Mexican oil production to decline rapidly after 2030: Tip of the iceberg?

The news agency Reuters has seen something the rest of us haven't: Internal Mexican government estimates of that country's future oil production which paint a gloomy picture of rapid decline after 2030. Is this admission just the tip of the iceberg?

For many years those of us suggesting that a peak in worldwide oil production was in the offing kept pointing to several pieces of intelligence including the following:

1. Leaks of information about lower-than-publicly-stated oil reserves among major oil producers. In 2005, leaked internal government documents put Kuwait's oil reserves at 48 billion barrels, just half of the 99 billion publicly claimed at the time.


2. Unexplained massive one-year jumps in oil reserves of major OPEC producers in the 1980s. This was probably tied to OPEC production quotas that were, in part, based on stated reserves. In 2007 the former executive vice president for exploration and production at Saudi Aramco told an audience that as a result of these unwarranted jumps in reported oil reserves, world reserves had been overestimated by 300 billion barrels.

Not with a bang but a whimper: Making our own pandemics

One headline last week suggested that future pandemics are "a bigger threat than nukes." Hence, my allusion to T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men in my title. Pandemics may or may not be a bigger threat than nuclear war, but the assertion highlights the increasing concern some of those in the medical community have regarding ongoing failed policies in addressing COVID even as a summer surge of cases hits the United States. Our own response and behavior is not only sustaining COVID infections, but also setting the stage for new pandemics.

For example, concern remains that the ongoing "bird flu" infections of cattle will lead to variants capable of being spread human-to-human. It's worth reiterating that since 2003 half of the 889 people worldwide known to have contracted the virus called H5N1 have died.

While what is called the case fatality rate for COVID is notoriously difficult to estimate—because so many cases have gone unreported—one estimate puts it at 0.7 percent. That means the rate for the small number of bird flu cases in humans is more than 71 times higher than COVID. And, yet there seems to be little effort in the United States to check the spread of bird flu among cattle, let alone poultry. Some 99 million chickens and turkey have been infected since a new "highly pathogenic strain" appeared in early 2022. These developments seem like they should be "hair on fire" events given the potential seriousness of the outcome. Finland is so far the only country to offer bird flu vaccinations for people, in this case, those who work with potentially infected animals.

Can coastal property values weather climate change?

A reader of mine asked the following question in a recent email: If climate change is such a threat, how come U.S. coastal properties continue to rise in value? This seems like a conundrum unless you know what is actually driving the trend. And, it's worth noting that coastal home prices in certain instances have suddenly collapsed along with the shoreline next to those homes due to coastal erosion—which, not surprisingly, increases with rising sea level. A Nantucket seaside home assessed for tax purposes just this year at $1.9 million recently sold for $200,000. Expect more stories like this one to start appearing in the news.

So, what about other homes that continue to hold their value and even rise in value? Here are some of the drivers of what will some day be considered an insane bubble in coastal real estate prices:

Why adaptation to climate change misses the mark

The climate change deniers frequently offer three contradictory responses as their position becomes more and more untenable in the face of mounting evidence, to wit: 1) There is no climate change, 2) it'll be cheaper to adapt to climate change than prevent it, and 3) climate change is good for us—it will improve agriculture and open the Arctic to resource exploitation.

It is the second of these that I wish to discuss. There is no solid evidence that adapting to climate change will be cheaper, nor do the deniers provide a clear picture of what adapting would mean. In other words, they have no comprehensive plan; they are simply trying to muddy the waters to stall efforts at addressing climate change because the business interests behind them do not want to bear the costs.

The number one reason adaptation will be so costly is that climate change is a moving target. Sea level, temperature, and severe weather are not going to simply reach a new constant level to which we can adapt for the long run. On the contrary, these are all moving targets. Infrastructure improvements made today which are meant to last 20, 30, even 50 years are unlikely to address the ever-rising sea level, temperatures and severe weather in those periods. We have been consistently surprised by the pace of climate change. There is no reason to believe that the surprises will magically cease.