Ten Points On Oil And Climate Issues In "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan

[ancianita]

Last edited Sun Mar 12, 2023, 07:06 PM - Edit history (3)

Note: Caps are for EMphasis.

1.
Everyone on Earth needs oil. Oil is the worldwide ONE market. Its stability of oceanic transport made possible by the US Navy since 1945.

2.
Oil is THE transport fuel.

3.
Oil continues to be the transport fuel for
-- basic foodstuffs: wheat, soy, rice, corn, for humans and animals
— nitrogen fertilizers for agriculture
-- medicines; pharmaceuticals
-- medical equipment,
-- manufactured goods: refrigeration in transport, food packaging, detergents, coolants, footwear, tires, adhesives, diapers, paints, inks, chewing gum, lubricants, insulation, paper, clothes, construction materials, furniture, glass, consumer electronics, automotive, home appliances
-- raw manufacturing materials like iron ore, bauxite, copper, cobalt, lithium, silver, gold, etc.

In other words, ALL countries NEED the basic energy infrastructure to maintain modern basic human needs, like food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education.
Oil is the transport fuel across nations — there are no sailing freighters, blimp transporters, or EV ships recharging in the middle of the ocean supply lines to other continents.

AS COVID SHOULD HAVE TAUGHT US: disrupt supply and/or oceanic supply lines at ANY point in the global network, nations' economies shrivel, and humans starve and die.

4.
Zones for which today's greentech makes both environmental and economic sense COMPRISE LESS THAN ONE FIFTH THE LAND AREA OF POPULATED CONTINENTS. THAT’S IT.
-- Eastern Canada and northern and central Europe are cloud-bound for more than NINE MONTHS of the year on average, in addition to painfully short winter days
-- The eastern two thirds of China, the vast bulk of India, and nearly the entirety of Southeast Asia -- home to fully HALF the world's population -- have so little solar and wind potential that a large-scale greentech buildout would emit more carbon than it would ever save.
-- Same goes for West Africa, northern Andes, Ontario and more populated parts of the Soviet Union

5.
Regarding greentech EVERYWHERE:
What about cities? High rise renters? hospitals? They all have minimal to no solar and wind space.
Greentech has to be spread out.
How close is greentech wind and solar spread to cities? Very far, even in the 1/5 of land that can produce solar and wind.
Delivery of wind/solar for cities everywhere (except America's Denver and cities of Western Plain states) will take massive infrastructure buildout everywhere there are cities not near available solar and wind tech. Worldwide.

6.
GREENTECH IS BY DEFINITION NOT DENSE. NOT RELIABLE. Fossil energy is.
IF ONLY solar and wind are doing the heavy lifting of oil for the above global needs, they would need a NINEFOLD BUILDOUT to fully displace fossil fuels. How to sustain humanity and economies with EV shipping recharging in the middle of 3,000 - 7,000 mi. oceanic supply lines?

7.
In the meantime, look at geographics and demographics.
First, the world is NOT heating up evenly; the world is going through UNEVEN HEATING
-- -- different gases have different heat trapping & light reflecting characteristics,
-- -- so do different climate patterns.
-- -- And land covers.
-- -- And latitudes.
-- -- The most "lucky, good geographies" on the planet -- ones that produce/export their own electricity (shale revolution), materials for manufacturing (mining) transport power (navies & fuel) food (arable land) -- are North America, Australia, New Zealand. They check all boxes for their own climate locations for sustaining energy, capital, materials and agriculture.

Second, while the world population is growing, the demographic replacement on some continents is low to zero — unequivocally Europe & China.
— low to no work force sustainability affects total work force economic (taxation revenue and capital projects and asset investment maintenance). Above all other countries, China, now and over the next two decades, will suffer worst of all, to the point of collapse, due to high debt/GDP, food and energy shortages.

8.
How does anyone propose to gauge the trading and transport of the above necessities in the next ten to twenty years?
Do high capital wealthy countries in the West just abandon allies and enemy trade partners of the One Earth Market because they get no green energy and revert to coal, which is everywhere on the planet?? We are seeing the shrinking of globalization to the point of regional spheres' coping mechanisms now.

9.
THESE ARE A BASELINE SET OF FACTS AND GEOPOLITICAL QUESTIONS TO DEAL WITH ENERGY FOR SURVIVAL, ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE.

10.
SO. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS POLITICALLY OR TECHNOLOGICALLY, WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR BEING "DONE" WITH OIL IN THE NEXT DECADE, MAYBE EVEN TWO.

Source for further reading of complete numbers & charts, and geopolitical analyses covering up to 2022.
(If time is tight, a good cut-to-the-chase start is p. 138 to the end.)

[paleotn]

1. Disaster porn.

One truth I've learned over the years about human perception is reality is never as good as we think it is and never as dire as we think it is. Reality is somewhere in between. Not saying things won't get ugly, but humans have this terrible habit of cherry picking information and going to extremes.

[ancianita]

3. When changes happen rapidly, geopolitically, and climate-wise in our lifetimes, we've got to start

somewhere. I'm learning myself about the larger frameworks for how regions will pull together when climate affects production, supplies and transport. And when America stops being the world's policeman.

Which is what I think Biden is doing in taking a hands off approach to the Belt & Road desperado of the East making nice with Big Oil Saudis.

These are thinking frameworks, nothing more. Not arguments. Not predictions. Take 'em or leave 'em, my friend. I just wish you wouldn't be too judgy up front.

[Ferrets are Cool]

4. If it isn't as dire as you THINK it is, you aren't thinking hard enough.

Not you in particular, but we as a human species. Do you think the oil companies are just going to be open and tell us that the oil fields are almost gone? I don't.

[ancianita]

6. IMO, human inertia in facing and constructively dealing with these issues is our biggest human issue

From what I've read, the oil fields you think won't last are going to last for at least the next 30 years -- enough time for us to spend on our tech, innovations and science to save humanity.

It's never too soon to learn what we can. It's always too soon to draw conclusions.

[paleotn]

8. They've got little incentive right now to come clean on proved reserves....

Primarily reserves that they can actually extract and profit from in a decarbonizing world. And to your point, how much of those proven reserves actually exist. Most value reserves as assets on their books based on the idea that they can continue to extract and sell at something close to recent historical prices. The "business as usual" model.


But can they extract all those reserves in the face of government mandates and a radically changing market place? There will always be a market for petroleum, but will it be as big or as profitable in the future? Abandoning the "business as usual" model, would crater Exxon-Mobile's market cap, so Wile E. Coyote will continue running as normal even after he's gone off the cliff. Little incentive not to. One of the reasons oil stocks have under preformed in recent years. Too much systemic risk in how they value themselves and what the future will actually look like. A lot of investors just aren't buying the reserve calculations.

[Bucky]

11. Ziehan really is the worst

https://worldaffairs.blog/2022/07/09/debunking-peter-zeihans-shocking-and-popular-china-predictions/

Here are some shocking predictions about China from geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan:

• China’s population can fall by 50% by year 2050.
• China, in ten years, will not exist as a functional nation!
• Entirely possible that 2022 is the last year of PRC!

Zeihan is the new favorite gloom-and-doom pundit when it comes to prognosis about America’s geopolitical enemies like China and Russia. His speeches on YouTube have received millions of views; and even the U.S. military invites him to give speeches. He also has a fascinating speech style that involves frequent emphasis of words and dramatic pauses.

And from 2018:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/peter-zeihan-makes-bad-predictions-with-bad-premises.html

This is a great read, in part because the writer didn't know that Russia was gonna invade the rest of Ukraine and that that would
make surprisingly almost no difference in the world order.

Ziehan makes a lot of money making bad predictions. He's not going to stop anytime soon.

[ancianita]

15. I've made an effort post here. You're trying to discredit it.

Last edited Wed Mar 15, 2023, 08:17 AM - Edit history (3)

The least you can do is consider the facts presented in the book. Your links aside, your negative ad hominem arguments are bullshit.

I've got a few links of my own. And the OP didn't even present the book's team of experts, yet you attack the lead writer of their work without even having read it.

While still at Stratfor, Zeihan coauthored his first book, A Crucible of Nations, with Lauren Goodrich in 2011.The book discusses the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe.

Zeihan left Stratfor in 2012, founding his consulting firm Zeihan on Geopolitics that same year. His client list would grow to include energy companies, financial institutions, business associations, agricultural interests, universities, and other government organizations.[11]

Peter Zeihan Predicted Russian Invasion of Ukraine Years Back Now Warns of What's to Come Next





This map comes from a review of Zeihan's look at capital from Bretton Woods to the current outlook on climate change pressures on globalization.

... The calculus behind America’s support for free trade could be expressed simplistically as follows:

Support for Free Trade = Threat of Global Communist Revolution + Need to Secure Access to Low-Cost Energy Supplies – Negative Impact of Free Trade on Politically Active, Vulnerable Working Class Americans.

As:

(1) The Red Menace has become a lower-level threat;

and

(2) The U.S. is rapidly becoming de facto energy independent;

and

(3) Asia has become the world’s “factory floor,” resulting in the near-collapse of diversified manufacturing industry in the United States (an outcome which, as discussed in the February 2017 report, has caused the domestic Political Stress Index to rise to the highest level seen in the United States since the eve of the Civil War).

then

America’s appetite for militarily, politically, and economically underwriting the post-Bretton Woods global trade system has been greatly diminished.

In essence, the America of the immediate post-war era had the gold, the military might, the industrial capacity, the trade surpluses, and the moral authority to support a free trade system that, one way or another, shared U.S. economic power in exchange for continued U.S. military dominance. With Western Europe a smoking, bombed-out ruin, China a Third World country, and Japan soon to be the target of atomic weapons, America was in the historically unique position of having a blank canvas on which to write the new rules. We were a wartime nation and our chief strategic concern was Stalin and the Soviet Army; containment of that threat dominated foreign policy discussion.


Why America Can Go It Alone: 4 Pillars

Starting with the assumption that free trade is now entering a falling-tide phase, Zeihan concludes that the new regime will be favorable to America as well. His confidence that the United States has the ability to do quite well under falling net-globalization conditions rests on a few pillars:

-- A unique geographical advantage — the Mississippi River Basin and the Midwest farm belt.
-- Well-developed coastal population centers on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the ability to defend those great oceanic ‘moats’ against foreign aggression with the world’s most powerful Navy.
-- Internal demographic conditions that are troubling, but still far better than those found in Europe and Asia.

https://www.bastiatcapital.com/peter-zeihan-and-the-return-of-american-isolationism/





https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/af3ubo/peter_zeihans_predict_on_global_stability_for/





This last graph says this about China credit and debt economy(sub-chapter entitled "Adventures in Capital," pp 186-187):

"... as of calendar year 2022, total outstanding corporate debt in China has reached 350 percent of GDP, or some 385 trillion yuan -- US $58 trillion.
The Chinese have embraced the fiat currency era... China regularly prints currency at more than double the U.S. rate, sometimes at five times the U.S. rate... whereas the U.S. dollar is the store of value for the world and the global medium of exchange, the Chinese yuan wasn't even used in Hong Kong until the 2010's. ...

The option of crashing their credit/debt bubble isn't an option in Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party's onlysource of legitimacy is economic growth... China's only economic growth comes from egregiious volumes of financing. Every time the Chinese government attempts to dial back the credit... growth crashes.... In the CCP's mind, moving away from debt-as-all is synonymous with the end of modern China, unified China and the CCP... It's no surprise then that the CCP's preferred method of storing their wealth is in U.S. currency... outside of China....

Just stop. You've made your silly ad hominem attack. Enough with the group validation. Channel your energy to post your own OP if you think you can paint a differently sourced geopolitical outlook.

[Buckeyeblue]

19. I think China is struggling right now

It may not be as fast as he has predicted. But I think China has mismanaged both its people and its economy.

[ancianita]

24. Why do you think that.

Why wouldn't it be as fast as he thinks? Do you have any links with contradictory information?

Lately I've been wondering. Why China, with its genocidal and slavery record against the Muslim Uighurs, would reach out to the Muslim theocracy of Saudi Arabia. Is it because of our Russian sanctions? Shorter supply line length? The Saudis' foreign worker supply? There must be more going on than is reported.

Everything I've read in media says that China's a big threat, politically and economically speaking. Until I read this book -- where I've seen more solid economic information on China - there's enough here to show the press take on China has either been too narrow, short on facts, or flat out wrong.

[Buckeyeblue]

25. I misread the bullet point

He said 2022 could be their last year but I read that they would be done by 2022. I think China is struggling with a dissatisfied population who is sick of being worked to death. I think they are in a constant search to secure resources such as fossil fuel and minerals needed to electronics. And I think they are aligning themselves with the wrong players. The Saudis can only contribute oil. And they aren't going to give it away. Russia is turning into a liability. And I don't think China's military is all that great.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. IMO, we will not be DONE with fossil fuels until they are gone.

And then it will be too late. There is NOT an infinite supply.

[ancianita]

5. I hear you. Preaching to the choir. Maybe read up on how long it will sustain our power and

wealth until we spend it all on green teching the whole world? If that's possible?

Me, I believe we have to start somewhere to study this more.

It's the wealth of facts, charts and analysis that give this geopolitical analysis heft.

[Buckeyeblue]

20. Agreed. President Carter tried to set forth a new energy policy

St. Ronnie ended it. In some ways we have waited too long to really plan out what a post-fossil fuel energy infrastructure looks like.

Green energy technology will continue to get better.

It's hard to imagine being able to continue a global economy on the same scale that it is today. Which is too bad.

[NickB79]

7. It's simple, really. In 50 years large swaths of the planet will be in ruins

Either uninhabitable due to lack of food, water, or lethal wet bulb temps close to the equator. Other areas will be warzones and/or ruled by warlords and petty dictators squabbling over power and resources.

Vast refugee waves will be heading north, crippling the nations that still have a habitable climate. And ultimately, our population will be substantially reduced by the end of the century as starvation, war and disease rebalance the ecosystem.

[ancianita]

9. Simple to say. More complicated than you think.

No matter what anyone predicts, anyone could still read up more on what mitigation actions humans are taking. The thing about predictions about Earth dynamics and geopolitics are that they turn out wrong more often than not.

There are a lot of national mindsets (monoculture inertia) policies (help and govt structure inertia)/violent conflicts (belief & resource wars) that might distract media and populations from climate & energy goals and rollouts, which we see happening even now with current refugee intake issues of many countries (ours isn't even as big as Europe's) the slowness of climate upheaval relief and rebuilding. The political and for profit distortions of those recent events alone have distracted most of us from clearer understandings of what world leaders' moves will be in the big picture.

Distraction is a form of denial; both are forms of human inertia.

[NickB79]

22. We're at 420ppm CO2, with another 80+ppm equivalent in methane

So approximately 500ppm. And we have absolutely no realistic way to reduce that number in our lifetimes. We'll struggle just to reach equilibrium as it is, given the positive feedback loops starting in the Arctic, the boreal forests, and the tropical rainforests. Those alone will emit billions of additional tons of CO2 as they dry out and burn, even without further human action.

And the last time CO2 was this high, 2.5 million years ago in the Pliocene, seas were 75' higher and forests grew in the high Arctic.

Barring either a miraculous energy breakthrough to allow us to sequester billions of tons of carbon annually, or a global pandemic that wipes out a couple billion people, we're locked in to a mass extinction event. Mitigation can buy us time, and we need to do as much as we can, but vast numbers of species, many we depend on, will go extinct in the 21st century.

[roamer65]

26. Spot on.

I think we are on our way to Cretaceous Thermal Maximum.

[Bucky]

10. Peter Ziehan is a panicmonkey

Google the number of predictions he's gotten wrong.
Stratfor specializes in panicking their gullible client into overprotecting themselves. And he was too flighty for them to handle

There's reasons to be concerned about the future of energy and start making plans. Peter Ziehan should not be part of that conversation

[ancianita]

12. So they say about climate scientists at IPCC. There's plenty to respect about his research team's

Last edited Sun Mar 12, 2023, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)

numbers and analyses, along with the research team members themselves. He doesn't win personality contests, true.

But if you think why he got where he is with delivery style -- and not by his own knowledge, and his team's own authoritative reputations for information and analysis, that you can discredit his entire geopolitical map and 30 up-to-date charts -- without even reading his book, mind you -- you're not getting the point of the OP.

First easiest form of denial is to find points of difference, blow off the spirit of an expert's message by judging the messenger.

I recommend that people start somewhere in looking at climate and geopolitics. Here is the somewhere I started.

Your criticism is duly noted.

[paleotn]

13. Why? Their pronouncements are grossly wrong most of the time.

[ancianita]

17. You make the claim, it's on you. Name the predictors, the grossly wrong predictions & LINK them.

Make good on your claims or stop with the group undermining of a perfectly good effort post.

[Achilleaze]

14. "Thank you, thank you very much." - Big Oil, Inc. (R)

[hunter]

16. Nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

Wind and solar power will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

"Renewable energy" as it's commonly promoted is just another flavor of climate change denial and won't save the world.

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist (and a fairly radical one at that...) but I'm not any more.

Zeihan isn't anyone I pay attention to. I don't think he can do the math. We really should be paying more attention to the scientists and engineers. Zeihan has also got the same bug up his ass about China that many U.S. Americans do, the same revulsion toward's China's emergence as a superpower. He deals with this by imagining China's demise.

[ancianita]

18. I've read that in previous years and changed my mind from negative to positive about nuclear, too.

Last edited Sun Mar 12, 2023, 01:10 PM - Edit history (2)

Here's what Zeihan says about uranium as an energy source in the sub-chapter entitled "The Reliable Materials" (pp 316-317):

"The thing is that in 1993, the Americans and Russians started not only separating their warheads from their delivery systems, but also removing the uranium cores from those warheads and spinning them down into material to transform into fuel for nuclear power plants.

By the time this megatons-to-megawatts program finished in 2013, the two countries had transformed some twenty thousand warheads, leaving each side with "only" about 6,000 apiece. The U.S. spun-down weapons material powered civilian nuclear reactors that were 10 percent of the gird for two decades, and since large portions of nuclear power fuel are recyclable, the uranium market will be skewed. Whatever that means for other countries' affording uranium for reactors to produce electricity.

Uranium will likely become more popular as a power fuel. While running a 1-gigawatt coal power plant for a year requires 3.2 million metric tons of coal, a 1-gigawatt nucleare power plant requires only 25 metric tons of power-fuel-enriched-uranium metal, making uranium the only electricity input that could theoretically be flown to its end users.

There's also unlikely to be all that crazy a shakeup to the world's civilian nuclear fleet, or at least not one due to access restrictions. The world's top four nuclear-power-generating countries are the U.S., Japan, France and China. Japan and France both have the capacity to go out and source their needs without assistance. China's uranium comes from neighbors Kazakhstand and Russia, if its demographics and debt don't crash its economy first.

The locations that face the most risk in sourcing sufficient supplies will be those middle powers that both lack the military capacity to source their own inputs and live in geographic locations that utterly preclude safe shipments -- Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Finland, German, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Korea. The likelihood of insufficient supplies increases as you move through the list..."

[hunter]

21. His entire premise is a collapse of world trade.

There's enough nuclear fuel sitting around as "waste" to power the world for a century and more. All we have to do is build the infrastructure that can utilize it.

With modern, efficient fast reactor designs fuel can be profitably extracted from very diffuse sources, including mine tailings and sea water.

China is in a good position to be self-sufficient in nuclear fuels much sooner than anyone expects, if they choose to.

In my own speculations about geopolitics I expect the Russia kleptocracy will collapse. China is likely to gain much greater access to Russian natural resources in exchange for manufactured goods, as will Western Europe.

It's this xenophobic fear that is destroying Russia from within. In the 21st century no nation is an island. The harder any nation tries to make themselves an island fortress the harder they'll fall.

[ancianita]

23. I don't know about premise. I do think that's his conclusion, though, based on the facts of

geography in relation to climate upheavals, standing resources, current demographics and economic practices. China is not the powerhouse everyone thinks it is. Long term for Russia and China, their economics, policies and locations will do them in.

I like the innovation of building a new generation of the small modular reactors. Bill Gates has made heavy investment in them. At least investors and scientists are trying. And it's getting traction because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is certifying them and the Biden administration is giving tax incentives for building them.

While traditional nuclear power plants are built on-site, SMRs can be built in a factory and shipped to a facility for deployment. They use smaller amounts of radioactive material, which makes them easier to cool and secure—and lessens the potential damage of a leak.

In contrast to current gigawatt-scale reactors, the DOE defines SMRs as reactors that can produce up to 300 megawatts. NuScale’s pressurized water reactors, which look like oblong tubes and are 65 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter, can generate about 77 megawatts of electricity each. (For reference, an energy industry rule of thumb is that 1 megawatt is enough to power 1,000 households, although this varies widely among homes in colder and warmer parts of the country.)

An energy producer can seat up to 12 of the NuScale reactors together at one site, for example, to produce up to 924 megawatts of power. The reactors sit together in an underground cooling pool. In the event of power failure, the reactors automatically shut down and self-cool. This passive, operator-free safety approach is already in use in some conventional reactors, as well as in dozens of proposed SMR designs, from thermal-neutron and fast-neutron to molten salt and gas-cooled reactors.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/first-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-certified-united-states/

Here's one in California

Policymakers in the U.S. are of course aware of this and have begun taking steps to bolster the country’s nuclear industry. Last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $6 billion for a Civil Nuclear Credit Program to support plants at risk of economic closure. And the Inflation Relief Act just passed by the Senate contains billions in energy-related subsidies, including some that could impact SMRs specifically.

In addition to $60 billion for renewable energy like wind, solar, and hydro, the act includes $700 million for domestic mining and production of high-assay, low-enriched uranium and a 6% tax credit for energy providers investing in “advanced nuclear” technologies. For technology in the “microreactor” class (SMRs) the investment credit can go up to 30%.

The provisions are part of the more $250 billion that the bill would devote to combating climate change, with the aim of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90777719/new-nuclear-reactors-finally-get-regulators-nod-but-they-still-have-a-lot-of-proving-to-do