Friday, May 29, 2015

The senility of elites: coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

The coal mine of Bihar, India. Photo by Nitin Kirloskar

This post was inspired by a recent article about coal mining in India by David Rose in the Guardian about coal mining. In India, people are dying in the streets because of excessive heat caused by global warming, but Rose reports that "...across a broad range of Delhi politicians and policymakers there is near unanimity. There is, they say, simply no possibility that at this stage in its development India will agree to any form of emissions cap, let alone a cut." In other words, coal mining must continue in the name of economic growth, no matter what the human costs. 

I think it is hard to see a more evident example of the senility of the world's elites. It is, unfortunately, not something that pertains only to India. Elites all over the world seem to be nearly totally blind to the desperate situation in which we all are. 

On this matter, I have a post written on my "Chimeras" blog that describes how the blindness of the elites is not just typical of our times, but was the same at the time of the Roman Empire. It is a discussion of how one of the members of the Roman elite, Rutilius Namatianus, completely misunderstood the situation of the last years of the Empire. It is our plea of human being that we don't understand collapse, not even when we live it.

   The return home of Rutilius Namatianus 

The 5th century saw the last gasps of the Western Roman Empire. Of those troubled times, we have only a few documents and images. Above, we can see one of the few surviving portraits of someone who lived in those times; Emperor Honorius, ruler of what was left of the Western Roman Empire from 395 to 423. His expression seems to be one of surprise, as if startled at seeing the disasters taking place during his reign.

At some moment during the first decades of the 5th century C.E., probably in 416, Rutilius Namatianus, a Roman patrician, left Rome - by then a shadow of its former glory -  to take refuge in his possessions in Southern France. He left to us a report of his travel titled "De Reditu suo", meaning "of his return" that we can still read today, almost complete.

Fifteen centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we have in this document a precious source of information about a world that was ceasing to exist and that left so little to us. It is a report that can only make us wonder at how could it be that Namatianus got everything so badly wrong about what was happening to him and to the Roman Empire.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Frontiers's new blunder: firing editors who disagree with the company's editorial policy

The academic publisher Frontiers has summarily fired a group of editors because of their criticism of the editorial policy of the journals they were editing. Not bad for a company that claims to be a "community oriented"  publisher.

It is not the first time that "Frontiers" appears in the news for a blunder or another. Last year, I gave up with Frontiers on a row over their retraction of a perfectly good paper and, just two months ago, they made another big mistake with a paper dealing with HIV/AIDS. I am more and more convinced that I did the right thing. 

I guess that there is something basically wrong with the idea that a commercial publisher can handle academic papers in the "Open Access" format. For a profit oriented company, the obvious way to go is to maximize the number of papers published,but that is obviously in contrast with the goal of maximizing their quality. 

Open access publishing seemed to be a good idea, at the beginning. It is probably still a good idea, but the way it has been implemented is turning out to be a disaster. 

Here are some documents about Frontiers' latest blunder

From "Science Magazine" (emphasis added)

"Emotions are running high. The editors say Frontiers' publication practices are designed to maximize the company's profits, not the quality of papers, and that this could harm patients. Frederick Fenter, executive editor at Frontiers, says the company had no choice but to fire the entire group because they were holding up the publication of papers until their demands were met, which he likens to "extortion."

Read the whole article

Here is the abstract of the "Manifesto of Editorial Independence of Editors of Frontiers Medical Journals "

Much to our regret, repeated recent attempts of the medical Editors to discuss crucial issues regarding their position within Frontiers remained unanswered. Therefore Editors of the Frontiers Medical Journals felt urged to write the enclosed Manifesto of Editorial Independence.

The manifesto is submitted to Frontiers Media SA as the publisher and owner of the medical journals Frontiers in Medicine, Frontiers in Surgery, and Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine and signed by Editors from 14 countries.
The manifesto summarizes the Publisher’s continued interference with our editorial independence, documented transgressions, the unacceptable peer review procedures of medical article manuscripts, and the medical publishing regulations of the WAME, the ICMJE, and the COPE. The publisher is required to respond to the manifesto, to implement changes so that the international medical publishing standards are met, and full editorial independence established and warranted.

And, finally, the start of Frontiers' long rebuttal.

Frontiers today ended the engagement of several Specialty Chief Editors and the Field Chief Editors of Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine and Frontiers in Medicine. The Chief Editors wanted Frontiers to change its fundamental principle of distributed editorial decision-making during peer-review and the editors refused communication with Frontiers, some even blocking journal operations, until these demands were met.

Friday, May 22, 2015






















George Mobus' take on the future evolution of humankind. 









Albert Bates also commented on this subject at "PeakSurfer




Monday, May 11, 2015

The oil crash: something wicked this way comes

The recent oil price crash signals the impending demise of the oil and gas industry as a major world energy producer. That should be a good thing, in principle, but something wicked may still come out of the process.

With the ongoing collapse of the oil prices, we can say that it is game over for the oil and gas industry, in particular for the production of "tight" (or "shale") oil and gas. Prices may still go back to reasonably high levels, in the future, but the industry will never be able to regain the momentum that had made its US  supporters claim "energy independence" and "centuries of abundance." The bubble may not burst all of a sudden, but it surely will deflate.

So, what's going to happen, now? The situation is, to say the least, "fluid". A great rush is ongoing to convince investors to place their money where there is still some chance to make a profit. I think we can identify at least three different strategies for the future: 1) more of the same (oil and gas) 2) a push to nuclear, and 3) a push for renewables. Let's see to examine what the future may have in store for us.

1) A push for more gas and more oil. The oil&gas industry has not yet conceded defeat; on the contrary, it still dreams of centuries of abundance (see, e.g. this article on Forbes). It seems unthinkable that investors would still want to finance uncertain enterprises such as squeezing more oil from exhausted fields or, worse, from difficult and expensive technologies such as coal liquefaction. But you should never underestimate the power of business as usual. If people feel that they absolutely need liquid fuels, then they will be willing to do anything to get liquid fuels.

The main problem with this idea is not so much its technical feasibility. By throwing every resource at hand at the task (and beggaring the whole economy in the process) it would not be impossible to fool peak oil for a few more years. The problem is a different one: it is with climate change and with the fact that we are running out of time. If we keep burning hydrocarbons, we just can't make it: the industrial society cannot survive the resulting warming and the associated troubles. That is true if we keep burning at the "natural" rate, that is along the bell shaped curve. Imagine if we try to keep growing, instead (as all politicians in the world say we should).

All this is becoming well known and, as a result, a push toward further hydrocarbon production (or, God forbid, more coal) will be possible only if accompanied by a strong propaganda campaign destined to silence climate science and climate activism. Some symptoms that something like that is in the making are evident enough to be disturbing. Consider that none of the Republican candidates for the US 2016 elections supports the need for action on climate change, that in Florida government employees are not allowed to use the term "climate change" or "global warming," that NASA has been defunded on anything that has to do with climate change, and more. Then, a certain logic starts to appear: "muzzle the science and keep on burning". Something very wicked this way comes.....

2. A new push for nuclear. This option would not be so bad as the first, more hydrocarbons. At least, nuclear plants do not directly generate greenhouse gases and we know that it is a technology that can produce energy. Nevertheless, the hurdles associated with its expansion are gigantic. The first and foremost problem is that the uranium mineral production is not sufficient for ramping up nuclear energy from a few percent of the world's primary energy production to a major fraction of it - to be able to do that would require investments so large to be mind boggling. To say nothing about the need for rare minerals in nuclear plants: beryllium, niobium, hafnium, zirconium, rare earths, and more; all in short supply. Then, there are all the nightmarish problems of nuclear waste disposal, safety, and strategic control.

Nevertheless, if it were possible to convince investors to pour money into nuclear energy, then it would be possible to see an attempt to restart it, despite the various problems and disasters that have given to nuclear a bad name. An attempt to do just that seems to be in progress. President Obama is said to be considering a massive return to nuclear and investors are told to prepare for a gigantic surge in uranium prices. Will it work? Unlikely, but not impossible. Something wicked this way comes......

hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium

Read more at:

3. A big push for renewables. Surprisingly, the renewable industry may have serious chances to take over from a senescent oil industry, leaving the nuclear industry standing still and gasping at the sight. The progress in renewable technology, especially in photovoltaic cells, has been simply fantastic during the past decade (see, e.g., the recent MIT report). We have now a set of methods for producing electric power that can compete with traditional sources, watt for watt, dollar for dollar. Consider that the most efficient of these technologies do not need critically rare materials and that none brings the strategic and security problem of nuclear. Finally, consider that it has been shown (Sgouridis, Bardi, and Csala) that the present renewable technology could take over from the current sources fast enough to prevent major damage from climate change.

It looks like we have a winner, right? Indeed, the atmosphere around renewables is one of palpable optimism. If renewable energy picks up enough momentum, there will be nothing able to stop it until it has catapulted all of us, willing or not, into a new (and cleaner) world.

There is a problem, though. The renewable industry is still tiny in comparison to the nuclear industry and especially in comparison to the oil and gas industry. And we know that might usually wins against right. The sheer financial power of the traditional energy industry may well be enough to abort the change before it becomes unstoppable. Something wicked may still come....... (*)

(*) "Something wicked this way comes" is mainly known today as the title of a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury. Actually, it comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth..

Sunday, May 3, 2015

The Great Oil Game: Resource Crisis in Russia?

Weekly pageviews of "Resource Crisis." My blog seems to be having a remarkable success in Russia, but do the Russians understand the problem of resource depletion?

Complex structures, such as states and empires, are always prone to collapse and they usually give little or no previous warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union, indeed, had not been predicted by anyone and it came completely unexpected. In the present crisis, instead, Western analysts seem to have fallen in the opposite mistake, predicting the rapid demise of the Russian Federation. But that didn't happen. On the contrary, the Russian economic system showed a remarkable resilience and it strongly rebounded after a bad moment, last year. (image below from Bloomberg).

So, predicting collapses is always very difficult in a world's situation that looks more and more like a Russian Roulette (an appropriate name in this context), but played with nuclear weapons. It might well be that some states which at present look very solid could be the ones to experience a sudden and unexpected Soviet-style implosion (let me not say which ones these states could be).

Let's go more in depth in this matter. The collapse of Russia was expected in the West mainly as the result of the recent crash of the world's oil market. That repeated the situation of the late 1980s, when the old USSR was bankrupted by a similar effect: a rapid fall of oil prices which strongly reduced the revenues from oil exports. However, the present situation is not exactly the same. The main difference is related to the perspectives of the oil market. In the 1980s, low oil prices were generated by new oil fields entering the market after the first oil crisis - for instance the North Sea. The supply increased and prices collapsed around 1985 at levels that today we can't even dream any more - around 20$-30$ in current dollars - and they remained there for nearly two decades.

Today, there is no equivalent of the new resources that had entered in production in the 1980s and the price collapse has been generated mainly by a demand slump. Additionally. what we call today "low prices" are at least twice as high (in current dollars) than they were in the 1980s. And these "low" prices are bankrupting the whole US tight oil industry. That can't be without effect in bringing back oil prices to the levels which were considered "normal" up to last year. Consider also that Russian production costs are not the highest in the world, as shown in this figure

The values shown in the figure are very uncertain but, as long as oil prices do not fall below US 40 $, Russia should be able to survive; and they seem to be doing exactly that. In the short term, at least, the "oil weapon" that some analysts saw as unleashed against Russia, failed to obtain its purpose.

Certainly, however, the question of the long term management of the Russian mineral resources cannot be ignored. There are elements indicating that Russia's oil production is peaking this year and, according to Ron Patterson, USA and Russia may peak together. How would their respective economies react to that? More in general, how will Russia manage the unavoidable long term depletion of the country's resources? What do the Russians want to do with their mineral wealth? Who is going to use it and for what purpose? Planning on the basis of the fundamental elements of the depletion process (*) would be the best for Russia to avoid a future resource crisis.


(*) The problem of oil depletion is very poorly understood everywhere in the world, but, according to my personal experience, it may be that it is even less understood in Russia. For instance, over more than a decade of existence of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) there have been many national chapters (including ASPO-Italy). However, there has never been an ASPO-Russia (if you google for "ASPO Russia" you'll find the Astrakhan Shipbuilding Production Association, which is not exactly the same thing!). 

