Is Norway the New East India Company? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#71

Post by lenkite » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

nautilius wrote: post #57

lenkite wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you cope with food prices rising 10x in cost ? And the famines ? And the breakdown of law and order accompanied with the failure of most industry and the military. ? Please propose a solution along with your oil-ban utopia.

Ah yeah, who doesn’t remember the infamous famines and the collapse of police and industry in the U.S. during the oil crisis in the 70s.

There was even a book authored on this "Eating Oil: Energy Use In Food Production" in that era that showed how reliant agriculture is on oil and how close the first world was to food crisis.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#72

Post by dsign » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

Welmerts wrote: post #5

Norway is a tiny country, they are largely irrelevant as far as their consumption habits go regarding climate change at large. They are not even a particularly large exporter of oil, outside of top 10 I think. The other countries mentioned are much bigger, not to mention that Nigeria is going to see massive population growth this century. You don't want a country that's projected to have 800 million people to get add…

> You don't want a country that's projected to have 800 million people to get addicted to fossil fuels.

I had to look this out, and it checks [1][2]. Of course, as with any forecast, anything can happen. I hope this turns out to be a bad forecast. Right now, Africa is in need of a lot of things, but this wouldn't be one of those.

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[1] https://www.populationpyramid.net/nigeria/2100/ [2] https://theconversation.com/why-nigeria-cant-fix-its-develop...

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#73

Post by GuuD » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

This has to be the most insane take I’ve ever read. There is no shortage of would-be fossil fuel producers if the price is high enough. Norway, on the other hand, by restricting consumption of fossils pays “early adoption fees” for greener tech. That’s not the most direct way to invest oil dollars in renewables, but it’s certainly one, and it works.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#74

Post by ptr » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

progre wrote: post #26

capableweb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Norway starve without oil exports? Surely they would figure something else out, its neighbors are not sustained on oil exports so why wouldn't Norway be able to too?

Norway has very diffrent terrain from neighbouring Sweden, she is practically all coastline. Not much easily logged forrest, no big lowland plains for large scale farming

Norway has a lot of fishing going on, it was their main export before oil.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#75

Post by lenkite » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #50

lenkite wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you cope with food prices rising 10x in cost ? And the famines ? And the breakdown of law and order accompanied with the failure of most industry and the military. ? Please propose a solution along with your oil-ban utopia.

Why would food costs increase 10x? It’s not particularly hard to make ammonia fertilizer with renewables. Ammonia is made using hydrogen already (not fossil fuels directly, as is mistakenly believed by many), it’s just that usually that comes from natural gas. The price of ammonia might increase a bit in the near term as we make it with clean hydrogen, but it wouldn’t increase food prices 10x. Secondly, electric trac…

Who is going to make that Ammonia fertilizer without functional industry and oil ? You need oil to produce gaseous hydrogen for the process.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#76

Post by likecarter » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #52

likecarter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Production cuts would actually lead to more countries with unscrupulous leaders ramping up their own production. We need to focus on consumption. I.e. moving to other sources.

I'm not sure it's that easy: if you just reduce consumption but don't touch production, someone with less scruples than you can buy (slightly) cheaper oil and use it. I guess the big deal is to come up with alternatives that can compete on cost with oil?

It will definitely have to match or exceed performance based on cost.

Right now, I think there is no truly viable alternative for electricity generation in most low income countries. Not enough money for renewables + battery storage. Not enough money for nuclear or hydro.

We can only hope that more advanced countries can create the battery technology we desperately need for the whole world.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#77

Post by lenkite » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #49

lenkite wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you cope with food prices rising 10x in cost ? And the famines ? And the breakdown of law and order accompanied with the failure of most industry and the military. ? Please propose a solution along with your oil-ban utopia.

Why do you think these things would happen? (Also, how is the military responsible for maintaining law and order?)

The US Navy runs on oil. Without the Navy, say welcome and kneel to large-scale high-seas Piracy, extraordinary human-trafficking, drugs, smuggling, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta...

How will cargo ships run without heavy fuel oil ? They are responsible for global trade and keep world-economy and industry running. (Well one solution is nuclear...)

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#78

Post by xqcgrek3 » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

Norway is Norway. It has the population of a small city in China.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#79

Post by dathinab » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

Is it just me or is whole "Is Norway the New East India Company?" a absurdly extrema leap of logic?

I mean the East India Company caused (as far as I can tell) a extrema degree of damage of which the echos still noticeable affect all of us today and will so in the future, it might even have lead one of the foundation stones which might start WW3 (if a WW3 starts in the not to long future involving China as a major aggressor).

Sure, we can't say what would have happened if things would have gone different, but we can say that the East India Company might have screwed us over big time.

In case of Norway I don't see that, like at all.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#80

Post by CapsAdmin » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

One thing I feel I don't understand in these discussions, is all use of oil equally bad for the environment? The assumption to me sounds like all use is bad, but I never really hear about how and why.

Surely oil used in a newer car must be a lot better for the environment than an old car due to advancements in exhaust filters?

Or a modern fossil fuel power plant with good filters.

To me, a single source of emission with high quality filtering (modern fossil fuel power plant?) seems better than many smaller sources spread around the world with varying filter qualities (cars)