LifeItself

First, let me remind you that a pessimist is an optimist who shed his delusions and denial, and educated himself. Please keep this in mind, if you continue reading. If you don't, that's fine too. You will remain in your blissful bubble of denial and ignorance, which are the dominant genetic traits of most denizens of the fossil superorganism. Please understand that many democratically elected governments know very well about your truth aversion and are making  best use of it. Imagine now that your favorite airline offers a vacation package to a world-class city like the one shown below. That city is Beijing. China is the rising economic superpower that will collapse rather immediately, because there is not enough of the environment left to protect her 1.4 billion people from disease and death. But before China collapses, she will suck dry most of the world that remains. The brutal global competition for resources may precipitate a war between China and US. By the way, a fa...

If you are like me, you may read, watch and listen to what is happening around you with disbelief. But should we be incredulous? Perhaps not... By chance, I looked at " What on earth are we doing ?," a sad commentary on human condition I wrote 6 years ago, and this passage caught my attention: Our Society “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must be at all costs avoided. When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre dance party. We try to stay out of harm's way, afraid that they will go off, shatter our delusions, and l...

In Part I of this post, I discussed production of gas from the four largest shale plays in the U.S. Ordered by production levels, these are the Marcellus, Barnett, Haynesville and Fayetteville shales. In my mind it is quite unlikely that much new drilling will occur in Fayetteville and Haynesville.  There will be some drilling in the Barnett and plenty in Marcellus, but significantly less than to date. Based on my calculations, I concluded that these plays may deliver between 3 and 7 years of U.S. gas consumption in 2015, a far cry from the 100-year gas supply postulated by many experts.  Consistently with this view, for at least three years I have argued that the large-scale oil and gas exports from the U.S. may not be good . Here I consider the two largest oil plays in the U.S.: the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales.  Eagle Ford is also a significant gas and condensate producer.  At their respective production peaks, these two shales together produced about 3 millio...

We are in the western part of Turkish Anatolia, which in Greek means "East" or "Sunrise."  Suddenly, we are inside of many of the oldest human stories that are particularly dear to my heart. The ancient city of Troy is here.  Around 1300 B.C., when Troy was almost 4000 years old, the mother of all Greek wars was fought there, and immortalized by Homer five centuries later in probably the most important oral stories and later texts ever conceived by rational men: The Iliad and Odyssey.  Some of the Greek Gods were born here, many other dueled with one another for power and revenge, or gave birth to the heroes and heroines who determined fate of Troy and future of mankind. My favorite scary goddess, Nemesis, who is reputed to have been conceived by the primordial Goddess of Night, Nyx, played a pivotal role in the fate of Troy. Her name was derived from the Greek words nemêsis and nemô, meaning "dispenser of dues." This full size statue of beautiful Nem...

My Dear Western Friends, Many of you have read my previous letter , dated May 4, 2015, and responded by email. Thank you. I think we still have a little problem: Your replies have been much too U.S.-centric.  Unfortunately,  the world today is far too interlinked, in good part because of the U.S. policies over the last 35 years, and all problems are global.  Please parse the last sentence again and try to understand that you can no longer get away with being over there and ignoring what is happening here and everywhere else.  The cheap clothing and industrial products you buy in the U.S. come at a very high price to all other parts of the world.  High price means environmental and social deterioration. Since hardly anyone cares about the environment until they can't breath, have no water to drink, food to eat, drown in floods or mudslides; or alternatively fall sick with cancer, Ebola, cholera, AIDS or Hepatitis, let's focus on the social deterioration an...

JPMorgan forecasts oil supply to fall short of demand by 600,000 barrels a day during the third quarter, even with the assumption that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increases output by 1.2 million barrels a day in coming months. The gap could narrow to 300,000 barrels a day by the fourth quarter, assuming  Saudi Arabia increases production to 9.5 million barrels a day,  Angola  to 1.7 million and  Iraq  to 3 million, though “that may prove a stretch,” the bank said. Output from those three OPEC countries in March was 8.66 million, 1.56 million and 2.69 million barrels a day, respectively, it said. As I pointed out in the April 30 blog , the runaway Global Casino speculates on everything on the Earth and distorts all prices everywhere.  Mr. Casino is totally divorced from Ms. Reality, and his current bets on a lower oil price are as imaginary as his bets to the contrary. Earthlings beware! These speculative bets and brazen market mani...