We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Bruce Oksol at The Million Dollar Way provides an updated scorecard on what he is seeing as the cost to construct a variety of electricity generating plants.
From Enquiring Minds Want to Know – January 30, 2016: Continue reading “Estimates of construction costs for new energy projects”
Have mentioned some of this before, but will post again to keep track of it.
12/3 – The Million Dollar Way – Minneapolis Airport Solar Project Twice The Quoted Rate for Solar Energy Projects at $7 Million / MW; No Problem – Increased Landing Fees – No One Will Notice –
Two Minnie solar projects on top of parking garages at the airport.
Continue reading “Data points for building solar farms at airports”
Previously mentioned a lot of players are involved with cutting edge efforts for space exploration. Russia is still a player. So is China. Here are a few articles on the Chinese efforts:
1/11 – Behind the Black – China has big plans in space in 2016 – Summary of the following article. Recap says China has the goal of launching a new space station in 2016 and put staff on it along with initial launch of two new rockets.
1/11 – Parabolic Arc – China Plans Space Station & New Booster Launches in 2016 – Article gives a few more details on China’s plans for spaceflight in 2016: Continue reading “China is a competitor in the open frontier of space exploration”
While tech innovations have opened up new frontiers, innovation is disrupting some fields. Here are a few articles making this point that I’ve accumulated recently: newspaper circulation continues to collapse, higher ed is increasingly vulnerable to disruptions, and accreditation agencies (which illustrate regulatory capture) show why disruption is needed.
1/20 – Richard Tofel at Medium – The sky is falling on print newspapers faster than you think – Author pulled together circulation numbers from March 2013 and September 2015 for the 25 largest newspapers in the country.
Guess what? Circulation is collapsing.
Here are just a few of the numbers he accumulated: Continue reading “More illustrations of disruption from technology”
A few articles on military drone operations.
12/27 – Wall Street Journal – Air Force Looks Beyond Officers to Boost Drone-Pilot Ranks – USAF is moving towards having enlisted troops fly drones. To this point rated pilots had to be at the controls. The increased demands for joint operations combined with staffing limits along with the dreariness of the work has created a shortage of qualified pilots. To fill a gap, USAF may use enlisted pilots.
Fun news on one space competitor competing and one non-competitor lollygagging.
1/23 – Instapundit and Behind the Black – Blue Origin reflies and lands New Shepard again – Blue Origin successfully recovered a booster last November. They have now successfully relaunched the booster and again recovered it.
A reused booster. Extremely cool.
As BtB says, the competition heats up…
Check out the video, Launch. Land. Repeat. January 22, 2016:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/74tyedGkoUc]
(Video courtesy of Blue Origin.)
In the opening frame of the video above, it is noticeable to me that it landed something in the range of 10 or 15 feet from dead center.
Continue reading “Blue Origin launches and recovers a previously used booster rocket”
My friend John Bredehoft provides a different perspective on technology change. On 1/22 at his blog tymshft, he asked Do the essentials change?
He discusses a podcast comparing life today to about 35 years ago. For perspective, that puts us in 1981, or the range of the first year of the Reagan administration.
One of many points I draw from the discussion is related to Jon’s last comment:
But the speed of the processing chip in my smartphone is relatively meaningless.
Phrased differently, the smart phone in your hand may have an operating speed that is thousands or millions of times faster than 30 years ago but that increase doesn’t have an impact on your life in proportion to the increase in speed. Increased operating speed in the last decade probably hasn’t affected your life much at all.
A few articles of interest to me over the last two months: baby deliveries increase, airline boardings down, adjustments to low prices continue.
1/15 – Amy Dalrymple at Oil Patch Dispatch – While oil boom has slowed, births still booming – number of births in Williston and my not word a record number last year. The count at Williston’s Mercy Medical Center:
Checked the docket in the federal PACER system again today for the now-convicted, felon, sex-trafficker Keith Graves.
No change since my last update on December 18. No new filings in district court. I can’t find any appeals in the 8th Circuit.
Sentencing is still set for February 17. That is just under four weeks away.
What’s noticeable by being absent is the sentencing recommendations from the federal Probation Office, opposition from Mr. Graves’ attorney, and rebuttal by US Attorney. At this point it sure seems to me there should be several filings regarding the recommended sentence. As of this morning, nothing has been filed regarding the sentence.
A prediction from 1976:
“We need to have, uh, a realization that we’ve got about 35 years worth of oil left in the whole world. We’re gonna run out of oil.”
That scientific certainty was from candidate Jimmy Carter during the 1976 Presidential Debate.
Check it out for yourself:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/iXHTmEUGR7c]
Here is some math: Continue reading “We ran out of oil in 2011. You didn’t know that? (Peak oil #42. Oops #44)”
Here are three very different articles on the future of crude oil prices.
One of the memorable things I learned in grad school was the idea that you can’t project the current trend of something into the future forever.
Keep in mind that West Texas Intermediate price was somewhere in the region of $100 a barrel in mid ’14. WTI is now about $26. Let me round off some calculations for simplicity. Let’s call that a current price of $30. Let’s call that a year and a half.
So we see a drop of about $70 in 1.5 years. A straight line projection would calculate out as another $45/bbl in another year. Thus, by 12/31/16 WTI price will be $30 minus $45, or a negative $15. Yes, you read that right. A straight line projection means that oil producers will be paying refineries $15 for every barrel the refiners agree to take off the producer’s hands. Gas prices will consist only of the refining costs, a humongous list of taxes, with an offset for the negative cost of raw material.
You can’t do straight line projections forever.
Here are three superb articles that help me understand what is going on in the world of crude oil…
1/18 – Mark P. Mills at The Wall Street Journal – After the Carnage, Shale Will Rise Again / Vast swaths of shale will be profitable with oil at about $40 a barrel, and the nimble industry is ready – If you actually pay attention to my blog, Mr. Mills’ article is a must-read.
Oil prices are quite cyclical. He points out there have been six extremes since the’73-’74 oil embargo. The extremes create turmoil. At the moment we are in the carnage stage of the cyclical extremes.
Continue reading “Oil prices – Trends don’t continue in a straight line forever”
All the world’s players are reacting to the sustained drop in crude oil prices. Here are a few articles I’ve found of interest lately. Another post soon.
1/12 – CNN money – OPEC considering emergency action on oil prices – Article hints that OPEC may have an emergency meeting as soon as February. Next scheduled meeting is in June. Goal would be to get production cuts which will pull oil off the market and increase prices.
Article asserts Saudi Arabia started the price war (which is now the appropriate word) to go against shale producers in the US. That has been my assumption all along. Most articles I see in print now state that as common knowledge.
OPEC may be about ready to blink.
12/28 – Bloomberg News at Calgary Herald – Shale drillers running out of tricks to survive as OPEC keeps up pressure – Shale drillers have done all they obvious things to cope with $50 oil: lay off staff, focus on the best spots, increase amount of sand, drill smarter, drill faster, and squeeze suppliers. That has allowed the industry to essentially maintain production.
But now oil is at $35.
Continue reading “Background on collapse in crude oil prices – 1/20”
I’ve been tracking the actual costs of various electricity projects as I come across them in my reading. Came across a superb source for future reference.
The Energy Information Administration calculates the costs to build a wide variety of generating plants. The 2014 data is here: Table 8.2 Cost and performance characteristics of new central station electricity generating technologies
I’m probably in over my head with this table, but here is what I’ve learned. The total overnight cost is the estimated amount if the project were to be built instantly. I think that represents what most people would consider to be the cost of construction.
Continue reading “Official estimates of capital costs for electricity sources”
Mentioned Saturday there was a small increase in oil production during November. Here are a few more graphs.
Value of the production is dropping fast due to the world-wide drop in prices. These reflect the discount to allow for transportation costs to the Gulf, East, or West coast.
Continue reading “More graphs showing North Dakota oil production – 1/18”
If you want to know why I remain so optimistic for our future even though the national political, geopolitical, and economic news is so depressing, check out the space news I’ve noticed in the last week. As Behind the Black often says, the competition is heating up.
One bit of not-so-great news. From Space.com: Video Shows SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Land on Droneship, Then Fall Over and Explode. The video is here. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 landed almost dead center on the drone floating 200 miles south of Vandenberg. The engine cut off which means it was landed successfully. Then one of the legs gave out, the rocket tipped over, then exploded. Preliminary guess is that something (a lockout collet?) iced over while on the launch pad.
1/14 – Behind the Black – Orbital ATK and SpaceX win Air Force contracts – ULA does not have engines for its rockets and thus must rely on Russian engines to get our military launches into space. Orbital ATK and SpaceX both have contracts to develop new engines.
The obvious story line here that gives me such encouragement is two new-on-the-scene, privately owned space companies have been called in to help the mega-contractor ULA get out of its mess.
Another big contract:
Continue reading “Fun news on the incredibly wide open frontier of private space exploration – 1/18”