Insanity -- February 1, 2022

This is so cool. We noticed this more than a couple of years ago, and have been reporting at least weekly, especially during the winter. Now, everyone is reporting this story. Most recently, from social media:

Note, location, natural gas price, percent change, electricity cost, percent change:

• New York City: $20.05 (NG); 139%; $216.64 (MWh); 30%
• New England: $30.05 (NG); 30%; $208 (MWh); 17%
• Houston: $5.28 (NG); 26%; $44 (MWh); 7%

Almost criminal how elites are treating the middle class in New England. Probably not a lot of crypto-mining in New England going forward.

But look at that:

• electricity;
• NYC / Houston: $216 / $44 = almost a fivefold difference.
• and the weather in winter, NYC vs Houston

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EU / UK Energy Crisis

Nuclear plants:

• Germany: to shut down the rest of its reactors this year (2022)
• Spain: seeks to abandon nuclear, as does Italy, Belgium

• wants to build:
• Romania, Poland, Czech; Netherlands
  

• is building:
• Great Britain
• France
• Finland

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The Book Page

Again, if interested in origin of solar system, earth, fossil fuel, origin of life, this is currently the best new book on the market right now for armchair/amateur biologists, geologists, fossil fuel aficionados. 

• How The Mountains Grew
• John Dvorak
• c. 2021
• Pegasus Books, August 2021

From the book, pages 146 - 147:

The Permian Basin: where, why? 

It was a consequence of the collision of Euramerica and Gondwana and the formation of the supercontinent Pangea.

• at the western end of where the two great landmasses collided, a large inland sea was formed
• connected to the greater waters of the ocean by a narrow seaway
• this narrow seaway was the location of the Permian Basin
• it is one of the most well-studied geologic regions (oil industry)
• the inland sea:
• consisted for three smaller seas, each one contained within a separate basin
• Marfa Basin: the smallest, and located closest to the ocean
• Delaware Basin: in between the other two; most oil found here; connected to the Marfa Basin and to the ocean through the Hovey Channel;
• Midland Basin: largest and farthest east
• the collision occurred close to the equator;
• the water was warm and life was prolific
• the collision was also causing the surface to buckle and the three basins to deepen (more heat, more oil)
• moreover, because the Hovey Channel was narrow, the three basins were occasionally cutoff from seawater
• the water within the basins evaporated leaving behind layers of impermeable salt and gypsum;
• this was repeated for almost 50 million years
• a proliferation of both phytoplankton and zooplankton that left an organic-rich ooze
• then a drying of the basins and burial of the ooze beneath sediments and salt and gypsum
• the burial heated the ooze and changed it to kerogen, then to oil
• seawater again covered the land and life again proliferated
• another layer of ooze, another drying of the basins, and another oil-rich layer formed
• and the cycle continued
• to date, nearly two hundred thousand (200,000) wells have been drilled into the Permian
• with 500 rigs in the Permian, 500 x 24 = 12,000 more wells each year