleration or "jerk"). There are higher levels too, for example the 4th derivative being called "snap." This is not a math lesson, but rather an attempt to point out the basis of what I call the hypercomplex society. The US has become a hypercomplex society because not only is the rate of consumption and financialization accelerating; it is accelerating at an accelerating pace. What this means is that the US cannot manage contraction like the complex societies of Germany and France for example. It will instead implode and collapse rather than contract. Scorching the surrounding economies and societies it interacts with like a Red Giant. The comparison is apt.
You are very right about the US wanting to secure Canadaโs heavier crude, and with the Alberta Premier offering fealty to Trump as his Useful Idiot it could get ugly. However, under our constitution, no Province can unilaterally declare independence, a position reinforced by the Supreme Court of Canada August 1988 ruling. With the expansion of the TMX pipeline, we now have the ability to significantly increase oil exports to Asia.
Can a province be declared independante by the others ? And so it became a matter of well applied political pressure.
Thank you, fine article!
Well written! The Arctic is just a very difficult place to drill in, not just because of the cold (which can reach -75-80 F) but because of violent storms, which require the evacuation of every platform..Chevron lost 7 billion drilling offshore Alaska, got no oil...and Alaska is much more convenient than Greenland....Your point about the shortage of heavy crude is spot on...The problem for the US government is that if it costs $125-150 Bl for oil, which it ultimately will if these prospects are developed, the economy will roll over and die...
So... Big orange before giant red then....
You need to start including and addressing the other profound, irreversible(?) decline to modern society. Its dumbing down. The average IQ of Western Societies has been declining for almost 30 years, if not longer. Why that is is an entirely different discussion. But one strong component to the decline is that smart people are having far less kids than dumb people. This is why we now have an explosion of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and MAGA cultists. Ingesting cattle wormer and bleach while declaring vaccines are "From Satan", along with voting into office a sexual-predator-felon-pathological sociopath traitor with dementia because "he'll lower the price of eggs"....All are powerful indications of the curtain of profound stupidity that is descending on the United States.
Excellent post!
I'm curious if you have a response to Art Berman's latest post. I'm a bit surprised and a bit confused, as he seems to have changed his tune. This is the person that in recent years has been often referenced in support of oil depletion concerns.
One year ago (Dec. 2023) he told Nate Hagens that " ...the real jaw-dropper in the study, I guess, was looking at US production today, it's declining at a very precipitous rate, and the shale plays, again, the average well performance is declining at a really concerning rate. What that says is we're heading back to where we were in the 1990s and early 2000s, unless I've got something very, very wrong. In other words, the unconventional plays bought us about a decade or a decade and a half, and now we're probably looking at something. Well, nothing's ever the same as it was, but a situation that's potentially similar to when we were worried about peak oil the first time around."
His new post (Jan. 21, 2025) - Lazy Thinking: How Memes Get Oil All Wrong
https://www.artberman.com/blog/lazy-thinking-how-memes-get-oil-all-wrong/
โReserves are constantly changing, not fixed, and depletion isnโt as straightforward as many believe. Yes, Peak Oil will happenโfinite resources eventually run out. But itโs not happening anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, and possibly not for a few more decades. Climate change and economic challenges, including the Great Simplification, pose more immediate threats than Peak Oil.
There are nearly 2 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves worldwide, with about the same amount in technically recoverable conventional crude resources (Figure 1). At current consumption rates, thatโs 60 years of oil thatโs for sure at todayโs pricesโplus another 70 years that is probably there but may require a higher price to become viable. Then, add another 80 years from tight and heavy oil, and maybe a century from NGLs (natural gas liquids). Even with a skeptical take, itโs hard to argue thereโs not enough oil to get us to whatever cliff civilization is headed forโwhether in 5 years or 50.โ
I read Art Berman's latest as alot of word salad. "Define "Today's Prices." Today's Prices" have been extracting fracked shale hydrocarbons at a net loss for the entire fracking time frame. What's more mysterious is his separating the "Great Simplification" and "The Cliff" from oil supply. "We have enough oil to get us to whatever cliff civilization is headed for" makes no sense whatsoever when the cliff is the end of cheap liquid fossil fuels. This seems to be an effort by him to placate some unseen benefactor.
He's flat out saying that there is enough hydrocarbon liquids of all types to last us another 310 years at the current rate of consumption. That's B.S., easily shown to be B.S. by quickly found references, and would be something some MAGA/Club for Growth weasel would spew. So is he looking to get on the MAGA grift now?
No he isn't, "Art Berman on January 23, 2025 at 5:19 pm: There are many different world reserves estimates. They are all wrong but provide the same general perspective that the world is not on the verge of running out of oil. Each of the years of supply that I noted was separate but obviously consumption is parallel and not serial. Use 75 years of supply and you will not be too high or too low."
What he says in his post and what he says in that response are two entirely different things. His originally post is purposely written poorly and is read that the reserves add up one after the other. This is pointed out to him several times in the comments. When you read his responses to those comments you realize what he's actually doing. It seems Art Berman no longer wants to be associated with "Oil production is moving into permanent decline and as a result modern civilization is over."
No they aren't: series adding would get a the 310 year figure, c/w parallel giving the 75 year figure. Further in support of the 75 year figure, he writes: "Reserves are constantly changing, not fixed, and depletion isnโt as straightforward as many believe. Yes, Peak Oil will happenโfinite resources eventually run out. But itโs not happening anytime soon, certainly not within the next few years, and possibly not for a few more decades."
In any case, depletion time scales will be dictated by consumption rates, all other factors being equal.
Further still, "peak" refers to an estimated half way point in quantity remaining, not how much can be physically or economically extracted: in other words it's complicated!
Our world is collapsing, and with it - industrial civilisation, industrial agriculture, and the global economy. However, before it ultimately implodes, there will obviously be significantly increased efforts to sustain the #unsustainable. Aside from the inevitable geoengineering of course, for the empire of the USA, this means an effort to expand its energy-hungry tentacles further afield - and this puts producers of heavy oil in its crosshairs. The risk of major, catastrophic, international conflict has never been greater. Dangerous daysโฆ.
Excellent analysis.
I would add an observation to to your last point about Trump's Power Politics:
I would suggest Trump has already done the informal deal with Putin and Xi to allow the carve up of the World's countries and economies; Greater America from Panama to the Artic, Europe for Putin to add to Russia if he can, and Asia for Xi, including Taiwan and Korea.
But the notable feature of all historic periods of power politics is constant wars, and as the Republicans have snuck in a national conscription law, I would say America will be triggering conscription and starting wars with its neighbours very soon.
If I were a young American male, say 17 to 25, i'd be looking up foreign university and college courses and heading abroad right about now!