Month: December 2025

First nibbling, soon chomping.

Faster than predicted impacts on oil demand will begin to cut into profit margins for new drilling. There are several very active growing tips of the transition.
Big companies find that EVs make for much cheaper and more competitive delivery fleets.
One wild card is E-bikes, which are competing directly against gasoline powered cars, not regular bicycles, as described in the video above.

MarketPlace:

There is plenty of crude oil sloshing around the global economy right now, which has kept crude oil prices relatively low. Brent crude stands just below $63 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate is around $59.

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And prices are low in part because the market’s gotten crowded. For one, there’s the U.S.,which produced a record amount of crude in September. Hugh Daigle, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that’s partly because U.S. oil producers have gotten more efficient. 

“As it stands right now, most basins here in the U.S. are still profitable,” he said, even at $60 or so a barrel. 

But it’s not just the U.S. boosting supply, said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at data firm Kpler. 

“We have Brazil hitting record production. We have Canada also showing increasing output. You have Norway increasing production,” he said.

There’s also new offshore drilling elsewhere in South America. A lot of this new output was planned years ago, but it takes a while to get a new oil rig going. 

“It’s like London buses. They’ll all come along at the same time,” Smith said.

And that’s the challenge for OPEC.

“It’s not just one player that they’re having to deal with here, but it’s a number of them all increasing, getting up to record production at the same time,” Smith said.

All of that supply is hitting kind of tepid demand, said Clark Williams-Derry at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. 

The global economy is a bit shaky. And, especially in Europe and Asia, “electric vehicles are starting to bite into gasoline demand, into diesel demand,” Williams-Derry said. That’s pushing down the price of crude. 

Continue reading “EVs Nibbling at Global Oil Demand…”

Interview with former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton, who makes it clear that he is no dove on Venezuela, but nevertheless has “a bad feeling” about the way the current policy is trending.

Below, former Trump insider Lev Parnas, who, credibly, it would seem, claims some insight into the process that nearly brought about a Venezuelan military action in the first Trump term, has a substack post on what’s happening.
He’s asking for donations of course, but his story nevertheless rings true.

Lev Parnas on Substack:

Let me tell you the truth:

This is not about drugs. This is not about democracy.

This is about controlling Venezuelan oil and who gets rich off it.

And I’m not saying that as a pundit.

I’m saying it as someone who was in the room the last time they tried this.

I Was Inside the Venezuela Oil Deal in 2019

Continue reading ““I’ve Got a Bad Feeling”: MAGA’s Oil War Gearing Up”

Very interesting! Is this the future of chicken farming in America pic.twitter.com/3ZfDhKJGsl

— SULLY (@SULLY10X) December 1, 2025

A number of farmers who actually get that climate change is real, are nevertheless rebelling against the idea that all meat consumption is an insult to the atmosphere. I’ve heard a lot about projects raising cattle to mimic the movement of bison across the landscape, at least in theory making pastures a carbon sink, much like the American prairies were historically.
I’ve also heard about small scale chicken farming, using coops that are mobile, and as they move, bring the birds across different patches of soil to do what comes naturally, making, in theory, happier hens, as well as better soil, and healthier meat.
What I had not seen is the marriage of this idea with automation and solar energy.

Apparently there are several companies working on this idea.
One is PastureBird.

Longer video explainer below.

Continue reading “Are Mobile Solar Barns the Future of Chicken Farming?”

For quite a few years I’ve been devoting most of my energy to climate solutions, having concluded that the battle with climate denial was, for the most part, won, except among the terminally conspiratorial and misinformed.
Now, we find ourselves in a brand new era of climate denial even as the signs of climate disaster have never been more clear.
Biggest contributor is a social media environment where dangerous misinformation is not only not checked, but monetized.

New York Times:

When nearly 200 nations signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, acknowledging the threat of rising global temperatures and vowing action, many hoped that the era of climate denial was finally over.

Ten years later it has roared back, arguably stronger than ever.

As delegates wrapped the annual United Nations climate talks last Saturday, those who have campaigned to reduce the use of fossil fuels expressed growing alarm that forces arrayed against them are gaining ground in the information war.

The oil, gas and coal industries continue to downplay the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is dangerously heating the planet. It’s a strategy that has been echoed by oil-rich countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and — under the Trump administration — the United States.

President Trump mocks global warming as a hoax, cheered on by a chorus of influencers online who regularly promote disinformation on social media platforms that once tried to curtail it. While such views have long been dismissed as conspiracy theories, their influence on the global policy debates has clearly grown.

Continue reading “Losing the Climate Info Wars?”

A gathering of UK based scientists came together to (once again) sound an urgent alarm about imminent global change, including the elevated risks of a shutdown in Atlantic currents, which would have an enormous impact, in particular on agriculture, in the UK and Northern Europe.
The scientists signed a letter to Prime Minister Keri Starmer and the leadership of the UK’s leading broadcast networks, urging greater seriousness on climate issues, and “an urgent televised national emergency briefing for the public, and to run a comprehensive public engagement campaign so that everyone understands the profound risks this crisis poses to themselves and their families.”