A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on May 24th, with data for March 2019. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year 2019 to date.
The Table immediately above shows the absolute amounts of electricity generated in gigawatt-hours by the main sources for the last two months and the year to date. In March, the absolute amount of electricity generated rose slightly as is usual for the month of March when compared to February for the period covered by the charts, January 2013 to date. Coal and Natural Gas between them, fueled 59.11% of US electricity generation in March. The contribution of zero carbon or carbon neutral sources rose from 38.23% in February to 39.91% in March.
The graph below shows the absolute monthly production from the various sources as well as the total amount generated (right axis).
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In March 2019 the output from solar at 8,988 GWh, was 2.8 times what it was four years ago in March 2015.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the combined contribution from wind and solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for combined wind and solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the combined output of solar and wind as a means of assessing the potential of the combination to make a meaningful contribution to the year round total.
The chart below shows the percentage contributions of the various sources to the capacity additions up to March 2019. In March Natural Gas contributed 72.61% of new capacity, with 5.36 of new capacity coming from Solar and Wind contributing 21.29%. Batteries contributed the remaining 0.75% of new capacity. Natural Gas, Solar and Wind made up 99.25% of new capacity in March. Natural gas and renewables have made up more than 95% of capacity added each month since at least January 2017.
The only capacity added that was not fueled by Natural Gas, Wind or Solar was the 20 MW battery storage project in Saratoga County, New York, two 3 MW batteries in Massachusetts and a 3.1 MW battery also in Massachusetts. The 2831.2 MW of Natural Gas fueled capacity added, consisted of a 827.7 combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant at the York Energy Center in Pennsylvania, a 97.4 MW combustion turbine at Exelon Power’s West Medway II plant in Massachusetts, a 1723.1 MW CCGT plant at Florida Power and Light’s Okeechobee Clean Energy Center and ten 18.3 MW generators driven by internal combustion engines at the F.D. Kuester Generating Station in Michigan owned by the Upper Michigan Energy Resources Company In March 2019 the total added capacity reported was 3899.4 MW, compared to the 1216.6 MW added in March 2018.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements for March 2019. In March among the retirements reported were 721 MW of capacity, owned by the Virginia Electric & Power Co., consisting of six coal fired steam turbines, two each at the Yorktown, Chesterfield and Mecklenburg Power Station. There was also Wisconsin Electric Power Co’s 359 MW Presque Isle plant consisting of five coal powered steam turbines in Marquette, Michigan. The remaining 1090.1 MW of retired capacity consisted of 34.8 MW powered by Municipal Solid Waste, 880 MW powered by Natural Gas, 24.6 powered by Petroleum Liquids and 150.7 MW powered by Wood/Wood Waste Biomass.
Following the posting of the November 2018 edition of this report, a request was made for a graph that better represented the scale of the capacity additions and retirements. Below is a chart for monthly net additions/retirements showing the data up to March 2019, followed by a chart showing the net additions/retirements year to date.
It remains to be seen whether the 2019 trend of capacity additions will continue to mirror 2018 with the first three months of 2019 being somewhat similar to the first three months of 2018. Apart from the fact that more than three times more capacity was added in March 2019 compared to a year earlier, one difference is that while the capacity additions not fueled by Natural Gas in March 2018 were primarily solar powered, the non Natural Gas capacity additions in March 2019 were primarily wind powered.
In the previous edition of this report, it was reported that the EIA is projecting that the output from all renewable sources will exceed that powered by coal for the first time in April and possibly again in May before the peak summer demand period kicks in. It will be another four weeks or so before the data to support these projections is released so, we look forward to seeing if this projection proves to be accurate.
Below is a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for March 2019 and the year before for comparison
Thanks Islandboy.
Great job as always.
Agreed. Thanks islandboy.
It’s worth noting that the wind exponential growth in the US has paused / flatlined. Since wind had a head start, this is somewhat hiding the solar exponential growth which has continued.
Excellent.
In case anyone missed it- this shows how your state produces electricity-
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html
And Arcimoto is rolling on. Development update video. Way cool-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=116&v=_MHPujoi3Fo
The Arcimoto reminds me of the Renault Twizy, a nice vehicle Renault won’t make any effort to sell, except in South Korea.
Arcimoto is Oregon based. I suspect someone bigger will buy them soon.
There are many small companies doing this kind of thing.
I suspect these guys will make it.
So many cool vehicles in the works around the world.
Along these lines- India is considering a ban on sale of ICE 2 and 3 wheel vehicles by 2025.
Just electric.
Hope they do it.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/30/india-may-allow-sale-of-only-electric-two-and-three-wheelers-from-2025/
Hi all,
since I was a little “crude” with my comment on the previous post, here is some gentle and “safe space” worthy enlightement for the “knowleadgeble” dudes in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xe3BWPsBTU
G’Day to all and let’s go get them dirty oilers!
yesanoilman
Here is a link to the entire 47-minute video.
If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
Elbert Hubbard
Bill Gates Talks About the Future of Energy
Ron,
that is not the same video, but the grosso modo ideas of:
“….there is NO substitute for how the industrial economy ryns today…”, are the same.
That is the message that the mirror and the windmill crowd did not get from the “edited” and “out of context” videoclip of Mr. Gates.
yesanoilman
Funny, this just in:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnparnell/2019/05/29/bill-gates-vehicle-and-brussels-launch-new-clean-energy-fund/#478afb2be753
Bill Gates’ Investment Group Launches European Clean Energy Fund
A new $111 million clean energy innovation fund has been launched with the goal of getting capital intensive startups off the ground.
The initiative is the work of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $1 billion fund launched by Bill Gates in late 2016. It has pulled together a coalition of corporate and private investors including SAP, GE, Jeff Bezos, Vinod Khosla and Jack Ma.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures Europe (BEV-E) has been launched in partnership with the European Commission. The European Investment Bank (EIB) and BEV are providing half the capital each. It is described by BEV as a “pilot” offering the potential for a scaling up of the cooperation beyond the initial funds.
Support will be provided to European companies working to “bring radically new clean energy technologies to the market.” Investments are expected to start before the end of 2019. EU Member States and countries participating in the Horizon 2020 program are eligible for BEV-E funding.
Dunno, sounds like they are saying no to oilmen…
Wow, and I thought that you said that:
“….Bill Gates is the ultimate pro BAU advocate….”
…imagine that!
You sure “know” your numbers, though.
$111 million spent on “clean” (and you and ALL here have the wrong meaning of clean, by the way) energy, on a $75 TRILLION (for your info: one has 12 zeros…. the other has 6….) global economy…
Yeah, that will sure show ’em “dirty oilers”…!
I’m with you on this. I really hate oil and FF. They are filthy and desgusting!
I have family and I want to breathe clean air and see wild animals as long as possible.
But unlike you ( and the peninsulaboy/s over here), I know physics and numbers and do not “fly with a Harry Potter wand up my derriere”.
– “….there is NO substitute for how the industrial economy runs today…”! and $111 million ain’t gonna cut it…
I will give you a hearty embrace when we find one, but until then:
“… how about a hand shake…” – as Sheldon Cooper said.
yesanoilman
P.S.: memo to you (and the rest of windmill crowd), those $111 million spent on “clean” energy, came from FF/Oil.
Think about it…. if you can, that is.
If you read the article you will see that the total investment by the European fund is on the order 500 billion per year over the next decade or so.
Though you are probably right about this being more like a 75 trillion dollar problem. And I may not be as ignorant about physics as you suggest. Though I may be more concerned about ecosystem synergies and tipping points than you seem to be.
So now you claim that despite calling yourself yesanoilman you don’t like oil?! LOL!
I absolutely do NOT think that you are “ignorant” – as you put it.
But I think that you ( and the windmill crowd over here… you know: nickGs, peninsulaboys and such) are wishfull thinkers.
If you spent a bit more time appreciating the numbers and a little less counting windmill blades off of the coast of New Zeland…, or Hanover – you would absolutely come to the conclusion that “…the ultimate pro BAU advocate…” Gates states:
“….there is NO substitute for how the industrial economy runs today…”.
-I absolutely hate oil/FF and everything that pollutes nature and kills wild animals… and that includes Shanghai with all in it (go ahead, call me pc names if you want).
-Mr.Coyne in his infinite wisdom blocked my previous moniker, so I found a new one that might “rub” a few knowledgeable dudes here.
That’s all…. no LOL.
be well,
yesanoilman
If you spent a bit more time appreciating the numbers and a little less counting windmill blades off of the coast of New Zeland…, or Hanover – you would absolutely come to the conclusion that “…the ultimate pro BAU advocate…” Gates states:
“….there is NO substitute for how the industrial economy runs today…”.
I actually agree! Which is why we need systemic change on the grandest scale ever faced by any human civilization. To be frank I’m at a total loss as to how we collectively find a way to achieve that! So Gates and everyone else is wrong!
“….there is NO substitute for how the industrial economy runs today…”.
Actually there is! It means completely shutting down the current incarnation of the industrial FF based economy. And before you tell me to look at physics and the numbers, I have, and the consequences are very grim indeed! But the ecological consequences of not doing so are grimmer still. We are all between a rock and a very hard space!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFO6p4lurw
Greta thunberg full speech at Austrian World Summit Vienna 2019
…We have never been taught about feedback loops or tipping points or what a runaway greenhouse effect is, most of us don’t know almost any of the basic facts, because how could we, we have not been told, or more importantly we have never been told by the right people.
We are Homo sapiens sapiens, of the Family Hominidae of the Order primates, of the Class Mammalia, of the Kingdom Animalia.
We are a part of nature, we are social animals, we are naturally drawn to our leaders…
Greta is absolutely right!
But we are all of us, still fiddling while the planet burns. And the ‘Climate Change Iceberg’, is just one of many many interrelated crisis that even fewer of us are aware of because we have never been told! For most of us searching through hundreds of scientific research papers in dozens and dozens of highly specialized fields is obviously not an option!
So who can we trust to tell us the Truth?!
Ironically not any of our world leaders. It seems the task has fallen on the shoulders of one very brave and highly intelligent 16 year old autistic girl!
Shame on the rest of us!
Good Luck!
Towards the end of her new TEDx Talk, Thunberg said: “this is when people usually start talking about hope, solar panels, wind power, circular economy, and so on, but I’m not going to do that. We’ve had thirty years of pep-talking and selling positive ideas. And I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work. Because, if it would have, the emissions would have gone down by now — they haven’t.”
I know Doug!
Even so I will continue to promote renewables, EVs , flying electric ride sharing, lab raised insect protein, systemic social, political and economic change and a host of other things to speed up the demise of the current FF based power structure.
Even if it is too little too late and doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, I can not in good conscience do anything else.
If it were up to me we would already be having trials of oil execs for crimes against humanity and the global ecosystems.
While I don’t have any hope if you watch this last video the faces of the people in the audience do look about as somber as any I have seen in the past.
Yet this is where the main focus of the world still rests!
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Oil-Set-For-Worst-Monthly-Drop-Since-November.html
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat. Louis L’Amour
And wouldn’t it be most ironic if Israeli and Palestinian teenagers found a way to solve their own problems in the name of climate change?!
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/05/24/bigger-palestinian-israeli-teens-strike-together-climate/
‘This is bigger’: Palestinian and Israeli teens strike together for the climate
Published on 24/05/2019, 11:53am
Comment: At a climate march in Jerusalem, students put hatred aside to tell the government that nothing matters more than a safe climate
Bill Gates is the ultimate pro BAU advocate but even so that clip is out of context and cherry picked from a 45 minute talk. In case you didn’t get the memo, BAU is unsustainable. If ‘unsustainable’ is too big a word for you, look it up!
While this might work with Windows, it doesn’t work with the planet.
.
Resulting from the evil Decision with Windows 2000 NT. To take the Kernel out of Ring Zero to provide gaming performance. Is Windows more than 1% efficient? The user has no control or clue about 99% of Windoze resources. The unnecessary complexity is pure evil.
“….In case you didn’t get the memo, BAU is unsustainable….”
~ F. Magyar
Yeah, because urbanizing every monkey village in china and india by replacing their goats and donkeys with iGadgets and electric vehicles, is not BAU and is sustainable….
You’rrrre a grrreaat and wize mannn, Magyar!
yesanoilman
If you believe that is my view of the world then you haven’t been paying attention to anything that I have been saying. So quit putting words in my mouth.
Nat gas plus coal down below 60%. I give it 6 years before it is below 50% and another 5 years before it is below 30% (by 2030). Coal will be decimated by then.
But wasn’t nat gas plus coal below 60% last year as well in March, and the year before that? When does the curve start to bend?
It’s already bending.. down from 70% to 60% now. The pace will pick up since the renewables base is now much higher and going to eat into fossil fuels at a much more rapid pace going forward.
I copied comment from Teslarti. It goes with an article about the astounding pace of construction of the Chinese Tesla factory.
“The gigafactory 3 is what a war effort looks like;
Compared to the war effort going on in the US right now, which is the shale oil fields, it seems the US is stuck in the 20th century. Hopefully the oil workers (and oil trolls) are saving their money for the coming bust, and all the companies are setting aside money to retrain their workers in solar, wind, battery storage and EV tech.”
But so far as I have heard, nobody has ever worked 24 /7 in the shale oil fields.
This construction pace is possible because China, arguably the world’s big dog these days in the construction industries, has put the power of the Chinese state on display, the power to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN…….
The power of LEVIATHAN, the modern industrial nation state to make things happen, if ever Leviathan is once truly alarmed about it’s own existential interests, is almost beyond comprehension to anyone who has never studied the history of actual wartime economic activities.
This construction is a prime example of what can be done when LEVIATHAN decides something MUST be done and done FAST.
In this particular case, half the incentive to giterdone so fast may be bragging rights, with the Chinese able to go forth in the future, into other, smaller, less developed countries considering WHO they will do business with, showing hard evidence that the CHINESE are now the go to people when you want a big project built on time and on budget and people put to work.
Some small portion of the effort is also no doubt the result of a desire to display the pointed middle finger to show the USA NUMBER ONE idiots just who actually IS number one these days.
Sure they cut the fuck out of every possible corner, including the environmental corner, but they will soon be at the forefront of the electric car industry, which is THE car industry of the future, just as they more or less OWN the solar industry these days. They are moving at least two or three times faster towards the day when oil is no longer affordable than any other major nation. Ditto the day when gas and coal are no longer affordable!
IF we are so lucky as to get enough sharp chunks of WAKE UP brick upside our collective Yankee head, we Yankees can have a nationwide HVDC grid and other such infrastructure built out and working before it’s too late to build it, before the necessary resources are squandered away building football stadiums or whatever.
(Please don’t jump on NASCAR. It’s the only grand scale spectator sport in this country that builds its facilities with private money. The billionaires who own the football, baseball, and basketball industries all get their facilities by way of public welfare. If they don’t get their free new stadium when they feel the need, they take their ball and move to another town, where the welfare office better understands their tender feelings and poverty.
I foresee Nascar having an electric division within the next five to ten years, maybe sooner, and seeing electric cars on the track will result in tens of millions of rednecks buying one that looks at least a LITTLE bit like the one their favorite driver runs in circles for hours at a time, lol. )
OFM,
It would be a pretty short race unless they figure out a way to swap battery packs. Also with Lithium battery packs crashes would be a big problem. Not sure we will ever see BEVs running a 500 mile NASCAR event. Maybe in 10 years it would be possible.
Hi Dennis,
I’m pretty sure from talking to people who hang around the biz that electric car races will be put on at first as opening acts for the main ICE events, with the cars running maybe half an hour.
Nascar runs some races using a heat format, with the cars running for only about that long, being stopped a few minutes, and restarted again, with the starting order determined by the finishing order of the prior heat.
The race cars are built using templates for the outer body panels that are unique to each manufacturer, so they look more or less like a car you can buy, if you look very closely, lol. And the engines are built using components based on a manufacturer’s design. You can’t run a Ford engine in a Chevy body in Nascar.
But the basic engine design is standardized in each class, and the actual chassis under the sheet metal is hardly any different at all from one make to another.
And Nascar mechanics can change out a blistering hot engine or transmission in nothing flat. Four new tires and a tank of gas takes typically around twenty SECONDS in Nascar.
The battery design will be standardized, in respect to size and connections, and various battery companies will want to have their logos on the cars, and so they will provide their own batteries to various teams.
Batteries will either be easily swapped or recharged at super high speeds during heat break intervals. Teams will compete to hook up the charger to get their car back out for just a couple more laps, just like they dump in some gasoline in five or six seconds to make the last few miles.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a battery swap completed in well under a minute, if they go that route.
The world’s fastest and most powerful automotive battery chargers will probably be in the pits at a NASCAR facility within ten years. I will probably live long enough to see an electric car race at Charlotte, which is the nearest super speedway to me.
Trades people in the industry are talking about electric cars, and they mostly believe they are inevitable, a matter of when, not if. I used to hang around with some of them who competed at the lower levels, and still talk to a couple of them. NASCAR management is not saying much.
I’m not a big racing fan, but basically all spectator sports on the grand scale are about the same thing….. going to the party with your friends, rooting for somebody, having some beer, etc.
People who knock car races because the cars use gasoline seldom stop to think that only a very small portion of the total gasoline used is burnt on the track. Most of it is burnt by the fans getting there and back home again.
Ditto other sports. Fifty thousand fans at a football game don’t get there without burning some gasoline.
Hey, we already have Formula E and batteries have been getting better!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGElBSE_xEA
2019 Berlin E-Prix | Race Highlights | ABB FIA Formula E Championship
Yep, as usual, except in the case of Tesla, we’re playing catch up here in the good ole USA.
But I can’t think of a better thing for the electric transportation industry than seeing electric cars running on Nascar tracks here in the USA, when it finally happens. Millions of my fellow rednecks will line up on Monday to buy the electric car that wins on Sunday, just as they have for the winning conventional car for the last sixty or seventy years now.
If NASCAR is running electric cars, and NASCAR will, eventually, that will be proof positive that electric cars are a GOOD THING, and not part of a DIM RAT COMMIE PINKO conspiracy to take away our freedom to choke to death on oil fumes, not to mention sending young men to die to maintain access to oil, not to mention the privileges of paying for that access and choking to death on the fumes.
But I do have to admit that gasoline and diesel fumes make me high, as they tens of millions of other rednecks.
I ENJOY running a truck thru the gears, the more gears the better. It’s sort of like dancing or playing music, if you don’t have to do it all day every day. Then it turns into work.
My own large truck has only nine, but I’ve driven others that had thirteen and fifteen.
Once you get good at it, you don’t have to touch the clutch except from a dead stop. You match the gear speeds to the engine speed and the truck speed, which takes a finely tuned ear and a certain amount of finesse manipulating the throttle and shifter.
I’ve driven trucks, just recently gave up my CDL and still drive a stick shift.
EV conversions of classic cars often keep the original gearbox…
So you can keep the best of both worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJLdzRJdKrs
Electric Porsche 911 | Fully Charged
Cheers!
“…Compared to the war effort going on in the US right now, which is the shale oil fields, it seems the US is stuck in the 20th century. Hopefully the oil workers (and oil trolls) are saving their money for the coming bust, and all the companies are setting aside money to retrain their workers in solar, wind, battery storage and EV tech.”
No worries!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/us/freedom-gas-energy-department.html
‘Freedom Gas,’ the Next American Export
According to the Department of Energy, the next critical export from the United States is made from “molecules of U.S. Freedom.”
You may wonder, what are these molecules?
The technical answer is liquefied natural gas. Or, if you are in charge of energy policy for the Trump administration, “freedom gas.”
Wow, what is this? 1954? 🙂
With President Chump in charge, this is not unexpected.
Yeah, every morning when I get up I check the calendar to see what year it is…
1984: newspeak
NAOM
Yup! Freedom Gas, coming soon to a location near you!
Case in point. The electricity utility in Jamaica has commenced pre-commissioning tests on their new 190 MW combined cycle gas turbine electricity generating plant. My sources tell me that in the past couple of weeks they powered it up, synchronized with the grid and “threw the switch”, supplying power at very low levels for a short period. This plant is fueled by, you guessed it, Freedom Gas!
Somehow, I feel a lot more comfortable about the 2 kW of Freedom PV that I have on the roof of my apartment and the Freedom EV that I am planning to acquire. With both of those I have the Freedom of not having to depend on outside sources for electricity or transport.
Incidentally, below is a link to a short video, uploaded on May 2, showing the progress of the new 50 MW solar farm at the southwestern end of the island, scheduled for commissioning within the next month!
51MWp Paradise Park Construction Phase – From Idea to Reality
Twelve more of these and the entire mid day demand of the island could be met with solar alone!
Freedom Gas is what you get when you eat too many Freedom Fries, I think.
This has me thinking though. Maybe vaccinations should be called Freedom Shots.
“Maybe vaccinations should be called Freedom Shots.”
Great idea +9000
NAOM
“it seems the US is stuck in the 20th century” > “it seems the US is stuck in the 19th century”
NAOM
podcast of the Making of the series Chernobyl. You can use any Podcast client on your SmartPhone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUeHPCYtWYQ
Field Demo of Fluke’s R440 @ Chernobyl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEl_Zk14z7A
Time to sell the wife, dog, F150 and get a FLIR R440.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-30/american-chernobyl
These souls in Ukraine were Lucky. They only had to deal with just 200 tons of a single RBMK reactor core ejected into the Biosphere. They were not as Insane as the Comrades in North America as to store FIVE+ Decades and Thousands of tons of Hot Radionuclides in OPEN pools distributed over a continent in 50+ locations. In the US the Reactor core would be the least of the problem as one of these Gadgets gets unplugged for some hours. Fukushima was a Level 7 Event ONLY due to simple Power Failure. All hardware rode thru the Earthquake and Tsunami intact. BP Macondo deck turn into a instant mushroom due to power failure as the turbine sucked in free gases. GE/NBC Brings Death to all Lifeforms. GE is also responsible for the 737Max Fiasco since they sell outdated Jet Engine Technology. Demand your Political critters that they must act to get this Diablo “safely” secured underground. Mind blowing that a single power failure could wreck a Nation/Planet.
From Magoo in the Comments Section.
“When the global economy collapses there are hundreds of nuclear plants and over 4000 spent fuel ponds that MUST be kept cool otherwise they will exterminate all life on the planet.
Think about that for a moment ”
Indeed – Put down the Remote and Think about that for a Moment.
I’m not a Doomer – Grew up with those building Westinghouse PWR’s and I can’t comprehend that no one seems to comprehend the risk of not being responsible and managing this spent fuel. There is little choice. Governments thru Industry needs to get this right or NOTHING else really matters. It’s not that big of a challenge to isolate from the biosphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo
Remember our threads about this sort of thing at The Oil Drum during Fukushima?
PV leads the way as renewables threaten coal-fired power
Still no coal! Britain edges towards coal-free fortnight
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3076536/still-no-coal-uk-edges-towards-coal-free-fortnight
I’ve been looking with very little success for articles written by economists about the effect of wind and solar electricity on coal prices.
Any links will be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.
I can’t see coal being phased out altogether for a long time yet, because maintaining a few of the newer coal fired generating plants as backup capacity, to be used only at rather long intervals, will be very cheap insurance against bad weather, while contributing very little to pollution, due to sitting idle almost all the time.
And a lot of coal will still be needed far industrial processes such as refining iron ores, etc.
True, but I suspect that in 10 years coal will be less than 15% of the mix in USA.
It went from 40% to 25% in just 6 yrs!
Most of that was a result of tight Nat Gas,
but solar and wind are coming on- increased from 5 to 10 % in that same time period.
That’s FREEDOM gas, Hickory, show a little respect! 😉
Rather “F*cking Gas”.
Thank you for highlighting the reason I have been carrying out this exercise for the past few years. Without the charts it is difficult to spot the six year trends but, with them it is dead easy! People like yesanoilman who provided a link to a youtube clip featuring Bill Gates speaking on energy further up should take note.
I have repeatedly called attention to the fact that between 2007 and 2017 the contribution of solar to the US electricity mix grew from 0.01% to 1.32% if only utility scale facilities are counted or 1.92% if estimates of rooftop and other non-utility scale are factored in. That is a growth in the contribution over ten years by a factor of 132 to 192 depending on which numbers are used. If the contribution from solar were to grow at a slower rate over the next ten years, say a rate that would result in in fifty fold increase over the next ten years, the contribution from solar alone would be 96% by 2027!
The contribution from wind was 6.58% at the end of 2018, up from 1.34% in 2008 and hydro varies between 6% and 7.5% depending on rainfall. If the contribution from wind continues to grow at a modest pace, we could easily be looking at considerably more than 10% from wind by 2027.
It would appear to me that Bill Gates is in the same boat as the IEA when it comes to his thinking on future energy. I started watching the link that Ron provided in response to yesanoilman and reached my conclusion by 4 minutes 40 seconds in. One of my favorite graphics in the whole world is the one pinned at the top of Auke Hoestra’s twitter page. He is a big critic of the IEA’s renewable energy forecasts, asserting that they do no “get” exponential growth. Here is a quote from Hoestra from a recent thread on his Twitter page:
Bill Gates, being someone who benefited from exponential growth in the use of PCs, should know better. In the charts I produce every month, I am seeing the beginnings of profound changes in the electricity sector. I am heartened that I am not the only one detecting these trends.
Indeed. And thank for the charting and all the work Island Boy.
When will solar yellow line cross on top of that coal black line?
We should start a betting pool.
‘Make the Sun Great Again’ [who needs a god]
Oooh I will go first. The crossover will happen over the month of April 2025.
I will make a prediction on the crossover percentage too.. The percentage should be around 9-10% each.
Thats reasonable.
I’ll go with Nov 2027, at 14% each.
I wouldn’t bet on a November. That’s usually when solar output is at its trough. Infact, if the solar output is higher than coal on a November, it’s pretty much game over as far as coal vs solar is concerned.
Good point!
Oh, Gates does understand but his finger is deep in the nuclear pie.
NAOM
Never understood Gates reputation for genius. Audacity. And ratfucking. That’s what made his money and position. Genius. Please. There is a lot more Zuckerman than Einstein there and anyone who spends ten minutes listening to him understands the limits of his intellect.
Yeah, Microsoft inherited the IBM monopoly, and it’s tactics. The installation of an inferior MS-Office as a freebie on PCs to eliminate competition like Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect, for example…
OFM,
The cost of operating those coal plants is far higher than natural gas power plants, so the natural gas plants will be used as backup rather than coal, alomg with hydro, pumped hydro, demand management through flexible pricing, batteries, thermal storage, vehicle to grid, and fuel cells. Coal will still be used to produce steel, but coal will no longer be used very much to produce electricity after 30 years or so, cheaper alternatives will make coal fired electricity production obsolete, much like the buggy whip.
It’s a bit complicated. Every major coal mining company in the US has gone bankrupt, and the same is true in most of the world; the ones which haven’t gone bankrupt are on the verge of bankruptcy. They’re not just reorganizing — they’re actually shuttering mines.
So demand destruction has driven the thermal coal price down low enough that supply is being removed to bring the price back up to breakeven. The coal demand destruction is mostly from natural gas power plants so far, but partly from wind, solar, and batteries.
Coal-free processes for refining iron into steel are being deployed as we speak. It requires hydrogen to create Direct Reduced Iron. I know of projects in Sweden and Australia.
If you have some links to those projects it would be interesting if you could post them in the new thread – TIA.
NAOM
@T Shyam
One I posted the other day
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/may/25/the-power-switch-tracking-britains-record-coal-free-run
NAOM
According to the web page at the link provided, it’s 14 days 2 hours and counting! Hopefully the day will come within the next few years when the use of coal generators is a newsworthy event. As “forbin” says below there is still a lot of work to be done. The big carbon emitters are very much in full stride. According to this web page from the Union of Concerned Scientists web site, China, USA, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Iran, Canada and Saudi-Arabia round out the top ten emitters with Brazil being number eleven. I would hope that Brazil is using that coal for industrial (iron smelting) purposes only. With the amount of hydroelectricity in their electricity mix, it should be feasible and economical for Brazil to eliminate the use of FF for electricity generation, as is apparently part of the plan according to today’s installment of the EIA’s Today in Energy:
Brazil plans to add more solar to its hydro-dominated electricity generation mix
Australia deserves (dis)honorable mention since, while it is number 16 on the list of emitters, it the world’s largest exporter, accounting for some 36.9% of global exports in 2018 according to this web page.
Just looking at this data, the mining, transportation and burning of coal represents a sizeable chunk of global economic activity and it is going to be a real challenge to replace that with renewables. Nonetheless it appears that this is exactly what is happening albeit very slowly in Australia and in the US. The cost of renewables needs to fall a little bit more to make the switch more economically palatable so people can get a move on.
we buy 10-15% of leccy via the IC , more are planned
so long as the supplying countries dont need the same power then we’re fine
we still need to replace CCGT and home gas heating and cooking
then replace all petrol( gasoline in USA speak) and diesel .
filling Dogger land with windmills will help but there’s still no viable solution to intermittency and Winter ( as everyone ( I hope) is aware of here on this board).
I also dispare because to claim, as some do over this side of the pond, that the UK runs without coal is going to save the planet is wrong . Somehow China, India, Russia and yes even the US of A need to stop coal burning ( it has other uses of course)
Get Greta to convince the Chinese to cut back on coal , please , because some one has too!
Forbin
I understand that there is a plan to phase out gas supply to homes in the UK although I cannot remember the details. A step in the right direction. As for winter, there are still MANY poorly insulated homes in the UK that need attention, that £30 billion dumped into the nuke plant could have reduced consumption by more than it will generate.
NAOM
I worked for over 30 years in the lab on solar cells trying to increase their efficiency. I remember the race to make the first 20% efficient laboratory cell. I personally made the first 30% efficient laboratory cell. As well as the first 40% efficient lab cell. Retired now. I just put an array of SunPower modules on my home that provides 110% of my power needs and only covers about 1/3 of the roof of my 2000 sq ft ranch house. The modules are over 23% efficient and have microinverters built into them. I was always optimistic when I was working on this stuff, but I don’t think I really thought the technology would get this good this fast. It is hard for me to understand why anyone with the resources (both insolation and dollars) doesn’t take advantage of it.
It is hard for me to understand why anyone with the resources (both insolation and dollars) doesn’t take advantage of it.
I think many of us here feel the same way! Though I think the deliberate misinformation campaigns in which people like yesanoilman up thread, take part, may have a quite lot to do with it!
Enphase IQ7X Inverters are integrated into those 360/400 watt Sunpower AC Modules. Grid-Tie PV systems have to date been crippled by Centralized Utility Swamp Monsters. Breakout/Solar 2.0 is on the Horizon which will tilt the economics in favor of behind the Meter PV. Battery optional/agnostic systems will also force all vendors to provide real Utility. PV Systems must charge ANY Battery since most don’t exist yet. Little storage is actually needed to provide lots of Utility with simple time shifting/load management. Mass adoption of NEV’s will be a catalysis in Decentralization of Energy Production.
https://enphase.com/en-us/stories/are-you-ready-ensemble
Been working on a DIY version of that sort of thing using an old Trace inverter, but this looks interesting. Thanks.
Do it super easy way with under 5 parts. 4-8 60 cell Panels in Series to a Meanwell HLG-480H-xx TYPE A – Adjustable current/ Adjustable Constant Voltage. Outputs Isolated Safe and Pure 30 or 54 Vdc even on Cloudy days. Millions made each week. EMP proof with Spares. Perfect Regulation and Power Flow-thru an optional LFP Bank (Battle Born, KiloVault, etc). The 24V version maintains 6S Tesla Model S Modules (Outside in a Steel Box with LVD). Warning- Experience Required/Grounded Metal Conduit/Extreme Caution on the Lethal High Voltage (150-400Vdc) input side. Consult the International spec sheet. https://www.onlinecomponents.com/mean-well/hlg480h30a-49208173.html
I would love to have solar but I only use about 3kW a day. Here the cost per watt decreases as you use less so it would take me about 15-20 years to get payback even if I buy all the gear on Alibaba and install it myself. They are also talking about changing our cost from 1B to 1D which cuts costs further. So, yep, I can afford it, I have the insolation but it is not currently viable. Maybe, as temperatures rise, I might install new air conditioning so I may consider it then but that time is not now.
One downside, I have here, is that we get power cuts and I would be frustrated by having solar generation but now power. I know there are units that have an off grid output but they push the cost up a lot and make the balance even worse.
NAOM
I have the same problem. I don’t use enough electricity to make it worth running the wires, replacing the meters etc.
Thanks for the work James!
” It is hard for me to understand why anyone with the resources (both insolation and dollars) doesn’t take advantage of it.”
And why not apply the same to the country as a whole.
I sure hope the next president has a energy policy that opens the gate for Massive Solar Installation around the country. Really pound it hard. As if the future depends on it.
It does.
It was my pleasure. I enjoyed going to work every day. My choice to install the system was easy because I suppose I feel that I owe everything I have to the technology. But I would like to think I would have made the same choice regardless. It isn’t just a dollars and cents calculation. Of course we worked very hard for a long time to make the stuff competitive. But for many years it really didn’t make sense for anything but remote power or space systems or high value applications. Now, as in my case, if you just do a dollars and cents analysis it is pretty much a wash if you have the money to invest. Perhaps there are “better” investments from a financial perspective. But it is close enough so that the moral component easily outweighs the hassle factor or the search for the optimum return on investment. Some things really are more important than money particularly when you are not talking about crazy money. It is a marginal expenditure in line with what a person of conscience might expect of himself under the circumstances. You can’t fool yourself into thinking that you have solved the problem. But it is a way to put down a marker that you understand it and are willing to walk the walk.
This link is highly relevant to the future of the electric car and especially to the self driving electric car.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613578/ai-algorithms-liability-human-blame/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
That is a fascinating legal area.
The same kind of issues will apply with robots.
If a robot injures a human who is to blame?
And when a military deploys these and civilians are killed, who then?
Can you sue your clone for defamation of character?
Yum- Lab grown insect meat.
Now we know what to do with the human bodies- feedstock!
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-edible-insects-lab-grown-meat-real.html
YUM!
How will it taste?
So, future food production could be a sight to behold: silent discos of insect muscles, flexing to the pulse of lasers in vast pools of soy juice. But how will it taste?
The short answer, says Rubio, is that nobody knows.. LOL!
“Despite this immense potential, cultured insect meat isn’t ready for consumption. Research is ongoing to master two key processes: controlling development of insect cells into muscle and fat, and combining these in 3-D cultures with a meat-like texture. For the latter, sponges made from chitosan—a mushroom-derived fiber that is also present in the invertebrate exoskeleton—are a promising option.”
I think it will be possible to bioengineer yeast to produce the chitosan…
OFM- if you haven’t heard of this innovation from a Canadian company, it may be of interest to you.
Sounds like an outstanding application of science to me.
https://www.arcticapples.com/how-did-we-make-nonbrowning-apple/
That’s very interesting stuff, the ignorant knee jerk comments about GMO food products nothwitstanding.
To be clear, Monsanto’s round up resistant patented GMO seeds are borderline pure evil.
But only the scientifically illiterate fail to understand that all domestic plants are GMO, humans have been selecting for specific qualities since the dawn of agriculture. Now we just have better technology and can do it much quicker… Not to mention that natural selection through evolution can do exactly the same things, though at a much slower pace.
Not sure if I would count phenotype selection such as in farming or dog breeding GMO. Only genotype changes via deletion, addition or alteration of specific genes would constitute GMO.
Same with natural selection. Specific traits are being selected by the respective environment, but not necessarily at the gene level.
Same with natural selection. Specific traits are being selected by the respective environment, but not necessarily at the gene level.
No, that isn’t quite how it works, it is a bit more involved. To be fair there are many reasons to be concerned about employing genetic engineering techniques wholesale, without good controls.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-selection-genetic-drift-and-gene-flow-15186648
Natural Selection, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow Do Not Act in Isolation in Natural Populations
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/challenging-evolution-how-gmos-can-influence-genetic-diversity/
Challenging Evolution: How GMOs Can Influence Genetic Diversity
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/mutationsanddisorders/evolution
How are gene mutations involved in evolution?
And last but not least
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/161011_evolutiongmo
GMOs struggle to stay one step ahead of evolution
And also, gene silencing (epigenetic effect) is not the same as gene additions (Monsanto’s seeds)
I am in complete agreement with Iron Mike and DrTSoul.
No knee jerk antiGMO reaction is appropriate here.
Things aren’t black and white when it comes to genetic alteration.
Yes, GMO have huge potential, such as creating nitrogen fixing crops to replace fertilizer.
http://science-union.org/articlelist/2017/4/5/staple-crops
You will still need other micro and macro nutrients, its not just nitrogen. Having said that, nitrogen in fertilizers comes with a huge CO2 footprint….
http://science-union.org/articlelist/2017/4/5/staple-crops
Bioengineering Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria and Staple Crops: Genetically Modified Sustainability
My agronomist cousins down in Brazil have a small farm near this plantation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-pr0cYzuDQ.
Is this the Future of Global Food Systems?
I think we have to work both with nature and all the tools in our kit. Including genetic engineering. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed with extreme caution.
Genetic engineering, in many cases, if not ultimately all, is a solution in search of a problem.
My issue is with comments such as these:
Dub June 12, 2016 at 11:25 pm
Brown apples are fine! When was this ever an issue? STOP GENETICALLY ENGINEERING OUR FOOD! We don’t want our children to eat your poison!
I doubt those apples are poisonous!
I assume that you do approve of engineering yeast to produce spider silk 😉
(facepalm)…Try to feed _your_ kids brown mushy apples….
I am glad they like food spoilage and huge food waste (with associated GHG emissions).
Whose talking about brown mushy apples. I’m talking about perfectly good fresh fruit that has been cut open and left exposed to the air for 20 minutes. Just normal oxidation like this one. If back in the day my kid had not eaten that he would just have gone without!
.
The did a study and found that in school kids would rarely eat whole apples, but would eat most of the cut up apples they put out- if they were not brown.
These newer Red and Golden Delicious varieties that don’t brown quickly allow the cafeteria workers to cut the apples earlier in the morning.
Adults act like this too.
There is a similar new russet potato variety that has decreased acrylamide levels [known as a potential carcinogen]. Same kind of genetic manipulation- no added genetic material, just change in internal gene regulation.
Smart work these companies are doing.
The public needs to be a little smarter about genetic engineering. The knee jerk reactions are just a display of ignorance on the topic. A little bit of a nuanced approached is appropriate. IMO.
My German raised daughter ate an apple with a knife at a wedding in Switzerland last week and her (American) uncles and aunts thought it was pretty funny.
Has no-one heard of lemon juice?
NAOM
Sure! Works great but it isn’t half as much fun as genetically modifying something… 🙂
I guess being European I see GMOs a little differently. My main concerns are that changes being made are truly beneficial, properly understood and do not cause unwanted effects. I saw a lot of the early work as taking a lot of risks with poorly understood outcomes. Some outcomes were to be expected such as Bt resistance. Now, with CRISPR CAS9 things can be more controlled but we still need to have care.
As for apples, I never have trouble with their browning, they don’t last long enough 🙂
NAOM
My brother in law has apple and pear orchards near Nuelingen Germany and I helped harvest and plant new trees. We made cider, schnnapps, baked pies and stored apples in the underground cellar. A little browning is not an issue with me either.
It’s the sort of doubts raised in this article that concern me
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/30/727884309/scientists-genetically-modify-fungus-to-kill-mosquitoes-that-spread-malaria
NAOM
Wow! Someone needs to take a few bricks and hit those researchers upside their heads with them!!
Using CRISPR to wipe out a a species of mosquito by creating a gene drive is something that should not under any circumstance be taken lightly and the precautionary principle should be applied in spades. However such a technique only affects that one species of mosquito.
Now genetically modifying a fungus that infects a mosquito is many orders of magnitude more dangerous an experiment.
I agree 1000% with the concerns expressed in the article that if such an organism is released in the wild there are way too many unknown unknowns about whether or not it could potentially infect other species of beneficial insects. Not to mention if it might mutate and evolve to do so!
Again, to be very clear, it is one thing to apply gene drive technology to a single species, which is bad enough. It is quite another to start modifying potentially opportunistic pathogens that might find other insects to be suitable hosts.
This idea raises way too many red flags!
But based on laboratory experiments, the fungus seems harmless to other insects, such as bees, St. Leger says.
“From our scientific understanding, so far it’s safe,” he says.
Famous last words?
“All systems are failing, social, economic, political and especially ecological!
Good Luck!
Our world…
Happiness (The Rat Race)” ~ Fernando G Magyar
Damn you guys are a tough crowd.
I guess it will have to be lab grown insect meat then.
Soylent Green
Just a few brief off-the-cuff thoughts to consider when considering this sort of corporate mods to ‘our’ food:
1. Why? Is it truly for some sort of added nutritional value for example, or to simply ‘look good’ despite spend more time in transit, storage and on store shelves?
2. What are the tradeoffs? Taste? Monocultures?
3. WRT to Fred’s comment WRT selective breeding in this subthread, well, yes, and I’ve already mentioned hereon that, for example, some dogs have been ‘overbred’ insofar as they have health issues. I seem to recall citing hereon some time ago the bulldog as an example.
4. Who wants it? Who is making the decisions and where? A small select corporate relatively-clueless few (Maybe their are clued-into their myopic fields, but so what.) in some remote and/or centralized location or out of some sort of pure democratic process and in specific localities? Who wants it?
5. Patents? (Who profits and what kinds of controls are put on said GMO’s?)
6. Displacement: What other apples and/or other food are being displaced as a result? How does this affect genetic variability, such as in the events of disease outbreaks?
7. Other unforeseen vulnerabilities as the result of the change?
Anybody who is worried about browning of apples is free to pare and slice them right before eating them, lol. I generally eat mine entire, except for the core and seed.
I’m not too happy about more and more genetic engineering aimed at trivial benefits such as food cosmetics, because this sort of thing provides ammo to the people who are opposed to using this technology for really important purposes, such as introducing genes that confer resistance or even immunity to certain diseases and or pests.
We are well past the point in human history that we can afford to get all holy and righteous about such POTENTIAL problems as health risks associated with consuming genetically engineered foods, considering that damned near all of us are at least potentially at risk of going hungry, for a number of reasons too involved to go into in this comment.
Nothing is absolutely safe. Sure pesticide residues probably contribute to some small increase, but too small to be definitely detected, of various problems such as cancer among people eating industrially produced foods.
But if you don’t have the MONEY and the OPPORTUNITY to eat organic foods of a wide variety all year around, you are at HUNDREDS or thousands of times higher risk of suffering from nutritional deficiencies that DEFINITELY are tightly correlated with some very bad health problems , than you are from pesticide residues.
An apple or other piece or two of fruit a day really and truly does keep the doctor away.
Fred is right, virtually anything farmers produce is genetically modified, with the only real difference being that modern techniques allow plant and animal breeders to do things in years that used to take centuries.
We sure as hell need to keep a close eye on the implementation and marketing of genetically engineered plants and animals, but outlawing the same is utterly stupid.
Sometimes the arguments against GE crops or chemicals used in association with them are misleading, and sometimes I think this is deliberate.
For instance weeds that evolve resistance to a given herbicide can only properly be described as superweeds when they are found in the same fields as crops are grown. This resistance does not confer any extra vitality or survival value to the weed, except when it’s exposed to the herbicide.
Give up the herbicide,and the weed has no further advantage, and the combination of genes conferring resistance will gradually fade out…. because maintaining it imposes a cost on the weed.
I have been raked over the coals, in various university level classes over the years for pointing out obvious if unpleasant truths professors preferred to overlook, such as that the children who died as the result of exposure to nasty chemicals in the early days of the match making industry would almost surely have died SOONER, as the result of outright starvation or extreme malnutrition, had it not been for earning enough to have SOMETHING to eat, doing the ONLY work available to them.
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Millions and millions of people today ruin their health, long term, by doing work that is too physically difficult, or working under adverse conditions such as being exposed to noxious gases, extreme heat, etc.
But without those jobs…….. they would be a LOT worse off.
Most people are ill equipped to understand the ecological and economic tradeoffs involved in industry in general , and in agriculture in particular.
They make their minds up, one way or the other, most often based on their political convictions, about questions such as the use of herbicides, without having any serious understanding of the consequences of using them, or NOT using them.
For instance, the use of herbicides to kill off a cover crop, such as wheat, or just the weeds and grasses emerging in a field due for planting, makes no till production possible. Planting in the stubble just about eliminates soil erosion in most cases, and reduces the need for added fertilizer and water, which often means no or less irrigation.
The farmer makes fewer trips thru the field, using less fuel, wearing out less equipment, and getting his crop in sooner, which means better production. The herbicide that runs off is a problem, but it’s partially offset by the fact that a little less fertilizer is needed, and less of THAT runs off.
Other people who advocate burning crop residues, such as corn stover, for energy , generally fail to understand that every last stalk is needed on the ground, as mulch or ground cover, and to put back some organic matter in the soil when it remains in place. One of the biggest issues with industrial scale farming of corn is that it depletes soil carbon, so gathering and burning the residue should be a no no, or at least rather limited in extent.
Then others, some of them agriculture professors who are unwilling to focus on anything other than the short to near term advocate raising such species as switch grass as a fuel crop, saying it grows on marginal land and doesn’t need any fertilizer and so forth.
I don’t have a doctorate but I can say with professional certainty that after you grow switch grass a few years deliberately, and harvest it, you are going to start running into various problems associated with producing any crop, such as bugs and blights, fire, drought, and soil depletion. Those marginal soils are KEPT at least marginal by the fact that whatever is growing on them is falling back and replenishing such nutrients and carbon etc as is present initially. Haul it away, and you haul away a portion such nutrients as are present in the soil, harvest after harvest.
Am I saying switch grass can’t work? It might, but by the time you consider the cost of harvesting, drying, and transporting it, using diesel fuel, wear and tear on the roads, equipment, and manpower, not to mention the ecological costs, it’s not nearly as attractive a proposition as it’s usually painted to be.
The only RATIONAL explanation for the production of corn to manufacture moonshine to burn it in cars is that the people who made THAT decision must have been drinking quite a lot of it. We may eventually HAVE to resort to such measures, but good sense, informed by no more than freshman level science, as it is taught at respectable universities, is all you need to understand that we should be pedal to the metal on conservation and efficiency rather than pissing away trees and other plants better left alone than burnt for fuel.
The shipping of trees to burn them from the southeastern part of the USA to Europe is about as idiotic an idea as I have ever run across, in terms of the environmental cost versus benefit analysis.
We could get two or three times the bang for the dollar spending the money we spend on moonshine on improving the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles.
And the same amount of money spent on hauling wood across oceans to burn it would return a far far better profit spent on tightening up building codes.
WTF – Be Afraid -More Russian Phobia – MOF – Molecules of Freedom?
Posted without further Comment
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-30/us-energy-departments-freedom-gas-roundly-mocked-headlines
I’m pretty sure there is a market for spray cans, filled with Freedom Trump Farts. Potential sales of about 60 million to Trump supporters! I could see one being a permanent fixture on the podium when Sarah Huckabee gives a press conference, she could use it to spray at the journalists. Maybe they can even be made to emit fart noises! US politics is a gas!
OK, now we’re talking-
The one-of-a-kind facility would combine compressed air storage in salt caverns with hydrogen storage, large flow batteries and solid-oxide fuel cells- to the tune of 1000 MW energy storage capacity!
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/utah-aims-to-shatter-records-with-1000-mw-energy-storage-plant#gs.f7koi8
I wonder what happens to the salt’s stability when the pressure is put on, taken off, rinse repeat? I’ve been in salt mines and they don’t strike me as being able to withstand a lot of stress.
NAOM
I’m pretty sure they’d have taken that into account.
If not, it will be a good news item someday.
In Trump Era, Pentagon Chief Calls Military Last U.S. Institution Working, Woodward Says
There’s “high anxiety” everywhere about a president who has “legitimized hate” in our political culture, the former Watergate reporter argues in a podcast interview.
Woodward, recalling President Richard Nixon’s thoughts on hatred, said the most dangerous aspect of Trump is that he has “legitimized” hate.
“If you look at it, what Trump has done — and you can draw a straight line from Nixon to Trump — Trump has legitimized hate, and he has said it is acceptable in American politics,” said Woodward (beginning at 38:20). The former Watergate reporter accused Trump of outrageous remarks, including encouraging violence, that would be unacceptable “in the extreme” for “your teenage child” to say.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bob-woodward-pentagon-high-anxiety-trump_n_5cf0702be4b0a1997b67bce1
I’m shoulder to shoulder with HB these days, lol.
At Least 11 Killed In Virginia Beach Shooting At Municipal Center
Shortly before the end of the workday at 4 p.m., the gunman, a longtime employee of the city’s Public Utilities department, entered the Operations building in Virginia Beach’s municipal center and opened fire.
The gunman “fired indiscriminately” upon people on multiple floors of the building, Police Chief James A. Cervera said at a news conference.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/virginia-beach-shooting-municipal-center_n_5cf1b0b5e4b0e8085e3a3a33
Mac, what can be done ? Clean and simple.
“Pentagon Chief Calls Military Last U.S. Institution Working”
And they worry they need to hide the name John McCain from trumps view, or he will have a major tantrum.
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/27/723501793/american-soil-is-increasingly-foreign-owned?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Empires can be built with other tools than guns and chains.
I could care less if some American farmland is owned by foreigners, but when it comes to their buying it up a county at a time, it’s scary, wondering what use will be made of it, and what will happen to local communities, and what will happen to the people who work that land now.
But at least there’s a glimmer of good sense to be seen. The Dutch buyers mentioned have bought up some big acreage to build wind farms.
It’s idiotic for wind companies to pay the rents I hear about for the privilege of setting up wind farms, because the farmer retains ultimate ownership, and can continue to farm the land in most cases.
Maybe the real reason wind industry offers such sweet deals to lease land because it’s politically necessary to do so, in order to get enough local support to get the necessary permits.
Renting, even for thirty or forty years, is not the same thing as selling, to a farmer…… and most of them probably understand that prime wind locations will be twice as valuable, or five or ten times as valuable, when that lease is up…. because the roads, tower foundations, grid interconnections, permits, and everything else will be long since paid for, with just about everything in excellent working order, with the possible exception of towers and turbines.
So depending on how those leases are written……. a land owner may be creating a gold mine for his children or grandchildren.
But at least there’s a glimmer of good sense to be seen. The Dutch buyers mentioned have bought up some big acreage to build wind farms.
Not to mention they can still grow their own crops on that land, or even rent it out to local farmers… 🙂
Here’s an interesting take from a couple of US based researchers in in article over at reneweconomy.com.au:
A radical idea to get a high-renewable grid: Build way more solar and wind than needed
I believe OFM has floated this “radical idea” here several times and also pointed out that overbuilding has been in place in existing electricity grids for most if not all their history. A general rule of thumb, that no single generator should be larger than 10% of typical grid output, is an attempt to minimize the amount of overbuilding required. It is far less risky and less expensive to have a muliple plants in reserve backing up 10 plants each supplying one tenth of the load than it is to have fewer large plants standing by, ready to take over a larger portion of the load.
There is however a significant difference when talking about renewable energy. For a fuel operated plant, a much higher proportion of the cost of operating the plant is the cost of fuel. For wind and solar the fuel costs don’t exist and a much larger portion of the cost is the cost of building the plant. This means that it is a much larger waste to curtail a wind or solar generator than it is to take the decision to not burn fuel in a fuel operated plant. The fuel can almost always be saved for later sunlight or wind not taken advantage of and in some cases water that is released from a dam without generating power is gone forever and cannot be called upon at a later date.
For this reason, it is my belief that as variable renewable sources proliferate, economic activities that take advantage of low cost electricity when available will emerge. Humans will return to the practice of “making hay when the sun shines”.
For this reason, it is my belief that as variable renewable sources proliferate, economic activities that take advantage of low cost electricity when available will emerge. Humans will return to the practice of “making hay when the sun shines”.
Right! And as I’m sure you are already well aware there is a huge potential for energy storage in interconnected EV batteries!
https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/
Share Your Sion
* Sharing your car may seem unusal in the beginning. But once you’ve tried carSharing, you’ll never go back. It’s totally up to you to decide for how long and with whom you would like to share your Sion.
* You don’t want to ride alone? With rideSharing you can offer other users a ride.
* PowerSharing makes sharing the energy stored in your Sion easy. You decide on how much electricity you are willing to share and at which price.
Everyone benefits from your Sion as a result – including your wallet and, most importantly, the environment.
Disclaimer: It is highly plausible that a civilization based on ideas an technologies such as these is already too little and too late. So maybe we should all just throw in the towel right now and admit once and for all that there are no possible alternatives whatsoever to BAU! Oh yeah and renewables and EVs are just BAU extenders… Good Luck on Mars! /sarc
Incomplete Disclaimer Rectification:
You forgot to mention that all PV and wind power growth may be sucked up by new technology growth effectively neutralizing it’s effect. 🙂
You mean like this? 😉
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01683-9
NEWS 27 MAY 2019 CLARIFICATION 28 MAY 2019
Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments
Researchers tested mechanisms linked to nuclear fusion at room temperature — but found no evidence for the phenomenon.
PV currently cheap, eChem Storage is many times the cost of Pure PV Power. Equipment PVin/Pmax Ratios are climbing in the Industry. Clipping a few hours a year matters not, what matters if you have enough power on short cloudy days.
Where NOT to be during a tweet storm … https://www.askaprepper.com/worst-places-emp/
The ideas in this study aren’t really new or radical. Grid managers (aka Independent System Operators) have understood and used these principles for a very long time.
On the other hand, excessive investment in generation facilities and underinvestment in Demand Side Management (DSM) are the direct result of the perverse incentives built into most utility regulation: their profit is a percentage of their capital investment. So….they over invest in big capital-intensive items, and underinvest in the cheap stuff, like DSM.
I agree: people will find a way to make use of surplus power from wind/solar. But, it will take a little while for the surplus power to become large enough to be important, and a little while for investors (commercial or residential) to have some certainty that it will be available.
Hightrekker- does this ring true to you?-
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-trees-ancient-macedonians-world-environmental.html
Hickory,
The article pretty much describes my graduate research on a 17-meter-long core from a lake SW of Mount Rainier.
The bottom 10 centimeters or so dated to the late glacial and was mostly sand, with very little pollen in it. The rest of the 17 meters spanned post-glacial time and had little mineral sediment in it at all–it was mostly guttja, which is decomposed organic matter. There was the occasional twig. The pollen was dominated by that from trees. To speak broadly: we see the same pattern throughout the middle latitudes in North America and Eurasia.
Interesting- but that was a different timeframe than they were studying in Macedonia right?
I imagine this is of interest to you-
https://pnsn.org/blog/2013/01/24/the-last-cascadia-great-earthquake-and-tsunami-313-years-and-ticking
btw- I lived in seattle for quite a few years
Hickory,
The core was late-glacial at the bottom and current (to the date the core was taken) at the top. It includes the time span for the work in Macedonia.
A colleague and neighbor of mine, Brian Atwater at the USGS, thought up the way to date the earthquake in your link: C14 dating gave us a date with a plus or minus of a few years, but there was no written record in the Pacific NW at the time so the date couldn’t be narrowed down. Brian reasoned that the tsunami would have crossed the North Pacific and hit Japan so he set about checking Japanese chronicles for NE-facing areas of the country and found a tsunami record. We know the distance the wave traveled and how fast it would have moved so the time the wave was generated could be determined. I don’t have it off the top of my head but it was something like a day in January 1770, the third week I believe.
I believe you are referring to this one:
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26 with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2.
Source Wikipedia
BTW, I love Seattle, but always thought the Alaskan Way Viaduct by Pike’s Place Market place was a disaster waiting to happen, smart move that they finally decided to tear it down…
E FredM,
I took the viaduct southbound every Saturday morning and northbound every afternoon for 15 years. The view from the top deck of the Sound, the islands, and the Olympics when I was northbound was breathtaking.
The quake that happened in the early 2000s knocked down some of the brick storefronts in Pioneer Square though I didn’t feel it, and it caused a vertical offset in the top deck of the viaduct of maybe an inch or two and I felt that for sure, every Saturday afternoon etc.
Indeed. The history, and discovery, on that is fascinating.
https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/tsunami-historical-series-cascadia-1700/
Regarding the Macedonia story, the deforestation of the virgin forests for widescale agriculture resulting in massive soil erosion, is a story that has happened to variable degrees all over the world.
People must have been shocked by the changes, but nobody was writing these things down back then (3500 years ago or so).
I believe Europe is at high risk for being severely deforested once again.
People will be burning all the wood by mid century.
Hickory,
I guess the changes weren’t rapid enough to cause much comment. Plato does mention somewhere that in the days of the forefathers the mountains were cloaked in forests, though they weren’t in his day. Later, during Roman times, I suspect the situation became clearer but nothing much was done to deal with it, that I know of.
Where did you live in Seattle?
One of the explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire was peak wood in Roman Imperial territory.
Agricultural empires are commonly Ponzi schemes, in which the core of the empire exploits the periphery. The periphery expands until the empire becomes too large, and then it collapses due to the lack of new victims.
Modern empires are different. For example the UK is more affluent now than it ever was during the heyday of the British Empire.
So…comparisons of ag empires due modern conditions are not very useful.
Yeah it’s almost funny in retrospect to think of the goals of past imperialists.
For example in the 30s the Japanese were convinced they needed to conquer a big chunk of Asia to get ahead in the world. When that didn’t turn out too well, they switched to a complete focus on efficient manufacturing.
The rest is history.
Madison Park neighborhood.
It does ring–
Fantasying link.
Repost of a critical topic:
Five sigma heat events, are they to be a more normal part of our weather and heating climate in the future?
The variance is more important than the mean. Both seem to be happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9rP-MnDLc
Christopher Schar of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science discusses the relationship of heat waves and changes in climate. He begins by discussing three historical heat waves, the North American Drought of 1988, the Chicago Heat Wave of 1995 and the Great European Heat Wave of 2003, and how these have impacted scientific perspectives on heat waves. He then discusses the variability hypothesis and provides related climate change scenarios. He concludes his talk by discussing the soil moisture threshold effect and some of the complexities of soil-moisture precipitation feedback.
Since the time of this presentation there have been almost 30 recorded heat waves globally.
Personally, I think this heat wave research is an easy scam (accurate records don’t go back far enough), but the consequences are important to discuss. We’re reaching the limits the planet’s ecology can handle as far as human population and industrial output is concerned. If we don’t scale both back, I fear a grim world in many ways as soon as the next decade. Global economic breakdown and another world war may be near.
“We’re reaching the limits the planet’s ecology can handle as far as human population and industrial output is concerned”
How do you know that the planet’s ecology has reached it’s limits? What are your sources for this claim?
That’s my sense after spending some 62 years here on God’s green earth.
I was actually interested in the scientific and factual basis for that claim. Local observation is important but the Earth is a large place and very complex.
Thanks for that info/link GF.
Its another example of how the average days are not at all the problem with climate change.
Rather, its the rare extreme events that cause the big damage.
-The day that Miami get swamped will be during a tropical storm with full moon.
-One 3 day heat wave (during pollination time) in the Indiana, Iowa, Illinois zone can have a huge impact on corn yield.
etc
You are welcome Hickory.
True the average tells very little. A combination of heat, humidity and air currents just produced a swarm of tornadoes and violent weather across the US, even spawning a new Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_May_2019
and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/05/29/extreme-weather-has-made-half-america-look-like-tornado-alley/?utm_term=.30a2435cdcc3
Combine that with the horrendous flooding pattern and we have way too many extreme events before even half way through the year.
Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science triggered me. 🙁
Why?
I suspect it might be the word science…
My Fox News addicted Dad and I recently got going on this issue. He kept pounding the idea that determining whether or not climate change is caused by humans is impossible. Instead of arguing with him over that, I tried to stress that the climate is indeed changing, and that arguing over what could be causing it is dumb because truthfully the better discussion is what we will do to fix it. I said what matters is what we, as a species, decide to do to fix this problem. Humans are the only creatures able to make the dramatic corrections that could reverse, or, at least, delay some of climate change’s effects.
Another way of providing grid storage albeit just for smoothing
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/31/ups_systems_to_ease_burden_on_irish_grid_in_eaton_pilot_project/
NAOM
For those who regularly participated on The Oil Drum, they may recall, under Kris DeDecker’s excellent article, The Mechanical Transmission of Power: Endless Rope Drives, one of my comments/inquiries, as ‘Tribe Of Pangaea- First Member’, regarding using a windmill to heat a place without electricity.
Well, I was pleased to find that Kris has recently added (or reposted) an article about that very subject:
Heat your House with a Mechanical Windmill
https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/31/facebook-solar-farm-texas-renewable-energy/
Half a dozen trolls are bad mouthing this solar farm because it takes up a good bit of land, but as any of them if they believe in landowners doing what they please with their land……… and this kind virtually always do.
They’re arguing for nukes because they supposedly have a small footprint, and that nukes are the safest source of electricity, bar none, based on the record in the USA…… they have apparently never heard of Chernobyl, or Fukushima, or Three Mile Island.
None of them seem to have the faintest conception of the amount of land occupied by coal mines, or the acreage used to grow corn to make moonshine, etc.
Land and sunshine are NOT in short supply in Texas.
I looked up Andrews County Texas. It is way down in SW corner near NM border.
On the map you can see a small percent of farmed land, mostly dry farmed.
Most of it is sparsely vegetated grazing land, and there are literally many hundreds of oil or gas wells scattered over the county.
Overall it looks like a great place for solar,
if they stay off the little bit of farmed land.
Take a look on google maps.
The value of Ag products produced [thats redundant] puts it in the bottom 5th of Tx counties.
Get used to it Texans.
Wind and Solar are going to be ubiquitous across the landscape.
It does bring up the point- there is so much land that is poor for Agriculture, not even so good for low density grazing, poor for forest growth, that there is little need to be cutting down forests or putting solar on good farm land.
Cover every one of those oil pads with solar and light up half of Texas. No need to worry about land and just double the usage.
NAOM
OFM
>bad mouthing this solar farm because it takes up a good bit of land
It’s worth mentioning that solar PV is nearly 20% efficient, but photosynthesis is only about 1% efficient. Considering that tens of millions of acres of American farmland is wasted growing corn for fuel solar is a much better idea than agriculture.
Soory Alim… but I don’t buy that argument at all.
It is always an ecologically tragedy to destroy vegetation an ecosystem for human energy production.
Lets remember that we are in the midst of an impending global mass extinction.
If we can’t find roof tops or very poorly productive land (from the standpoint of natural potential), we should look farther afield.
This project in Texas is a good example.
The land is frankly crappy.
We’ve got plenty of it in the far plains and SW.
I know its harder in Germany, and much of the eastern USA.
I just came across this related article.
Apparently some people have been giving this plenty of thought-
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/michigan-opens-33m-farmland-acres-to-bee-friendly-solar-projects/556090/
I recently posted a link to a YouTube video showing the progress of a new solar farm to be commissioned in my neck of the woods later this month. The 200 acres on which it being built has been idle for who knows how long. It was probably once used to grow sugar cane. With the solar farm, it is probably going to yield far more electrical power than could be had by growing the most efficient of crops (sugar cane?) and then converting the resulting output to electricity, by a long shot.
The linked page includes a map showing the location of the project and rough outline of the area covered. Since the area covered is .809371 sq km (200 acres) and the area of the island is 10,992 sq km, that works out to roughly 0.0074% of the total land area to generate roughly 5.7% of the peak demand. Extrapolating from that, it would 0.13% of the total land area to meet the entire peak demand. If one wants to claim that it would compete with agriculture for land and that only 10% of the total area is suitable, we would still need less than 1.5% of the arable land to meet the entire peak demand. When it is considered that these calculations ignore the contribution of rooftop solar, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me.
Map showing location of new solar farm and area covered.
Yeh, not many places on the island that can be used without competing with vegetation.
Hickory,
Farming is the problem. Most farm is a massive waste of land and water, and degrades the environment. That is where the destruction is coming from.
There’s no real excuse for it either. It would be easy to reduce the footprint of agriculture.
Swanson’s Law has not preaked.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-31/renewables-are-set-outprice-oil-gas-2020-report
Investment in new wind and solar generation in the EU peaked in 2011 and has been declining since, being down to less than half in terms of GW added.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/the-decline-of-weather-dependent-renewables-in-europe-2008-2018/
Offshore wind is still increasing faster, mainly in the UK and Germany, but onshore wind and solar are increasing more slowly. The sweetspots for onshore wind have already been occupied, and new locations are worse and/or meet local opposition. Solar is not very productive in the UK and Germany. In Spain solar capacity is better, but the end of subsidies with the debt crisis meant solar investments dried up.
Investment in new wind and solar generation in the EU peaked in 2011 and has been declining since, being down to less than half in terms of GW added.
OK, if you say so! But to be frank on my last trip to Europe I came away with a slightly different perspective.
https://www.theclimategroup.org/news/leading-shift-renewable-power-europe
ACCELERATING THE CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION IN EUROPE
Business action on renewable electricity is shifting global markets. Our new report reveals that RE100 members increased the amount of renewable electricity they source by 41% in one year – and that 37 member companies are already sourcing over 95% renewable power.
Europe is where our members source the highest share of renewable electricity, 62% in 2017. Due to a well- functioning Guarantees of Origin tracking system, as well as dynamically developing markets for power purchase agreements (PPAs), we are expecting this number to grow exponentially. Some individual European countries are already forging ahead, with RE100 members sourcing 93% renewables in Denmark, 82% in the UK and 81% in Switzerland.
Sure there are may factors influencing business cycles and there are bound to be ups and downs but overall I strongly suspect the trends for renewables in Europe have definitely not peaked.
Time will tell!
Personally I’m of the opinion that the Fat Lady has yet to sing…
http://www.iberglobal.com/files/2018/renewable_trends.pdf
It is not me saying it. The data is from EurObserv’ER from official data here:
https://www.eurobserv-er.org/online-database/#
Ups and downs from the business cycle is a possible explanation. Another is that the more intermittent energy from wind and solar that is added to the grid, the more difficult it becomes to add more.
If that is the case then a plan B will be required.
So Javier,
Are you saying that Europeans are poor decision makers?
Or can’t make long term plans?
Or quietly plan to just burn all their wood, and coal?
Or they plan on invading the mid east for that oil?
Or just plan to be Putins puppet?
Or perhaps they are just planning to downsize 90%.
What is the plan?
You are certainly correct about the solar potential in Europe. It is relatively poor in the northern 2/3rds.
They are going to have to spend a lot more money on it than many parts of the world. Transmission of solar electricity from the south will likely get big attention, at least for larger scale generation.
For USA folks, imagine if Washington state didn’t have hydroelectric. They would be eager for wintertime solar from AZ.
Europe has an analogous situation.
Here is an outstanding interactive Global Solar Atlas-
https://globalsolaratlas.info/
No. I just showed evidence from data. I did not interpret it.
The evidence disagrees with the idea that the energy transition is proceeding according to plans to end CO2 emissions before 2040-50. It started quite strongly in the 2005-2011 period but it is losing steam.
If Europeans are good decision makers a plan B is required.
And plan B is?
Channel Z‘s Plan A or A Better Plan A?
Europeans? Or just the illusions of pure democratic decision-making Europeans? Big difference.
Crony-capitalist plutarchy elitist plan A’s are not plans, except from/by a minority plus, I guess, the indoctrinated.
A ‘Plan A’ or better one would be to simply get off FF’s/power down sooner than ASAP and for good examples, do some permaculture and stuff like that. Oh and consider sleeping more often when the sun goes down, so less lighting is needed at night, less 24-hour civilizationing. The arthropods that depend on the night and the natural lighting that comes with it might appreciate darker nights too. Win-win.
A denialista site repeating oft repudiated memes. It also does not take into account austerity and Brexit either.
NAOM
Austerity is another word for energy poverty. Energy poverty is increasing in Europe.
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/news/energy-poverty-may-affect-nearly-11-eu-population
It leads to all short of health conditions and premature deaths.
Haha “decline” is an odd word to use for rapid growth. Output is growing rapidly.
These dopes don’t understand the difference between production of energy and building new plants.
Also Spain’s issues are purely ideological, not economic and have been overcome.
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/02/05/inenglish/1549357123_580894.html
“If the projections are right, 2019 will be a record year for renewable energy in Spain, and solar power in particular. According to Donoso, 4,000 MW of solar installed capacity is on the cards.”
Almost every year is a record year for renewable energy. You just need to install some more for that. But the fact remains that there is a declining trend in what is added.
Spain installed so much solar in 2009 that it will be difficult to break that record. The problem caused by the socialist government of Zapatero was that the subsidies were so high that investors from all over the world were investing in solar in Spain and the amount of money going to pay them through the subsidies became an unbearable burden for the Spanish economy and its energy sector. The subsidies had to be cut drastically by the conservative government elected to deal with the economic crisis and the cut has been challenged in court.
Spain has a very expensive electricity. A large part of the bill goes to pay for renewables subsidies and CO2 tax. Then a lot of people live in energy poverty because they can’t pay the bill.
” unbearable burden for the Spanish economy and its energy sector…a lot of people live in energy poverty because they can’t pay the bill.”
Javier. You think this is bad. This is very tip of the iceberg. In ten years the world will be well past peak of oil. Perhaps approaching that for nat gas and coal as well. And the population will be marching towards 9 Billion. It is unlikely that your country will find oil to purchase on the world market by that time, in sufficient quantities to keep the country rolling.
Energy poverty will be really starting to hit hard, some places faster and harder than others.
My state will make a lot (more) of solar electricity by then. And I will be thankful for the policies that got the ball rolling.
I hope your country is ready for 1o-20 million more refugees by then. They will be coming.
I thought of Javier and Fernando last year when the news reports came out of Spain about the loss a vote of confidence for conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy leading to socialist leader Pedro Sanchez taking over as prime minister. I looked at the Spain profile at the BBC web site that shows that the socialists formed the government between 2004 and 2011 during the period in which Spain experienced it’s first big burst of growth in renewable energy. A sense of the politics of energy in Spain can be gleaned from the same article linked to further up by alimbiquated:
Self-generated energy soars in Spain as solar panels plunge in price
The Popular Party formed the government in Spain since 2011 and consistently pushed back against renewable energy. This follows a pattern the world over of right wing, conservative political parties hitching their wagons to the FF industries, old money as it were.
It is somewhat puzzling to me that these politicians seem to completely lack the vision or foresight to side with the industries of the future, instead choosing to side with industries which will inevitably decline. As part of their allegiance with the FF industries, this political wing is also solidly engaged in global warming denial.
Having said all of that, it is clear that Javier is part of this political wing and is back here with his right wing, anti-renewable, global warming denial BS. Based on his patterns of posting from way back before he was banished, we should all know what expect when we see the name Javier at the top of a comment. On the odd occasion he posts something useful just like how a broken clock is right twice a day.
Why are rightwing politicians allied with FF??
Well, one really big reason is that the FF industry has an enormous amount of money, and is willing to pay off anyone it can.
There will always be someone who is willing to do *anything* for money, power and status.
The Weekend Read at the PV Magazine web site’s News page is a fairly comprehensive overview of the current situation in Spain.
I hope your country is ready for 1o-20 million more refugees by then. They will be coming.
I think for Europe as a whole it could easily be tenfold that amount!
Africa is projected to see the largest relative increase in the size of its population over the coming 15 years: the median projection of 1.68 billion people in 2030
If things are going to be that bad in my country then nobody will want to come. They’ll go to yours. They are not stupid.
“They are not stupid.”
Sure they are. Look who is the president of the USA.
Really stupid.
>Spain installed so much solar in 2009 that it will be difficult to break that record.
Spain will definitely break a record this year for new solar installations.
Your remark that renewables production breaks a record every year, even when things are going badly, shows why the fossil fuel industry cannot compete in the long term.
Your remark that renewables production breaks a record every year, even when things are going badly, shows why the fossil fuel industry cannot compete in the long term.
Which is why they spend so much on misinformation campaigns!
Alimbiquated,
You really have no clue what you are talking about, have you?
The solar sector in Spain is ecstatic because from 2017 to 2018 solar photovoltaic new installed capacity went from 135 to 261 MW, a 94% increase. However you have to put that into historical perspective:
Spanish new installed solar PV capacity per year (MW)
2007 538
2008 2707
2009 17
2010 427
2011 410
2012 292
2013 102
2014 22
2015 49
2016 55
2017 135
2018 261
I’m not sure when the 2008 record will be broken, if ever, but I seriously doubt it will be broken this year. A >1000% increase over last year does not appear likely.
https://www.tsolar.com/es/noticias/energia-fotovoltaica-en-espana.html
Javier must be unaware of Spain’s sunny climate. If solar power won’t work there it won’t work anywhere.
That’s not what I said Webhub. Spain is in the top three countries in Europe in terms of bang for the buck in solar photovoltaic and currently number one in solar thermal. I am not opposed to solar energy, but the facts are obstinate:
– Without subsidies solar doesn’t get installed even in Spain.
– Even in Spain solar doesn’t produce much in winter and nothing at night, which means you still need 100% of your energy needs covered by other means.
It is painfully obvious that solar is not the solution. Even solar + wind is not the solution. We must rely on gas for the middle term and nuclear for the long term. Unless you are Iceland, Norway or Portugal, any other solution is simply wishful thinking.
It is painfully obvious that solar is not the solution. Even solar + wind is not the solution. We must rely on gas for the middle term and nuclear for the long term. Unless you are Iceland, Norway or Portugal, any other solution is simply wishful thinking.
No it most definitely isn’t! I’m sorry but that is 100% highly refined Yak Dung and I strongly suspect you know that! What is painfully obvious is that you must be a paid operative.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/24/mark-jacobson-has-a-plan-to-convert-the-world-to-100-renewable-energy-is-it-realistic/
Mark Jacobson Has A Plan To Convert The World To 100% Renewable Energy. Is It Realistic?
But you are obviously a member of the contrarian club as described in this excerpt:
Pushback
As creative and important as those road maps are, they haven’t met with universal acceptance. By most estimates, there are oil, gas, and coal reserves still buried in the Earth that are worth a staggering $26 trillion dollars. A small group of fossil fuel companies say they own those reserves and they intend to extract every molecule, justifying their avarice with the canard that they are compelled to do so by the economic imperative to maximize shareholder value.
With so much money at stake, there is plenty available to buy politicians, scientists, and media sources who will help them delay, then delay some more the transition away from fossil fuels as long as possible, even if it means risking the Earth’s ability to support human life. The principle strategy they have devised is the “all of the above” argument. It goes something like this.
“Yeah, renewables have a place in the energy mix of the future, right alongside oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. While we are transitioning to renewables, we must continue to build new coal, gas, and nuclear powered generating stations, too, because they make electricity we can depend on. Renewables are inherently unreliable because, you know, the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, and sometimes rivers have less water available to make hydro power.”
The corollary to this fiction is the “government shouldn’t pick winners and losers in business.” What that argument really says is “government should continue giving us the outrageous public subsidies we have grown accustomed to over the past 100 years and not give any to renewable energy interests.”
Here is a link to Jacobsen’s paper.
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf
From the looks of the Science Magazine article I linked to in my comment further down it will eventually be “game over” for FF. People like Javier are beginning to flail wildly as their ship starts sinking. I’m looking forward to the next few years as the dominoes fall one by one.
Based on the amounts of money at stake in the FF industries and the fact that new disruptive technologies are likely to make FF seem prohibitively expensive, I am starting to view anything negative about renewable energy and EVs with extreme skepticism. There is way too much money at stake and the legacy industries are not about to take this lying down. What I find particularly offensive is that they have shown a willingness to use every dirty trick in the book.
Good points Fred
” By most estimates, there are oil, gas, and coal reserves still buried in the Earth that are worth a staggering $26 trillion dollars”
That’s not staggering if at some point in the near future 1 effective barrel of oil costs $100, then that means ~260 billion barrels of oil is still buried. But when you consider that we have burned 1400 billion barrels so far, we’ve used up over 80% of what’s available.
But since that is including coal and gas, the $ value is either likely higher than this, or not much is left at all.
It really doesn’t matter how lousy solar is, there’s no other choice but to try to make it work.
Yeah, Paul, I know. But there is also the possibility that all of that coal. NG and oil might become completely worthless stranded assets due to some as yet unforeseen combination of circumstances. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people if it did!
🙂
Cheers!
I have no interest whatsoever on FFs. I couldn’t care less where my energy comes from. I am just interested in that it keeps coming and I can afford it. That without subsidies it doesn’t gets installed means it will be more expensive. That countries reduce installing when just at a few percentage means it might not keep coming if we continue that path.
Jacobson is delusional or a snake oil salesman. He has been amply criticized within the field, for example:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003388
Comments on Jacobson et al.’s proposal for a wind, water, and solar energy future for New York State
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722
Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar
So much that he wanted to go to court to defend his faulty science (absurd!)
http://westernwire.net/100-renewable-researcher-lawyers-up-in-unprecedented-move/
Best comment by Mike Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) July 2, 2017:
“Always amazed me how reporters & others thought a bunch of assumptions on a spreadsheet was “scientific” “proof” 100% renewables achievable”
https://t.co/gJrgq6XWfb
I am not surprised that you believe such absurdity, because you are a believer.
Javier,
One of your first references a couple of days ago was from a website that denies that CO2 is a problem.
Do you agree that Climate Change is a serious problem??
I am not surprised that you believe such absurdity, because you are a believer.
First, I don’t believe anything, I look at the facts! The facts are scientifically and economically on my side not yours.
For the record I do think these people are far more qualified to opine on the validity of Jacobsen’s proposal then you are.
https://physicsworld.com/a/100-renewable-electricity-is-viable/
Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, and Aalborg University, Denmark, have now hit back with an analysis of hundreds of studies from across the scientific literature to answer each of the apparent issues.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118303307
Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’
They claim that a shift to 100% renewables is technically feasible and economically viable.
I actually think you should read the rebuttals and refute them on a point by point basis if you can. But you can’t!
The Heard et al. paper has also been challenged by Australian academics Mark Diesendorf and Ben Elliston, who extend their critique to a paper by Brook and Bradshaw. A core issue is reliability. Diesendorf and Elliston say that the accepted engineering approach is that “reliability is a property of the whole demand-supply system and that a perfectly reliable system is impossible – it would require infinite back-up and hence would have infinite cost”. However, they say that “Brook and Bradshaw confuse it with dispatchability of individual power stations, while Heard et al. confuse it with the presence or absence of base-load power stations in the supply system”.
BTW if I recall you are the one who used to tell us that sea ice extent and volume have been steadily increasing in the Arctic…
LOL! and you call me a believer? Well for the record I certainly don’t believe any of your BS!
Last but not least while a civilization based solely on renewables may not completely solve the global ecological and climate crisis. one thing is for sure, FF and nuclear are the path to hell and armageddon and any one who continues to support that path is complicit with crimes against humanity!
It is a widespread belief.
You have a problem distinguishing facts from opinion. Filling an Excel spreadsheet is not a fact. A fact is that France gets ~70% of its electricity from nuclear, so nuclear is viable. It remains to be seen that a country without special circumstances can get most of its electricity from wind, solar and hydro. So it is an opinion, not a fact. That it can get 100% is just wishful thinking.
So far the evidence shows countries decelerating their transition when they haven’t even reached 30%.
Clearly the issue is controversial in the scientific literature. That you completely accept what one side says in the absence of evidence marks you as a believer. Your attacks on anybody that disagrees mark you as a zealot. That’s your creed.
Your attacks on anybody that disagrees mark you as a zealot. That’s your creed.
Riiight! Says the man who posts absolute bullshit at WUWT!
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/only-connect/
You’d think Da Paws dead, but no – Javier currently argues at Tony’s that the planet is no longer warming. At Judy’s, BobD tried to reason with him (and a bit more) using statistics. I submit it is both overkill and not enough for ClimateBall
I do have to confess that I am at a loss to fathom what your true motivations might be!
My last word to you on the Jacobsen Report, your claim regarding Excel Spreadsheets aside, there is nothing in it that contradicts the laws of physics. All you have to do is come up with a single example to prove me wrong but you cant!
I don’t have to prove you wrong. All we have to do is sit and wait, because it isn’t going to happen. you are just delusional.
“Of top 10 global carbon emitters, not a single one is hitting its climate goals as outlined under the Paris Agreement.”
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1134799254566780929
The biggest reduction in CO2 emissions is by USA for going methane, not renewable.
Same with climate. Time will show all those alarmist models are wrong. The same the Arctic sea ice demise by 2010s predictions from 2007-2012 were wrong.
Arctic sea ice extent:
March 2007: 14.513 million sq km
March 2019: 14.552 million sq km
difference: +0.039 million sq km
September 2007: 4.267 million sq km
September 2018: 4.714 million sq km
difference: +0.447 million sq km
Awful melting last 12 years, really. The problem with being a zealot of a creed is not having contact with reality.
Javier,
Do you pick cherries for a living?
The fact remains that Arctic sea-ice extent is the same 12 years later. This is not what we were told it was going to happen. It shows Arctic sea-ice dynamics are not understood by most experts. And the same applies to the rest of climate. All those funky predictions about rising seas and scorching temperatures will turn out equally wrong. They are designed to create a state of climate fear that has little to do with the evidence.
Meanwhile climate continues doing what has been doing for the past 300 years with or without significant human CO2 emissions.
Javier says”
Same with climate. Time will show all those alarmist models are wrong. The same the Arctic sea ice demise by 2010s predictions from 2007-2012 were wrong.
Gone Fishing posted this link down thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM&t=672s
Dan Britt – Orbits and Ice Ages: The History of Climate
Is that you at 54 mins and 21 seconds?!
He’s got it wrong. CO2 levels at the Late Cretaceous 65-75 Myrs ago were below 600 ppm according to proxies. Perhaps even below present levels, for a much warmer climate.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14845/figures/1
So the idea that the Late Cretaceous hot climate was due to much higher CO2 levels is not supported by current evidence. During the Paleocene and Miocene the world was cooling while CO2 levels were increasing. There is little correspondence between CO2 levels and temperature in the past, beyond very low levels during Ice Ages.
Javier,
You really don’t understand that it is inappropriate to pick two data points only out of 40 years of data. Not really much point talking to you. When you make statements such as those you reduce your credibility.
Javier. You may want to read this article. It shows the trend that is building in solar. Worth the read, courtesy of Island Boy-
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/836
Nuclear may be a compliment to solar wind hydro and what nat gas is left, but right now most 1/2 sunny countries are finding nuclear very expensive compared to solar. Certainly that is the case in the USA.
It will be interesting to watch Germany, S. Korea and Japan.All three have the internal engineering and industrial expertise to do solar, wind or nuclear.
They are energy hogs for their industrial export economies, with very little internal energy, esp Korea and Japan. And all three are not all that sunny.
Atleast Spain and USA can fall back, or actually fall forward, on solar and wind.
Additional note on this. Where I live, a solar system gets just a little more energy per year than it would in Madrid. And there are much sunnier areas a little further inland. I [and the vast majority of those who also live in this state- the biggest in the USA] would surely prefer to live off solar, than to have any nuclear reactor within 1000 miles of our homes. If it was a referendum, I wager solar would win a vote 90 to 10%. Even most republicans here would vote that way. The cool thing about solar for the average citizen, is that it can be set up so that individuals can be a stakeholder in energy production. People like that, a lot.
Solar still has quite a lot of room to grow and you are correct that solar is strongly preferred to nuclear. I don’t doubt that solar is going to continue growing and I see that as a good development. I don’t think that we can rely on solar + wind + hydro for most of our energy needs. And when you see how solar is growing you can see that early adopters slow down and new adopters provide new impetus. This means the trend will probably slow down when most large economies reach the level of installation of early adopters in a few years. Germany gets 7% of its electricity from solar and it has considerably slowed down solar installation over the past few years.
The energy system that we choose will have far reaching consequences so the issues have to be studied in detail. No solution is perfect.
Pereira, D.S., Marques, A.C. and Fuinhas, J.A., 2019. Are renewables affecting income distribution and increasing the risk of household poverty?. Energy, 170, pp.791-803.
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/pereira2019.pdf
“This paper proves that both income and risk of household poverty are directly linked with renewable energies, in both the short- and long-run. The energy transition to renewables has had negative consequences for households. Thus, the disadvantaged households should be helped to meet the increased cost arising from the energy transition.”
One thing is what people prefer when it doesn’t cost them anything, but the yellow vests exploded in France over a tax increase in fossil fuels. If your choice makes people poorer you will face resistance.
One thing is what people prefer when it doesn’t cost them anything, but the yellow vests exploded in France over a tax increase in fossil fuels. If your choice makes people poorer you will face resistance.
Climate change and ecological destruction will make people a lot poorer than a tax on fossil fuels.
But framing it as an economic hardship for the poor is part of the misinformation campaign that people like you are fomenting in order to protect the interests of powerful fossil fuel companies!
The yellow vests are being manipulated!
On the other hand:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests/turnout-at-frances-yellow-vest-protest-hits-fresh-low-idUSKCN1T23DX
Turnout at France’s ‘yellow vest’ protest hits fresh low
Some 9,500 people took to the streets across France on June 1, the Interior Ministry estimated, with 1,500 in Paris. That was down from the 12,500 nationwide last Saturday, and a far cry from the close to 300,000 that first occupied roundabouts and blocked roads in what began as an outcry against fuel tax hikes.
BTW in a country that gets most of its electricity (over 70%) from that clean, too cheap to meter nuclear energy, why do you suppose the French government wants to increase electricity prices?
It must be because the price of wind and solar are decreasing! /sarc
>You really have no clue what you are talking about, have you?
Javier, your tone is inappropriate and you don’t seem to research your claims. Here is a source for my claim.
https://www.pveurope.eu/News/Markets-Money/Spain-4-GW-new-PV-installations-in-2019
Discussions like these tend to include a lot of confusion between what people want to happen and what they expect to happen. Whether you think solar is a good idea is irrelevant.
Alimbiquated,
A guy from the PV industry says he believes 4GW of PV are going to be installed in Spain in 2019 and you just accept that uncritically? Despite the average for the past 12 years being one tenth of that (420 MW)?
We’ll get the data in about 12 months and the amount will come at 0.5-2GW and nobody will care what this guy said. You just accept what he says uncritically because you like it, despite the evidence from the past and despite him having a vested interest.
Javier,
I believe you suggested elsewhere that past trends tell us very little about the future.
I agree.
Perhaps that may be true of future installation of PV in Spain.
Also note that the criticism of Jacobson’s work was by someone who had published papers suggesting that 80% renewable energy was feasible. The disagreement was over the last 20%, there’s plenty of time to work on solutions to that problem, whether vehicle to grid, demand management, batteries, thermal storage, HVDC grid connections to move power across continents or even across the Mediterranean (Spain to Morocco may be a good spot).
Perhaps the last 20% will be provided by nuclear power, but many believe there are safer alternatives. Maybe France can provide that last 20% for Europe.
Those are all theoretical studies. Theoretical studies were published in the 70s about having cities in space by now. It appears possible but it isn’t happening 50 years later. Lots of people believed it was going to happen.
https://gizmodo.com/that-time-congress-considered-building-cities-in-space-1666207416
Things have to be demonstrated. That you all believe it is possible doesn’t mean anything to me.
Javier,
Yep future always the same as the past.
I have seen no changes at all over my lifetime, guess that is true for you as well. 🙂
Cost of solar has fallen a lot.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/
Just to abound in the argument that solar PV transition slows down in first adopters when subsidies decrease:
Home solar panel installations fall by 94% as subsidies cut
data showed the scrapping of home panel subsidies from April caused new solar power capacity to fall from 79MW in March to only 5MW last month.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/home-solar-panel-installations-fall-by-94-as-subsidies-cut
As in Spain, no subsidies, no installation.
Reading the article, the message is different. The following extract gives a better picture
“The solar feed-in tariffs had encouraged more than 800,000 homes to fit to their roofs solar photovoltaics, the panels which generate electricity. The end of the scheme was widely expected after a series of cuts to subsidy levels in recent years.
Renewable energy developers and green groups had hoped ministers would replace the scheme with another incentive system to avoid dashing the sector’s momentum and accelerating job losses in the industry.
Instead, officials confirmed that new solar pv installations would be expected to give their unused clean power to energy companies for free until a new scheme is set up. A spokesman for the government said new proposals will be unveiled in the coming days.”
The changes to feed in tariff seem more to blame and one would expect people to wait and see what the new proposals are. People would be very uncertain of what to install until more is known and Brits would be very unwilling to hand over electricity for free. Unfortunately, this is likely to be held up with the mess over Brexit and change of prime minister.
NAOM
Once in a while Caelan posts something useful and relevant. Some of us block him. I check his posts for links such as this one.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with-a-water-brake-windmill.html
Personally I doubt that any such scheme is actually economic and practical except maybe in places where the wind blows hard and steady, and it’s cold most of the year, because small wind turbines just don’t produce much power, and they are expensive as hell to buy, expensive to erect, and hard to maintain, when maintenance is needed. Furthermore, a water brake involves quite a lot of expensive plumbing subject to corrosion and leaks.
Bottom line, small wind turbines are just about useless, except when the small amount of energy you get from them is of very high marginal value. The oh so famous and collectible wind mills that used to be so common in the mid west, where the wind blows steady and strong, typically produced less than four hundred watts in a twenty mph “breeze”. That’s enough to pump water into a reservoir hours on end, and it’s enough to charge up electronic appliances and batteries to run a few lights, etc, if you want to invest ten grand to harvest a couple of kilowatt hours, maybe four or five kWh on good days.
You would get a hundred times bigger bang for your money and sweat installing new windows and doors and putting insulation in walls and so forth, than you could ever hope to get using a water brake windmill.
I am interested in the possibility of using a small steam engine/ generator in combination with a wood fired furnace to generate SOME electricity during times when space heat is needed anyway.
If anybody knows of such a set up that can be bought on a pallet, please post a link, and thanks in advance.
It might also be practical and economic to run a small IC engine on natural gas, propane, or diesel, using it to drive a generator when heat is needed, if the IC engine can be tightly enclosed in a water jacket, so that all the heat normally wasted can be captured for space heating. Such engines can be built to last ten thousand hours or longer, with almost nothing needed in the way of maintenance the entire time, and if they are built to a STANDARD, in terms of all the connections, such an engine/ space heater/ generator combo could be a no brainer, saving the customer more every year on his electricity and heating bills than the annual cost of ownership.
Of course this would be a no brainer for Islandboy, meaning no brains if HE bought one, because living in the tropics he has no need for space heat.
But anybody who lives in a place where more nights than not the temperature drops down to freezing could make economic use of such a rig, if the price is right, and the price could be right if it is mass produced.
I could make use of one from November until March almost every night. Somebody in the Dakotas might keep his running more or less continuously for six months at a time.The key would be to make it small enough that when you want the electricity, you can make use of the heat as well, so you could run it for say ten hours putting out one or two thousand watts, rather than two hours putting out ten thousand watts for just a short period.
There’s a LOT of good info in the linked article, such as this.
“On a global scale, thermal energy demand corresponds to one third of the primary energy supply, while electricity demand is only one-fifth. [1] In temperate or cold climates, the share of thermal energy is even higher. For example in the UK, heat counts for almost half of total energy use. [2] If we only look at households, thermal energy for space and water heating in temperate and cold climates can be 60-80% of total domestic energy demand. [3]”
Countries such as the UK tend to have a hell of a lot of old housing and other buildings that are very poorly insulated, if there’s ANY insulation, not to mention leaky old windows and so forth.
The REAL bottom line as often as not indicates that the best use of one’s own personal resources is to go for conservation and efficiency first, and then renewable energy next.
This is not the case in places such as Islandboys home turf though, since most people there are using as little energy as possible already, and hardly any at all for heat, other than cooking, etc.
Any country with an excellent solar resource that’s importing fuel to generate electricity should STAY pedal to the metal building solar farms as fast as humanly possible. There’s a day coming when even coal is going to be expensive, and deliveries are inevitably going to be interrupted due to war or political problems.
Interrupted deliveries are not a matter of IF, they’re a matter of WHEN. History isn’t over.
The economy of a small country highly dependent on tourism could be just about wiped out by nothing more than a sharp economic downturn.
Bottom line, we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to solving the problem of electrical energy storage.It’s possible and practical to generate electricity using IC engines if it’s HIGH MARGINAL VALUE electricity……. as is the case when it results in shaving peak demand, helping prevent blackouts….. or charge batteries when the sun isn’t cooperating.
It’s going to take a long time to transition away from ff generated juice. If I could install anything mentioned in this comment, it would have an expected service life of twenty years or more…… and it will take that long at least to build out enough wind and solar farms and new transmission lines to run the country on renewable electricity.
If anybody knows of such a set up that can be bought on a pallet, please post a link, and thanks in advance.
Haven’t looked into it recently but you might want to check into Stirling Engines too.
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_on_new_energy?language=en
From the article:
My personal takeaway from that part alone is that; it’s more local, DIY and sustainable/reusable/resilient tech; it’s good for my climate area (Nova Scotia) which is relatively cold and can be often cloudy and windy in the winter; and for the relatively-small size of accommodation(s) I have in mind: Think ‘tiny house movement’ for one. (We already assume that the house is built and insulated well, etc..)
That’s the second time in about a week you’re written something like that and I have not been participating hereon that much previously. Are you pining for a kiss and a hug or something?
As I’ve previously suggested, to paraphrase/summarize, the key appears to be (at least more) in the mention of the supposed block– social engineering/copycatism and all that– rather than the block itself, assuming it even exists, since the key is in the mention of it and since many bullshit/lie.
But what the hell, I’ll indulge myself in that regard in admitting that I pass over many people’s comments, including your typically bloated shit, OFM, without needing to use the ignorance-button command. Hey, my time is limited. And, for example, it’s almost like a ‘Who the fuck is notanoilman?’ when they come out of left field. I also spend much time offline and (therefore) off POB, and even off POB when I am online, and so ‘ignore’ the entire site…
Oh, hey, that felt good… So, ya, I, too, realize the inherent internal feel-good benefits of mentioning ‘ignores’…
LOL
Misfit Kid
Here you go! What you want is a smaller version of this:
All Power Labs PP20 Power Pallets
I suspect you will find them a bit pricey, starting at 28 grand but they have already developed an optional CHP module:
In a future where significant amounts of variable renewable energy are supplying power to the grid a progressive utility might be willing to pay a premium for distributed on demand generation. Users of systems such as the one above could then use thermal storage (hot water tanks etc.) to recover the heat when they want to.
Thats Funny- All Power Labs is in a small warehouse across the alley from where I get my hardwoods stock, and 3 blocks from my grocery store (the most awesome in the world I must say, ok USA).
Their shop looks like a junk yard. i guess they keep the good stuff inside.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1010+Murray+St,+Berkeley,+CA+94710/@37.8519929,-122.2893835,1141a,35y,33.67h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80857ef548cd2d9d:0x53656df371ac9332!8m2!3d37.8512308!4d-122.2886566?hl=en
Alan, if you’re talking about power to the grid, did you not previously suggest that alternative energy was supposed to empower people and offer them freedom from the grid or something like that and maybe help sink governments?
The ability of former consumers to become producers of electricity also raises the possibility of selling power to the grid, providing an income stream that was previously out of the question. The idea of an internet of electricity as posited by Tony Seba, where many more nodes on the network (grid) can be servers (suppliers) as opposed to dumb terminals (consumers) is a radical change to the concept of the electricity grid. It is a client server network model as opposed to a mainframe computer model, one that many existing players in the electric utility sector are struggling to come to grips with but, is just about as inevitable as the switch from mainframe computing to client server networks was.
I’m on the road, have someone speaking with me at the same time, and will also have to pack up soon, so just something off the cuff for now: In a world of diminishing energy/increasing entropy and challenges to the capitalistic status-quo, who’s supposed to be paying for those who are supposed to be making money uploading electricity? Also, what about microgrids? Where do they factor in? Would they jam/compete against this model? Lastly, what happens if/when many operations like solar PV corporations go belly-up? What does Seba know?
The whole idea of the energy industry as a get rich quick scheme is dying. That isn’t a bad thing.
The reason people get rich on fossil fuels is that the resource is unevenly distributed. This allows small groups to grab the resource hoard it, and overcharge the rest of society. This kind of “rent taking” is much harder to do with solar because the sun shines on everyone, rich or poor.
Lost Is Found And Then Lost Again
alimbiquated, no one really knows much about anything. How can they? Economists are infamous for that, as are news-show talking-head pundits and the fake newzeries, yes?
Why, even you, assuming it’s ‘you’, whatever ‘you’ means anymore (trans?), ‘can’t even appear to get your nickname straight’: Ilambiquated? ‘u^
Did Orwell ever write, ‘Truth is fiction’?
Maybe, maybe not.
Some talk about solar because ‘it shines all over’ without talking about when and how and also about who has the rare earths, the mineral rights (if/until their contracts are anulled), the military industrial complexes, media spin, who’s drawing and redrawing the nation-state borders, who makes the decisions, who enforces them, and stuff like that.
Systemic resin.
And I hear that Extinction Rebellioners are praying in their protests– gettin’ a little religious. For what is unclear, but let’s assume, perhapps ultimately fruitlessly, to avoid NTHE, if I have the acro correct.
At our ostensible civilizational apotheosis, humans appear ever more lost…
But appearances can be deceiving.
Thanks Islandboy,
But twenty grand is out of the question. You buy a comparable genset a hell of a lot cheaper, and put it on your own pallet, lol.
Thirty five percent overall efficiency is nothing to brag about. Lots of diesels get that or close to it without salvaging any waste heat at all. Sixty five percent is still being dumped to the atmosphere.
I’m thinking ( for immediate purposes of this comment) in terms of things that are possible bridge solutions that may be economic and practical for use by millions of homeowners and small businesses.
Not very many people are willing to put in the time and effort needed to deal with purchasing, storing, and feeding a biogas fueled / gasifier engine.
But millions of people and businesses do have ready and convenient access, without hassle, to natural gas delivered by pipeline, or LP gas, delivered in trucks and stored in large onsite tanks, with the dealer taking care of everything except paying for it, lol.
Not too many people have oil storage tanks anymore, except in the North East, but there are plenty of oil companies that are eager to install one for a new customer, and keep it full of diesel fuel, almost any where in the country.
A mass produced engine made to run submerged, except for the air intake and exhaust would be a piece of cake, if somebody with money wants to build it.There are lots of engines that will run submerged around already, on military boats, and on atv’s that people run thru rivers and lakes just for the fun of it, fully submerged, except for the air inlet. The only additional part needed would be a jacket to hold the water so it can be circulated thru radiators, etc.
I could build a water jacket around such an engine myself, and circulate the water thru pipes to radiators or a large hot water storage tank, for delayed use as space heat, or into another water jacket built around a domestic water heater, so as to use the heat for cooking and bathing.
But such submersible IC engines as are available are expensive and designed to run at all possible speeds and especially at high speeds, and thus are not well suited to steady speed operation for long hours. They wouldn’t last, and they are fuel hogs.
What’s needed is a low speed engine designed to run at a fixed speed with relatively good fuel efficiency, for long periods of time.
If I had one of that description, I think I could get to seventy or even eighty percent overall efficiency without even having any drawings, lol. I could just cobble it together in my backyard shop.
All that would be necessary is to put enough water in the cooling system and enough contact area that it cools the exhaust until you can hold your fingers in it a couple of inches from the outlet. I have an oil furnace that is over ninety percent efficient. The exhaust stream is only a little over two hundred F.
Whatever waste heat is thrown of by the generator can be salvaged by locating it inside a space that is heated anyway, or likewise enclosing it in a water jacket as well.
The reason I brought this up was that when you said “such a set up that can be bought on a pallet”, I immediately remembered the All Power Labs set up. I originally got interested in it sometime in 2014, the year my father died. The island was going through a drought and a huge amount of bush fires one of which would have consumed the six acre homestead my father left behind, were it not for a footpath that created a fire break. As it was, the fire only affected about a quarter of the property and did not reach the house.
That scare, along with the sight of all the burning hillsides, got me to wondering if there was any way that the energy of the fires could be harnessed in a way that did not strip the hillsides bare of all vegetation and emit horrendous amounts of CO2. I also was concerned about the tendency of my fellow islanders to solve every problem with fire. Cut a lawn and rake up the cuttings, burn them. Rake up leaves that have fallen off trees, burn them. Need to clear land to plant crops, burn it.
This gasifier seemed like a good way to extract some of the embedded energy in the biomass with less CO2 emissions. I thought it might help to reduce unecessary burning of biomass in the form of domestic cuttings if people knew it could be used to produce electricity using this gadget.
The biochar produced would also be much better for working into agricultural soils than the common practice of burning areas to clear them for agriculture.I thought that something like this could encourage folks to stop the practice of burning sugar cane fields as part of the harvesting process. Every time I see a bush fire or a cane field fire, I think of the wasteful creation of CO2, releasing sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere.
I introduced the idea of this type of gadget in a shipping container size to a former college classmate of mine that works in the government and was actually part of the formulation of the island’s National Energy Policy. He immediately remarked that such a technology might encourage people to harvest biomass in an unsustainable way, to profit from the electricity production. Despite the fact that huge amounts of biomass go up in smoke every year by way of intentional and accidental bush fires, he does have a point.
I keep the technology in mind in case there comes a time when it becomes an idea who’s time has come. It has the advantage over straight burning of biomass that, it produces far less CO2 and lots of biochar.
Oh ya, ‘burn everything’ and biochar…
Reminds me of Eric and me (Tribe Of Pangaea- First Member) going over it on The Oil Drum, almost 7 years ago.
@Caelan, you are a real piece of work ! How you get from:
to:
streches the boundaries of logical reasoning.
I was taking pains to explain how large amounts of vegetation go up in smoke on the island where I live, by way of what I suspect are intentionally set fires that get out of control. I was lamenting that the energy embedded in this biomass was being wasted, when it could be used to offset FF use while creating biochar, which can be used to improve the productivity of soil. My thoughts being that, IF the vegetation is going to be burnt anyway, why not use it to offset some FF use and produce a useful additive for agricultural soils?
You then take that to mean that I want to burn everything in sight just to get some electricity! Wow!
Trash Comments, Not People
Regarding ‘burn everything’, I was simply referencing, and in agreement with, your own words…
And, coupled with your mention of biochar, it made me recall that related part on The Oil Drum.
Yes, I get that, but dislike the IF part and have a right to say so, by the way, ideally without the implied personal attack; ‘real piece of work’. You don’t need that part and should know better.
I have exercised great restraint in this regard over the years hereon (and anyone can confirm that via a peruse of the archives) compared with the garbage lobbed at me, and at others, from some members of this site.
(There are significant differences between comment-criticisms, ad hominems and personal attacks.)
That goes against, incidentally, the spirit of POB’s original owner, Ron Patterson’s initial exception (which he has since broken) to the use of, as he put it, ‘vile names‘. Go ahead and read it.
Nevertheless, I realize that this appears in general par for the course for our era… and, now that I think about it, somewhat or indirectly related to why civilizations collapse.
Perhaps including working with what is actually renewable rather than what is couched in language that defines non-renewable as renewable, and with the individual extending to many individuals and that includes the nation-state? That would appear to contradict somewhat your quote below, yes?
I’ve heard that many countries perhaps even like Jamaica are already above some critical thresholds vis-a-vis anthropogenic climate change, and so am unsure that kind of pedal-to-the-metal is a good idea even there, while we in North America may have to ‘power down by 75%’.
Global Solar Atlas- great tool
https://globalsolaratlas.info/
It is interesting to look around.
See how relatively poor the solar resource is in much of China- clouds!
Similar relatively poor results in Indonesia, Congo, and western Amazon basin- clouds!
On the shortest/cloudiest day of December, my system had only 1/20th the output of a clear sunny day 1 week later- clouds!
In response to a short subthread further up I added a line for the combination of coal and gas to the annual electricity mix chart as shown below. It clearly shows the combination of coal and gas trending down from 70% in 2007 to 61.8% in 2017 with a slight uptick to 62.6% in 2018. Over the same time period the line for non hydro renewables has gone from 2.5% to 10%. All the hoopla about Natural Gas displacing Coal in the electricity market has ignored the slow but steady displacement of both by renewables.
Will the displacement of FF in the electricity mix accelerate as the costs of wind solar and storage continue to fall?
It would be interesting to have a chart from about 1950 to 2000 showing % generation from oil.
I think we’d see a dramatic example of how quickly oil can be replaced…
I found this:
https://alternativeenergy.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004341
Seems oil consumption peaked around 2004. Interestingly it seems both natural gas and renewables started on an upwardly exponential trend at about the same year.
I’d like to see an update for 2015 to the present. Though we can probably fill in the blanks in the data from other sources like Islandboy’s chart above. I’m betting that well before 2030 renewables catch up to and then pass natural gas!
.
I think we’d see a dramatic example of how quickly oil can be replaced…
This graph is quite telling!
Fuels Used to Generate Electricity in the United States by Source, 1950-2015 (Btu, quadrillions)
.
That’s great, thanks.
Oil’s share dropped by about half in roughly 4 years (from 1978 to 1982), due to the high price of oil. Overall US oil consumption dropped by 18% in that period (while GDP grew slightly).
This happened due to price incentives, and is a good example of the importance of price signals.
Now we need to properly price all fossil fuels to reflect their actual costs from pollution and supply risks. Fossil fuels would go away remarkably quickly if they were properly priced.
Proper pricing of fossil fuels (and other commodities) requires government action. Fossil fuel investors such as the Koch’s know this very well, which is why they’ve been sabotaging government for decades.
“Now we need to properly price all fossil fuels to reflect their actual costs from pollution and supply risks. Fossil fuels would go away remarkably quickly if they were properly priced.”
And remove subsidies.
NAOM
Absolutely.
Implicit subsidies, like pollution, would need countervailing (Pigovian) taxes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
“A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities (costs not included in the market price). The tax is intended to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome, and does so by being set equal to the social cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product.[1] Often-cited examples of such externalities are environmental pollution, and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and sugary drink consumption.[2]”
The very concept of a Pigovian tax is over the head of the people in the greatest need of the revenue derived from such a tax.
Well, you can’t call it a Pigovian tax (outside this well informed group) – people will look at you funny.
Just call it a user fee. Like paying a toll to maintain a toll-road. Or a gas tax for highways.
If you need coal miners, but coal mining is unhealthy, then you need a user fee to pay the cost of taking care of all those coal miners dying from COPD. If you need oil, then you need a user fee to pay for the military you employ to protect access to oil in the ME. If you want fossil fuels, you need to pay the cost of cleaning up the pollution they cause.
It’s a very old, very conservative idea. The very opposite of socialism. It’s taking responsibility. It’s paying your own way.
It’s “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”!
Robert Heinlein would love it…
LOL!
Happiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk
Great, er, catch! 🙂
NAOM
THANK you Fred!
I feel so HAPPY.
Brilliant.
Been there and done that, and back on the farm is the place to be! Especially retired, with a welfare check adequate to pay the basic living expenses from groceries to electricity.
Agreed. Unfortunately not many of the 8 or 9 billion inhabitants of this planet will have that option.
Enjoy it while you can!
Cheers!
We don’t hear much in this forum about particular electric cars except for TESLA’s.
This link is by somebody with a leased Bolt.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/01/two-years-with-the-chevy-bolt-mixed-feelings-a-family-of-geese/
I think maybe GM will be in a position to sell electric cars like ice water in hell a few years down the road. At least they will have a core of experienced mechanics familiar with electric cars, and training programs in place ready for expansion into areas where they don’t yet sell electric cars, etc.
Beyond that, there are at least fifty million people in this country who see the bowtie as synonymous with apple pie and motherhood. That long term acquaintance and brand loyalty will go a LONG way when they are finally confronted with six dollar gasoline and waiting in line to buy it.
Ditto Ford, and to a much lesser extent, Dodge trucks.
Of course Honda, Nissan, and Toyota have an established fan base too.
The sale of electric cars here in the USA will take off like a rocket sled once people see an acquaintance driving one every day. Until then….. only Tesla is going to have any problem building as many as buyers want.
A hell of a lot of people are scared silly of Tesla, perhaps with good cause, because it IS possible Tesla could go under, or that TESLA management will screw everybody dry at some future time when repairs are needed. It’s not likely, but in ten years you might not be ABLE to get your older TESLA repaired, unless you know a couple of electronic wizards……. and wizards don’t come cheap!
If I were God, there wouldn’t be any secret technology or info unavailable to the customer on anything priced at above a throw away price.
Well, at least after we hit the WALL(S) there will be some helpful technology out there. Not too sure anymore if any true voluntary efforts and wise decisions by humans in general will be made. Looks like limits to growth, climate chaos and continued global heating due to natural feedbacks will be the only thing that will reshape civilization into a more survivable form.
As far as GM goes, they have been digging a big hole for themselves in the lack of reliability area. Same with Nissan, Renault, Chrysler. GM will have to keep it’s old style management far away from the EV design and production areas, just the opposite of what I hear is happening.
China could be the big deal in future EVs.
But why worry about EVs when most people will not be able to afford a car if the current US income/cost trends continue? We will be a small market of drugged up Uber/Lyft users. Tesla as a taxi/limo service.
”But why worry about EVs when most people will not be able to afford a car if the current US income/cost trends continue? ”
Maybe so, eventually.
Or maybe this scenario is more likely:
One way or another, the people and the government of this country will make sure cars are available and affordable to the vast majority of people who have one now, excepting maybe kids who may have to wait until they are adults to get one, or be allowed to drive one owned by their parents.
Automobiles and light trucks are absolutely ESSENTIAL to the functioning of American society, except in a few core city areas where buses and street cars or subways are sufficient.
So cars will be one of the VERY last things to go away so long as the nation is still functional.
People will , and quite often do already, go without medical care, proper food, recreation, even birth control pills, in order to keep a car on the road. Why?
Because most of us who have one now simply cannot get by without it.
I could but it would be one hell of a hassle, carpooling to town to buy groceries and so forth, but odd items needed on short notice would mean big problems with what’s left of the farm.
But I might be able to get along ok ordering stuff to all be delivered once every couple of weeks by UPS or Fed Ex.
Almost every single person I know who has a job has to commute to work in his or her own car, but in a bad enough pinch, maybe a third of them could work out SOMETHING in the way of a carpool. It would be easier in places with more large employers and fewer small companies.
The solution may be micro mini cars, or two seater fore and aft stripped down cars, which could profitably be sold brand new for probably no more than one third the price of a typical compact new car these days. Such a car would get at least twice the miles per gallon too.
There’s NO REAL reason car companies can’t build cars that weigh well under a ton, with engines way less than half the size of the ones in the smallest cars sold today, WITHOUT everything working at the touch of a button, without air conditioning, without fancy paint, without fancy upholstery, etc………. except that people are not currently in enough financial strain to buy such cars new.
Even mandated safety equipment,such as air bags, could be deleted, and may actually be deleted, if necessary to make cars cheap enough.
A top speed of around fifty is adequate.
We can get where we HAVE to go at fifty to fifty five or even lower speeds, and mostly we do anyway, due to either heavy traffic or the nature of the streets we are driving on.
Hot. Dry. A billion people. Hard Days on the Planet.
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-india-heatwave-temperatures-celsius.html
And not even remotely survivable.
I do believe Pakistan will be the first over the cliff.
But I’ve been wrong before.
I’ve been at a place with 45C and breathing in can feel like breathing fire until you get used to it. At least it was dry heat but, even so, the night is rough. Cold showers and sleeping on tiled floors help.
NAOM
Remember those times, without A/C when the inside of the house had reached 35+C , the tile floor was warmer than skin during the night. (Athens, 1987 heat wave – lasted 10+ days, killed my godmother)
And people think that we can just get along fine when the temperatures rise by 8 or 10 C. Try those temperatures around here with the humidity at 84% as it has been the last few days.
NAOM
Never have had a AC, except in one room in Santa Rosa, for a year or so.
Do you mean the Santa Rosa in Sonoma county?
I’ve been in Sebastopol for 40 years this month. Never had A/C. I grew up in western San Diego county and never had A/C in a car until I moved here. that, however, was a lot more about the time than the place. It was a lot hotter there than it has ever been here. You can get used to a lot if don’t know any better.
Palm Drive for 5 years.
No, unfortuanately, the Pacific Island nations are first in line for destruction.
Saudi Arabia’s going to be next on the list; it was barely habitable to start with.
The Plan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/climate-plan.html
I’m more interested in this guys plan.
The Evergreen Plan.
Have you given it a look?
I think he is the closest to a big vision, doable project of any of those currently jostling for a seat at the table.
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/evergreen-economy
I just started reading- “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming”
So far, its impressive in exploring the situation.
It’s sad that politicians have to sell economy and growth to even have a chance to get the vote. However, Inslee’s plan sounds good as far as energy is concerned.
True GF. De-growth doesn’t sell, as we’ve pointed out before.
Out of 120 million voters, only 237 have signed up for de-growth.
Right now the country has record low unemployment, low inflation, and 3.1% GDP. Let’s not do anything to mess any of it up.
Hey Perry. Many people believe in planning for the future.
In the near future global oil production will be peaking. USA peaking too in this coming decade.
So, we better get moving on a big plan for a world short on oil.
Secondly, we have a ‘little’ crises brewing in this place called the biosphere.
Its called climate change. It warrants some big plans for change too.
Unless of course you choose to only care about the next couple years. Then its probably not a big deal. You really old?
People, families, companies, and countries that plan for challenges that are in front of their face do tend to do better. Much better.
In other words: investing in new, cheaper, and more abundant energy sources, and better and cheaper transportation is the very best way to keep inflation and unemployment low, and GDP high.
Perry Not so Smart Houston, I just checked and that is absolutely not true! I could post links giving the numbers all the way back to the 1950s to prove you wrong! Doubt it would change your mind.
Here’s just one statistic for you to chew on and you can the google the numbers behind it for yourself. The country does not have record low unemployment!
Current US unemployment rate: 3.6% (Apr 2019)
The unemployment rate in August was 3.9 percent, and it dipped as low as 3.8 percent in May. But the unemployment rate was as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.
So at the very least the current unemployment rate is by no means a record! Are you too lazy to google this kind of information yourself?! Took me less than a minute to prove you wrong.
As for: Let’s not do anything to mess any of it up.
Apparently you have either drunk the Trump Kool Aid, or you are a liar, troll or a bot!
What ever benefits there have been from the current economic upturn has mainly gone to the wealthy. And just wait till the effects of the Trunp Trade Wars start to really kick in…
And last but not least maybe you are of the opinion that those floods in Houston from Hurricane Harvey last year were good for the GDP! And yes we can say that that particular weather event was definitely related to climate change! I could even provide links to scientific studies that back up my assertion but I doubt you would read them!
Audio- Helicopter Money and a Game of Kick the Can (Episode 12 of Crazy Town) By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Nate Hagens.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-28/helicopter-money-and-a-game-of-kick-the-can-episode-12-of-crazy-town/
Interesting talk. Whether we do anything to change our ways or not, the combination of limits to growth, climate chaos, global heating continuing from positive feedbacks and eco-crashes will make the changes for us.
Agree- I’m a Nate Hagens fan a bit.
So am I, but I disagree with him about the potential risks that could lead to some of the higher order RCP scenarios.
While it may be true that we do not have enough fossil fuels in the ground to be burnt to achieve them we certainly have enough to stay well above the RCP 2.6 scenario. Everything indicates we are on track for at least RCP 4.5. Everything that I have read indicates that that should be more than enough to cross tipping points and set off feedback loops that will then take us past an RCP 8.5 scenario without the need for more CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources.
It seems even some of the smartest people have their rose colored glasses on when it comes to realistic assessment of risks!
https://thebulwark.com/what-changed-my-mind-about-climate-change/
…The answer is that we can’t be sure. And that’s okay. Because in life you rarely know for certain what’s going to happen next. You plan for a range of outcomes and try to mitigate your exposure to the worst possible risks. There’s an entire economic discipline on this subject. It’s called risk management.
Risk management is not about discerning the optimal response to the most likely outcome. It is about discerning the appropriate response to the most likely distribution of possible outcomes. That means incorporating the possibility that climate change, either by a bad roll of the geophysical dice or a large and unexpected societal vulnerability to warming, turns into a bigger problem than we expect.
I would have expected that a former hedge fund manager such as Nate. would have a better grasp of risk management than most, but apparently not!
So party on dudes!
I agree– set off the alarm bells.
I’m new to enjoying the Crazy Town Podcast. I’m now listening to all the episodes starting at the beginning. I quite like it.
I’ve noticed its advert at Resilience but it didn’t pique my interest enough, but with your mention, I might give it a listen.
Give it a try—
A bit “dryly humorous”, but good info.
The History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM&t=672s
Good lecture! Too bad people don’t care much about historical facts.
Not to mention that most people will come away from it with the conclusion that the climate has always changed even before there were humans around to influence it in any meaningful way, so we don’t have to worry about what we are doing now. We can’t possibly have any influence on it.
Of course what they should take away from this is that the climate is actually quite sensitive to even relatively small changes that can be amplified by tipping points and feedback loops which can in turn have major consequences lasting for millions of years. And, yes, there was life in the ocean after the PETM extinction event, but if you happened to be a fisherman or other, big, top level predator, depending for your survival on a stable marine ecosystem chances are, you, were pretty much fucked…
Cheers!
The way climate scientists are presenting their analyses is backwards and partial. Telling people a spread of temperature effects does not describe the problem or a true goal. It makes them sound unsure and does not describe what and how much needs to be done.
Our major objective should be to slow the warming of the planet and greatly decrease our footprint to reduce loss of species. High rates of change are devastating to many species.
I hope that Wikipedia’s Category:Species made extinct by human activities is kept up-to-date.
Well, if humans manage to drive ourselves to extinction or at least collapse civilization then there won’t be anyone around to update that particular database. So chances are your hope is in vain!
That’s what I fear. Humanity’s great creations like Wikipedia or Star Wars would be lost forever in a civilization collapse.
According to the site at the following link (first brought to us by notanoilman), Britain has now gone 16 days and five hours without the use of coal to generate electricity:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/may/25/the-power-switch-tracking-britains-record-coal-free-run
I occasionally look at the site at the following link for how the UK is getting it’s electricity and it appears they will not have to start up any of their coal plants for a while yet. The next newsworthy occurrence might be the restarting of a UK coal plant in hours, days, weeks or months from now!
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
World coal production is about 1 tonne per head of world population per year. 7.7 billion tonnes in 2018, and rising. It will take some time to get this to zero, or even half.
Without additional nuclear power the UK will need at least some coal fired electricity for a while yet, especially in cold winters.
We are very dependent upon imported natural gas, much of it from Russia, which has been a reliable supplier for decades.
“Counterintuitively, soaring sales of EVs in China, Europe, and the U.S. haven’t had the expected effect on commodity prices. According to some analysts, the market is in oversupply because producers have reacted to predictions of insufficient lithium and cobalt production. It is expected that the current situation will continue into 2020 and maybe even further.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Battery-Metals-Are-Bafflingly-Cheap.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJ9q45PfD0
I wonder what the chances are that aerogel can be manufactured cheaply enough to use it for insulation in ordinary homes and other buildings.
The odds don’t look good for now, but a few years down the road it might be possible to mass produce it using industrial processes adapted from various other industries.
I have often speculated about the possibility of manufacturing small hollow glass or ceramic balls in such a way that the gas in them reacts with the shell, leaving a fair to good vacuum inside. If such balls could be mass produced cheaply, they could be embedded in insulation made from fireproofed cellulose fiber or fiberglass or other good insulators, creating a super effective and affordable insulation.
In times to come, older housing in places that are REALLY cold for months on end will have to be abandoned unless it can be super insulated, unless the inhabitants are willing to live at just above or even below freezing temperatures. This is not as big a deal as most people might think, except for bathing, which is a bitch when it’s that cold. I’ve camped in a house without heat or water for a month in well below freezing temperatures, and found it far more agreeable than living in a tent while chasing Bambi and other innocent creatures with the intention of murdering and eating them. You get used to it fast.
It’s possible that most future residential construction in cold climates will be in the form of compact multi unit apartment buildings. Such a building going up several floors can have a good number of apartments in it with only one exposed outer wall in each unit, or if further expanded, lots of units with no outside walls at all. Sunlight can be brought in using special duct work made for that specific purpose, and an electronic living room wall consisting of one giant HD tv screen could display virtual real outside world scenery well enough to satisfy most people.I’m sure I would like such a wall BETTER than the real view at any of a dozen university dormitories, apartments or houses in urban areas where I have lived at one time or another.
Energy for space heating could be cut to near nothing this way, and in northern climes, nothing more than ventilation fans will be needed for summer cooling.
Adaptation is possible, and new or adapted technology can make it happen for at least some of us…….. if we are quick enough to take advantage of whatever time we have left before the shit hits the fan.
Plenty available though still a bit pricey, with increased use the price will come down and I think a good search will find cheaper than these.
https://www.insulationsuperstore.co.uk/product/aerogel-gt-insulation-board-1142mm-x-700mm-x-10mm-pack-of-3.html
http://www.buyaerogel.com/
https://www.phstore.co.uk/spacetherm
NAOM
An interesting analysis of the potential of solar to transform the global energy system, published in Science Magazine:
Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Transform global energy
This is very much in line with what Tony Seba has been saying since 2014 when his book “Clean Disruption” was published. Essentially what it boils down to is that,o renewable energy is likely to continue to reduce the price of electricity t the point where FF based forms of generating electricity will have no hope of competing, since they will be seen as ridiculously expensive in comparison.
In the meantime…
would someone explain why my electricity bills are going up by double digits each year, as coal is phased out and wind and solar are brought in, backed up by natural gas generation on those still winters’ evenings.
Well, post copies of your bills, and we might be able to give you an idea.
The cost of power across the country is NOT going up by double digits.
Not exactly what you asked for, but here is a 2015 graph of Europe electricity prices by country and installed solar and wind. The more intermittent renewables, the higher the price.
Britain has being playing catch-up, with rapidly rising prices resulting. I shop around and am on a cheapish deal of £0.15/kWh, up from about £0.135/kWh in 2018.
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/europeelectricprice.png
from this article:
http://euanmearns.com/green-mythology-and-the-high-price-of-european-electricity/
High capital cost per GW of installed capacity compared with gas [7]
Fake: renewables don’t need a constant supply of gas to operate. The correct comparison would be total cost of install and fueling.
High maintenance costs of equipment
Fake: Look up how often gas turbines need rebuilding and what it costs. Do you even need to do that with solar panels?
Low load factors
Depends on type/location
High cost of subsidies
Fake: Many major projects are going ahead without subsidies. FF is massively subsidised.
High cost of maintaining 100% back up
Fake: Backup has to be provided on all grids or you get brown outs and cuts as you do in countries that have not invested.
High cost of load balancing
Fake: Just move loads to higher availability times and enjoy cheaper power.
High cost of grid up-grades
Fake: 1/ Grids need upgrading now just to cover lack of investment that was cut to increase profit. 2/ Distributed power can take load off grids.
High cost of storage
Fake: Storage can pay for itself by load smoothing on existing grids and storing cheap or free power for use later.
NAOM
Well, post copies of your bills, and we might be able to give you an idea.
He came back with this?!
Not exactly what you asked for, but here is a 2015 graph of Europe electricity prices by country and installed solar and wind. The more intermittent renewables, the higher the price.
ROFLMAO!!
Electricity is on the average cheaper or only little more expensive in places with lots of sun and wind power on the grid than otherwise. Look it up state by state.
And as time passes, the places with lots of wind and solar power are going to get to be cheaper, in relative terms, as the years go by. Wind and sun are free, but coal and natural gas are depleting fossil fuels and the price of them, on average, will be going up over any extended period of time.
New stuff has to be paid for, and payment is arranged by charging the customer more. Old coal fired plants built fifty years ago were paid for at least twenty years ago, probably even longer.
Rates would be going up MORE if we were replacing them with new coal plants.
And more people would be sick from breathing the fumes emitted by such plants.
Electricity is going up just about everywhere, to some extent, because the cost of operation is going up, a little at a time.Poles cost more transmission cable costs more, trucks and diesel fuel cost more, wages cost more, insurance costs more, taxes are higher….. especially taxes and fees levied on the end customer.
https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
two options
1/ you are living in a monopoly state where there is no competition
2/ your electric utility is screwing you to get ever higher profits.
You could install your own solar and reap the benefit for yourself.
NAOM
The question as to why UK electricity bills are going up made me turn to Google and do a couple of searches. This in turn led me to look at the history of the electricity industry in the UK. The most thorough account of the recent history of the UK electricity industry I found was the following PDF.
UK Energy Policy 1980-2010
A history and lessons to be learnt
According to this web page the electricity industry was nationalised in the UK in 1947 so the report linked to above starts covering the industry immediately after the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the modern conservative movement in the UK.
This leads me to believe that this will be a politically charged discussion with those leaning to the right of the political center blaming subsidies on renewable energy and lack of adequate free market mechanisms to foster competition and drive prices down. Those to the left of the political center will blame corporate greed encouraged by inadequate regulation of the markets and so on.
There is a similar dynamic at play in Australia where the electricity industry was privatized and market mechanisms put in place to ostensibly lead to lower costs and a more efficient electricity industry. Again the debate is highly polarized with renewable advocates blaming the greed and gaming of the market by the private electricity industry and backers of the private electricity generators blaming renewables. I follow the website reneweconomy.com.au so I see the situation from the point of view of renewable energy advocates in Australia on a regular basis.
One thing seems sure, the decision of the UK government to back the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear facility by EDF is not likely to help at all. It is projected that if or when the project is completed, it will be supplying some of the most expensive electricity to the market and the UK consumers will be expected to buy it. If they do not, guess who is likely to end up paying for it. If you guessed Uk taxpayers, you are probably correct.
Below are some links to articles that might shed some more light on the subject:
Why Are The British Paying So Much For Energy? (oilprice.com Nov 02, 2017)
Why are energy bills rising and what can consumers do about it? (The Independent August 07, 2018)
Five reasons why energy bills are so high – and still rising (The Guardian Apr 14, 2014)
Why UK energy firms are upping prices while govt fights to keep them down (Reuters August 10, 2018 )
It is a widespread phenomenon. In Spain electricity bills have been climbing relentlessly for years. It doesn’t help that the price of the rights to emit CO2 has more than trebled from 8€/ton to 25€/ton in 2018. In essence that is a tax on air levied on taxpayers. Money for nothing in another money transfer scheme that hurts consumers and makes some people and organizations filthy rich.
It doesn’t help that the price of the rights to emit CO2 has more than trebled from 8€/ton to 25€/ton in 2018. In essence that is a tax on air levied on taxpayers.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! LOL! the argument used to be that CO2, an atmospheric trace gas, was good for plants. Now it has become AIR?!
Money for nothing in another money transfer scheme that hurts consumers and makes some people and organizations filthy rich.
You mean like the FF businesses?
The International Monetary Fund periodically assesses global subsidies for fossil fuels as part of its work on climate, and it found in a recent working paper that the fossil fuel industry got a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies in 2017. This amounts to 6.4 percent of the global gross domestic product.
Here’s what renewables got in 2016
Worldwide subsidies for renewable energy in power generation amounted to $140 billion in 2016
Hmm $5 trillion vs $140 billion?!
On the other hand, you might want to Google ‘David vs Goliath’!
Methinks you are backing the wrong side and you will lose…
Cheers!
Fred
FF get more subsidies because they supply the lions share of energy to the global economy. If the opposite was true, renewables would be getting more subsidies. Anyhow this is not a good metric of measure. The better metric is subsidy/energy output. FF subsidies are orders of magnitude lower compared to renewables with this metric.
Here is a nice interactive link to illustrate my point:
http://data.instituteforenergyresearch.org/energy-subsidies-vs-btu-output/
I’m more interested in the true full cost accounting costs to society as a whole.
The fact that the world gets about 80% of its energy from fossil fuels is not, in my view a good thing… and it should not be subsidized at all!
Here is just one example of a cost to society and there are many hundreds more that I could list, some much worse than this example!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800116/
Pollution from Fossil-Fuel Combustion is the Leading Environmental Threat to Global Pediatric Health and Equity: Solutions Exist
Abstract
Fossil-fuel combustion by-products are the world’s most significant threat to children’s health and future and are major contributors to global inequality and environmental injustice. The emissions include a myriad of toxic air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the most important human-produced climate-altering greenhouse gas. Synergies between air pollution and climate change can magnify the harm to children. Impacts include impairment of cognitive and behavioral development, respiratory illness, and other chronic diseases—all of which may be “seeded“ in utero and affect health and functioning immediately and over the life course. By impairing children’s health, ability to learn, and potential to contribute to society, pollution and climate change cause children to become less resilient and the communities they live in to become less equitable.
Fred
If there was no subsidies then the global economy will grind to a halt in my opinion and governments know this. Subsidies hide the true cost of energy. I guess it is a reminder we are living beyond our means maybe.
As for it’s impact on the climate, in my neck of the woods people vote in governments who don’t give a shit. Which means here in Australia, majority of people don’t give a shit about climate change. Their main concern is inflated house prices, and ways to keep it over-inflated! Lol sad world.
“The better metric is subsidy/energy output. FF subsidies are orders of magnitude lower compared to renewables with this metric.””
Agreed, if the metric is modified by both the efficiency of the system (net useful energy produced) and by factors of human health damage and biosphere health damage.
I believe in it is using net useful energy. Human health and biosphere impacts would make it impossible to calculate due to the complexity.
I like to remind people, renewables are NOT devoid of pollution. Look at cobalt, nickel, lithium and rare earth mining, exploitation, child labour, habitat and environmental destruction are all part of the renewable system.
As nature often reminds us, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
“make it impossible to calculate due to the complexity”
We can do complicated. Without the “externalities” included the values would just be another delusional economist number with no real value and no actual connection to reality.
Follow the energy/material/pollution stream all the way back to the mines and to suppliers.
If you are thinking of rare earth’s in wind turbines, only two percent of turbines in operation use rare earth metals.
Silicon PV uses no rare metals or cobalt or lithium, nickel. As far as batteries go, Panasonic and Tesla have reduced cobalt use by 60 percent and are working on eliminating cobalt. 11 manufacturers make lithium batteries with no cobalt.
As I have said of China in the past and this can be said about the Congo cobalt mines: This is a societal and government problem, not a resource problem.
Mike, just a heads up to be extremely wary of anything coming out of the IER. They are a Charles Koch funded outfit, set up for the express purpose of spreading misinformation in favor of FF and unflattering of renewables. Take for example their chosen metric of subsidies vs btu output. Typically more than half of the btu output of FF is wasted during the production of electricity so maybe that’s why they didn’t chose subsidies vs kWh of electricity which is what really matters.
An exchange that started back October 2015, when I did a little digging into the IER, can be found at the following link:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/bakken-production-down-plus-iea-predictions/#comment-542947
It appears they are refining their tactics and engaging in more skillful cherry picking.
True, the source does get funding from the FF industry. But I’ve seen a similar Australian report not long ago. Maybe the source of that is questionable too.
I’d assume the efficiency of around 30-35% is used for coal power plants to give you the subsidy/useful energy.
Efficiency of solar would be inclusive of the 30% efficiency also. Otherwise the calculation is useless.
So again i am quite confident they are only using useful energy, not total energy density of the source in question.
Whether the units is BTU or kWh is irrelevant since they are interchangeable units of energy.
Yabut, have you tried burning the same piece of coal every day? The same solar panel will keep churning out electrons for 30 years, try that with a lump of coal. That makes those comparisons go buggerup.
NAOM
“Efficiency of solar would be inclusive of the 30% efficiency also.”
Are you comparing the efficiency of a solar cell that inputs free sunshine with a conversions system that destroys the energy source and generates greenhouse gases and piles of ash while concentrating stuff like Mercury in the environment?
Iron Mike,
Keep in mind that most of the energy from fossil fuel produces waste heat, typically about 62% of the energy in fossil fuel is wasted. So if you account for this fact, how do fossil fuels do? Also note that the institute for energy research sound quite authoritative, but is simply a shill for fossil fuel interests.
My guess is that they do not include the externalities from fossil fuel pollution nor the lack of taxes paid in some nations by fossil fuels to maintain roads and bridges due to fuel taxes that are too low.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-07/imf-true-cost-fossil-fuels-53-trillion-year
Dennis,
As i explained in the other comments, I think they are calculated via net useful energy. Otherwise the calculation would make no sense, again I might be wrong in my assumptions.
Renewable externalities aren’t included as well I assume.
Dennis that $5.3 trillion dollar cost keeps the ~$81 trillion global economy humming.
Javier’s comment above is exhibit A as proof of what I said about the polarized nature of this debate. The situation in Spain is far more complex than the simple, misleading explanation above would lead you to believe, as revealed in the articles that can be found using an internet search. The explanation above completely ignores the fact that fuel prices play a part in the increased cost of electricity and fuel prices have in fact been rising.Links to some relative articles can be found below:
The shocking price of Spanish electricity
2018 ended as the second most expensive year of the Spanish electricity market history
Why Spain has the most expensive electricity bill in Europe | Part 1
As I wrote earlier, the explanations given will depend on the political viewpoint of the writer and given the huge financial interests that are at stake for the FF industries, I am inclined not to trust viewpoints that support their interests on the the basis that it is quite likely that these viewpoints may well be “sponsored”. It would be interesting to see some evidence for the claim that it is all ” another money transfer scheme that hurts consumers and makes some people and organizations filthy rich” based on some profit and loss statements for all the players involved.
If in fact the FF players are incurring huge losses while renewable energy players make off like bandits, I would be quite surprised based on reports out of Spain about renewable energy players struggling with the FIT cuts that were instituted by the previous administration (2011-2018). Despite the cuts in FITs electricity prices have still gone up in Spain.
It seems we are back to playing whack a mole with Javier and his comments!
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. One can respond to the trolls, the blockers, arguers and deniers or one can ignore them. They will not go away, though we can.
As far as solar energy is concerned the world has built only one part of a system, the energy gatherer. The rest of the system, the energy storage and distribution system is not built.
It would be like building a water supply system with no valves and no reservoirs. It rains, the water runs through and then it is done until it rains again. Stupid, not a system to fit real needs.
It took many millions of years for the energy of the sun to be stored in fossil fuels. Now we can store energy in real time from sun and wind, but within limits. The source of energy is much vaster and more evenly distributed but the storage and distribution is somewhat limited and thus we cannot act as we want at all times but must move and act within those limits.
Fossil fuels have limits too, and vast harmful downsides.
And what will we have once the whole solar/wind/storage/distribution system is built? A slightly different way of living and making things, but pretty much the same. The big difference is that we will not be changing the atmosphere and oceans as much. We will not be polluting as much or destroying the landscape as much. Nor will we be dependent upon a finite source of energy that will leave us energy bankrupt in a relatively short time, with a wrecked ecology.
PV, wind turbines, passive solar, increased insulation etc. will not solve global heating and climate chaos. They can however help slow down the rate of increase which might be very significant over the long run. It might, with some other changes in societies, be enough to avoid a mass extinction event and just get an extinction event.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. One can respond to the trolls, the blockers, arguers and deniers or one can ignore them. They will not go away, though we can.
True! Time to hit the ignore button.
Tks for the reminder.
Cheers!
737 solution:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images8/737rollercoaster.jpg
Insanity In A Green Suit
Unsure that’s a textbook definition, but it is likely one symptom.
In any case, what is leveraging a crony-capitalist plutarchy for greenwashed ends but a bit of an example of said symptom– repeating the same thing over and over, wearing a green suit, while expecting a different result.
Praise of renewable energy is always accepted unquestioned here, but bring some skepticism or criticism and you are a troll. Another mark of a creed that doesn’t touch reality.
The price of electricity in Spain is a multifactorial problem. However everybody agrees that the rise in the rights of CO2 emissions that trebled in 2018 was one of the main factors for the increase that year. Many believe the main one. The problem is that we don’t buy anything with that money and it is mostly a tax on consumers with the money going mostly abroad to international investors, companies and organizations that trade on those rights.
@Javier, you seem to have added another item to your list of things you do not understand or are being paid to not understand – whatever. Let me explain.
Tax is paid to the government not to investors. I respectfully suggest you should take up that issue with your government to see that those taxes go to the benefit of the people.
NAOM
Punch-Drunk Pseudotech
Many people understand the limitations of so-called renewable energy, and that it is in fact not really renewable, while others seem oblivious, often willingly so, to that and susceptible to a certain kind of thinking that might be akin to a certain level of punch-drunkenness, so beaten into them has been the current technograndiosity and/or technonarcissism that characterizes the many facets of the current status-quo that is not going to go away willingly or quietly. (‘It’s what they know’.) Many of these very people will help see to that. They drunkenly rationalize it as evidenced through comments along the lines of, ‘Look how bad Earth is getting– the climate and all those species, etc.. See these graphs? How sad!’ and ‘ ‘If it’s going to be burned/destroyed/despoiled/etc. anyway, then we might as well go along with it and try to do so supposedly less so (with this and the other tech by this and that corporation of course).’
They want their EV’s, PV’s, batteries and ‘civilizational conveniences’, etc. and the dystopic system that underpins them and they’re going to get them, damn it, come hell or high water, or both. And like many a drunk, many are obstinate and belligerent about it.
I seldom post a joke, but once in a while…… Courtesy of https://chaser.com.au/world/mike-pence-horrified-to-discover-unisex-toilet-in-own-house/
Vice President and conservative campaigner Mike Pence has today used the power vested to him as Vice President of the United States to issue a proclamation that nobody in his house is allowed to use the unisex toilet adjoining the spare bedroom. Calling the Caroma Uniset liberal propaganda, Mr Pence warned that anyone caught within five metres of the guest room en-suite would be damned to the fires of an eternal hell.
“It’s just not natural” Pence explained to his wife as she urgently hopped back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I’m afraid from now on you’re just going to have to use the women’s bathroom at the park down the road, or hold it in until we visit the mall on Sundays.”
Pence however was quick to clarify that his stance was in no way related to bigotry against women nor was it linked to his deep-seated hatred of trans people. “I’m simply following the teachings of the Bible, and helping others see exactly how Jesus felt about the designation of public bathrooms at schools and local shopping malls,” said Pence. “When God created Adam and Eve he did so with the explicit instruction that they not use the same porcelain lavatories to dispose of their bodily waste. The supreme being is very concerned with these things you know. That’s why he never gets around to solving the whole starving children thing.”
Maybe somebody will get a laugh out of this one. From Quora
“If Republicans promise to stop telling lies about Democrats, we will promise not to tell the truth about Republicans.” —Adlai E. Stevenson
Here is another:
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him:
“Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are — or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”
Good ones OFM.
@Fred
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-48389920/this-invention-from-the-1930s-is-cutting-period-poverty
NAOM
It’s funny you should post that. About 5 years ago I consulted for a Brazilian company that was interested in manufacturing that product and had planned on exporting to the US. For me it turned out to be quite the education in the behind the scenes workings of the FDA regulations and Amazon marketing… Back then it turned out it was much cheaper to produce in China. Ironically because of high Brazilian import tariffs… Though I also had a hunch the Chinese were manipulating the test results on their medical grade silicone.
New Zealand battery module adds 45% range to Nissan Leaf
I more or less predicted this in a recent discussion. If an old EV battery is being replaced, why would the replacement not include newer, more energy dense technology? Who is going to continue to manufacture battery packs or modules as replacements for old ones, based on ten year old technology when the new technology is better on almost every metric and less expensive to boot?
IIRC in a comment as part of the earlier discussion, I asked something to the effect of, how likely is it that owners of early EVs (Nissan Leafs) are going to be able to secure identical replacements for their failing ten year old batteries in the next decade?
Are they available in the US?
I doubt it but, if some guys in New Zealand can do this, how long will it be before people like Jack Rickard or the guys over at EVWest or somebody we have yet to hear of, comes up with something similar?
BTW, did you ever check on that Japanese to English conversion tool I posted about a couple months ago when you mentioned that the instrument cluster on the Nissan van you were interested in getting was all in Japanese?
Yup I did but, I also looked back at another outfit that I had an email exchange with back in March last year and while they didn’t have a solution for the e-NV200 ready, it seems they now have a tool that can convert both the Leaf and the NV200. See:
http://evsenhanced.com/services/instrument-cluster-language-conversion/
I’m pretty confident that a whole industry geared towards upgrading old EVs to work with newer cell technology is going to emerge. I am pretty sure the charging rates are all controlled in software which would make it a matter of updating the charging software to be compatible with unfamiliar cell chemistries.
Germany renewable energy share jumps to record 47% for first five months of year
Apparently, at least according to Javier, this doesn’t matter so you can all breath easy. Regardless, it’s an interesting bit of trivia.
EARTH’S CO2 LEVEL SLIPS PAST ANOTHER MILESTONE
“The new reading of 415.26 parts per million (ppm) on May 11 was the first daily baseline at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory to eclipse 415 ppm. The increase from last year will probably be around three parts per million whereas the recent average has been 2.5 ppm.” Keeling said.
https://www.axios.com/carbon-dioxide-concentration-earth-all-time-high-2c5073f2-a4fb-445c-9613-8998dc8f58cb.html
As homo sapiens we have never lived with Co2 levels this high.
We will see how long we will survive.
https://truthout.org/articles/co2-levels-hit-415-parts-per-million-for-first-time-in-over-3-million-years/
Writing on his Informed Comment blog Monday, historian Juan Cole said that life on Earth in that pre-historic era, known as the Pliocene Period, is not a place humans would recognize:
In the Pliocene, it was much hotter.
In the Pliocene, oceans were much higher, maybe 90 feet higher.
That is our fate, folks. That is what 415ppm produces. It is only a matter of time, and some of the sea level rise will come quickly.
Amsterdam, New Orleans, Lisbon, Miami – the list of cities that will be submerged is enormous.
Gee that’s only 27.3 m of sea water. No worries! BTW, I’m about 1.0 m. above sea level where I live…
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial
In a nutshell!
Too Large to Believe
Among the myriad reasons that we shun this problem is its enormity. We aren’t “merely” being told that unless we take action our identities will be stolen, we will lose thousands of dollars, or even that it will take a few years off our lives. What the climate scientists are telling us is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the human race faces extinction.
We can grasp a potential calamity if we know it is made up and will be okay in an hour and a half. But we resist when that calamity is real, will be spread out over decades, and is of catastrophic proportions that can only be averted if we change almost everything about the way we live. Stop driving your car, eating meat, and flying in planes, we are told. Shut down ExxonMobil, Shell, and British Petroleum. Move quickly to build solar fields and energy-producing windmills. Simply writing that list makes us totally exhausted. What we are being asked to do will take gargantuan efforts and face vicious opposition. “Solving climate is going to be harder, and more improbable, than winning World War II, achieving civil rights, defeating bacterial infection and sending a man to the moon all together,” warn Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones. It is very difficult to accept as real a problem that requires this magnitude of solution.
That’s a pretty good article. But…they put too much emphasis on denial (probably because that’s their career – they’ve written a book about denial), and not enough on the power of propaganda.
It’s propaganda that has made people afraid of big government projects, or excess government taxation. It’s propaganda that has poisoned the ground for accurate information about climate change. People aren’t virgin receptacles for new information, and that’s why providing information about climate change doesn’t work very well: people have been thoroughly propagandized to believe otherwise.
“What the climate scientists are telling us is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the human race faces extinction. ”
Balderdash and bullshit, TUT, TUT, them there pinko commie living on grant money welfare treehugger sinetis’s orter not go round telling sich lies and xageratin the way they do , thas why nobody wif good sins pays tention to ’em.
Five or ten million of us are going to survive, easy. Maybe even a HUNDRED MILLION !
Dang I need a bit more that that to make this a seafront property.
NAOM
So how do y’all propose to stop a natural process? If Obama couldn’t keep a promise to stop sea rise after spending 60 Trillion $ in his tenure there’s not much anyone else can do anyhow.
Blessed cat-
I count three statements that you made.
Each was about 1000 miles off course from real.
Have a nice time out there.
Yep – it’s repetition of propaganda talking points.
These are new ones to me. They’re so unrealistic that they’re funny. For instance, $60T. That’s four times the US annual GDP!
Yeh. And he promised to stop the sea rise….
King Canute!
I thought Al Gore was the one who invented sea level rise? He’s probably who you speak to.
Not bad for a cult belief. The end is nigh.
Except it won’t happen, of course. Those that believe in the catastrophic effects of increasing CO2 levels will turn out to be wrong as always, and the second coming will be postponed once more. Apocalyptic cults are really old news.
Wasn’t it 350.org? shouldn’t it be 450.org now? Or perhaps 550.org so we don’t have to change its name so often. Meanwhile most folks haven’t noticed much change in the climate. Total disconnect between what we are told and what we see is one of the telltales that we are being taken.
Hi Javier, where’ve you been, why’d you return and how long do you plan on staying?
Also, what if you’re wrong. Then what? Should we be making plans just in case you’re totally off, assuming you aren’t already?
Lastly, have you heard any word of or from Judith Curry? If so, what might she be up to?
Javier is a typical contrarian. He has all sorts of contrarian theories to explain huge temperature swings with similar CO2 changes during ice ages but now that we have similar CO2 swings today, apparently that is all meaningless. It doesn’t have to make sense, but as with Trump, the contrarian view adds to the FUD level.
What do you think of ‘contrarian’ as some kind of potential psychological aberration or a symptom of it?
Perhaps it’s time for another recap of Javier’s numerous prediction FAILS.
All we need to remember about Xavier is that he does not believe in the precautionary principle, even though according to Dennis he does have genuine qualifications.
And although I say this about his SCIENCE, I also say that as far as POLITICS is concerned, he has a damned good grasp of what’s been going on with commie type governments, and continues to go on. I have spent literally thousands of hours over the last fifty years or so reading modern history, history being one of my favorite evening past times.
Even the smartest of us tend to refuse to face up to facts if the facts don’t jibe with our preconceived political convictions. I will never ceased to be amazed at the number of hard core liberals who still believe the IRON CURTAIN was to keep capitalism and people OUT, rather than to keep PEOPLE and communism IN.
“The ‘precautionary principle’, properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle.”
because the application of the precautionary principle might be harmful on itself and block innovation, and because it is vague enough that the risk doesn’t need to be plausible to be invoked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Criticisms
Caelan, I did not leave. I was told literally:
“Comments no longer accepted.”
So no tolerance for people that have different ideas. Too bad as climate hysteria needs some sanity. No plans therefore. I think the blog benefits from having somebody who thinks differently.
Plenty of time. Global warming is a really old story. It started around 1750 and really kicked after 1850. CO2 is a late comer increasing strongly after 1950. The last phase of the global warming scare started in the 1980s, so it is ~ 40 years old. In that time the changes have been modest. A few centimeters of sea level rise and a few tenths of a degree warming.
See the Rhône glacier decreasing hugely between 1850 and 1900, when CO2 barely changed.
https://i.imgur.com/fa9yhHJ.png
Global warming has a strong natural component.
Judith Curry is doing very well. She has her own company of climate and weather forecast. She is very much into hurricanes and ENSO forecasting and publishing her blog. Latest article yesterday:
https://judithcurry.com/2019/06/04/2019-atlantic-hurricane-forecast/
Climate Denial: A Measured Response
https://youtu.be/RLqXkYrdmjY
But then how are you commenting now? What happened?
Which means what? What time-frame?
I am not sure and don’t want to ask.
Climate science is very young and a lot is not well known. With all the money poured a lot has been learned in the past 20 years. One problem is that to keep the money coming they need to keep the level of alarm high, as the military. But considering that in 20 years the warming has been very small and mostly due to a transient strong El Niño (we are like +0.1°C warmer than in 2002),
https://i.imgur.com/PDHDfzG.png
and that sea level has increased like 7 cm since 2000
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
It is clear that the emergency is no such. In 2-3 decades we should have a better idea of what to expect and if there is really a worrisome acceleration in climate change or not. So far no acceleration is being detected. The worst predictions of the 1980s and 1990s have turned out to be false. It looks like the current worst predictions will also be wrong.
As you know I am a lot more concerned with Peak Oil. If it takes place it is clear all those calculations about all that CO2 are also going to be wrong. We will start burning less fossil fuels, not more. And if the climate hasn’t changed that much in the 70 years we have been increasing CO2 levels it should change less if we don’t increase them.
The climate has changed, on average, world wide, quite a lot over the last seventy years.
And anybody who really knows shit from apple butter about climate knows that the oceans contain so much water that the buffering effect is enormous, and that therefore there’s going to be a substantial ( in human terms ) time lag as the top few hundred feet of water warms up enough to change the ways the winds blow and the amount of water that evaporates and is transported, etc etc.
The fact that cruise ships are now routinely operating in places that a only a little over a hundred years ago were even SEEN by the roughest and toughest hairy chested men willing to die, and a hell of a lot of them DID DIE, for the privilege of seeing these places, means NOTHING to somebody like Javier.
The early stages of the time lag are behind us already, and it’s very likely that the process of climate change is going to accelerate from here on out.
Quite a lot is a subjective appreciation. We are still in the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, one of the coldest periods of the planet, during an interglacial that is already long in the tooth and was warmer and had higher sea levels a few thousand years ago. The climate is always changing. We know of the Medieval Warm Period, when Greenland was colonized by Norsemen, and of the Little Ice Age when Greenland became inhabitable to them. Climate is always changing either by warming or by cooling. To expect that climate should remain stable is to not understand climate. To think that we are sole responsible for recent climate change is to neglect the known role of natural climate change factors that have been acting for billions of years producing more drastic changes than now. Those factors are still acting and might be responsible for a great deal of what we are observing.
Seems prudent to throw an additional forcing into an unstable system.
We don’t do it because we are stupid. Fossil fuels have allowed a civilization advance that has increased life expectancy by more than 30 years and a quality of life for billions of people that emperors of the past could not dream. CO2 is a byproduct and it is not clear that it can be eliminated without harming many millions of people. That’s why after so many years we have not been able to reduce our CO2 production. Just the opposite, it keeps growing faster.
The first principle in medicine is that the cure should not be worse than the disease. The hyppocratic “do not harm.” We better be damn sure that we don’t make matters worse. The diesel debacle in Europe is a recent example on causing harm to the population while pretending to do the opposite.
Can Javier please be banned again? He does nothing but spread lying, dishonest fossil fuel propaganda. He adds absolutely nothing to this website, and he’s basically committing evil acts by spreading the propaganda.
As you know I am a lot more concerned with Peak Oil.
Why?! Peak Oil?! What Peak Oil?!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2019/03/20/the-curious-incident-of-the-oil-supply-that-didnt-decline/#42a01f161eae
The Curious Incident Of The Oil Supply That Didn’t Decline
Interestingly, there are still peak oil advocates who think that we’ve reached peak oil now, despite the fact that shale oil production is still growing, OPEC+ has about 1.5 mb/d of production shut-in due to weak prices, while Venezuela, Libya, Iran and Nigeria are all experiencing difficulties that have closed down temporarily 3 mb/d or more, much of which is likely to return to market in the next few years.
Still Ron Patterson asks, “Was 2018 the peak for crude oil production?” and Gail Tverberg says, “Given the nearly worldwide problem of falling affordability of goods by non-elite workers, we should not be surprised if the peaks in oil production in October and November 2018 ultimately prove to be the maximum production ever recorded.” The former is merely looking at recent production trends, the latter believes that consumers can’t afford the prices producers need to invest in new capacity. Neither argument impresses me.
So it looks like The worst predictions about Peak Oil have turned out to be false. It looks like the current worst predictions will also be wrong…/sarc
In both cases I have done the same: analyze the data.
a) Oil. It is obvious that the massive exploitation of shale oil represents a clear indication that we are approaching Peak Oil. We wouldn’t need to do it if the cheap stuff was still plentiful. That nearly all the growth in oil has come from the expensive stuff demonstrates it.
b) CO2. Analysis of the climate history shows climate changing irrespective of CO2 levels. The Early Twentieth Century Warming was similar to the Late Twentieth Century Warming while having very different CO2 levels. It is obvious that the climate does not respond to CO2 levels as much as it is believed.
In both cases what people are being told is not what the evidence shows. But we shouldn’t be surprised that people are lied to, should we?
As far as I can tell from this pile of BS, Javier has never analyzed data honestly in his life.
For those who don’t know, he is flat out lying about the facts.
You are just an ignorant with a closed mind. You are the one rejecting any evidence that doesn’t fit the view you have adopted.
“Climate science is very young and a lot is not well known.”
Climate Science: It’s a Lot Older Than You Think
KATHARINE HAYHOE,
One of the biggest myths about climate science – a myth that has been deliberately fostered, for decades — is that we just don’t know that much, yet.
The field is still in its infancy, people argue, and a lot more is needed before coming to consensus. After all, aren’t scientists always changing their minds? Just a few decades ago, they were predicting an ice age, not global warming!…
…The field of climate science stretches back almost 200 years. That’s right: scientists have been studying our planet for that long.
=
The article goes on to say that Rat’s campaign to repeal and replace Tyndall with an American woman is a partial success Tyndall is still mentioned, but second…
Eunice Foote was an amateur scientist with a lively interest in many topics, from campaigning for women’s rights to filing patents for boot soles. In 1856, she wrote a paper for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reporting on her measurements of the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide. She even speculated that if, “at one period of [earth’s] history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion [of CO2] than at present, an increased temperature from its own action must necessarily have resulted” – in other words, if there were more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, then it would trap more heat, and the earth would be warmer.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/katharine-hayhoe/climate-science-its-a-lot-older-than-you-think
She knows very little and thinks that having a few precursors makes your science old and respectable. Well it is not.
Madden-Julian Oscillation. Discovered in 1971
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden%E2%80%93Julian_oscillation
The Quasi-biennial oscillation driven by gravity waves. Discovered in the 1970s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-biennial_oscillation
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Discovered in 1994
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
The Brewer-Dobson circulation. Discovered in the 1950s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer%E2%80%93Dobson_circulation
CO2 reliably measured by keeling since 1958.
Prior to satellites and big computers the knowledge of climate was woefully inadequate, and climate science was a small subfield. Nothing to do with the classical sciences of physics, geology or biology with a tradition of hundreds of years. Glaciations, discovered in 1837, were not satisfactorily explained until 1976. When I studied the consensus was that there had been only four glaciations: Würm, Mindel, Riss, and Günz.
Javier. Its time to say it. Enough wasting mental energy engaging with you.
You speak as if you are a paid mis-informant, or simply an idiot.
Ignore.
Shitposting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting
What milestone?
CO2 levels grow almost every year as they keep increasing in an accelerating way, so there is a new record almost every year. There are no milestones, though. 420, 425… are just numbers like 419, 423…, and they will all be reached over the next decade quite surely. If we don’t it would probably mean that the global economy has entered a deep recession.
ROFL! You’ve really jumped the shark this time, Javi!
.
I’m unsure what to make of that doctor.
Add another item that Javier does not understand to his list.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/milestone
NAOM
I’m guessing Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón and Javier probably do not see eye to eye!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xOZDjTW8bI
Why earth destruction is a crime – VPRO documentary
Damaging the earth is a crime, right? That is what earth´s lawyer Polly Higgins thinks. Why earth destruction should be seen as a crime and what is it that brings earth lawyers Polly Higgins and Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón to fight for ecocide? A documentary about earth guardians, a new view on earth destruction and the will to make people accountable for ruining our eco-system.
Our world knows four international crimes: war crimes, genocide, torture and crimes against humanity. Spanish examining magistrate Baltasar Garzón and Scottish lawyer Polly Higgins believe that this list of serious violations of international law should be expanded with a fifth: ecocide. Will Higgins and Garzón eventually succeed in gaining enough support to get recognition for ecocide? As a concept, ecocide refers to both naturally occurring processes of environmental or ecosystem decline and destruction of the environment that is caused by human activity.
I agree 100% with this concept.!
Baltasar Garzón is no longer a judge. He was evicted from the judicial career by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2012 for corruption of the justice, the worst judicial offense.
“evicted from the judicial career”
No, disbarred for 11 years. Not the same thing.
NAOM
No. He was disbarred for 11 years AND evicted from the judicial career. Barring a government pardon he will no longer be a judge in Spain ever.
El Poder Judicial ratifica la expulsión de Garzón como juez
…
el acuerdo de la Permanente ya ha sido ratificado y a todos los efectos Baltasar Garzón ha sido expulsado de la carrera judicial
[The Judicial Power ratifies the expulsion of Garzón as judge
…
the agreement of the Permanent has already been ratified and for all purposes Baltasar Garzón has been expelled from the judicial career]
https://elpais.com/politica/2012/02/23/actualidad/1330003133_031058.html
A convicted felon shouldn’t go around giving lessons.
Gracias. That makes it clearer, I stand corrected.
NAOM
Yeah, he got on the wrong side of the right wing pro Franco supporters! Your people!
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Baltasar-Garzon
Meanwhile, Garzón continued to work on various domestic cases. He played an important role in Spain’s crackdown on ETA, and in 2008 he opened an investigation into the disappearance of more than 100,000 people during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the subsequent Francisco Franco regime. However, he was soon charged with breaching a 1977 amnesty law that had pardoned all perpetrators of politically motivated crimes during the Franco era.
Although Garzón stepped down from the case, he was suspended from his position with the National Court in 2010, and he later appeared before the Spanish Supreme Court. In addition to the alleged violation of the 1977 amnesty law, he faced charges involving other cases, and in 2012 he was convicted for ordering the illegal wiretapping of conversations between defense attorneys and their clients; Garzón claimed that he had been attempting to prove that the lawyers were involved in money laundering. The court disbarred him for 11 years.
There can never be amnesty for scumbags that committed crimes against humanity! Especially anyone having anything to do with the Franco regime!
U.N. tells Spain to revoke Franco-era amnesty law
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-franco-idUSBRE98T0YJ20130930
Spain has been a democracy for over 40 years and with socialist governments most of that time. Its judicial system is independent. Garzón was judged by his peers and the vote was unanimous by the seven members of the supreme court tribunal. Now you might think that the entire tribunal and most of the Spanish judicial system is corrupt, however the evidence supports that just one judge was corrupt and that is why he was condemned and expelled.
I think it is your political bias that shows, not mine, by defending a corrupt judge that was judged and condemned. Just because you like him you think his corruption should have been overlooked.
I think it is your political bias that shows, not mine, by defending a corrupt judge that was judged and condemned.
I make no apologies for being rabidly anti fascist, anti authoritarian and anti dictators of all stripes.
I like Spain and the Spanish people very much but I am also a student of history! Unfortunately those forces are undergoing a revival all over the world.
Yes, I am biased! I grew up under a military dictatorship and I despise those people with a vengeance! They killed my friends and those forces are now back in power!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/23/franco-ghost-exhumatiob-spain-elections-far-right-vox-party
Franco’s shadow: reburial battle sees Spain confront its darkest days
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/06/06/democracy-and-its-discontents/
Democracy and Its Discontents
Adam Tooze JUNE 6, 2019 ISSUE
The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
by Yascha Mounk
Harvard University Press, 393 pp.,
How Democracies Die
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Broadway, 302 pp.,
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
by Timothy Snyder
Tim Duggan Books, 359 pp.,
How Democracy Ends
by David Runciman
Basic Books, 249 pp.,
You raise strawman arguments. I’ve never defended any fascist or totalitarian regime. I like liberties as much as anybody else. The empire of the law is one of our fundamental guarantees. The law applies to everybody and nobody is exempt from it. Not even a popular (populist) judge as Garzón. You still think his felonies should have been overlooked because you like his ideology. The Spanish judicial system believes otherwise.
Garzón was a judge that instead of serving Justice wanted Justice to serve him and his ambitions. He went as far as breaking the law several times. You might like one of his misdeeds. He asked the biggest banker in Spain, Emilio Botín from Santander bank, financing for a course in New York. He got $300,000 in 2005 and 2006. Five months after returning from New York, already reincorporated to the National Court, Garzón received a suing request against Botín. He did not abstain from intervening and he rejected the request.
https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/12/16/espana/1260993454.html
It is surprising that he is so liked among the left when he was so corrupt as to take money from the richest to bend the law in their favor. I guess ideology is all that matters to many.
Javier has repeatedly defended fascist and totalitarian regimes, for those who don’t know his history — including Franco’s Spain and Battista’s Cuba.
You are a liar. My mother’s family suffered the repression of Franco’s regime because my grandfather was a known republican supporter. My father was strongly opposed to Franco and my entire family was extremely happy when Franco died and democracy was established in Spain. I’ve never opined on Batista as I couldn’t care less about what happened in Cuba before I was born. You are probably thinking of Fernando Leanme, who suffered under Castro’s dictatorship and lives in Spain.
It is clear you invent everything you say about me. I am a classical liberal in the sense of Frédéric Bastiat, defending individual rights, private property, and small government, and thus opposed to any authoritarian regime from right or left, and opposed to both socialism and neoliberalism, which is a complete corruption of the true liberalism that inspired the American Revolution.
Stop talking about me. You don’t know me.
From The Archives: Solar Panels Are Green Plants
It’s The End Of The World And I Feel Fine: Stim’s Last Stand
Energy Vault Funding Breathes Life Into Gravity Storage
Recent investments and patent filings indicate growing interest in a class of energy storage concepts that appear seductively simple but have yet to gain commercial traction.
The speculative field of gravity-based energy storage got a boost recently with news of a strategic investment and new patents.
Swiss-U.S. startup Energy Vault, one of the most high-profile gravity storage players to date, secured financial backing from Cemex Ventures, the corporate venture capital unit of the world’s second-largest building materials giant, and a pledge to help with deployment through Cemex’s ” strategic network.”
Meanwhile, the University of Nottingham and the World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies confirmed the filing of patent applications for a concept called EarthPumpStore, which uses abandoned mines as gravity storage assets.
Implementing the technology across 150,000 disused open-cast mines in China alone could deliver an estimated storage capacity of 250 terawatt-hours, the University of Nottingham said in a press note.
The announcements indicate growing interest in a class of energy storage concepts that appear seductively simple but have yet to gain widespread acceptance.
Most gravity storage concepts are based on the idea of using spare electricity to lift a heavy block, so the energy can be recovered when needed by letting the weight drop down again.
In the case of Energy Vault, the blocks are made of concrete and are lifted up by cranes 33 stories high. EarthPumpStore, meanwhile, envisages pulling containers filled with compacted earth up the sides of open-cast mines….
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/energy-vault-funding-breathes-life-into-gravity-storage#gs.gpr3hw
Thats very interesting. Similar to pumped hydro.
Seems like combining some such mechanism with a flywheel would be worth exploring.
It would take some huge blocks to store any significant quantity of energy. Check my math, I brought up an energy unit converter and for a simple conversion:
1,000,000,000 foot pounds = ~376 kwh
You would have to raise one billion pounds 1 foot (or 1 pound a billion feet) to store 376 kwh which is about half my monthly usage. Then there is friction to deal with.
Wettest 12 Months in U.S. History
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Wettest-12-Months-US-HistoryAgain?cm_ven=cat6-widget
But the US has only existed for about 250 years (sarc)
Glacier National Park removes signs from visitor center that claimed its glaciers should be gone by 2020:
“The small alpine glaciers present today started forming about 7,000 years ago and reached their maximum in size and number around 1850, at the end of the Little Ice Age. They are now rapidly shrinking due to human-caused climate change. Computer models indicate the glaciers will all be gone by 2020.”
http://lysanderspooneruniversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_0159.jpg
Not very trusty those computer models, are they? By now we were not supposed to have any Arctic sea-ice left too. It seems climapocalypse has been postponed.
It seems climapocalypse has been postponed.
Yep! And even none other than Dr. Guy McPherson actually agrees with you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njQ0llcqIYc
Guy McPherson (Short Version) – Peter Miller Interview
On the other hand we could look at a more sober analysis of risk assessment.
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a1406e0143ac4c469196d3003bc1e687.pdf
You on the other hand are like the guy who owns a cigar shop, trying to convince people that smoking is fine because there was this case of an individual with stage four lung cancer who was given six months to live and he actually lived eight and a half and that proves that medical science is completely wrong about the link between smoking and lung cancer!
Yes, Thomas Malthus also predicted that population would outgrow food production causing untold misery in 1798. Paul Ehrlich didn’t learn anything and in 1968 in “The Population Bomb,” a bestseller, predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, and forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
There is no difference between the doom predictions of the past and those of the present. They arise from data selection and an erroneous or incomplete knowledge. The correct medical analogy is misdiagnosis. The stomach ache is not due to cancer but gastritis. The painful and dangerous operation prescribed is unnecessary and the supposed cure is worse than the disease.
LOL! Ok, that’s enough amusement for now. Hope you get sent back to WUWT! Permanently this time.
Goodbye, it has been fun!
It gets tiring playing in the mental septic tank. All good ideas and conversations will get coated with mental crap.
There is only one reality, many truths, but an infinite amount of lies and misinformation.
My physicians health care models are often wrong too, when it comes to HOW LONG it takes a particular known fatal disease to kill any particular patient.
Sometimes a given victim of such a disease lasts a decade past the time he should be, according to modeling, DEAD. This does NOT prove the models are wrong.
Mother Nature operates on a time scale of her own, and to her, as my old tattered family Bible says, a thousand years is as the blink of an eye is to God, somewhere in it.
Everybody should be giving thanks to his favorite Mountain, or Bear, or Snake, or Sky Daddy or Sky Mommy for the fact that the climate hasn’t gone to hell YET, and might not, for another decade or two, maybe for another four or five decades.
If we are that lucky, it means more of us will have had time to realize what is happening, and make such plans as are possible to live thru the coming bottleneck, economic, ecological, and social.
While I’m rather liberal, personally, in terms of almost all my politics, I plan on being very well armed, and ready to fort up, when the shit hits the fan, assuming I live that long and I’m still physically capable of doing so.
It’s possible, with some luck and some friends on hand, old soldiers who have been under fire, that I might last thru the Mad Max period, assuming I can still grow beans, potatoes, corn and such on my place. I will be one of the very first people to haul in a few truckloads of non perishable foodstuffs, fertilizers, seeds, diesel fuel, etc, once there are signs indicating such things will be hard or impossible to get within weeks or months.
I can always either use or sell such stuff, maybe at a minor loss, if the shit storm doesn’t arrive on schedule. I do have my own concrete and masonry warehouse, which we used to use for farming operations, fifty feet from the kitchen door, and I ‘m not getting much use out of it anyway.
Of course there’s a possibility that UNCLE SAM will be able to maintain control of the country, more or less, by imposing martial law. But I’m out in the boonies, and there’s only one soldier or cop for each couple of hundred people in this country………
There’s zero doubt in my mind that if I had little kids of my own that I would steal and rob to feed them, if all else fails. And if the cards were to fall in such a way that I would have to murder my victim, in order to get away, I would.
And so would just about every MAN in the country. The ones who even contemplate failing to feed their own kids so long as it is physically possible for them to do so, in ANY fashion, aren’t worthy of being called men.
Women will do what’s necessary too, from selling themselves on the street to armed robbery……. if they’re REAL women, in order to feed their kids.
And if the grid is down, and gasoline is not being delivered, and the stores are empty……… those of us who survive will have done so because we have done whatever was necessary.
OT:
Kinda interesting:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/images8/francewwii.jpg
Updated version adds 2015, en anglais 😉
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/bxe58t/poll_in_france_which_country_contributed_the_most/
Thanks—
English is the universal language.
Oui, mais le français est la langue universelle de la romance 😉
Oui
Voulez-vous
Some food for thought, perhaps?
INDUSTRIAL METHANE EMISSIONS ARE 100 TIMES HIGHER THAN REPORTED
“Even though a small percentage is being leaked, the fact that methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas makes the small leaks very important. In a 20-year time frame, methane’s global warming potential is 84 times that of carbon dioxide.”
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-industrial-methane-emissions-higher.html
Yeah, I saw that article. The idea of natural gas being a bridge fuel has come completely unraveled yet it will be extracted, burned and used for decades to come. At 150X CO2 in radiative forcing after one year, and at least 180X for what exists in the atmosphere now (rising) with lifespan growing, one can only imagine the effect of long term natural releases of methane.
1.865pp CH4 X 180 = 336 ppme growth rate = 1.8 ppme/year
The idea of natural gas being a bridge fuel has come completely unraveled yet it will be extracted, burned and used for decades to come.
Ok! If we take the minimum possible amount of decades to mean say 20 years, that would put us just shy of 2040, right? If we look at the overly conservative RCP scenarios that already puts us in right smack in the middle of: ‘The We Are Totally Fucked Zone’ see attached graph below.
3.5 W/m^2 of radiative forcing should be more than enough to put us past some tipping points which would probably mean setting in motion CH4 feedbacks like these.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017RG000559
Methane Feedbacks to the Global Climate System in a Warmer World
.
The IPCC recommendation to reduce CO2 output by half in 12 years is way too little, way too late.
There will be no short lifetime for methane in the atmosphere as it is replaced by natural feedbacks. It is already almost three times higher concentration than at the beginning of the Holocene period.
CO2 will also build in level as the ocean equilibrium shifts and natural emissions increase.
The long slow process of exposed mountain rocks removing CO2 is much slower than the emission process. The albedo decrease will also be a large factor as snow and ice vanish.
Solar input to the northern and Arctic regions is now increasing due to orbital changes so that long term decrease is over for many thousands of years.
The next ten years are critical, yet I doubt if people will leave delusion land during that time.
The next ten years are critical, yet I doubt if people will leave delusion land during that time.
Probably not! 😉
.
The solution should be to ban the trade and consumption of baked beans. 😉
Six times, since 1968, short term interest rates have gone above long term rates. Every one of those six times, it signaled a coming recession. It just happened for the seventh time. Will there be a recession?
Its been a long time since recession.
I don’t like to wish for bad times for people, but a well timed recession to flush out the trump shit would be most welcome.
A lot depends on how long China can hold out.
Maybe oil will hit $147.oo a barrel… 😉
China’s CRISPR babies could face earlier death
A genetic mutation that protects against HIV leads to a shorter life span, researchers find.
“It’s clearly a mutation of quite strong effect,” says population geneticist Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, who made the discovery while studying DNA and death records of 400,000 volunteers in a large British gene database, the UK Biobank. “You can’t have many mutations that do that, or you wouldn’t live that long.”
The finding offers a warning light to anyone else seeking to enhance human beings. That’s because many genes have more than one role, and scientists tinkering with the balance are likely to cause side effects they didn’t expect or want.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613614/chinas-crispr-babies-could-face-earlier-death/
Blade Runner1982. Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJs4qJPQ_M
Blade Runner (5/10) Movie CLIP – The Prodigal Son (1982) HD
One more really big reason to convert to all renewable power, otherwise just training AI will flood the planet with GHG.
Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes
Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint.
To get a better handle on what the full development pipeline might look like in terms of carbon footprint, Strubell and her colleagues used a model they’d produced in a previous paper as a case study. They found that the process of building and testing a final paper-worthy model required training 4,789 models over a six-month period. Converted to CO2 equivalent, it emitted more than 78,000 pounds and is likely representative of typical work in the field.
The significance of those figures is colossal—especially when considering the current trends in AI research.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613630/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/
But silicon based life forms can withstand much higher temperatures than carbon based ones can…
Maybe that was part of the plan all along 😉
The first step was to install TV’s and smart phones everywhere.
New posts up
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-shock-model-scenarios-2/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-shock-model-scenarios/
second link is the open thread non-petrol
Thanks Dennis. Appreciate the efforts.