How did U.S. 'energy dominance' turn into rising domestic natural gas prices?

The noticeable upward tilt in graphs of the U.S. natural gas price since April 2024 is likely a hint of things to come for U.S. consumers of energy. That's because record amounts of U.S. natural gas are now being sent abroad in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). And much more export capacity is planned. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. LNG export capacity will double by 2029. That's all gas that cannot be delivered to American users.

I have written about these trends (see here, here, here and here) and predicted they would mean considerably higher heating and electricity costs for Americans and much higher costs for American-based chemical manufacturers; for industries that rely on natural gas for process heat in the manufacture of steel and other metals, concrete, and glass; and for farmers who use natural gas to dry crops.

There's been a lot of talk about U.S. "energy dominance" by which the current administration means policies that maximize production, maximize exports, and yet somehow "reduce energy costs" at the same time. It's the "reduce energy costs" part that is now running into trouble.

'Newspeak' comes to the Energy Department

In George Orwell's novel, 1984, a totalitarian regime now rules the homeland and operates by three slogans: 1) War is peace, 2) freedom is slavery and 3) ignorance is strength. In 1984 the term "Newspeak" refers to what is essentially a mandatory style guide for using the English language under that regime by substituting Newspeak formulations for common words and phrases so as to make public discourse conform to the ruling party's orthodoxy. (For a list Newspeak words and phrases, check here.)

Not surprisingly, failure to conform to this style in written and oral communications is considered a crime. In fact, to think thoughts contrary to those expressed in Newspeak terms is considered a "thoughtcrime" because it implies one's personal values are not in harmony with official party dogma. Even having a facial expression that appears to imply disagreement with that dogma is a "facecrime."

Every modern regime tries to regulate the language used by its citizens (or subjects, as the case may be). As I have written previously, "If you want to corrupt a people, corrupt the language." So, it's not particularly surprising that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), now controlled by an oil industry insider, has put out its own Newspeak-like manual in the form of an email to department employees which is focused on subtracting words and phrases according to Politico. In the email the DOE is doing to the vocabulary of its personnel what the Trump administration is doing to the government, namely, cutting it.

Taking a break - no post this week

I am taking a break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, October 19.

AI vs humans: The 'singularity' keeps getting postponed

Sam Altman is the CEO of the most visible artificial intelligence (AI) organization on the planet, OpenAI, the purveyors of the popular ChatGPT AI interface. His job is to keep the investment dollars flowing into OpenAI, tens of billions of them. So, it's pretty important for Altman to keep investors interested and to promise them breakthroughs...and also, apparently, to reschedule those breakthroughs when they don't occur.

Now, something that most people don't understand about OpenAI is that despite being recently valued at $500 billion, OpenAI loses money, reportedly $5 billion last year on sales of $3.7 billion. Back in 2023 Altman was telling the public that OpenAI had achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI). For those who don't know, AGI means intelligence capable of learning and executing all the tasks that humans can do. No one appears to know how exactly to measure whether a machine can do the totality of things a human can do, but it sounds very cool to talk about it. And, it's the kind of talk that keeps investors excited. The implication, of course, is that the investor class won't have to put up with pesky employees much longer for most jobs.

The moment when this happens, when machines become smarter than humans and start running everything for us —as if they don't already—is sometimes called the singularity, usually with a capital "S." Now, singularity has a specific meaning in physics. In this context it refers to a nonreligious, tech version of the rapture in which technological advancement becomes very rapid as machines take over and iterate on technical innovation. We know what happens to people in the religious version of the rapture—some ascend to heaven and others are left behind. But we aren't exactly sure what is to become of humans after the so-called singularity version of the rapture since supposedly there won't be much work to do. AI will be doing it.