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Energy Wars | Art Berman

June 9, 2024

Energy Wars | Art Berman

We have to save ourselves from ourselves

Whoever controls the energy supply controls the new world order.

Russia and China are deepening their relationship, Western allies in the Middle East are joining the fossil-fuelled BRICS alliance spanning the globe, and the Wagner group is loosening Europe’s grip of Africa. The tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting along new fault lines as rising powers focus on securing resources while the old Empire in the West pretends it can decouple economies and energy. The world is at war, but only one side is being honest about what for.

Acclaimed energy expert Art Berman says this is the culmination of millennia of human fallibility. This is a conversation that takes us from 3000 BCE and the discovery of what he calls the most disruptive technology humans ever had right up to today and the energy wars blooming around the world. We discuss our psychological disposition to immaturity, our cognitive shortcomings when examining complexity, the secrets of holy texts and even morality. Art explains how energy is reshaping geopolitical alliances, which leaders understand the reality of our situation, and why technology cannot solve our problems.

 

Are Green Resource Wars Looming?

October 16, 2022

Are Green Resource Wars Looming?

The Burden of Massive EV Batteries Will Be Borne by People and Ecosystems

Much of the excitement over the Inflation Reduction Act, which became law this summer, focused on the boost it should give to the sales of electric vehicles. Sadly, though, manufacturing and driving tens of millions of individual electric passenger cars won’t get us far enough down the road to ending greenhouse-gas emissions and stanching the overheating of this planet. Worse yet, the coming global race to electrify the personal vehicle is likely to exacerbate ecological degradation, geopolitical tensions, and military conflict.

The batteries that power electric vehicles are likely to be the source of much international competition and the heart of the problem lies in two of the metallic elements used to make their electrodes: cobalt and lithium. Most deposits of those metals lie outside the borders of the United States and will leave manufacturers here (and elsewhere) relying heavily on foreign supplies to electrify road travel on the scale now being envisioned.

Adventurers and Opportunists

In the battery business, the Democratic Republic of Congo is referred to as “the Saudi Arabia of cobalt.” For two decades, its cobalt — 80% of the world’s known reserves — has been highly prized for its role in mobile-phone manufacturing. Such cobalt mining has already taken a terrible human and ecological toll.

Now, the pressure to increase Congo’s cobalt output is intensifying on a staggering scale. Whereas a phone contains just thousandths of a gram of cobalt, an electric vehicle battery has pounds of the metal, and a quarter-billion such batteries will have to be manufactured to fully electrify the American passenger car fleet as it now exists.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

If humanity’s critical planetary overshoot is not corrected deliberately, nature will impose a chaotic implosion

February 23, 2021

If humanity’s critical planetary overshoot is not corrected deliberately, nature will impose a chaotic implosion

“If we wish civilization to continue, human beings must learn to live more equitably, well within the means of nature” – William Rees. —

No 2709 Posted by fw, February 14, 2021 —

“So, if I can just summarize and put the choice before us –.

1/ Climate change is indeed a serious problem. We must deal with it.

2/ But it’s a mere symptom of a much greater disease, which is the generalized overshoot of the human population above and beyond the long-term carrying capacity of Earth. We cannot solve any of these problems in isolation, and doing so would be futile because the others would take us down. They are a collective issue under the umbrella of overshoot.

3/ Well, we are in that critical overshoot, and the present trajectory resembles a plague phase of a one-off population cycle. And if it is not corrected deliberately, it will crash.

4/ We may or may not already be on some critical tipping point, not only in climate but in other ways as well.

5/ In my view, in coming years, there’s no question that the human enterprise will contract.

6/ But, as an intelligent, planning-capable, moral species, we can theoretically make a choice between —

6(a) Insistence on “business as usual”, which risks, in my view, a chaotic implosion imposed by nature, followed by geopolitical turmoil and resource wars;

6(b) Or we can come together as a society, realize the flaws in our currently globally-shared constructed vision of reality, accept what our science is telling us, and, in that context, cooperate internationally toward a well-planned orderly and cooperative descent toward a socially just sustainability for all.

7/ So, human beings must learn — if we wish civilization to continue – to live much more equitably, well within the biophysical carrying capacity, well within the means of nature.” —William Rees

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

How energy shortages really affect the economy

August 28, 2018

How energy shortages really affect the economy

Many people expect energy shortages to lead to high prices. This is based on their view of what “running out” of oil might do to the economy.

In this post, I look at historical data surrounding inadequate energy supply. I also consider some of the physics associated with the situation. I see a strange coincidence between when coal production peaked (hit its maximum production before declining) in the United Kingdom and when World War I broke out. There was an equally strange coincidence between when the highest quality coal peaked in Germany and when World War II broke out. A good case can be made that inadequate energy supply is associated with conflict and fighting because leaders recognize how important an adequate energy supply is.

Some of my previous analysis has shown that if we view energy in terms of average energy supply per person, the world as a whole may be again entering into a period of inadequate energy supply. If my view is correct that inadequate energy supply leads to increased conflict, the recent discord that we have been seeing among world leaders may be related to today’s low supply of energy. (My energy analysis considers the combined energy supply available per person from fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables. It is not simply an oil-based analysis.)

The physics of the low energy situation may be trying to “freeze out” the less efficient portions of the economy. If successful, the outcome might be analogous to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991, after oil prices had been low for several years. Total energy consumption of countries involved in the collapse dropped by close to 40%, on average. The rest of the world benefitted from lower oil prices (resulting from lower total demand). It also benefitted from the oil that remained in the ground and consequently was available for extraction in recent years, when we really needed it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weather Impacted Wars & Migrations in Pre-Recorded History

May 24, 2018

Weather Impacted Wars & Migrations in Pre-Recorded History

Archaeologists working in the wetlands of Denmark have uncovered 2,000-year-old human remains are revealing that the Germanic “barbarians” were engaging in warfare in northern Europe against other barbarian tribes which had nothing to do with Rome. The research, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a unique look at how Germanic tribes memorialized their battles. The sheer magnitude of the number of remains demonstrates that the Germanic armies were clearly organized with leadership. There is no recorded history of this people so all we have to go on are the things left behind.

One thing to emerge is that the climate in Northern Europe was turning very cold. Even by 170AD, when the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was battling the Germanic attempts to invade the south most likely due to climate change. He wrote his Mediataions to keep his mind distracted from the cold at night. He sent his children home to Rome to live with their great-great-aunt Matidia because Marcus thought the evening air of the country was far too cold for them. He even asked his friend for “some particularly eloquent reading matter, something of “your own, or Cato, or Cicero, or Sallust or Gracchus—or some poet, for I need distraction, especially in this kind of way, by reading something that will uplift and diffuse my pressing anxieties.” id/ Ad Antoninum Imperator 4.1 (= Haines 1.300ff), qtd. and tr. Birley, Marcus Aurelius, 120.

It appears from this new evidence that as the weather grew colder and colder, barbarians first fought against each other for resources. It appears that after such inter-tribal warfare proved fruitless, this is when the Germanic invasions of Rome begin. The Germanic invasions of Rome began during 113 BC and lasted until they finally conquered Rome by 596 AD.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Emerging threats of resource wars. U.S. House hearing

June 23, 2016

Emerging threats of resource wars. U.S. House hearing

Goh Chun Teck, Lim Xian You, Sum Qing Wei, Tong Huu Khiem. Resource Wars.2011. A hot-seat multiplayer game where players compete with each other for territories that generate resources such as coal, water, gold and gas. A Player can sell resources for money, which he can use to purchase even more territories to grow his empire, or fight with other players to attempt to conquer their territories. NatiOnal University of Singapore. CS2103 Projects AY10/11 Semester 1
Goh Chun Teck, Lim Xian You, Sum Qing Wei, Tong Huu Khiem. 2011. Resource Wars. Players compete with each other for territories that generate resources such as coal, water, gold and gas. A Player can sell resources for money, which he can use to purchase even more territories to grow his empire, or fight with other players to attempt to conquer their territories. National University of Singapore.

[ About half of the pages are images from Brigadier General John Adams “Remaking American security. Supply chain vulnerabilities & national security risks across the U.S. Defense Industrial Base”.  

Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer]

House 113-63. July 25, 2013. The Emerging threat of Resource Wars.  U.S. House of Representatives,  88 pages.

DANA ROHRABACHER, California.  We import 750,000 tons of vital minerals and material every year.  An increasing global demand for supplies of energy and strategic minerals is sparking intense economic competition that could lead to a counterproductive conflict.

A ‘‘zero sum world’’ where no one can obtain the means to progress without taking them from someone else is inherently a world of conflict.

Additional problems arise when supplies are located in areas where production could be disrupted by political upheaval, terrorism or war. 

When new sources of supply are opened up, as in the case of Central Asia, there is still fear that there is not enough to go around and thus conflict emerges.   The wealth that results from resource development and the expansion of industrial production increases power just as it uplifts economies and uplifts the standards of peoples.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Grand Finale: “World War III Will Be A Fight Over Basic Human Needs – Food and Other Commodities”

November 15, 2015

The Grand Finale: “World War III Will Be A Fight Over Basic Human Needs – Food and Other Commodities”

resource-wars-2

As political tensions heat up it is becoming clear that the world’s super powers are vying for control of resources like oil, water, metals and food. And though developed nations have thus far avoided any significant clashes with each other, the proxy wars being waged in the middle east and Europe are a slow burning fuse that will soon lead to widespread military confrontation.

Throughout human history one key factor has been behind every major war: a battle for resources. As the following documentary from Future Money Trends warns, this time will be no different:

“The Pentagon told Fortune Magazine that World War III will be a fight over basic human needs – food and other commodities.”


(Watch this video at Youtube)

Natural resource wars are brewing and becoming an increasing threat, and may be the grand finale to an already intensified currency war among the world’s top economies.

Most wars in human history are a fight over natural resources.

… Credit is ever expanding, but the resources we pull out of the ground are finite.

The culmination of economic, financial and monetary crisis will be a grand finale unlikely any seen in the history of the world. War is coming. The time to prepare is now.

What’s Really At Stake At The Paris Climate Conference

November 5, 2015

What’s Really At Stake At The Paris Climate Conference

At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), the Paris summit will be focused on the adoption of measures that would limit global warming to less than catastrophic levels. If it fails, world temperatures in the coming decades are likely to exceed 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), the maximum amount most scientists believe the Earth can endure without experiencing irreversible climate shocks, including soaring temperaturesand a substantial rise in global sea levels.

A failure to cap carbon emissions guarantees another result as well, though one far less discussed. It will, in the long run, bring on not just climate shocks, but also worldwide instability, insurrection, and warfare. In this sense, COP-21 should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference — perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history.

To grasp why, consider the latest scientific findings on the likely impacts of global warming, especially the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). When first published, that report attracted worldwide media coverage for predicting that unchecked climate change will result insevere droughts, intense storms, oppressive heat waves, recurring crop failures, and coastal flooding, all leading to widespread death and deprivation. Recent events, including a punishing drought in California and crippling heat waves in Europe and Asia, have focused more attention on just such impacts. The IPCC report, however, suggested that global warming would have devastating impacts of a social and political nature as well, including economic decline, state collapse, civil strife, mass migrations, and sooner or later resource wars.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cap Fossil Fuel Production Now!

September 9, 2015

Cap Fossil Fuel Production Now!

Climate scientists are in broad agreement that there are enough fossil fuels in the Earth’s crust that, if they were all burned, the result would be dramatically rising sea levels, extreme weather, plummeting food production, dying seas, and a mass extinction of species (possibly including our own). Therefore the only sane response to global warming is toleave most of those fuels in the ground.

But there are actually other reasons as well to cap fossil fuel production.

Back in 2007 I wrote a book called The Oil Depletion Protocol.* It argued for a policy idea that had previously been put forward by petroleum geologist Colin Campbell; the essential thrust of the idea is to put a gradually lowered cap on global petroleum production. The book didn’t discuss climate change much; indeed, its subtitle was, “A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism, and Economic Collapse.” I argued that such a Protocol would actually be good for oil producers (as well as everyone else), in that it would provide stable prices and thus a more predictable market environment in which to operate.

The book mostly failed to connect with policy makers (a few cities endorsed the Protocol, but no nations), or oil companies (not a single one responded positively), or book buyers (even though it carried some glowing endorsements from politicians, environmentalists, and an oil industry insider).

 

Here we are eight years later and the oil industry is in a carefully disguised panic. No company wants to admit that its future is bleak, but the signs are unmistakable. Undisciplined production and volatile prices—two of the problems the Protocol was intended to address—have overturned the balance sheets of producers large and small. Conventional crude oil extraction rates stalled out a decade ago due to the depletion of legacy giant oilfields; that initially sent prices skyrocketing, and the global economy stuttered to a near-standstill (yes, other causes contributed to the slowdown, including too much debt). 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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