Six Impossible things before Breakfast from the BBC. Aunty Beeb has been at the Gin again. “The Devils Excrement” #Oil #Debt #Brexit #EndGame #EndTimesEschatology #FOMO #FUD and #SCUDS

 September 25, 2019

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Six Impossible things before Breakfast from the BBC. Aunty Beeb has been at the Gin again.

https://www.corbettreport.com/bigoil/

The continued decline in the BBC is evident from this article appearing on why the Oil Price became so important.

In the new age of Goebbels Cobblers, the BBC can be guaranteed to ask the most stupid question followed up with the most superficial, mendacious & inane of answers.

Watch the Corbet videos and this is a very good opportunity to look at Money Debt, Energy-Based economics and the Geo-Politics of Feudal Imperialism.

‘The devil’s excrement’: How did oil price become so important?

By Tim Harford Presenter, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

 

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Image copyright EPA Image caption Edwin Drake was the first American to successfully drill for oil

It was 27 August 1859, and a crucial message had been sent. Entrepreneur Edwin Drake’s last financial backer had finally lost patience. Pay off your debts, give up and come home, the message read.

Drake had been hoping to find “rock oil”, a brownish unrefined “crude” oil that sometimes bubbled near the surface of western Pennsylvania. He planned to refine it into kerosene, for lamps – a substitute for increasingly expensive whale oil.

There would also be less useful by-products, such as gasoline, but if he couldn’t find a buyer for that he could always pour it away.

The message had been sent, but Drake had not yet received it when his drill bit punctured an underground reservoir full of crude oil under pressure. From 69 ft (21m) beneath the surface, the oil began to rise.

The whales had been saved, and the world was about to change.

Just a few miles south and a few years later, came a hint of what lay in store.

When oil was struck at Pithole, Pennsylvania, in 1864, “there were not 50 inhabitants within half a dozen miles”, according to the New York Times.

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Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Pithole City at the height of its short-lived oil boom in 1865

A year later, Pithole had at least 10,000 inhabitants, 50 hotels, one of the country’s busiest post offices, two telegraph stations and dozens of brothels.

A few men made fortunes, but a real economy is complex and self-sustaining. Pithole was neither, and within another year, it was gone.

Its oil boom did not last, but our thirst for the fuel grew and grew. The modern economy is drenched in oil.

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy highlights the inventions, ideas and innovations that helped create the economic world.

It is broadcast on the BBC World Service. You can find more information about the programme’s sources and listen to all the episodes online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

It’s the source of more than a third of the world’s energy.

That’s more than coal, and more than twice as much as nuclear, hydroelectric and renewable energy sources combined.

Oil and gas together provide a quarter of our electricity, and the raw material for most plastics.

Then there’s transport.

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Image copyright Getty Images

Edwin Drake may have questioned who would buy gasoline, but the internal combustion engine was about to give him an answer. From cars to trucks, cargo ships to jet planes, oil-derived fuel still moves us – and stuff – around.

No wonder the price of oil is arguably the most important single price in the world.

In 1973, when some Arab states declared an embargo on sales to several rich nations, prices surged from $3 to $12 a barrel in just six months.

It led to a global slowdown, with US recessions following subsequent price spikes in 1978, 1990, and 2001. Some economists even believe that record high oil prices played an important role in the global recession of 2008, which is conventionally blamed on the banking crisis alone.

As oil goes, so goes the economy.

So why did we become so excruciatingly dependent on the stuff?

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Image copyright Getty Images

Daniel Yergin’s magisterial history of oil, The Prize, begins with a dilemma for Winston Churchill.

Churchill was made head of the Royal Navy in 1911.

One of his first decisions was whether the British Empire would meet the challenge of an expansionist Germany with new battleships powered by safe, secure Welsh coal, or by oil from faraway Persia – modern-day Iran.

Why would anyone rely on such an insecure source? Because oil-fired battleships would accelerate more quickly and sustain a higher speed, required fewer men to deal with the fuel and would have more capacity for guns and ammunition.

Oil was simply a better fuel than coal.

Churchill’s “fateful plunge” in April 1912 reflected the same logic that has governed our dependence on oil – and shaped global politics – ever since.

After Churchill’s decision, the British Treasury bought a majority stake in the Anglo-Persian oil company – the ancestor of BP.

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Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption An oil strike at an Anglo-Persian Oil Company field in 1909

In 1951, it was nationalised by the government of Iran. Our company, protested the British. Our oil, responded the Iranians. The argument would be repeated around the world over the subsequent decades.

Some countries did well. Saudi Arabia is one of the richest on the planet, thanks to its large oil reserves.

Its state-owned oil company, ASaudi Aramco, is worth more than Apple or Google or Amazon.

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Image copyright Reuters
Image caption Saudi Aramco operates in 28 locations around the world and employs around 76,000 people

Still, nobody would mistake Saudi Arabia for a complex, sophisticated economy such as that of Japan or Germany. It’s perhaps a bit more like Pithole on a grander scale.

Elsewhere, from Iraq to Iran, Venezuela to Nigeria, few oil-rich countries have prospered from the discovery. Economists call it the “curse of oil”.

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, Venezuela’s oil minister in the early 1960s, had a more vivid description. “It is the devil’s excrement,” he declared in 1975. “We are drowning in the devil’s excrement.”

More things that made the modern economy:

Why is it a problem to have lots of oil?

Exporting it pushes up the value of your currency – which can make everything other than oil prohibitively expensive to produce at home.

That means it can be hard to develop manufacturing or complex service industries.

Historically, many politicians have tried to monopolise their country’s oil for themselves and their allies. Dictatorships are not uncommon. There is money – for some – but such economies tend to be thin and brittle.

That’s one reason we might hope for something to replace oil. Climate change, obviously, is another.

But oil has so far stubbornly resisted giving way to batteries. This is because machines that move around need to carry their own source of power with them – the lighter the better.

A kilogram of petrol stores as much energy as 60kg of batteries, and has the convenient property of disappearing after use. Empty batteries, alas, are just as heavy as full ones.

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Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Electric car company Tesla is also developing pioneering battery technology

Electric cars are finally starting to break through. Electric jumbo jets are a tougher challenge.

There was a time when it seemed as though oil might simply start to run out – “peak oil” was the phrase – pushing prices ever higher, and giving us the impetus to move to a clean, renewable economy.

In fact, oil is being discovered far more quickly than it is being consumed.

This is partly thanks to the rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, a controversial process in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped underground under high pressure to release oil and gas.

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Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption The US Energy Information Administration estimates that about half of the total US crude oil production comes from fracking

Fracking is more like manufacturing than traditional exploration and production.

It’s standardised, enjoying rapid productivity gains and the process starts and stops depending on whether the price is right.

Many critics have expressed fears about its potential long-term environmental consequences.

However, the Permian Basin – home of the US fracking industry – already produces more oil than the 14 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) group, apart from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

It seems we are still drowning in the Devil’s Excrement, and may continue to do so for some time.

The author writes the Financial Times’s Undercover Economist column. 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is broadcast on the BBC World Service. You can find more information about the programme’s sources and listen to all the episodes online or subscribe to the programme podcast.

How & Why Big Oil Conquered The World

• 10/06/2017

Oil. The 19th century was transformed by it. The 20th century was shaped by it. And the 21st century is moving beyond it. But who gave birth to the oil industry? What have they done with the immense wealth and power that it has granted them? And what are they planning to do with that power in a post-carbon world? This is the remarkable true story of the oiligarchs and the world they have created.

PART ONE: HOW BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD

CLICK HERE for an mp4 video download of this documentary

CLICK HERE for an mp3 audio version of this documentary

SCROLL DOWN for a full, hyperlinked transcript of this documentary

PART TWO: WHY BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD

CLICK HERE for an mp4 video download of this documentary

CLICK HERE for an mp3 audio version of this documentary

http://priceofoil.org/content/uploads/2011/01/DrillingIntoDebt.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20190915072126/http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZHfkDjveZzYXU3UHhLem1HQms/view?usp=sharing

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https://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2019/02/14/distinction-rebellion-settled-seance-and-psuedo-climastrology/comment-page-1/#comment-5349

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And This Just In,

https://lionelmedia.com/2019/09/24/climate-hoax-stepford-shill-greta-thunberg-charms-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-with-your-empty-words/#respond

 

“You are failing us but young people are starting to understand your betrayal.” Counterfeit. Fugazy. Inauthentic. Unauthentic. Not real. Staged. A poseur. Some climate parvenu. A weather snake oil dilettante. An exceedingly scary and shockingly vacuous young lady, put up and propped up by climate hucksters pushing and pulling for the ultimate brass ring, the big enchilada — carbon taxing. That’s what everything’s about. It’s about cap and trade, track and tax, carbon exchanges and carbon taxing. The illusive and mythical and magical and phantasmagoric carbon footprint. It’s a part of our world now. Antifa thugs, global protesters leaving parade routes with garbage strewn. Incomprehensible logolalic platitudes. Alas.

 

 

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/09/02/155-the-art-of-dark-sky-thinking/

Author: rogerglewis

https://about.me/rogerlewis Looking for a Job either in Sweden or UK. Freelance, startups, will turń my hand to anything.

3 thoughts on “Six Impossible things before Breakfast from the BBC. Aunty Beeb has been at the Gin again. “The Devils Excrement” #Oil #Debt #Brexit #EndGame #EndTimesEschatology #FOMO #FUD and #SCUDS”

  2. rogerglewis
    on September 29, 2019 at 12:24 pm said:
    Don,
    I do not try to convince anyone of anything.
    I do not say anyone is wrong in the totality of any claims which they make including yourself.
    What I do ask for is the evidence and the reasoned arguments posited with the aid of those arguments and that data.
    These are very complex systems and the binary and proscriptive tone adopted by many who attach themselves to the tribal polarities generates more heat than light.
    The insistence that arguments have been carried by evidence when patently that is not the case are rather tedious. The CO2 arguments detract particularly from the environmental arguments and the arguments related to resource depletion and exhaustion of other organic systems.
    The criticisms I have of the intellectual dishonesty regularly displayed now in these discussions at Tims excellent blog here remain.
    Have a great Sunday.
    https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/journal-of-integral-theory-and-practice/

    Steven B Kurtz
    on September 29, 2019 at 3:29 pm said:
    @Roger

    Wilber, despite being brilliant in some areas, has for decades assumed that non-physical/energetic things exist. He is far from alone, as theologians and some philosophers have done so for millennia. As appealing as those positions are to Homo superstitious (estimated 80+%), there is zero shareable evidence for such stuff. The attempted ‘proofs’ I’ve seen are either circular or tautological. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/66/Circular-Reasoning.
    https://www.thefreedictionary.com/tautology

    Similar techniques have been used by those claiming disembodied mind and panpsychism. An Australian author, Reg Morrison, has written about mysticism as an evolved trait which has outgrown its usefulness now that we’ve become too successful. (overshoot) See:
    http://regmorrison.edublogs.org/articles/

    drtimmorgan
    on September 29, 2019 at 4:17 pm said:
    We do know of one non-physical, non-energetic thing that does exist – thought.

    Moreover, the idea that mysticism (or anything beyond the tangible) has been rendered obsolete by advances in our knowledge seems to put a lot of faith in the concept of ‘advance’.

    I’m not a subscriber to any established religion, but I certainly don’t dismiss the concept that there might be ‘something beyond us’. Perhaps the most rigorous philosophical investigation of this topic, carried out many years ago by a retired judge, concluded (a) that there probably is a driving intelligence behind the universe, but (b) that this is likely to bear no resemblance at all to the Deity postulated by religion. For one thing, this intelligence is likely to be subjective (akin to our subconscious minds), not objective (like our conscious minds). It might thus be likened to a “highest law of science”.

    Steven B Kurtz
    on September 29, 2019 at 4:29 pm said:
    Tim,

    Energy is physical. If anyone can evidence non-caloric thought, a Nobel likely awaits!

    Cheers,
    Steve

    rogerglewis
    on September 30, 2019 at 5:06 am said:
    Your comment is awaiting moderation.
    Hello Stephen,
    Ken Wilber is an interesting Philosopher and Psychologist I find his ideas interesting. Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of Morphic Resonance is very interesting as well, and one which I believe has much to recommend it.
    Regarding Philosophy of Mind, it is a huge subject and my own interests tend towards the work of Wittgenstein and Linguistics. Ultimately I am though most persuaded by the Father of American Pragmatism CS Pierce.
    Here is a link to my Essay, why are we here which I wrote in reaction to David Malones Documentary series of the same title,

    https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/why-are-we-here-an-essay-provoked-by-golem-xivs-david-malones-latest-documentary-series/
    In all matters epistemological and philosophical I demure ultimately to C S Pierce and this made up quote from ´We Pragmatists ´

    CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: ´´In order to reason well …. it is absolutely necessary to possess … such virtues as intellectual honesty and sincerity and a real love of truth (2.82). The cause [of the success of scientificinquirers] has been that the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to know how things really were … (1-34).[Genuine inquiry consists I in diligent inquiry into truth for truth’s sake(1.44), … in actually drawing the bow upon truth with intentness in the eye, with energy in the arm (1.235). [When] it is no longer the reasoning which determines what the conclusion shall be, but … the conclusion which determines what the reasoning shall be … this is sham reasoning…. The effect of this shamming is that men come to look upon reasoning as mainly decorative…´´. http://web.ncf.ca/ag659/308/Peirce-Rorty-Haack.pdfPierces seminal essay How to make our ideas clear is also a great starting off point for embracing such truth as we might be fortunate enough to encounter in our allotted time on this blue marble suspended in eternity.http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html

    Davids Documentary is available on Curiosity stream. David and I are good friends and you may be familiar with some of his other Documentary Work for BBC Horizon ( Icon Earth) or Independently (Dangerous Knowledge) or of his Father Adrian Malone, Cosmos with Carl Sagan and The Age of Uncertainty with GK Galbraith.
    https://www.whyarewehere.tv/about/

    Here is a link to My trilogy of Poems which informs my Novel Conquest fo dough which I have also made a web site for also linked.

    https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/globalisation-un-entangled-a-found-poem-cipher-of-globalism/

    https://theconquestofdough.weebly.com/

    Getting back to Wilber the Paper by the late great Bernard Lietaer Integral money
    is hugely en-riching and AQAL analysis of monetary perspectives bears much fruit
    Jain Many Sidedness and Maimonides souces of Contradiction are equally helpful templates for Making our ideas clear.

    http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html

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