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'Carbon Bubble' Could Spark Global Financial Crisis, Study Warns (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The existence of a "carbon bubble" -- assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use. Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world. Instead, the authors' detailed simulations found the demand drop would take place even if major nations undertake no new climate policies, or reverse some previous commitments. That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.
That's just a guess.
For many of you, this slump will happen right before you retire, crushing your savings and forcing you to stay in the working world, with now-shittier pay and even fewer job prospects.
But you are the lucky ones.
For me, it will happen just a few years after I have already retired, let my skills rust and myself age to the point of being unemployable....now with no passive income to speak of and no job prospects at all. And the costly medical issues that come with age.
The world is an unkind place.
Those bubbles could spark much worse and sinister disasters:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
Surely you at least care what happens in 2038!?
Crucially, the findings suggest that a rapid decline in fossil fuel demand is no longer dependent on stronger policies and actions from governments around the world.
This dangerous trend can and will be stopped: We will use a combination of tariffs, executive orders and obscure WWII-era federal statutes to nationalize the energy sector and stamp out this "change" nonsense, ensuring that fossil fuel jobs in key voting districts will endure for decades to come!
There's a certain greedy advantage to holding this view.
First off, it encourages research into bringing it closer to fruition - which basically saves everyone in the US enormous amounts of money, even fossil fuel folks, since it's easier for them to exit the market than middle eastern and Russian folks tied to those markets.
But more importantly - even if it won't be the dominant factor for a decade or whatever, it will reduce the price of fuels we'll be using to get us to transition away. Or at least reduce their increase in price, as the cost to unearth them goes up in percent.
All that reduces the power of fossil fuel nations to interfere with our political systems, and basically buys us a better footing in the world.
At least in game theory terms, it makes sense to push that as far as you can, if positive outcomes for America over the other fossil fuel producing nations are important to you.
And hey, it's another reason to get rid of Trump as soon as possible. How about that!
Except for Central Banks keeping interest rates too low for too long and all of the QE. Couldn't be that.
read my Sig
[($)]
Dont worry, peak oil should cancel it out nicely ;)
(for the idiots, yes, joking, get a sense of humor.....)
In a 4,5 billion $ pipeline... kill me now plz
[($)]
It seems as though our vaunted financial indicators must be...a trifle off...in some way if a combination of cheaper energy efficiency measures and increase in availability of energy sources cheaper than the current low cost options would have negative effects on the economy.
How do you do that? The cost of a fair amount of energy(and often a lot of petrochemicals that will presumably be cheaper if less demand for using them as fuel means lower cost for purchasing them as feedstocks) is baked into pretty much every good and service imaginable. What sort of ghastly mistake does it take to turn "basically everything has become cheaper to produce" into a financial crisis?
I've read that a mix of lower Energy Reruns On Investment (EROI) I.E higher energy inputs to extract carbon fuels (one barrel of light crude equivalent) and lower ore grades for mining raw materials (more energy to move more rock for less ore) will cause the bubble to burst eventually.
But the true wildcard is the adoption or non carbon energy sources and how much of a market share it will take from carbon fuel sources.
Worse case scenario, carbon fuel EROI will be very low I.E high extraction costs. In a market where carbon fuel prices are trending lower due to drop in market share to green energy!
In a situation like this investors won't put money into oil/gas or mining companies!
Every energy company (except maybe the coal ones Trump supports) diversifies their energy investment. Even Saudi Arabia has been investing in electric vehicle development for over 10 years.
By then Bruce Perens will have colonized Mars with 3D printed asteroid private rockets. Just like he was promised as a kid, and as we all know, the universe always keeps its promises...
if you want to see the effects of dropping oil prices look at Venezuela. Yeah, some of those wounds were self inflicted, but the big issue was the sudden drop in oil prices pulling the rug out from under them (plus a drought shutting down their hydro electric dam, folks forget how small they are, that was a big deal).
Now, imagine what's gonna happen when the price of oil gets low enough that the middle eastern countries can't afford to keep up their militaries and their social welfare programs. Don't forget that most of these countries are crazy religious and several of them have big arms and nukes.
The sane thing to do is to provide aid to modernize these countries. Instead we've been putting sanctions on a lot of these countries. We're doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and it's exactly what we've always done as a species. I don't have an answer because it comes down to conniving assholes taking advantage of large groups of people who aren't very bright, and I don't have an answer for that.
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I think most people are going to woosh on this.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
would divest themselves from fossil fuel extraction companies starting with coal, then oil and then gas. Oil is an elastic commodity. A small change in demand will result is a large change in price.
Most urban dwellers have no idea how vast America is, and the great distances rural people travel to work and to trade. Gasoline and diesel are the only reasonable fuels to travel the American heartland. Heating likewise. Electricity is not an economical way to heat. Carbon fuels are here to stay. They aren't going anywhere.
Almost all the world's oil and gas reserves are owned by National Oil Companies, not by private corporations, and NOCs do what their governments tell them to do.
The bigger issue is that if demand for hydrocarbon falls, then to sustain the level of military spending and social programs that supports a state built around extractive industries they need to produce more, thus crashing prices further.
Saudi Arabia needs a price of about USD60 to maintain themselves, for example.
TLDR : If BP goes bust, it doesn't matter that much because it's Halliburton etc doing the work anyway. But if a country goes broke, there's more issues.
HILARIOUS.
No. What's going to happen is we're going to keep on burning fossil fuels for two or three hundred years until they run out and our civilizations go into permanent decline.
These Chicken Littles are always wrong.
Let's assume that you and TFA is right.
If that is the case then renewable energy sources and carbon-less vehicles are currently valued a lot lower than they should be.
If you fully believe what you are saying, invest in renewables and EVs now before the carbon bubble pops and you'll be fine.
Sooo... Sorry Africa. And millenials. And, well, millenial children, if the millenials can ever afford to have any.
Halving the Earth population might do wonders for the environment.
Heck, a one child per family policy might to wonders in a culture where marital traditions doesn't favor having sons only.
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
So that would be like the economic disasters that came about when people started burning coal for steam power or oil for the internal combustion engine, And electrification destroyed the worlds economy ?
Heavy transport, shipping and planes will be using liquid fuels for longer than cars will.
Cheaper yes, valueless no.
This doesn't worry me. I am ready to retire. I have been investing heavily in bullets and bullion since the advent of disco first presaged the looming apocalypse. So carbon bubble bursting, zombies walking, whatevs....
Do this instead of having your wife go to some skeezy gas station in the worst part of town to save a few pennies a gallon.
Me too! I have been investing heavily in silver coins, long tail amazon revenue streams and long tail youtube channel so my retirement is guaranteed! :)
Also, I use iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint very special customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
Here is a picture of my iphone, very nice picture:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
"All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers." (Steven F. Hayward) Mr. Hayward is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. https://www.wsj.com/articles/c...
Speaking of bubbles that are going to burst...
Just FYI
You're an idiot if you think Hilary will be in 2020. But we appreciate you helping us :)
Stupid useless tit - invest in renewables now then
I spend all of my UBI on oil so I can burn an open flame on my lawn - why you ask? Cause I can
The problem with Clean, ATOMIC Energy was that it was only fun when the US gov was asking for a nuclear weapons production line out the side of the nuclear plant.
The cost to design Clean, ATOMIC Energy was not a low cost.
That ATOMIC energy then had to sell for less than hydro, coal, oil, gas, later solar and wind to stay in demand.
Then the US fuel cycle was different and had to look after its waste on site.
All the new security, storage, upgrades, spare parts, new computers, next germination of staff with security clearances.
Finding the nuclear weapons experts to design busy "work" to hide the US nuclear weapons production lines from the UN.
Finding people to buy/design a part for a 40 year old system. Having other experts to see if the new part will last 40 years.
Then covering the costs of closing down a nuclear power plant. Cleaning up. Storing the years of waste.
Getting gov approval to run for another 40 years. But the cracks then need to be fixed as the plant falls apart.
The money is just not in the nuclear power without the hidden profit of the US needing new nuclear weapons for decades.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I skip articles containing "Carbon"
And I never reply to comments which contain the string 'FYI'
Who remembers the doom and gloom about "Peak Oil"? Who remembers being told we are heading into a new ice age? Why do we pay attention to this crap. It's just like a new fad diet.
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
No. He expects it to negatively effect the financial world which has a lot riding on the traditional energy users. Too big to fail is such due to the impact the failure itself has on the economy. Industry itself will be doing just fine as will the general economy. The fewer job prospects isn't really anything to do with the number of jobs as much as the competition.
Also your comparisons to the switch to coal and oil isn't quite fair. The coal and oil for its most part provided new opportunities rather than replacing existing ones. Buggy whip manufacturers aside the world economy wasn't propped up by people selling horses and hay. The same can not be said for the trillions of of dollars sitting in the oil industry. We are talking about active replacement / destruction of industries as the end goal now. Expect it to be quite different from the steam age.
There are a few problems with this:
#1 There's nothing stopping the likes of BP, Shell etc. investing in green technology development - in fact they do currently.
#2 Even if they do, there's nothing stopping you and/or anyone else investing in the new companies that do.
#3 There is unlikely to be a sudden cut off, people don't open power plants over night and cars last decades.
Classic economic theory would have the situation whereby the "best" power plants (for example) would stay around longer while their less efficient competitors die off from the higher costs. As the competitors die off, the demand falls holding prices in check to some extent. Finally, as (cost effective) oil dries up the final slew of plant are retired, and while this is a cliff-edge of sorts, it is considerably smaller than the situation now - and along with this, the writing will have been on the wall for some time!
Traditional energy sources are predicted to drop in value, as many things will have moved to using alternative energy sources. By 2035 i imagine fossil fuel cars will no longer be in production, with fuel being available as a niche for classic car enthusiasts.
So sure you might be able to buy gasoline cheaply, but it won't be of any use to most people. Most industry similarly will have moved on to newer sources of energy.
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The authors are a condensed matter physicist and a lawyer. No economists there. So the "global financial crisis" they refer to could be that some countries benefit, others lose, that some companies make higher profits and others go bankrupt. How is that different from today's "crises"? An economist could help.
Global carbon emissions are NOT and never have been a problem.
AGW is a total fraud.
You can conclusively persuade yourself of this noticing that water vapor outguns CO2 by a whopping 100x in heat capacity and a whopping 100x in concentration. Thus it is 10,000x effect of CO2. Any guesses on how to control water vapor on a planet mostly covered in water? I didn't think so.
I was under the impression that the oil bubble was finally what pushed the US economy over the edge and into recession back in the summer of 2008. Are we in another oil bubble now? Maybe or maybe not?
You should have done what the rest of us did and waste your youth on drug and alcohol binges, guaranteeing you will die in your 50s.
Can I have some of what you are smoking? There is no way fossil fuel cars are going away by 2035. Even if the necessary energy storage and packaging issues are solved and electric cars become entirely feasible to replace gasoline and diesel, the electric grid cannot handle that hand off and it will take more than 17 years to add the infrastructure necessary to deliver that amount of energy much less produce it.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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Not USian here - you seriously think that one is better than the other? I mean, I can understand you want dump the Trump but why on earth would anyone want to have this other parasite in the office?
Like I give a shit what will happen in 2035!
Like I give a shit what a group of academics predicts will happen financially in 2035. Even famed economists can't predict what is coming in the next 5 years.
Price goes down, people can afford more of it, demand goes up.
Price goes up, people can no longer afford it, demand goes down.
The price of petroleum products will only ever keep going up (on average). Humanity won't stop burning oil until there's none left to burn.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Of you think you know the future you can place financial bets on the outcome. Think bitcoin is going up up up, buy it. Think Florida swampland is not getting flooded buy it up. You can start an insurance company and undercut the global warming hoaxers and sell your own policies and reap big bucks.
Or maybe you are just angry and thrashing in an unfocused manner. Killing the President might get you fifteen minutes of fame to shout your diatribes. I hear he plays a lot of golf. A boat and rifle might work. Probably a bad idea though, as only the President says he can shoot people and pardon himself.
Meh, this is just fear mongering based on the current high oil prices. If you look back just 6 months, the crude prices were about 1/2 of what they are now and no economic collapse happened. Further, 1 week is a long time in the stock market, so 2035 may as well be the year of the heat death of the universe, in terms of relevance to current investment decisions. Also, any investor with half a brain knows not invest in only 1 sector, and is properly diversified. AFAIK, pension funds are obliged to diversify.
It's not just fossil fuel cars; there are also power plants, ships, chemical industry, etc. that all use crude oil. This is just idiotic fear mongering.
He said fossil fuel car production, strongly implying in the context of mass scale production. Ferrari will sell as many cars as they do now I imagine.
If you think electric only vehicle production in 2035 will not exceed gasoline only production, lay off whatever you are smoking because it is way too strong.
I'd guess a 40:40:20 split on plug in vs hybrid vs gasoline only cars, and likely it shifts right more than left.
Place is festooned with neckbeard Donnie Moscow fans. They don't believe humans can affect the climate even in principle. Well, they might do, but they use cowardly motivated reasoning to come with reasons why they don't need to do anything any differently.
Cunts, in other words.
I imagine it's "possible" but that's academic. Ultimately our world is connected. You could do the cleanest possible thing in a few countries and it wouldn't matter. Ultimately it might make it worse like say...exactly what we have now. Current anti-pollution laws are in no small way associated with outsourcing. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. It may be worse in East Asia where they're burning scrap electronics to recycle copper and gold, but you're the ones who turned them in to be "recycled" and ultimately the jet stream will distribute your comuppance, at least insofar a what wasn't released as soil contamination, that will come through in the food instead.
I doubt electric only will out sell or produce gasoline only production by 2035. I agree that hybrids are likely to gain a lot of traction, but I see the split being more like 15:60:25 for passenger vehicles. The cheap end of cars is going to be gasoline only for a long while considering the cost of batteries and that's a good amount of volume. People on a tight budget are unlikely to invest more capital up front to reduce fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. Also, pickup trucks are unlikely to transition to hybrids at all in the next 5 years and definitely won't be electric only for a lot longer. Electric only isn't going to take over commercial vehicles anytime soon either. Until batteries can charge in 5 minutes comparable to refueling or last an entire 8 or 10 hour shift employers aren't going to pay to sit around and wait for charging and they aren't going to maintain twice or three times the fleet or swappable batteries to keep a charged vehicle at the ready. Electric only might make some inroads to long distance freight trucks, but I see that being more of a transition to electric motors powered by a diesel generator similar to how rail is primarily powered today for freight.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
There are some things the author completely fails to grasp:
1) Organic Chemistry is based on oil as the feed stock (including medicine, food additives, makeup, and many more).
2) There is not enough Ethanol found in nature to supply the fuel needs of the world.
3) Wind power is available most when you need it least.
4) Solar still isn't cost effective.
While all of this is going on, you're trying to lift a large part of the world out of poverty, meaning they are going to need plastics, fiber for cloths, medicine, and fuel.
That is because advances in technologies for energy efficiency and renewable power, and the accompanying drop in their price, have made low-carbon energy much more economically and technically attractive.
Oh ... so we don't need to go nuts and go all socialist to handle this, after all.
Despite decades of insisting that we do, and that the only solutions possible just happen to magically align with policies that certain parties favored anyway.
There is no way that coin payphones are going away by 2018.
India and China will continue to use fossil fuels. If there is any bubble, it's in green technology, There are lots of unworthy solar stocks etc that are way overvalued. I love Teslas, but that company is also extremely overvalued and wouldn't be surprised to see it have a $5b market cap in a few years which would be much more reasonable since the Model 3 isn't the godsend it was supposed to be... $35k? Lol!
Except for USians and Aussies, whose governments are intent on bailing out buggy whip manufacturers (inefficient power producers in this case). For us poor sods, weâ(TM)ll directly be paying for the bad investment decisions of the coal barons for the rest of our taxpaying lives.
Privatized profits, socialized losses.
Ford F150 and F250 Hybrids are coming
As is the Chrysler Ram 1500
XLC F150 hybrid conversions available now
Workhorse PHEV is available now
Delivery vans and postal vehicles are going full EV in Europe in a big way today
City buses have gone entirely EV in one of the worlds largest cities and entirely dominate the Chinese market
School buses are going EV, especially in California.
Tesla, Mercedes, and others are spinning up Class-8 EV 18-wheeler trucks
IOW, despite what you believe, it is happening NOW
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
So that would be like the economic disasters that came about when people started burning coal for steam power or oil for the internal combustion engine, And electrification destroyed the worlds economy ?
Exactly.
As well, the article seems to neglect the real worldwide collapse if we simply decided to ride fossil fuels to the point that supply simply peters out and becomes so limited and expensive that there isn't enough to support civlization. It appears they believe that the supply of coal and oil are infinite.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've been hearing garbage like this for years. The Peak Oil Apocalypse is a similar doomer line of thought by people who don't seem to understand the energy density of liquid fossil fuels. Since we are talking about someone's bullshit cockamamie theories how about we throw this one into the ring? Fossil fuels keep selling until significant amounts of vehicles and equipment becomes electric. At that point, the fossil fuels get cheaper, and as folks transition away jobs open up on the electric side (nowhere did I say we'd stop transporting people & goods). It could very well be a seamless transition based purely on supply, demand, and price dynamics. As tech makes electric cheaper, the shift occurs and no big dislocation occurs at all. Why is it that anytime someone sees a change coming, they say "This is going to result in massive joblessness and blood in the streets!"
You expect a collapse in energy prices and the massive availability of cheap energy to negatively effect industrial economies ?
No. He expects it to negatively effect the financial world which has a lot riding on the traditional energy users.
Won't someone think of the Koch Brothers!
Now let's say that in order to avoid this collapse because of shifting to renewables - and a big thanks to the Guardian for alerting us to this truth - we decide to make all alternative energy sources illegal, That in order to sustain civilization - we must force coal, oil and gas.
So is the supply of the three energy sources that are keeping us from global collapse infinite? Should we just fold the tents and pray for the rapture?
Yes - if we get some stubborn folks who want to ride the fossil fuel train forever, they will suffer. But that is their stupidity, not their gawd given right to make a never ending profit on a diminishing resource
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
USAan here - many of my fellow countryman are dumb as posts. Researching candidates and their positions takes work, and thereâ(TM)s a new Kardashians on, so they vote based on gut, or thatâ(TM)s the party their parent voted for.
Hillary was a better choice than Donald, but that in no way means either should have been President, and yet all the stupid people acted as if they were the only choices. Weâ(TM)re only a two party system because we keep voting that way. If there was ever a time to break that cycle this past election was the time. But apparently most of us are not up to it. The government we deserve indeed.
Can I have some of what you are smoking? There is no way fossil fuel cars are going away by 2035.
God will provide us with all of the oil we need. It will fall like manna from the heavens.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Well the supply of fossil fuels or any kind of fuel is hardly infinite, but hydrocarbon fuels are indefinitely available
https://www.betterworldsolutio...
If you are going to force people to sequester carbon you might as well do it as diesel.
So what is America's excuse for using more coal powered electricity per person than China?
Only reason China uses more is because it has more people.
Nope. The bubble is people's interest in climate change. People aren't giving a sh*t about it because they have come to the realization that solving it is too expensive for them.
The US uses more fossil fuels per person than either India or China. It's not even close. China uses more coal for industry, America uses more coal for electricity, way more natural gas, and way way way more oil.
Pretty sure it won't sneak up on the financial markets (which is what would actually effect your retirement scenario). In fact, since energy use will persist and it's a swap of energy sources, it seems like the financial markets, while divesting slowly from carbon source investments, will re-invest in those replacing them. Because, you know, that's how market economies work.
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people mellow out once they've got enough food/shelter/healthcare. It's not like we don't have plenty of evidence of this either. Look at Europe. The problems they're having right now are mostly from Muslim refugees being forced to migrate because of bad economic conditions in their countries. They're a problem because they're being forced to move, so they're not integrating into their new countries. It'll be 3 generations until they do.
TL;DR: It's cheaper to drop food than bombs.
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They transformed themselves from a third world hell hole into a first world nation in 50 years. That's incredible when you think about it. A modern miracle they don't get enough credit for. But it was all based on the price of oil. When the petrol dollars dried up they didn't have a 200 year old banking system in place to deal with it.
The Saudis see this coming, btw. It's why they're letting women drive. They're trying to get them into the workforce to keep their economy growing.
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>> "Can I have some of what you are smoking? There is no way fossil fuel cars are going away by 2035."
Step back 17 years ago to 2001. I can think of a few crazier things that people would have told you that you were smoking something if you said would be true by 2018 (or earlier:
-near ubiquitous smart phones, with good voice recognition, good translation, networks to support streaming video, etc
-China's pace of economic and technological development
-a mass market electric car
-Donald Trump as president of the U.S.
(not arguing that all of these are good...)
Localized power generation (yes, this is already happening on a smaller scale) helps reduce transmission demands.
Additionally, if consumers were charged for electricity based on current demand, this would go a long way to fixing your aforementioned grid capacity problems. This technology already exists and certainly could be implemented in the next 17 years. There is ample evidence that plenty of people will go through all kinds of crazy exercises to pay a little less to fill up their car (does not need to be everyone).
Is it possible that it won't happen? Of course.
I find this truly interesting and I have noted it as well. It speaks to the hypocrisy of most of the people in the world I guess. All the blustering aside, the ACTUAL policies of the two main parties in the US political system are quite similar. It was Mrs. Clinton who called the TPP the "Gold Standard" for trade treaties even though it would decimate the environment throughout a good chunk of the world and many, many more US jobs. Mr. Obama pushed for expansion of that abomination, The Patriot Act. Mr. GW Bush pushed and got the patriot act. Mr. Clinton got the first anti-terrorism laws in the 90s, which were Patriot lite. Unfortunately, because the peons believe the politicians that they support are on their side, when really they aren't as the little people are merely proles, they support them.
If Hillary has any damn sense, she says "fuck you ingrates, you had your chance".
Even if the transition does happen around 2035 (which is doubtful), I would anticipate big businesses to lobby heavily for taxes and bailouts to stave off the inevitable for some time. That move will almost certainly artificially move the bubble burst to the right but the writing will be on the wall.
I welcome our new energy overlords - I'm bored with the old ones.
There's a basic stupidity here. By implied extrapolation, the PR wonks are trying to lump energy technology in with Moore's law, as it applies to silicon: a die shrink only ever gets better (which itself is barely true any more, though it certainly enjoyed a stellar half century).
Environmental energy is not like that. Your fancy new solar technology might be cost effective while there is still more of California to exploit, but hardly ready for prime time in frigid "central" Alberta (the same 55th parallel north also runs through Glasgow, Copenhagen, and Moscow, just for starters).
But no problem, Canada's tiny population has a ludicrously unfair share of the world's ground water (and many powerful rivers associated with this). And if that doesn't get us through, we've still got thorium, too. As for wind power, better hope you get that build soon enough for forestall run-away climate change, or your wind forecasts might prove extremely fickle.
The march of progress is good, but this is shaping up as a long war, and today's low hanging fruit shall ever remain in perilous supply.
Yes, the implied metaphor sucks big time. In truth, the problem here is a lot more like optimizing software than optimizing silicon. Your database is the bottleneck, so you optimize a few key queries—and declare permanent victory.
Celebrating Too Early Compilation
But nope, now you've got other fish to fry. The load balancer, OMG PHP, the Intel Spectre BIOS patch, etc.
Dang it! If only Intel would simply give us the 8 GHz chip we've been waiting for since the thermally untenable Pentium 4 teased us horny.
———
As a side note, the legendary inefficiency of the Pentium 4 almost surely lead to the construction of an entire electrical generation station the world desperately did not need. And now all that extra carbon is part of today's problem, too, likely continuing to bear Intel-legacy climate interest for the next hundred years.
Good grief, Charlie Brownout, are we a feckless, stupid species.
———
Global-foresight triple word score if you bought a Prescott and then configured your 24/7 screensaver to run 3D Pipes.
Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage — 1 February 2004
Cuffing Intel upside the head is popular again, lately, but in truth Intel has always been strangely bipolar.
For a while, there, CoreDuo's lurking Spectre saved a lot of carbon (on finite tasks, not counting CPU sinks like 3D Pipes).
Even Steven?
Hard to say.
Markets work.
Except for all the AGW doom mongers who were hoping to use this as a wealth transfer mechanism.
Have gnu, will travel.
Man, here in Norway electric cars are almost 2/3 of all new vehicles already (half battery, the other half hybrids, mostly plug-in). Range is already more than enough for anyone who is not a taxi driver or otherwise drives all day long. Calculations by DNV GL indicate that EVs will be overall cheaper than fossil-fuelled card by 2022, that's before you factor in extra taxes on pollution or subsidies on zero emissions. It's true that their up-front cost is higher, but maintenance and energy are way cheaper, so that the TCO is still better.
2035 is a perfectly reasonable date to expect ICE cars to be off the market: It took only 10 years for the car to displace the horse. Some ICE cars will still be around, but mostly as a curiosity (we did not exterminate horses either). Also, as demand for gas plummets, gas stations will close, oil companies will not invest in new fields, the oil value chain will lose its economies of scale, and gas prices will go a long way up.
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It doesn't matter that Donald Trump is Donald Trump. It matters that he's a Republican.
All you need do to discover this is incorrect is look for Republicans and conservatives who criticize Trump. There are a lot of them. Plenty of Republicans would be OK as President even if I don't agree with their policies, but Trump is - at best - completely incompetent, regardless of party.
The political parties in this country really whip their members up into a boiling mess, when the other party has a success, though the Democrats seem to be better at that, than the Republicans.
You've got to be kidding. Mitch "my number one priority is making sure Obama is a one term President" McConnell? The affordable care act, which started from a conservative think tank and was only opposed by Republicans because Obama supported it? The Republicans do this all the time.
And in other news, sometimes big businesses fail to react in time to changes in markets. Obviously, of course, this is a problem for the government, because all Americans value a centrally-planned economy.
(This is a joke, but it's also true, as proven by the Democrats' and Republicans' bipartisan support for the bank bailouts of 2008. I know the Democrats' excuse, but for Republicans, this is one of the many reasons I call them liars whenever they try to imply they're the "conservative" party. They're not. They're left of Democrats on more than 50% of issues, and Trump hasn't changed that, either. Maybe to Republicans he isn't anything like a Republican, but to everyone else, he mostly is a real Republican. And I bet that makes Republicans mad. You people keep voting for leftists and then somehow they end up winning, and somehow it's all someone else's fault! Awwww!!)
Well siad.
I wonder if after the oil collapse, biogas will become more attractive for those people still running a petroleum powered engine.
"It could very well be a seamless transition based purely on supply, demand, and price dynamics."
Supply is throttled based on psychology. Demand is increased by sales, usually involving manipulation of consumer preferences so they violate transitivity. Thus, prices are arbitrary.
There's actually a really good reason to think it COULD happen before 2035. Autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles (EV) have a great synergy together (A-EV), which would drive the adoption of both far faster than one would expect. The short version is that autonomous vehicles allow the reduction of automobile stocks by about a factor of 10, due to primarily to heavier re-use as part of an autonomous transportation network, as well as more efficient use patterns (for instance, it'd make "carpooling" to work on an electric shuttle bus much easier and dirt cheap). In addition, it'll drastically drive down transportation prices at the same time, especially when EVs are used since they're much more efficient and deprecate very slowly due to their simplicity (few moving parts means low maintenance costs). We're seriously talking about costs so low that it'll probably end up being packaged as a monthly transport network use fee (ex. $50/month for "unlimited" on-demand in-city transport). Even if someone hates driving with people it'd still be only like $0.10/mile to go anywhere in a private vehicle. The prices will be so low that using your currently existing paid-off vehicle will lose you a LOT of money compared to just using the transportation network, driving people to abandon their current vehicles even if it's at the loss of the entire vehicle and their investment in said vehicle with no recompense (since just the insurance and maintenance costs are more than using the transport network an unlimited number of times, let alone the fuel costs).
Requiring 10% of today's vehicles to service the population and offering vastly lower costs means that the transition time may very well be 10x faster as well, and given that a present day car lasts around 10 years, a year or two's worth of present-day car production volume may be all that's needed to replace our current stocks of gasoline vehicles with A-EVs (once critical mass is reached).
The following report lays out the full case for this. This report suggests a slower but still shockingly fast transition period of 10-ish years with the main transition happening over approximately 4 years.
https://www.rethinkx.com/execu...
Full report here:
https://static1.squarespace.co...
I was skeptical of this at first, but after reading it I'm confident it'll play out this way if full autonomy can be worked out. The disadvantages of EVs are completely moot when they're used in this way (ex. the high up front expense doesn't matter when each car is worth 10 today and they have much lower long term costs and a much longer lifespan). Socially, most people will respond to the drastically lower cost and drastically higher convenience, since it'll basically take transportation costs down to a rounding error on their current costs ($10,000 today to $50-100) and be available 24/7 without needing to park or drive. I'm sure there'll be some holdouts that refuse to change, but they'll pay out the nose to keep the luxury of their own vehicle, and most will have to transition to EVs when the carbon bubble pops (which they detail in said report, basically you'll see a massive stock of abandoned fossil fuel vehicles due to the earlier mentioned incentives, and the gasoline infrastructure will collapse as soon as the transition gets serious because you can't easily stockpile gasoline as it's a volatile chemical, driving even more people to adopt EVs even if they aren't using them autonomously).
As for electrical needs, it won't be nearly as bad as you're thinking, since EVs use a LOT less energy than gasoline vehicles, and if we're only running a tenth of the vehicles (admittedly much more frequently), then the energy requirements will be substantially lower. EVs can also make better use of cheap baseload power in the middle of the night and intermittent renewables (th
The average age of cars in the US is something like 12 or 15 years, and rising. In 2035 the average car may be from 2018 or earlier, and then there are all the cars above average in age. Gasoline will still be available everywhere, because there will still be millions of gas powered cars on the road, regardless of what is being produced new.
OPEC limit production to maximise profit, which means undersupplying demand and storing up reserves to maximise profiting off surges. And the reason why shale oil is now a thing is because oil is just too expensive to get out because of what you have to put IN to get that stuff OUT. And even if they have a glut, they'll use the reserves and close down pumps because they can't even idle at profit.
Well the supply of fossil fuels or any kind of fuel is hardly infinite, but hydrocarbon fuels are indefinitely available
https://www.betterworldsolutio...
If you are going to force people to sequester carbon you might as well do it as diesel.
Of all the cacahead things, concepts that make using food stocks to produce fuel look like prudent and sensible strokes of genius, using the very element that allows the earth to have some temperate climate areas - removing carbon dioxide to allow coal rolling is as good an idea as using Brawndo with electrolytes - it's what plants crave.
The earth would have an average temperature below freezing if not for carbon dioxide. This gas is critical for life on earth.
So now these tools propose turning atmospheric CO2 into a cash generator. Well now, I kind of wonder if they would plan on stopping once they disrupt the atmosphere in the other direction. There is as much an issue it it goes too low as if it goes too high.
Even then, the problem isn't that the CO2 is one thing or another. It is the rapidity of change. The level at the beginning of the industrial revolution isn't the level it has to be for all eternity, it is the rapidity of change which causes unstable weather, and shifts habitible zones, creating deserts and verdant areas based on the shifts. High or low, the rapid disruption is the issue.
We kinda have the CO2 levels we have now, and our best bet is to live within whatever happens, try to shift to energy sources that don't generate any extra, and not perform cacahead experiments like seeding the oceans with iron, or turning CO2 into a money generator.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is why Texas is a big wind farm state instead of an oil one.
Moron.
Trump is criticized by many republicans because he is not, like them, a member of the uniparty and actually represents the people of the country. For someone who is âoeincompetent, he sure has a lot of achievements for his first 500 days.
What makes you think that the coal miners and the people who voted for Trump because they are disappointed at globalism shipping their jobs to China and Mexico will vote for Hilary in 2020? Why should "the map" change?
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In which case she would be deluding herself as usual. She never had the chance
Well, this is only going to show creimer that not every AC is FCLM and that FCLM doesn't have control over the other ACs.
By the way, our AI software has been scanning Slashdot and ran further analysis on the "The Fat Bastard" account.
After a few weeks, our AI has confirmed that the "The Fat Bastard" is indeed creimer.
Same crammar, same subjects, same stories, etc.
View his new account here:
https://slashdot.org/~The+Fat+...
Yep, creimer spoke with his child brides military buddies and they suggested: "hiding in plain site".
CROFLOL!
A crash in fossil fuel prices will certainly be disruptive, but it takes more than just disruption to cause a major financial crash.
Certainly many specific areas will face some pretty severe consequences from such a crash. States where fossil fuel exports make up a large fraction of their economy, such as Alaska or North Dakota, will be hit pretty severely. Nations that are doing similar, such as Saudi Arabia, will get it even worse. But most countries and areas are likely to sail through without dire consequences.
What could cause such a crash to turn into something like the 2007-2008 crash is debt: debt magnifies crashes. That's the reason why the housing bubble had such severe consequences: houses are typically debt-financed. The question, then, is how much of fossil fuel investment is leveraged, and where is that debt held? The answer to that question will determine whether there are wider consequences beyond oil-exporting areas.
Granted, the consequences within oil-exporting areas could be extremely severe if it triggers wars. Which is definitely a possibility in some such areas.
Most urban dwellers have no idea how vast America is
Yeah, we "urban dwellers" don't know how wide the country is. But we do know that it's full of retards who say stupid shit like this.
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A few dozen billionaires become millionaires, a few millionaires go bust and thousands of employees head for the solar and wind industry.
It has happened before, the world didn't end.
There's been no lack of demand for oil, and it's doubtful that this is going to change any time soon.
In fact (as a later item on the slashdot front page today notes):
The World Set a New Record For Renewable Power in 2017, But Emissions [of oil and gas sourced carbon dioxide] Are Still Rising.
This is because energy demands rose faster than deployment of renewable energy sources to supply them, and fossil fuel energy is still cheap.
I expect renewable energy generation to catch up with demand growth and start makng it shrink again. And the driving force for the changeover, of course, will be price: Economy of scale and technological advancement will reduce the price of renewable generation, attracting first new loads, then equipment replacement loads, and possibly eventually changeover of existing facilities. Meanwhile, cost of fossil fuel extraction gradually rises as the cheaper-to-get portions get used up and less-cheap-to-get portions become worth chasing.
I also expect both deployment of renewable generation and load switchover to be gradual. There is an ENORMOUS amount of infrastructure involved, and no percentage in all of it changing at once. (In fact, price signals would push back against sudden changeovers.)
Now that doesn't mean you won't get a market panic sometime in the next SEVENTEEN YEARS, as the article moots. Crowds CAN be driven mad from time to time. (Especially by articles like this. B-) )
But while I don't claim to be any better than the authors of the study at predicting the markets for a generation ahead, I don't see any reason why the currently-visible fundamentals of the markets and the typical vicissitudes of tech deployment should be expected to produce such a sudden crash.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, the oil age won't end because we run out of oil.
What a GREAT sound bite. That deserves both an "insightful" and a "funny".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The fact that she is incapable of doing that is precisely why she lost.
impressive...
Don't be as delusional as creimer please!
creimer only knows one thing. He is programmed to do this and he will keep trying for ever:
1) Build karma
2) Start spamming amazon and youtube links until his account gets modded down into oblivion.
3) Open a new account, rinse repeat.
The only way to break the cycle is to not give him an inch.
You have been warned!
But the account is bare. No bio, no signature, no links. Just someone claiming to be the fat bastard. Not typical for creimer.
Traditional energy sources are predicted to drop in value, as many things will have moved to using alternative energy sources. By 2035 i imagine fossil fuel cars will no longer be in production, with fuel being available as a niche for classic car enthusiasts.
So sure you might be able to buy gasoline cheaply, but it won't be of any use to most people. Most industry similarly will have moved on to newer sources of energy.
Here's the IEA world energy outlook which takes into account likely policies.
https://www.globalenergyinstit... ... gy-outlook
"Global Demand Growth: Energy demand between 2015 and 2040 is expected to grow by a bit more than 28%, or 3,770 million tons oil equivalent (mtoe) worldwide. All of the increase in global demand—in fact, more than all (about 3,922 mtoe or 104%) of it—will come from non-Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (i.e., developing countries). IEA expects that OECD (developed) countries will see their energy demand decline by about 4% while non-OECD demand jumps 49%."
Well, it took him 20 years to come up with that strategy and he had to wait for his child bride military buddy to come visit him from Thailand to suggest it to him. He couldn't figure that one out by himself.
Hi creimer! I know it is you again! You are so fucking transparent!
Fuck you!
Oh Chris... Your transparent attempts at anonymity are funny. Just like when someone suggested you change your name to Cashews and you signed up about 12 cashew accounts.
"Not typical for creimer."
I guess even you can learn from your mistakes. We welcome the new Chris.
The Cashews accounts are FCLM's. Wouldn't surprised me if he made a deal with management to keep FCLM while giving up the Cashews accounts.
Otherwise, why has Anonymous Cashews gone silent?
Chris,
Chances it is due to advice that you've received from your child bride military buddy,
I thought datavirtue was creimer? Or was it Joe Dragon? APK maybe?
Doesn't matter. As long as you have someone to troll, you're happier than a dung beatle in goat shit.
Yes. I agree completely. He does have a lot of incompetent achievements for his first 500 days.
Chances are FCLM is creimer.
Oh yes Chris, I'm sure Slashdot ONLY allows ONE login per computer! CROFLOLLER! You doth protest too much!
"dung beatle in goat shit."
OOOoooh can I be Ringo, Chris? You dullard...
FMRB!!! (Fat Man Repeating Bullshit) As you well know, FCLM is the original owner of cdreimer.
"Otherwise, why has Anonymous Cashews gone silent?"
Oh yes Chris, it is a mystery why an account owned by you could possibly go silent when you obviously have no control over it!
Global financial crises cycles are now much shorter than the 17 years to come before 2035.
You and this so called Economists have no clue. Purchases of gasoline vehicles continue to rise. It will take multiple decades befor ewe come even Close to not making new gas powered vehicles, amd multiple decades after before the hundreds of millions of vehicles going through replacement. It's easy enough to do the math just look up the stats.
She have HAD the chance. More-than-equal chance given how the whole machine and even former POTUS is "with her", at one point Obama was holding way more rallies for her than the candidate herself (almost abandoning his actual job as a President), who disappeared for days and days with no explanation.
She squandered it all.
Meanwhile, creimer got another +5+ comment. You still haven't found his new account.
No one is thinking of the Koch Brothers. They will be the least affected by the result. On the other hand the continued wealth of the rich is of great interest to a lot of people nearing retirement age, as their wealth is pegged to the same source of value.
Also no one is saying that we should do anything to avoid the crisis, just that the crisis will happen.
Also also, the question of if the supply is infinite is missing the fundamental cause that will lead to the collapse. The useful life of equipment is dependent on the sources of energy. The abandonment is taken into account of the financing which is clear from the up-front estimation of the size of oil and gas fields. It what makes them viable or not. The end of a field and the associated cost is normal. What we are seeing here is a potential shift away from these resources leading to a devaluation of the field, or a premature abandonment. That is what causes accounting books to not balance, and what moves share prices around.
If you're getting close to retirement and still have the majority of your retirement funds in the stock market you need to get a new financial adviser.
Someone is getting ballsy with this comment. Despite all the new comments in the last 24 hours, no one has responded. Maybe because no one cares anymore?
No one is thinking of the Koch Brothers. They will be the least affected by the result. On the other hand the continued wealth of the rich is of great interest to a lot of people nearing retirement age, as their wealth is pegged to the same source of value.
Although altogether to many people approaching retirement age do as you say, It it bass ackwards. Whether through waiting too late to start saving for retirement, greed, or the fear instilled by financial advisors, you don't invest in this sort of thing nearing retirement.
Also no one is saying that we should do anything to avoid the crisis, just that the crisis will happen.
Also also, the question of if the supply is infinite is missing the fundamental cause that will lead to the collapse..
Ahh, the collapse because of transitioning away from Petrochemicals and other fossil fuels.
Tell me, is that going to be more a cause than the protectionist and socialist tariffs that seem to be suddenly the economic touchstone of crypto-conservatives? That's what interests me about this whole concept of the shift to renewables being responsible for the next collapse. That's really handy, when you can identify the guilty party long before it happens.,p> It isn't going to be the student loan debt - nope
It isn't going to be restrictive tariffs either - or the inevitable backlash to them. That's crazy talk.
It will be those damn liberals not buying fossil fuels and using rewnewables instead.
The useful life of equipment is dependent on the sources of energy. The abandonment is taken into account of the financing which is clear from the up-front estimation of the size of oil and gas fields. It what makes them viable or not. p>
Sure - its why the gas companies have largely stopped drilling in my neck of the woods. There's still plenty of gas, but they drilled so much it isn't economical to drill more.
The end of a field and the associated cost is normal. What we are seeing here is a potential shift away from these resources leading to a devaluation of the field, or a premature abandonment. That is what causes accounting books to not balance, and what moves share prices around.
No one is assured of a profit. As for the fields themselves, be it gas or oil, there are uses for both that will continue for a long time. Plastics, home heating. Those will provide a good use for oil and gas. Coal? That's the big loser in the modern age. That's a really good thing too. Living in the area of production and having relatives who worked in the mines and strippings - and who mostly died young, and the destruction of the environment coal causes - I'm happy to see that go away.
Anyhow, it's a good thing that we have found the real villain of the coming collapse.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What's a +5+ comment, Chris?
All those, except Trump, were completely believable then. 2001 was a crucial year in my life, and I remember a lot about it. There was a belief that everyone would have great cell phones: Hell, I had a japanese one with a built in dictionary at the time that was way better than US available ones.
China's pace was obvious.
Electric cars would eventually arrive, and their equivalent. It was just a matter of when.
nobody's stopping you. Plus, gun ranges will rent you a pistol if you don't have the cash to spend.
Hillary? Gag me with a Howitzer shell
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.