datadrivenangel
12 hours ago
The whole point of shale is that you can get it going again quickly and piecemeal based on the price of oil. It puts a large plateau/floor on oil at $~60 per barrel which is geopolitically very useful.
fraserphysics
8 hours ago
Yes! There's more oil in the ground than we should ever burn. The places where it's cheap to get out are ruled by unpleasant people. Shale limits the price they can charge. Yea shale. However, low prices encourage putting CO2 in the air. Boo shale. I wish we would find a better way to reduce use than paying unpleasant people high prices.
consumer451
7 hours ago
> Yes! There's more oil in the ground than we should ever burn.
I don't think that everyone realizes what would happen if we did so. [0]
> Our calculated global warming in this case is 16°C, with warming at the poles about 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages ~20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world (Hatfield et al., 2011). Increased stratospheric water vapor would diminish the stratospheric ozone layer (Anderson et al., 2012).
My question is, what is going to stop this trajectory?
https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/what-if-we-burn-all-t...
silverquiet
7 hours ago
Eventually human civilization breaks down to the point where we can no longer sustain the industry to extract the fossil fuels.
consumer451
7 hours ago
So just to be clear: if we burn all of the fossil fuels that we know about, then we are guaranteed to end human civilization, correct?
That is the plain truth, and we are going to keep making fun of climate activists until we get there?
cindyllm
7 hours ago
[dead]
defrost
7 hours ago
In related news about that trajectory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815912
There are strong signs that the small amount of increased mean tempreture seen already has been sufficient to downgrade the ability of the environment to sink what has been added.
consumer451
7 hours ago
Sure, but why even make that argument? Nobody cares about this nerd stuff. Maybe the only argument should be that "if we burn it all, then we will all die." That's the level of argument people can understand. That should be the title of every climate study going forward, shouldn't it?
_aavaa_
5 hours ago
People do make that argument. The people who think climate change is a haox aren’t persuaded by the purported consequences of a hoax.
seanmcdirmid
5 hours ago
But we don’t die, well we do but that’s unavoidable. Our grand kids or great grand kids are the ones that will really suffer from this, but maybe by then we will have created a successor species based on AI or something so humans would have been obsolete anyways. The 2020s will be known as the decade that made humanity’s continued existence infeasible and unnecessary?
defrost
6 hours ago
> Sure, but why even make that argument?
To accurately model a physical system humanity depends upon.
> Nobody cares about this nerd stuff.
Clearly false.
Many do. Military types care about ocean tempretures as it facilitates submarine tracking, for example.
> Maybe the only argument should be that "if we burn it all, then we will all die."
Many would suggest burning 90% of it then. That's 10% shy of we all die so that's got to be ok, okay?
> That should be the title of every climate study going forward, shouldn't it?
This is what you want to hang your stance upon? Uniformly stupid titling?
alephnerd
12 hours ago
Depends, breaking below $60 per barrel does lead to significant layoffs and it's difficult to rebuild that know-how because knowledge isn't 100% elastic.
The oil glut itself is largely because of the KSA and Russia in the midst of a mutual price war as well as the US expanding it's own production.
That said, it's still an open question of whether a glut will exist or not - at this point it's China, India, and Japan that's become the primary driver for oil prices because they are getting similar deals from both KSA and Russia, and are trying to pressure other suppliers to give similar deals.
actionfromafar
9 hours ago
Easy solution, bomb more Russian oil infrastructure.
nradov
9 hours ago
Sure, but we should do that anyway regardless of oil prices.
alephnerd
9 hours ago
1. A significant portion of that ONG infrastructure is in the Russian Far East - especially those that are furnishing the Asian market
2. Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean companies and SOEs all have significant stakes and investments in Russia's ONG infrastructure, such as Sakhalin-I (Japan's Mitsui Group and India's ONGC), Sakhalin-II (Korea's KOGAS and Japan's Tohoku Electric), and Power of Siberia (China's CNPC), so any attack on Japanese, Chinese, Indian, or Korean ONG infrastructure in Russia is viewed as a red line by these countries.
3. Saudi Arabia remains a competitor against Shale, and would continue it's price war against American Shale.
actionfromafar
8 hours ago
Practically, Ukraine can’t reach that infrastructure anyway. Making western Russia an oil free zone will probably suffice.
alephnerd
7 hours ago
But most oil exports that are subsidizing the Russian economy and providing forex are being exported from the Russian Far East.
Hitting infra in Western Russia makes it painful for civilians and does have a psychological impact of highlighting to the Russia public how war has consequences, but by and large it doesn't do much given that Russia still has the capability to continue garnering foreign currency or operating with foreign markets.
Furthermore, those strikes aren't truly crippling [0] to Russian ONG capacity and the associated sanctions won't have much of an impact given how diversified Russian ONG companies are [1], with JVs and stakes in Western ambivalent countries like China, Congo, Egypt, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and others.
The psychological impact of such strikes cannot be understated, but it's not really painful for Russia given that they have chosen to dig in and believe that they can win an economic war of attrition [2] as it stands. If the much more isolated Maduro regime in Venezuela or the Khamenei regime in Iran are able to hold onto power, it's hard to see how these strikes can impact that Putin regime in what has become a war of attrition, especially when regional powers like Vietnam have begun pivoting back to Russia [3], and larger powers like China [4] and India [5] are doubling down on Russian investments.
[0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/1...
[1] - https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/1...
[2] - https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-war-ukraine-next-chapt...
[3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/world/asia/3-takeaways-fr...
[4] - https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/power-of-siberia-2-rus...
[5] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-signs-pact-with-sa...
actionfromafar
an hour ago
Putin may not lose power, but may lose ability to keep the logistics of an invasion force. Also, none of those other countries are locked in a war of attrition.