Steve Bull's Blog, page 145
January 2, 2023
Nuclear Waste Disposal and Peak Oil
Preface. One the greatest tragedies of energy decline will be the nuclear waste left to harm thousands of future generation for hundreds of thousands of years. We owe it to them to clean up our mess while we still have the fossil fuels to do it. If we do nothing, 263,000 tons of nuclear waste will poison the world. Both of my books explain why transportation and manufacturing can’t run on electricity, so let’s hope new nuclear plants are not built to cope with the energy crisis. The waste from existing plants is bad enough.
Though there probably isn’t time to build more of them if world peak oil production was in 2018. Though there is a tremendous push to build them (just listen to podcast Power Hungry for example).
Below are several articles about disposal of nuclear waste. Also see these related posts on nuclear waste. Especially “A Nuclear spent fuel fire at Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania could force 18 million people to evacuate” and Nuclear waste will harm future generations for hundreds of thousands of years, a book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste”.
Finland will be the first nation in the world to store nuclear waste if all goes well starting in 2024 at 430 meters (1410 feet) deep. There are 2300 tons of waste to be stored. Other countries will have a hard time copying Finland, since their success was due to their high trust in institutions, community engagement, a lack of state-level power centers blocking the waste site from their area, and a balance of power between industry and stakeholders (El-Showk 2022).
…click on the above link to read the rest…
US October Oil Production Pushed Higher by New Mexico
All of the Crude plus Condensate (C + C) production data for the US state charts comes from the EIAʼs December Petroleum Supply monthly PSM which provides updated information up to October 2022.
U.S. October production increased by 69 kb/d to 12,381 kb/d to a New post pandemic high. It should be noted that September’s oil production increase of 289 kb/d to 12,268 kb/d which was reported last month and was considered high, was revised further up by 44 kb/d to 12,312 kb/d in the current October report. For September, the state with the largest increase was New Mexico 41 kb/d, along with a number of small increases from the smaller producing states.
While overall US oil production increased, a clearer indication of the health of US production can be gleaned by looking more closely at the Onshore L48 states. In the Onshore L48, October production increased by 69 kb/d to 10,104 kb/d. This means that 100% of the increase in US production came from the Onshore L48.
The blue graph, taken from the December 2022 STEO, is the production forecast for the U.S. from November 2022 to December 2023. Output for December 2023 is expected to be 12,614 kb/d, 34 kb/d higher than reported last month.
Note that production in October 2023 is forecast to be lower than in October 2022. The flatness in overall US output up to October 2023 is because the production increase in the Onshore L48 of 506 kb/d from December 2022 to December 2023 is offset by declining production in the GOM. See GOM chart further down.
The red OLS line from June 2020 to October 2022 indicates a monthly production increase of 53.2 kb/d/mth over that period. The first portion of red line stops at October because that is the range covered by the OLS analysis. The second portion is the same OLS line extended to see how well it fits the STEO forecast.
Oil Production Ranked by State
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Quake Prediction Says “Signal Just Hit,” Warns Of Potential Big Earthquake From San Francisco To LA
An earthquake rattled parts of Northern California on Sunday for the second time in two weeks. The 5.4-magnitude quake was centered about 30 miles south of Eureka. On Dec. 20, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake also struck near Eureka.
Now one quake prediction research firm warned that the next big one could be imminent.
On Monday morning, Quake Predictions published a warning that read for the next two days — there is a “dangerous situation” of the likelihood of a 7.0-magnitude “in the San Francisco Bay to NW of Los Angeles area.”
The warning comes after two sizeable quakes hit Northern California in less than two weeks.
Sunday morning’s earthquake was described as “more violent this time,” Rio Dell Mayor Debra Garnes told CNN in an interview.
“It was shorter but more violent. My refrigerator moved two feet. Things came out of the refrigerator. There’s a crack in my wall from the violence of it,” Garnes said.
California has an average of five earthquakes per year with magnitudes between 5 and 6, according to LATimes. And the latest shakings might suggest a long overdue big quake could be nearing.
You Don’t Have to be a Conspiracy Theorist to be Worried About the World Economic Forum
Samuel Greg, a Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy at the American Institute for Economic Research and author, most recently, of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, has written a good piece for the Spectator about the WEF on the eve of Davos 2023. He argues that if you care about liberty, democracy and national self-determination, it’s perfectly rational to be concerned about the influence of Klaus Schwab and his followers. Not because they are the puppeteers controlling politicians across the West, but because they’re ideas permeate the upper echelons of the global elite. In particular, Schwab’s belief in the top-down, technocratic form of government exemplified by the EU.
It wields no formal political power and can’t make anyone do anything. Nonetheless, since its founding in 1971, the WEF has become an organisation which embodies supreme confidence in the imperative of a particular type of person running the world from the top-down. In his famous 2004 essay entitled ‘Dead Souls’, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called this prototype ‘Davos Man’.
A clever moniker that neither Schwab nor the WEF have ever succeeded in shaking off, Davos Man was Huntington’s short-hand description of “academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs” who thought alike and tended to view national loyalties and boundaries “as residues from the past”. Davos Man also looked with undisguised disdain, Huntington suggested, upon those who weren’t getting with the programme – whatever the content of the programme happened to be.
Therein lies the deepest problem with the WEF. It’s one thing for people to come together in international settings to discuss problems, share insights, and network. Business leaders, politicians, and NGO-types do this all the time.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
With U.S. shale oil boom over, can world production climb?
Prior to the pandemic-induced downturn in world oil production, U.S. oil production growth was responsible for 98 percent of the increase in world production in 2018 (as reported in 2019). Almost all of that growth resulted from rapid increases in shale oil production which accounted for 64 percent of U.S. production (as of 2021).
Fast forward to today when OilPrice.com has declared that “The U.S. Shale Boom Is Officially Over.” The reasons cited mostly have to do with management “discipline” regarding capital expenditure in favor of shareholder payouts and complaints about “anti-oil rhetoric” and “regulatory uncertainty.”
But there might just be another reason for the slowdown in shale oil production in the United States: There isn’t as much accessible and economical shale oil underground as advertised. Earth scientist David Hughes laid out his case for this view in his “Shale Reality Check 2021.” (For a summary of Hughes’ report, see my piece from December 2021 entitled, “U.S. shale oil and gas forecast: Too good to be true?”)
There may be other sources of oil worldwide that will somehow make up for the significantly lower growth in U.S. shale oil production. But no other source seems set to provide the kind of growth U.S. shale oil provided, that is, 73.2 percent of the global increase in oil production from 2008 through 2018.
The world has actually been getting along with less oil for some time now. World oil production proper (crude oil including lease condensate) peaked on a monthly basis in November 2018 at 84.58 million barrels per day (mbpd). In August 2022 production was 81.44 mbpd. That’s after a pandemic-induced shock that saw production fall to 70.28 mbpd in June 2020.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
January 1, 2023
In War for Control of Humanity, Thoughts and Emotions Are the Battlefield: Dr. Robert Malone
Dr. Robert Malone, author of “Lies My Gov’t Told Me,” in Washington on Dec. 19, 2022. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)In War for Control of Humanity, Thoughts and Emotions Are the Battlefield: Dr. Robert MaloneSocial media platforms are being weaponized, he saidInventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are “actively employed” by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel.
“This new battleground, in which your mind and your thoughts, your very emotions are the battleground. It is not about territory,” Malone said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Twitter, it’s clear now, has become the premium platform for shaping emerging global consensus about the topics of the day.”
A sign at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2022. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo)During his work with the DOD, Malone became aware of companies researching multilingual programs that assess the emotional content of the language used on social media, which those companies then use to “map relationship clouds,” including what topics people are discussing, who the influencers are, and who is at the fringe of that cloud, said Malone.
Phenomena like being deplatformed, shadowbanned, and a “tweet” going viral is a part of this weaponizing of social media.
Twitter prevented users from sharing former President Donald Trump’s post. (Screenshot/Twitter)“By using these tools of manipulating what information, what tweets you put out, what messages you put out to your influencer cloud, they can modulate how those people behave,” he said. “You can actually very actively control what individuals are thinking, the information that they’re gathering, what they’re being influenced to do.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
It’s a New Era
This dynamic–making problems much worse by forcing more of whatever worked in the previous era into a saturated, increasing unstable new era–receives little attention or understanding.
Eras may last decades, and only those who’ve lived long enough to recall previous eras have experienced the transition from one era to the next. The era of financialization, globalization and low-cost, abundant oil/natural gas began over 40 years ago in 1981.
The era of digital / Internet technologies took off about 30 years ago. All of these dynamics accelerated in the early 2000s, roughly 20 years ago.
Only those 60 and older experienced working in a previous era (pre-1981).
All of these dynamics are entering a phase of nonlinear turbulence as the changes are outpacing these highly streamlined / optimized systems’ ability to self-correct.
This nonlinear instability is being accelerated by doing more of what worked in the previous era, in the mistaken belief that the 2020s are simply an extension of the eras that began 40 and 30 years ago.
The fixes that worked in the past won’t resolve the nonlinear instability because all these dynamics have reached saturation: adding more debt no longer generates organic expansion of productivity, all it does is inflate an even larger and more unstable credit-asset bubble.
Globalization has been optimized to the point of saturation: the potential downsides to national security outweigh any remaining marginal gains in corporate profitability.
Financialization has so distorted the economy that gambling on useless speculations is now viewed as the best (or only) way to get ahead.
When a system has absorbed all it can absorb, adding more is just a waste of resources.
We’ve entered a new era, and so the fixes and incentives that worked in the past 40 years no longer work.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition
Abstract
Achieving the Paris Agreement will require massive deployment of low-carbon energy. However, constructing, operating, and maintaining a low-carbon energy system will itself require energy, with much of it derived from fossil fuels. This raises the concern that the transition may consume much of the energy available to society, and be a source of considerable emissions. Here we calculate the energy requirements and emissions associated with the global energy system in fourteen mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5 °C of warming. We find that the initial push for a transition is likely to cause a 10–34% decline in net energy available to society. Moreover, we find that the carbon emissions associated with the transition to a low-carbon energy system are substantial, ranging from 70 to 395 GtCO2 (with a cross-scenario average of 195 GtCO2). The share of carbon emissions for the energy system will increase from 10% today to 27% in 2050, and in some cases may take up all remaining emissions available to society under 1.5 °C pathways.
Introduction
The IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C concludes that we can still meet the 1.5 °C target and that by doing so, we would reduce climate impacts and limit the risk of exceeding the tipping points of the climate system1. The report provides a range of low-carbon energy pathways compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. However, at present, there is no estimate of how much energy would be needed to build and maintain a low-carbon energy system, or what amount of greenhouse gas emissions would be associated with such a transition2,3,4. This is an important gap in knowledge, as previous research suggests that rapid growth of low-carbon infrastructure could use a substantial amount of the global energy supply5,6. Moreover, since the global energy supply is currently derived mostly from fossil fuels, the transition itself may become a source of significant emissions7,8.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Elon Musk Calls Out ‘Corporate Journalism’ Over Coverage of His ‘Twitter Files’
Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles as he addresses guests at the Offshore Northern Seas 2022 (ONS) meeting in Stavanger, Norway, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)Elon Musk Calls Out ‘Corporate Journalism’ Over Coverage of His ‘Twitter Files’Elon Musk has criticized mainstream media outlets over their coverage of the so-called “Twitter Files.”“Why is corporate journalism rushing to defend the state instead of the people?” Musk wrote on Twitter on Dec. 27, in response to a tweet from journalist and documentary filmmaker Leighton Woodhouse. The latter was sharing his new Substack post about how corporate media rushed to defend the FBI and the state instead of exposing them.
“The Hunter Biden laptop story shows the extent to which the corporate media has become the propaganda arm of the state,” Woodhouse wrote in his Substack, pointing to the recent release of the seventh installment of Twitter’s internal documents.
Independent author Michael Shellenberger published the seventh installment on Dec. 19, revealing how there was an “organized effort” by federal law enforcement agents to discredit the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop report, by targeting social media and news companies.
Other installments of Twitter’s internal communications have shown how the media giant placed certain individuals on “secret blacklists,” debates over how to handle former President Donald Trump’s account before it was suspended in January 2021, and how the FBI allegedly flagged accounts and tweets for Twitter to take action against.
The FBI has dismissed the “Twitter Files,” alleging that “conspiracy theorists” are attempting to discredit the bureau.
A Twitter user responded to Musk’s question by writing, “Simple… it’s Corporate Journalism… Not Journalism.”
To which Musk replied: “Exactly. Why would anyone trust corpo journalism?”
Substack
In the same thread, Musk also said that he was “open to the idea” of buying the Substack platform, while responding to a tweet from Wall Street Silver.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
December 31, 2022
Rising authoritarianism and worsening climate change share a fossil-fueled secret
Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change.
In my new book, “Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis,” I lay out connections between these industries and the politicians who are both stalling action on climate change and diminishing democracy.
It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate.
Corporate capture of environmental politics
In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to protect the public’s interests, including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle that prioritizes citizens over corporate profits has been aggressively undermined.
Today, it’s easy to find political leaders – on both the political right and left – working on behalf of corporations in energy, finance, agribusiness, technology, military and pharmaceutical sectors, and not always in the public interest. These multinational companies help fund their political careers and election campaigns to keep them in office.
In the U.S., this relationship was cemented by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. The decision allowed almost unlimited spending by corporations and wealthy donors to support the political candidates who best serve their interests. Data shows that candidates with the most outside funding usually win. This has led to increasing corporate influence on politicians and party policies.
When it comes to the political parties, it’s easy to find examples of campaign finance fueling political agendas.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
