Enjoy the "low" inflation - oil prices jumped nearly 10% literally right after this report. This is due entirely to (not unexpected by some) slow resumption of growth by China after ending its lockdowns combined with some US/EU trade friction; it is far from clear this is going to hold up. The US took well over a year after lockdowns to "get back into the swing" including massive COVID subsidies. We shall see how China actually performs.
Re: CO2 removal
I see this as a scale problem, not a technology problem and therefore not solvable by technological solutions.
In particular, I calculated how much electricity would be needed to just pump the pure CO2 generated by emissions in 1 year; it was something like 2% of human used electricity. Multiple by 2380 (the inverse of 420 ppm) and the whole situation is just ludicrous.
A separate calculation based on what I am working on: if all of the CO2 from all of the flared natural gas in the entire United States was captured - it would amount to 0.04% of global emissions. Ouch.
And a last data point: genetic engineering to increase plant and/or algae borne carbon sequestration. Plant borne: 100% fail - see forest fires.
Algae borne: again, a scale problem. Human agriculture is about 2% of world plant mass. Unless we can engineer algae that can outcompete that in nature in terms of procreation and survival (unlikely) we would have to increase human farming by 25000%.
And note that just because a plant or algae sucks in CO2, does not mean it is sequestrated. The "bio" origin geologists hypothesize that our present "fossil fuels" come from a unique period in the past where the upper oceanic layers were fantastically productive but there were also over large deep regions with no oxygen. The algae and other microfauna growing in these top layers grew and died, fell into the anoxic regions and were eventually folded deeper into the Earth's crust. The vast majority of the oceans today are deserts - the same literally cannot occur (yet).
Some people will make money from carbon sequestration because there is so much money being throw at it, but there is zero possibility of it making any difference whatsoever.
I also think it's a bit foolish for us to expect inflation to fall back to 2 percent, and it may be needlessly destructive trying to get there. We're in a new era of Post-Covid "near shoring" and "reshoring." Who is to say the natural rate of inflation shouldn't be 2.5-3.0 percent?
Near shoring and reshoring is guaranteed to increase inflation. You are simply not going to get the combination of low labor cost AND low capital cost AND high infrastructure investment which China has assembled. Factories in Mexico, India have to contend with intermittent power and water; factories in Vietnam have to contend with transport infrastructure that is only now starting to get built.
But even above that: there has been at least a decade of underinvestment in basic commodities development from energy to minerals to chemicals to everything else. Unless demand flatlines or decreases substantially and permanently, it is ludicrous to think that there won't be inflationary impact from this as well.
The real kicker is that the problem of inflation isn't just inflation. The US and EU experienced 5 to 10% inflation over a period where wages were flat to up; the US has had at least 15 months of negative real wage growth at the moment and I think it is more like 20 months straight. This is a severe societal problem.
The Scylla to the above Charybdis is the massive national/federal debt to GDP ratios in the West. Where before interest rates were prime 0% to negative, now they are 5% and still climbing - the interest paid on the US federal debt, for example, is going to exceed the annual US Defense budget if this situation persists for 2 or 3 more years.
So is it preferable to have more years of negative real wages due to high inflation - which is going to make the Western populations even more restive than they are now? Or is it preferable to try and rein in inflation with the wrong tool (i.e. interest rate increases vs. commodity and structural inflation) but suffer massive government deficits due to interest payments on government debt?
The only explanation I can see, which is insane, is the West is trying to offset the burgeoning demand of the Rest Of World for energy, minerals etc by reducing its own consumption via recession...
I think I have more reservations about X.ai than you, but perhaps with the right stewardship, it can become something good and genuine.
We are so back.
Re: Inflation
Enjoy the "low" inflation - oil prices jumped nearly 10% literally right after this report. This is due entirely to (not unexpected by some) slow resumption of growth by China after ending its lockdowns combined with some US/EU trade friction; it is far from clear this is going to hold up. The US took well over a year after lockdowns to "get back into the swing" including massive COVID subsidies. We shall see how China actually performs.
Re: CO2 removal
I see this as a scale problem, not a technology problem and therefore not solvable by technological solutions.
In particular, I calculated how much electricity would be needed to just pump the pure CO2 generated by emissions in 1 year; it was something like 2% of human used electricity. Multiple by 2380 (the inverse of 420 ppm) and the whole situation is just ludicrous.
A separate calculation based on what I am working on: if all of the CO2 from all of the flared natural gas in the entire United States was captured - it would amount to 0.04% of global emissions. Ouch.
And a last data point: genetic engineering to increase plant and/or algae borne carbon sequestration. Plant borne: 100% fail - see forest fires.
Algae borne: again, a scale problem. Human agriculture is about 2% of world plant mass. Unless we can engineer algae that can outcompete that in nature in terms of procreation and survival (unlikely) we would have to increase human farming by 25000%.
And note that just because a plant or algae sucks in CO2, does not mean it is sequestrated. The "bio" origin geologists hypothesize that our present "fossil fuels" come from a unique period in the past where the upper oceanic layers were fantastically productive but there were also over large deep regions with no oxygen. The algae and other microfauna growing in these top layers grew and died, fell into the anoxic regions and were eventually folded deeper into the Earth's crust. The vast majority of the oceans today are deserts - the same literally cannot occur (yet).
Some people will make money from carbon sequestration because there is so much money being throw at it, but there is zero possibility of it making any difference whatsoever.
I also think it's a bit foolish for us to expect inflation to fall back to 2 percent, and it may be needlessly destructive trying to get there. We're in a new era of Post-Covid "near shoring" and "reshoring." Who is to say the natural rate of inflation shouldn't be 2.5-3.0 percent?
Re: "Natural rate of inflation"
Near shoring and reshoring is guaranteed to increase inflation. You are simply not going to get the combination of low labor cost AND low capital cost AND high infrastructure investment which China has assembled. Factories in Mexico, India have to contend with intermittent power and water; factories in Vietnam have to contend with transport infrastructure that is only now starting to get built.
But even above that: there has been at least a decade of underinvestment in basic commodities development from energy to minerals to chemicals to everything else. Unless demand flatlines or decreases substantially and permanently, it is ludicrous to think that there won't be inflationary impact from this as well.
The real kicker is that the problem of inflation isn't just inflation. The US and EU experienced 5 to 10% inflation over a period where wages were flat to up; the US has had at least 15 months of negative real wage growth at the moment and I think it is more like 20 months straight. This is a severe societal problem.
The Scylla to the above Charybdis is the massive national/federal debt to GDP ratios in the West. Where before interest rates were prime 0% to negative, now they are 5% and still climbing - the interest paid on the US federal debt, for example, is going to exceed the annual US Defense budget if this situation persists for 2 or 3 more years.
So is it preferable to have more years of negative real wages due to high inflation - which is going to make the Western populations even more restive than they are now? Or is it preferable to try and rein in inflation with the wrong tool (i.e. interest rate increases vs. commodity and structural inflation) but suffer massive government deficits due to interest payments on government debt?
The only explanation I can see, which is insane, is the West is trying to offset the burgeoning demand of the Rest Of World for energy, minerals etc by reducing its own consumption via recession...
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers
Regfluencers 😂