We are in a paradigm shattering moment, where the loss of legitimacy and moral authority by the US leadership is so complete, that they are allowing a despotic radically conservative Muslim regime, with the help of a famously creative film industry – portray itself as the plucky underdog, complete with a hip-hop soundtrack.
Clearly they’ve been taking lessons from Ukraine’s playbook, and added a few pages of their own.
The Grift War: Conflict as a Con Game
Above, vivid illustration of rather obvious insider trading in advance of recent social post that moved the price of oil.
WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
― Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket
Paul Krugman via Email:
Over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, a deadline that would expire Monday evening in Washington. Specifically, he announced that the U.S. would begin bombing power plants — plants that supply electricity to Iran’s civilian population — unless the Strait was cleared.
But at 7:05 AM Monday Trump called the whole thing off — for five days, he said, but many people are assuming that the threatened action, which would have been a massive war crime, is now off the table.
The reason for the about-face, he claimed, was that the U.S. was engaged in productive negotiations with Iranian officials — although this seems to have come as news to the Iranians, who denied that any such negotiations are taking place. Sad to say, in this case, as I tried to explain yesterday, the fanatical, brutal Iranian regime is more credible than the president of the United States. Is he lying or living in a fantasy world? Neither possibility is comforting.
Continue reading “The Grift War: Conflict as a Con Game”At $4 Dollars/Gallon, Good Timing for a New EV?
New York Times via email:
Average U.S. gasoline prices hit $3.98 per gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA, on the cusp of a level that was last hit when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The last month has seen the second-largest gas price spike in three decades, with average prices climbing more than 30 percent since the war in Iran effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that conveys up to a fifth of the world’s oil.
Though there’s no hard and fast rule that dictates exactly what choices consumers make at $4, $5, and $6 per gallon, higher gas prices are already stressing household budgets. At $4 per gallon, more than half of Americans said they’d change their driving behavior, according to a 2022 survey by AAA. More recent data has also shown that Americans are delaying some forms of spending.
The most important EV of 2026 has almost arrived. Rivian just announced the full lineup and details on the R2, the two-row, five-seat SUV that will make the American EV startup’s vehicles affordable for many more drivers. As promised, Rivian will begin deliveries this spring — but only on the top-end model. If you want to buy an R2 for less than $50,000, you’re going to be left waiting until the end of next year.
The R2’s arrival is truly a make-or-break moment for Rivian. The brand wowed the world with its electric pickup prototype in 2018; the SUV version, R1S, sold prestige EVs to plenty of well-heeled buyers who weren’t looking for a truck. The company now sits where Tesla sat in the late 2010s, just before the Model 3 and Model Y arrived — having lived through years of economic uncertainty, now hoping its mass-market offerings can elevate it from niche brand to large-scale car company. R2’s success would accomplish that and pave the way for the even more affordable R3 that is supposed to get Rivian into the $30,000s.
Continue reading “At $4 Dollars/Gallon, Good Timing for a New EV?”In “Energy Emergency”, Tax Money to Shut Down Wind Projects
The White House – Declaring a National Energy Emergency – January 20, 2025:
This active threat to the American people from high energy prices is exacerbated by our Nation’s diminished capacity to insulate itself from hostile foreign actors. Energy security is an increasingly crucial theater of global competition. In an effort to harm the American people, hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets. An affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy is a fundamental requirement for the national and economic security of any nation.
The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston.
Under the unusual deal, TotalEnergies would forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms, which would have been built off New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department would then reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration.
In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers.
The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power. It comes as the war in the Middle East has shocked global oil markets, prompting concerns about energy supplies.
Continue reading “In “Energy Emergency”, Tax Money to Shut Down Wind Projects”Assymetric Warfare Includes Memes, gifs, and AI Slop
AI makes anyone a cinematographer, and this is the first war where all of these tools are available across all theaters of the war, and literally everyone is joining in, democratizing insanity- insuring that we are in the dumbest timeline of all.
But if anyone thought the Lego-themed Iranian propaganda video winging its way around the internet the last few days was a flash in the pan, think again. There will likely be plenty more of this sort of thing to come.
Soon Lego-fied ultra-Orthodox Jews were fleeing an Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, while the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ran to an underground bunker as dead American soldiers began to come home, each coffin draped in a Lego stars-and-stripes flag.
Continue reading “Assymetric Warfare Includes Memes, gifs, and AI Slop”Permafrost “Gateway to Hell” is Not Slowing Down
Slightly annoying but informative video on a famous land formation in Siberia, that is perhaps the world’s most striking example of decaying and melting permafrost, accelerated by a warming arctic.
Energy Secretary: “The Campaign is Going Well”
Watching these journalists strain to treat this man as a serious person made me laugh out loud.
It’s like watching the fucking Muppets show.
For an alternative perspective, Energy Analyst Paul Sankey has one.
He calls the current situation “a true TACO”, using the acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out”, which has now apparently entered the language.
Does not see the Straits of Hormuz ever returning to what’s been “normal”.
They are “structurally denigrated.”
Oh, and also, “we could be into a global depression type situation.”
It’s CERA Week in Houston, which is Burning Man for Oil and Energy tycoons. Looking for some interesting insights next 3 days.
Clean Energy Siting is Climate Action’s Front Line
I spent last Monday night in a packed meeting room at a nearby township hall, advocating for a proposed solar energy project. The process had been proceeding quietly and fruitfully for some months, until a anti clean energy politicians raised the profile on Facebook, resulting in a rush of MAGA style attendance, that was, as typical, rude, loud, and, they hope, intimidating.
Bottom line, it’s illegal for a Planning Commission, at this stage, when the developer, utility DTE, has met or exceeded every requirement of the local ordinance, to deny a permit. The only question is, will the local township issue that permit as required, or will they be buffaloed by the mob into withholding.
In that case, Michigan’s clean energy siting reform laws allow for DTE to take another path, through the State Public Service Commission, to obtain the permit.
Among the many public commenters at the meeting, Mark Gaff, the chair of nearby Jonesfield Township Planning Commission stood up to attest that warnings about decline in property values, which is a common thread in any clean energy project, were heard before the construction of the nearby Meridian Wind Farm. They proved to be groundless, and home values in fact have risen.
War Brings Clean Energy “Paradigm Shift”
China’s top battery makers have gained more than $70bn in market capitalization since the US and Israel attacked Iran, highlighting investor expectations of a long-term boost for clean energy.
Neil Beveridge, who leads Bernstein’s energy research, expects China, the world’s biggest oil importer, to double down on its plan to “electrify everything”. Other large Asian economies, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, may also seek out clean energy and fuels.
“This totally changes the whole energy paradigm,” he said, adding: “Even if the war ends next month . . . there is no going back.
Electricity grids need batteries for storage as they rely more on renewables, which produce power intermittently. Batteries are also essential to support energy-hungry data centres. The value of just the domestic Chinese market for grid-scale battery storage is forecast to surge to $199bn by 2032, from $48bn last year, according to Mobility Foresights, a research group.
Continue reading “War Brings Clean Energy “Paradigm Shift””Trump is the Greatest EV Salesman Ever
History has shown that oil price shocks can lead to structural changes in consumer car-shopping habits. The 1970s energy crisis led U.S. car buyers to opt for smaller vehicles, which favored Japanese automakers and eroded their U.S. rivals’ market share.
Analysts say the recent sharp increases in fuel prices likely will not significantly alter shopping patterns for new cars right away. It often takes a sustained period of elevated prices, or for them to eclipse a psychological milestone before car buyers shift their focus to more fuel-efficient choices, industry watchers said.
“Consumers are highly reactive to gas prices, but it tends to be that it has to hit a certain round number,” said Kevin Roberts, director of economic and market intelligence at online marketplace CarGurus. “The $4 (per gallon) threshold may be the one to watch,” he said, noting that was a tipping point for EV interest during the last oil shock, in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine.
An uptick in EV interest is more likely in Europe, where fully electric cars accounted for 19.5% of sales last year, and where government tax breaks for electric purchases are being reintroduced.
In Germany, EV-related traffic for online car dealer MeinAuto has increased by 40% since the start of the Iran war. “Our consultations have also revealed that many people are currently focusing more intently on the running costs of their cars,” the company said in a statement.
In a survey of 1,164 people conducted on March 12 in Germany by online marketplace Carwow, 48% of respondents said that spiking fuel prices “would influence their decision to consider an EV or hybrid.”
Between March 2 and March 12, up to 66% of shoppers were looking at EVs, up from 55% at the end of February, Carwow said.