Conventional wells start and ramp very fast (knocking out the bugs), stay on a plateau for a while (maximum production rate possible with the equipment), then decline away over time (geology, pressure), till they are capped (return on costs).
Fracking basically declines from the get go, and can lose 90% of production in 1 year. Fracking is the original Red Queen race - you HAVE to keep drilling to keep production even stable. It's also very geology dependent, even though companies talk of large reserves, only some have the right fault structure to allow money to be made.
As shown in @96 above, the best prospects have been drilled on a comprehensive scale, yet have only delivered ~1 Mbpd of extra usable oil. The US has saved more than that since 2007 in reduced demand.
They are a footnote on oil production, a last desperate throw of the die - they are not a solution or replacement. If someone tells you otherwise, they are trying to sell you something.
]]>You are mistaking YOU seeing the wider system and feedbacks that mean discarding the unemployed is unsustainable with the elite seeing it and acting on it.
In contrast they appear very much to be optimising in the short term, immediate environment to them. If it's cheaper to automate, or ship the jobs to china, then that's what happens. If some plebs riot, then kettle them, arrest them, and jail them as a warning to others. Planning longer than 3-5 years is an anathema to the MBA'ed business exec.
To the extent that a police state is constructed, it's in an attempt to have a nice controllable system with no surprises; not some understanding of what might be around the corner.
Well, in most cases.
As for fracking being some kind of saviour, meaning we don't have to care about MENA - you've been listening to too many americans again. Fracking is evidence we're up sh*t creek, not that we have a solution. It's limited, expensive, and about as much use for transport fuel generation as biofuels were.
Take a swift look at this map of N. Dakota and tell me it's going to provide into the future. Active well sites and horizontals.
http://juanvelascoblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/high-plains-map.jpg
Each well lasts 1-3 years, and then you have to drill another one in a spot that's not already drained. And it's only worth drilling where the conditions are exactly right, otherwise the cost of each barrel gets much more expensive. If each well only generates half as much oil as the best spot, the price has to double to make it viable ...
]]>Firstly, the primary purpose of the royals is figurehead - so give the prols a show and make them luv/trust you. Harry in a Nazi uniform is much more acceptable than talker-to-plants because people can understand others going to a fancy dress party more readily than cooing over a rhododendron.
Second, provided they accept those stunts the interest in a bit of royal tupping will be minor. Next to the stunts, it's not really news.
So, the way to get a measure of privacy is to fake a lack of it. Whilst they are focusing on the stage managed show, they ignore the truly private stuff.
Now, tell me, what did Branson do last?
]]>Your Adam Curtis like focus on shadowy figures, all with essentially the same agenda (maintaining power) and with the same worldview (economists, lawyers and other paid liars) is fine for understanding a BAU world. Thing is, we are going into a very much non-BAU timeline.
Wealth is being centralised as the lack of growth created by the oil plateau meets the need of the hyper rich to continually increase their holdings. Sucking it from the prols is the only place left, so outsourcing, offshoring and global competition hollows out the wealth of the rest.
However, eventually it gives. Eventually we don't get a peaceful transition of power; we get a lot of people looking for a return to the good times, the jobs, and the holidays in the sun. They don't take no for an answer, and they don't need or have leaders you can track from your panopticon.
The revolution is a self-organised, self-sustaining event.
Remember the fuel protests?
Now, look at Egypt and look at the Egypt listing at http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/
Whether you call it tipping points, black swans or system catastrophes - the flip in the long held structures of governance (your shadowy ruling party) is formed from the inevitable outcome of the system behaviours. What you are seeing in stolid status quos is only going to be short lived.
]]>There are several of your books that I would like to see in movie form, but Glasshouse, with it's themes, seemed to be the one that most easily translated into a script.
Precisely those characteristics which I assume turned off the american readers would be the characteristics which would make it work in the third-person viewpoint of celluloid.
PS I always read the title in the prison meaning - that probably says something...
]]>In fact, merge the flood defences with some wind & wave power extraction and it's the type of thing they should be doing today anyway.
Levy a tax on wall street.
]]>and in doing so managed to write a far-future space operatic universe that sane human beings would actually want to live in (if only it existed).
The universe he created was a consequence of his outlook - that things can get better and that life is for the living. When surrounded by the 'can'ts', the 'won'ts' and the 'must nots' - the detritus of dystopia - his vision might have had darks, but they were set again a general light, a positive, human, viewpoint, even encompassing death.
Can't say anything higher than that. A life well lived.
RIP
]]>And if the US book cover is mermaid boobies, I presume the Georgia O'Keeffe inspired UK cover is mermaid c.......?
Thinking back to the ideas on eBooks and dynamically changing 'covers' to improve sales, how would automated AB testing evolve these covers to optimise sales? What factors would you identify as the 'genes' to be tweaked?
]]>Instead
For 2003: "H7N9 response lowered" Sure the flu surface proteins were known by health types in 2003, but not the general populous. It was still a few years before H5N1 entered the lexicon.
For 2023: "Kuwait accused of exportland as Israel collapses" We know that the level of oil exports, globally, have been falling for 7 years now, as production flatlines and domestic demand rises. However the 'exportland' concept, the idea that the oil exports available for importing countries declines faster that world production, isn't commonly understood. By 2023 we can expect the differential availability of oil to be making economies grind to a halt as transportation stops and societal systems break.
It's already collapsing countries, but nobody has put the name to it, yet - or recognised how the blame can be spread around as a form of economic warfare.
]]>Or more realistically, there would probably be and ongoing low level war of empire building seeking for control of the money.
]]>You say every book is 'different', in its writing, genesis, research, reception etc. - and thus deserves a 'making of'.
Well first work out what is common and what is unique to each book. Then group/order those unique factors and cover them in some kind of logical sequence - describing the unique factor and how it applies to the specific book.
For example, if Iron Sunrise was unique in the realisation that you were painting yourself into unresolvable plot hole - you could cover how/why and how you avoided it in the other books.
In theory, that way, you might find out they are truly unique factors, or if there is a common metafactor, a thread that can be illuminated (say to do with world building).
]]>. . .
Personally, I'd say the capability to make, understand, optimise, model/predict and incorporate into a doctrine of operations a weapon would tend to count as a warfighting 'capability'. Whether a squaddie might know it is pretty unimportant - if someone felt the need to lob a chemical warfare shell at someone, then it could be done.
Knowledge is not generally 'given up'. It's only ever really 'lost'.
]]>Even if you publicly got rid of all weapons, every enemy would have to assume that you had such weapons, or could gain them very quickly. Therefore you would probably have to make sure they were right, so as to have an effective bargaining chip available, should you need it. At best you might be 'temporarily inconvenienced' on the nuclear weapon front.
The only reason for going away from an obvious nuclear deterrence is cost, and there are lower cost ways of having the capability/deterrence (like putting them in orbit). Or, being part of an obvious, public, general disarmament (which would still be a publicity stunt, but could at least clear out the mass numbers of weapons).
Oh, and as far maintaining capability is concerned, I think you might be VERY surprised at just how far and long term governments can be to keep that capability alive. The adjunct of this is to make sure you have control/tabs on the human capital capable of making nukes - such that it doesn't wander.
]]>Answer : Not very long
Question 2) How do you now that a former nuclear power doesn't have one hidden away?
Answer : You don't
The reality is that giving up nuclear weapons is only a symbolic act, best reserved for a symbolic general disarming of all states (israel included). Even then, you'd have to assume that anyone who wants one would have one. At least anyone capable of knocking up an enrichment facility.
I do agree with one thing. Playing with nuclear armed subs is pointless. Put the weapons into orbit, pointed down, instead. B*gger the treaties, it's more practical and cheaper - and concentrates the mind much more effectively.
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