Piousbox

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The Peak Prosperity's Chris Martenson talks about Peak Oil. Couple of things

• Energy = Economy. (or as Coppenhagen Atomics puts it, Energy = Prosperity.) Maybe it's obvious to some, but for me it's worth repeating over and over.
• wars tends to start around energy crises. So if the thesis of peak oil 2025 is true, this is one more reason to expect a war at that time. (Some people say, peak oil has already happened.)
• invaluable insight: not only is US economy (prosperity) dependent on how much debt US takes on (creates out of thin air), but also the debt itself depends on how much energy is created. 
• Smartly and/or luckily I've put myself near the Permian Basin, where oil will supposedly run out last. Maybe Texas is a better play than Florida, after all.
• No discussion of nuclear? Nuclear appears literally the only nice way to continue with the pyramid scheme that is the society. Nuclear is free, infinite energy within human reach. (The not so nice way to continue is to fight a few wars, re-negotiate capital vs labor, eliminate the 0.1% wealth hoarders, and abandon fiat. However honestly, how could such a war possibly be won?!)

On the topic of nuclear. AI companies have been buying up energy contracts, since AI computation is very energy-intensive. Oklo (ticker OKLO) is a nuclear company based in California, that does modern compact reactors. Still water-cooled rather than salt-cooled and still using uranium rather than thorium, but it's a good step forward. So, Sam Altman who owns OpenAI bought OKLO with a special-purpose vehicle. I wouldn't be surprized is all the innovation in nuclear space will be done by huge AI companies rather than governments. Mega corps are already bigger than governments. I've bought a tiiiiiny stake in OKLO, just to keep it on my radar. Of course, if all the nuclear is controlled by governments and mega-corporations, regular people won't get much benefit from it.

Ideally we would be able to buy/build a mini nuclear reactor the way you can buy/build a pizza oven. I would love to see a Nuclear Prohibition within my lifetime, where such technology exists but is illegal. Coppenhagen Atomics is developing this very idea, their stuff is currently illegal in every country. Exciting stuff. China is very interested in them.   

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Just searched Iceland energy. Great for them, 100% renewable! But they're lucky: their energy comes from geothermal and hydro. No solar, no wind. I haven't actually checked, but it says those huge wind turbines are actually energy-negative, when you factor in production costs and the fossil cost of plastics that goes into them. Wind power doesn't break even, it's a net loss.

 Geothermal is a long-shot, just like nuclear. It says, we don't have the technology to drill deep enough in most places to use geothermal. It also says, *all* available hydro opportunities in the world have been developed. Colombia for example draws 70% of its energy from hydro (note: i don't actually trust Our World In Data, I saw a lot of mistakes in their data):

  And as a reminder, base power must be provided at all times, when the sun doesn't shine, and when the wind doesn't blow. The world doesn't have energy storage capacity: batteries? Not enough cobalt. Hydro storage? Noone is really doing it. You'd think that renewable LNG (from cow farts and trash decay) would be blooming right now - a dense, renewable, eco-friendly energy source! And they are doing it in Brazil and Latin America, lots of cars run on methane. But in USA its the opposite: new construction in Austin doesn't even have gas lines, at all. So USA is going backwards.

 To think that heavy machinery and shipping, or consumer cars, can be up and powered by wind and solar, is naive. All the Teslas are still powered by... as much coal as renewables.

 And what, in France they finally had a few good days of sunshine and instead of celebrating having a little bit of free energy, they shut down half of their nuclear capacity? Look at what happened to oil refineries in 2020: they were never brought back up onilne. France, Germany, USA and UN are going backwards.