So what clues lie in wait for us in 2023? I’d target what Liz Truss once touted in a speech when she eulogised “Uber-riding, Deliveroo-eating, Airbnb-ing freedom fighters.”
Sorry, Liz, while we all love a free lemonade, these were never the entrepreneurs you thought they were. They wouldn’t exist without incontinent money printing by central banks, and those artificially low interest rates.
They found a loophole and called it a revolution. Outside my local McDonalds recently, I counted 21 bike couriers. Some will deliver you a packet of crisps or chewing gum. Perhaps somewhere in the “delivery economy” there will emerge a modestly profitable service company – but Deliveroo and Just Eat may not be it. Their debt becomes more expensive each year.
Entirely so. And yet, and yet. We still need to do the experiment. Because that’s how we find out what does work.
Like electric cars, demand for ersatz plant-based meat has plateaued. Oatly makes an oily emulsion it sells as a milk alternative. Its share price peaked at almost $29 per share in June 2021; last week it was down to $1.56.
Beyond Meat, a poster child, reduced its sales forecast and cut its staff.
That’s ever so slightly different. They’ve no moat – as Buffett says is desirable – to protect their revenue/profit stream. It is entirely possible for the tech to succeed – not that I’m saying this one will – and yet the companies not. It all ends up as low margin bulk sales. You know, just boring capitalism in free markets again.
And this I think is wrong:
Unless the hydrogen atom becomes larger in the next few years, and therefore easier to store and transmit, that includes pretty much every hydrogen initiative you hear about today. There’s a reason we haven’t ever had a hydrogen economy before.
Chemistry – Stinks. If we have cheap green hydrogen – if, of course, and it must be cheap – then formulation up to the hydrocarbons we know how to store and transport is cheap enough. It’s already true that Porsche is producing petrol – before tax – at the sort of price we’re used to paying for petrol – post tax.
As Sasoil showed, entirely possible to run an economy this way.
The point about ‘oat milk’ and ‘plant-based meat’ is – as Orlowski says – these a heavily-promoted products that no-one wants. Vegans are a tiny portion of the population and most of them don’t want to eat processed filth either.
The withdrawal of idiot VC money from the market (he quotes Softbank spaffing $300m on a dog-walking app) should actually support firms like Uber and AirBnb in the long run. They both have brand recognition, a stabilising financial picture and less competition now the idiot VC money is out.
Green hydrogen is bollocks. It’s not going to happen, except as part of taxpayer-funded virtue-signalling exercises.
What Oatly and BeyondMeat (and all the others) were trying to do is created patented forms of vegetable substitutes. The problem is that we have had veggie substitutes for decades (or even centuries in some cases) for those that wanted them. So whilst you could invent a new veggie burger there was always the issue of what was the point of it. Most burgers derive their flavour from the sauce. Cheese and the meat provide texture (along with fat and protean).
The real trick would be to create a veggie steak with all the texture and flavour of real steak. I am not saying I would eat it, but it would be an impressive feat.
I’d argue that we could extract CO2 from the air or ocean surface and use hydrogen to make hydrocarbon fuels. But I’d have to admit that just drilling for the stuff and pumping it out of the ground is always likely to be cheaper.
“Fake or substitute products are another good arbitrage opportunity.”
Isn’t he confusing arbing (buying and selling the same thing at different prices simultaneously, thus guaranteeing a profit) with trading (or gambling, as normal people call it – selling a thing at one price and hoping you can buy it back at a lower price in the future)?
@Boganboy
That depends on where you think oil comes from. One school of thought is that oil is the result of decomposed fish and animals from a hundred million years ago. The other school is that the Earth some how makes it and it pools in rocks to create oil fields. The later is believed by people who want there to be an infinite supply of oil. This theory is the hydrocarbon equivalent of believing that the Earth is flat.
Most scientists believe in the first theory which means that at some point it will become uneconomic to drill for oil and gas.
‘… then formulation up to the hydrocarbons we know how to store and transport is cheap enough. ‘
Isn’t the whole idea of using hydrogen to get rid of the carbon element – save the Planet, etc – not just find a way to make oil & gas rather than dig it out of the ground?
‘ It’s already true that Porsche is producing petrol – before tax – at the sort of price we’re used to paying for petrol – post tax.’
True? Data please.
I believe this as much as I believed ‘safe & effective’ for the CoVid faux-vaccine. Each step in production is cost and requires energy. It could never compete with ready made, easily extracted, low energy input, using long established technology and infrastructure.
As economist point out, just because a thing can be done, doesn’t mean we should do it.
Like the man in the US who decided he would make his own chicken & tomato sandwich, which by the time he had grown the wheat, made the bread, grown the tomatoes, raised the chicken and slaughtered and butchered it, cost about $1 500 per sandwich.
Sasoil was a case of having to find an alternative in the absence of being able to get oil, when cost of having something is acceptable in the presence of nothing.
If Porsche can do this why aren’t they making and selling it all gangbusters?
@salamander
‘Most scientists believe in the first theory which means that at some point it will become uneconomic to drill for oil and gas.’
And do ‘scientists’ know when that point will be?
Were they the same ‘scientists’ who said it would be by 1980, 1995, 2000, 2010…? Are they the same scientists who tell us that ‘alternatives’ can replace fossil fuels, and that the tiny 10 000 plus year incremental increase in Earth’s near surface temperatures is all the fault of Man and life will be extinct as a result within the next century unless we kill ourselves off first?
Scientists don’t produce oil; they produce bullshit.
‘at some point it will become uneconomic to drill for oil and gas.’
Fair enough salamander. But since most of it’s still in the ground and fracking means we can get quite a bit more of it out, I don’t expect this to happen any time soon.
Porsche and petrol:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/porsches-synthetic-gasoline-factory-comes-online-today-in-chile/
Salamander – Peak Oil was originally forecast in 1917 or thereabouts by prominent geologists with impressively large moustaches.
(The tranny pedophiles at Google will lie to you and claim it was 1957. Don’t listen to their sad, gay deception or their pathetic doodles about obscure Guatemalan lesbians.)
We do know that the Earth is chock full of delicious hydrocarbons and we’re in no danger of running out of them any century soon, though collapsing the West into a seething brown mass of retarded clit-snippers, aspiring rappers, impoverished eunuchs and grinning popinjay-turds nobody voted for will put a significant dent in the human race’s ability to escape our natural state of Malthusian squalor. But I’m sure the People’s Republic of China will be prepared to send us some foreign aid after the United States goes tits and Rashee Sanook and friends take us back into the dying Single Market.
Hope that helps x
Exactly Boganboy
So far we have picked the low hanging fruit – or low lying skeletons where oil is concerned. There is a lot of crust on the Earth unexplored.
The Earth IS always producing oil and coal. Because organic materials get buried, undergo pressure and heat and is happening constantly. So theoretically we can never run out of oil permanently. Trouble is, any temporary hiatus in oil exploration might last another 100 million years before the next batch is ready.
I saw something earlier about Yanqui nuke aircraft carriers making synthetic jet fuel on board from electrolysed seawater.
Anybody know more?
Yes, that definitely works. You’ve a nuke, at sea (so water) and unless the thing is trying to escape missiles at that very moment of time you’ve plenty of spare power. So, you run desalination plants and so on. And, why not an electrolysis plant? Which you can then combine with CO2 (probably from atmosphere) and then go through the Stinks process.
What makes it works is effectively free energy – that nuke running at less than full flow most of the time – plus the ghastly costs of getting a gallon of jet fuel to the deck. You’ve got not just the usual drill and refine bit, but also the tanker has to get out to sea to meet the carrier group, dodge everyone else’s Navy etc. Expensive business.
This process doesn’t “make jet fuel economically.” It does – or aroundandabout – “deliver jet fuel to the deck of a carrier economically”.
Ah, a number of points to respond to.
Scientists produce bullshit: I am typing this on a computer and you are seriously going to use that as an argument?
How hydrocarbons are formed is important as it allows you to work out where to drill for them. We call oil and gas fossil fuels as we are pretty sure that the source is decomposing fish that has been cooked in the Earth. I would assume that scientists (including those dirty ones that work in the oil and gas industry) are happy with the fossil explanation as they use it to work out where new oil and gas fields are likely to be.
Peak oil: If I knew when peak oil would happen I would not tell you (or anyone for that matter) as I would profit more by keeping that knowledge to myself and use it to trade the markets. As it happens, I do not know. We will only know when peak oil happens after the fact and we will know it has happened by looking at the global production figures and seeing the decline.
Even if the earth is chock full of delicious hydrocarbons, being able to synthesise if from the air and some water would be worth doing.
Energy independence for everyone.
No need to go around
fighting oil wars delivering glorious democracy to every country where someone digs up some oil. We could all just mind our own business and trade, without having to drop insane loads of peace bombs on people for oil.Maybe naive, but hey ho, worth a try.
Damnit, cocked up the html
Even if the earth is chock full of delicious hydrocarbons, being able to synthesise if from the air and some water would be worth doing.
Energy independence for everyone.
No need to go around
fighting oil warsdelivering glorious democracy to every country where someone digs up some oil. We could all just mind our own business and trade, without having to drop insane loads of peace bombs on people for oil.Maybe naive, but hey ho, worth a try.
Agree with salamander. We do know the fossil fuels will run out sometime. We’ve already got (highly wasteful and polluting bird-killing wind farms and solar farms) which have no storage capacity.
Efficiency of storage is largely about energy density/instability (the tendency to go BANG). Hydrocarbons are an amazingly good storage medium as they have high (for non-nuclear stuff) energy density and surprisingly low banginess.
So, if we are to continue down the green path/ eventually find an alternative to fossil fuels, I vote for synthetic hydrocarbons. Generate the hydrogen from your favourite sustainable energy source then use to synthesise (longish-chain) hydrocarbons and put it in your V8 ICE.
Everybody (sane) is now happy so go home for cream cakes and lashings of ginger beer, only pausing to throw insults at the perpetually-offended greenies who think it doesn’t sound like it will eliminate/immiserate 99% of the world’s population and the politicians (who think much the same).
Peak whatever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coal_Question
Hardly a new argument.
Earth, of course, is not the only potential source of hydrocarbons, metals, nuclear fuels etc. We have barely scratched the surface (literally) of the potential resources of this planet never mind any other.
CD – but we never really needed the Petrodollar or the Empire of the Petrodollar in the first place.
Nuclear technology is so old, they were playing with atomic piles when the Charleston was a funky new dance craze.
Chemistry – Stinks. If we have cheap green hydrogen – if, of course, and it must be cheap – then formulation up to the hydrocarbons we know how to store and transport is cheap enough. It’s already true that Porsche is producing petrol – before tax – at the sort of price we’re used to paying for petrol – post tax.
The point Mr Orlowski makes is about using hydrogen directly as fuel (for cars and trains*, and some fools are even talking about planes), which remains a total boondoggle.
* trains are possibly, maybe, just about doable, but why would you want to?
“Most scientists believe …” is one of the dimmest expressions around. Most scientists know little outside their own narrow field except for remembered fragments from school or undergraduate days. On topics where they have no expertise they usually just repeat uncritically what they suppose the real experts to believe. Their idea of who the real experts are is normally formed by a circular argument in favour of the conventional wisdom.
The veggie meat industry appears to be assuming that there is a market of people who want to stop eating tasty animals but who need a crutch, making veggie meats somewhat analogous to the various products used to help people stop smoking. However, there is a population of smokers who want to quit and who may need an assist. is there much of a population of people who want help quitting meat?
Technology is always developing in the oil industry making hard to reach oil more financially feasible to tap. What would a Texas wildcatter circa 1900 have said if you suggested drilling in the North Sea? I believe Tim once pointed out that if we start using less oil its price will come down. That might put Alberta out of business but there should be plenty of oil nonetheless.
“That might put Alberta out of business but there should be plenty of oil nonetheless.”
They had to fence Alberta in by making it impossible to use pipelines to get the stuff out. East, West and South were all made impossible due >solely to green politicians<. Why do you think Biden was so impatient to kill Keystone XL?
Result is the extractors get less for their oil because the transport costs are higher (trucks or trains), which means a lot of the fields are not economic anymore.
They also made sure that there was no route that would allow export so the US can continue to buy Alberta oil at a good discount as there is no route to other buyers
The indigenous opposition is also played up as well as the greens, though that ignores the indigenous communities in the interior that would like a pipeline as they would profit from it and focuses on the coastal communities that are against it and would benefit less
“oil is the result of decomposed fish and animals from a hundred million years ago.”
Possibly pendantry, but nope… Not nearly enough biomass.
Unless by “decomposed” people mean “has seen the inside of/been part of fish and animals at least once”.
Most oil is from the remains of microorganisms who are part of the plant section of life, followed by anaerobics doing their Stuff on fish/shellfish shit. Carcasses rarely make it all the way down without being… recycled… by other critters deeper down.
See also: The white cliffs of Dover ( and other places on that belt of chalk running from the UK up to the Eiffel range..)
All that oil and gas coming from the North Sea comes from the currently deeper end of that layer of diatome carcasses, covered by the salt crust of the sea that used to be there.
So also not “100 million years ago”. That stuff got trapped at best 65 million years ago. Any time before that, the methane and carbohydrates did not get trapped and leaked out into the environment. Not enough of a lid on it.
Also pendantry, but… The whole idea that oil/gas is continuously being produced “in the earth” is not as Woo as it seems.. Plenty of “extremophiles” adapted to high temps/pressure can provide energy for themselves by chopping longer C-chains into shorter ones.
And those critters live in places we call “rock”, well under the surface.
It’s really hard to even start to estimate how much their contribution is to the oil and gas fields we find. There’s simply enough not enough known about them, and the conditions they thrive under, or even how the hell they’re doing it.
But do they exist, and do they contribute in some way? Yes.
Have seen arguments that one could simply extract the nitrogen from the air and combine it with hydrogen.
Though I must admit I wouldn’t want the garage at the end of my street doling out ammonia. The petrol is much less smelly. Still, the Iranians run quite a few of their cars on propane, so I can’t see why we can’t run them on ammonia.
Of course the Greens’d have hysterics. They’ve been whinging about NOx for decades. And ammonia is much less energy dense than hydrocarbon fuels.
As for the windmills, I’ve been entertained to read that General Fusion is going to build a fusion demo plant at Culham. The general subsidy—-oops investment doesn’t seem much more than the cost of a windmill, it saves the jobs of the blokes at Culham, the simple dumb 19th century style tech looks as though it might work – if they can make the computer jigger it around properly. And it does mean that at least one of those damn windmills wont be built!!!!!
And they seem to have started off right by making sure the safety regs’ll be controlled by Culham. After all, those are what’s strangled fission power.
Grikath is right. There’s way too much oil for it to be skeletal in origin. That’s just where they found the early deposits. It’s also far too deep, which we didn’t know until we could drill that deep.
And then there’s all the gas we keep finding. Almost everywhere in fact.
Oil and gas are not fossil fuels. Unlike coal, which frequently even has fossils.
Of course it is produced too slowly to replenish our use. But produced it is.
The other school is that the Earth some how makes it and it pools in rocks to create oil fields. The later is believed by people who want there to be an infinite supply of oil. This theory is the hydrocarbon equivalent of believing that the Earth is flat.
The abiogenic theory of origin could also be believed by people who observe that hydrocarbons are present in vast quantities in the wider solar system and the universe beyond. You’re more likely to observe hydrocarbons in space than not. They’re everywhere, and there’s no reason to believe that they’re not present in the depths of the Earth where surface conditions haven’t dissipated them.
I don’t get the logic behind the green hydrogen and the Stinks process at all.
I mean if the CO2 combinant comes from burning FF then there’s no ‘green’ benefit.
If the CO2 comes from the atmosphere then it doesn’t matter what carbohydrate you can produce with your clever reaction – the cheapest most easily stored carbohydrate is best – you’ve got your CCS right there.
Store it in a mine.
Scale to fix the annual CO2 level at whatever is the optimum for life on earth and have a laugh at the committees debating that number.
This idea of producing something combustible and usable from Stinks is daft when we’ve already got capital and processes to make the useful stuff like petrol. Imv of course.
JohnB:
Only if you project the result against your hourly Union-derived wage/unit, assuming 24/7 etc…
Farming works in bulk, so does actual manufacturing.
The reverse is… I participated in one of them living history experiments.
1) The one Pig was Holy
2) It still got et.
3) The shit it produced, along with its offspring, gave us the Next Year, with Bonus.
Seriously.. without the pig we’d have been fvcked for the yield of our fields.
Din’t stop us from butchering Momma + most piggelets.
She did get the Parade and Cuddles/recognition before the inevitable… Some Thradithions are easy to trace, and to re-enact.
Yeah Bongo. I’ve always felt that just digging up peridotite, grinding it up and spreading it over the surface of the ocean is the simplest solution.
I understand it’d combine with the CO2 in solution and drag it down into the depths. Where I assume it’d eventually be subducted down into the mantle until it was booted back upstairs by a volcano.
Of course this implies that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is controlled by inorganic processes. And that the trace amounts controlled by that scummy stuff on the surface called life are quite irrelevant.