Tag: Energy

Confirmation bias

Why Is Everything So Complicated?

We are the generation of the soundbite. The Tweet. The meme. We consume our information in tiny little pieces. And most of the time, that’s probably just fine. I don’t need to have a deep understanding of the cattle futures market to decide if I can afford the rib-eye this week or only cube steak. The price is the price and I either have the quan or I don’t.

But every once in a while, big events happen that raise questions. Politicians and pundits jump on these events and start spewing one-liners and soundbites that reinforce their echo chambers. Pretty soon we’re in a full-scale soundbite and meme war that leaves everyone confused and angry. What’s the truth?

I was thinking about this as I read snarky Twitter comments about energy independence, buying Russian oil, and gas prices. Everyone has an answer. Because I’m a dork, I decided to do some light reading on the energy sector and politics. Whew – there is no such thing as “light reading” about this subject! It is a deep, deep rabbit hole. It is hard to describe how many moving parts and global players there are in the energy world.

There are a whole variety of types of crude oil, all coming from different places in the world, all used for different things. Much of the recent increases in our purchase of Russian crude are due to fallout from previous sanctions on other countries like Venezuela, hurricanes in the gulf, and African countries not being able to ramp up production after Covid. We import foreign crude to the East and West coast because we lack the domestic infrastructure to transport our own oil. It’s actually cheaper to purchase non-US crude, than it is to send US crude to the East and West coast from the Midwest or gulf. We often purchase Russian (and other) crude because it has a higher sulfur content than US crude, which is needed for some specific refining processes. The worldwide crude oil market is a very interdependent and complex system. Even when we declared we were “energy independent”, that is a fuzzy interpretation with many moving parts that changed from month to month. We’d offset US products produced from crude and sold, against crude imports and for some quarters and depending upon what the meaning of “is”, is, we’d declare we had greater net exports vs. imports.

This led me to the issue of the current administration shutting down oil and gas leases. Come on, man – drill baby, drill! Well, they did attempt to put a moratorium on new leases in some areas. The courts shut that down. And currently… the Biden administration has outpaced the Trump administration in issuing drilling permits on public lands. Wait, wut? For example, just last fall the Biden admin completed the largest oil and gas lease in US history – 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Sigh, I’m so confused.

What’s my point? I don’t care what the Fox, CNN, or Twitter pundit says… virtually every issue you’d like to discuss is infinitely more complex than you think it is. Nothing is black and white, yes or no. It takes years for industry and policy experts to develop a real understanding of their domain. I did a tiny bit of reading this morning beyond Twitter, and quickly realized I know absolutely zero about the energy sector. It has tentacles in transportation, logistics, commodity markets, politics, money supply, production, jobs, and on and on. I think it would take at least a semester equivalent class to have at least a beginners grasp on the entirety of the market. And I think that holds true for most things in life. Geopolitics, military strategy, history, everything…

All of which is to reinforce my standard saying… Question everything. Be a Contrarian. It’s ok to endorse the Left or Right’s approach to the world. Just don’t do it blindly. They’re both equal manipulators of the narrative. And under the surface, things are often more complex than you realize.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple

Oscar Wilde
Cool, Daily Life, Health, Politics

Learn To Code
  • Way back in 2019, then candidate Biden showed his concern for out of work coal miners by encouraging them to simply learn to code: “Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God’s sake.” When more than a thousand journalists were laid off later that year, many of them were inundated with “learn to code” memes on twitter. In a move foreshadowing it’s current purge, Twitter promptly began shutting down accounts of anyone tweeting the offensive and obviously racist meme. Climate czar John Kerry seemed determined to keep the theme going yesterday by telling potentially out of work oil and gas workers they can just simply learn to make solar panels. Probably good advice since we’re going to need a lot of ’em. Biden wants the US to run completely on “clean energy” by 2035. Currently clean energy supplies 6.8% of energy production. 5.5% for wind and 1.3% for solar. Hydroelectric adds another 6.5%, but I don’t think we’re talking about damming up more rivers. So… in 14 years we’re somehow going to replace ~85% of our energy infrastructure? It’s hard not to laugh at statements like that. Except that those cute little feel good statements will come at a cost. Biden’s already thrown out a $2 trillion figure for his climate plan. And yesterday the nominee for the commerce department, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, said “the administration would have to remain open to new taxation on middle class families in order to fund policies on climate change and infrastructure improvement”. So I guess the plan is to tax us for the privilege of covering every square inch of open space with wind and solar farms? I wonder if its too late to invest in Solyndra?
  • I live in a small town. The last few years it’s grown rapidly due to the mass exodus of people fleeing states like California. Unfortunately they also bring their California values and attitudes. Where I see this the most is driving habits. Way back when, we had little traffic and people were generally courteous. Most people would wave you in to merge and would generally keep a reasonable distance on the freeway. Now it not uncommon for other drivers to cut you off, people are reluctant to let you merge, and cars on the freeway ride your bumper. It’s only going to get worse as more people discover the joys of not living in a huge city. I have no point to this other than I saw an article listing the top 20 megacities in the world. Tokyo has 37.3 million people. I can’t even fathom what it would be like to live on top of that many people. I get claustrophobic just going to Costco, so I don’t see myself moving to a megacity any time soon.
  • Hunter Biden apparently still has a 10% stake in a Chinese equity firm, despite saying he would divest. President Biden said no one in his family would engage in foreign business if he was elected president. Then again, he also lied about not having any involvement in his son’s business so I don’t know why we’d believe him now. Interesting that the press is no longer obsessed with investigating a president’s business dealings.
  • Apparently everything we thought we knew about herd immunity was wrong. You catch the disease or get a vaccine and you develop an immunity to it. Enough people do that and you break the contagion cycle. Seems simple enough. Now “medical experts” and the news are continually advising that even though you had the vaccine (or the ‘rona), you can still get it and/or transmit it to others. Therefore you still need to wear the mouth diaper at all times, socially distance, and eat only outside at restaurants except now it’s cold so we eat outside in tents that make the outside the inside. Sigh, I’m so confused. So we performed this herculean effort to create a new vaccine that everyone is now angrily pointing fingers at each other because we don’t have enough of it, yet it doesn’t work? Or it does work, but not until everyone gets it? Or, I’m going out on a limb here, we can’t enforce the silly mask mandate unless we start tattooing a giant I (for immune) on peoples foreheads. Ok, that would be extreme. I guess we could start issuing some sort of bracelet or badge you wear indicating your covid-free status. I don’t think anyone would try to sell counterfeit versions. Besides, it’s not like there’s any historical evidence that forcing a certain group of people to wear a label would be bad. Until we sort this out, I guess we’ll all just have to keep wearing the mask. Sorry, not just one but two now. It’s almost like they’re worried that nasty piece of cloth on your face isn’t really working.
  • I entered the lottery for a river permit this summer. Of course I’ve just jinxed my chances by saying it out loud. This summer is shaping up to be quite busy. This is a good thing. I better update my bullet journal. Oh, wait I haven’t looked at it for multiple weeks now. I’ll try again to motivate myself to use it, but I don’t hold high hopes. It just doesn’t seem to work for me.
  • Photos of a 1965 Soviet submarine. It had a crew of 78. I cannot fathom (see what I did there? I’m so clever. No? Sigh, a fathom is a unit of measurement for depth of water. 1 fathom is six feet) how horrible it would have been to serve on one of these.

Song of the day: Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (Official Video)

Uncategorized

Don’t Make Me Tell You Again
  • Anyone else hear that as a kid growing up? I was never brave enough to find out what would happen if mom or dad had to say it again. Except one time in the car. I remember the “don’t make me pull this car over” as we were driving somewhere. I think my sister and I were horseplaying in the back seat. You know, the massive station wagon bench seat without seatbelts. Kids today have no idea. Anyway, whatever we were doing was the final straw and my dad stopped the car in the middle of the road. Tires screeching, horns honking, and drivers yelling at us. We were informed if we didn’t shape up right now, we were getting out right here and walking home. I believed him. This is what the mask mandate culture feels like. Nobody can really explain the science, just that masks are just supposed to magically work. Authorities are angerly stomping their feet and insisting we completely ignore common sense and just bend the knee. Meanwhile, back in the science and statistics department, this group did a data analysis of all fifty states and examined Covid case counts per day with and without mask mandates. During the days under mask mandates, states had 27 cases per 100k. Days without mask mandates? 17 cases per 100k. WTF? It’s almost like the mask mandates had no impact… or made things worse. How could this be? Again, there is a very good chance that a properly fitted mask, in the right circumstances, could lower viral load and thus reduce the severity of Covid if you catch it. This should be encouraged for people in high risk categories. That is NOT what we’re being told. Authorities are implying that masks will PREVENT Covid, which is utter nonsense. Think critically people.
  • This is a very well written article that looks at the idea of asymptomatic spread of Covid. Asymptomatic spread is the reason given for all the lockdowns. Well, that pesky science may be getting in the way and indicating that there isn’t asymptomatic spread. You’d think this would be great news. Maybe we should be looking into this further? We can end the lockdowns and try to rebuild our economy! Crickets. Science is supposed to be the ultimate contrarian intellectual activity. The very definition of science is that your peers should be trying to break your argument. It’s not until we’ve exhausted the attempts to disprove your hypothesis that something becomes accepted. We’ve moved into a frightening era in which to even question something today will get you labeled as a “denier”, in the same category as flat earthers.
  • I don’t know why anyone would be surprised, but reporters are getting frustrated that Biden and his team refuse to answer questions. He did not have a single open press conference during his “campaign”. Harris did not take a single question from the press. It’s starting to look like “A Weekend at Bernie’s”. Question is, who’s controlling things behind the scenes?
  • You know the world is upside down when Rachael Maddow is defending Tucker Carlson.
  • I’m a little cynical today, so bear with me. Let me get this straight. The (collective) government shuts down the economy. They killed hundred of thousands of small businesses. Politicians have twiddled their thumbs playing political games, all while happily collecting their paychecks. Finally they decide the optics are right and decided to print another trillion dollars we don’t have, to “help” those suffering the most from the problem they created in the first place. Congratulations! You get $600 dollars. See, we really care about you. Never mind that most of that trillion is going to programs other than direct payments to citizens. To give some perspective on how idiotic our federal spending priorities are, here’s a mind-blowing nugget from a nuclear power expert. “For $900 billion we could build enough AP1000 nuclear reactors to replace our entire power grid. Let that sink in. The average American would save thousands in electricity costs annually.” Why aren’t the green new deal people screaming about this? Where’s our new Climate Czar, Kerry?
  • Enough of the cynicism for the day, enjoy this guy talking to his dog. Yes, I totally talk to my dog this way.

Song of the day: VIOLENT FEMMES – Add it Up

Solving the wrong problem

But, It’s Renewable?

There’s nothing I hate more than pointless, feel good statements that are utterly devoid of reality. The latest is the clamor for ending evil fossil fuel and switching to 100% renewable! Yay for me, I love the planet! Let me forward a meme on the Facebook so everyone knows I’m an eco-warrior.

Here’s the percentage of renewable energy use for the major regions in the world:

Country RenewableFossil Fuel
China3%86%
US6%83%
Europe9%75%
CIS0%87%
Middle East0%99%
India 3%92%
Central America8%69%

You can be as optimistic and hopeful as you’d like… but single digit percentages are a not a bridgeable gap right now. Until some fancy new technology is invented, the U.S. is not going to generate the 4,000+ terawatt hours of annual electricity use by recycling used banana peels.

I’m sorry if this crushes your green spirit animal. Renewable energy, as it stands today, is not a viable source of sustainable energy. Period. That doesn’t mean we should abandon all hope and stop trying. Eventually (we hope) someone is going to create a fusion reactor powered by unicorn tears and used tires and we’ll all be saved from the evils of climate change.

Until then, stop with the unrealistic green campaigns and tax schemes. I pay too much in taxes already and current government spending is not sustainable. If you’d like to support green research, be my guest. Don’t just be a keyboard warrior echoing Facebook memes – you can write a check to the company or university of your choice today. You are also welcome to pay more than required this tax season. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Hello?