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The Abundance Illusion

77 points by cwal37

by Hansenq

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61% AI generated, according to Pangram https://www.pangram.com/history/e5a00ace-94cc-436e-b87b-a094...
c'mon, you're Carlyle, a trusted institution for financial advice! How can I trust what you're saying if the AI-generated text is so blatantly obvious?

by beloch

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Some have touted the U.S. as having achieved "energy independence" because of its status as net exporter of oil. This is premature. The U.S. is marginally a net exporter. However, it still imports a lot of oil. It just exports slightly more than it imports.
So, if the world markets gets too dicey, it'd be easy to just cut off the export taps and keep all that oil for Americans, right? Not so fast! First, it's the wrong types of oil in the wrong places. The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to transport that domestic oil to where it needs to be, nor the refining capacity to handle it. There's also the pesky issue of enforcing export bans and lower domestic pricing of oil. Go look up Canada's "National Energy Program" from the 80's to see what sort of things might come with that strategy.
If world oil markets go nuts, the U.S. is still very exposed. Putting up a wall would require pipelines and refineries that would take decades to build and policies that could tear apart the country. Americans have a president who is both committed to destabilizing world oil markets and opposing electrification that might reduce the impact of that instability. That's a dangerous combination.

by skybrian

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> The hard work Carter asked for — building the physical capacity to never need the buffer — was quietly abandoned.
But since then, US natural gas production doubled [1], and solar power is growing exponentially [2]. Leaving that out of the history seems excessively gloomy.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generat...

by Grombobulous

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There might be some missing context here. China and the US are not experiencing growth and development at the same rate at the same time.
In the US, everyone that has access to electricity has had it for decades.
In China, the first year where 100% of the population has had access to electricity is 2013, according to the World Bank.
China is also putting its middle class into automobiles almost a century later than the US did, and they’re almost entirely skipping internal combustion. The US has basically no urgency to replace internal combustion as they have a well-established supply of oil.

by strfry

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'Figure 2: US energy exports outpace production'
We're producing 14,000,000 barrels of oil per day and exporting about 6,000,000 per day, but the author used a graph with two different y-axis scales to make the lines cross so it looks like more oil is being exported than produced.

by Starman_Jones

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“…for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called ‘The Power Company’; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.”
— CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Centauri Monopoly

by derektank

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Odd framing. Every country, not just the US, is drawing down its oil stockpiles, including China[1]. Chinese investments in electrification will certainly pay dividends for as long as the strait of Hormuz remains closed, but they will only be partially shielded from the pain that will hit global oil markets once reserves run out, which as the author points out will probably happen this summer.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-seen-tapping-d...

by sircastor

1 subcomments

Sometimes when I’m programming I get a little lost in trying to make a pipeline more efficient. While it’s a noble goal, I have to remind myself: “somewhere here, you have to pay the piper”. No matter how you squeeze the bits, distribute the work, or optimize the input, you still have to draw those pixels to the display.
The simplification and optimization makes it easier somewhere in the process, but all of those pixels still have to be drawn, somewhere, sometime.
Extending the metaphor a bit far, we’re about to try to draw the entire buffer. And we’re still populating it.

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by cheriot

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In addition to this article, I've seen well thought out assertions from knowledgeable people that Hormuz is far worse than the market thinks and the market just continues not caring.
Maybe they're both right? Horrible things can happen to oil importing economies without derailing the AI build out that's driving the US economy and stock prices.
I think there's a catch-22 where Trump will hold out as long as the market lets him and everyone in the market wants to look through him throwing in the towel.

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