Euan Mearns

 
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  • in reply to: Automatic Earth Fund for Athens Makes First Donation #22237
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    I just been looking at Greece Energy and economy – post later today. I don’t think Greece can continue with austerity and given that her European friends are no longer going to bank role the country Greece must leave the € and it is going to be dreadful for the Greek people.

    In Greece 54% of energy comes from imported oil and 9% from imported gas. The country is supposed to have a 90 day oil reserve – wouldn’t surprise me if that is not already depleted. 40% of electricity comes from imported oil and gas. Unable to pay, the energy imports may have to stop – lights go out and tourist industry collapse. Take care Roel!

    Enter the Russian white knight?

    in reply to: The Oil Price Crash and Economic Slow Down in China #20117
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, thanks for cross posting this. Regarding your introductory narrative. This stems from a few posts I have written where I speculated that global demand was weak. Javier picked up on this to show that demand from China (the main engine) was weak. As you know its hard to follow everything all of the time. My speculation appears to have had some grounding.

    This post is 90%+ Javier + those who prepared the charts. I just added a few thoughts.

    CW

    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    @ E Swanson, just to make the record clear.

    Final years of The Oil Drum there were 4 managing editors of which I was one. Two. including me can easily be described as climate sceptics, one a well informed warmist and the fourth neutral leaning warmist. It was the best balance that emerged. But the comments on the site became dominated by the Green calamity side of the debate creating the situation where those running the site lost the will to continue.

    Roel and Nicole at an early stage had a major disagreement with the then site administrators and the solution then was that they left. This benefited all. Pretty much like Greece leaving the Euro. I don’t agree with all that Roel has to say, but he is a very well informed, intelligent and literate guy and I appreciate what he does here. Nicole also spent huge amounts of time explaining to me things I didn’t understand.

    And so to the recent “Booker Telegraph Homewood scandal”. I spent the last 2 days looking at all the temperature records within 1000 km radius of Alice Springs – 30 records in all. Comparing raw records with homogenisation adjusted records shows 3 things:

    1) 29 of the 30 records are cooked to a greater or lesser extent (comparing V2 raw with V 3.1 homognenised)
    2) Records are cooked to create warming and cooked to create cooling in almost equal capacity which cancels out in the sub-regional analysis
    3) None minus 1 and all of the records are to be trusted

    Booker Homewood and GISS are simultaneously all right AND all wrong. Now go figure a way forward. Post on EM on Monday.

    in reply to: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Syriza? #18745
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Well just a spoonful of euros will help the medicine go down…

    Couldn’t resist it 🙂

    in reply to: Too Much Of A Good Thing: Scotland Gags On Wind Power #18329
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    @ Mark Janes – its not so simple. You need a bottom reservoir to pump water out of. Some of our hydro schemes do empty into large lochs but when you pump you lower the water level and reduce river flow and vice versa – when you produce the rivers flood. This happens at the moment so its all a matter of scale and what the river systems can handle. One existing hydro scheme on Loch Lomond (Sloy) is being converted to pump and this will double its capacity.

    in reply to: Too Much Of A Good Thing: Scotland Gags On Wind Power #18328
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    @carbon waste life form – I’d be a major supporter of variable power prices with a display on the wall telling me what the current price was. But for some reason in the UK they are not able to role out something like this that seems so simple.

    in reply to: Too Much Of A Good Thing: Scotland Gags On Wind Power #18327
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    @ skintnick – electrolysis – what am I missing?

    in reply to: Broken Energy Markets and the Downside of Hubbert’s Peak #17746
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    PV powering AC in hot sunny places makes sense when you have lots of folks living in hot sunny places.

    Humanity changes in small steps. Sometimes lots of small steps in a short period of time. Private enterprise is not a silver bullet. We are in for a period of adjustment between State and private control.

    PS hope the word order here is better than in my prior comment 😉

    in reply to: Broken Energy Markets and the Downside of Hubbert’s Peak #17743
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    I’m not wanting to excuse the ripping apart of Alberta (which is up to the Canadians) but 1) burning or rain forest in Indonesia and killing loads of orang-utans to make way for nut oil plantations, 2) clearing rainforest in Brazil to make way for sugar cain 3) burning US hard wood forests in England to make electricity 4) REE mining in China 5) hydro electric dams that kill salmon and 6) wind turbines that reportedly kill many raptors; are collectively not to be swept under the carpet IMO. There is no such thing as a free lunch in energy world.

    in reply to: Broken Energy Markets and the Downside of Hubbert’s Peak #17739
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Thanks to all for your generous support 😉 A few thoughts…..

    In counting costs, you always have to count the benefits too. Ask, is it a good thing that Small Pox was eradicated? Or would it be better if it were still at large keeping the population in check?

    It is a fact that we have 7+ billion souls. The planet and its diversity will survive despite us for hundreds of millions more years. So who or what are we preserving the planet for? I have as much if not more concern about preserving habitat diversity than most and simply pissed off that we seem to be destroying habitats right left and centre in the name of Green.

    In the UK, most of the large centralised energy infrastructure was built by the state. I gather that in the USA, energy industries were so heavily regulated so as to be The State in all but name until 1992. BP was owned by the UK State as recently as the 1980s. I am not advocating State control simply looking for alternatives.

    About 2% of power is lost to transmission. The math I learned at school makes that 1/50th 😉

    The other way to run the economy would be to abandon huge, centralized, capital-intensive projects in favor of small-scale, localized solutions.

    Good luck with roads, air travel, higher education and research, food production and medical research with that model. Without the huge centralised resource, we would not be able to have this conversation.

    in reply to: Oil Price Scenarios for 2015 and 2016 #17628
    Euan Mearns
    Participant
    in reply to: Oil Price Scenarios for 2015 and 2016 #17627
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    TonyPrep

    I know that Roel disagrees with me when it comes to CC, but we mange to live with that. But your comment has really, really pissed me off.

    The link between sunshine and temperature based on UK climate records since 1933

    UK temperatures since 1956 – physical models and interpretation of temperature change

    The Vostok Ice Core: Temperature, CO2 and CH4

    I expect you to come with a substantial critique of these three articles highlighting where my analysis is dispassionate.

    in reply to: Oil Price Scenarios for 2015 and 2016 #17609
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    ninjin, if demand and price does not recover in 2016, then we are looking at widespread destruction of non-OPEC high cost supply. The world would then settle on a lower supply of low cost oil commensurate with a significantly reduced global GDP. Its likely that we see nationalisation of energy industries and a new world order that is impossible to forecast.

    in reply to: Oil Price Scenarios for 2015 and 2016 #17573
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Capacity adjustments are made by moving the blue supply curve left or right. But you are correct to question whether or not the shape might change as well. It worked incredibly well on the way up and down in 2008. In a way it is a response curve of industry to changing demand. I guess we may find out in the next couple of years if there has been a fundamental change. For the time being, its all I have to go on.

    in reply to: The 2014 Oil Price Crash Explained #16858
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Certainly, China 2030 will expect to have converged upon OECD per capita CO2 emissions and can from that point agree to reduce them in concert with the OECD in a world of diminishing FF availability – maybe (in my very humble but less humble opinion than others 😉

    in reply to: The 2014 Oil Price Crash Explained #16852
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Bearing in mind that the EIA only have data up to July 2014, hence Roger’s grey dots are “synthetic data” more colloquially known as “made up”. But we know we must be down there somewhere, if you see the down arrow on my Figure 5.

    in reply to: The Most Destructive Generation Ever #16543
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, this is a great posting! A theme I must return to. But I just want to follow up on my comments yesterday and the Bloomberg link in debt rattle;

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-12/fossil-fuels-with-550-billion-in-subsidy-hurt-renewables.html

    FF subsidies $550 billion
    Renewable subsidies $120 billion

    Now I refute that legitimate expenditure deducted from profits is a subsidy, but just accepting the numbers…From BP 2014 energy consumption in million tonnes oil equivalent:

    Oil 4139
    Gas 2986
    Coal 3724
    FF total 10849

    New renewables 241

    Doing the sums, “subsidy per toe”

    FF 51 $
    New renewables 498 $

    @ $80 / barrel 1 toe is priced at $586 – can you see problem?

    But your posting today is a timely reminder of the real issues. I’d note that population is following a logistic and will begin to fall this century. This creates a whole new set of socio-economic issues that we are in fact beginning to feel today – pensions and immigration to name but 2.

    in reply to: And Then There’s The Things You Couldn’t Even Make Up #16500
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    PPS – in fact I think unsuccessful exploration is treated as R&D – and anyone who knows anything about the oil industry will know that exploration is innovative R&D out of the top drawer.

    I’m not 100% sure of my facts here. But if I’m correct, then the general tenor of the Gruniad is that unsuccessful R&D expenditure should no longer be tax deductible. Good luck to the world with that!

    Roel, sorry about leaning on TAE on this one. I may be wrong. But its an itchy itch that has been itching a long while.

    in reply to: And Then There’s The Things You Couldn’t Even Make Up #16499
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    PS – looking at your $37 billion to $88 billion graphic, I believe it is this way because the ol industry PAYS SO MUCH TAX!

    37+88 = 125
    88/125 = 70%

    It is the very fact that the oil industry pays such a high rate of tax that makes these numbers.

    in reply to: And Then There’s The Things You Couldn’t Even Make Up #16498
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, This OECD governments subsidising oil companies thing has been bugging me for a very long while. Below is my understanding / view of things. Appreciate if you can correct me where I go wrong and explain your side.

    The oil industry can be split into maybe 5 parts:

    1. Exploration
    2. Development (building pipelines and platforms)
    3. Production
    4. Refining
    5. Retail

    It is traditional in OECD accounting practices that CAPEX can be paid over the life of the asset (offset against tax initially – you get a big tax rebate that you then repay over time). In the oil industry, exploration costs are counted as CAPEX initially. Successful exploration effort gets charged to profits over the life of the asset. Unsuccessful exploration costs have no asset to charge against and companies are allowed to write down these losses against their aggregate pool of assets. The $88 billion so called subsidy is I believe simply $88 billion of losses that oil companies get to write off against the substantial taxes they pay.

    So what is the aggregate tax bill paid by the oil industry world wide? I don’t know. I hope someone can answer. In the UK, companies producing oil pay something like 65% tax on the oil produced. And then there is an additional 60+% tax paid by consumers at the pump. Virtually all the revenue ends up in the hands of the government – and you are portraying this as a subsidised industry.

    Without the exploration relief there would be no exploration and there would not have been exploration which would mean that you and none of your readers would be here!

    In the UK the renewables industries are running on consumer paid subsidies – ROCs and FIts – paid for mainly by the poor. The oil industry forks out a huge amount of tax that pays for the hospitals and well fare that keeps the poor alive.

    Happy to be corrected if my view of the Orwellian Greenspeaking Gruniad is at fault.

    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Scotland and FREEDoooooooooooooM

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/scotland-decides/poll-tracker

    Good source of polling history. All the polls show NO with a narrow lead. Yes it is rather tense knowing that tomorrow morning may see the start of an 18 month process to leave the UK. I know Roel thinks we should vote yes, but I tend to be risk averse. I juts paid over £100 for a new British Passport and I wouldn’t want that money to be wasted, would I 😉

    This is also an interesting read.

    Ewan Morrison – YES: Why I Joined Yes and Why I Changed to No

    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, the report on flight MH17 is very important. I never got a reply from our Foreign Secretary and so will send him the link and a gentle reminder. I did get a reply from Dame Anne Begg asking to be kept informed.

    I guess the Russian report is inconclusive. But it is telling when they say that it is only Russia that are seeking an explanation and that the Dutch report is delayed. The absence of a filmed vapour trail is also rather telling, although it was “overcast” on the day. It will be excruciating embarrassing for NATO to learn that their new best friend in the region might just be responsible.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle Sep 14 2014: Draghi To Save Europe With Semantics #15146
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Second, small countries just don’t have the money to engage in truly crazy ideas.

    What like 100% of our electricity equivalent from renewables by 2020? And the risk that the subsidy for this that now falls to the whole of the UK may fall to Scotland alone.

    An example of recent merging of nations was E and W Germany. Imperfect analogy I know. But I believe E Germany and the whole of Germany has benefited.

    But I see where you are coming from Roel, a Europe made up of 100 federal states of 5 million each is an interesting thought. But it cuts across our evolutionary heritage of family, clan, country, alliance and security.

    If the Scotland vote goes YES I will work towards making it work. Might even stand for election to the Parliament.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle Sep 9 2014: The Black Swan Of Scotland #15065
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, it’s quite important to understand the recent history that brought Scotland to this point. It begins with the finance crash of 2008. Followed by a UK general election in 2010 which unusually for the UK resulted in a hung parliament. The Conservatives (Cameron) and The Liberal Democrats (Clegg) formed the coalition that is in power today.

    The following year we had an election to the Scottish Parliament. The proportional representation system was specifically designed to never deliver a majority government, but it did. There was an SNP landslide. Scotland has always been a Labour stronghold but in that election traditional labour voters, disillusioned with New Labour, Tony Blair and his illegal war in Iraq abandoned labour and voted SNP instead (at least some did). And the Lib Dems, disgusted with the unlikely coalition with the Conservatives abandoned their party big time, they were almost wiped out. Some may say that disillusionment with Westminster has strengthened demand for a Scottish independence, and that is also partly true.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament

    Since the Scottish Parliament was formed the SNP have been gathering strength and so popular support is also a part of the story. But the main reason we are where we are was protest voting against New Labour and the Lib Dem – Conservative coalition. Not because a large majority of the Scottish population wanted then to be independent.

    I have a large number of friends who will vote Yes. Many of them academics. The most rational view I’ve heard is for the UK to move to a proper federal system with a substantial dismantling of the power held at Westminster.

    in reply to: Follow The Money All The Way To The Next War #14511
    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Raul, many thanks for this report, that is suitably cautious, but is sufficient to raise serious doubts in my mind about the popular E Ukraine BUK rocket theory. The EU and USA extending sanctions without evidence is pretty appalling in itself.

    The report in the New Straight Times certainly needs a reply from Western Governments. I will try to find time to write letter (email) to Philip Hammond, UK foreign secretary.

    I don’t understand what Obama is up to. He looks grey, haggard and isolated.

    Euan Mearns
    Participant

    Roel, I’ve been following your commentary on Russia – Ukraine and the ME and finding I agree with most of it. To be honest I don’t understand WTF is going on. I’m pretty sure that Putin is equally confused.

    The real issue here is why did Dutch authorities allow an aircraft to take off from Schiphol, laden with Dutch passengers, to fly over a war zone? British Airways and Quantas were already avoiding the area. IMO the culpability here really lies with those who sanctioned the route which I understand from reliable sources is Malaysian Airlines.

    The reporting of this tragic event here has been surreal. The Ukranian separatists seem to have done a reasonable job of gathering up bodies and body parts to send them home – recalling that they are fighting for their own lives against a larger force. The western media seems to expect some ridiculous standard to apply.

    Be warned that finding out who did this may rumble for decades. We still don’t know who downed Panam 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.

    I’m writing this while listening to the opening ceremony of The Commonwealth Games in the background. NUF said.

    Andy Murray was a pupil in the primary school in Dunblane on the day Thomas Hamilton struck in 1996 killing 16 children. Grieve and then move on.

    Obama? Spying on everyone. Too much data to process. Relying on cherry picked reports from his security services. He should get on a plane, fly to Moscow and talk to Putin… before its too late!

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)