Shipping & Ports the Supply Chain Problems

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-10-16 11:24:14

Ships are backed up in California, Port of San Diego was asked to with Los Angeles cargo ship backlog then other Ports started to back up with Trucks. Europe is not without issues, German a coal fire plant was closing, in England the British petrol gasoline shortages come in major cities, the Army was asked to deliver supplies. Theer might even be an element of inflation hitting it can cost you $10.50 to buy $8.00 worth of stuff today, next month it goes up even more and the US Dollar value going down? Others say it can simply be explained by a Truck Driver Shortage the lack of Truckers is Adding Troubles into the Supply Chain Dilemma. Not anything to do with Vaccine Mandates but some Drivers Just for fear of being exposed, decided to not be on the road anymore? A number of conspiracy people say its the big royal cabal machine, its all organized and being done to boost inflation, suck more money from America in a 'conspiracy' if nothing else. Some others say shipping and trucking is simply down, nobody’s applying for these jobs, and the trucker or ship companies don’t understand why and don't know how to turn it around.

Hundreds of ships are sitting out in the Pacific Ocean - hundreds of hours in delay and tens of thousands of containers not being unloaded in several California Ports. In the media the blame gets shifted and they claim there's no one to unload the containers. everything was working fine but now in a downturn they say infrastructure just isn't there to handle this much freight. Others say there is this Covid global pandemic going on, the excuse is Covid and that has affected all areas of the supply chain.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/news/ca … -shipping/
https://www.popsci.com/technology/recor … ing-entry/
https://usatruckloadshipping.com/whats- … ng-delays/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … risis.html

Port Congestion, No Truckers, Backlogs, Political Chaos? Eventually the small stores will have no product to sell, putting the Mom & Pops out of business?

Why Biden's plan for 24/7 California port operations won't solve the supply-chain crisis
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-bid … is-2021-10
Biden tries to tame inflation by having LA port open 24/7
https://omaha.com/news/national/govt-an … ec8fb.html

Biden announces plan to ‘speed up the delivery of goods’ across America
https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/biden-a … a-80566078

Washington Ports Reject Biden’s Supply Chain Fix
https://www.gopusa.com/washington-ports … chain-fix/
Florida to shipping companies: Our ports are open
https://www.wtvy.com/2021/10/08/florida … -are-open/

SpaceNut · 2021-10-16 11:42:25

Some are saying that We've reached peak supply chain crisis - it'll only get better from here, according to Jefferies

Then again what's-causing-america-s-massive-supply-chain-disruptions

The blame game lazy-crane-operators-making-250-000-a-year-exacerbating-port-crisis-truckers-say

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-10-18 10:25:18

We also seen this with fuel shortages in England back and forth between Britain and France with Brexit and any kind of delay impacts supply. When the ship went sideways in the Suez Egypt, it started to cost the global economy and add to a European Chip shortage acorss some nations of the EU. Then we now see a California problem, it seems to have a social political element to it adding to a backlog of international cargo vessels, with fuel price hikes, an economic downturn, the Covid lockdowns and Crona numbers the small stores and restaurant and businesses and consumers were already feeling the squeeze of a global supply chain under duress. Biden wants some Cranes and Trucks to now work 24/7 get companies like UPS, FedEx working even more, business and people have moved out of California some famous celebrity and engineer like Musk have publically stated they werwe moving out, as people leave empty homes, crime can go up and more move out adding to more labor shortages, the biggest driverfor any delays and backlog in California might be the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Secretary Buttigieg defends taking weeks off with his 'husband' during the crisis and warns supply chain crisis will go into 2022 or longer while US Presdient Biden is expected to talk more on ‘supply chains’. The Southern California ports seem to say they are under staffed and over worked and deny Biden's appeal for non stop operations.

louis · 2021-10-18 16:20:46

No one knows for sure but the World Economic Forum (the Davos lunatics) did predict that supply chain problems would occur...and we know they have ways of making things happen.

There are some political movements that thrive on stability and some that thrive on crisis. The Green-Globalist-PC-Woke-Leftist alliance thrives on crisis.

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

We also seen this with fuel shortages in England back and forth between Britain and France with Brexit and any kind of delay impacts supply. When the ship went sideways in the Suez Egypt, it started to cost the global economy and add to a European Chip shortage acorss some nations of the EU. Then we now see a California problem, it seems to have a social political element to it adding to a backlog of international cargo vessels, with fuel price hikes, an economic downturn, the Covid lockdowns and Crona numbers the small stores and restaurant and businesses and consumers were already feeling the squeeze of a global supply chain under duress. Biden wants some Cranes and Trucks to now work 24/7 get companies like UPS, FedEx working even more, business and people have moved out of California some famous celebrity and engineer like Musk have publically stated they werwe moving out, as people leave empty homes, crime can go up and more move out adding to more labor shortages, the biggest driverfor any delays and backlog in California might be the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Secretary Buttigieg defends taking weeks off with his 'husband' during the crisis and warns supply chain crisis will go into 2022 or longer while US Presdient Biden is expected to talk more on ‘supply chains’. The Southern California ports seem to say they are under staffed and over worked and deny Biden's appeal for non stop operations.

SpaceNut · 2021-10-18 22:35:39

Latest articles are claiming the consumer as to the cause for the issue.
So during lock downs the brick and mortar stores were a danger zone and had reduced numbers so what would you expect to happen with people not going out with reduced store hours as well.
Then the people upped the excess buying since they could not guarantee how long before the next purchase further plugging up the docks when everything is bought over seas....

cvhx8ccozwwvok1emfn6.jpg?v=1630610556

Calliban · 2021-10-18 22:45:30

The supply chain problems reflect an increasing mismatch between financial purchasing power and the ability of the real economy of goods to produce real wealth in the form of tangible goods. This mismatch is laid bare by supply disruptions and rampant inflation. There probably isn't any conspiracy at work, other than the increasingly desperate efforts of elites to keep things going through financial manipulation. It reflects ongoing, real world deterioration in prosperity, as fossil fuel energy supply proves insufficient to maintain growth in the real economy that match financial claims.

SpaceNut · 2021-10-18 22:51:24

That's the multiple rounds of stimulus checks, boosted unemployment amounts which hopefully these have run there course.

kbd512 · 2021-10-19 18:50:43

Louis,

People weren't working for nearly a year. What we're experiencing now is exactly what happens when everyone decides to quit working. Fuel stops flowing, food becomes unavailable, and everything else that you thought you had an infinite supply of, eventually runs out. That's how the real world works, with or without a World Economic Forum. What we really need is a World Reality Forum, where real problems with real consequences are up for discussion, and only realistic solutions are proposed.

Calliban · 2021-10-22 10:23:22

A deeply troubling report.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/20/oil- … cientists/

Quote:

'A team of French government energy scientists are warning that the collapse of the global oil system is coming so rapidly it could derail the transition to a renewable energy system if it doesn’t happen fast enough. In just 13 years, global oil production could enter into a terminal and exponential decline, accompanied by the overall collapse of the global oil and gas industries over the next three decades.

But this is not because the earth is running out of oil and gas. Rather, it’s because they are increasingly eating themselves to stay alive. The oil and gas industries are consuming exponentially more and more energy just to keep extracting oil and gas. That’s why they’ve entered a downwards spiral of increasing costs of production, diminishing profits, rising debt and irreversible economic decline.

The implication is that global energy shortages and price spikes will be a taste of things to come if we stay dependent on fossil fuels. Yet a growing narrative has instead wrongly pinpointed the ‘clean energy transition’ as the culprit.'
**********************************************************************************************

This paper confirms what I have been saying for a while. The rapid collapse in systematic EROI of oil and gas production, is rapidly bringing us close to the point where they produce too little surplus energy to be viable as energy sources. Society has been blindsided by this problem, as physical resources do not appear to be in short supply. The problem is that what remains is lower in grade compared to what we have consumed already. Back in the 1950s, most oil came from onshore, shallow conventional super-giant fields, many of them in the US. The energy cost of this oil was low. The energy equivalent of 1 barrel of oil out of every fifty produced, was reinvested in new oil producing infrastructure. That made oil cheap to produce. It was precisely the low cost of oil, gas and coal in the US, coupled with the new technologies developed during and after WW2, that permitted the explosive growth in living standards in the US between 1945-1973.

The ratio today, with an industry increasingly dominated by shale, offshore and Arctic resources; is about 1 in 7. This is a problem because the economy is an energy driven machine, with a lot of overheads. A lot of energy is used within an economy maintaining and operating essential infrastructure and producing the basic services that keep the population alive. The surplus energy, after that consumed accessing the energy and maintaining essential systems, is what forms the basis of discretionary wealth. With a lot of surplus energy, people's wages will stretch to more than just essentials. And that surplus energy can be reinvested in new infrastructure, that allows even greater wealth to be enjoyed next year.
This is how high surplus energy enabled high rates of economic growth and rapidly rising living standards up until the 1970s.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, surplus energy has effectively been too low to allow real economic growth in most OECD countries. This paper makes clear that, not only is surplus energy continuing to decline on each average barrel, but we are rapidly approaching a discontinuity, at which point these fossil fuels will no longer sustain at all the systems that we have in place. It will be impossible for consumers to afford a price that is profitable for producers. We are already at or close to this point and the researchers predict rapid declines in oil production after 2034. I suspect, that global oil production has already peaked around October 2018. The rapid deterioration in EROI of remaining oil production, suggests that decline rates in net energy from oil, will be far more rapid than were the growth rates of energy yielded from oil prior to peak.

The energy transition being sold to the public as a solution to 'climate change' is predicated on the massive expansion of ambient energy harvesting technologies. The problem with this solution, is that power density of these sources is too low to allow for high EROI, especially when the cost and added complexity associated with intermittent energy flows is dealt with. Hence, the solution that is being adopted by power elites, may stabilise declining EROI at a low value, but will not restore the wealth that we once had. We appear to be falling into the energy trap.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/

Needless to say, none of this bodes well for our ability to colonise other planets. We are attempting to undertake an ambitious programme, requiring very large surplus energy and wealth, at a time in which the energetic basis for that wealth is collapsing. The future looks poorer, harder and a lot more local.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-10-22 11:11:04)

tahanson43206 · 2021-10-22 15:18:30

For Calliban re #9

At some point, the cost of oil/hydrocarbons from gift deposits should rise to meet the cost of oil/hydrocarbons produced by atomic plants.

There are some cultures where atomic power is accepted and in use, and others where fear has driven the population to forego this option.

Those who are accepting of atomic power, and willing to make the investments in education needed to support it, will inevitably become the providers, and their customers will accept whatever price is on offer.

The solution to the problem of abundant energy is a social problem. The technical solutions are well known.

In the United States, we have a mix of attitudes, with some States wanting to eliminate nuclear power, and others embracing and expanding it.

Fusion is coming but I don't expect it to arrive before the crisis you've described is well advanced, and ** that ** crisis is ON TOP of the climate crisis we humans have created for ourselves by mindless exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves.

This is most definitely a business opportunity for those with the vision to see it, and the organizational skills to direct the labor of human beings to achieve it.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-10-22 18:06:44

As large as these ships are getting they would be able to bring more cargo if they were nuclear powered.

The corporate greed of the past is catching up with the companies now that can not even get their goods into the country...

Its going to be about another 9 months before some industries come back to begin productions at a huge cost to restart what should have never left....

kbd512 · 2021-10-22 18:16:59

Eventually, every Chicken Little will be proven correct, but probably not within your lifetime, or your children's lifetimes, or their children's lifetimes.

Other analysts have pointed out that technology disruptions like solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, batteries for storage and electric vehicles (EVs) are on track to eliminate demand for oil and gas over the next decade. Oil, therefore, faces a perfect storm from both above and below.

Yes, there's a perfect storm of BS being peddled by unscrupulous and/or mathematically illiterate people, but where can I find "the news", or simply the "news-ish"?

This was my favorite part from the article you posted about:

Previous discussions about peak oil, the scientists say, were too polarised to be helpful. So they call for a re-opening of the debate based on these new findings, not because we are running out of oil (the authors point out that “we clearly have too much fossil fuels stock to respect ambitious climate targets”), but because our economic ability to access the oil affordably is declining at an exponential rate that decision-makers aren’t talking about.

Translation:
Prior debates were without merit, because their ideologically motivated ideas about energy were utterly infeasible back then, but this time will be "different", because they need to push their ideology "now more than ever", since it's so blatantly obvious that it's not having the desired effect. We couldn't make their "green religion" work for any reasonable cost, and we still can't, so now it's time to attempt to foment even more "panic at the pump", to push "green religion" harder than ever before. We need to get rich off of the gullibility and stupidity of the general public, either by jacking up the price of oil and gas or by jacking up the price of "green energy", through the banning of any economic alternatives. They flat-out admit that fact in the article.

The real agenda:

So if we delay the clean energy transformation for too long, there might not be enough energy to sustain the transition in the first place – leading to a ‘worst of all worlds’ scenario: the collapse of both the fossil fuel system and the ability to create a viable alternative.

This "energy transition" is an oxymoron if ever there was one, because it's simply not taking place. Now someone is worried that there won't be enough oil and gas for said transition to take place. That's perfectly circular logic.

Humanity went from having very little energy without coal / oil / gas, to having lots of energy with coal / oil / gas.

Why is it necessary to have any oil and gas to accomplish the goal of re-achieving perpetual energy poverty, which is precisely what humanity had when humanity was totally reliant upon the wind and sunlight for energy?

Calliban · 2021-10-22 19:23:42

The Peak Oil theories were right to begin with. Forecasters like Deffeyes predicted that global conventional crude oil production would peak between 2005-2010, with peak liquids between 2010-2020. Conventional peaked around 2005. Since then, they started lumping condensates in with crude, even though condensates are really LPG. Total liquids appears to have peaked in October 2018.

What the Peak Oil theorists did not anticipate was the effect that very low interest rates and QE would have on the oil industry. This allowed billions of dollars to be invested in things like shale and tar sands, producing millions of dollars of oil. They did not anticipate that this would happen, because no central bank had really done it before. It made the shale revolution possible. But shale was never really very profitable because of the high depletion rates of wells and the need for constant drilling. Rig counts have fallen dramatically since 2014. No one would bother with shale if there were enough high grade conventional oil in the world. There isn't.

From the article:

“In 1950, the EROI of global oil production was really high, at about 44:1 (meaning, for every unit of energy we put in, we were getting a whopping 44 out). Yet as the graph below from the new study illustrates, this value has undergone a shockingly steep decline.

“By 2020, it reached around 8:1, and is projected to decline and plateau to around 6.7 from 2040 onwards.

“By 2024 – within the next four years – the amount of energy we are using for global oil production is going to increase to 25% of energy production. In other words, the world will be using a quarter of the energy produced from oil just to keep producing that oil.

“But instead of getting more efficient, fossil fuel technologies are getting less efficient – which is why the quantity of energy we need to keep producing oil is exponentially increasing.

“By 2050, fully half of the energy extracted from global oil reserves will need to be put back into new extraction to keep producing oil. The authors have an interesting name for this self-defeating phenomenon: they call it, “energy cannibalism.”

As I noted before, oil and gas are becoming less and less profitable as energy sources.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-10-22 19:27:22)

kbd512 · 2021-10-22 23:58:22

Calliban,

Believing something doesn't ground said belief in objective reality. You of all people should know that.

Anyway... Three little "open secrets" about the industry:

1. Nobody tells the truth about how much oil and gas they currently have, because if they did, then the reported reserves get nationalized, in just about any country you care to name off, including the US of A. It's a perverse disincentive to be honest in reporting of known reserves. This deliberately makes independent analysis difficult to impossible to achieve. Whenever I hear that some scientist has predicted something about the oil and gas supply, I have a good laugh, because I know for a fact that any data they're working with has been deliberately misreported. If you ever find an honest survey out there, let us know, so we can tout it as an "industry first".

2. You'd have to be pretty obtuse to think that those doing the producing will simply produce as much or as little as some specific person or group of people think they should. OPEC, anyone?

Peak Oil: Not Just Wrong but Invalid

From the article:

Although the insistence that “peak oil” was imminent has largely faded from public view, it remains a valuable illustration of how poorly developed theories can nonetheless catch the public’s imagination, including those who should know better. So what were the theories and methods that were employed to support peak oil, arguments that a library of articles and books repeated to create a false narrative (and, undoubtedly, a ‘97% consensus’).
The original claim underlying peak oil was that resource scarcity would cause oil production to decline in the near future and that nothing could be done to alter that trajectory. Two retired oil geologists—Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère—justified this idea by making their estimates of recoverable resources using a private database of oil field sizes fitted to the so-called Hubbert curve, a bell curve said to represent production for a region.
Their theory was that since production followed a bell curve, fitting production data for a country or region to a curve would demonstrate the entire trajectory of supply and yield an estimate of the total resource. Also, once half the resource was produced, production would decline; and conversely, if production was declining, then the peak had been reached and half the resource produced.
Actually, though, production in a region rarely follows a bell curve nor do regions necessarily experience a single peak. As a result, this method repeatedly predicted premature peaks for many countries and for the world itself.
Laherrère attempted to reinforce his claims by the use of so-called creaming curves, ordering discoveries by date to show how their sizes decline over time; the asymptote of the curve would then represent the total resource. This method is employed by conventional petroleum geologists, but with this understanding: It works only for a given basin, not a combination of them; it cannot predict the discovery of new basins; and it requires stable estimates of field size.
The peak-oil theorists ignored the first argument, insisted both that no new basins remain to be discovered and that their field size data was stable. (However, they elsewhere chided economists for not recognizing that field size data was often revised upwards.)
The shortcoming was made worse by the insistence that the results were robust, which they were not; as regards the Middle East, for example, creaming curves yielded an estimate that was revised upwards three times. It was simply asserted that the final estimate was correct, and earlier ones not, without recognizing the implication that the method did not yield a stable estimate but one which evolved over time.
Another freshman mistake was to rely on graphs of cumulative data, specifically discoveries and production, which Laherrère noted seem to resemble each other. The first thing taught in freshman statistics is that cumulative numbers are meaningless: next year’s GDP may change substantially compared to this year’s, but if you put a century’s cumulative GDP on a graph you can see no difference.
However, Laherrère in particular believed he has created a ‘model’ whereby he could predict a country’s production by looking at its cumulative discovery trend, although his graphs showing individual discoveries in a country made it clear that they were highly variable and related poorly to subsequent production trends.
The one thing in common with these methods was that they represented curve-fitting, just extrapolating discovery and production trends (and sometimes not accurately). Because some of the proponents are geologists, they claimed that the work was “scientific” and derided their opponents as economists, even though many petroleum engineers and geologists disagreed with their work.
...
More Peak Oil Fallacy
A certain amount of circular, reality-defying logic was also employed in peak-oil theory. Aside from the bizarre suggestion that only geology affected supply, not politics or economics, the insistence that estimates of field sizes did not change and that technology could not increase the recoverable portion of oil was nonsensical from the beginning. Recovery rates have been growing gradually over time, and numerous new methods and inventions have greatly increased the amount of oil that can be extracted.
But for the creaming-curve method to function this had not to be so to function, and in response, peak oil advocates like Jean Laherrère would claim that overall field size increases occurred only in the United States, owing to its industry’s reliance on a more restrictive and conservative definition of reserves. Yet various other sources all noted field size increases in other international settings. And when asked about new technologies, peak-oil theorists claimed that they only increased production rates, not recovery. Again, all the evidence is to the contrary.
Lastly, in a move that should puzzle the typical high school math student, Princeton geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes developed the “Hubbert Linearization” method. This involves graphing annual production divided by cumulative production on the y-axis against cumulative wells, production, or time on the x-axis.
Naturally, the result is a declining curve because the y-axis denominator, cumulative production, is growing over time. After a century, you get a curve that looks like it’s heading towards zero, an inevitable result that Deffeyes used to predict world oil production would peak in November 2005.
Obviously, the very structure of this “equation” means that any data series will yield the same results, whether it’s global oil production, U.S. GDP, or sales of Hostess Twinkies. All that is being demonstrated is that the annual level becomes small compared to the total historical production as time passes.

3. 60% of the oil contained in all existing reservoirs was not extractable until highly specialized liquid polymers came into existence in the past few years. The liquid polymers we currently use can recover approximately 50% of that otherwise un-extractable oil. This has been repeatedly demonstrated now in real oil wells, so it's not a lab bench top science experiment. The French were the pioneers of this new extraction technology. The "catch" to this new technology is that the polymer is custom-designed for extracting oil from each formation, so it's not some kind of silver bullet, much like every other technological solution in existence. That said, if we go back to recover a mere 25% of the oil from the wells we've drilled, then we're talking about a truly massive amount of energy.

Profitability has almost nothing to do with availability of the natural resource and almost everything to do with management decisions. I could spend the rest of my life expounding on this topic, but because I have better things to do with my time, I won't.

Calliban · 2021-10-23 06:34:31

'Although the insistence that “peak oil” was imminent has largely faded from public view, it remains a valuable illustration of how poorly developed theories can nonetheless catch the public’s imagination, including those who should know better. So what were the theories and methods that were employed to support peak oil, arguments that a library of articles and books repeated to create a false narrative (and, undoubtedly, a ‘97% consensus’).'

The problem with the whole 'peak oil is false' mantra is that it conflicts with real data. Peak oil production has already occurred for most producing countries. The global production curve is simply the sum of individual country curves. The world has been relying upon increasing output from a handful of producing countries, to offset declines virtually everywhere else since around 2005.

http://peakoilbarrel.com/usa-and-world-oil-production/

Since 2005, the world has relied on production increases from just five nations: US, Russia, Canada, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, to offset declines virtually everywhere else. And production increases in the US and Canada, came at enormous capital cost, from what were previously considered to be low grade resources. This was only affordable due to the unprecedented cheap money policies of the past 12 years. We do not know with any certainty, how much reserve production capacity Saudi Arabia and Iraq have remaining or indeed, what their oil reserves even are. But we do know that most other OPEC producers have had declining production for some time now. Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field has been surviving on water water injection since around the turn of the century. And a peak in total OPEC production is now 5 years behind us, in November 2016. To reverse that overall peak, Saudi, Iraq and UAE must produce at least another 8 million barrels per day on top of existing production, whilst other member states must halt decline. Is it possible? It will require a huge amount of new investment if it is.

https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-october-2021/

Surfactant polymers have been used in enhanced oil recovery for a while. Carbon dioxide injection, sea water injection, heat injection as well. Water and CO2 injection displace oil, whilst surfactants and heat injection reduce viscosity. And these techniques have cushioned decline rates in the US, the North Sea, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. They will continue to do so, where they are practically achievable. But these measures do so at great expense, both in financial terms and in terms of net energy.

The overall conclusion of the report, is that trend EROI of oil production is deteriorating. It is this that ultimately sets the hard limit for global oil production. When consumers can no longer afford to pay the price at which production is profitable, then production must fall. Because cheap money policies have provided so much of what enabled increasing oil production over the past decade, we may in fact be reaching a tipping point, in which rising interest rates result in more rapid declines than was previously foreseen.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-10-23 07:07:02)

tahanson43206 · 2021-10-23 06:56:23

For Calliban re oil (in general)

This topic was started to discuss the current supply chain challenges facing global shippers and customers.

When I went looking for a better topic for discussion of the inevitable exhaustion of stored hydrocarbons, I was surprised to find that there are only two topics that contain the word "oil" and neither has to do with the inevitable exhaustion of stored reserves, or the inevitable increasing cost of extracting those reserves.

A separate topic devoted to the inevitable exhaustion of hydrocarbon reserves on Earth would seem worth considering. I enjoy the spirited defense of archaic practices by kbd512, and look forward to the debate continuing in a new topic better suited for it.

However, something that I have not seen in the debate so far is the need to STOP extracting stored hydrocarbons, regardless of how cheap or expensive they may be.

(th)

Calliban · 2021-10-23 07:13:58

Whilst COVID lockdowns undoubtedly have resulted in supply disruption, by disrupting JIT; it is notable that China is now facing severe power shortages, which are shutting down large parts of it's economy. This is direct result in of its inability to increase coal production and the absence of any other energy source that can replace it at the requisite scale. The Chinese are now halting exports of many energy intensive products, like aluminium, because of difficulty in meeting domestic demand due to energy shortages. This suggests that supply chain issues are not going to be a short-term problem, because they are largely energy driven.

SpaceNut · 2021-10-23 08:16:00

That issue is due to cheap labor employee costs that made them the world supplier of just about everything. Centralization of manufacturing has broken the basket that the eggs are in. I saw and so have many the signs of this as industries one by one from the US companies left since the late 60'S to make use of that cheap labor in many forms and nearly non existence rules for hazardous materials use as well as discharge.

tahanson43206 · 2021-10-23 09:57:47

For Calliban re oil - energy - cost ...

Thanks for the reminder that the cost of energy is a factor in supply chain problems ..

However, the issue you have raised, of the worsening ratio of energy invested to energy yield for fossil fuels is worth it's own topic, and with any luck, kbd512 will give you a worthy set of posts in opposition if you decide to create one.

I ** think ** we (how many not sure) are in agreement that for a variety of reasons, conversion to nuclear fission to supply all sorts of energy related needs is a GOOD IDEA!

What is needed is decision making that leads to the required investment, around the world.

Those Nations who are accepting of nuclear fission power (eg, France) are positioning themselves to become suppliers of energy to those Nations who fail to adopt policies that allow themselves to be suppliers.

The United States is conflicted in so many ways that I suspect it won't be able to get it's act together to become a global supplier of fission produced hydrocarbons, but it certainly ** could **. It's just the human decision making that is a problem.

However, your Nuclear is Safe topic is where the elimination of fossil supplied fuels would be a good fit, if you don't want to start a topic about the (needed) demise of oil.

Oil should NOT be burned. It is far too valuable as a lubricant.

Coal might be useful as an input for nanotechnology using carbon fibers.

(th)

kbd512 · 2021-10-23 16:38:52

Calliban,

I'm not sure what to tell you except that the "peak oil" theory is utterly lacking for evidence. It's every bit as valid as the "peak twinkie" or "peak fresh water" theories. Since ideology is so clearly involved here, no part of objective reality will ever be debated. Objective reality is that global production took a hit due to the global shutdown and greed, on the part of some of the oil producers, such as OPEC.

What you pointed out, as it relates to OPEC's production, was the direct result of US shale oil becoming cheaper than oil imported from the other side of the world. OPEC has specifically stated that they want more money for each barrel of oil, so they refused to produce more oil in response to demand, in order to drive up the price of oil. OPEC dramatically dropped the price of oil in 2020, in order to eliminate the competition from US domestic fracking and from Russia, because that put a major dent in their cash flow. As soon as they accomplished that goal of eliminating competition, they immediately increased the price of oil to what they wanted it to be (nearer to $100USD/bbl, vs $40USD/bbl for domestic shale oil). If you were paying any attention at all, one of their spokesmen publicly stated as much. If not, then I guess you missed that.

The funniest part of this, is that the first article you linked to simultaneously claims we've hit peak oil and that we're also producing too much oil, for "green energy" to take over. If you aren't able to accept how wildly incompatible that combination of assertions is, then I guess you can't. Yet again, belief or lack thereof has nothing to do with objective reality.

Comparing each "last year of production" with "total production over decades", is always going to show a decline in production when graphed. That's precisely what our peak oil theorists did. They were wrong in the 1970s and they're still wrong now, because the underlying basis for their assumptions is still every bit as objective false as it ever was. The "green energy" religious zealots used either their lack of understanding or continued deliberate misrepresentation of the math behind said theory, as another point of justification for their religious views. At the same time, oil companies are more than willing to capitalize on a lack of understanding of basic mathematics.

kbd512 · 2021-10-23 16:50:34

tahanson43206,

1. It's not a question of whether or not oil should be burned. It's a matter of a mathematically verifiable and therefore objective fact that there are no batteries on planet Earth that store nearly as much energy as petroleum products, by per unit weight or per unit volume. At the rate we're going, you and I and everyone else here will be long dead before batteries are equivalent to petroleum.

We keep throwing more and more money at that "manufactured problem", because we have people who are unable to accept that simple fact so that we can move on to solutions that actually work. Chemical reactions are superior to 100% of all battery technology that ever existed, or is likely to ever exist within our lifetimes, if energy density counts for anything, and it most definitely does matter whenever we're talking about practical motor vehicles.

2. If Point #1 wasn't enough, none of the batteries last for more than about 5 years or so. 5 years later, most of the time you need to produce brand new batteries as replacements, making them even less practical than combustion engines that last for 10 to 25 years. Each battery pack costs as much as a gasoline powered car, all on its own, due to the energy cost of producing those batteries. The machinery required to produce batteries at the scale Tesla operates at are a few tens of millions of dollars, maybe a couple hundred million dollars tops, meaning that's already been paid for many times over. The cost that remains is the energy cost of the input materials and manufacturing process. There's very little human labor involved in making batteries, because if there was, then batteries would be even more unaffordable.

3. While we can make just about any product cheaper through mass-manufacture, we can't reduce the energy cost of producing the input materials without better mining / refining / fabrication / recycling technology, which we clearly don't have. Tesla has increased the price of their motor vehicles, because that was the only way for Tesla's sales of those vehicles to remain profitable. It's an indicator that even with all of the purported technological advancements, the cost of making their vehicles has increased over time, not decreased.

You can always argue that you get more for your money, as Louis points out, and in one sense that's true. However, in terms of total dollars spent per unit of good / service, it simply costs more money, to the point of unaffordability for the average consumer. Ford / GM / Chrysler are making gasoline powered light duty trucks now that cost $70,000+. You can buy a brand new or a very nice used late model big rig / Class 8 heavy duty truck for that amount of money. GM has begun selling "electric Hummers" for even more money than that. That's a ridiculous amount of money to pay for something that's supposed to be good at towing and hauling.

My parents second house, back when we lived in Austin cost $80,000. I Googled the last sale of that property. It sold for around $250,000. It's the same crappy little house that we lived in back in the 1980s, except I think it had new carpets and a fresh coat of paint. The trucks we (as in, everybody on the planet who was making trucks) produced 50 years ago were equivalently capable, for far less money.

Spending more and more money to accomplish the same end result, IS NOT "PROGRESS", unless the end goal is to spend more money.

4. Rolls-Royce aerospace division has achieved a battery pack-level energy density of 160 Watt-hours per kilogram. Gasoline's energy density is around 13,000 Watt-hours per kilogram. Even if you only obtain 1/3rd of the energy from a kilogram of gasoline, or 4,333Wh/kg converted into mechanical work by an internal combustion engine, that's still 27 TIMES what the most energy dense battery pack setup is capable of producing, EVEN IF the combination of battery and electric motor are 100% efficient.

5. You don't have any math-based argument to make here, nor does anyone else. It's all personal ideologically-motivated belief that deliberately ignores basic math. That's religion by any other name. It's not science. It's not engineering. The only argument I've seen offered up to date is that "one day, we'll achieve greater energy density from a battery". Well, maybe we will, "one day", but today is not that day. Nothing I've seen makes me think we're anywhere close to seeing that day, either.

A motor vehicle with 27 times less energy onboard is NOT an improvement over internal combustion, especially when total cost over time (ultimate sustainability over time) is taken into consideration. It is a great excuse to spend more money to achieve the same result, in a "personally preferred ideologically-motivated way", but that's as far as it goes.

You're demanding something of current technology that's a physical impossibility. The notion that you can accomplish the same mechanical work using an energy source that's 27 times less energy dense, to propel any kind of motor vehicle, is utterly fallacious, full stop. The corollary is that if you must accomplish equivalent work, then you require a bare minimum of 27 times more materials and energy devoted to producing batteries. Ultimately, 10 times to 1,000 times more materials are devoted to producing the electric power consumed, which means 10 to 1,000 times more energy consumption to produce the machinery that produces and stores the power, thus far greater total monetary cost, since 100% of actual economies are based upon energy availability, no matter how much "free energy" is received from the sun and wind. The wind and sun and electrons are NEVER free to actually use it. There are material and labor costs involved in using an energy source that's orders of magnitude less energy dense than competing alternatives. I recognize and accept that fact, even if you don't.

kbd512 · 2021-10-23 17:19:27

Getting back to the current shipping and supply chain issues:

Q: What did we do that caused the current problems?

A: Government mandates / decrees shut down global production for the better part of the year.

Q: What happened after we did that?

A: We've had persistent supply chain problems with the availability of basic necessities that have now lasted the better part of a year, and are projected to last for at least another year, if not several more years.

Q: Why do we still have problems with labor participation rates exacerbating the supply chain problems?

A: Here in America, but also abroad, leftist / Democrat politicians have decided to incentivize people to stay home, rather than to work for a wage or salary, by spending public money to pay people more money not to work, than to see gainful employment to pay their bills.

Q: How do we fix that problem?

A: We remove the incentive to not work, by ceasing to use public money to incentivize anti-social behaviors. Not working to support your fellow humans is anti-social behavior. "Arbeit" does not "macht frei", but is does "macht basic necessities of life". Freedom or lack thereof is not tied to work, but ultimately not working when you can, reduces both your own quality of life, and that of others, which does detract in a meaningful way from the freedoms we enjoy.

Q: Why should we never incentivize able-bodied people to not work?

A: It's basic human nature to take advantage of anything handed out, without expectation of remuneration.

Even in the military, there's an axiom that's followed fairly closely:

Why run if you can walk? Why walk if you can sit down? Why sit down if you can lay down and sleep?

That's basic conservation of energy, but it also leads to unacceptably lazy solutions that typically have very bad outcomes, which is why you have the equivalent of a task master overseeing your work- a Sergeant or Chief who reports progress of assigned tasks to the officers appointed over us. The officer corps decides what tasks must be performed, and then the senior enlisted non-commissioned officers organize the labor to perform the required tasks.

Q: What do the overwhelming majority of people do without a task master keeping them on-task?

A: They quit working.

Q: Can we afford to stop making food, water, transport vehicles, and other manufactured goods and services?

A: Given our present level of technology, we can NEVER afford to quit working.

Q: What was the only prudent response to the global pandemic of COVID-19?

A: Take measures to assure that the vulnerable were protected and paid for, by continuing to work, much harder than before in some cases, in order to produce that which others were unable to produce for themselves. Basically, the pandemic should've been our cue to hit the afterburner switch, as it relates to solving all of our existing problems, plus the brand new problem of lab-engineered viruses gumming up the works of the global supply chain. We could reasonably afford to hold up production for a month or so while we figured out how deadly and how infectious the virus was, and how to fight it, but then we needed to soldier on.

SpaceNut · 2021-10-23 22:27:00

One way to get rid of the log jam 40 shipping containers have fallen into the ocean

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-10-28 17:38:14

Truckers, port workers vent as supply chain frustration mounts: 'A lot of us are willing to work'
https://www.aol.com/finance/truckers-po … 07992.html

Ports backlog persists despite Biden promise of longer hours
https://nypost.com/2021/10/27/president … ain-issues

Donald Trump Says Unloading Ships 'Very Simple Task' in Dig at Supply Chain Crisis
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-unloadin … en-1641514

SpaceNut · 2021-10-28 17:50:47

That is the power of the union and why if laws did what they should we would not need them....

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