Oil prices go up and down pretty irrationally at times, but on the whole, there’s a massive global oil glut. We had a stretch recently where worldwide tankers were locked out of ports because there was nowhere to put all the oil. The industry will lose much of the massive influence it has, but it won’t just go quietly.
Arms sales are very important. It’s a large industry, the foreign sales are absolutely controlled by the government and there’s quite a bit of door revolving at the highest levels (reminds me of oil and Trump’s first SoS). And who do they compete with in their efforts to sway government? A bunch of hippies who might put on a new bumper sticker?
The oil glut is just a mismatch of supply and demand. That will work itself out. Longer term covid wont have much of an impact. These are all 30 and 40 year assets.
Regarding arm sales. We are probably in agreement. You have a small number of players who make a fuck ton of money out of it, like many of the industries with disproportionate power, theyve just been able to capture the government even while being a clear net negative on society.
The oil glut isn’t just covid. It’s a long term decrease in demand because of renewables and efficiency (that’s oil and gas) and increasing production because of things like fracking.
In normal times there’s probably a case to be made that an incoming administration shouldn’t be undermining the admin currently in power, but no, I don’t really care after four years of Trump breaking down all of the presidential norms.
We don’t really know enough details, but it’s really easy to see any number of scenarios here where Trump has (intentionally) put Biden into an impossible situation where commenting publicly in any form before he takes office is a net negative.
Oil demand under all scenarious is forecast to go up for 20 years min. Demand for energy is far outstripping supply of renewables. This is true even in the best case, fast transition scenarios.
In regards to fracking and the oil sands. Supply has increased. But think of supply vs demand as at a certain price. The new US oil is expensive and only makes sense at certain price points.
All of the price changes are basically about the big players menuvering to get the most out of the market while half co-operating with each other in the cartel.
The root cause for the oil glut early this year was of course the damand shock from covid, but was then exacerbated as Russia and Saudi played a game of chicken as to what the post reduction world would look like. I.e. who was going to reduce production by how much in order to reinflate prices. Russia blinked first and they got to a deal.
Cliffs: You’re basically right. The theoretical knowledge isn’t too hard, but actually building one from scratch (especially one small enough to be reliably delivered via different, flexible methods) requires big facilities and enough specialized material/equipment that don’t have many other uses that it’s hard to do it without detection.
Stated policies. This is what they keep updated regulalry. basically “what would happen if all governments do what they say they are going to do.”
“Delayed recovery” is new. Specific to post covid modeling, and assumed a sustained downturn.
The green line “sustainable development scenario” would cover scenarios with aggressive carbon taxing, subsidies, regulation etc. It should be viewed cautiously. These scenarios tend to be “what do we need to do” rather than what is possible or likely. The lines also get steeper and steeper the longer we delay meaningful action, because we are consuming more and more of our carbon budget and so we keep needing faster and more drastic action.
And this isn’t new. Israel has been killing Iranian scientists for awhile now. Plus they killed an al-quida in tehran not long ago. Israel is wrapping up business before the new US administration
Im not doing a thesis. Although we will probably pick up the major project. Its whats called a taught masters rather than a research masters. I guess aus is different?
Im a third of the way through. Part time. 3 years. Most interesting course was the “Introduction to energy systems” because it very multidisciplinary and covered a lot of ground.
The rest of the course sp far has been fairly heavy engineering stuff, interesting enough. Thermodynamics, how power and energy works, the inside of gas turbines, stuff like that.
Ehhhh, idk. For sure making a nuclear bomb requires a lot of technical know-how, but nations like Pakistan and even North Korea have joined the nuclear club. Hell, even South Africa had nukes at one point. Seems pretty clear that Iran has the GDP to support a nuclear weapons program if that’s a big priority for them. Israel certainly seems like it’s resorting to desperate measures with this assassination and the centrifuge hack they pulled a few years ago. imho it’s basically just a matter of time before Iran joins the nuclear club.
Iran isn’t developing a nuclear weapon at the moment and there’s a fatwa from Khameni that they shouldn’t develop any weapons of mass destruction. It’s all politics, including Iran’s declarations, but the idea that they’re particularly trying at the moment is largely nonsense.
(Though they have tried in the past and could again, obvs.)
Edit - I didn’t mean this to sound particularly contradictory to your post, which I pretty much agree with. Just wanted to add that they’re not actually trying to get one and have said they don’t want one, which isn’t usually part of the story.
I think you just illustrated why the “without detection” part of my post is important… In a world where noone was trying to deter nuclear proliferation, basically any country that wanted one could have one. Heck, Jeff Bezos could probably whip one up. But, if you have to play a cat and mouse game where other countries might bomb your reactors, assassinate your scientists, hack your centrifuges, and sanction folks who sell you uranium, the whole process gets much trickier and more costly. Iran is in a bad spot because there are some pretty wealthy and tech savvy countries that REALLY don’t want it to have a bomb.
