Tim Bray Profile picture
Sep 18, 2020 12 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1/ Big news out of BP last week, but media coverage was light and mostly paywalled. If you care about the #ClimateCrisis, this is essential stuff.
Here’s their actual “Energy Outlook”: bp.com/en/global/corp…
But that’s not the best place to absorb the key message. Read on…
2/ I didn’t find the actual outlook that easy to absorb, it was a little *too* interactive and didn’t tell a story. But BP does tell the story, in two other places. First of all, here’s an overview page, not bad: bp.com/en/global/corp…
But wait, there’s more and better…
3/ The overview introduces the 3 scenarios BP uses to think about the future, which is useful. But it’s a bit of wall-of-text and I think fails to make a few key points. Fortunately…
4/ Go back to the Outlook page at bp.com/en/global/corp… and look at the top right corner, where there’s a video by Chief BP Economist Spencer Dale. Here’s where the goodies are…
5/ I’m a bit allergic to online video and this is 44 minutes worth. But if you care about this stuff, I strongly recommend scheduling a break and watching it…
6/ Dale is a really smart dude. He digs deep into the three scenarios, the commonalities between them. And introduces a fourth, which is really interesting…
7/ “What if policymakers ignore the problem for a few more years then panic and try to do a couple of decades’ worth of decarbonization in a few months?” It’s not pretty. It’s also not unlikely. But still, that’s not the key take-away…
8/ The preso makes it clear that a very high proportion of known fossil-fuel reserves are, as of now, stranded assets. They cannot and will not be used. The basic business model of the oil-&-gas biz is, to quote, “unsustainable”. I’d say “smoking crater”…
9/ In the Telegraph (paywalled), Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes “With a single stroke of the pen, BP has written the obituary of the global petroleum industry.” I don’t think he’s overstating it.
10/ Now, there are places where BP is unsubtly twisting the message to promote their own biz plans (integration, blue hydrogen, etc) but really, a tip o’ the hat to ’em for not just acknowledging but shining a bright light on the emperor's nakedness.
11/ Anyhow, if you still have any oil&gas in your investment portfolio, get out while you still can. And finally…
12/12 The investment, growth, and planet-saving opportunities in renewables and related efforts is probably bigger than even optimists think. If I were a young person with related expertise, it’s the only place I’d want to work.

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More from @timbray

Dec 1, 2022
1/5 Hey, I’m not really here on Twitter any more but a bunch of people said “You have to look at this!” So take a second to read Nik’s thread, which is excellent, and I’ll add on a couple of remarks below.

If you want to ask questions or argue, I'm @timbray@mastodon.cloud
2/ Tl;dr in case you didn’t read Nik’s thread, which you should: Pipes a universal-crossbar for AWS, stream input from lots of sources, filter it, transform it, deliver it. Takes care of scaling, buffering, ordering, data normalization, lots of details.
3/ We were talking about this when I left AWS in May 2020. The fact that it’s taken a couple of years to ship shows that there’s a *lot* of heavy lifting behind the curtains here. Which otherwise you’d have to do.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 27, 2022
1/10 Here’s my quarterly look at Amazon financials, with an eye to how the profit and loss is spread out among retail, AWS, and other divisions. Boy, Mr Market hated 2022 Q3, the share price is getting hammered. Whatever… Source: s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/file… Title of Amazon's Q3 2022 financial report
2/ Revenue up 15% to $127.1B YoY, would have been more without forex weirdness. Profit $2.5B. Outgoing free cash flow is high; the financial geeks don’t seem to look at that last number much and maybe there’s accounting voodoo I’m missing, but looks bad?
3/ Interesting; They break out “North America” vs “International” business which I *think* means retail, not AWS? Anyhow, US North America lost $412M and International lost $2.466B.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 16, 2022
1/12 Conservatives (some even not Putin tools) are screaming for a quick Ukrainian surrender, because the risk of nuclear war is unacceptable. Doesn’t sound insane on the surface. Here’s why they’re wrong.
2/ The Ukrainian offensive might grind to a halt and the war becomes a stalemate. Nothing happens for a year. Why surrender now? (Let’s say “WSN?” for short.)
3/ Putin might have a 100%-natural fatal heart attack. WSN?
Read 12 tweets
Jun 6, 2022
1/ Here’s a little tour of what a crypto-bro swarm looks like. I think it’s well-known that if you are publicly cryptoskeptical you’re going to get some grief. Here’s what it looks like.
Read 25 tweets
Apr 28, 2022
1/8 Let’s look at the Amazon 2022 Q1 results: ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/n…

Most interesting: Where does the profit come from?
2/ First of all, there was a $7.6B loss on their Rivian holding. Not as terrible as it looks since they booked a $11.8B win last quarter. Amazon reported a $3.8B quarterly loss; without Rivian the “real” profit was $3.8B.
3/ Advertising top-line up 23% Y/Y to $7.9B (down sharply Q4-to-Q1, but that’s advertising). The second derivative is negative, that is to say the Y/Y *growth* rate of advertising is drifting down, was 76% in 2021’s Q1. Margin is undisclosed but I bet very high.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 27, 2022
Hey, check out the brand-new RFC9116, which defines a file format that any org can/should post at /.well-known/security.txt
rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9116.ht…

Nice idea! Image
Amazon doesn't have one, but AWS does: aws.amazon.com/.well-known/se…
Read 4 tweets

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