I see this statement often that renewables have reduced our demand for oil, but that doesn't seem to be the case and I don't think it explains the price drop:
It looks more like the market is being flooded with oil.
The price of oil is probably unsustainable for all produceres at these levels. Either the price will have to increase or the number of producers will decrease.
I read somewhere that the Middle Eastern countries can continue at these levels for about 5 more years. My guess is that they will try to squeeze as many competitors out of the market as possible, increase demand, and scare off any potential future investments in competing energy producers (alternative or conventional) for the following decade.
I was surprised to see that the Saudis are considering selling shares in Aramco - I wonder if the House of Saud is about to make a strategic retreat to their palaces on the Riviera?
[NB It is entirely possible I have been reading too much Robert Baer and watching too much Adam Curtis].
Best explanation I've read is an IPO boosts the Saidi treasury so it can last until 2025 under the current oil prices. Current projectIons without the IPO only show the treasury lasting until 2020 before Saudi Arabia has to issue debt to cover their spending. It seems unlikely foreigners will service Saudi debt without high interest rates and even so, Saudi would not be able to pay it back. If Saudi Arabia can make it to 2025, it seems highly likely the decade of cheap oil will have destroyed the fraking/tar-sands oil company holdouts in the U.S.
The House of Saud is one of cards, and they know it. Their social contract is one of regular, large oil payments to citizens, not patriotism. This social contract will die when the money does, and so too will the nation. Money can paper over a broken society, but it won't build the sort of national unity you need for a successful nation state.
Maybe the Aramco thing is just part of this fire sale to try and prop everything up on the hope that, in the long term, a rise in oil prices will come to their rescue?
Is frakking best looked at as a bunch of capital trying to hold out against low prices? Seems like it is a technology that won't be forgotten in just 10 years.
A lot of possible reasons - a bug out fund, paying for other people to do their fighting for them if a war kicks off with Iran, propping up their troubled economy, paying off Wahhabis...
As a meteorologist, it's the weather that fascinates me most. I think there is a lack of appreciation for what global warming really is. Temperature is the measure of kinetic energy Of particles. Air with a higher temperature has a higher kinetic energy (faster moving particles). So global warming really is an increase in the global average available kinetic energy in the Earth's atmosphere. When written in more scientific terms, it becomes obvious that global warming should lead to more vigorous weather events - more kinetic energy, the more powerful atmospheric phenomenons that can be achieved.
It's very hard to pin 2015 weather anomalies on global warming. Confounding variables (ex: El Nino, and to what extend did GW cause the EL Nino) reign. But I think it's safe to speculate we've canceled the next ice age.
The kinetic energy of macroscopic motions in the atmosphere is most probably not simply related to total kinetic energy of molecular motions (which is many times higher), but is rather linked to the intensity and location of air heating due to radiation and air humidification due to oceans. For example, the air in my room (windows and door closed) has, in a simple model, around 10 MJ of kinetic energy of molecular motion. Since the convection is weak, the kinetic energy of macroscopic motion is many times lower, probably less than 1 J. When I open the window and let the dense cold air in, the hot air gets out and much stronger convection sets in. The macroscopic kinetic energy is now much higher than before, both due to higher density and higher speeds of flow, but still nowhere near those 10 MJ. As a result, I have more energy in the room, but lower temperature. Of course, the weather is much more complicated, but you get the idea.
Negative things tend to grab our attention, but the world is actually doing pretty well. The number of people living in poverty has been going down steadily since the 70's, for example.
sure. but the human world is consuming environmental capital (e.g. fish stocks, easily accessible fossil fuel reserves, soil, space in the atmosphere to harmlessly store pollution) at a rate that isn't anywhere near sustainable. as we continue to burn through this environmental capital over the next decade or two things will probably continue to get better on average, in terms of material standard of living, until things start to collapse.
i think negative things really grab our attention once they're happening and we're feeling the immediate pain. i don't think negative things that will happen in the future sufficiently grab our attention (otherwise we wouldn't be running society this way - a way that dramatically limits our options a few decades down the line - would we?)
It's a human psychology thing, and not that objective. Negative news (and The News is always novel, crucial, negative, threatening but...) is always heard in our present.
This may seem obvious, but it means that it's really hard for humans to step out of time and see events with the lens of history.
Our psychology, and the news panders to this, thinks that RIGHT NOW is the most crucial, important, serious of times of all times.
Every year we think that. It is not that every year things are getting progressively worse. Not at all. It's that we cannot see things for what they are. Objectively and relative to each other, without our present day emotions.
The lens of history doesn't have much to say about the resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, nor about the giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world...
Imagine yourself in 100 years discussing that present (i.e. what the issues are in 100 years, not in 2016). You will have the same perspective, of now, the same level of urgency, the same levels of complexity, because you are living in the now.
Thinking about how someone in the future will think of their present does not say anything about the facts around our present or future, but it speaks volumes about how humans perceive their present. Thus I would say that "resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world" are making now as the most crucial of times. Rather they are things that happen, as usual which because we are living in the now we take for being the most crucial of all time.
We always look back 100 years ago and think "oh, they had it easy"
And "Oh, they had it easy" doesn't mean that life is progressively bad, from garden of eden to the present day, that would mean that 100 years from now it will be worse than it is now. No, what it means is that we are humans who don't usually have perspective.
You are the only person I've ever heard saying that 'in 1916 they had it easy'.
I agree that if we are facing new challenges 100 years in the future, they will seem critical whereas the solved challenges of our present will appear solved and therefore not as challenging as they seemed at the time. This seems tautological.
I don't see how this is informative, or different from a platitude like "our problems don't seem so bad after we've solved them".
Very wisely put. Humans never put things into temporal perspective - the Now, the present, is more important than at any other time.
Thus, in 10 years time we will consider that Now to be more important than the now, well, now. And in 30 years time we will think that that now is more important than in 10 years or now. This invalidates this kind of present-ism. Now isn't any more or less important. It's probably, on the whole, less bad, less important, doing okay actually.
I'm not disputing climate change, or the causes of it, nor that rainfall in December in parts of the UK was at a record high, with localised flooding, but this:
"The UK just had its wettest December ever, with more than double the normal rainfall and extensive floods taking out the centers of major cities."
There are no spins on Cologne - the german officials showed they are more scared of being called racists than in pursuit of justice. Same as with England case a couple of years ago.
This is not an immigration issue. This is failed state issue.
How is the Köln incident "not an immigration issue"?
The evidence clearly shows that many of the perpetrators were not from Germany.
It surely is an immigration issue.
The rise in anti-immigrant sentiment throughout Europe is because Köln isn't an isolated case.
Köln-type incidents happen on a daily basis, but typically on a much smaller scale.
These small-scale incidents, which range from muggings to assaults to burglary to murder, combined with larger-scale incidents like Köln and Paris, put Europeans in a bad position.
Of course these Europeans will begin to question their past generosity!
Why should these Europeans continue to offer these foreigners so much kindness, aid and opportunity, only to have the foreigners commit various crimes against these Europeans?
Stross throws around terms like "racist clowns", "xenophobia", and "bigotry", yet that's exactly what we haven't seen from Europeans for so many decades now.
Europeans have been more than welcoming, and offered unselfish charity to so many foreigners.
Yet despite showing so much good will and kindness, Europeans have come to suffer as a result of their efforts to help others.
Any backlash that the foreigners face in Europe is because of how disgracefully so many of these foreigners have treated Europeans.
Well, it's only an 'immigration issue' if this kind of behaviour is unique to immigrants. Would that it were so.
If you're curious about this aspect of European life, I would recommend a whirlwind tour of European capitals during the high summer, and make sure you stay up late. It doesn't make front page news typically, because it's regarded as normal - and many people avoid known problem areas at night accordingly. Britain in my experience is particularly bad, but the mix of alcohol, men, and late nights is rarely a good one. Parents, don't let your daughters grow up without self-defence lessons.
If such activity is common on summer nights, where are the hundreds of criminal complaints ? Or what's the confounding phenomenon that makes only Colognes NYE generate such complaints ?
No it is not. The case would have been covered up, no matter if the perpetuating people from were legal residents or illegal, as long as they were from Arab countries and Africa. So in that sense - it is not a immigration issue.
Boy, has this man changed. I remember him from his usenet days, before the first novel. So sad that living under close public scrutiny has this tendency to transform formerly useful people into insufferable know-it-all devotees to whatever is currently considered politically correct, who feel this need to talk about the less enlightened as "insecure, threatened hominids."
I think this is spot on for futurology, although this is not what we will see in the news. We will see other stories in reaction to these events. However....
I have a theory that when I read something like "you must read the following literature to understand what I am saying" it really means "what I am saying is based on faith - the beliefs of which you also must believe to take what I am saying as good". When I read this appeal, my defences go up.
For example in this essay:
> (Note: As usual, there's a lot of meat in the hyperlinks. You won't get the most out of this essay unless you are familiar with their content.)
It's saying "invest your time reading this selected literature and you too will understand my beliefs".
Is it just me or is this an accurate rule of thumb, this appeal to the necessary canon as indicating that the views are beliefs on faith rather than logic and rationality?
You have to provide people with background information if you have a view that is not mainstream. Since most people with views that aren't mainstream are probably wrong, it is a weak signal that their beliefs are wrong, too. But it is probably only a weak signal, and if you try to use it in an argument, you are being a very rude arguer. They can always respond, "Yes, I understand my ideas are not mainstream, that's why I have to provide you with background knowledge that you don't receive through education and zeitgeist. There is no other way to convince you than to provide you evidence."
This doesn't directly address whether there is a difference between peoples beliefs being grounded in faith vs. logic, however. For that, I think that what you are really seeing is that in certain fields, like sciences, you can make complete arguments grounded in logic without referring to extensive outside information, or outside information that is beyond criticism. In arguments that are based on soft fields like social trends, you have to make arguments based on many examples and extrapolations. I think these arguments will necessarily seem more faith-based. The evidence in these fields is so wishy-washy, that everyone is essentially operating on faith, because there is usually not enough information to justify anyone's certainty.
The opinion that the climate change is causing the conflict in Syria is quite speculative bordering to total whack concpiratory theory.
The weather might be a extremely tiny part in the events, but the whole situation is the result of political-, clan-, ethnical- and religious struggles for power that's been going on for thousands of years, and fueled by empire building super powers the last 200 years.
The authors acknowledge that many factors led to Syria's uprising, including corrupt leadership, inequality, massive population growth, and the government's inability to curb human suffering.
But their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compiled statistics showing that water shortages in the Fertile Crescent in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey killed livestock, drove up food prices, sickened children, and forced 1.5 million rural residents to the outskirts of Syria's jam-packed cities—just as that country was exploding with immigrants from the Iraq war. (Related: "Half of Syrians Displaced: 5 Takeaways From New UN Report.")
The fertile crescent is one of the most geoengineered regions on this planet, with a long history of ecological collapses and recoveries going back five thousand years. The most major one is thought to have brought about the fall of Babylon and resulted in mass desertification. The construction of many dams along the Tigris/Euphrates/Nile and rapid salinifcation of the soil over the last hundred years also had a very drastic impact on agriculture. Then there's also the effects caused by the collapse and splintering of the Ottoman empire, including less investment and cooperation in repairing aging infrastructure and ethnoreligious conflicts that have been very destructive.
I have little doubt that climate change has contributed to these changes over the thousands of years, but it's just one of many confounding factors that have led to the fertile crescent death spiral, one that I'd wager is relatively irrelevant (at least for now) when compared to everything else we humans have done in that region.
The opinion that the climate change is causing the conflict in Syria is quite speculative bordering to total whack concpiratory theory. [sic]
Actually, climate change has often been cited by academics as an underlying cause of conflict. Jared Diamond wrote an easily digestible book on this. (General climate change, not just the current issue.)
High food prices caused by drought decreased the stability. The drought might have been caused by climate change, or it might have happened eventually anyway. But there were much deeper underlying problems with their country, and the current conflict is long since divorced from that issue. Now it's fueled by ideologies and outside influence.
Furthermore the know-it-all tone undermines credibility for me. Societies are complicated systems. People who claim to have a simple model to explain many events are more likely to be deluded than correct. By deluded I mean suffering from confirmation bias, erroneous pattern recognition, etc.
Exactly. And it's littered with simple factual errors - greatest refugee crisis since WW2 -erm, Indian partition, the Congo, the Sudan, Vietnamese War, just to start with. And then he claims that there's been a hyperinflation that 'the public hasn't noticed' - which is both factually untrue, and ludicrous.
I'm skeptical of anyone who says they can make a long term prediction of the world.
That being said his predictions for the world seem to be that things that are happening now will still be happening in the near future, which is a pretty safe bet.
I disagree that the capitalist class is interested in reducing immigration from developing countries. Reducing labor cost is a primary concern for this elite group.
I have nearly the 100% opposite opinion on many of these issues haha.
Oil is a bit of scapegoat I think. All commodities are on basically all time lows. Value of real assets across the board has been generally plummeting.
Hard to know how much of this is proxy selling of the Chinese economy -- I suspect a bit; it's perhaps a plausible outcome for Chinese stocks to plunge much further and have commodities RALLY out of it on the unwind.
This is a very political article. All the predictions revolve around topical political subjects. From the current immigration issues in Europe to climate change. Climate change is definitely long term, but how many of the other issues will still be relevant decades from now?
And his opinions on immigration are ridiculous. The first world has had very guarded borders for a long time. The trend is going in the opposite direction, with Europe becoming more sympathetic to immigrants and letting in tons of them.
The author wants completely open borders, and declares this is even a civil right. Which is totally impractical and would have huge negative consequences. The author accuses anyone of being against this as being racist or right wing. He suggests some kind of conspiracy theory by rich people opposing it. As if rich people don't benefit from immigration with cheaper labor.
> A humanitarian could only say "These people are beneficial!" than he would immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back." That has never happened.
An open border would result in a rapid and massive wave of immigrants, who would completely destroy the culture, politics, and economy of the home country.
An immigration tax could prevent that, but then it's not an open border. If the fee is high enough, poor immigrants and refugees would be left out. Otherwise it sounds like a much simpler and fair system than the current bureaucratic mess.
And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801578 had the proper response: "Faulty logic. One of the biggest reasons for supporting liberalized immigration is that it lets people move to the areas where they are most productive. People in Guatemala become massively more productive when they move to the USA, which earns them higher wages and makes them better off (along with others who benefit from more production)."
Thanks for the pointer to the previous discussion.
The point of the comment was saying that those immigrants don't benefit the country taking them. If having them is such a benefit, then sending them back should benefit their home country, which it obviously doesn't.
The immigrants would of course benefit economically, no one ever disputed that. But at the expense of the native population. Good luck earning a living wage when you are competing against the whole third world's population of laborers.
That's not even covering the immigrants using social services. You can't have any social programs at all, or every sick person who needs free health care can just move to your country. Or welfare benefits or whatever. Those programs can't work if the entire world's population can show up and take them.
> The point of the comment was saying that those immigrants don't benefit the country taking them. If having them is such a benefit, then sending them back should benefit their home country [...]
That's not at all clear. Also, we should probably look at benefits to persons (or humanity in general?) instead of countries.
The point of the comment was saying that those immigrants don't benefit the country taking them. If having them is such a benefit, then sending them back should benefit their home country, which it obviously doesn't.
> The immigrants would of course benefit economically, no one ever disputed that. But at the expense of the native population. Good luck earning a living wage when you are competing against the whole third world's population of laborers.
Actually, it's not at the expense of the native population. (Studies have shown that. The open borders people have the links.) In any case any negative impact could be compensated with taxes and redistribution.
Also, with free trade you already compete with the whole world in some sense.
> That's not even covering the immigrants using social services. You can't have any social programs at all, or every sick person who needs free health care can just move to your country. Or welfare benefits or whatever. Those programs can't work if the entire world's population can show up and take them.
Exactly. The only reason we even have "developed" nations is that "development" is concentrated, i.e. unevenly distributed. If everyone just migrated into EU and US, those regions wouldn't be that "developed" any more.
Rejection of nuclear power wasn't down to Greens or CND types. They don't wield that kind of political power, especially in the major nuclear states where most reactor development was/is happening (USA, Russia, China, UK, France, Japan). Politicians stopped building nuclear power plants because it's expensive (zomg DEBT) and locally unpopular and didn't fit in with the ideology of either centre right or 3rd way centre left parties of the last 30 years in most western countries (i.e. it's centralised, heavily regulated and heavily state subsidised).
It's tragic that development stalled, but blaming some of the people who are most sympathetic to the nuclear power argument in the modern debate isn't really productive.
>So, I'm seeing a bunch of disturbing news headlines in the new year. Mass sex attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve would be one (and I want you to think very hard about precisely whose political agenda benefits from the different kinds of spin that can be placed on this story depending on how it is framed)
What spin can be placed on it? Germans imported "rape culture"--the real thing, not the feminist figment--by accepting into their country thousands of young, fighting-age, middle-eastern men who practice a religion that specifically permits them to take up to four wives and as many sex slaves as they like (Sura 4 from the Qur'an). Men who fetishize white women and who view them as mere sex objects to be claimed and possessed. Germany is now reaping the consequences that all but the most deluded leftist could have predicted.
And Stross's biggest concern is not for the safety of the women and girls of Europe, of his own nation, or even of his own family, but for the rise of far right politicians and parties. Guess what Charlie? If putting the far right in power is what it takes to prevent Cologne or Rotherham from happening to the women and girls I care about, then for me at least, the choice is a no-brainer. You've left us with no other option but to vote for the likes of UKIP, Trump, or worse.
I don't think the point is to minimze the horrific nature of ISIS, its to counter the people who use ISIS to tar 1/3 of the planet's population as irredeemably sub-human. Which is a sadly prevalent thread in immigrant debates.
The price of oil is probably unsustainable for all produceres at these levels. Either the price will have to increase or the number of producers will decrease.
I read somewhere that the Middle Eastern countries can continue at these levels for about 5 more years. My guess is that they will try to squeeze as many competitors out of the market as possible, increase demand, and scare off any potential future investments in competing energy producers (alternative or conventional) for the following decade.