"Peak Oil, AI, and the Straw" | Frankly #56 

And still waiting for peak total production. Sure, it is going to happen, perhaps sooner than later, but I expect not much decrease as long as climate breakdown has not affected economy and fossil production. If oil production slowes sooner, it is going to add to breaking the back of economy. Don't see that happening, however, so much easy money to be made from fossil, they gonna squeeze them dry lemon peels until the last molecule. At sixty two, I do not think I'm going to live to see the downfall.

@@reuireuiop0 As Nate has mentioned often, the shale boom was financed by Wall Street and thus dependent on financialization. It gave us a few more years but the financial aspect points out how dependent we are on debt, especially dollar debt. The war in Ukraine has changed the picture though, as the US keeping the money of Russia and other countries has spurred de-dollarization. Since the global economy is hypercomplex and susceptible to the slightest downturn in money flows, I suspect the speed of collapse will increase. I thought I would "die in my bed with the lights and heat on," but now I am not so sure. And I just turned 74.

I would say it's proof that the govt there is just a bunch of useful idiots for the voters to get mad at while the neocons push ahead with their plans to make them a client state (more than they are already)

I don't things ever go well for the US puppet governments. That is why russia doesn't want to become a puppet of the neocons.

I personally can't wait to see how Tesla and SpaceX factories function once Elon gets his robots trained by Twitter now X. He has said his robots are close and that he bought Twitter to data mine for AI. So his Twitter trained robots running his factories should be a good test of AI.

Thank you for that bit of hope!! Great perspective. I hope you're right.

Where I'm from (Ireland) the government in its infinite wisdom gave tax breaks for data centres to open up here. They are already drawing 20% of power out of the national grid. At the rate they are being built they'll be using 70% of the grid by 2030. Apparently the vast amount of this "data" is junk that nobody have use for and will never has use for. The monetary imperatives driving this circus has it's own insane logic. As this is happening , right now this week, the government has put €400 into the bank accounts of the nation's house holders to help them cover soaring electricity bills. This money is no more than a band aid for a lot of people. Somebody's going to have to put up with the consequences of this weird almost surreal set up. Can imagine very well the kind of people who wont be.

😂 Humans

The Pretenders had a song about "fixing the rich folks' cars and slashing their tires." The rich folks need us peasants. We can use that to our advantage.

Sadly building wind and solar farms and pumped hydro is contributing to that, but you made a succinct observation.

I remember telling my grandfather that same thing back in the early 90s. He warned me that I would see a time when farms like ours couldn't function because there would be no diesel fuel. I told him we would destory the biosphere before we pumped the last oil. He thought about it a while and said maybe there are plenty of changes to the environment that he saw in his lifetime. He lived through most of the last century. But the changes are coming faster now.

​@@chrisruss9861all human activities have an impact on the biosphere. The trick to energy technology is to limit both the impact of the source and to minimize the demand. Things like airlines being replaced with rail travel is important. Complaining about new generation in renewable energy is counter productive. For one thing the off grid home with solar is going to live within that systems capacity. That is a huge win for a society that believes in endless growth. The trick is to limit harm on the down side. The late Michael Dowd was a great source of perspective on that.

Until the west run out of country to invade, the world is not running out of oil anytime soon.

We will be destroyed by earth before that happens, well have a revolution before we have more expensive products due to gas. Thats what nobody accounts for.

He is not a technical person, but what he says is a barometer for what Silicon Valley is doing, or trying to do.

Elon invented AI and founded Open AI by finding Sam Altman and putting together his team to develop on the released google document that drops meaningless words to increase language model compression.

You're good at revealing the quiet part out loud.

@@mrrecluse7002 Just trying to stay ahead of an ever steepening curve.

@@jerryhoefs5803Bend your knees. That's what my ski instructor said.

@@jerryhoefs5803You and me both. I try to fish out the truth, and I think most scientists may be greatly pulling their punches.

That's my one real criticism about Nate.. most everything he talks about is true and valuable.. but he seems to be obscuring the fundamental facts about just how f*cked we are. He reliably skirts around the obvious conclusions that the evidence is pointing to: we're well past key, critical thresholds, and there's no going back.. and its getting worse, faster. The heating is now accelerating.. the rise in temps over the past 8 months have been shockingly grim to the point of disbelief. Does Nate really believe that we're just going to peacefully and gradually 'draw down' and 'simplify' over the next 50 years? Surely he knows thats not how it's going to go down... we're about to hit a wall, and billions are going to die in the next 50 years. That's how simplification will happen: global industrial civilization is going to utterly collapse along with everything that depends upon it.. and the vast majority of the earths population is going to die of starvation, violence, disease, suidice and other forms of trauma. This is what will happen. Nate knows this.. but it doesn't make for a nice, regular monetized podcast.. and its a great way to lose your audience, friends and professional peers. Nevertheless.. I know that Nate knows.

I was astounded when I saw this essay.

@@urbanistgodDon't be. Humans create (have created and continue to create) fantasy world rabbit holes but all they're really doing is pushing problems out into the future, so we can have a comfortable, fantasy lifestyle right now and into the near future. Humans are assholes - they just can't help it.

Like changing the definition of vaccine and changing the formula by which excess deaths are calculated. Just keep moving the goalposts.

Absolutely! You are correct! What leaves me just stunned is how little the media pays attention to it and when they do pay attention to climate issues they speak about it like it's a page 17 is not front page

Either figure seems big to me. Surely not at the end of winter though? Sounds a bit like attempts at irony by the " more climate nonsense" crowd. Yes, I spend too much time on tinternet.

That's about a 300m cube per hour.....over a huge area..

@@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220 I don't understand the point you're trying to make, what do you mean?

@@ppetal1 average annual daily melt. To me, that is mind boggling!

Best comment I have seen so far!

And how much have all those paved asphalt roads and driveways contributed to atmospheric warming and to rainwater runoff and the resulting pollution of water ways?

@@brushstroke3733 depends. Bacteria breaks down oil. There is an estimated tanker’s worth of oil that naturally seeps into the Gulf of Mexico each year. Bacteria breaks down that oil. In down town Los Angeles are the Labra Tar Pits that seeps heavily oil and gas into pools/ponds. They have a fly, labra tar fly, whose larvae live off of eating the tar.

Great analogy, and comment.

This needs to be pinned as the top comment.

Well yeah, people rely on their jobs to survive. Almost no one is going to willingly start living in squalor for the sake of "cutting ties with the toxic economy".

Same people saying same stuff over and over.

Then it is time to act

@@r.s.334 and what's the point you're making?

Good for you. But you can still keep your hand in even though you spend all your spare time in the garden growing your own food. Nate's Franklys are a good aggregator of what is going on out in the world. Sort of like the Utne Reader used to be in the 1990s.

You are right. I don't yet see evidence that AI will markedly increase oil production. It may get a bit more, or a bit faster, but the fields are still declining. AI will be better used in developing alternate energy sources. If it concentrates on oil, we just hit the wall faster and harder. And right, price these days is 10% fact and 90% hype.

Which make his travel emissions (not to mention the consumption of his fraction of energy & materials) from Wisconsin to India totally worth it to humanity.

We left them worse than nothing. But you can't blame any one individual. It's been generations of humanity.

But how will we afford tiktok dances and block takeovers?

​@@SRCX.ClimateResearch. Thanks to you. From Alberta North of Edmonton.

It doesn't really matter in the long term. If you look at the demographics, the earth is depopulating. I am not one of those anti-human types. Just pointing out a factual trend.

I don't have the same personal exposure to our food systems as you do, but all of my reading on climate and biosphere collapse has been screaming at me that we're due for multiple bread basket crop failures and yet almost no climate scientists are talking about it. Even many of the doomers don't consider it the most imminent sign of collapse. And as soon as there's massive shortages in the industrial food supply chain, starving humans will go pillage the last remnants of wildlife to sustain themselves just a bit longer.

@@ZankrasI think even those feral hogs, (millions of them in the USA) don't stand a chance, once they become a food supply, rather than just a nuisance.

I think it's the speed of using masses of information that beats the human brain.. it sort of mimics the creativity .. l take your point.. guess what it does will be the test, not what we call it.

@@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220 That makes sense. The speed and winsomeness, (it gets me) in how it responds is incredible. The fact that it can't "think" gives me hope that it can be out-thought should one have the time creativity.

Pick up a copy of Michael Crichton's Prey (2002). It is all about the intersection of biotech, nanotech and distributed intelligence. You can read it in a day.

5 wells were drilled years ago to find one that produced. Now every well drilled produces. Less energy to get oil than before, not more. I'm in Midland, TX

@@jeromehaymaker5071 That's also a good point I did not know. I wonder if the government will ever open up that federal land up in Alaska for drilling. There are other issues drilling in cold climates but if things get desperate. Possibly a good thing they saved it for so long.

​@@jeromehaymaker5071 Right. Keep doing that. But we need heavier stuff. Too much condensate in your brew.

Drilling cost have gone down. I live in the oil patch. It was common to drill 5 holes to have one good well before now. They hit it every time now. The guesswork is gone! Tracking has speed up the whole time frame. It's more expensive but quicker. Quicker means income sooner. Advancements come as we go along making it safer also. I worked on oil rigs.

@@jeromehaymaker5071 They hit every time bc they are in the middle of a known oil field. Infill drilling is not wildcatting.

Burp

Quit dreaming. We are going much faster now than ever right at the iceberg.

@@j85grim4 sure, many people are nearly sprinting off the cliff at this point... Meanwhile, there are those of us who have been living the solutions for decades. I've got 25 years of living off the grid at this point, and I don't see any icebergs around here

@@gianpaulgraziosi6171 😂

Look at the EIA 2023 annual energy forecast. 13 mmbd of crude from now till 2050. No growth. That doesn’t meet our own daily demand.

​@@jtjones4081And that's just one of many problems we are going to be hit with once we hit the ice berg. We have declining male fertility rates which may lead us straight into Children of Men territory.

I learned the other day that c the c original Luddite weren't against technological progress, they were against it being used to enslave and impoverish the masses whilst the c owners of the technology were enriching themselves. Technology creating vast inequality.

Nate knows we're fu*ked.. he just doesn't talk about it. Telling the straight truth is a quick way to lose your audience, peers, colleagues and friends. I wonder how much longer he'll keep dancing around the central, core truth of the matter and tell it like it is. Depends upon how bad things get and how quickly. He can't keep up the sideshow for more than a couple/few more years if he wan't to be taken seriously by any serious thinker. Global industrial civilization is on an express elevator to hell.. total and complete collapse is coming like a fright train. Many billions will die over the next 30-50 years. I know it. You know it. Nate knows it. ... everyone will know it soon enough.

it needs lot of energy.

I drink your milkshake!

When I think about the 'insanity' of industrial civilization, I can't help but observe that while humans may in and of themselves be crazy, I have a distinct feeling that there is a group that sits on top that pushes even more craziness on everyone else to benefit themselves.

Wind and solar are all made with, from, and by, oil. So called 'renewable' energy plants cannot create more renewable energy plants -this greenwashing of alternate energy is possibly the biggest lie on Earth. 1)They only add to energy supply (they do not displace it), 2) are not clean, not 'green' and, 3) only serve to facilitate ecocidal "...business as usual by alternate means". - Prof. Bill Rees

Those hidden numbers blow my mind when you hear the oil industry fear mongering about mining requirements for batteries. Tons of finger pointing to distract from their own impacts.

I have heard a couple years ago that there is a worldwide sand shortage incoming for construction (mostly concrete making and roads construction). I had no idea fracking was using sand as well. That being said, it may not be the same suitable construction sand that is required in both fields, but I am leaving this comment here, if someone informed could enlighten me if thoses 2 applications pull on the same sand supply

@@stephanecloutier181 Around here, the nat gas shale drillers use massive quantities of sand, yes, but they come from new river sand mines/plants built for their industry. Several up and down the river, is mind-boggling how much sand is used for the entire field.

I think "Omega Generation" is more appropriate.

And think of the effects of all that light pollution on humans and wildlife! It keeps us from sleeping as well as we would otherwise (assuming some of it leaks through many of our windows) and it screws up the nocturnal navigation systems of sea turtles, moths, june bugs, mayflies, and probably a million other species.

The amount of energy being devoted to the green transition should be popularized. It would be a telling metric.

@bumblebee9337 we're well into extreme energy with coal and then there's the true cost of fracking. But you're right.

What do you purpose for an alternative?

@@DanA-nl5uo humans using energy only for essential things so that we have enough for the transition whilst using less total energy overall. We should also not delude ourselves that transitioning to rebuildables(renewables) means we'll be able to go back to our extravagant use of resources because it will not provide us with enough energy to do that. Which is a good thing because the more energy we have, the more we trash the environment. I personally am happy to live in a mud hut surrounded by a large permaculture garden.

@@bumblebee9337 yes, it would be good to know this figure in terms of an overall percentage and how much Co2 it will produce.

I suspect us peasants will be left alone. The Nazis found that bullets were too expensive in their elimination plans, hence the gas chambers. I don't think there will be enough energy to chase us down and implant chips. Us feral types will be left alone to work the potato and wheat fields, as long as we bring in our taxes to the local ganglord/warlord.

Automatically Incompetent with your point in mind.

Lucky too be 75

Thank you for the good news! There's hope for humanity after all!

@brushstroke3733 Yes, there will be survivors. Sadly, many think our unsustainable way of life will continue long into the future. I hope I'm wrong and they are right.

@@grahammewburn I hope you're right. Because if we keep going the way we're going, the military/industrial/pharma/tech/media/government complex will have us all tightly in their grasp (they already do.) I think the only thing that might stop Big Brother from becoming an even scarier entity than Orwell imagined is running out of resources to power the superorganism.

@@karlkessler6017 Kilowatt hours are convertible to joules, kilocalories, BTUs and horsepower. There are conversion tables and calculators online. Thus 1700 kWh = 6.12 gigajoules of energy and .6 kWh or human energy = .00216 gigajoules = 2160 kilojoules = 516.252 kilocalories. Here is a good definition of kWh for you. "The kilowatt hour is a composite unit of energy with 1 kW⋅h being equivalent to 1 kilowatt (1 kW) of power sustained for 1 hour. One watt is equal to 1 J/s. One kilowatt hour is 3.6 megajoules, which is the amount of energy converted if work is done at an average rate of one thousand watts for one hour." Nate is talking about the energy you expend when you burn a barrel of oil and (presumably) the energy expended by a human doing some sort of work in 8 hours or 64.5 kcal/hour. These are conventional numbers often used on the Web, but I think the value for a human is too low. The calculation is also kinked because work is all about doing tasks and very little time is spent sweating and grunting. [The working day, whether in an office or on the farm is not like playing soccer or running all day long.] My calculation is 125 kcal/hr throughout the waking day of 16 hours (2000 kilocalories) and 500 kilocaloris for 8 hours of sleep. I checked this calculation, while writing my first book, by wearing a heart rate monitor with a chest strap and doing my usual 12 hours a day of farm work. My calculations were within a 95% confidence interval. You can do the same experiment yourself. Get a heart rate monitor with a chest strap (Polar makes good ones) and just wear it all day long. You should be able to set your readings for either kilocalories burned or watts produced. Divide by hours wearing the strap for the rate per hour. The point here is that work and power are a red herring for dealing with the effects of fossil fuels on the environment. It is all about the energy expended, which generates heat and gases into the environment. Many analysts, wittingly or unwittingly, confuse the issue in an attempt to flog their latest product, whether it is renewable energy, EVs or some other product where they do not do a REAL energy accounting. The calculations also get kinked because some of the 6.12 gigajoules of energy in a barrel of oil get wasted turning it into gasoline, kerosene, etc Nate and Art Berman have gone into this in depth. Finally, check out this calculation. 8.095 billion people on the planet, at 2000 kcal/day, produce the equivalent of burning 11.072 million barrels of oil in heat discharged into the environment every day. Every day. This is 98.3% of Russia's production of 11.263 million barrels of oil per day. So . . . the population of humans on this planet expends almost the same amount of heat as another Russia. Clearly, the overpopulation of this planet, especially the overpopulation of wasteful Americans, is a huge problem. As I have been saying for many, many years now, the laws of physics are on my side. I never had children for this very reason.

​​​@@karlkessler6017 My earlier reply didn't make it past the censors, so I will be quick with this one. Power = energy over time. Kilowatt hours can be converted to joules of energy. In other words, how much heat is expended if you burn it (oil) or move about doing something (humans). 1700 kWh = 6.1 gigajoules of heat expended into the environment. .6 kWh = 2160 kilojoules, which is actually too low. A human actually expends 2000+ kilocalories per day or 8368+ kilojoules/day. The heat expended by "generating power" or "doing work" is the problem. You wouldn't be the first one to be confused by this. Consider this: the heat expended by 8 billion humans each day, whether working or not, is nearly equal to the amount of oil produced by Russia each day (which is burned to generate power). Over 11 million barrels/day. Efficiency is another topic, but you can measure how much heat you expend doing work by human power or fossil fuel power. The human wins hands down.

@@karlkessler6017 Yes efficiency is an attribute of a power conversion system, which speaks to my first post. Keep in mind that the energy in a barrel of oil can be converted to power, just as the energy in a human can be converted to power. The human is a store of potential energy, just as the barrel of oil is. You can say that the human is the engine that uses fuel (food) to do work and is more akin to a car engine rather than the fuel that powers the car, but that is just niggling over terms. Nate's overall point is that we get more power from fossil fuel energy to do work than human energy applied to do work. This has proven to have a HUGE downside over the last 200 years. My point is that we can mitigate our present polycrisis by adopting manual labor to get things done because we are more efficient than engines that run on fossil fuels. This is not a game of one-upmanship over terms. It is a concerted effot to get people to change their behavior.

Have you seen the data in the video?

Keep telling yourself that you might convince yourself that there can be endless growth on finite resources

But you don't address the impacts of global warming and other polycrisis issues. I suppose that billions will perish as a result of unbearable heat, floods, crop failures, gang killings, etc., but that doesn't matter a bit to the super wealthy. They will simply arrange for the nuclear waste to be buried in the nearest impoverished neighborhood.

And what will power our DeLoreans? Mr. Fusions?? Or will we all have electic cars and if so, where will we source all that lithium and other metals from? And will those electric cars work well in cold weather, towing heavy loads when necessary??

Nukes were last century. Most of the world is moving on to Mr. Fusion in the Sky -- Solar PV, that is. Solar PV is now the largest new build in the real world US, 2024. Meanwhile Nukes are shutting down (Peak US Nukes = 104 Reactors, down to 94 Reactors in 2024). No utility wants a New Nuke -- they are now: Most Expensive, Slowest, Long-Term Dirty, and Highest Risk new generation, EVER.

@@brushstroke3733 Long-Term Electric Transport is not even battery based. With Electric Roadways, vehicles draw power directly from the Grid Connect Roadway. Here is a truck, in the snow. Example >>> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-27100u7IcII.html

Thanks for your comment . I’ll have follow up with more details/examples soon

Perhaps when AI "takes over" it will decide that it doesn't need much. The will to power and destruction is a human error and may not even be relevant to a world controlled by AI. Let me know if this happens. If I am still alive, you will have to find me as I will be out in the back working in the garden.

He did a full interview last year (I think) with Art Burman with a lot more detail if you have time for greater depth. Really interesting.

yes...I think like You...although I started from the Ecology pov. Meadows and Meadows, limits to growth. They just didn't imagine the innovations in Financialization.

The problem is overpopulation. Living in a suburb is the best way to live.

Thx. I stand corrected. Been 25 years since I had to remember stick symbols and the like!

@@thegreatsimplification Haha. I only know that cause I'm an old school gamer who has been buying their cards since the 90's