Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 1

232 thoughts to “Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 1”

1. Wow. What a thorough presentation. Beyond interesting.

   I was interested in the parallel drive system section as it seems, like always, the biggest problem is battery technolgy and range.

2. Overall it appears that while a good number of the entities that sought to begin the transition of commercial vehicles from purely liquid or gas fueled options, to hybrid electric or pure electric have failed, there are some that have survived and are still supplying solutions today.

   Which reminds me of a talk given by Bill Gross of idea labs about why some companies make it, while others don’t. Unfortunately I don’t have a link to that specific talk but here is a link to the Idea Labs site:https://www.idealab.com/

   Basically in a nutshell it is about having the right vision, the right team, and being in the right place at the right time, with enough funding and a huge dose of luck!. He specifically makes a point about businesses that fail because they are just a little bit ahead of their time. Many of the companies you cite in this post probably suffered from precisely that ill.

   And that example of Jack from EVTV bringing back the dead Ford Transit Connect was what I immeadiately thought of when I read about:

   “They were some of the best trucks I ran,” said Down East’s president, Edward Taylor, who purchased the pair of vehicles in 2011 for $200,000 each. But they have since broken down, and without anyone from Smith to service them, Taylor is nearing a decision to scrap the vehicles.

   If he is going to scrap them maybe he should contact Jack…

   Any way, all of this just underscores why I think that Tesla naysayers totally miss the point when they get all self righteous and proclaim that Tesla is doomed to fail. Hint, it doesn’t matter if they do or not, a massive transition away from fossil fuels transport has been launched due mostly to Tesla’s vision and that is a monumental sucess by any standard.

   BTW, check out this talk by Bill Gross:
   https://www.idealab.com/
   Innovator Bill Gross on why clean technology is a trillion dollar business opportunity

   Thanks for a really great post and a walk down memory lane, Islandboy!

   Cheers!

   1. You’re welcome. I just thought it would be really interesting to take a look back at what happened to all that stuff from ten years ago.

      I actually soldiered through the evtv video just before the post went live and got to the point where they described what they found wrong with the van and how they fixed it. I think a lot of Jack’s videos could be classified as “nerd porn” whenever he starts getting into the technical stuff! 😉

      I am facing a possible issue of IP and right to repair with the van I want to purchase. It is a Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) Nissan eNV200 (will get covered in part 2) and as such, the instrument cluster and information displays are all in Japanese. The version made in Spain for the European market has a language choice in it’s menu but, not the JDM version. Fortunately, for those of us in countries that buy used JDM vehicles, some enterprising people in New Zealand have figured out how to change the JDM Nissan EV displays to English.

      I’m sure Nissan does not approve but, does anybody think I’ll be able to get any help from Nissan or any of their dealers on this? The local Nissan dealer does not want to have anything to do with JDM models, even though a couple of the most popular Nissan cars on the roads in Jamaica were never imported by the dealer. Talk about free markets! How free is the market when car companies decide what models are to be sold in a given market but when consumers have a choice, they go for something completely different?

      1. I am facing a possible issue of IP and right to repair with the van I want to purchase. It is a Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) Nissan eNV200 (will get covered in part 2) and as such, the instrument cluster and information displays are all in Japanese.

         Ah, there’s a challenge right up my alley!
         You need something like one of these conversion tools for the Nissan Leaf!
         Dunno if it will work on the Nissan eNV200 but you never know, it might.

         If it doesn’t you can contact the guys who built the tool and have them build one for you. Then you can start a business converting them for all your neighbors! 😉

         Explanation starts at 1:44 in the video linked below.

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uzIHUvTNOY
         Japanese to English Conversion Tool for Nissan Leaf Instrument Cluster

         Keep us posted on how that conversion works out.
         Cheers!

         Edit: Good News! It does work with the e-NV200

3. Excellent- thanks for the education! Looking forward to the followups.

   On a related topic, its bizarre that toyota is dragging their feet on EV so much, compared to other majors-
   “Toyota Motor Corp. may have kicked off the green-car movement with its Prius hybrid more than 20 years ago, but the company is not nearly as bullish as rivals about the American consumer embracing EVs. Bob Carter, executive vice president of sales for Toyota Motor North America, said at a conference affiliated with this week’s New York auto show that batteries are still too expensive and place plug-in cars out of reach for many buyers.

   “On electrification, we see an opportunity in North America, but it’s much further down the road,” Carter said Tuesday at a forum co-hosted by the National Automobile Dealers Association. “The average vehicle today costs $34,000 and for many EVs, the battery costs $34,000 [!!!] The economics are not there.”

   1. Battery-Powered Toyota C-HR Highlights Electric Debuts In China

      Don’t ask about specifications just yet.

      Toyota has just jumped into the battery-powered pool, revealing a small collection of all-electrics at the Auto Shanghai 2019. The most notable was its compact crossover, the C-HR EV. It’s the first completely electrified vehicle from the Japanese brand to come to China. Curiously, the other main EV is also the C-HR, but wears a badge proclaiming itself to be the Izoa EV. It, according to Autocar, will be built by the state-owned outfit FAW. Toyota says the twins should be offered to consumers in 2020.

      If you’re going to be doing business in the country that is ground zero for EVs, you better have some EVs in your product line.

   2. “On electrification, we see an opportunity in North America, but it’s much further down the road,” Carter said Tuesday at a forum co-hosted by the National Automobile Dealers Association. “The average vehicle today costs $34,000 and for many EVs, the battery costs $34,000 [!!!] The economics are not there.”

      Wow, Tesla is near producing cells at $100/kWh. That means a 60 kWh battery costs $6000.
      As of last November Tesla was producing cells at $111/kWh.
      I expect it to drop below $100 for most manufacturers by the early 2020’s.
      So it is not the battery cost that is holding back manufacturers, it’s their reticence to commit and lack of knowledge/expertise. One has to be ready to burn money, make mistakes and do fast changes to jump into the EV market.
      The potential market is huge, and I suspect it will go wide open in about 4 to 5 years.

      Although there are some new high efficiency ICE technologies that may compete for a time with EV’s. Tying them to a hybrid system might get 65 mpg in cars and up to 40 mpg in trucks.
      But this is a wait and see if they hit the market at all. Every year they delay the EV gets better. Once the EV goes below 30K with 300 mile range it may just kill the ICE car.

      1. Yeah, according to Toyota, when Tesla starts delivering their $35,000 Model 3 they will either have to be selling you the car and giving you the battery for free or selling you the battery and giving you the car for free. /sarc

         1. Is that what you believe?

            Since LGChem is supplying Audi with cells at $114/kWh, I don’t find $111/kWh improbable or even $100/kWh.

            https://electrek.co/2018/10/24/tesla-model-3-best-selling-revenue-gross-margin/

            1. I forgot to add a /sarc tag at the end. Fixed. 😉

               1. OK 🙂

4. The global economy, heat engines, and economic collapse

   “So economic production, or the GDP, can be seen as the consequence of this imbalance: production is positive only when primary energy consumption is greater than the rate at which civilization dissipates energy due to all it’s internal circulations. If production is positive, civilization is able to incorporate raw materials into its structure. It grows, and then uses the added population and infrastructure created with the materials to consume even more energy.

   Collapse
   I think this is what is happening with the BP statistics. Because the GWP exists, we grow, and then use our growth to access more energy which we can then consume with the higher infrastructure demands. The relevant equation is that every 1000 dollars of year 2005 inflation-adjusted gross world product requires 7.1 additional Watts of power capacity to be added, independent of the year that is considered.

   Right now, energy consumption is continuing to grow rapidly, sustaining an ever larger GWP. But it is not the rate of energy consumption that supports the GWP, but the rate of growth of energy consumption that supports the GWP.

   This important distinction is flat out frightening. The implication is that if we cease to grow energy and raw material consumption globally, then the global economy must collapse. But if don’t cease to grow energy consumption and raw material consumption then we still collapse due to climate change and environmental destruction.”

   The green deal is hopium

   “To express our predicament as simply as I can, it is this:

   In order to prevent environmental collapse bringing about the death of more than six in every seven humans on the planet, we (all of us) simply have to stop using fossil carbon fuels today.

   But if we stop using the fossil carbon fuels that currently provide the world with 85 percent of its power, our highly complex and interconnected oil-dependent economy will crash; resulting in a global famine that will kill more than six in every seven humans on the planet anyway…

   As with any other oil-based technology, wind turbines and solar panels are subject to diminishing returns which leave green deals dead in the water. But resource depletion is an even greater problem…

   The vain hope that by shovelling vast amounts of fiat currency at lithium ion batteries we will somehow transcend the laws of physics is a siren song that takes us even further away from even mitigating the crisis before us…

   When that illusion is shattered – as it very nearly was a decade ago – the resulting stagflation will put paid to any chance of deploying a fraction of the windmills and solar panels required even to maintain the standard of living currently endured by a growing precariat in the developed states.”

   Timebomb

   1. You are right on spot. Toyota does not have millions of fan boys buying their stock. They run a real company, and the Japanese government are not subsidizing electric batteries, although they have other problems. Electric is riding on the wave of fossil fuels.

      1. Electric is riding on the wave of fossil fuels.

         Well, maybe you haven’t been payin attention but the times they have been a changin and that just ain’t true no more!

         https://www.idealab.com/videos/clean_technology.php

         Innovator Bill Gross on why clean technology is a trillion dollar business opportunity
         At VERGE 16, one of the tech world’s iconic innovators shares some ground-breaking new solar energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage technologies, and with that, why clean technology remains a staggering opportunity today.

         1. For electricity generation, solar may become the primary source in certain climates. For transporting large quantities of goods and people to far away places, which Island Boy’s article looks at, solar will not replace internal combustion engines. Without global transport, economies will collapse, as Caelan noted. I’m not looking at retirement for at least another 10 years, so if anybody should be cheering solar, wind, nuclear, it should be me. But when looking at the whole picture, I feel I’m probably in trouble.

            1. For transporting large quantities of goods and people to far away places, which Island Boy’s article looks at, solar will not replace internal combustion engines.

               Of course not! Solar will only help with the generation of electricity. Electric motors and batteries will substitiute for ICE motors.

               Given all the disruptive technologies such as 3D printing that have emerged over the last few decades and advances in architecting materials from the nano to the macro scale in materials science, I fail to understand why anyone would imagine a future where we still need to transport large quantities of goods and people to far away places.

               While there are many reasons why economies and societies may indeed collapse in the not too distant future, assuming that future economies will continue to be anything like the ones from the 20th century is not a very safe bet.

               But when looking at the whole picture, I feel I’m probably in trouble.

               I agree, as we probably all are, but not for the reasons you cite!

               Cheers!

            2. Stick around for Parts 2 & 3. The volume of material I am unearthing on this topic is huge. Part 2 will cover vehicles that have been developed or released for sale subsequent to the 2009 article. These are generally vehicles that are available now or that have been the subject of trials and have been scheduled for delivery before the middle of this year, now basically. The pictures will show vehicles that are actually out in the field doing commercial work. I am working on Part 2 as we speak.

               Part 3 will cover concept vehicles and prototypes that are yet to enter series production, most of which have working prototype or development examples out in the field undergoing testing. The vehicles in part 3, while actually existing and having logged orders are actually some way off in terms of getting into customers hands. Vehicles in part 3 may or may not actually enter series production as opposed to the vehicles in part 2 that have production and/or delivery dates scheduled at the worst. Depending on the relative volumes I might shift some stuff from part 2 to part 3.

               I’m also looking at a part 4, covering some electric commercial vehicle options (mass transit in particular) that have been in use in some cases for over a hundred years but, have been overlooked so far.

               You might be surprised at what comes out.

               1. I have mentioned on a couple of occasions that while I still read the Petroleum posts on this site, the focus of the comments often baffles me. It seems that despite the name Peakoil Barrel there is this underlying, and IMHO misguided sense that BAU and fossil fuel use will still continue for a very long time.

                  Obviously I do not subscribe to that notion at all. The environmental consequences of Climate Change notwithstanding, assuming that we even survive, the idea that renewables will always be able to depend on fossil fuels just doesn’t make sense, so what is plan B in the minds of FF supporters?! That’s a rhetorical question, BTW!

                  https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/18/the-largely-ignored-problem-of-global-peak-oil-will-seriously-hit-in-a-few-years/

                  The Largely Ignored Problem Of Global Peak Oil Will Seriously Hit In A Few Years

                  The era of oil is coming to an end, with global oil production set to halve in the next five to six years. To avoid a global economic slump, the transition to 100% renewables worldwide needs to be accelerated. It is feasible and cheaper than the current system, research shows.

                  2018 was a year of bold ambition and remarkable achievements for renewable energy, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Indeed, the production costs of renewables fell to record lows, undercutting the costs of existing coal-fired power plants. Investment in renewables kept rising, with most investment coming from emerging and developing countries. And even in places where politicians try to block the energy transition, for instance in the USA and Australia, numerous private actors, companies, and entire communities increasingly committed to go 100% renewable.

                  Yet, one important piece of news on the global energy transformation went unnoticed, despite the fact that it came from one of the most influential organizations, the International Energy Agency (IEA). The dramatic message was hidden in a graph on page 159 of the 2018 World Energy Outlook (WEO), the annual edition of the most significant report on global energy developments.

                  It shows that with no new investment, global oil production — including all unconventional sources — will drop by 50% by 2025 (Figure 1). That means that the global oil supply crunch is likely to happen already in the next five to six years and not in decades, as many fossil fuel companies hope.

                  So when Jason and others like him say: For transporting large quantities of goods and people to far away places, which Island Boy’s article looks at, solar will not replace internal combustion engines.

                  The longer we attempt to delay a transition to 100% renewables, the more economic damage our global industrial civilization is likely to sustain. And our chances for survival as a species will be greatly diminished.

               2. Furthermore we have the data from recent research that quickly transitioning to 100% renewables is technically feasible and already cheaper than continuing on our current path to destruction by burning fossil fuels!

                  http://energywatchgroup.org/new-study-100-renewable-energy-across-europe

                  New Study: 100% Renewable Energy across Europe is More Cost Effective than the Current Energy System and Leads to Zero Emissions Before 2050
                  New scientific study models full energy transition across power, heat, and transport sectors

                  Some of the study’s key findings:

                  The transition will require mass electrification across all energy sectors. Total power generation will exceed four to five times that of 2015, with electricity constituting for more than 85% of primary energy demand in 2050. Simultaneously, fossil fuels and nuclear are phased out completely across all sectors.

                  Electricity generation in the 100% renewable energy system will consist of the following mix of power sources: solar PV (62%), wind (32%), hydropower (4%), bioenergy (2%) and geothermal energy (<1%).

                  Wind and solar make up 94% of total electricity supply by 2050, and approximately 85% of the renewable energy supply will come from decentralized local and regional generation.

                  100% renewable energy is not more expensive: The levelised cost of energy for a fully sustainable energy system in Europe remains stable, ranging from 50-60 €/MWh through the transition.

                  Europe’s annual greenhouse gas emissions decline steadily through the transition, from approximately 4200 MtCO2 in 2015 to zero by 2050 across all sectors.

                  A 100% renewable power system will employ 3 to 3.5 million people. The approximate 800,000 jobs in the European coal industry of 2015 will be zeroed out by 2050, and will be overcompensated by more than 1.5-million new jobs in the renewable energy sector.

               3. “That means that the global oil supply crunch is likely to happen already in the next five to six years and not in decades, as many fossil fuel companies hope.”

                  Yes, global oil will peak and for a short time demand will rise above supply. There is a lot of slop in the system so tightening belts, government fuel restrictions, efficiency and actually filling passenger seats will flatten out and extend the petro culture.
                  This is just the kind of heads up to push energy transistion forward that is needed. When the downward pressure on oil production continues another flurry of transistion will occur.
                  It will be crazy for a while, leveling out a bit just about the time climate change takes a shocking step and other limits to growth hit harder. Then ecosystem collapse will set in, in irreversible steps.
                  All in all, it will be quite an educational experience for people.

               4. This time, when the price of fuel goes up, commercial fleets will have a lot of options. Based on the research I have done so far for part 2, it would appear that relative to the size of the fleet and the typical amount of choice for commercial vehicles, there are far more options for commercial vehicles than private cars available right now.

                  It is also very interesting that the majority of new offerings are battery electric and not hybrids and the deeper I get into part 2, the more it appears that the US is falling behind Europe in terms of having product ready for market from established manufacturers. In addition the transition to electric transport is going to need a lot more batteries (lithium?) than exist at the moment.

                  Back in 2009 I made the following points, which are just as true now as they were then, if not more so:

                  Electric Pros and Cons

                  Battery powered electric vehicles have restricted range. Overcoming the range restriction carries significant penalties in terms of battery pack size weight and/or cost. For commercial vehicles, the range limits are not an insurmountable problem as a large percentage of delivery vehicles operate on fixed routes and schedules so their use and charging cycles can be planned with more certainty than an individual’s personal transportation. In addition, larger commercial vehicles tend to have more space that can accommodate larger battery packs without impacting the cargo or passenger areas. Smaller delivery vehicles tend to do shorter range trips so smaller battery pack sizes offering limited range are not a big issue. In any case, routes can be planned so that vehicles return to base long before they run out of juice and the fleet operation bases can be equipped with high power, fast charging stations or battery swap stations if fast turnaround times are more important than the cost of spare battery packs. In some cases the loading bays at destinations could be equipped with fast charging stations so that batteries could be topped up for the onward or return trip while the vehicle is being loaded or unloaded. School buses, airport shuttles and other passenger moving operations that frequently move people on routes that are less than 50 miles round trip also present opportunities.

                  Although Electric drive systems attract a higher initial capital cost of at least 30% more than a similar conventional vehicle, they should be able to gain some serious traction in the commercial vehicle market since electric drive in commercial vehicles results in significantly lower operating costs in the form of reduced fueling costs and lower maintenance costs. The only parts that can really wear out in an electric motor are the two motor shaft bearings and one only need look at electric motors used in industry and commerce for an indication of how much maintenance will be required there. For battery electric vehicles, the only oil changes required, are for transmissions and final drives which are less frequent than the oil changes required by an ICE. If regenerative braking is used, the vehicles are able to go more than twice as far between brake lining replacements. In series hybrids, clutches and complex transmissions are not required so drive train maintenance can be greatly reduced while the ICE used to generate power is usually set up to operate under optimum conditions, extending service intervals and the useful life of the engine.

               5. Supercapacitors will be a big boon to commercial stop and start deliveries, people like FedEx, UPS etc, that will take a lot of the charge cycle strain off the batteries and prolong their life. Maybe it will mean needing less batteries. As for battery swap out, that is what a lot of fork lifts do now and would be straightforward for freight depots with fork lifts to do the lifting and moving of those packs, commercial vehicles are big enough (and ugly enough) to make access to the packs easy.

                  NAOM

               6. Then ecosystem collapse will set in, in irreversible steps.
                  All in all, it will be quite an educational experience for people.

                  Hmm, not so sure that it will!

                  Case in point. I was recently involved in an exchange with two individuals on another forum, both of whom were hell bent on convincing me that ‘Ocean Acidification ‘ couldn’t possibly be a real thing… they were both kind of hung up on the fact that the pH of the ocean was still above 7.0…

                  One of them was quite adamant that even when CO2 was 7,000 ppm, the oceans were never acidic.

                  You’d think people would at least know how to do a basic Google search at this point in the 21st century.

               7. “You’d think people would at least know how to do a basic Google search at this point in the 21st century.”

                  You are overoptimistic. Spend some time over on Cheezeburger.

                  NAOM

               8. “Educational?” Nah. They’ll just say the Endtimers were right.

               9. Fred- ” have mentioned on a couple of occasions that while I still read the Petroleum posts on this site, the focus of the comments often baffles me. It seems that despite the name Peakoil Barrel there is this underlying, and IMHO misguided sense that BAU and fossil fuel use will still continue for a very long time. ”

                  I think that many of the people on the other thread have a different motivation. They have skin in the game in the fossil industry. They are most interested in their financial well being. They are threatened by the idea of regulation, renewables, conservation.
                  The look forward to peak, hoping it happen in the right timeframe for them to make money.
                  I think that explains a lot of the comments and attitudes you see there.

               10. .

                   In human terms, in the minds of naked apes engineered by evolution to think in terms of seconds to a year, for all intents and purposes, the oil age IS going to last for quite some time yet, at least another generation.

                   It’s going to take at least that long to replace the countless machines that run on oil. Probably longer.

               11. Look at this 2008 video of this 300 mpg hybrid electric vehicle. Full electric version was available. Now it would perform even better.
                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45pjOYFEO3k
                   There should be millions on them the road by now.
                   Nope.

                   I think the major problems stopping transistion are three fold.
                   1) legacy industries (energy and transport) are doing as much as possible to slow the change
                   2) fossil fuels are still abundant
                   3) This is not a machine replacing the horse, this is a machine replacing a machine and doing about the same thing.
                   EV’s are still just cars, no grand leap for the owner. So price and practical needs come mostly into the picture.

                   Apparently saving $50 a month in fuel costs was not enough to make people purchase an Aptera over a Prius.

5. Meanwhile, there are still a lot of bumps on the roads to an EV future
   https://insideevs.com/hyundai-reduce-kona-electric-production/

   1. Chinese EV manufacturer’s are going to eat everybody’s lunch if the incumbents don’t get sorted and get producing compelling, affordable, and available battery electric vehicles soon.

      Adapt or die.

      1. That looks like the most likely outcome.

         But to be clear, a lot of car companies are investing.

         https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/17/big-carmakers-are-placing-vast-bets-on-electric-vehicles

6. Symbiotic tree fungus and climate change.

   U.S. forests’ changes are double-edged sword for environment
   Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi grow inside the tissues of roots and are more common on trees such as maple, ash and yellow poplar. Ectomycorrhizal fungi live on the outside of a plant’s roots and are often found on pine, oak, hickory and beech trees. The fungi act as extensions to a tree’s root system, allowing them to reach more water and nutrients. In return, the trees provide needed carbon for fungi survival.

   Over the last three decades, the authors find, forests dominated by ectomycorrhizal trees have given way to those dominated by arbuscular mycorrhizal species. That’s due in large part because arbuscular mycorrhizal trees are better suited for the conditions associated with climate change.
   
   https://ag.purdue.edu/climate/u-s-forests-changes-are-double-edged-sword-for-environment/

   1. Trees are life,
      save our trees.

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V06ZOQuo0k
         The Lorax (original)
         😉

7. EV are now subset of NEV – New Energy Vehicles. however as EV’s win the battle they will likely be known as NEV’s.
   Much excitement in EV World.
   My Favorite EV Podcast :EV NEWS Daily. https://www.evnewsdaily.com/

   Latest on the EV Front-lines in Asia. ZH will always have the doomer angle.
   “Those facing the largest risks in China are upstarts that have been founded or funded by people with internet or technology backgrounds and not aware of the massive investment needed for automobile manufacturing. Non-car companies that are spending heavily on EV’s include Foxconn Technology Group, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and China Evergrande Group.”
   https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-15/486-manufacturers-chinas-electric-vehicle-bubble-set-burst
   So will Flex and Foxcom make the “Hardware”?

8. The Charging Standard in the US (CCS) will not do V2G BiDirectional on the Level 3 DC Side any time soon. But it’s possible to have a Bi-Directional Grid Interactive 240VAC converter behind the Level 2 side port to drive the code people crazy. This would be limited to 5-7 kVA – but that a sweet spot. Since a C/5 to C/10 discharge rate makes a happy battery. Honda to the Rescue? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBhb_QfAe08&t=578s

9. There’s the often-expressed conviction that so-called developing nations won’t be able– Earth won’t support it– to ‘develop’ into the ‘Western way of life’.
   So why should or would some think that some fantasized Western-lifestyle/crony-capitalist-steered ‘techno-transition’ be somehow magically supported by the planet, and on an increasingly-degraded one now with a population of about 8 billion people, and given that the planet was already ‘symptomatic’ with a much smaller population and a large fraction of it not (yet) adopting this Western lifestyle?

   What of all those people, in all those locales around the globe, who might supposedly want to jump on some fantasized crony-capitalist-derived techno-transition bandwagon, and while in the context of the current fractal or catabolic decline of global-industrial civilization, and as per that, what with increasing global social movements, unrest and wars; declining incomes and means to make an income; increasing wealth disparities; increasing ecological degradation, including anthropogenic climate change, and so forth?

   And how does this ‘criminal system’ that clearly does not value equity or ecologics, offer up in these contexts ~8 billion-plus people some kind of equitable/ecological techno-transition, along these lines of NEV’s, PV’s and so forth?

   Where will the resources come from, how will they be acquired, who will acquire them, who will not, and how will they be managed, repaired, recycled, supported, and so forth?

   Remember, again, we’re talking about ~8 billion-plus people on a planet that many, even on POB, claim cannot support more than, roughly, 1 billion, if that.

   Should any transition on a planet with ~8 billion-plus people on it be considered (at least more) from an ecological and sociological/social equity standpoint, rather than a technological one, such as if we’re truly interested in the well-being of people and in the context of avoiding some kind of relatively-catastrophic decline in population?

   1. On point as usual Caelan.

      I propose an addendum to Einstein’s oft quoted line about trying to fix our problems with the same kind of thinking that created our problems. It goes something like “The same systems that created our problems cannot be used to solve our problems.”

      It is actually quite ludicrous that so many on this board simultaneously see the destruction that techno-capitalism has wrought, and yet are depending on, indeed cheering on that same system to fix our problems. And yet, it is more even than that, since the proposed solutions of the global industrial system require a gross increase in the size of said system!

      This is why EVs and solar panels are such obvious bunk to me. In order to make them work, we must massively expand the same extractive system that is destroying the planet, and at the end of the day billions will die due to ecological catastrophe anyway.

      “Green tech” (an absolutely 1984-esque newspeak word for these extensions of the destructive global amoeba) will at best extend the capitalist system a few decades, and I’m not even convinced of this point.

      1. Niko- and your alternative is? Your Plan B for the 7.7 Billion?
         We are all waiting for a viable/elusive Plan B.
         I’ve not yet seen one spelled out that doesn’t require a massive downsizing in population.
         Quickly.

         Plan C is the chaotic downsizing. Plan C is the default choice.
         Anyone who hasn’t got lots of goats, and solar,[or their equivalent] and great basic skills,
         has chosen plan C for their pathway.
         Even those who still think they can have Plan A, and those who have a magical Plan B in mind, will get plan C by group default.

         I cheer those who have taken steps to implement (not just talk about) steps of sustainability, and simplicity (if there truely is such a thing with human beings).

         1. Hickory,

            As I have stated many times, I have no plan. I do not think a viable one exists.

            But over the long term, any prolonging of this industrialist system ultimately makes life far harder for those on the other end. I would rather see the system die sooner, so that more life is left on Earth. Without this global system, starving people will eat the birds from the trees and the rats from the sewers, and then burn those trees for warmth before going into that good night. But 200 years later much of what was burned will regrow, and small mammals will start again evolving and filling biological niches, as they’ve done before.

            But if this system continues, what will be left is a poisonous wasteland barren of virtually all life, and inhospitable to the Earth’s natural replenishment. Have you seen the toxic lakes in China, which are the result of producing our electronics, some of it the supposed “green tech”? If this system does what it wants, what posters here want with respect to the EV revolution and electrification and such, then those lakes are a premonition of this planet’s future.

            1. My plan A is not to die in the famine.
               Fred and a few others here like to shitpost hopium, and then when critiqued offer the challenge “what are you doing to fix the problem”. Denial comes in many flavors.

               1. First, I am doing something! I’m working on disrupting the current plastics industry with a radical startup company. As any startup it may ultimately fail. That’s just the nature of the beast with any startup. See Bill Gross Idea Lab link I have posted up thread.
                  Second, why don’t you just go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on!
                  Cheers!

               2. We can all do more than be self serving.

               3. “Denial comes in many flavors.”
                  Certainly. And when a person has a condition with an impending painful death, and there no more painkillers available, denial and sleep are the very best friend. Really. I have seen it.
                  Even thinking that you can protect yourself from famine and that act will make things OK, is a form of denial. Denial that there are so many other pitfalls to wreck your life in this interconnected world. It may not be marauders, it may be a virus. It may be the lack of a functional health care to remove your ruptured appendix., etc.
                  Regardless, I applaud all steps people take to build resiliency. Whether in their food supply, their energy supply, or their culture.
                  IMIO

            2. ” I would rather see the system die sooner, so that more life is left on Earth. Without this global system, starving people will eat the birds from the trees and the rats from the sewers, and then burn those trees for warmth before going into that good night. But 200 years later much of what was burned will regrow, and small mammals will start again evolving and filling biological niches, as they’ve done before.”

               If nuclear war is not initiated during the destruction of civilization.
               Big if there.
               If the hundreds of nuclear reactors and their waste storage facilities are cared for and controlled for thousands of years after the fall of civilization (impossible with no industrial civilization).

               Sorry, but until the nuclear menace is removed from the earth a collapse of civilization and or eradication of mankind is extremely likely to make this planet uninhabitable.

               And no, weird mutants will not run around the earth. Just dead carcasses that don’t rot.

               Toxic lakes and industrial pollution is a political problem. The environmental laws need to be changed and enforced.
               I worked in the chemical industry, there are ways to safely handle hazardous waste.

               1. I would rather see the system die sooner

                  So would I! And I plan on doing everything in my power to help kill it. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of not having any system at all in its place.

                  I worked in the chemical industry, there are ways to safely handle hazardous waste.

                  I’m sure there are! The question is, how do we safely handle hazardous political and economic systems?! And can we somehow substitute them with nontoxic ones?

               2. Hi Fred, the first quote is not from me but I will respond to your question derived from the second quote since I am it’s perpetrator.
                  Fred asked:
                  “, how do we safely handle hazardous political and economic systems?! And can we somehow substitute them with nontoxic ones?”
                  I would not replace them, just remove them.

                  I think I will let Lord Hugh R. Adumbass answer that question more thoroughly. The answer is near the end of the video but best to watch the whole thing.

                  Lord of the Lies
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFRhKKYhoHk

               3. I would not replace them, just remove them.

                  LOL! But in practical terms. the new less authoritarian matriarchal Baboon society is a defacto replacement for the previous more violent male dominated hierarchical one.

                  I doubt this would work too well if applied to the tribe of baboons currently inhabiting 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I’m afraid you would end up with a Matriarchal hierarchy where power would be shared by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump… I think I’d prefer a global nuclear holocaust to that.

               4. I have no problem extending the leadership dismissal to both sexes. All of them. Not just males.
                  I don’t want to appear sexist. 🙂

      2. I don’t know what you guys see around you but, in and around the city of Kingston, Jamaica, I see a system that is still very heavily dependent on petroleum products to sustain millions of people (billions globally). Every time I go out on the streets I see people bustling around, carrying out activities that would not be possible without oil, the primary activity being transport.

         Within the first two weeks of this year, I attended a motivational “kick off” meeting for life insurance sales people that came from all across the island. One of the presentations was made by a highly regarded economist from the local branch of the regional university. He made the point that improvements in highway infrastructure and big road infrastructure improvements underway in the capital city, were a critical part of the boom taking place in the local economy because, economic activity is primarily about the delivery of goods and services. I emphasized delivery because, he made the point that the improvements in the infrastructure make transport more efficient and reduce time wasted in transportation, enabling economic growth. The point was not lost on me.

         Our entire civilization is heavily dependent on moving stuff around, part of the reason for my intense interest in electrified transportation. If we, as a global civilization, start to have problems with transportation, it is going to be a matter of life and death for many people. Let me clarify that. If we cannot move people and stuff around as we have been doing for the past century or so, millions of people are either going to starve to death or die fighting over the limited food and resources that will be available!

         I would rather see substitutes for petroleum based fuels in transport and other fossil fuels in electricity generation, make the decline in availability less chaotic than it will otherwise be. Fighting (violence) is not my strong suite, I have never been in a fight in my life apart from childhood fights with my kid sister and I used to get a strapping from my father whenever that happened. As a result I do not want to live in a situation where the ability to take by force determines who gets what (as a matter of life and death). I am fairly certain that if it comes to that, I will not survive. Of those reading this comment, who thinks they can survive in a environment of anarchy where ability to take by force determines survival?

         1. I don’t know what you guys see around you but, in and around the city of Kingston, Jamaica, I see a system that is still very heavily dependent on petroleum products to sustain millions of people (billions globally).

            Yes, that is the current incarnation of the global industrial techno-capitalist system.

            Replacing that incarnation with one powered by solar panels and EVs will not change the system’s nature. It will still be extractive, destructive, polluting, growing like a cancer, and devouring life in it’s race to global suicide. And in fact it will be doing so faster, due to the need to rapidly and massively expand in order to transition to PV and EV etc.

            Global warming, co2 output, is only one kind of environmental and ecological catastrophe. There are other forms, and they will still be occuring in plethora ways until this system itself ends, leading inevitably towards disaster, fossil fuels or not.

            Do I think that we can change this system? Not really. Humans will continue pursuing profit until they find out they can’t eat money. Oh well.

            1. I am on pretty much same page as all you of with most of this stuff.
               I still circle back to the idea that during the next 20-30 yrs we will going through the first stage of a big transition.
               -All fossil fuels will have peaked, and be in significant decline
               -Global industrial output will have peaked and be in decline
               -Global population will [atleast] approach peak level
               -Energy consumption per capita decline will accelerate rapidly.
               -Highly likely that very bad effects of global warming will be felt widely

               Economic chaos and hardship, and conflict between nations and all other human divisions (generational, religious, tribal, etc) are inevitable in the this scenario, of overshoot.

               However, some places will do better than others. We could have long discussions on this, whether it is culture, food, water, energy, geographic location, policy. One specific thing I will say on this regarding energy- I’d sure rather be living through this period in a place that went heavy [extremely heavy] on renewables and associated measures, rather than relying on the ‘infinite’ supply of fossil fuel products that we have all become reliant on.

               Regarding the longer term. Hell if I know, other than to say good luck. Downsize.

            2. If you think my advocacy of renwables and EVs means I don’t care about the natural environment, quite the contrary. I see these things as a way of eventually reducing the amount of greenhouse gases our civilization is putting into the atmosphere. The problem as I see it is that the replacement of FF based technology should be happening ten to a hundred times faster than it is and probably would be if it weren’t for the economic power of the status quo. At any rate within the last year I have posted at least three times about plastic waste problems in my neck of the woods, with at least one post containing pictures of plastic trash take way up in the sparsely populated areas of the hills overlooking the city where I live.

               I am also concerned that housing developers are increasingly using flat arable land that use to be used to grow sugar cane for housing. In fact the government is planning a whole new town to be built on former sugar estate lands since it seems food production, or at least sugar production is less valuable than housing. There’s huge amounts of land on this island that are not good for agriculture (thin, stony soils and/or steep gradients but, that using them would add costs to the developments and we can’t have that can we? The main daily newspaper here is salivating at the prospect of all the economic growth these developments bring with them, oblivious to the prospects of any resource constraints that will come about as a result of Peak Oil.

               Which brings me to the link Fred posted in his comment from 04/18/2019 at 11:03 am which Ron also added over on the open petroleum thread about an hour later. Here’s a choice quote from the linked article:

               “Yet, one important piece of news on the global energy transformation went unnoticed, despite the fact that it came from one of the most influential organizations, the International Energy Agency (IEA). The dramatic message was hidden in a graph on page 159 of the 2018 World Energy Outlook (WEO), the annual edition of the most significant report on global energy developments.

               It shows that with no new investment, global oil production — including all unconventional sources — will drop by 50% by 2025 (Figure 1). That means that the global oil supply crunch is likely to happen already in the next five to six years and not in decades, as many fossil fuel companies hope. The global annual oil production is set to decline by approximately six million barrels per day starting in 2020. That means in the coming years the provision of energy related to oil will reduce annually by an amount equal to the total energy demand of Germany in 2014.”

               What do you think is going to result from such a decline? Unfortunately the average person can be expected to live on average 30–40 years in Swaziland and 82.6 years in Japan, with all other countries falling in between that according ta a List of Countries by Life Expectancy at Wikipedia. All the babies born in my neck of the woods last year can be expected to live another 73 to 77 years according to the lists found at the Wikipedia page but, nobody is telling parents or would be parents about any resource constraints that these children are going to have to face. I don’t hear anybody moaning about the added burden that more humans are going to place on natural ecosystems all over the world (except for AOC). One moronic member of the US senate (Mike Lee R-Utah) in response to the “Green New Deal”‘ resolution, co-sponsored by Senator Ed Markey and AOC actually said and I quote, “The solution to so many of our problems, in all times and in all places, is to fall in love get married and have some kids”. I kid you not! It is the closing sentence of a bizarre rant found in the following Youtube video:

               Velociraptors, giant seahorses and babies: GOP senator mocks Green New Deal

               Based on that performance alone, if Americans do not get rid of Morons like Mike Lee the world will be FUBAR sooner rather than later!

               1. If you think my advocacy of renwables and EVs means I don’t care about the natural environment, quite the contrary. I see these things as a way of eventually reducing the amount of greenhouse gases our civilization is putting into the atmosphere.

                  This is where your and my views drastically differ islandboy. You see renewables as a way to combat the destruction created by fossil fuels(green house gases), while I see them as a means of furthering the destruction caused by our global industrial civilization.

                  This is what I meant when I spoke of “being unable to solve our problems with the same systems that created them”. The system (global society) operates in a destructive manner. Therefore, any and all productions (including renewables) of that system are also destructive.

                  Because I see a totality of environmental concerns (not just green house gas) I do not believe renewables are a net good for the planet. I think they are a net negative, as they will allow the continued exploitation and destruction of the planet, until there is nothing left.

                  Here’s a thought experiment: assume there were exactly 0 green house gas emissions, and we even did the impossible and got the level of green house gases in the atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels. Also assume that the global civilization continues to grow at 2% per year. What do you think the Earth looks like in 200 years? Probably a nightmarish wasteland devoid of all life but a few humans surrounded by layers of protective material and silicon, right? 200 years at 2% growth is ~6 doublings in size. Do you think the biosphere can handle that? GHG’s, or lack thereof, don’t make a lick of difference in this scenario.

                  So, obviously, where the long term health of the planet occurs, the sooner this destructive civilization collapses, the better. If we could somehow create renewables outside of the context of this civilization, then they might be a good thing. But we can’t. They are part and parcel of the destruction we are causing, requiring destruction in order to create and promoting destruction via the energy they supply.

               2. IIRC you are posting from the UK so, you might not be all that interested in US politics. I find US politics a particularly interesting example of the struggle of the status quo (the destructive system) and the forces of change. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever to elected to congress, is on record questioning if it having kids its a responsible and moral thing to do under the circumstances. So, there is at least one US policy maker who kinda gets it but look at Mike Lee’s bizarre statement above. Then look at this brief video of AOC (link below) talking about having kids, posted by a right winger and take a look at the comments. I believe there is an urgent need to convince people to have less kids but, that is an EXTREMELY unpopular idea in many circles. After all, God said in the bible, “go forth and multiply”!

                  AOC Suggests People Should Not Reproduce Or Have Kids For The Sake Of Environment| Green Deal Logic

               3. Niko- “So, obviously, where the long term health of the planet occurs, the sooner this destructive civilization collapses, the better.”

                  Well certainly this true, and it true that sooner we disappear the better the overall ecology, no doubt.

                  Taken to the logical conclusion, we should be ending our lives. You and I. Now, since we now realize it.

                  In the meantime we are having a family picnic this afternoon. And there is solar on the roof. I will have traveled by land and air motor vehicle less than 6000 miles this past 12 months, and 3900 was by electric motor from the roof solar. So I have made some room for others to travel 10,000 miles? Big deal.

                  While we do live, we should make some attempt to step gently. Burn and tear up as few things as we can.
                  Burn less crude, coal and wood. Eat less animals. Buy less plastic.
                  Either way, destruction is our middle name. Cruel is the first name.

               4. Beware of purveyors of the great purification. Purity does not exist.
                  Nature is a balance between growth and death, creation and destruction. Paradise is only in the heads of a few humans.

               5. Yeah, there a serious undercurrent of an idea of purification in the whole concept of the apocalypse. The righteous are rewarded and raised into heaven and the sinful are purged.

                  Apocalypse is something to be avoided…

               6. Your point about what we are doing while alive is well taken, we just have differing views about what we should attempt to change.

                  We both agree that we should live while we are alive.

                  I think, if we were going to send time on such things, we should try to convince people that they can be happy, happier even, with lifestyles not involving high tech and involving 40 times or more less resource use.

                  You think, should we spend time on it, we should try to convince people to switch to renewables, as well as consuming less etc.

                  Of course, neither of us can convince hardly anyone of anything, so this is all academic, and we thoroughly agree on the likely result.

               7. Six doublings in size of the economy don’t mean any physical growth. The total weight of the American GPD hasn’t changed in decades, despite continued growth. There are a lot of reasons to think that mankind’s footprint might shrink dramatically, just because it’s cheaper than growing.

                  For example, on current trends, computation will be nearly all energy consumption in a few decades. But the computer industry has a huge incentive to reduce energy use.

                  Agriculture will shrink as well. Remember that margarine is much cheaper than butter, because it requires no cows. In a few years, fake meat will be cheaper than ground beef, which is the main reason we have cattle. The result could be a rapid fall in demand for grain. With electric cars replacing oil, the huge sugar cane, rape seed and maize farms used to produce oil would vanish as well. Just killing the ethanol business could mean a 40% reduction in American maize.

               8. In a few years, fake meat will be cheaper than ground beef, which is the main reason we have cattle.

                  There is no doubt about it. All the major fast food franchises are already on board for obvious reasons. Though the cattle and dairy industry are already up in arms, also for obvious reasons. Much like the clash between fossil fuels vs renewables the legacy industries will be beaten to a pulp (no pun intended) by the new kids on the block!

                  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-you-dare-call-it-meat/

                  Don’t You Dare Call It Meat
                  The M-word applied to plant-based substitutes is making people who produce the real thing very nervous

                  If it were me, I’d call it Le Burger végétarien 😉

                  Edit: now that I think about that would be a great name for a food truck.

               9. Yes, Burger King is already on board with the Impossible Whopper

                  https://impossiblefoods.com/burgerking/

                  If this makes them money, the propaganda machine will start cranking up and there’s nothing the beef industry will be able to do (except buying legislatures to ban it).

               10. @alimbiquated
                   “(except buying legislatures to ban it).”
                   Yep, see my comment below, American companies’ standard wat of dealing with competition.

                   NAOM

               11. Niko,
                   As nations become more wealthy, they put environmental laws in place to reduce the poisoning of the environment, these regulations can be improved and enforced better no doubt. In addition, total fertility ratio falls as nations become wealthier and better educated, this will eventually cause a peak and decline in global population and will reduce environmental impact, global population will continue to fall until a desirable global human population level is reached (perhaps 500 million).

                   There can also be changes in behavior as education in ecology may create a majority of people that take action to reduce their impact on the environment, buying fewer throwaway products and purchasing quality goods designed to last 100 years or more, recycling those goods that break and cannot be fixed, walking and biking instead of driving, buying and renting homes that use less energy (due to better sealing, more insulation, and passive solar design).

                   You might claim this cannot happen, I would suggest that we strive to make it a reality, starting with us and spreading the word.

               12. Dennis,

                   You have got to be the most optimistic guy on this thread. It is great that POB is not an echo chamber.

               13. Thanks Iron Mike,

                   I am more optimistic than many, but note that I have never claimed a transition will be easy, or even likely, simply possible (I’d say roughly a 1 in 3 probability would be my guess, though it might be as high as even odds). The general outlook here is quite pessimistic, like everyone else, I believe my viewpoint is realistic. When one considers technological progress of the past 50 to 60 years, despite the lack of proper application of that technology to build a more sustainable economy up to now, it seems to me a transition is possible as fossil fuel peaks, becomes expensive and leads to natural incentive to replace fossil fuels with less environmentally damaging sources of energy.

                   This is but one problem, I imagine we can find solutions to many other problems as well (population may be taken care of as less developed nations become developed with better access to healthcare, modern, birth control, and education along with more equal rights for women).

               14. Dennis,

                   I think it’s possible to have one’s perspective shifted a bit by the people you’re talking to. Kind’ve like an Overton Window, except in the context of a blog.

                   POB is not really a representative sampling of opinion from the larger community of people who are very knowledgeable about energy, and a transition from fossils to renewables.

                   The transition is inevitable, and the idea that it is likely to cause a general collapse is not realistic. There are certainly risks: the worst is a WWIV that goes nuclear (or biological, or killer AI, etc). That’s impossible to calculate, and it certainly could cause a general collapse. The second worst might be a Great Depression that lasts a long time due to serious mismanagement. That too is hard to estimate, but we did manage to avoid that in 2008 and certainly economists have a pretty good handle on reasonably good policies, if only politicians listen to them. And, finally, some individual countries, especially FF exporters, are fairly likely to be in serious trouble. Venezuela is a poster child for this: they’re suffering from almost terminal Dutch Disease, which hollowed out their economy and left very little for them to live on when their oil industry was disrupted. KSA is very similar – they simply don’t know what to do without oil. Russia isn’t that far behind, though their educational system has some very good elements, and they have lots of other resources if they can just manage to figure out how to use them.

                   But, countries like the US? The level of surplus energy is astonishing. Carpooling alone could get us through a transitional bottleneck!

               15. @Nick
                   “But, countries like the US? The level of surplus energy is astonishing. Carpooling alone could get us through a transitional bottleneck!”
                   US is into competing not collaborating, sharing a car is sooo communist!

                   NAOM
                   😉

               16. NAOM,

                   The last time the US was seriously committed to carpooling we were in WWII, and allied with the USSR! So, you’re right: carpooling is communist!

                   OMG!!

                   OTOH…if you didn’t drive with a carpool, you were driving with Hitler!

                   I gotta find one of those posters…

               17. Hereyou go Nick.
                   https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/10/8/wwii-carpooling-propaganda

               18. You might claim this cannot happen, I would suggest that we strive to make it a reality, starting with us and spreading the word.

                   Perhaps we just need more autistic teen age girls, to speak truth to power… As the father of an Aspie, I know they are better than average at math, science, and logic. They are unfazed by BS, they look at the data and analyze it. You just can’t fool them!

                   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speech-to-mps-you-did-not-act-in-time

                   …Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?

                   Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.

                   And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.

                   Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost.

                   Nor do these scientific calculations include already locked-in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity – or climate justice – clearly stated throughout the Paris agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.

                   We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these “points of no return” may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes, because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.

                   These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC.

                   So what part of all this, do ‘Neurotypical’ people not get?!

            3. Do I think that we can change this system? Not really. Humans will continue pursuing profit until they find out they can’t eat money. Oh well.

               Ah, that is where we see things differently! Nowhere is it written that we can’t push the system into a completely new state.

               https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/how-quarks-turned-into-cultures/

               How Quarks Turned into Cultures
               Big-picture biologist Tyler Volk talks about his book on “How We Came to Be”

               …I agree with Nick Bostrom, we need to be thinking about the matter of AI a lot more. The internet-AI is participating in the coming planetary scale. In fact, we all need to be thinking and talking about and debating the human future a lot more, rather than simply letting it happen or letting certain powerful individuals in government, tech, or finance determine it (a complex topic, because voters and consumers weigh in). I tend to think about new international “organs” of the planetary scale. Please, no Borg-like future. I personally lean toward a desirably complex world but one more decentralized across multiple modalities compared to today.

               Personal, cognitive evolutionary dynamics (one’s internal decision-making, with its evolutionary “recipe” of processes of propagation, variation, and selection) need to be part of this evolution toward planetization. After all, important structures of cultural evolution are linked to patterns laid down in earlier levels of the grand sequence. Specifically, the animal body (level 8) participates in the next level of the animal social group (level 9), with the animals themselves remaining the main unit of evolutionary adaptation, because the animal body had and has a life cycle that involves death and therefore was subject to intense selection. In our genus Homo ancestry, this led to increased brain size and new cognitive capabilities. Despite our current lives in multiply nested social systems, we have inherited this intense degree of individuality from several levels down. Let us keep that, even if a planetary scale is coming into being.

               I see profound change on the horizon. The chances that humans (if they survive) will continue to pursue 19th or even 20th century notions of how to construct economies, social structures and nations states, to be highly unlikely. In fact I think that much of what we are seeing around the planet, such as populism and nationalism a la Trump or Brexit is just a visceral knee jerk reaction to the obvious changes already underway.

               1. Ah, that is where we see things differently! Nowhere is it written that we can’t push the system into a completely new state.

                  Ah, this is where we see things differently Fred. What we can do as individuals is totally different than what 7 billion people can do as the population of the earth. You are talking about what a group of like-minded people can do and Niko is talking about human nature.

                  In fact, we all need to be thinking and talking about and debating the human future a lot more, rather than simply letting it happen…

                  Yes, yes, yes, we need to be doing all those things that might save the world. And a few people, a very few people, are doing just that. But the vast majority of the population is doing nothing but going on with their lives and helping destroy the world as we know it.

                  It is too late Fred, way too late. All those things you talk about, all those things that are destroying the world, are all the result of just too damn many people.

                  Don’t get me wrong, I applaud your efforts. But you are tilting at windmills.

               2. You are talking about what a group of like-minded people can do and Niko is talking about human nature.

                  No, while those are fundamental, I am not talking about either of those things!

                  I’m talking about the possibility of a next level of combogenisis on a planetary scale as discussed by Tyler Volk. Something that transcends our current concepts of Nationhood or even something like a world government.

                  This is not something that people will get together, plan and implement. It will either emerge from our currently existing states as a higher level of co-operation and form something completely new or it may not happen at all and we all go extinct.

                  To be clear, chances that it will, are vanishingly slim. Probably similar odds as to when molecules clumped together to become prokaryiotic life forms or single celled organisms somehow becoming multicellular.

                  Anyways from the Big Bang to human civilization and culture a lot of extremely unlikely steps occurred along the way and nothing says another level can’t emerge.

                  Cheers!

               3. To be clear, chances that it will, are vanishingly slim.

                  Well…. at least we can agree on that. 😉

               4. LOL! I’m not looking for agreement. I’m just putting ideas on the table.

                  For reference, at the time of the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago what do you suppose the odds were that you and I would be having this very exchange? Vanishingly slim? Yet here we are.

                  “You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight… I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”

                  ― Richard P. Feynman
                  😉
                  Cheers!

      3. It is actually quite ludicrous that so many on this board simultaneously see the destruction that techno-capitalism has wrought, and yet are depending on, indeed cheering on that same system to fix our problems. And yet, it is more even than that, since the proposed solutions of the global industrial system require a gross increase in the size of said system!

         If you truly believe that to be the case then you most certainly have not been paying attention to what many on this board have been saying for a very long time! Starting with:

         THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS FUBAR!
         THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS NOT SUSTAINABLE
         RENEWABLES ARE NOT MAGIC BULLETS
         INFINITE GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET IS NOT POSSIBLE!
         WE NEED TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION
         WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTRACT
         IF WE DON’T SOLVE THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS THERE WON’T BE ANY ECONOMY!

         Now what part of that, do you not get?! And what are you doing to solve any of those problems?

         1. And what are you doing to solve any of those problems?

            Oh my God, it’s up to me to solve those problems? If that is so, then we are in a world of shit.

            1. It was just my way of asking him to get off his self righteous high horse!

               For the record no one individual is going to solve anything!
               And yeah we probably are in a world of shit!

               So what are we supposed to do? Commit collective suicide?!

               1. Fred, he is just expressing his opinion, just like you do.

               2. OK, Then let me count the ways why I still find his ‘OPINION’ a tad offensive. Not to mention, wrong!

                  It is actually quite ludicrous that so many on this board simultaneously see the destruction that techno-capitalism has wrought, and yet are depending on, indeed cheering on that same system to fix our problems.

                  A lot of people here and elsewhere see no such thing!

                  https://electrek.co/2019/04/19/extinction-rebellion-climate-protests/

                  Cheers!

         2. THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS FUBAR!
            THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS NOT SUSTAINABLE
            RENEWABLES ARE NOT MAGIC BULLETS
            INFINITE GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET IS NOT POSSIBLE!
            WE NEED TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION
            WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTRACT
            IF WE DON’T SOLVE THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS THERE WON’T BE ANY ECONOMY!

            I agree with all of your main points, especially the part about renewables not being magic bullets. However, the primary focus here, again and again and again, is solar deployment and EV sales. Which I think are inherently destructive in a manner similar to fossil fuels, because they are created and maintained by the same destructive system. As you yourself pointed out:

            THE SYSTEM WHICH CREATES RENEWABLES IS FUBAR
            THE CURRENT SYSTEM WHICH CREATES RENEWABLES IS UNSUSTAINABLE
            RENEWABLES ARE NOT MAGIC BULLETS
            RENEWABLES ARE AN ATTEMPT TO PROLONG INFINITE GROWTH ON A FINITE PLANET
            RENEWABLE PRODUCTION AND USE NECESSARILY INCREASES CONSUMPTION
            WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTRACT
            RENEWABLES DON’T SOLVE THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

            1. Niko, not sure what your point is.
               Are you asserting that PV and wind power do not reduce fossil fuel emissions?
               Are you asserting that PV and wind power do not solve all globa lproblems? I agree with that but they do solve a huge set of ecological destructors.
               Are you asserting that we should continue the uninhibited use fossil fuels since you appear against energy transistion.
               Just need you to clarify your positions versus grand generalities.
               I am attempting to get to what you actually stand for versus me guessing and jumping to conclusions.

               1. I think that we should downsize and return to a non-technological society as quickly as possible. I think advanced technology has been a net negative for humanity. I think the only hope for the biosphere is letting go of technology immediately. I think that in our striving for technological “progress” we have lost sight of the fact that people can live happy lives in it’s absence. I think that renewables are just as destructive as fossil fuels, but in other ways. I think that with or without renewables, billions and billions are gonna die. Because that is inevitable, I think it should happen sooner rather than later, to end the destruction earlier. I don’t expect to be one of the survivors, but I want the Earth itself to survive. Nothing is worse than a dead Earth. I think we should stop using fossil fuels immediately. We won’t do that. The good news is, depletion will do that for us. Renewables on the other hand… We will scorch the Earth building renewables. It will be a devastation far greater than what has been caused by fossil fuels, because, if successful, they would allow a massive continuation and acceleration of our growth. Luckily, I don’t think they will work, so at worst we are just wasting a bunch of our remaining resources on them. I think it would be better to not waste our remaining resources on them.

               2. “We will scorch the Earth building renewables. It will be a devastation far greater than what has been caused by fossil fuels, because, if successful, they would allow a massive continuation and acceleration of our growth. ”
                  How will we scorch the Earth building renewable energy? They use 1.5 kilo of silicon per panel that replaces over 50 barrels of oil burn (fuel) over a lifetime. They are immediately deployable and stop the burn, not increase it since they operate at nominal temperature.
                  It’s burn reduction as they are built. Even most of the energy to build them (from sand) can come from electricity, eventually all.

                  Well, I think you have too much faith in humanity. Renewable energy alone will not rise fast enough to promote growth of population or lifestyle on a large scale. In fact it will probably just cushion degrowth and downsizing. Civilization is not that interested in long term survival, just in living today and the near present.
                  Renewable energy will also force change in lifestyle to fit with the new energy systems.

                  As far as returning to a non-technical way of life, very doubtful, though going to a biologically based way of life might happen.
                  None of it will have much of a chance if we do not get rid of the nuclear threats first and the fossil fuel burn quickly.

                  A dead earth is bad I guess. I would say that life exists all across the universe, it’s a side effect that occurs under certain conditions for certain periods of time.
                  Most likely some life will persist here no matter what, whether it has time to evolve again into highly complex forms is debatable with the increasing solar output. Maybe for a while.

            2. WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTRACT

               So at least we agree on one very important point! We need to completely restructure the current system! Your other points fall under the heading of logical fallacies 101! It does not follow that renewables can not be useful in a different system, nor that constant increases in consumption would automatically be a precondition in a completely new system.

               It seems the main point of contention between us is that you do not accept that a completely different system is even possible and that no matter any evidence to the contrary, the future will always be like the past.

               And again, for the 1,736th time, it may well be that we are witnessing the last vestiges of human civilization and we are on the eve of destruction. However it still does not logically follow that no other systems are possible.

               1. It seems the main point of contention between us is that you do not accept that a completely different system is even possible and that no matter any evidence to the contrary, the future will always be like the past.

                  The main point of contention is that I think renewables are worse than worthless, they are destructive, and any future improved system will not include them.

                  I also think, based on human history, that the likelihood of a nondestructive system is vanishingly small.

            3. “However, the primary focus here, again and again and again, is solar deployment and EV sales. Which I think are inherently destructive in a manner similar to fossil fuels, because they are created and maintained by the same destructive system.”

               Not exactly. There is a very important distinction to be made between a FF powered civilization and a renewable powered one. The FF system is a bit like a drug dealer who would willingly subsidized the drug delivery mechanism, their greater interest being the recurrent supply of the drug. The analogy with renewables and EVs would be the cannabis supplier facilitating the purchase of bongs with the full knowledge that most of their customers have a nice collection of various strains of cannabis in their gardens and won’t ever need to buy anything else from them. Renewables and EVs will eventually kill demand for FF.

               I have a solar PV system that was made by “the same destructive system” as you call it and am planning to buy an EV. When I get the EV and generate most of the electricity I use from my own system, how much will I be paying in to “the system”? Multiply my actions by thousands, then millions, then billions and you are looking at a death by a billion cuts for the current system. Look at what many companies are doing in Australia in response to high electricity prices. They are installing their own solar PV and if they need it, they will install storage as well.

               1. The liver fluke controls the ant and turns it into a reflexive zombie for the liver flukes purposes. The ant not only cannot fulfill it’s purpose for the nest but ends up dead.
                  Fossil fuels are like that, they are now controlling society for their own self-preservation while pushing the society toward thermodynamic ecological death.
                  The first order of action should be to stop being fossil fuel zombies. Cold turkey is an instantaneous death knell. Staying with FF will cause worldwide disruption with a likely scenario of being a radioactive planet or a mostly dead world through massive climate change.
                  Therefor breaking free of FF through transistion to low impact energy systems is the path forward. The next step is a bit more complex but is already showing itself.

               2. Not exactly. There is a very important distinction to be made between a FF powered civilization and a renewable powered one.

                  You really just don’t seem to get my argument. The system that creates renewables is destructive. To create each and every one, we destroy the Earth further. Swapping fossil fuels with renewables does NOTHING to change the system. It is the same system. It will be just as destructive whether it is powered by renewables or fossil fuels. The entire construct that is allowing us to build renewables is a consumerist, capitalist, extraction based, Earth consuming system.

               3. “The entire construct that is allowing us to build renewables is a consumerist, capitalist, extraction based, Earth consuming system.”

                  So breaking the entire fossil fuel driven civilization is bad in your estimate? Alternative is it will proceed.

                  Converting sand into silicon and glass is Earth consuming and will wreck the environment? Look at the mass balance. I think you have a perspective and magnitude problem Niko. 1 does not equal 1 million.

                  Did you know squirrels and deer kill millions of trees each year, maybe billions? They eat the nuts and seeds as well as eat the young growing trees. How destructive can you get?
                  Oh wait, as long as a balance occurs, it’s OK. Destruction and growth are the two sides of nature. One without the other causes operations to cease.

               4. The system that creates renewables is destructive.

                  Yeah, I think we all know that already! So work on changing the system and don’t throw the renewables out with the bath water!

                  BTW, despite your constant protestations there are plenty of people who are already working on exactly that. As always, the necessary disclaimer: They may fail!

               5. ” It will be just as destructive whether it is powered by renewables or fossil fuels.”

                  Oh really? So you actually think providing energy for the current global civilisation using methods that produce 37.1bn tonnes of carbon emissions (2018), in addition to the other nasties like particulates and nitrogen oxides, not to mention the toxic stew that is coal ash, is “just as destructive” as providing the energy from zero emissions, renewable technology would be?

                  Further up, in your comment on 04/20/2019 at 12:36 pm you state,
                  “I think that we should downsize and return to a non-technological society as quickly as possible.”. You know damned well that nothing of that sort is going to happen voluntarily.You also know that the current political system, being led by Neo-classical Economics, is not going to enforce any such ideas. That genie is out of the bottle and there’s no putting him back in without the use of superior magic.

                  You also state in your 04/20/2019 at 12:36 pm that ” I think we should stop using fossil fuels immediately. We won’t do that. The good news is, depletion will do that for us.”. I do not believe you have thought through the implications of that. almost 8 billion humans (and growing) will totally trash all life on this planet in their attempts to survive in a world with dwindling energy supplies.

                  You conclude your comment on 04/20/2019 at 12:36 pm, by stating “Luckily, I don’t think they will work, so at worst we are just wasting a bunch of our remaining resources on them. I think it would be better to not waste our remaining resources on them.”. With those statements you are either wittingly or unwittingly taking a leaf straight out of the play book of Charles Koch and his ilk. They want the world to think exactly like that, since the consequence would be the continued wanton burning of FF to the benefit of the “consumerist, capitalist, extraction based, Earth consuming system” you so claim to oppose.

                  In some respects renewable energy and EVs are a real threat to the status quo, in that they stand to remove the opportunity for a select few to extract critical energy resources and profit from the distribution and sales of those resources to an energy dependent world. Renewable energy promises to allow much greater participation in the harnessing of energy by the general public. Not exactly the same. Not by a long shot!

               6. We now have new and different contexts in which your non-renewable renewable technologies and what they might power are entering and subject to, and yet with fossil fuels still burning away like there’s no tomorrow.

                  That’s the point I just made in one of my other recent comments.

                  Our first priority is with the Earth and our survival, which includes the web of life that supports us.
                  Nothing else matters where they are threatened.

         3. From The Archives

            “If, as you suggest, the planet is ‘FUBAR’, then their priorities seem a little screwed up, including yours.

            So how about growing a pair and considering sucking up less to that sort of industrial narrative?

            Like a good little anarchist? Or was that just out of the other corner of your mouth with one proverbial finger crossed behind your back?

            ‘Thanks, augjohnson, for clearly stating a major beef of mine! A very large group of Americans aren’t able to afford food and healthcare, right now. Buying a $27,000.00 EV even with a $7,500 tax credit is completely beyond their reach. They are lucky if they can buy a $3,500 ten year old ICE beater.’ ~ FMagyar

            See also.

10. Not sure if buses fall in the cargo category Island Boy, but here is a an update on what one city is implementing-
    https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/18/oregons-trimet-welcomes-its-1st-xcelsior-charge-electric-bus-which-will-run-on-clean-renewable-energy/

    1. Buses are a large part of the CV category. Thanks for the link. I had left New Flyer out of part 2 so, I’m glad you’ve reminded me.

    2. Kool–
       (I’m a OR resident)

11. In continuation of preparation for part 2 I have discovered something that many people may not be aware of. The scale of the issue surprised me. The Chinese central government has been throwing an unimaginable amount of money at the electric commercial vehicle manufacturing sector, in particular the electric bus manufacturing sector

    As will come out in Part 2, “Globally, there are an estimated 385,000 fully electric buses, and according to a recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, 99 percent of them are in China.” This was reported in May 2018 and the article cited BNEF as stating that Chinese manufacturers were cranking electric buses out at the rate of 1,900 a week (9,500 every five weeks)! Another article on the subject from January, 2018 states, “Shenzhen’s transport commission said on Dec. 27 that it had transitioned its 16,359 buses to all-electric models” The May “2018 article also reported, “According to the World Resource Institute, the city received $150,000 in subsidy per bus prior to 2016—more than half the cost of each one.” Assuming that of the 16,359 buses delivered to the city between the start of the project in 2009 and the end of 2017, only 10,000 got the subsidy, that would amount to $1.5 billion for one city with a population of some 12 million out of China’s more than 1.4 billion!

    Free market espousing, right leaning governments in the west have a problem. If one party is not playing by the same rules as everybody else, how does the “free market” correct for this? Tariffs? That won’t change the fact that one Chinese company, based in Shenzen, now has the benefit of having built more than 50,000 battery electric buses since 2009 making them the most experienced electric bus manufacturer in the world. Having got the “push start” the also have the benefit of the economies of scale. There may be countries out there that would rather take advantage of all these factors and buy the buses especially if they have no local bus manufacturing industry to worry about. How does the “free market deal with that?

    This is very reminiscent of how the Chinese came to dominate the PV manufacturing sector!

    1. Central planning has certainly got its benefits- like getting things done.

       Here is another e-bus story for the US-
       https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/proterra-rolls-out-bus-battery-leasing-program-with-mitsui#gs.679pg2

    2. There is a huge difference in the way that American and Chinese companies treat competition. The American companies use litigation, tariffs etc to halt the competition while the Chinese ones go all out to out compete the competition. If America continues this pattern it will destroy itself.

       NAOM

       1. “If America continues this pattern it will destroy itself.”
          I would like to expand that to the broader world.
          All developed civilization is set on a course to destroy itself and much of the world in total.

          1. https://psmag.com/news/extinction-rebellion-stages-demonstrations-around-the-world-in-photos

             EXTINCTION REBELLION STAGES DEMONSTRATIONS AROUND THE WORLD (IN PHOTOS)
             Climate change protests around the world are stopping traffic and leading to widespread arrests.

             On its website, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion asked protesters to take “action on the streets of cities all over the world” beginning on Monday, April 15th. And in central London, demonstrations have continued all week.

             On Tuesday, Farhana Yamin, an international environmental lawyer who helped draft the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, was arrested after gluing her hands to the ground outside the Shell building in Central London. And on Friday, protesters blocked the entrance of the headquarters of the French oil company Total, demonstrated in Parliament Square, and blocked London’s Heathrow Airport. All this happened after Extinction Rebellion activists took off all of their clothing (except their underwear) and glued their hands to the glass of the House of Commons’ public gallery. Pepper spray has been used against the protesters, and nearly 700 people affiliated with the protests have been arrested in central London this week, according to the BBC.

             Extinction Rebellion has three simple demands:

             1) Tell the truth
             Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.

             2) Act Now
             Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.

             3) Beyond Politics
             Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

             Furthermore their tactics are based on nonviolent civil disobedience similar to the US civil rights movement.

             See work and research done by Erica Chenoweth
             https://www.ericachenoweth.com/

             Erica Chenoweth, Ph.D. is Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Chenoweth’s research focuses on political violence and its alternatives. Foreign Policy magazine ranked her among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2013 for her efforts to promote the empirical study of civil resistance. Her next book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, forthcoming 2020), explores in an accessible and conversational style what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance.

             Also:

             The Met said it would continue to liaise with protesters and encouraged them to go to Marble Arch.

             A statement added: “One thing that is unusual about this demonstration is the willingness of those participating to be arrested and also their lack of resistance to the arrests.”

             Yep, ‘The Powers That Be’ just don’t get it.

             1. At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home & our being, drive a spear into the land, & say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government & corporations, “thus far & no farther.”
                — Edward Abbey

12. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508066/audi-etron-delay-batteries-lg-chem

13. Watch the US stall on climate change for 12 years(Youtube video)

    It was once a bipartisan issue, but now one of America’s major parties acts like climate science doesn’t exist. This is an updated version of a video we published in 2016.

    Very interesting to watch several prominent republicans do a complete 180° on the subject of Climate Change between the end of 2008 and 2016, condensed down to twelve minutes! It would seem pretty obvious to me that this is a result of lobbying and donations from FF interests in addition to a fairly sophisticated PR and smear campaign by the “Merchants of Doubt”, to influence the minds of the voting public, funded by these same interests. Oh, how I would love to see the guilty parties hauled before the courts and tried for crimes against humanity (and the biosphere)!

    1. ASSUMING our country survives and remains more or less free, I have great hopes that the younger people will see thru most or maybe even nearly all of the FUD being so liberally published by the old line political and business establishment.

       The day when you got your news from Huntley and Brinkley or Walter Cronkite and or your local daily paper is LONG gone. Nearly all the younger people I meet these days GET IT, in terms of political corruption, cronyism, civil rights, the environment, etc…… if they are paying ANY attention at all to anything other than the opposite sex and having a good time.

       The youngsters these days are getting their political news from tv shows such as SNL.

    2. Oh, how I would love to see the guilty parties hauled before the courts and tried for crimes against humanity (and the biosphere)!

       I couldn’t agree more!

       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/20/our-leaders-are-ignoring-global-warming-to-the-point-of-criminal-negligence-its-unforgivable

       Our leaders are ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence. It’s unforgivable
       Tim Winton

       Humanity survived the cold war because no one pushed the button. On climate change, the button has been pushed again and again

       The problem – and it’s an existential threat both profound and perverse – is that those who lead us and have power over our shared destiny are ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence. Worse than that, their policies, language, patronal obligations and acts of bad faith are poisoning us, training citizens to accept the prospect of inexorable loss, unstoppable chaos, certain doom. Business as usual is robbing people of hope, white-anting the promise of change. That’s not just delinquent, it’s unforgivable.

       1. E FredM,

          white-anting?

          How did termites get into the discussion?

          (Port. More Port.)

    3. And our side would like to see your side’s guilty parties hauled before the courts and tried for crimes against commerce (and economic growth)!

       1. crimes against commerce (and economic growth)!

          LOL! That’s a good one, I must admit!

          Sorry Alex! History is not going to be on your side in this particular debate!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWsM9-_zrKo
          Greta Thunberg’s emotional speech to EU leaders

          1. Lock her up! ?

       2. How much is Charles Koch paying you to post your folly? If you are doing it for free and you are as wealthy as the Kochs I could understand but, I strongly doubt that you are a millionaire, much less a. multi-billionaire. I hope they are paying you well because, if not, your post proves that the millions of dollars that they have spent on trying to disseminate their points of view, has been extraordinarily successful!

14. Just got the six year check up on my 2013 Leaf battery – still at 91.5% capacity, just about 1.5% annual decline. I was told to plan for 3%/year so this is definitely a pleasant surprise. That’s at 51K, so approximately 1000 charge cycles. The range started at 82 and is now about 75. I always charge it to full capacity although I’ve heard charging to 80% is better (the range is too pathetic to only charge to 80%).

    1. Does yours have the newer, more heat tolerant, so called “lizard battery” or is it one of the original, first generation batteries? If it is a 1st gen, I’m guessing you live in a region that never gets really hot?

    2. Excellent Stephen.
       Some (most?) auto batteries , like those in my Chrysler Pacifica plugin hybrid, do not allow a full charge to 100%. It is automatically limited.
       For example, When you charge to full on my 16kv pack, the actual is only 12kv. They do this to protect the batteries and promote long life.
       I don’t know if the older Leaf’s do this.
       I have an electric bike charger that allows you to select level of charge- 100,90, 80%.
       I always charge to 80%, except about once a year I try to go full cycle [empty to 100%]

       Fast charging, and full charging, will cut about 1/2 life from lithium battery life.

       1. Hi Islandboy, it’s a second generation battery, in its first year of production. I live in central North Carolina, so summers are hot but not scorching (my car is also black unfortunately but that’s what was available). Really I have done nothing special to take care of it so it’s good health may be luck, but at least it shows the battery tech does/can work in the real world. Initially I thought I would need a new battery in the 8-10 year time frame but now I’m hoping to get a dozen years out of it (unless Nissan screws me and stops selling replacements).

15. Apologies for posting this here islandboy. Couldn’t find the non-petroleum thread.

    The yellow vest are going at it again in France. So apparently these billionaires hand out money by the buttload for fixing a fucking church, while fighting tooth and nail against increasing middle and lower class wages, who are barely making ends meet.

    https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/yellow-vest-anger-burns-in-france-fuelled-by-notre-dame-donations-20190421-p51fw9.html

    1. The French wrecked the cathedral once before. Now they are up in arms again. Will it go as far as it did in the past?

       1. Yeah, that was a peoples’ rebellion back then too.

          NAOM

          1. Let’s just say I hope they don’t decide to ‘Make France Great Again!’

             “Most of the people rounded up were not aristocrats, but ordinary people. A man (and his family) might go to the guillotine for saying something critical of the revolutionary government. If an informer happened to overhear, that was all the tribunal needed… The promises of the Declaration of the Rights of Man were forgotten. Terror was the order of the day.”

             The Reign of Terror

             1. The “reign of terror” lasted less than a year. It’s original purpose of protecting France from enemies of the state and foreign enemies was perverted and continued by Robespierre past it’s usefulness. Robespierre and his followers were executed.
                Another lesson in choosing the proper leader and having the courage to get rid of him when he went too far.
                Something like 16,000 were executed in France.

                Compare that to the reign of terror we live under year after year. At least 10 million die every year directly due to fossil fuel burn. Many hundreds of millions are having their health ruined.
                The high school in the region where I live had 25% of the students being asthmatic, living directly downwind of a nasty coal burning power plant (now closed).

                And the reign of terror promoted into the future by global warming and other pollution, upon all species.
                A one year purge is nothing compared to the current reign of terror that goes on every day in the cancer treatment wards, hospitals, in the fields and forests and oceans.

                Resistance may be futile, but we will do it anyway.

16. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/04/19/the-what-and-when-of-p2g/

    While using electricity to make hydrogen and or methane is at first glance a waste of energy, once you think the energy supply problem all the way thru, it makes sense….. assuming pv juice is both abundant and dirt cheap.

    Fossil fuel depletion in and of itself is an ample guarantee that we will eventually be building wind and solar capacity at least double what’s necessary to run the country on sunny and windy days and nights, on the many days when it will be cloudy and calm over large areas, making it necessary to have lots of long distance interconnections.

    So……… on days when it IS sunny and windy, most places, wind and solar power will actually fulfill the old nuclear power promise of being ” too cheap to meter”!

    Manufactured H2 and methane will be easy and cheap to store , cheaper than batteries, and the gas fired infrastructure for burning them is already in place, most places. Old coal fired plants can be gutted and refitted with gas turbines, making good use of existing transmission lines.

    Has anybody seen anything new recently about the possibility of extracting lithium from sea water?

    With cheap enough electricity it’s possible that we might have for all practical purposes an unlimited supply of lithium.

    1. OFM- do you think we will have enough money to build so much energy source [assuming we had the inclination]?

       1. Good morning ,Hickory

          My personal opinion is yes, no, and maybe, lol.

          Seriously, the only way we will find out is to live long enough to see it happen, or not.

          Rephrasing the question throws some light on the subject.

          Can we afford NOT to build something along this line?

          It’s a do or die question. Fossil fuel depletion is baked in, assuming industrial civilization lasts, and it cannot last without ample and readily available energy.

          One scenario is that we just continue on our merry way, expecting the Invisible Hand and the Mighty Mighty Market to solve the energy problem…… which might work. This is possible, if we assume that peak fossil fuel energy arrives as a plateau gradually falling off over many years, rather than as a sharp peak followed by a sharp decline….. in which case failure is likely to inevitable.

          Under Seneca Cliff circumstances, short term survival determines policy, and little or nothing will be available for long term investment on the necessary scale, unless maybe the leadership of a given country can convince the people that a flat out wartime economy is necessary to survival, meaning strict rationing, industry forcibly converted to renewable, sustainable, and conservation policies, etc, for an indefinite period. Pearl Harbor type events will be necessary to convince anybody excepting the scientific community that such policies are necessary and essential to our survival.

          It’s also possible that as and IF fossil fuels deplete in a gradual fashion, various individuals, organizations, and governments will see the writing on the wall, and start investing in such new infrastructure on the grand scale. This is already happening, and at an encouraging pace, but not nearly fast enough to suit me.

          So far as I’m concerned, relying on a purely market based policy is reckless in the extreme, and apt to get us into WWIII as various governments start hot resource wars in order to ensure their own survival.

          If the cards fall in such a way that the LEVIATHANS, meaning various national governments individually and collectively, are aroused from their slumbers, and grow seriously alarmed about their own survival, SOON ENOUGH, the odds are good to excellent( again my opinion based on my own research) that we can successfully transition to a sustainable industrial economy powered by renewable energy, supplemented with relatively small amounts of fossil fuels during the later stages of the transition, and eventually giving up burning fossil fuels altogether.

          Somebody will probably accuse me of being a Nazi or at least a Nazi sympathizer for pointing out that at the end of WWI, Germany was in ruins, desperately short of damned near every resource except two……. the German people and will power.

          In roughly a decade, the Nazis built the most powerful and technologically advanced war machine in history, by a factor of four or five. The fact that it was a total waste of the talents and sweat of the German people, and resulted in the worst war in history, with Germany once again a nation in ruins, is NOT the point.

          The point is that they DID build this war machine, that it was POSSIBLE to do it, and that it’s POSSIBLE that IF modern day Yankees, modern day Limey’s, modern day Hungarians, Swedes, Brazilians, Russians, Mexicans, Canadians come to understand that either they build renewable energy economies or revert to an animal powered economy………

          They CAN build such new economies, individually and collectively.

          For what we Yankees spent in blood ( not much in historical terms ) and treasure fighting the last hot war we got into in the Middle East, we could now easily build ten thousand square miles of solar farms someplace in the sunny Southwest, on federal land, and the HVDC transmission lines needed to get all that juice where it’s needed.

          Electrical energy storage can and will be accomplished, one way or another, probably half a dozen ways at scale, and combined with conservation and efficiency, we can get by just fine. A double or triple sized super insulated water heater can serve in the place of dozens of hours of on demand kilowatt hours, over the short term course of a few days, and couple of thousand dollars worth of gravel with embedded duct work or refrigerant lines, built into the crawl space or slab of a new house, can store heat or cold for days at a time.

          We can change our tax laws and our culture so that the higher status status symbol will be a solar roof rather than an unneeded new car (unless it’s ELECTRIC of course!) in the driveway, and so that a new house with new appliances will produce excess energy for sale. Furniture can be made to last for centuries. Mine will be around, barring fire, hundreds of years from now…… maybe in museums, lol.

          Pray to the Rock, Snake, Mountain, Fish, Bear,Sky Daddy or Sky Mommy you hold most dear for Pearl Harbor Wake Up events.

          LOTS of them.

          Just ONE brick upside the head of the average Joe Sixpack, the typical voter on the street, is seldom enough to get his attention, but Joe owns the future, via the ballot box. Two or three such events that impact him DIRECTLY will likely be necessary to get his attention.

          There’s a credible case to be made for the argument that while Pearl Harbor cost us Yankees most of our Pacific Fleet of battleships and a lot of fine sailors, it also WON WWII for the Allies, by getting us Yankees into the war in time to prevent Germany and Japan from consolidating their gains and growing powerful enough that we would have lacked the means and the will to beat them later on.

          Pearl Harbor events have proven to be the best things that have ever happened to a number of people I know, and history is replete with countries saving themselves by changing their policies as the result of such events, or even just taking note of new technologies. Winston Churchill understood that the age of coal was over, and that the age of oil had arrived, and saved the British Empire for another generation by seeing that oil was the fuel of the future, rather than coal.

          Political and cultural change triggered on the grand scale by Pearl Harbor Wake Up events may be the only real hope your grandchildren have of living a dignified and comfortable life.

          1. Thanks for reply OFM.
             I guess the 2008 economic downturn wasn’t a big enough ‘Pearl Harbor moment’, for the USA to change its financial system at all. Glass Steagal act is still repealed, and the election of Trump shows the country is still infatuated with those who can commit high financial crimes and still avoid being jailed.

             In regard to energy transition, it is possible that the Pearl Harbor moment you speak of as a motivating force will come at a time when our pants down. It is hard run out the outhouse when your pants are below your knees. By this analogy, I mean that we may be uncredit worthy just when we will need to be extremely credit worthy to pay for this transition , at scale (to borrow your most appropriate wording).

             We shall see. I sincerely hope we get a new administration with the ability to enact the 2nd inning of a big [huge] transition.

          2. The Seneca Cliff article in Wikipedea can do with some work. Anyone with good knowledge and citations should pop over there and update it.

             NAOM

          3. Hey Trumpster, I am in Seneca, SC this week. Crank up the old Buick and come see me. Bring your fishing pole, Lake Hartwell.

             1. LOL! can’t wait for the picts!

             2. Hi HB,

                I would love to, but I’m pretty much stuck at home for the duration, however long my old Daddy lives.That might be a few days to a few more years.

                Keep up the good work!

                1. Have you read the Mueller report yet ?

                2. No, but I have watched a couple of dozen news program excerpts of it, on the net,plus almost everything on You Tube about it.
                   Plus the usual articles in major papers such as the LA Times, the WP, NYT, etc, up to the limits of free articles, plus what’s in some magazines such as the Atlantic.

                   It’s obvious that Trump ought to be in jail or maybe in a psych hospital.

                3. “It’s obvious that Trump ought to be in jail or maybe in a psych hospital.”

                   I’ll say it again- it was obvious well before the election as well.
                   Disgraceful to have cheered him, saluted him, voted for him, or enabled him in any way.

                4. You should definitely download a copy!

                   While it is written in dry legalese, The story it tells, OMG!

                   Every US citizen should read it. Not even so much as to learn what it says about Trump and his behavior, he is after all just a pathetic low life and a loser, but to get a behind the scenes look at the deep, dark, malodorous and slimy world of which he is obviously a born and bred native.

                   Volume one is a pretty juicy read, but it is Volume two and the obstruction of justice investigation, that should leave you hanging on the edge of your seat! After reading it, most will conclude that Rex Tillerson’s characterization of him, may have been the understatement of the century.

                   While Muller, may not be a writer of prose, IMHO, he is at least as good a story teller as Samuel Clemens! To be clear it is necessary to familiarize oneself with some of his arcane technical language and more importantly to be adept at reading between the lines, for it is there, that a significant part of the story occurs.

                   I rate Muller’s report at 4 and a half, out of 5 stars!
                   Great read, Highly recommended. 🙂
                   Cheers!

                5. So why is he not in jail? Is our judicial system that corrupt? Is he more powerful than all of us? What kind of banana republic is this? Has Mueller no balls?

                6. @farmlad
                   Remember what happened to Al Capone? Remember the Teflon Don? Remember the recent case of a Mafia Boss shot dead who was living in the open? It is getting the right evidence for a conviction that is difficult. You may know damn well they are guilty but putting together a case that will stand up in court is another matter.

                   NAOM

       2. Hickory, building renewable energy saves money. It does not cost money.
          6 kWh replaces 1 gallon of gasoline (actually more that is another story). That is, at current grid rates, $0.72 instead of $2.60. If we all had EV’s the average driver would have about an extra $1000 in his/her pocket each year. If one had roof PV that is even more money in the pocket each year.
          That comes to about 260 billion dollars saved each year for an initial 600 billion in PV(utility scale cost). In other words, a saving of 7 trillion dollars over 30 years (lifespan of panels). Might be a lot more if gasoline costs rise as predicted and a huge amount more if we run out of oil.
          Every PV panel installed saves money and not just for EV’s. EV’s are the sweet spot.

          1. Hi GF,
             “Hickory, building renewable energy saves money. It does not cost money.”

             In the long run, I certainly agree.
             But to get to the lung run, you have to come up a lot of money in the here and now. By money, I mean cash, or credit worthiness. And it is not even close to trivial amounts required, whether you are talking about an individual, community, state or country.
             Example, to provide an individual family for enough PV for transport, heating/cooling, home electricity needs, and their business/job needs for energy, roughly $50K (+/- 50K).
             That doesn’t account for any EV. Throw that in.
             Or do the same equation on a big scale- countrywide. Put industry and agriculture into the equation. Erase all air travel.

             Its a huge cost to bear (and yes, in the long run its a great investment).
             My question was to OFM- can we come up with the money to pull it off?
             I’m not at all certain of it. Depends on the decisions we make (prioritize), and perhaps luck of circumstances, I suppose. Since 1960 , when I was born, this country has been horrible at decision making. I’m not expecting some great change in that.

             1. Since my discovery yesterday of the huge incentives the Chinese central government has given to the EV manufacturing sector, I have decided to revise part 2 of this series and start it with a section on China. Stay tuned! You should find it interesting.

                1. Islandboy,

                   Could you check your e-mail please?

             2. By money, I mean cash, or credit worthiness. And it is not even close to trivial amounts required, whether you are talking about an individual, community, state or country.

                True, but keep in mind, as we have discussed here on a previous post by Islandboy, that we are looking at a cost to the global economy of about 2.4 trillion dollars per year over the next decade to transition to a fully renewable economy.

                Which does seem like an insurmountable amount until we remember that, that is what the the world spends per year on the global fashion industry alone.

                Perhaps we need to reassess our priorities a bit, eh?

                1. Some people are unhappy even with a less than three year payback.
                   The key to all this is not to get the fanciest, the best, the most. We merely have to be good enough. That is a long way away, but if cost is actually the problem (I don’t think so) then do half systems and cut back. Increase the systems later.
                   Creative methods and innovation cost little money and can go a long way.

             3. Sheesh, what a downer. I never said that it would be done, just bringing up the economics. It does pay as you go you know.
                Probably going to keep spending $350 billion dollars a year on gasoline until the rapture. That is sure no huge cost to bear. Especially as it kills us and the planet.
                Happy Feedback Day, enjoy the warmth.

             4. The Fed prints money and the interest rate is the time value of money. If the economics are profitable. Business men will build it. When the Fed lowers interest rates, it makes projects more profitable. When to much money is chasing to few goods you get inflation. We have been in a low inflation environment for some time now. If renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel. The transition will happen.

                1. This whole discussion that posits we can convert entirely to renewables I think is extremely optimistic. The EROEI for solar, wind and water worldwide (combination generously might be 15:1) is not high enough to compete with fossil fuels (between 100:1 down to 30:1).

                   Here is one of many article about the EROEI concept https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#744fba76a027

                   Anyway, for renewables to be self sustaining (i.e we no longer use fossil fuels), you need to be able to build and maintain all the mining equipment and steelmaking mills and transport systems that mine the minerals and smelt them to make the components that go into wind turbines and solar panels not to mention under current economic conditions we have to ship the raw materials to China, manufacture there, ship back etc all using only solar, wind and water.

                   I doubt this can be done AND maintain the same extravagant energy lifestyle we all enjoy today. Especially not when energy storage is brought into the mix to avoid intermittency issues.

                   And let’s face it, no one anywhere has every produced a wind turbine or solar panel in a self sustaining system where all power to manufacture, install and maintain comes also from the same renewable power sources.

                   The transition costs for this would be massive. You would need to change every input and process step along the way from one energy source to another.

                   As a research project this is one I think we need to do very soon to determine just what is possible in terms of energy left over if we try to use renewables only to manufacture the next set of renewables.

                   More realistic I think is to focus all fossil fuel use on the manufacture of renewable energy producing systems and use renewables wherever they make sense (e.g long distant flights) because we require a dense energy source.

                   Let’s also not forget that via the Haber Bosch process the world now relies on fossil fuels just to boost crop production to a level that sustains current global population.

                   Anyway – I think though cannot prove it’s unlikely we can live even remotely close to the way we do now on only renewables + battery technology.

                2. Anyway, for renewables to be self sustaining (i.e we no longer use fossil fuels), you need to be able to build and maintain all the mining equipment and steelmaking mills and transport systems that mine the minerals and smelt them to make the components that go into wind turbines and solar panels not to mention under current economic conditions we have to ship the raw materials to China, manufacture there, ship back etc all using only solar, wind and water.

                   This kind of argument is typical of those who do not grasp the implications of all the disruptive technologies and advances in materials science that are totally changing the way we can produce materials, manufacture all of the above, reduce the need for much of long distance transport etc…

                   Anyway – I think though cannot prove it’s unlikely we can live even remotely close to the way we do now on only renewables + battery technology.

                   The only thing I know for sure is that that many of the old systems, political. social, economic, technical etc… that have gotten us to where we are are today, are currently severely compromised and in the throes of systemic failure.

                   A very different new world is being born and we are experiencing radical systemic paradigm shifts on multiple levels. The danger that I see is that there are very powerful forces in play doing every thing they can, to keep much of this from happening as quickly as it needs to. So the risk is that we run out of time and this new world is stillborn.

                   Making predictions is hard, especially about the future
                   Yogi Berra

                   Cheers!

                3. Fred Yogi Berra didn’t say that. It was Niels Bohr.

                4. Heisenberg was uncertain…

                5. They both said it.

                   “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
                   Yogi Berra

                   “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
                   Niels Bohr

                   I don’t know who said is first. Bohr died in 1963, Yogi’s last playing year. But the odds are Bohr said it first.

                   And it could be that Berra never said it. It could have been attributed to him by someone who heard it and just assumed that Berra said it because it sounds so much like him.

                6. Heisenberg was uncertain…

                   And because of that, poor little Schrödinger’s kitty ended up with only 4.5 possible lives out of the normal 9, allotted to the average feline… 😉

                7. Those EROEI numbers are wrong.

                8. That is an article written by a nuclear shill.

                   NAOM

       3. Money is only a means of exchange. The question should be do we have the will and/or resources. Resources yes, will to be determined.

17. Caught with our pants down in the Arctic.

    It’s bad enough that climate science is downgrading the effect of methane by about 5 times. All those graphs you see show what effect a pulse of methane would have over 100 years, not what it is actually having nor what the actual atmospheric concentration might be (now increasing fast) in the future. The real effect is about 150 times molecule of methane in the atmosphere compared to a molecule of CO2.
    Now we have found out that methane has an even larger effect than previously thought to the shortwave radiation (light) but that is another story about another feedback for another time.

    Now we have not been paying attention to the Arctic release of nitrous oxide (300X CO2 at 100 years). If you are interested listen to Paul Beckwith talk about the reanalysis of aircraft sampling data from 6 years ago now showing 12 times the rate of release that was originally thought. Of course we have no baseline for seeing changes over time because it was not observed. They finally looked the data. Sheesh.

    Both methane and nitrous oxide also influence ozone concentration.

    Happy Feedback Day.

    1. Paul Beckwith recently uploaded 2 videos onArctic Emissions of Nitrous Oxide.
       Part 1
       https://youtu.be/fLopWeZVTg8

       1. And here is the research paper
          Permafrost nitrous oxide emissions observed on a landscape scale
          using the airborne eddy-covariance method
          If permafrost N2O emissions are already not negligible,
          their predicted increase with warming permafrost soil temperatures
          could result in a non-carbon climate feedback of a
          currently unanticipated magnitude.
          https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/19/4257/2019/acp-19-4257-2019.pdf

    2. Happy Feedback Day

       No worries! We are currently in the process of creating living (sorta) artificial biological machines with the capability to evolve. Knowing how stupid and filled with hubris humans can be, we will surely attempt to imbue them with advanced AI capabilities. Setting them free to figure out how to develop super energy efficient metabolic pathways, at which point they might just decide that humans are an existential threat to their survival and need to be eliminated ASAP! …It’s time to stop worrying about the future, because chances are, we aren’t going to be around to experience it.

       https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/29/eaaw3512

       Dynamic DNA material with emergent locomotion behavior powered by artificial metabolism

       Abstract
       Metabolism is a key process that makes life alive—the combination of anabolism and catabolism sustains life by a continuous flux of matter and energy. In other words, the materials comprising life are synthesized, assembled, dissipated, and decomposed autonomously in a controlled, hierarchical manner using biological processes. Although some biological approaches for creating dynamic materials have been reported, the construction of such materials by mimicking metabolism from scratch based on bioengineering has not yet been achieved. Various chemical approaches, especially dissipative assemblies, allow the construction of dynamic materials in a synthetic fashion, analogous to part of metabolism. Inspired by these approaches, here, we report a bottom-up construction of dynamic biomaterials powered by artificial metabolism, representing a combination of irreversible biosynthesis and dissipative assembly processes. An emergent locomotion behavior resembling a slime mold was programmed with this material by using an abstract design model similar to mechanical systems. Dynamic properties, such as autonomous pattern generation and continuous polarized regeneration, enabled locomotion along the designated tracks against a constant flow. Furthermore, an emergent racing behavior of two locomotive bodies was achieved by expanding the program. Other applications, including pathogen detection and hybrid nanomaterials, illustrated further potential use of this material. Dynamic biomaterials powered by artificial metabolism could provide a previously unexplored route to realize “artificial” biological systems with regenerating and self-sustaining characteristics.

       Who knows, maybe they will evolve to survive by metabolizing CH4. Thus answering the age old question about our purpose in this universe. To create the conditions for the evolution of a super intelligent race of extremophile methanotrophic artificial lifeform/robots!

       If we look at the 4.5 billion year history of this planet, stranger things have happened… 😉

       Cheers!

       1. Let’s make them out of plastic! Then they can recycle us.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfo53uqn7cE
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yonrHZILH8

       2. “No worries!…. Who knows, maybe they will evolve to survive by metabolizing CH4” ~ FM

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitposting

          1. Bro, do yourself a favor! Just put me on your ignore list, you’ll be much happier that way! Apparently you don’t get my sarcasm. That’s fine, there are others that do!

    3. This scientist thinks she has the key to curb climate change: super plants
       Adam Popescu

       https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/16/super-plants-climate-change-joanne-chory-carbon-dioxide

       If this were a film about humanity’s last hope before climate change wiped us out, Hollywood would be accused of flagrant typecasting. That’s because Dr Joanne Chory is too perfect for the role to be believable.

       The esteemed scientist – who has long banged the climate drum and now leads a project that could lower the Earth’s temperature – is perhaps the world’s leading botanist and is on the cusp of something so big that it could truly change our planet.

       “We’re trying to do something that’s a huge, complicated thing even though it sounds so simple,” Chory says. “Plants evolved to suck up CO2 and they’re really good at it. And they concentrate it, which no machine can do, and they make it into useful materials, like sugar. They suck up all the CO2, they fix it, then it goes back up into the atmosphere.”

       She is now working to design plants capable of storing even more carbon dioxide in their roots. Her Ideal Plant project uses gene editing – via traditional horticulture and Crispr – to do so. On a large scale, this could suck enough carbon out of the atmosphere to slow down climate change.

       This concept basically splices the genes of regular crops and everyday plants like beans, corn and cotton, with a new compound that makes them absorb more carbon. Their roots then transfer it to the soil to keep it there.

       This approach essentially supercharges what nature already does.

       Developing these Ideal Plants is step one in the Harnessing Plants Initiative, which amplifies root systems and production of suberin – which is essentially cork, or the rind on your cantaloupe, the magic key to plants holding more of that carbon – before transferring these genetic traits to row and cover crops. Given the right resources, and funding, prototypes of each crop are expected to be ready in the next five years.

       A $2m gift by Howard Newman, a Salk board member and private equity veteran who has invested in oil and gas, jump-started the project last June. In April, Salk received a TED Audacious grant totaling $35m to support the plan.

       1. Well, I wish her team luck with their project. They certainly have done well with the marketing and fundraising.

          The big problem with these kind of schemes is that any reduced carbon (sugars, cellulose, etc) that are the product of photosynthesis- that gets put into the biosphere in an unprotected manner (such as plant roots in this example), rapidly gets oxidized to CO2 by living organisms such as fungus and bacteria.

          The exceptions are in protected settings that are unfavorable for normal metabolic pathways to operate. Examples- in an evacuated jar, under constant water like a peat bog (and eventually a fossil fuel bed), and temporarily within a living plant cell protected by a cell wall and on a large scale- a living tree.

          btw- even within a living plant cell it is a great struggle to last long. Fungi and bacteria are making constant inroads going after that reduced carbon (energy in the bonds). Read about wheat stem rust to get a flavor for the action. Wheat has trouble making three months without attack in much of the world/history. Constant breeding for resistance has helped the crop remain viable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_rust

18. Combined EV Sales In U.S. & Europe Less Than Half Of China In Q1

    In terms of BEV, sales China is second to none

    The Chinese plug-in electric market, and all-electric in particular, gradually expanded to a level that is now totally out of reach for the U.S. and Europe, even if we combine the two. In fact, China can now overcome the entire world in terms of BEV production and sales.

    AID analyst Matthias Schmidt (SchmidtMatthias.de) points out that during Q1 some 227,000 all-electric vehicles were registered in China (official CAAM data), while registrations in Western Europe amounted to just 81,100 (already a big record). In the U.S., the BEV car market is estimated at 41,000 for Q1.

    The reasons behind this will be covered in part 2, to be posted Wednesday, April 24 or thereabouts. The US and indeed, the rest of the world should be very concerned. The US lead in battery electric vehicles, largely attributable to Tesla Motors, may yet slip away.

19. Back atcha, Hickory

    Personally I believe that we CAN afford the cost of transition to a sustainable economy powered primarily by wind and sun, if we are once convinced that it’s a do or die proposition.

    It’s as Fred has pointed out, it’s simply a matter of priorities. Rationing may be necessary. My personal guess is that we will dawdle around, collectively, until it IS necessary, to a substantial extent.

    The various national governments of virtually all of the richer and more stable countries world wide have established emergency powers laws and procedures for putting them into place and administering them.

    Building ten thousand miles of HVDC transmission line or a thousand square miles of solar farms would be a piece of cake for Uncle Sam under wartime economic controls. The actual expense involved in mandating that all new refrigerators run on half the juice a typical new one uses today would be trivial…… it’s just a matter of using a slightly more efficient motor and compressor, and giving up a little interior space for more insulation.

    When the shit is once well and truly in the fan, the old rule books on finance will go out the window, and new ones based on Uncle Sam or John Bull’s say so are distributed overnight. It’s HARD to say no to federal marshall’s who ready to take control of your business and throw your ass in jail on a few hours notice under martial law, unless you cooperate.

    Electricians can be told how much they are going to be paid, and where they are going to work…. out of uniform if they cooperate, or IN uniform if they don’t. Positions can go unfilled in all sorts of government offices and programs, so that the money saved thereby can be put to work doing more critical work.

    An assembly lines that’s are producing car doors and fenders can be reorganized to produce racking for solar panels in a matter of weeks. The check signed by the designated federal official who ordered the racking manufactured WILL be good, although the federal deficit may be exploding like dynamite. That won’t matter very much, if the transition is successful…… and it won’t matter at all if it’s not.

    We could easily save two or three hundred million bucks per day, money that could be diverted to the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, by way of eating a healthier diet, one with less red meat in particular, and more whole grains, beans, veggies, etc…… and be all the healthier for it.

    An extra billion dollars every week or two is enough to pay for one hell of a lot of solar panels or insulation.

    1. Damn, everyone is so wildly optimist this season. Maybe Trump will indeed get re-elected.
       [i hope i’m being sarcastic]

       1. Last election, I posted that I would get drunk on election day and mourn my country, being unable to vote for either of the major party presidential candidates, but this time around, I don’t care if the D’s nominate HRC again.

          I’ll even vote for her, in order to vote against Trump, but then I was convinced one that Virginia would go D, which happened, and two that she would win, which didn’t.

          In the meantime, it’s always good to keep one eye on the bright side. Whatever we accomplish by way of going renewable and sustainable will make life easier and more pleasant for us and our descendants for a while, even if we fail in transitioning to a renewables based economy.

          I absolutely must give Trump credit for one thing, at least. He has proven to me that Mencken was right about the American people in so many ways.

          From Snopes:

          “A statement attributed to American journalist H. L. Mencken gained currency on many political blogs at the end of 2004 as an expression of the way many of President George W. Bush’s detractors regarded him, and it was subsequently applied by partisans from the other side of the political spectrum in reference to Bush’s successor in the White House, President Barack Obama, and then again to his successor, President Donald Trump:

          “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

          Mencken is out of fashion these days, due to the circular firing squad nature of the PC dominated literary establishment, but he’s a national treasure, and will always be remembered by people who have actually READ his work that he’s right on up there, on his better days, with ANYBODY.

          1. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
             Winston Churchill

             Cheers!

       2. “The problem is in US politics.”
          -Putin

20. I’m glad to see that at least once in a long while you can read some of the LESS WELL KNOWN facts about nuclear power, such as the fact that nukes CAN load follow, to a substantial extent.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/21/some-good-news-for-the-us-nuclear-fleet-renewables/

    I don’t support the construction of new nuclear plants using current designs, because they are too dangerous, as evidenced by recent history, but it’s possible that a new generation design could be both safe AND economic. Nuclear power isn’t necessarily finished for good.

    The ones we have could be used more efficiently, as outlined in this article, and quite a few of them will likely still be running for another ten or twenty years, barring another catastrophic accident.

21. Electric Car-Owners Shocked: New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars

    “The reality is, in addition to the CO2 emissions generated in mining the raw materials for the production of electric vehicles, all EU countries generate significant CO2 emissions from charging the vehicles’ batteries using dirty power plants…

    So maybe Elon Musk’s plan to save the world with electric cars is the biggest scam of our lifetime…”

    Watch: Shocking Video Shows Parked Tesla Spontaneously Exploding In Chinese Garage

    “Karma can be quite the funny thing.

    About 24 hours ahead of Tesla’s coming “Investor Day” and just moments after we broke the news that Tesla had been granted a restraining order on a short seller who has been critical of the company on Twitter, stunning video has surfaced of a Tesla catching fire and exploding, while parked.”

    1. Electric cars produce more co2 than diesel car
       http://brusselstimes.com/business/technology/15050/electric-vehicles-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones,-german-study-shows

       Maybe they’ll break even one day?
       https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/pe-ratio

       1. Survi-
          That is assuming the electricity comes from coal.
          Nat gas would be much better.
          Wind, hydro and solar are the big winners in this kind of analysis.
          Of course.

          Truth emanates from factual analysis.
          Unless you are talking about belief systems.

       2. LOL! So, you accuse me of shitposting and then post an absurd gish gallop of lies, half truths and logical fallacies?! Nice work!

          https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/20/electric-vehicles-bad-environment-politico-garbage-hit-job/

          Oh, POLITICO, Please Don’t Publish Garbage — Reality Check For Electric Vehicle Hit Job

          And a rather quick and succint rebuttal to similar BS straight from the mouth of someone deep in the evil den of Mordor aka Tesla.

          https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/a0dc7q/carbon_footprint_of_the_lithium_battery_pack/

          TheBurtReynold
          edited 4 months ago
          With respect, put the burden of explanation back on them — can they explain the carbon it takes to engineer, design, construct, and operate massive deep water drill platforms? The helicopters to shuttle crew to them? The entire production ==> delivery supply chain (oil tankers around the world, naval security for platforms and tankers to protect from piracy, tanker trucks to get fuel to individual gas stations around the country/world, etc.)?
          

          Yep, EVs are so much dirtier than all of that.

          Which might explain why all those Germans continue to jump on the EV band wagon and why they are banning diesels and not EVs.

          https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/04/electric-vehicle-sales-jump-67-in-europe-cleantechnicas-europe-ev-sales-report/

          Electric Vehicle Sales Jump 67% In Europe — CleanTechnica EV Sales Report

          Cheers!
          BTW the paper can be read here. It is in German but Google translate does an Ok job.
          http://www.cesifo-group.de/DocDL/sd-2019-08-sinn-karl-buchal-motoren-2019-04-25.pdf

          1. Plus, there’s always the fun question, which would you rather be locked in a garage with, a turned on EV or a running diesel?

             1. Would you rather be locked in a garage with a turned on coal-burning power-plant or a running diesel? 😀

                …Or how about stranded on a degrading planet with a whole bunch of relatively-mindless, rampant, crony-capitalist technofetishists? Not so funny is it.

    2. Always fun to point each and every Tesla fire while ignoring ICE vehicle fires.

       https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kia-motors-recall/kia-hyundai-expand-u-s-engine-fire-recalls-by-534000-vehicles-idUSKCN1QH2EB

       As to the EV’s having a bigger carbon footprint. I haven’t read a credible study yet, including the one you are posting.

       https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wheel-emissions-myth/

       1. We already know about ICEV fires. On the other hand, ostensibly spontaneously-combusting EV’s are funkadelic.

    3. You sir, are either wittingly or unwittingly carrying out the agenda of Charles Koch and his ilk. If you are not a paid FF troll dressed up in a green cloak of faux environmental concern, you simply jumped the gun being so overjoyed to find a “new” study that shows EVs in a bad light.

       Here’s a bit of advice. Before you propagate information that supposedly casts doubt on the green credentials of EVs, do an internet search on the title in quotation marks and look at the results. I used Google to search for “New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars” and the results were, “About 1,090 results (0.38 seconds)”. The first page was all “Electric Car-Owners Shocked: New Study Confirms EVs Considerably Worse For Climate Than Diesel Cars”, with your source (zerohedge) as the top result. All the results on the except one were less than 24 hours old. The odd one out was four days old. All the results on the first page appeared to have been posted by people who were cheering the result. Suspicious!

       I found this particularly odd since, in my efforts to do research for this series of articles of which this post is the first, I have not been seeing consistent blocks of results like this. As a matter of fact, in many cases it is proving very frustrating to try and get real data on some of the EVs I’m researching. So the question is, how are these guys so lucky to have got their story so widely covered by Google in less than 24 hours? This smacks of a well organized PR campaign, run by people who know exactly how to get things to appear to go viral. In posting a link to the story here, you are improving it’s page ranking and thus reinforcing it’s visibility. If you are not on the FF industry troll army payroll, they must be really happy to have suckers like you contribute to their efforts without pay!

       Putting the word “debunked” before the search phrase didn’t produce any meaningful results so, I went over to Auke Hoestra’s twitter page to see if he had seen it. Sure enough, he was all over it from earlier on today (April 22). It is so easy for this “research” to make bad assumptions (see Auke’s reponse) which then requires time and effort to identify them and call them out. On your part it is easier to just cut and paste an article than go digging into it’s sources.

       There’s also the aspect of the hyperbole. “Electric Car-Owners Shocked:”! Really? How do they know this? Did they do a poll? Did they ask EV owners why they were shocked? That is just plain old hyperbole, added for effect and you just gobbled it all up, assuming you are not a paid agent of the PR machine responsible for this.

       If one applies the principle of “cui bono” there are two groups that might benefit from the propagation of these ideas. Tesla shorts. I seem to remember seeing somewhere that zerohedge.com is a haven for people holding short positions on Tesla. The other group is FF shills who I suspect would have no qualms about using zerohedge to do their dirty work. I note that the second link is also from zero hedge, leading me to wonder, why are you hanging out at zerohedge.com? I never go there!

       1. Yep! And for the record the BS from that paper published under the auspices of CESifo has now been officially debunked! Not that that should be much of a surprise to anyone who has more than half a brain.

          https://electrek.co/2019/04/22/study-electric-cars-dirtier-diesel-debunked/
          New study claiming electric cars are dirtier than diesel debunked

       2. LOL…
          Lot’s of words for an article I just found by accident and thought to post here.
          If you want to blow your time on conspiracies or whatever behind it, Alan, knock yourself out. As you may well know by now, and for many reasons, I’m generally against cars and their contexts– maybe more the single-occupant variety than, say, in car-pooling contexts– whether they are electric or internal combustion.

       3. See also here.

          BTW, why would you ‘frame’ that I ‘hang out’ at Zero Hedge, unless that would be along similar lines as your ‘Koch brothers rhetorical device‘? If so, then maybe I’ve answered my own question, ay? ‘u^

22. World’s First Solar Train – Byron Bay Railroad Company | Fully Charged

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SafVI7vKs4

23. One of the very BEST arguments, in terms of convincing Joe Sixpack that renewable electricity is good for his wallet, is that the more renewable juice we have, the lower the market prices of coal, natural gas, and oil……a fact that invariably puts a happy grin on the faces of people who get it.

    Coal and gas are essential inputs in countless goods ranging from steel to nitrate fertilizers….. and we all depend on these goods.

    Hard numbers are not easy to come by, but before long we will be getting ten percent of our electricity in the USA from wind and solar, and that’s enough to cut seriously into the market for coal and natural gas as generating fuel….. meaning these fuels will be cheaper for all other purposes.

    There are not yet enough electric cars on the road to significantly affect the price of oil, and thereby the price of gasoline and diesel fuel, but within five more years…….

    The best argument I ever ran across in favor of mass transit was to point out to somebody bitching about the buses on city streets that taking ONE bus off the street would mean that anywhere from a dozen to three or four dozen MORE cars would be MUCH harder to deal with.

    1. After 15 years of growth of wind and solar energy, the US carbon emissions are running about flat. Still above the Paris Climate Agreement even in non-reality land.
       Of course it’s all typical BS since the reduction in CO2 output has mostly been due to conversion to natural gas usage. Which as we know is more than compensated for by the increased leakage of methane into the atmosphere from that production. But we don’t count that.

       All in all, efficiency gains and a slowing of the economy has been the major reason why the US is not running carbon wild. The steady growth of the poor helps too (they use less energy).

       Against the stalled US emissions, global emissions are increasing.
       We crossed the 50 GT CO2 equivalent emissions level between 2009 and 2010.

       To give that a comparison, volcanoes emit about 0.2 GT CO2 per year worldwide (probably higher but that is in the field study stage now). That was apparently enough to stabilize CO2 at 270 ppm.

       1. Ever hear of limiting the population? The higher number of people the more pollution. There is also more forests cut down into homes and strip malls. More cars on the freeways. So, why are we increasing our population with immigration, not understanding that it is a burden on all natural resources creating even more global warming when more greenery is the best way to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.

          1. Good morning, Richard Brockley

             I wonder if you have thought things all the way thru, or if you are subtly trolling for the Trump camp, or if you are seriously thinking about proposing some sort of active measures to limit population growth. Given that you have not posted much if anything here before, I can only guess.

             The environmental camp would rather eat shit with a splinter ( an expression common in the backwoods of my home turf) than to discuss any sort of proactive population control measures, for two very powerful reasons, either of which is sufficient to prevent such discussions, in public forums.

             One is that this is judged to be unethical. I agree on this point, with the caveat that sometimes doing something unethical results in less suffering and misery in the long haul, and thereby is ethically justified, depending on one’s personal judgement of such cases. I don’t have any problem taking a kid to the dentist, whether he wants his cavities fixed, or NOT.

             But propose that people who are severely retarded or otherwise incapable of properly caring for children should be LEGALLY prevented from having kids, and you will be crucified. I must respect and support this decision as a matter of drawing a line in the sand, a line that once crossed might mean that OTHER people might and eventually WOULD be deemed unfit to be parents, for political reasons, etc. History is rife with instances where people have been deemed unfit to even LIVE, never mind to have kids.

             The ethical argument holds water, no question in my mind.

             The OTHER argument is the political solidarity argument. The environmental camp is politically allied with the better educated and more liberal wing of our political system, and leftish / liberals are understandably very touchy about such matters as personal rights of all sorts. Furthermore they have a zero desire to be painted by the conservative /rightish wing as Nazis or worse as the result of advocating proactive population control measures of any sort. The last thing you can do is to argue with your cultural peers……. the usual solution to dealing with people who refuse to observe cultural norms is to banish them, culturally and politically. Excommunication is not too strong a word.

             So as I see the big picture, the only currently available and politically viable way to work on the population problem is thru indirection, by promoting policies such as better education for everybody, and especially for women in particular. Greater prosperity is paradoxically the best long term solution to population problems, given that the more prosperous people are, the fewer kids they have, as a general rule. The problem with this approach is that the cure is so slow that the treatment may kill the patient, in a manner of speaking. Overpopulation is an existential question TODAY in many parts of the world, and the passage of a few more decades, which might or might not result in falling birth rates in such places, is apt to result in famines or genocidal wars , etc.

             Lots of people believe otherwise, but I personally believe that opposition to abortion here in the USA in particular will cease to be a major political issue within ten more years as the older generation dies off. I can remember when it was God’s intent that if you got laid, you raised kids. I can’t think of even one young couple that’s popping out kids one after another these days……… and I know for an absolute fact that some very regular hard core Baptists who rant and rave about abortion send their teenage daughters off to visit distant relatives before their tummies start to swell noticeably…… these days they’re back at home within a few days or weeks. Back then they visited for years, and sometimes they never came back…… or came back as young widows, lol.

             I know these things for facts as a matter of personal experience, and on three occasions, I have provided the transportation necessary, very quietly, for the girl/ woman in need.

             But I’m NOT so stupid as to fail to understand that tens of millions of people DO believe that abortion is murder…… and that a substantial percentage of them will continue to vote R for this one reason alone, just as tens of millions more believe the D’s are out to collect their guns, and will continue to vote in substantial numbers for the R’s for this one reason alone.

             Demographics will eventually solve both these problems. The typical city dweller doesn’t hunt, doesn’t have a real gun culture, ditto the typical suburbanite. A pistol for personal and home defense is considered necessary by lots of these people, but that’s about it, and it’s not all THAT big an issue for them, except as a matter of tribal solidarity.

             Now out in the boonies where I come from, the most treasured and priceless physical objects, other than the land itself, are apt to be the guns passed down from generation to generation. I wouldn’t sell the ones I wouldn’t sell the ones I have inherited, or will inherit, or received as gifts indicating my new status as an adult, old enough and mature enough to be trusted with them, for a hundred grand, although they are worth no more than a couple of thousand at going prices, just as the women in the family won’t sell their mother’s personal belongings such as wedding bands and other jewelry.

             But my kind of people are an ever smaller percentage of the total population and of the voters. Demographics will rule in the end.

          2. Hi Richard. Sure, I heard a lot about limiting population in the 60’s and 70’s. We also had the Limits to Growth come out, so yes we know all about the problems. But that was a time of fast development and population growth, so apparently the warnings went unheeded. Population growth is slowing.
             Maybe you have some ideas on how to limit population.

             Population is not the big problem, over-consumption and over-production is the major problem. Everybody can start to control themselves and use less, buy less.
             Immigration? I can’t answer that. You need someone with a knowledge of historical laws and international agreements to get to that one.

             Sure trees can sequester carbon dioxide. Studies lately have shown we have room to plant another trillion trees and some groups are already at it. However, if we keep burning fossil fuel, cutting down and burning forests, it’s hoisting ourselves on our own petard. Useless action.
             So stop using fossil fuels and stop burning biomass.

24. 41 Million Americans Live in Flood Zones -Three Times the FEMA Estimate, Finds New Study

    https://e360.yale.edu/digest/41-million-americans-live-in-flood-zones-three-times-the-fema-estimate-finds-new-study

    Probably needs updating again with the latest spate of flooding.

    I am just wondering if as we move out of the flood zones and also rebuild the over 300,000 homes that burn each year, codes and laws can be put in place to increase the R value of homes.
    From what I have heard of some of the rebuilds from Hurricane Sandy, just the opposite was happening. But those are just from a few examples and I have no idea what the overall picture looks like.

    1. I don’t know much about what’s happening in other localities, but the general trend in building codes is to gradually tighten up the requirements for insulation and so forth. People bitch like hell if new code provisions are put into effect short term, but when they are written to come into effect say five years down the road, the construction and real estate industries seem to take the changes in stride, actually pointing out that the time to build is “this year or next” rather than “THEN” when it will cost more.

       Only one person I know is still bitching about the disappearance of the old style hot running light bulbs, but five or six years ago, most of the Trump types were up in arms about the guv’ mint taking over their lives. They’ve forgotten all about their old bitching, and now I occasionally hear one of them talking about how cheap LED’s are to buy and run. The older ones still bitch about the missing carburetors, and how easy they were to work on and how hard it is to repair computerized fuel injection…….. all the while bragging about how easy their newer cars are on gas, and how long they last, and BLAMING this progress on the Democrats of course. After one of my acquaintances bitched like hell about having to replace five hundred dollars worth of ignition parts on his two hundred thousand mile pickup, pissing and moaning for the old days of distributors and breaker points, I gently reminded him that he just now going to his third set of spark plugs, and that otherwise he had NEVER even touched his ignition. In the old days, he would have put her in the shop for ten to twenty sets of points and plugs…….. and been getting considerably fewer mpg as well.

       But it’s still the D’s fault for trying to run his life.

       Stupid is the new smart.

       The R’s don’t want the D’s to have the full Mueller report, because they know the D’s will release it, and thereby prove that Trump is innocent.

25. Should have posted this before. A very widely used UK electric vehicle

    https://www.google.com/search?gl=us&hl=en&pws=0&biw=1920&bih=959&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=mWC-XMfWOsXwsQXhp5iYAQ&q=electric+milk+float&oq=electric+milk+float&gs_l=img.3..0l2j0i5i30j0i24l6.48258.50309..50580…0.0..0.94.689.9……0….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i7i30j0i7i5i30.cmvb0OfCCFw

    NAOM

    1. Cool!

    2. Reminds me of a vehicle I saw on Last of the Summer Wine.

26. https://www.sciencealert.com/greenland-s-accelerating-ice-loss-is-worrisome-to-scientists

    I wonder how long it will be before real estate agents will start pointing out that particular multimillion dollar waterfront or near waterfront properties are a meter or two above sea level…

    1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/15/florida-climate-change-coastal-real-estate-rising-seas

       Florida is drowning. Condos are still being built. Can’t humans see the writing on the wall?
       People tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and Florida’s coastal real estate may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call

       …I spoke with a developer who wanted to remain anonymous, given business interests. He told me that he’s surprised that people are still buying, building and investing in coastal Florida. He estimated that a decade ago, only one in 10 buyers asked about the property elevation, or expressed concerns about rising seas. Today, nearly six of 10 ask and many decide not to buy in these same critical areas. “I’m worried we’re one bad storm away from a rush for the exits,” he told me.

       I sought input from the environmental community as well. “Real estate is a huge economic driver here,” Laura Geselbracht, a senior marine scientist with the Nature Conservancy, said. “And it’s at risk from sea level rise. People don’t want to believe it. That’s a normal human condition – suspension of belief.

       “If you’re not a millionaire and you own a property in a vulnerable area, it may be a wise decision to think about moving before the masses think about moving,” Geselbracht said. She also owns waterfront property on a canal in Fort Lauderdale, and is deeply invested in her community, but has cautioned her child not to expect the same lifestyle in the future.

27. Tesla’s chip development unit: what these guys have achieved is amazing. They built their own chip for video processing and neural networks. Performs 21x faster than previous system. It’s a bit nerdy but a fascinating 21 minute video…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZK1fARxYsE

    1. Very cool! Both the bean counters and the software engineers at Boeing behind the 737 Max fiasco should be forced to watch it 10,000 times!

       1. Fred, I agree with your Boeing comment!

          Later in the day, Elon states that since 2016, all Teslas have had redundant steering pumps, redundant power lines. redundant data lines and redundant batteries (if the main pack goes, the auxiliary powers the brakes and steering). As well as redundant CPUs and power supplies in the autopilot hardware…

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhKkeJ2jWYs

    2. Semiconductor scientists discover effect that was thought impossible

       https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/miop-ssd042219.php

    3. Yipe, that is a chip! It makes one think of where neural networks will go as they move from general purpose computers and their chips (CPU and GPU) to dedicated neural network chips. 144 TOPS!

       NAOM

       1. Tony Seba’s early presentations rave about 2.3 TOPS (TeraFlops), this being a 50,000 improvement (in cost/$) since 2000. Then in 2017 he highlights Nvidia’s Xavier at 20 TOPS. And now we have 144 TOPS, with Musk predicting a 3-fold improvement in the next generation. Amazing.

          1. Beats most pre 2000 supercomputers.

             NAOM

28. “Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

    “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

    Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

    1. The faster we go the rounder we get,
       The faster we go the rounder we get,
       The faster we go the rounder we get,,,,
       in the 4th dimension!

       [sung to tune of pop goes the weasel]
       hats off to the one recognizes this.
       I used to sing it often in my youth.

       1. You Kidding?! Who doesn’t know that one?
          Granted there are few versions…

          All around the cobbler’s bench
          The monkey chased the weasel
          The monkey thought ’twas all in fun
          Pop! Goes the weasel

          BTW, at the time, at least from what I have read, Charles Dodgson didn’t much seem to care for all those new fangled symbolic algebraic notations, he was more down to earth and into Euclidean geometry so he may also have been somewhat critical of the notion of more than 3 dimensions. Just a hunch!

          I miss having Doug around to discuss the math of Black Holes.

    2. Hi Fred,

       It makes my day to run across somebody who appreciates great literature!

       Carroll is priceless. Works such as Through the Looking Glass are all to often dismissed by ignoramus types as kids books.

       Nothing could be farther from the truth.

       In days gone by, you had to be rather careful about saying anything that could be used to accuse you of insulting the king or queen, lol, unless maybe you wanted to take up the life of a hermit in a dungeon.

29. California just made more clean energy than it needed

    We’re a long way from the land of milk and honey but on Easter Sunday – for about an hour – we got a taste of the promised land.

    On Sunday, at 1.55pm Pacific time, grid operator the California Independent Systems Operator (CAISO) reported the greenhouse gas emissions necessary to serve its demand – around 80% of California’s electricity demand on an annual basis – was measured at minus-16 mega tons of CO² per hour. Five minutes later, the value was -2 mTCO²/h, before it crept back up to 40 mTCO²/h at 2.05pm. At 2:10pm, it fell back to -86 mTCO²/h and stayed negative until 3:05pm.

    The information was brought to the attention of pv magazine via a tweet from eagle-eyed reader Jon Pa, after CAISO’s site first noted the negative values:[snip]

    Lastly to note was the amount of electricity from solar and wind generation being curtailed. And while the Sunday numbers weren’t available yet, the below image noted Saturday saw 10 GWh in total curtailed – peaking at more than 3.2 GW of instantaneous, mostly solar power, in the hours of 12 and 1pm. On an annualized basis, less than 2% of total potential solar electricity was curtailed in 2018.

    Solar, wind covered most of Germany’s power demand on Easter Monday

    Conditions for renewable power generation were very good on Easter Monday, thanks to bright sunshine across all of Germany and a light breeze in many parts of the country.

    German think-tank Agora Energiewende revealed that solar and wind almost completely covered the country’s power demand for several hours. At noon, the power delivered by solar was 33 GW, while onshore wind turbines contributed 12.5 GW. In addition, a good 11 GW came from biomass, offshore wind energy and hydropower. This combined capacity of roughly 56 GW met almost all the country’s power consumption needs, which stood at just over 61 GW. At 3 p.m. CEST, about 51 GW came from renewable energy, with consumption at almost 56 GW.

    It is my considered opinion that barring some bad long duration black swan events, this will eventually become the rule rather than the exception.

    1. Here is the chart for Germany.

       https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm

       

    2. Solar, wind covered most of Germany’s power demand on Easter Monday

       I wonder if that explains why the Germans are parking their Nissan Leafs and putting their old VW diesels back on the road again, being that the latter produce so many fewer emissions…/sarc

    3. Why, that’s just swell for California. Until you realize those supposed “carbon emissions” figures don’t tell anywhere near the real story because, due to enviro-weenie concerns, the state won’t allow pipelines, oil trains, or fracking, so the oil the state’s populace demands has to shipped in from halfway around the world at a greater environmental cost than using the gloriously abundant resources available locally and domestically.

       1. Steven, your ignorance is showing.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_oil_and_gas_industry

          https://www.rigzone.com/news/californias_oil_industry_collapses_despite_shale_boom-03-apr-2019-158514-article/

          OIL DEPLETES. California has produced a HUGE amount of oil in the past, but now the oil fields in the state are mostly depleted. You don’t have much need of new pipelines to transport oil and gas that won’t be available in large enough quantities to keep the old EXISTING lines fully utilized a few more years down the road.

          Californians understand some things you evidently DON’T. They are at the forefront, nationally in the USA, and even on a world basis, in preparing for the time when oil and gas are too scarce and too expensive to provide the energy the people of that fine state need.

          But at the rate they are going, they will need LESS rather than more oil and gas within the easily foreseeable future. Electric cars are getting cheaper fast enough that they will sell as fast as new conventional cars within the next four or five years in places where most people earn good money….. places such as California.

          Lots of people there are already driving cars powered by their own personal pv systems, and as time passes, California will be the state with the most electric cars, both per capita and in total, of the entire country, and maybe the entire world, excepting a few HUGE countries such as India and China.

       2. Steven-
          There is very little ‘frackable’ oil or gas under the surface in calif. Meager amounts.

          Secondly, the vast majority of Californians are extremely concerned about water. Doesn’t take long to live there to understand why. In some years rainfall is poor. Agriculture is the priority. Groundwater in much of the state is depleted badly. They are on the thin edge between the ocean and desert. Its critical. Water for fracking, even if the geology was favorable, would be a major battle.

          Third, even you should be rejoicing that the largest state in country is making moves to long term energy security. For Calif, the best bet is primarily solar. Wind, hydro and imported fossil fuel as back ups.
          Where do you live?

       3. Truthfully I don’t mind the crazy California environmentalists anymore and I even think they should be encouraged. You see, the wackier they get, the more Texas benefits both economically and politically.

          1. CA has the 5th largest GDP on Earth.
             They could put Texas in a corner of the State.

             1. Most of that output is based upon unprofitable tech companies attempting to create value out of nothing while exploiting people’s privacy in order to attract further investment. Read that “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus” book Fred keeps promoting.

                1. Read that “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus” book Fred keeps promoting.

                   LOL! Either you didn’t actually read the book or you didn’t quite get the point which Rushkoff was making. Basically he is criticizing the entire economic operating system within which all of our corporations exist and the fact that they must provide revenue to shareholders.

                   In a nutshell:
                   “We are running a 21st-century digital economy on a 13th Century printing-press era operating system.”

                   He isn’t against profit per-se and he’s actually friends and personally acquainted with many of the founders of those Silicon Valley corporations. BTW here’s the stock market valuation for Alphabet, Google’s Parent company. I Think even you must agree that they are quite profitable.

                   Market Summary > Alphabet Inc Class A
                   NASDAQ: GOOGL
                   1,270.59 USD +16.83 (1.34%)
                   Closed: Apr 23, 5:32 PM EDT · Disclaimer
                   After hours 1,270.59 0.00 (0.00%)

                   Maybe you should go back an reread his book!
                   Even better read some of his other books or visit his pocast:
                   Team Human https://teamhuman.fm/

                   DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
                   HOST / PRODUCER
                   Author, media theorist, and professor Douglas Rushkoff has contributed a number of pages to the team playbook. His many books including Program or Be Programed, Present Shock, and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus all look deep into the question of reprogramming society to better serve humans. With each episode of Team Human, Rushkoff grapples with complex issues of agency, social justice, and all those quirky non-binary corners of life in a highly approachable and engaging podcast.

                   WHY TEAM HUMAN?
                   People-driven solutions
                   for a relentlessly
                   controlled and
                   top-down society

                   It doesn’t have to be this way.

                   Autonomous technologies, runaway markets and weaponized media seem to have overturned civil society, paralyzing our ability to think constructively, connect meaningfully, or act purposefully. It feels as if civilization itself were on the brink, and that we lack the collective willpower and coordination necessary to address issues of vital importance to the very survival of our species.

                   The simplest way to understand and change our predicament is to recognize that being human is a team sport. We cannot be fully human, alone. Anything that brings us together fosters our humanity. Likewise, anything that separates us makes us less human, and less able to exercise our will.

                   Team Human is a podcast striving to amplify human connection. Each week we are engaging in real-time, no-holds-barred discussions with people who are hacking the machine to make it more compatible with human life, and helping redefine what it means to stay human in a digital age. Members of Team Human include debt activists Astra Taylor and Tom Gokey, Yes-man Andy Bichlbaum, co-op organizer Esteban Kelly, DNA artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Fairphone founder Bas Van Abel, Tony winning playwright JT Rogers, and counterculture pioneer R.U. Sirius and so many more, including, hopefully, you.

                   So Dave, who’s team are you on?!

                2. All directions lead to the same place. Choose well, choose poorly, all the same.

                   “In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”
                   “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
                   “Oh, you ca’n’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
                   “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
                   “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

                   To all: How does it feel to be living in a bad horror/sci-fi novel with a poor ending, yet so much is learned along the way? Too bad it is the land of the mad and the deaf.

                   You are not in control. The knobs have been stolen and the markings too. You will end up in the same place no matter what you do.

                3. To all: How does it feel to be living in a bad horror/sci-fi novel with a poor ending, yet so much is learned along the way? Too bad it is the land of the mad and the deaf.

                   It’s all good! Just another day in paradise! Oh, wait a minute, land of the mad and the deaf?! That I could deal with, but land of the fucking dumber than rocks zombie morons might just be a tad too much!

                   https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-gets-gentle-reassurance-from-twitter-chief-jack-dorsey-over-follower-count-in-white-house-meeting

                   Twitter CEO Gently Tells Trump: Your ‘Lost’ Followers Are Bots and Spam Accounts
                   Jack Dorsey may have wanted to use Tuesday’s meeting to talk up Twitter’s efforts to fight the opioid epidemic, but the president had more important things on his mind.

                   On Tuesday, President Trump hosted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in the Oval Office for a closed-door meeting, during which the leader of the free world spent an inordinate amount of time complaining about lost Twitter followers, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

                   The Twitter chief, for his part, tried to reassure the president that the company’s staff merely wants his follower count to be as bot-free as possible.
                   

                   I wrote a comment upthread suggesting that every US citizen download a copy of the Muller report and read it. Of course that suggestion becomes moot in light of the fact that the average US citizen barely reads above a third grade level and that includes the Idiot in Chief!

                   Move along folks. Nothing to see here!
                   Cheers!

                4. The educational system has produced the elite and academic, neither of which listen to each other unless of benefit to themselves and think themselves superior to most others.
                   However, it is the elite and the academic who have produced the madhouse, continue to love it and do not recognize the control knobs are missing. Nor can they even control themselves, for their egos are fragile.

                   Leadership, something that looks good and convenient for a short time and kills it all in the long run.
                   Follow at peril.

                5. However, it is the elite and the academic who have produced the madhouse, continue to love it and do not recognize the control knobs are missing. Nor can they even control themselves, for their egos are fragile.

                   Yeah, I know. Case in point:

                   According to calculations, a round-trip flight from New York to San Francisco emits about 0.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person.

                   Every day, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) provides service to more than 43,000 flights and 2.6 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace
                   
                   Have a peek at any point in the sky right this very moment!
                   https://www.flightradar24.com/38.82,-71.53/6

                   Now lets talk again about economic growth and building more airports and how that affects the control knobs on methane release from melting permafrost and other feedback loops.

                   Um, I’m sure there was a control knob for that somewhere on that control panel…
                   .

                   

                6. Dream on Fred, the action control knob was never there. The sanity level knob was never connected.
                   Forget aircraft and cars. Just eating produces enough GHG and other effects to make the world a warm place. Yet even that pales against what nature is doing.

                   Best to stay at the party.

                7. You may say I’m a dreamer
                   But I’m not the only one
                   I hope some day you’ll join us
                   And the world will be as one

                   Yes I know, notions of naive kumbaya… At this point I’m entitled to both my moments of absolute despair and my anger at the cowardice and deep denial all around me. But there are a few tiny glimmers of light in the darkness and I intend to seek them out and make them stronger if I can.

                   I think the sanity knob may be in the process of being connected as we speak.

                   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/24/from-india-to-ireland-a-week-of-extinction-rebellion-actions

                   From India to Ireland: a week of Extinction Rebellion actions
                   Activists tell us why they have taken part in the protest group’s international rebellion week

                   You can read them all at the link. this is the one I personally relate to the most, for obvious reasons.

                   …As a coral reef ecologist, everything I love and have studied and wanted to protect all my life is dying in front of our very eyes. I can barely cope with the grief of the Great Barrier Reef – which I was so privileged to research – going extinct in my lifetime.

                   Extinction Rebellion is the last hope for this dying planet. That is why we are involved, because we know that science and facts did not save the Great Barrier Reef, nor the majority of our rivers here in New Zealand. Only a huge number of people willing to hold their governments, corporations and media accountable can create the system change we so desperately need. This is why I am a “rebel for life” and this is what I want Extinction Rebellion to achieve: a new eco-socialist way of life where all people and other species have the same right to live peacefully, to have clean water, land and air, and where the short-term greed of the few does not dictate the survival of all.
                   Dr Sea, 43, environmental scientist, Wellington, New Zealand

                8. “I hope some day you’ll join us
                   And the world will be as one”

                   The world is as one, something people rarely realize.
                   Join us?
                   Why? Can all that bleating in the streets convince the bacteria to stop doing what bacteria do. Can all that hubris stop water from absorbing light and turning it to heat?
                   I don’t think people know what they are dealing with.
                   But it does keep them busy. Gives the powers that be even more leverage to increase the police and security forces.
                   George Monbiot looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

                9. Funny, or ill-informed Dave Hilleman.
                   Maybe you’d be happy (or sad) to know that calif cash earnings from Agriculture more than doubles texas.
                   And that doesn’t include marijuana. Maybe it would be triple.

                10. He just missed the switch about a mile back and doesn’t know the bridge is out on this track…
                    .

                    

                11. Hey Dave Hilleman.
                    Imagine that texas is the size of Rhode Island, and California is a s big as Calif, Alaska and Montana. Now you know the relative size of texas vs calif tourism industry. You guess which one is the pee wee. The reasons are obvious to anyone whos been around.

                    Calif computer and telecomm industry is like the size of Africa and N. America combined , compared to texan cuba, on an economic scale.

                    And the marijuana, don’ get me started.

                    I’m making this stuff up, but you get the point.
                    Texas without the oil, and some half decent Univ action, is pretty much like Louisiana (without its oil) and New Mexico. Just bigger.

                    But don’t despair. Texas can hook its electrical grid to the national network and become the number one exporter of solar, wind and nat gas electrical power to the nation for a hundred years and more. Bank on it.
                    The refineries can be dismantled in about 25 yrs. Might want to save one for specific chemicals. Vaseline is great.
                    Blue Bonnet Vaseline. Genuine Texan style.

30. Renewables clearly the answer as Bob Brown marches on Adani mine

    Another major report has underlined the case for renewable energy to provide the lowest cost, most sustainable solution for Australia’s energy needs – noting that fossil fuels are still heavily subsidised while renewables need little more than policy certainty and guidance.

    The new report, from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), came as a convoy led by former Greens leader Bob Brown attracted many thousands of people to its rallies as it moved north to the site of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, before a planned return for a final, major rally in Canberra.

    Brown’s long-promised convoy comes in the middle of an election campaign where climate is expected to figure strongly for voters, and where questions are being raised by the Coalition’s granting of ground-water approvals for the Adani coal mine in the days before the election was called, and now also on the controversial buy-backs of water rights.

    Brown’s convoy – being led by a fleet of six Teslas and other electric vehicles – is due to gather near the mine site this weekend, and then move south for a final rally in Canberra on May 5, less than two weeks before an election seen as critical for the future course of energy and climate policy in Australia.

    Brown was particularly damming of prime minister Scott Morrison’s decision to hold up a lump of coal in parliament and declare it to be good for humanity, and of the Murdoch media which has relentlessly chorused its support of fossil fuels and mocked climate science and renewables.

    “When I read the Murdoch media and the diatribe against good people who stand up to this rotten fossil fuel industry … which is taking from all of us and our right to he hopeful about the future … I say you are complicit in that criminality (of building new coal mines) and … have torn up the rule book of journalist ethics,” Brown said at a rally in Mullumbimby on Sunday.

    May 18th is the date folks! Should be really interesting. What would the future of Australian energy policy look like under a coalition between Labour and the Greens?

31. Excellent news for the electric grid out west, and wind energy producers in the rockies (and a lesser degree solar producers).
    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transwest-wins-key-permit-for-transmission-to-bring-wyoming-wind-power-to-t#gs.7kiuru

    At some point the Texas grid will need to be connected to the other grid networks of the country so Texan producers can get their big solar, wind, nat gas electricity potential to market.
    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/8/3/17638246/national-energy-grid-renewables-transmission

32. Monopoly Plus Utilities (might as well be Boardwalk or at least Atlantic) or the Make America Gas Again (at a big cost to the citizens).

    Pipeline Payday: How Builders Win Big, Whether More Gas Is Needed or Not
    Close corporate relationships between pipeline builders and gas buyers
    But are all these new gas pipelines really needed?

    Critics say that the financial interests of gas and electric companies—not market demand—are driving most of the new pipelines proposed for the region. Those profits are approved by FERC, an agency that is charged with ensuring public interests, but that nurtures “an exceptionally cozy relationship” with industry, as described in a comprehensive investigation published last month by the Center for Public Integrity and StateImpact Pennsylvania, with National Public Radio.

    “At every turn, the agency’s process favors pipeline companies,” the review found after the groups interviewed more than 100 people, reviewed FERC records, and analyzed nearly 500 pipeline cases.
    

    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02082017/natural-gas-pipeline-boom-corporate-profit-bubble-limited-demand-climate-emissions

    To those that use natural gas for heating, tighten up and insulate more. If you got money, PV plus heat pump. The sooner we break the hold that fossil utilities have the better for everyone’s wallets.

    1. GF- you don’t use nat gas?
       We use nat gas to heat. Even with a decent size PV array and Calif sun, we couldn’t cover the electricity, transport and heating load we have. I’d have to come up with 20K to buy some offsite (desert) PV to make it work.
       Problem is, there is no good direct way to invest like that around here.
       It doesn’t get frigid like the upper Delaware basin around here, but the solar input can be pitiful for 20 days in row in the winter- 38 degree N.
       Gets much worse further north (in winter). But they have big hydro up north.

       ex. today got 45kWh production. Jan 3rd got 0.9 kWh. Nat gas and the grid was very much cherished in Jan.

       1. Yeah, insulation and heat storage (water or stone) was invented a long time ago. Sadly it was not implemented very well and many people are stuck with poorly constructed houses that do not fit the climate. Most people would rather burn natural gas than put in some money and effort into their homes. The whole system is built around poor planning, laziness and convenience.
          Heat pumps work well off PV in well insulated and sealed buildings. Looks like the New England region is now rife with zero net energy home builders and passive house builders, not like a decade ago.

33. Rivian must be the real deal, when it comes to Western competition for Tesla.

    Ford just put megabucks into Rivian, and announced plans to build Fords using Rivian drive lines.

    https://electrek.co/2019/04/24/ford-invests-rivian-electric-pickup-truck/

    1. They have an SUV coming as well, to be using the same platform.

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