Comments not related to oil and natural gas in this thread.
Thanks.
412 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 10, 2019”
OCEANS ARE WARMING EVEN FASTER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
“Heat trapped by greenhouse gases is raising ocean temperatures faster than previously thought, concludes an analysis of four recent ocean heating observations. The results provide further evidence that earlier claims of a slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years were unfounded. The new analysis, published Jan. 11 in Science, shows that trends in ocean heat content match those predicted by leading climate change models, and that overall ocean warming is accelerating.”
It would be very interesting to see an analysis of average air temps exclusively from island/maritime stations. Places at the waters edge like Auckland, Lihue, Aluetians, Cape Verde, Reunion, Galapagos, Maldives, Guam, Faroe, Bermuda,Diego Garcia etc.
I wonder if their collective trend is slower to drift than the continental ones.
Does anyone know an open download site for this data? I wanted to get cvs data METAR MMPR data going way back for my local from Wunderground but they have totally firked up their site. Was to have been my summer project analysing the data.
NAOM
PS Incidentally this is a coastal station at the airport.
Seems like the good times be rollin’
Not sure for who or what, but surely, something will benefit from this change. It’ll probably suck for most things though.
So it goes…
DougL,
Wow! Lots of good stuff from the AAS meeting in Seattle, at Eurekalert. Crystallizing white dwarfs yet.
That observatory near Penticton: In the Spring of ’98 I was the Project Geologist for an archaeology project in the Columbia canyon just south of the border at Kettle Falls. A storm came in and became stationary over the region and flooded the site so I figured I’d drive up toward Northport (?) just for a look-see. This was during a storm that brought the water level in the canyon above the highway in another day or two but driving up the canyon that dayI was noticing the traces of drought in the vegetation on the canyon walls–before it hit me that it was hardly the time of year for drought. A moment’s thought, and aha, Penticton and environs and mining. I had remembered from twenty years before that it was really pretty around Penticton but maybe all the emissions were going down the Columbia?
I hadn’t seen anything that bad since I’d worked for a week out of Kellogg in northern Idaho. The surrounding slopes there, just east of Smelterville, had no vegetation at all.
If you want to see the effects of industry on vegetation just look up the New Jersey Zinc at Palmerton Pa. The zinc smelting went on for 80 years and completely denuded 3000 acres of nearby forest, right where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Lehigh River.
It’s a superfund site but recent studies shows it is still very dangerous, partly due to a recycling business there.
“The American Zinc Recycling facility, formerly Horsehead Corp., recycles electric arc furnace (EAF) dust.
“Our recycling and conversion of this EAF dust reduces a steel mini-mill’s exposure to environmental liabilities which may arise when the EAF dust is sent to a landfill,” Pittsburgh-based American Zinc Recycling says on its website. “We use the recycled material as low cost feedstock for our metal production operations, yielding a competitive cost advantage.””
“In summary, based on our preliminary spatial analysis of EPA’s air modeling results and available state monitoring data, ATSDR concludes that a public health hazard is likely for young children and/or pregnant women living within 3 miles of the American Zinc Recycling facility,” the report states. “Young children and/or pregnant women could experience long-term health problems from exposure to lead in the outdoor air.”
If trees ever grow there, the insects eating the leaves will transfer the metallic toxins to birds.
It’s been over 40 years since the plant shut down.
Saw a similar place in France, just devastation. In Wales there was steel works that chucked out so much pollution that the snow there was red, where did the rest of that pollution go especially when it was dry with no snow. The ground must be laden.
nAOM
GoneFishing,
In September of 1969 driving west across Canada we passed through Sudbury, the town with the huge nickel on the height overlooking it. I’d been told that Sudbury had been considered early on as an area for Apollo-astronaut training, it being closer than the Moon.
I went through again eastbound in 1974 and the hills were vegetated so I guess the problem was being dealt with. The nickel mines in Sudbury are associated with a giant impact structure that dates well back into the Precambrian but I never checked to see if the nickel itself was derived from the impactor.
“Lots of good stuff from the AAS meeting in Seattle, at Eurekalert. Crystallizing white dwarfs yet.”
Yeah been on it all day. I live for that stuff. Thanks just the same.
Has there been any time, when the oceans weren’t warming or cooling?
Regards,
-Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
I’m hoping that is a rhetorical question!
Ralph.
No , its forever changing, of course.
Now its changing fast.
Fast change is hard to adapt to, especially for animals like humans that rely on a fragile web of resources for life.
If there were far fewer humans, they could migrate away from trouble spots like flood and famine, to fertile plains and lush forests over the ridge.
But there are now 7.7B people, and very little fresh productive land to settle.
Big trouble coming from this climate disruption.
Will Pennsylvania take 27 million refugees to settle in the Susquehanna valley?
Did they teach you that some numbers are bigger than others at Cass Tech? It’s part of a kind of math called relation theory, but most children learn the basics in kindergarten.
There are Amazon tribes that only count to three. They have numbers for one, two three and many. Their math skills are weak.
Western civilization moved far beyond that thousands of years ago. For example, I can say “I have some money”, but it might means I have two dollars, and it might mean I have two million dollars. So taken out of context it is meaningless.
Is this too complicated for you? Do you need me to draw you a picture? Hope this helps.
“So I guess my bad number detector must still be working …
“Finally, Zeke says that the ocean temperature in 2018 exceeds that in 2017 by “a comfortable margin”. But in fact, it is warmer by only 8 zettajoules … which is less than the claimed 2018 error. So no, that is not a “comfortable margin”. It’s well within even their unbelievably small claimed error, which they say is ± 9 zettajoule for 2018.
“In closing, please don’t rag on Zeke about this. He’s one of the good guys, and all of us are wrong at times.”
IMHO, things aren’t looking good, but uncertainty remains.
What’s you HO (humble opinion) or NSHO (not so humble opinion) on the matter?
Do tell.
Or am I simply asking the wrong question?
I often forget the role that time plays in these things. From the perspective of now and the short human time horizon, things may look good or bad. In a different frame of time, deep time, or even simply the duration of a specie’s existence (average of 9 million years if I recall correctly), determining whether or not the world is fvcked means something entirely different and may not mean anything at all.
I often forget that our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, has been radically reshaped and altered many times, has seen calamities beyond reckoning, and keeps on trucking. The “world” being “fvcked” in light of this history is really rather meaningless. The fact that it will go on for billions of years yet, ought to inform my question as well.
Nonetheless, have at it.
I’m curious to hear what the wise folk who frequent this place have to say on the matter.
There is never a safe time. All safety is an illusion. We could get hit by asteroids or comets. Supervolcanos could erupt setting off earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanism around the globe. A species could arise that wipes out most of life on the planet and changes the climate to a whole new state.
The advantage we have is that we know a lot about what is going on and what causes the predicaments. That is a first.
Will it do much good? Time will tell. No sense in stopping trying and accomplishing what we can. At a minimum it really irritates and spoils the plans of those who don’t give a shit.
Doom Incarnate,
I sense that this period is a unique one time shot for a species on Earth to become a spacefaring civilization.
Technology and daily life wasn’t much different between someone living in 100 BC or living in 1600 AD. Fossil fuels essentially condensed tens of thousands of year of technological and societal development into a 150 year period.
97% of the population used to be farmers. This was true in 1800 AD and 300 BC. Combine that knowledge with the explosion in population that fossil fuels allowed and you have a one-time only opportunity of humanity taken off the fields and allowed to create new technologies on a massive scale.
Even on a deep time frame of reference the fossil fuel bonanza our species is experiencing is never going to be repeated because the conditions no longer exist for its creation.
I believe it to be true that, even though there will be other “smart” species in the Earth’s remaining 500 million years of survivable conditions for life they will not have the benefit of fossil fuels we had.
Condensing tens of thousands of years of technological progress into a 150-200 year period has an additional advantage – catastrophe’s happen that disrupt progress and civilization, the longer you take to develop the more likely you are to experience a “tech reset level event”.
If a knowledge/tech reset event happens more frequently than it takes to become a space colonizing species, then it will never happen again. Basically, if, without fossil fuels, it would take a species 30,000 years to develop space colonizing tech, but “tech reset level” always occur within a 20,000 period, then it becomes impossible.
It cannot be overstated how critical the one time party of fossil fuels was to allowing the development and implementation of technology. All future species will still encounter the laws of physics and how they impact communities. Most members of that species will be there only to provide the net energy needed to sustain themselves and thus development will be handicapped by the tiny part at the top of the pyramid that is free to create technology.
How do you develop solar panels, mine the materials for them (from disparate locations), have factories for them, then transport and distribute them when you don’t have fuels or free energy to begin with?
Just 150 years ago it took MONTHS to travel to Europe. Ambassadors were given the power and prestige of the highest order. Afterall, if a war started in the U.S. it would be many months before Europe would receive a message from the president and many more months until our allies and foes would have a formal response reach the POTUS.
That was reality for all of human history. It was fossil fuels that changed that. I really don’t see how another species, better equipped than us apes, can overcome that reality given a lack of the truly unimaginable power that fossil fuels has provided our species from a standpoint based on the immutable laws of physics.
Thank you. Your post, for whatever reason, sparked a very evocative thought stream for me. I’m sure there are many things I am not considering. Just giving a quick synopsis on an intriguing thought.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Hopefully others are curious to explore this, in a critical, supportive, or refining capacity.
How do you develop solar panels, mine the materials for them (from disparate locations), have factories for them, then transport and distribute them when you don’t have fuels or free energy to begin with?
Did you know that some of the largest mining machines in the world are electrically powered? (Bagger 288) It is noteworthy that the biggest of these goliaths was built for use in coal mining operations. If civilization does not collapse first, future humans will probably witness an almost entirely electrically powered civilization. Everything from mining equipment to ships and planes.
When finished, the prototype will be put to the test using its 65-ton loading capacity to haul materials down from a cement works quarry on Switzerland’s Chasseral mountain 20 times a day. During each of those trips, regenerative braking will charge up the battery pack by 40 kWh, which the team says will provide more than enough energy to make it back up the hill with electricity leftover to feed back into the grid.
Because this project represents new territory for electric vehicles, the team will be watching closely to see how the truck performs and keeping an eye out for any malfunctions. This will mean running overcharging tests and purposely mistreating some of the nickel manganese cobalt cells with a steel nail to see how the batteries respond.
I somehow don’t think this technology will be developed (at scale) in time to support 8 billion plus people on the planet in the absence of FF. I could be wrong.
islandboy,
I’m not suggesting that we cannot transition. I’m just pondering – in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how would a civilization advance to the point where we have that level of technology to begin with.
In a world where the end of the line for free net energy is burning trees and peat moss you’d run out of energy long before you have the complex, integrated, long distance supply chains necessary to develop and manufacture colossal electric machinery.
I’m just hypothesizing, and I could definitely see how a civilization could get there with hydro, wood, and peat moss. I just think it would take so much longer that the occasional and very normal, very real phenomenon of civilization level collapse events would prevent the development of a space colonizing civilization.
I’m not suggesting that we cannot transition. I’m merely hypothesizing that in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how we would advance to the point where we have that kind of technology to begin with.
Without developing technology based on fossil fuels, things might have taken a very different turn. Nowhere is it written that fossil fuels were necessary to develop a technological civilization. Actually it may have been the worst thing to ever have happened to humanity!
The history of solar energy goes back to 400 B.C., when the ancient Greeks and Romans used the sun to heat certain areas in their homes. Solar energy is the earliest form of energy that is still being used as a power source for many domestic, industrial, and technological operations.
In theory, solar energy was used by humans as early as 7th century B.C. when history tells us that humans used sunlight to light fires with magnifying glass materials. Later, in 3rd century B.C., the Greeks and Romans were known to harness solar power with mirrors to light torches for religious ceremonies. These mirrors became a normalized tool referred to as “burning mirrors.” Chinese civilization documented the use of mirrors for the same purpose later in 20 A.D.
1839: Photovoltaic Effect Is Discovered
French scientist Edmond Becquerel first discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839. This process occurs when light is absorbed by a material and creates electrical voltage. Most modern solar cells use silicon crystals to attain this effect.
“I’m just pondering – in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how would a civilization advance to the point where we have that level of technology to begin with.”
Some history for yer, oh, fossil fuel not required!
Brian – I tend to agree with FF being needed to allow a civilisation to progress to space flight (and maybe radio communication). I read something similar recently from someone trying to assess the probability of there being parallel such civilisations in our galaxy. Ancient Chinese, Arab and Greek maths and science and the European Renaissance and enlightments show we’ve always had the ideas and imagination but they couldn’t be converted to widespread technology and engineering before FF came along (ps something I learnt recently was that Burma had an oil industry with wells, distribution systems, a simple refinery – it was even nationalised forcibly – in the early 19th century; before any US discoveries).
In terms of our civilisation I think we also needed the relatively long (in human terms rather than geological) stable climate of the Holocene with no major bolide impacts, no extinction level volcanoes (a couple of smaller ones did plenty of damage) and all the continents well placed with lots of land spread out longitudinally in temperate zones and enough of it at or around the poles.
In terms of what comes after us: we’ve also used up most of the concentrated, easy to get near-surface metal ores.
George,
That’s an interesting chicken and egg situation.
The stability of the Holocene was several standard deviations away from the norm. This allowed for tech to develop enough to exploit fossil fuels en mass. The unlocking of basically free energy then condensed tens of thousands of years of progress into a stable period creating a statistical/probabilistic royal flush.
Would go a decent ways to understanding the Fermi Paradox. Our circumstances would be a series of royal flushes (plate tectonics allowing for fossil fuels, life on Earth starting not long after the universe got out of its explosive adolescent phase, creation of Eukaryotes by endocytosis of mitochondria, etc).
We’re likely unique in that we’re “early” (compared to 30 billion years from now), we hit several events in sequence that are a few standard deviations from the norm, AND that, due to those two realities, we are very far removed in space and time from any other lifeform that can inform us of their existence.
We could be the first in our galaxy and still be merely one in a trillion.
We may genuinely be among the first in the Milky Way, and would be forever ignorant of a species in another galaxy calculating the exact same dilemma.
The Fermi Paradox is perhaps mostly about limitation of scope. We could be a royal flush within our own galaxy while also being a laggard galaxy by galaxy.
Between 1 trillion galaxies we could be a “big fish in a small pond”. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old (compare that to the universes heat death and we’re still in the womb).
I think that one thing the Fermi Paradox discounts is the question “20 billion years from now will the answer to this question be more evident to the hydrogen molecules participating in asking this question”.
I think the answer is yes.
In that case, we are early to the party.
I really do feel that this unique approach to the Fermi Paradox lends credence to the idea that we may be early to the Universal party.
The first? Unlikely.
Early? Most probably.
Brian, yes, the Fermi Paradox is no paradox at all. It is more probable that only one in a billion stars has a planet where any type of life evolved. And perhaps only one in a hundred of these one in a billion stars developed intelligent life. That would mean only one or two such planets exists, or once existed in our galaxy.
Still, that would mean there would be about two hundred billion planets in the known universe where life evolved. But the distances would be so great and perhaps even separated in time, that there could be no communication between them.
The universe is almost 14 billion years old but civilizations likely lasts far less than one million years. And highly advanced civilizations likely lasts only a few thousand years. So intelligent civilizations, in any galaxy, are likely separated by hundreds to thousands of light years, but also separated in time by millions of years.
I’m all in favor of electric trucks, but there are very few trucking jobs that involve hauling the load DOWNHILL time after time, trip after trip, day after day, lol.
I drove big off road trucks that hauled fifty tons on a road job for a few months back in the seventies, hauling downhill, all day, back up the hill empty, boring as hell, but it paid well, for that time and place. Anybody interested can google an R50 Euclid, you can get pics and video.
Fuel consumption ran from ten to twenty plus gallons per hour, depending on how quick I could get loaded and unloaded….. sometimes I had to wait in line.
These trucks probably averaged about a hundred fifty gallons per shift, and we were running two ten hour shifts, six days per week.
At current prices, that would be well over three thousand bucks per week per truck JUST for diesel fuel. You definitely cannot run a heavy diesel dump truck continuously day in day out year around for less than sixty to a hundred thousand dollars per year for fuel, and at the low end, this means a LOT of waiting time rather than actual hauling time.
Anybody who has a long term downhill hauling job is most DEFINITELY going to be able to afford an electric dump truck, lol.
My guess is that the battery in a Tesla S is big enough to easily run one of these big trucks empty half a mile or less up a pretty steep hill, no problems. Such a battery definitely doesn’t cost more than thirty to forty thousand even today, and will no doubt be considerably cheaper within the next four or five years.
Another time, back in my U days, I had a part time job driving in a quarry for a while and there all the hauling WAS uphill.
If diesel gets to be expensive enough, a big dump truck could run with a small diesel or electric motor and battery while on level ground for the thousand feet or so that is typical each trip, and use an overhead line to supply power to a big on board electric motor to get UP the hill. There would be ample regenerative braking to recharge a small battery used just to get around near the loader at the bottom and the crusher at the top of the hill.
Big diesel trucks have been running at this quarry for at least sixty years, probably longer, and will be running there so long as there is a market nearby for gravel. There’s plenty of stone to be blasted and crushed, but the political situation is such that opening another MINING OPERATION, especially an OPEN PIT mining operation in that general area is simply out of the question. The local people would rather pay double to have gravel hauled fifty miles or more than to permit another quarry. The one open now is of course grandfathered.
I foresee a hot market for a few hundred or maybe a few thousand off road electric dump trucks per year as of now, if somebody is ready to deliver them.
Similar to these tractors except they also eliminate the driver.
Siemens Mining: http://www.siemens.com/mining The Truck Trolley System and the gearless mill drives for primary and secondary milling were installed and engieered from Siemens at the Lumwana copper mine, one of the largest in Africa – to increase speed and productivity, to reduce fuel consumption, maintenance requirements and also significant energy consumption during mining.
While the mining trucks in the video still use some diesel, it is conceivable that the technology being used in the Swiss experiment could be used to reduce the need for liquid fuel altogether. I am intrigued by these examples of thinking outside the box!
Doom Incarnate you aren’t a Buddhist, are you?! Doom Reincarnate, Doom Reincarnate, Doom Reincarnate… 😉
Nope. Atheist. I’m the guy formerly known as The Wet One. Life circumstances changed and thus the handle changed as well.
You could be a atheist and a Buddhist.
Huh.
I didn’t know that.
So far as I’m aware I’m not a Buddhist. Perhaps I should look up their beliefs and find out if I believe the same thing.
My question is ‘are we fucked or are we really fucked?’ but I do have a side order of wishful hope.
NAOM
Well, Doug, Then you’ll be pleased to know that Brazil, is hell bent on following Trump straight off the cliff!
Great combo, with an authoritarian military dictatorship complex, a neo-classical growth based policy, anti science especially climate change related and a pro evangelical anti abortion no need for population control ideas! Hates the LGBT community, despises people of color, wants to limit the rights of indigenous Brazilians to their native lands and wants to restrict the basic human rights of Brazilians that are written into the Brazilian constitution.
WTF could possibly go wrong eh?! For the record, I lived in Brazil through the last military dictatorship and the fact that at this particular juncture of human history we are back to this kind of mentality when we need exactly the opposite, makes me more than a little bit depressed!
“Brazil has become the apocalyptic vanguard that signals how radical this moment is – one with the power to worsen the climate crisis at top speed and blight the entire planet.”
And,
“Without the world’s biggest tropical forest, there is no way to control global warming. If Bolsonaro’s messianic capitalism is not stopped, life on this planet will be much worse for everyone. For a contingent of neo-Pentecostal evangelicals, this may be welcomed as an apocalypse preceding the final salvation of “true believers”. For most of humanity, it will bring nothing but horror and suffering – perpetuated by the stupidity of a species with delusions of grandeur.”
Yeah, imagine my sense of doom being squared since I’m a dual US/ Brazilian citizen! And if that weren’t bad enough I have the whole Victor Orban asshattery to contend with as well. At a minimum, that’s doom cubed…
I think I might change my handle to (DOOM)^3
Dennis, some blogs let you tag new posts with something like new in capitals and square brackets, it makes new comment much easier to find, using a search, than the light blue background that can be missed when there are a lot of replies or when blue is turned down at night. Is it possible here?
NAOM
Just use “find” function and type in the date, such as 01/10. Will give you all the ones for that day. You could even get more specific than that such as the hour.
Well I do do that but when things get busy, like the last few days, then that gets harder. A simple tag of new (in capitals and square brackets) can be rapidly searched for and more obvious also avoiding issues when you have your screen blue turned down or using filter glasses. Here are just two ways
I strongly second that request. It would make life much easier.
NAOM,
Contact me at peakoilbarrel.com if you have the expertise to accomplish what you seek.
I tend to fear I will break things beyond repair, if I attempt to fix.
So mostly I follow the old adage, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix.
Any web gurus feel free to contact me with ideas for fixes that will work.
It is possible on many blogs but I don’t know WordPress well enough to do that at present. Take a look at those two articles and see if that gives any clues. I will be doing some with WordPress soon, for myself, and will get back to you if needed.
C’mon guys, someone must have some blog setup experience here!
NAOM
NAOM,
Took a look, I don’t know php and am afraid I will break things if I change them.
Tried it for comments, new post thing not really necessary.
Well, it looks good, but when I try to search for New using Ctrl-F, the “New” tag seems invisible. I can’t search for it, which was what I was hoping for.,..
Nick G,
It only shows up one time, when you search, it’s no longer new.
This will have to do, search kind of sucks in Word Press, I don’t have the skill to improve it.
Well, when you search the word “New” doesn’t disappear, as if you reloaded the page. It’s just…not there for search purposes.
In fact, if you try to copy and paste the comment, you can highlight the text above and below the word “New”, and you see the word in the stretch of highlighted text, but when you paste the word New is mysteriously not there. It seems to be how the html is formattted.
Now…I’m not complaining. This is a volunteer effort and I’m not complaining if you don’t have the time or resources to do more. But, if you or someone else happens to be into fixing this problem, that would be very nice.
It doesn’t show up as text in the page source as it is in the CSS code, am looking into it.
NAOM
Dennis, I think what NAOM and Nick G are referring to is the actual text “[New]” that was included in the timestamp of new posts at theoildrum.com web site. That allowed users to use the “find in this page” feature of their browser to search for new posts by entering “[n” in the search box. Those two characters almost never show up in the body of posts on any blog I have ever seen so, it was fairly easy to skip through new posts out of hundreds very quickly.
It is a feature I miss very much on this site especially once the amount of comments in a thread exceeds about fifty. Browsing through new comments becomes more tiresome as the count grows. The new tag you have added is a slight improvement over the original, subtle, light blue background in that it stands out more but, it appears to be an image rather than actual text, making it invisible to text searches.
IIRC theoildrum.com used/uses Drupal as it’s content management system, offering different features than WordPress used by peakoilbarrel.com. It may be just that WordPress does not offer the ability to create a text based tag for new comments while Drupal does. Since they are both open source projects, I find it a little surprising that an enterprising WordPress developer has not caught onto this yet. I would like to say that adding a “new” text tag to the timestamp should be just as easy, if not easier than adding an image to the new comment or changing the background colour of the post but, I really do not know enough about these things.
Incidentally, if you refreshed the page at theoildrum.com, the “[New]” tags disappeared from the timestamps of new comments, just like how the blue background disappears from new comments when you refresh the page on this site. In both cases, only comments that were posted since the last time you loaded the page will then show up as new.
Yeah, comments is what needs it but what @Nick said, it needs to be searchable. OTOH it does stand out quite well 🙂 I’m short of big time blocks to play on WordPress but I will play and see what I can find.
PHP
Always make a backup copy you can revert to but it is fairly easy to get the hang of. Comment it clearly so you see the changes eg
Oh!! Comments ignore the following line to make it work, I put the name of the symbol in single quotes in there to make the line visible and in the ‘end test’
‘left pointy bracket’!– Start test code –‘right pointy bracket’
<?php
echo "Hello World!"; // This will print out Hello World!
echo "Psst…You can’t see my PHP comments!”; // echo “nothing”;
// echo “My name is Humperdinkle!”;
# echo “I don’t do anything either”;
?>
‘left pointy bracket’!– end test code –‘right pointy bracket’
NAOM
How about if I get rid of the “New” marker, some people are complaining and it seems not to help.
Please keep the “New”! 🙂
Well, it is a big help in spotting new comments. If you can find the following
#FF000A;
in your code try replacing it with
#FFB3B3;
or
#FFCCCC;
which should tone it down a bit.
You may also be able to add the line, in the same section
font-size: 12px;
to cut the font size for the tag.
None of this, of course, allows a browser search to find it though 🙁
I will still look for a better way, had a look at the page source and CSS code yesterday, it seems to be event triggered in the DOM model.
NAOM
I did a little digging and found a bunch of plugins that supposedly enhance the commenting functionality of Word Press.
This one claims to allow searching for newest comments among other features…
The wpDiscuz plugin is feature rich, with lots of cool functionalities that upgrade the default WordPress commenting system. The developers clearly think it’s a match for the competition, too, readily claiming it to be the best alternative to the other big names — Disqus, Facebook Comments, and Jetpack Comments included.
wpDiscuz comes equipped with all of the standard functionality you’d expect from a commenting plugin — an intuitive user interface, nested comments, and multiple comment sorting methods (newest, oldest, and most upvoted).
Disclaimer: I haven’t played with Word Press or its plugins for a couple of years !
Cheers!
Thanks, but I understand that wpDiscuz is, effectively, a replacement comments system so it would represent a big change to the web site and how people use it. I’m not sure all the details of what it would do to the site and it would need to be rolled out on a test version first. I think what we need is a modification to the PHP code in the functions.php though Dennis is, rightly, a bit nervous of this. I think that the basis of the code should be in there and just needs tweaking as it already marks new comments. It would need to be in the PHP code itself to add text to the page source as the current version works through the CSS code.
NAOM
Yep, I hear you and the concerns are valid and duly noted.
Maybe you could email me a copy of the functions.php file and I can take a look through it and suggest a mod. I may go a bit cross eyed on it as it is about 10 years since last used PHP 🙁
NAOM
I assume you are addressing Dennis and not me…
I looked at some of the sample code myself and it did make my eyes glaze over… So I went to an overview of the basics
The brains of a theme, you should see,
Is one file: functions.php.
It adds crucial functions
At just the right junctions,
And it tells scripts and styles where to be.
Magyar’s quick trick:
But t’were it left up to me,
I’d gladly eschew the logical tree
No risk of dysfunction
Or website malfunction
A plugin may be well worth the fee!
😉
Cheers!
Thanks for that link, it is handy. It looks like functions.php is not what I need as it seems to be just for the CSS rather than the page build. I must dig more. Need to to see if I can get /var moved on my new ‘puter then I might try installing WP on it to play around.
NAOM
These are the words of our new Wyoming governor re: the war on the state’s coal. The west coast is going to get itself sued to the Supreme Court for the constitutional violation of interstate trade by refusing to build a coal export terminal. If RBG croaks within the next two years, the court can get the terminal built.
I want to take just a moment to talk about coal. Coal continues to power this country and, despite market trends and politics, it will remain an essential part of America’s energy portfolio for decades to come.
Around the globe technology keeps advancing, there is progress benefiting our world by burning coal more cleanly and efficiently. Japan and Korea have built the most efficient clean burning fleets of coal fired electric generation ever.
Technologies employed there, when paired with Powder River Basin coal, can reduce the overall carbon emitted to the atmosphere. That is progress that should be a gut cinch for those advocating to control carbon emissions.
And yet, our access to these Asian markets remains restricted, tied up in permit after permit. I believe this to be an unconstitutional restraint of trade. And I will strongly advocate for access to all markets.
I have invited my friend and a former colleague on the Environmental Quality Council, Wendy Hutchinson, to be with us here today. Wendy has been working for nearly a decade to open a coal port in Longview, Washington. This is a port that will expedite coal exports among other commodities to countries like Japan and Korea.
For her efforts, last year Wendy was named one of the 100 Most Inspirational Women in Mining in the world.
Wendy, I have asked you here today so that we can recognize you and the Millennium Bulk Terminal’s perseverance in navigating a complicated, time consuming, and inefficient, perhaps even now adulterated process. Would you please stand. Thank you.
There are promising new uses of coal that can provide advanced building materials and innovative new products. Some of these are being developed at UW and others by private industry.
Wyoming is the nation’s leader in advancing carbon sequestration and has launched the Integrated Test Center which is working on turning a byproduct like carbon dioxide into a valuable and marketable product.
Here in Wyoming, we will continue to seek innovative solutions that support coal, address climate change, and grow our economy.
Coal is far, far too expensive:
ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Issue: Ecological Economics Reviews
FULL COST ACCOUNTING FOR THE LIFE CYCLE OF COAL
Our comprehensive review finds that the best estimate for the total economically quantifiable costs, based on a conservative weighting of many of the study findings, amount to some $345.3 billion, adding close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated from coal. The low estimate is $175 billion, or over 9¢/kWh, while the true monetizable costs could be as much as the upper bounds of $523.3 billion, adding close to 26.89¢/kWh. These and the more difficult to quantify externalities are borne by the general public.
Still these figures do not represent the full societal and environmental burden of coal. In quantifying the damages, we have omitted the impacts of toxic chemicals and heavy metals on ecological systems and diverse plants and animals; some ill-health endpoints (morbidity) aside from mortality related to air pollutants released through coal combustion that are still not captured; the direct risks and hazards posed by sludge, slurry, and CCW impoundments; the full contributions of nitrogen deposition to eutrophication of fresh and coastal sea water; the prolonged impacts of acid rain and acid mine drainage; many of the long-term impacts on the physical and mental health of those living in coal-field regions and nearby MTR sites; some of the health impacts and climate forcing due to increased tropospheric ozone formation; and the full assessment of impacts due to an increasingly unstable climate. The true ecological and health costs of coal are thus far greater than the numbers suggest. Accounting for the many external costs over the life cycle for coal-derived electricity conservatively doubles to triples the price of coal per kWh of electricity generated.
I want to take just a moment to talk about coal. Coal continues to power this country and, despite market trends and politics, it will remain an essential part of America’s energy portfolio for decades to come.
Sorry, but that simply can not be allowed! FULL STOP!
PHF-
People in Washington , Oregon and California have absolutely no interest in being host to thousands of trains hauling coal through their towns, across their rivers, over their farmlands and forests.
Or dumping their loads portside.
Or hosting all the ships it would take to plow their harbors.
No thanks, and they will fight it hard. Vast majority feel that way.
In a democracy the majority sometimes gets to win, despite the electoral college.
You want to ship coal out, maybe Mexico will take it. Better leave a hole in the wall for your trains.
Hickory,
There are mile-long unit trains carrying coal from the Powder River Basin north from the Columbia River near Longview all the way up the Puget Lowland to an export facility north of Vancouver BC. They run open to the air and pass through the large cities along the way. They go under downtown Seattle through a tunnel but north and south of its entrances they can hold up traffic.
Yes. People are very opposed to more of it.
That’s too bad, the railroads were there first and literally almost all the cities along the way wouldn’t even be there without the railroads building them up from scratch.
Some might consider that a feature and not a bug!
The following is an excerpt from the transcript of Arithmetic, Population and Energy – a talk by Al Bartlett
…Remember the historic figure on the preceding slide, 6% per year? If that could continue for one lifetime, the population of Boulder would be larger than the population of Los Angeles. Well, I’ll just tell you, you couldn’t put the population of Los Angles in the Boulder valley. Therefore it’s obvious, Boulder’s population growth is going to stop and the only question is, will we be able to stop it while there is still some open space, or will we wait until it’s wall-to-wall people and we’re all choking to death?
Now, every once in a while somebody says to me, “But you know, a bigger city might be a better city,” and I have to say, “Wait a minute, we’ve done that experiment!” We don’t need to wonder what will be the effect of growth on Boulder because Boulder tomorrow can be seen in Los Angeles today. And for the price of an airplane ticket, we can step 70 years into the future and see exactly what it’s like. What is it like? There’s an interesting headline from Los Angeles. (“…carcinogens in air…”) Maybe that has something to do with this headline from Los Angeles. (“Smog kills 1,600 annually…”)
So how are we doing in Colorado? Well, we’re the growth capital of the USA and proud of it. The Rocky Mountain News tells us to expect another million people in the Front Range in the next 20 years, and what are the consequences of all this? (“Denver’s traffic…3rd worst in US…”) These are totally predictable, there are no surprises here, we know exactly what happens when you crowd more people into an area.
Anyone who is still pushing for the continuation of the use of fossil fuels and the neo-classical growth based economic paradigm, should be safely put away in a padded cell in an asylum for the criminally insane!
You must be in the for-profit prison industry, because under your plan you would have to lock up at least tens of millions of people.
Do not confuse the users with pushers!
I’m not. Just consider all the politicians in the world, all the business executives, middle managers, financial consultants, business school professors, stock brokers, wealth managers, venture capitalists, economists, bankers, entrepreneurs and innovators. They all need economic growth to be prosperous.
Not really.
You don’t need fossil fuels for prosperity.
And…you don’t need growing amounts of “stuff” to have economic growth. Economic growth can consist of higher-performance, safer, higher quality vehicles (recycled and electric); recycled electric-arc steel; higher resolution and faster computers (but still using less power and recycled materials); better health services; better education; more and better communications, art, entertainment, etc.,etc.
We in the OECD have more than enough “stuff”.
@Daybeer
“They all need economic growth to be prosperous.”
Infinite growth in a closed system is impossible. The earth is a closed system. Growth WILL stop. They need to choose how abruptly that will be. They will not be prosperous if growth is not curtailed by choice.
NAOM
NAOM,
Growth in consumption of new “stuff” (steel, oil, coal, electricity, homes, cars, appliances, etc., etc.) has already stopped in the OECD.
This whole “exponential growth is impossible” thing is a strawman: it’s not necessary to have more “stuff’ to have continued economic growth: you can have higher quality stuff, and more services, and that’s actually what people want.
@Nick
So, once your stuff is perfect how do you improve on perfect? You might be waited up hand and foot by servants but who does that for the servants then for the servants servants? Even quality and service have a limit, infinite growth is not possible in these or anything else. Maybe a steady state in those could be achieved but if that depends on new material input (eg an improved and perfect cellphone using raw materials and the old phone junked) it cannot.
NAOM
You might be right, notanoilman, but, aside for those who post here, nearly the entire world would rather see economic growth than economic decline.
NAOM, that is what robots and machines are for, to serve mankind.
It’s about time we stopped serving the machines.
@Daybeer
My point is you will get decline one way or the other. It is for you to choose the path, easy or hard.
@Fish
So, I get a Roomba*, more consumption, more growth, another brick in the wall.
In the video I posted about Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics just past the 25 minute mark she compares an I-Phone and an open source phone designed to be serviced and upgraded by the the end user.
Fred,
There specific design problems with the idea of open source, user upgradable iphone hardware – it’s a good idea in general, but I suspect it’s misguided in this case. The hardware is extraordinarily closely optimized: to allow the user to switch things out would require a much heavier, bulkier device.
I think that the idea of a circular economy would be satisfied by an iPhone designed to be recycled, accompanied by a tracking system that brought every discarded iPhone back to Apple (or an appropriate delegate) to be taken apart for reuse or recycling of every component.
Again, systems thinking, comprehensive approaches to optimal design, open source rather than proprietary IP…these are all good ideas. But, I don’t see why they’re necessary to a circular economy: the essential component to my mind is recycling: everything is reused in some way, either in its original form or in the form of it’s components, or in the form of the components melted down and recycled as a raw material.
Does that make sense to you?
Does that make sense to you?
No, it does not. Just this once, please watch the video and then come back to discuss!
Otherwise we will just be talking past each other. To be clear the I-Phone is not designed to be integrated into a circular economic paradigm and simply recycling every part of it will not make it so
@Fred
Sorry if I haven’t quite understood circular economy from your links, please send me a nice, straightforward one that I can re-educate myself from and no long videos please.
NAOM
NAOM,
I think there are some very short videos on the Ellen MacArthur website explaining the basics but Kate Rawort’s Doughnut Economics is not only about cicular economics principles and even though the video is an hour and a half long the presentation part is only 30 minutes followed by an hour of Q&A.
In any case sometimes a sound byte is not sufficient for getting accross a complex subject.
Kate Raworth does give the example of the fair phone as a better way of doing things as it can be repaired and upgraded by the consumer and is designed to allow that.
Two key ideas are regeneration where the waste from a process (or product) is used as an input for some other process (as in nature) and distributive networks (as in the internet and solar PV and sharing economy rather than the traditional centralized networks).
I see what you mean about the tendency for neoclassical economic thinking which distorts how things are viewed. That model ignores the social and cooperative nature of human social behavior and simplifies economic analysis far too much.
The more complex systems approach to thinking about social problems is not widely taught and might be difficult to apply. Seems variables would be nearly infinite with infinity raised to the infinity power relationships amongst the variables, a rather intractable problem.
I would have no clue how to proceed with such an analysis. Complex systems analysis and/or chaos theory I have never studied.
SBBishop,
Yep, railroads have always been important. The post wasn’t about railroads though, it was part, a bit of information, of a discussion of coal and its transport.
Ocean Acidification Is Bad, and It’s Getting Worse
The ocean absorbs about 30 percent of the CO2 emitted from human activites. As the volume of atmospheric CO2 grows, the ocean collects its proportionate share. To give you an idea of how much that is, in 2013, countries emitted nearly 40 billion tons of carbon. According to the World Meteorological Organization, that represents the biggest surge in CO2 concentration since 1984.
That’s bad news for the climate, but it’s really bad news for the ocean. When the ocean absorbs CO2, it converts the gas into carbonic acid. Until the Industrial Revolution, there wasn’t enough carbonic acid in the water to unbalance the ecosystem. But after more than a century of unchecked carbon emissions, the ecosystem has been measurably upended. The pH level of surface waters has dropped from 8.18 to 8.07, an unprecedented shift in the last 300 million years of the fossil record.
@fred magyar,
This is why I am wary of politically oriented publications for science info. Both their editors and most of their readers are scientifically illiterate (and I do not mean the huffpost only). At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived. Oceans are in no danger of becoming excessively acidic. Pseudo-scientific hoakum.
Oceans are in no danger of becoming excessively acidic. Pseudo-scientific hoakum.
Says who exactly?! Please be so kind as to provide the links to actual peer reviewed papers in the scientific literature. BTW, whatever you may think of the political orientation of the Huffpost, if you read the article you will find dozens of embedded links that do provide scientific information to back up the article’s premise! Ocean acidification is a fact and to deny it by attempting to put a political spin on it is rather disingenuous!
I more often than not post links directly to scientific papers and I could sit here all day doing so but I doubt you would read those papers and I doubt they would change your mind.
I’ll just post two below and could easily post hundreds from multiple disciplines.
Abstract The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) has been associated with the release of several thousands of petagrams of carbon (Pg C) as methane and/or carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system within ~10 thousand years (ky), on the basis of the co-occurrence of a carbon isotope excursion (CIE), widespread dissolution of deep sea carbonates, and global warming. In theory, this rapid carbon release should have severely acidified the surface ocean, though no geochemical evidence has yet been presented. Using boron-based proxies for surface-ocean carbonate chemistry, we present the first observational evidence for a drop in the pH of surface and thermocline seawater during the PETM. Planktic foraminifers from a drill site in the North Pacific (ODP Site 1209) show a ~0.8‰ decrease in boron isotopic composition (δ11B) at the onset of the event, along with a 30-40% reduction in shell B/Ca. Similar trends in δ11B are present in two lower resolution records from the South Atlantic and Equatorial Pacific. These observations are consistent with significant, global acidification of the surface ocean lasting at least 70 ky and requiring sustained carbon release. The anomalies in the B records are consistent with an initial surface pH drop of ~0.3 units, at the upper range of model-based estimates of acidification.
Mass extinction in tetraodontiform fishes linked to the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
Arcila D1, Tyler JC2.
Author information
Abstract Integrative evolutionary analyses based upon fossil and extant species provide a powerful approach for understanding past diversification events and for assessing the tempo of evolution across the Tree of Life. Herein, we demonstrate the importance of integrating fossil and extant species for inferring patterns of lineage diversification that would otherwise be masked in analyses that examine only one source of evidence. We infer the phylogeny and macroevolutionary history of the Tetraodontiformes (triggerfishes, pufferfishes and allies), a group with one of the most extensive fossil records among fishes. Our analyses combine molecular and morphological data, based on an expanded matrix that adds newly coded fossil species and character states. Beyond confidently resolving the relationships and divergence times of tetraodontiforms, our diversification analyses detect a major mass-extinction event during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), followed by a marked increase in speciation rates. This pattern is consistently obtained when fossil and extant species are integrated, whereas examination of the fossil occurrences alone failed to detect major diversification changes during the PETM. When taking into account non-homogeneous models, our analyses also detect a rapid lineage diversification increase in one of the groups (tetraodontoids) during the middle Miocene, which is considered a key period in the evolution of reef fishes associated with trophic changes and ecological opportunity. In summary, our analyses show distinct diversification dynamics estimated from phylogenies and the fossil record, suggesting that different episodes shaped the evolution of tetraodontiforms during the Cenozoic.
I assume you are scientifically literate enough to understand the information in these two papers and follow up on the vast available literature as well!
“At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived.” – not the life currently there though. Environment of evolutionary adaptation is maybe a new concept for you but worth trying to understand – it’s the speed that things are changing at that’s the problem not just magnitude. I’m putting your comment as another nail in the WASF coffin.
“At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived.”
Yeah, said by the guy who complained about the politics and scientific illiteracy of both the editors and readers of the Huffpost while posting links upthread to the notorious climate science denialist blog ‘Whatsupwiththat’
My oh my! Here is a kick in the ass to all the ICE pickup trucks. I’d love to see those rednecks blocking Tesla chargers face off with some of these vehicles. 100% US built, Amazing specs and not much more money than a typical US pickup with all the bells and whistles. Oh they also have an SUV built on the same platform. Towing capacity of over 5,000 lbs so those charger blocking bad boys won’t stand a chance!
Antarctica, Greenland, the permafrost are melting now. As the amount of Co2 increases the melting increases. Even if we cut Co2 emission by half. We are still ADDING to the warming rate.
Americans need to reduce Co” emissions from 16 tonnes per person down to 5 tonnes by 2030. This would allow other nations who produce hardly anything(look at map) to burn some gas and oil.
What are the chances?
Hugo- ‘It does not matter how many electric vehicles there are. What matters is are there more petrol and diesel vehicles, ships and planes.’
Absolutely agree.
But when you see one city putting 21,000 electric taxis on the road, it is time to acknowledge that the excuse of waiting for the technology to mature is no longer viable.
The transition decade to electric doesn’t start in 2020, it started in 2018, and is gathering steam.
Nonetheless we are still on the hard path to global mass extinction, just because of our shear bulk and lack of foresight.
Anyone who thinks renewables have a chance in hell at saving us, or even at making this situation better, should read the linked post. Really take it in. Especially the part at the end about the way journalists are imprisoned or censored for photographing the environmental destruction that goes into creating your batteries.
And the part about the converging ecological trend lines leading to collapse. Only a SINGLE one of these problems can possibly be helped by renewables. Just ONE. The rest… still gonna get you, solar panel or no.
And to everyone else, it is a truly sad and haunting piece, I recommend it.
a pessimist is an optimist who shed his delusions and denial, and educated himself.
Concerning the future of the world, a pessimist is a realist, an optimist is a dreamer.
Human population is growing, getting worse
Human livestock population is growing, getting worse
Human consumption is increasing, getting worse for all but the consumers
Human ecological and war-victim refugees are increasing, getting worse
Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse
Wild flora / fauna diversity is shrinking, getting worse
Aquifers, and all freshwater resources are shrinking, getting worse
CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, getting worse for existing biodiversity
Acid content of oceans is increasing, getting worse
Human economic unpayable debt load (fake energy, fake “growth”) is increasing, getting worse
Quality and availability of every critical resource are shrinking, making these resources more expensive and more destructive to recover
Net energy from energy resources is shrinking
Habitats and food for wild fauna are shrinking
Carbon and nutrient content of arable soils are shrinking
Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles are disrupted and concentrated, creating dead lakes and dead ocean zones
Coral bed sea-life nurseries are shrinking
Tropical forest terrestrial nurseries are shrinking
Estuaries are shrinking
Ponzi schemes, stock swindles, and scams are increasing in frequency and monetary value
Forest fires and violent storms are increasing with CO2 and heating
War budgets are increasing, etc.
I have been preaching most of these things for years. Collapse is not something that will happen, collapse is something that is happening.
All true but, just think, everyone can keep track of it all with their latest-and-greatest smartphone(s).
“6.1 billion phones represents 70 percent of the global population, and Ericsson also estimates 90 percent of the populated globe will have high-speed mobile data coverage by 2020. What’s particularly interesting is where the majority of these new phones will be sold. Ericsson says 80 percent of the new smartphone owners will be located in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.”
I was at an event on Tuesday this week where one of Jamaica’s leading economists gave what I can only describe as a pep talk to a group of “financial advisors” aka life insurance salespeople. He started out by saying something big is happening in Jamaica and proceeded to lay out his reasons for optimism about future economic growth in the island. One of the points he made I found particularly convincing, that investments in road infrastructure have improved and will continue to improve productivity by reducing the amount of time people and goods spend in transit, underscoring the importance of not having people wasting time stuck in traffic. He prefaced that by pointing out that a significant portion of economic activity is “movement of goods and people”.
The older of the two national newspapers reported on the talk here:
The rest of the presentations were predominantly about what individuals need to do to have a successful year in sales so they can buy that nice new car or new house etc.
As far as that list of 21 problems goes, what problems? Most of these problems are not staring the folks in that audience on Tuesday or the general public in the face yet, so as far as they are concerned, they are not real problems. There is going to be no acknowledgement of these problems until and unless they get real, very real!
Finally a note on renewable energy and solar in particular. I have opined before and will repeat my opinion that renewable energy has prevented some of the problems facing humanity from being a lot worse. Just imagine what the situation would be like without the roughly 500 GW of solar PV installed worldwide? Add to that all the electricity being produced by wind turbines and you have a huge amount of CO2 emissions being avoided.
More importantly I see renewable energy as having put a cap on FF prices that will lessen the damage to economies that can happen from price increases due to supply issues. I am seeing more and more articles talking about the need for FF prices to remain low in order to prevent a more rapid transition to renewable energy and EVs. The fact is, under the current circumstances, any movement in FF prices beyond a certain point, will certainly result in more people taking advantage of the increasingly available alternatives.
And the destruction of the environment marches on! 🙁
Ron,
A pessimist is just a pessimist. Things change, always have and always will.
A pessimist thinks only negative change is possible and that even positive changes will simply lead to negative changes later and that things cannot possibly improve.
The “optimist” thinks that people can see those behaviors and policies that are negative and make changes in policies and behavior.
One only need look back at history to find examples.
It really comes down to a question, can positive changes occur and can people continue to enact more of those changes.
For the pessimist the answer is no, and for the optimist it is the opposite.
Anther problem with the pessimistic view point is that it can lead to a conservative or reactionary policy viewpoint. If one thinks that only negative change is possible, then one would tend to prefer no change or possibly even to go back to some earlier set of policies where things were “better” before all the negative changes that have occurred.
An optimistic viewpoint where positive change is deemed possible would be more amenable to trying to improve policy in an attempt to improve the world (make society more sustainable for example).
The pessimist would say such an attempt is a waste of time and more likely to make things worse.
It also assumes defeat before the battle has been joined, a sure fire way to lose.
Dennis, no comment except to remind Fred that he was dead wrong on this comment:
Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition.
I didn’t want to mention your name as one who does have such illusions. But what the hell, you do.
But arguing with an optimist is like arguing with a religious fanatic, reason plays no part in the debate. So as I said, no comment. What would be the point?
Ron,
I agree with Fred, all that I argue is that replacing fossil fuel use with solar and wind and electric transport is a better idea than business as usual.
I have never said it solves every problem that exists, nor have I said it will be easily accomplished.
The argument is pretty simple, fossil fuels will deplete, they will become more expensive than alternatives and people will gradually switch to non-fossil fuel energy because it will be cheaper.
Now you often say this will not happen overnight.
I agree and have never said or implied it would happen very quickly, an “optimistic” scenario (one that I think is not likely, perhaps a 5% probability) might see fossil fuel reduced to 5% of 2017 levels by 2045, a more realistic scenario is probably 5% of 2017 fossil fuel consumption in 2055-2060.
Note that nowhere have I ever said this solves any problem except the depletion of fossil fuels and perhaps reduces the extent of the Global Warming problem to about a 2 C rise in temperature above the 1850-1900 average.
There are many other problems and potentially other solutions to those, for human population, education would be a key, along with equal rights for women.
There are plenty of problems, my point is to find solutions rather than simply focus on all that is wrong with the World.
There have always been refugees and this is likely to continue.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuel have been rising more slowly over time, they are likely to peak in 2025+/-2 and then decline. Data in chart from BP statistical review of World energy. The 2011-2017 rate of increase in C)2 emissions was 0.64%/year vs 1.78%/year in 1980 to 2010 and 3.6% per year from 1965 to 1979. The rate of decline in CO2 emissions will depend on fossil fuel prices, the prices of alternatives to fossil fuel, and economic growth, along with national policies. I expect CO2 emissions to fall to 5% of 2017 levels by 2050-2055.
Dennis
If CO2 peaks in 2025, then we will suffer the consequences of global temperatures rising above The 2c.
The interactive graph 2/3 of the way down shows what cuts would be needed.
Bare in mind the ice sheets are melting now at a high rate. What will stop them?
Emissions could peak in the coming decade, perhaps.
But the tail will be very long, and atmospheric concentration will likely peak several decades later due to long effective half life in the atmosphere.
Do you concur with this Dennis?
The effects will continue to mount long after the peak emission years.
Hickory,
Yes I agree. For a model with peak emissions in 2025 and using a Bern type model to estimate CO2 concentrations (likely to be an underestimate due to permafrost melting and other natural feedbacks), atmospheric CO2 peaks at about 485 ppm in 2065, total Carbon emissions (including cement production, fossil fuels and land use change) about 1047 Pg of carbon from 1800-2500.
To me this is the most likely scenario, though technically we might keep emissions as low as 800 Pg C.
There is not a lot of consensus on the future level of emissions from permafrost melt etc, many of the scenarios presented that I have seen are based on emissions scenarios that rely on 5000 Pg C emissions (RCP8.5). The RCP4.5 scenario (1600 Pg C emissions) is much more in line with available fossil fuel resources and should be the scenario that is focused on because it is more in line with mainstream fossil fuel resource estimates.
When cost reductions in wind, solar, batteries, etc are added to the mix, then 1000 Pg C emissions is quite reasonable and Tony Seba type optimism would lead to 800 Pg C emissions (I think odds of that are under 10%).
Chart can be clicked on for larger view
Hugo,
I am just reporting what I think is likely to happen, it is possible the peak will be sooner or later than 2025 (I think 2023-2027), I would prefer it to be sooner, but that will not make it so. Yes the ice sheets are melting, and they will continue to do so, not much can be done to change history.
Also correct that Global temperatures may rise to 2 C above the 1850-1900 mean temperature, though that was a relatively cold period over the past 6000 years. The Holocene Climactic Optimum was roughly similar to 1986-2010 temperatures (about 0.35C above 1961-1990 average Global temperature.)
The 1850-1900 average temperature was about 0.7 C lower than the Holocene Climactic Optimum average temperature from 9500 to 5100 BP (data from Marcott et al 2013 and BEST temperature data).
Thanks for the projection Dennis. Looks like a very reasonable effort. That is a long and nasty tail of atmospheric CO2- lots of time for amplification effects, such loss of albedo and permafrost melting.
Hickory,
Yes we will need to find a way to draw CO2 from the atmosphere, maybe in cement, or other processes, use excess solar energy to produce calcium carbonate?
The quicker we reduce carbon emissions the better.
“The “optimist” thinks that people can see those behaviors and policies that are negative and make changes in policies and behavior.
One only need look back at history to find examples.“
Dennis,
There is no situation to be found in history that compares to the last 100 years, with a human population explosion made possible because of fossil fuels.
There are positive changes in policies and behaviour, but the destructive forces, people making money out of ‘everything’ on earth, are much bigger. What to do ? People without a (normal) job, have to eat and need water too. And the number of those people is increasing rapidly.
Because of this, you now get presidents like in the U.S. and Brazil.
Han,
Probably advances in medicine played a part as well, child mortality decreased, life expectancy increased and it took a while for modern birth control to become widely used. Total fertility ratio (live births per woman) decreased for the World average from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2005.
Replacement rate is an average Total Fertility ratio of 2.1 (no population growth). The process is likely to reverse so that World Population will decline from a peak of about 9.5 billion in 2070 to 2.1 billion by about 2200.
I assume eventually the World’s average total fertility ratio falls to 1.5 (for my family and my wife’s, in one generation the TFR fell from 5.5 to 0.9).
I think it’s very, very important to straddle that fence, to keep the right foot planted firmly on the “optimist” side, and to keep the left foot planted firmly on the “pessimist” side.
The problem now is my balls hurt.
Michael,
Find a lower fence.
@dennis coyne,
” trying to improve policy in an attempt to improve the world (make society more sustainable for example).”
Alas, unlike you apparently, I do not have the ear of society’s very small number of movers and shakers, and thus cannot hope to affect policy at that level, not even optimistically. I do think the vast majority of people who think they can make a difference–the “I want to change the world” types, I call them–are a bit delusional and would be better off concentrating on matters they can actually control, or trying to influence the few people that they both know personally and who can plausibly be expected to take them seriously. If enough individuals and households prepared in advance, the result might be a a relatively orderly, slower, pre-emptive collapse rather than a global trauma. Yet if not very many make pre-emptive adjustments, at least those few will have improved their chances of muddling through better than if they had used most of their spare time and resources to futilely petition their congressmen or whomever to rescue the world. No matter how many times they try, most of us have extraordinarily little influence on the larger world. Heck, even my congressman doesn’t have any serious clout. The people who do are few in number, and usually are not elected, and often do not even hold a government post. Like other people, they have their own opinions and their own concerns and I, like most of mankind, do not have their ear. And even if I did, I probably would have to persuade a considerable number of key individuals before there was any hope I might have an effect–you know, the sort of people who get invited to Bilderberger meetings. Since my friends are not on that list, I should probably be content to “brighten the corner where you are” and leave saving the world to those who have a snowball’s chance in hades of doing so. If you were a feudal serf, you could plead with your priest (who might be literate) to write a letter to the king asking him to exert his influence on the feudal lords to possibly abolish serfdom, or you could run away to the city and free yourself. Sort of where we are, except we should probably be running away from the city.
Nehemiah,
I do not expect anything I write will change anything. Just reporting on the changes I see and how I expect things might play out. Of the infinite possible paths the World might take the odds are pretty low any guess I would make will be correct as 1/infinity is approximately zero.
As I often say, the story is pretty simple.
Fossil fuel peaks (around 2025), they become more expensive, alternatives to fossil fuel continue to become cheaper, people switch to non-fossil fuel energy because it is relatively cheap, CO2 emissions decrease to approximately zero over time.
Also, women succeed in attaining equal rights, access to education and modern birth control becomes more widespread, total fertility ratio gradually declines to 1.5 live births per woman for the World average (from about 2.4 births per woman today) and human population decreases to about 2.5 billion by 2200 and 1 billion by 2300, stabilizing at whatever level human societies choose after 2300.
There are many other problems which will require other solutions, humans are pretty innovative and there will no doubt be technological breakthroughs and future problems that I cannot possibly foresee.
Really take it in. Especially the part at the end about the way journalists are imprisoned or censored for photographing the environmental destruction that goes into creating your batteries.
Really?!
Do they also get censored and imprisoned for photographing scenes like this?!
And for the 10 millionth time!! Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition. What we do know for 100% certainty, is that if we stay on fossil fuels we are as sure as already dead! The only game in town at the moment is going 100% renewables and to argue against that is beyond disingenuous!
Meanwhile,
BP JUST DISCOVERED A BILLION BARRELS OF OIL IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
“BP’s investment in next-generation technology just paid off to the tune of a billion barrels. The British energy company has discovered 1 billion barrels of oil at an existing oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. BP also announced two new offshore oil discoveries and a major new investment in a nearby field.”
At one third recovery that is 4 days global supply. Which means a discovery like this has to happen 91 times every year to replace current consumption.
Since only 7 billion barrels of oil equivalent were discovered in 2017, there seems to be a problem.
Demand increases are outstripping oil supply increases by a rate of three to one.
Well, this should keep us going for awhile then, we have lots of coal and gas to fall back on: no worries mate!
SAUDIS BOOST OIL RESERVES AHEAD OF ARAMCO’S PLANNED IPO
“Saudi Arabia published the first audit of its vast oil reserves since it nationalized its energy industry about 40 years ago, saying its reserves total 268.5 billion, slightly more than the 266.3 billion figure that the government published previously.”
So oil will continue for over 70 years or less.
The question now is who will own Saudi Arabia when the ROW starts sucking water in their oil fields, say around 2030 or so?
Or will that ignite WWIII?
Or will most nations just ignore it because it’s another dead end play.
It feels like an intelligence test.
Doug,
So of 3000 Gb, another 1 Gb is really going to make a big difference, that’s about 0.03% of likely URR for oil.
Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition.
I am sorry Fred, but that is just not the case. There are many people who believe renewables will be our salvation, some of them on this list. The vast majority of people on this earth do not realize there is even a problem. And of those who do realize there is a problem, the majority of them believe we will solve the problem… somehow… somehow.
However, the vast majority of people, even in this United States, just don’t want to hear from us. They call us “Doomsayers” and “Chicken Littles” or some other stupid name. They believe “science” or “technology” or even “God” will save us. Some even believe that governments will wise up and step in and save the day. Back on the Oil Drum, one guy told me, “The government will not let that happen”. So don’t worry, be happy.
I am sorry Fred but denial is more than just a river in Africa.
PV and wind power can solve much of the atmospheric carbon flux problem and a large chunk of the pollution problem. No one with a brain thinks it is a panacea for world problems.
I am sorry Fred, but that is just not the case. There are many people who believe renewables will be our salvation, some of them on this list.
Ok, I stand corrected… but even knowing the truth as long as I’m still breathing I will be advocating for renewables and against the continuing use of fossil fuels.
Gonefishing and Fred are correct, nobody who comments here believes that renewables are a panacea, simply a way to solve the carbon pollution problem. Other problems require other solutions. Population problem requires equal rights for women, better access to modern birth control methods and better education.
Not sure of the solution to soil problems, but likely there are better agricultural practices which would help and lower population will also help.
Ok, I try not to look at things with rose colored glasses as more often than not when you take them off you end up rather disappointed!
However this is an interesting discussion about soil and an innovative form of carbon capture. I’ll be the first to admit that It does sound too good to be true! But, the more I understood about the process and how it might scale the more intrigued I have become about this idea.
As usual, to be crystal clear, much more research is needed and the time we have is exceedingly short. Furthermore this is but one arrow in our quiver with the main emphasis still having to be on 100% elimination of CO2 emissions. This is not a final solution to all our problems by any means.!
http://ScientistsWarning.TV/ – Dr. David Beerling from the University of Sheffield presents us with his current research into how we might trap gigatons of Carbon, using rock waste from previous mining, and a technique called ‘enhanced weathering’. The process appears also to increase the yield of crops. Trials have been very promising. There’s a huge quadruple win here… sequester bast carbon emissions, get rid of huge piles of rock, save on fertilizers, increase food yields, generate carbon credits.
I’m trying really, really hard to not worry and be happy.
I’m failing miserably Ron.
Got any advice on how to succeed with those activities?
BTW, sadly, I’m not ignorant anymore. I don’t know how to unknow what I know.
Any pointers?
Thanks in advance.
BTW, while you didn’t answer my question above at the spot provided above about whether we’re fucked or not, you did answer the question all the same.
Thanks for that! It’s appreciated!
Sorry Doom, but I have no advice. No one listens to my advice anyway. My kids don’t even believe it. I worry deeply for humanity but have no worries for my own ass. I am not worried because I am 80 years old and hope to be safely dead when the shit hits the fan. But it really hurts when I think of the future for my kids, and grandkids, and all the children of the world who will suffer so. It will be hell on earth. It hurts so bad even to think about it.
DI, since you apparently can ignore the many nuclear missiles aimed at you that could arrive in minutes, why are you so bothered about climate change and the state of the environment?
Face it, it was nature itself that produced the latest version of humans and provided the means of energy used to change the climate and wreck the ecosystems. It’s just evolution and sometimes evolution works, sometimes it doesn’t .
If it results in some mass extinction, would not be the first time. Listen to the Adam Frank video I posted below, he amplifies the fact that we would not even be here without a mass extinction event.
It’s been a good run for 65 million years, maybe time for a change.
Or we could actually use the brains we were given.
Hi Niko,
Lets assume the assertion that ‘renewables don’t have a chance in hell of making the situation better’ is true.
So then we’d be smart to not spend another dime on them, or on further innovation research.
Before too long fossil fuels will be running down. We will burn most of the coal we can get our hands on.
Then the forests will be cut. It will take 12 years, or so, to complete that job by a cold and hunger humanity.
We have 7.7 Billion [plus 80 mill/yr], who will be scrambling for the scraps. Humans are very ugly, and even worse when they scramble for the scraps.
If you subscribe to this series of events, even roughly, then how do you propose to react?
Some say get ready for a quick departure from life when things get ugly (for some, things are already ugly- Syrians for example).
Others will try to bargain with reality by attempting Survivalist mode, hoping to hold out to the last moment when the local warlord gang comes calling.
Others think that prayer can feed them.
Some just say what the hell, and go on as if things will be ok. ‘Lets not talk about it’.
Others stick with denial- ‘we’ve got no problem’. Overshoot oversmoot.
Some seek rationalization- we can make this work…
Others decide to make adjustments and hope to adapt to change. Hope to live in a community of like minded people who can find a way to live more sustainably. Set a new pattern of simpler life.
Constructive dreamers, I’ll call them.
Me, I suppose I choose elements of the first and last, while I find myself highly skeptical that humanity will find a smooth path down.
I’m sure I’m skipping some patterns of reaction to the reality of Massive Population Overshoot.
How about you, what is your path?
Lets assume the assertion that ‘renewables don’t have a chance in hell of making the situation better’ is true.
And just what does the term “making the situation better” really mean? Let’s just consider the first three things on the list:
Human population is growing, getting worse
Human livestock population is growing, getting worse
Human consumption is increasing, getting worse for all but the consumers
Would renewables solve any of those three problems? There are twenty items on that list. Renewables would help perhaps three of them. They are:
Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse
CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, getting worse for existing biodiversity
Acid content of oceans is increasing, getting worse
Going exclusively to renewables would help with these three items. For the other seventeen, renewables would be little, if any help.
Ron,
Possibly correct.
We also have the fact the Total Fertility ratio fell from about 5 live births per woman in 1965 (world average) to about 2.5 in 2005. When it falls to 2.1 births per woman on average population stabilizes, when it falls below that population eventually declines. Education, equal rights for women, access to women’s healthcare (especially modern birth control all tend to occur as economic development proceeds and the TFR tends to fall in economically developed nations.
I know the idea that improving the lives of millions of people might led to a positive outcome may seem strange, as in many cases economic development has lead to huge destruction of the environment. Much of the World’s population has a TFR of under 1.75 (about half of the World’s population). As the poorer half becomes less poor, the World’s population will become smaller as women choose to have fewer children.
With smaller World population many problems become less severe.
There are many problems and many solutions.
TFR…about 2.5 in 2005.
It’s now down to 2.4. Pretty darn close to replacement, at around 2.1.
Yep, only 10.1 New York Cities added to the world in 2019.
Global period for adding an additional billion people is slowing down but is still horribly fast.
Sometimes a farmer’s perspective can add something to the discussion of collapse.
Farmers are quite accustomed to thinking about collapse at the local and regional level, in terms of their own economic survival.
One of the key takeaways of this thinking is that if you as an individual can hold on for a year, or two or three, circumstances generally improve.You may have sold ninety percent of your cows, but the rain returns, and you start building your herd again.
Tens and hundreds of millions of people will likely perish in various places, but there will be survivors, and with the population pressure substantially reduced, local farmers and or business men can again provide for the remaining people.
Another is that even if your community, or your country, falls victim to flood, drought,war, etc, other farmers in other countries generally have enough to sell assuming somebody is willing to pay.
My personal belief is that while substantial portions of the world will experience hard ecological and economic collapse.
There is plenty of reason to believe that this collapse will occur in piecemeal fashion, in various countries and regions over a period of a couple of decades or longer, rather than world wide over a year or two.
It follows that some countries, especially bigger, stronger, and economically more advanced countries, may pull thru without suffering any major violence or loss of life.
Consider for instance just how much the USA could accomplish if the people of this country ever come to understand and believe in renewable energy and in fossil fuel depletion, never mind climate issues.
We Yankees could build wind and solar farms out the ying yang without ever even really missing the money. We could as easily build a nationwide HVDC transmission system to deliver the juice as needed and where needed.
We could have cars and appliances that run on a small fraction of the energy used by current models.
And we could justifiably ease the pain of paying for these things by cutting back on military spending, because the less oil we need to import, and the less need our closest friends and allies have for imported oil, the less our need for the MIC.
Bottom line, the only prudent course of action is to work to speed up the transition to a sustainable economy. It won’t be easy, but we know it is at least theoretically possible to pull it off.
We can do it if we put our minds and our hearts into it, as we did in fighting WWII.
It won’t be easy, but we know it is at least theoretically possible to pull it off.
We don’t know this, and I in fact disagree strongly with this point. We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. Everything from the mining, refining, shipping, and erecting, at every step of the way fossil fuels are consumed to create renewables. Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a renewable company that performs 100% of operations with only their own product, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy.
The standard trick right now is to use fossil fuel energy, but then purchase the equivalent amount of renewable power to claim that you did it with only renewables. This is what Google did. Problem is, renewables and fossil fuels have different energy densities. You can’t run a mine, a container ship, or a refinery with renewables. You can run much of these processes with renewables, but there are parts where you simply cannot.
Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.
“Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.”
Niko,
When most of world electricity is produced by solar/wind/hydrogen and most cars are EV’s, world fossil fuel use is small compared to now. That quantity of liquid fossil fuels necessary then could be produced by for example algae.
If that situation can ever be reached is another story.
From the comment of islandboy in this threat:
“Did you know that some of the largest mining machines in the world are electrically powered? (Bagger 288) It is noteworthy that the biggest of these goliaths was built for use in coal mining operations. If civilization does not collapse first, future humans will probably witness an almost entirely electrically powered civilization. Everything from mining equipment to ships and planes.”
Letting small planes, for let’s say 50 passengers, fly on electricity, is at least two decades away. For big planes it is much more difficult
We don’t know this, and I in fact disagree strongly with this point. We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. Everything from the mining, refining, shipping, and erecting, at every step of the way fossil fuels are consumed to create renewables. Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a renewable company that performs 100% of operations with only their own product, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy.
I guess at one point it was also possible to say: Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a heavier that air flying machine, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy!
Yeah, and next the thing you know fantasy became a physical reality and the Wright brothers took flight at Kitty Hawk!
At least as I understand things, ‘Theoretically feasible’ for practical purposes, means that no physical laws are broken to accomplish a particular goal. So in that sense 100% percent renewable electrical systems are indeed feasible.
In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, researcher Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100 percent renewable electrical systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.
Now, scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and collaborators have analysed hundreds of studies to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks to a 100 percent renewable future.
Here’s the Heard paper argueing against the theoretical feasability of 100% renewable electrical systems.
We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop.
Is a demonstrably false statement. Whether we will find the political will to do it. is a whole nuther can of worms!
Cheers!
Niko,
I lean towards your point on this- “Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.”
But if that is indeed the case, then extending is our best game.
And I certainly agree with OFM, some areas will do better than others. Some of that is pure geographical advantage, and some of it is the choices local cultures make. In fact, I think the differences will be huge, like they have been during other times of global tumult.
Example- the Pacific NW has a huge supply of hydroelectricity, as does Norway.
“We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. ”
YOU do not know. A chemist like me actually does. Please, do not project your uneducated opinion. 🙂
Ulenspiegel,
Your comment reads as if you agree with Niko.
Based on past comments I think you would disagree.
In other words you believe that at some point a World that uses 99.99% renewable power is indeed possible.
Is that roughly correct?
We do know, but whether we have the will to accomplish the transition is unknown.
(My personal belief is that a substantial part of humanity can transition successfully…. IF motivated to do so. See my other comments mentioning WAKE UP events, lol.)
First off, we have at least fifty to one hundred years, and possibly a lot longer, supply of fossil fuel still in the ground.
IF we use this one time gift of nature wisely, then we can build out not just dozens and hundreds of wind farms, but thousands and tens of thousands of each.
Once we have a large enough base supply of wind and solar power, plus maybe tidal and geothermal power, etc, as well, we can easily use this power to run all ESSENTIAL industrial processes.If I’m wrong on this point, it will still be possible to run critical industries on renewable energy based on biofuels…… so long as we don’t WASTE biofuels driving three ton pickup trucks to work and to fetch a six pack.
( I foresee cars shrinking to less than half their current size and weight, and getting three times the current average fuel economy……running on the dregs of whatever oil is left before we switch entirely over to electrically driven cars. )
We know already, and many people are doing so already, how to build houses that use only trivial or NO net energy.
We know how to build cars that are three to five times as efficient as the cars we use now…. and we know how to get by with far fewer cars, even no cars at all…. IF WE MUST………. and maybe we must, unless we succeed in building electrically powered cars that last indefinitely and can be very close to one hundred percent recycled.
We know how to have one or two children, or none, per couple.
And despite the fact that many people, including some of the regulars here, spend a lot of time spitting on religious people, the vast majority of such people are having fewer and fewer children as time passes.
I live in the heart of the socalled Bible Belt. People here generally had rather large families, typically four to six kids, sometimes more, as late as the fifties. Since then, the average has probably actually dropped below two kids per couple in this area, even among the folks who attend church services several times a week, religiously, pun intended.
Do you understand that a new solar panel produces twenty times as much electricity, at least, over the first twenty years of its life, as was needed to manufacture it?
Do you understand that steel can be recycled at rates at least into the mid nineties percentage without any problems?
Do you understand that IF we decide to mandate that cars, appliances, farm machinery, etc, be made to last fifty years or longer, doing so is really a trivial exercise, from the technical and engineering pov?
I LOVE wrecking yards, since I create many useful objects from materials that are scrapped which I can buy AS scrap for less than two cents on the dollar sometimes, never more than five cents?
Except for rust damage, and cosmetic issues, ninety nine percent of the parts of a typical scrapped car are still perfectly serviceable.
Most automobile engines with well over one hundred thousand miles on them are still in like new condition, as measured by wear on internal components such as pistons, cylinder walls, and bearings. What this means is that if CARS were BUILT to be serviced and repaired, rather than scrapped, they COULD be built like commercial trucks…… DESIGNED to be easily and quickly repairable. I can replace most of the component parts of an eighteen wheeler truck easier and quicker by a factor of three than I can on a typical car, assuming I have lifting aids handy for the heavier parts. AND garages that service let us say Perkins diesel engines need stock maybe only four to six electric starter motors to service every Perkins diesel they are likely to see over the course of the next year. You would need a couple of dozen starter motors just to service this years crop of GM cars, maybe two dozen, all different in some way that prevents them from being interchangeable.
I’m the proud owner of a house full of hand made solid wood furniture, which has never been boxed, or shipped or sold in a store. It’s all now fifty to a hundred years old, and was made by hand by a relative during slow times farming, thru the winter. It will last indefinitely, centuries at least, so long as it’s kept dry. I have been offered enough for just a couple of pieces to refurnish the entire house with moderately priced throwaway junk.
The problem with assuming we CAN’T run an entire industrial economy on renewable energy is that you are ASSUMING we must continue to run on fossil fuels in the future as we do today.
LOTS of changes will be necessary, but making the changes won’t be nearly as tough as going back to the time when the economy was based on muscle power and expansion into new lands. There won’t be any new lands available for expansion within another half century, and that half century estimate is based on people taking over and moving onto most of the lands that are protected as parks and nature reserves today.
He agrees. He said: “YOU do not know. A chemist like me actually does. ”
What he meant was “YOU do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. A chemist like me actually does know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels.”
And, of course, he’s correct. The fact is that replacements for every application of fossil fuels exist right now, and almost all of them are in widespread use.
Here’s just one example: we know how to make fertilizer without methane. The methane supplies hydrogen to combine with nitrogen, and we absolutely know how to produce hydrogen without methane. Electrolytic H2 production is a bit more expensive, but it’s not orders of magnitude more expensive. In fact, about 4% of industrial hydrogen production is done via electrolysis.
It’s basic high school chemistry!
“Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse“
Even growing with the growing world production of solar energy.
Comparable with the tremendous pollution from coal ash and desalination plants. Proper waste management is very expensive.
This way it is rather easy to bring down the costs of solar power.
With regards to your concern for warlord gangs coming along; I’d recommend mountainous terrain for survivalist mode. Mountainous terrain favors the defender; channeling terrain (defiles) concentrate forces making it easier to have over watch on areas of vulnerability and to detect intrusions sooner.
Thanks for the tip. And to think I was planning to hole up in a swamp.
Swamps can be good if you have water craft and your opponents do not. Alfred the Great did ok holing up in a swamp for a bit. Lots of folks seem to have their heart set on the prairies as a retreat. They won’t do so well, and will waste a lot of energy doing it. My preference is cold weather and mountains, both of which really suck the ‘I wanna be a warlord’ out of most folks. Northern end of the Rockies might be a nice spot to hole up.
First a disclaimer: To be clear, the Everglades are not a swamp! They are the better characterized as the river of sawgrass and the waters are not still, but flowing. The Seminole Indians at one time retreated to the Everglades when pursued by the US military during the Seminole wars of the late 1830s. They did quite well there even until relatively recently. Of course today they run the casinos…
But here is an interesting colorized video from 1949 about the Everglades.
Of course nowadays there are signs up everywhere warning people not to eat the fish there due to mercury poisoning… So even if one knew how to survive there, you’d probably still be in trouble.
Head for them there hills! 😉
Cheers!
All the hills and valleys around here are mercury poisoned. The state is kind enough to post signs near it’s lakes recommending a very limited diet of any fish caught there. So one can only assume that it is everywhere, all from the benevolent coal industry.
From 2013 Mercury’s Silent Toll On the World’s Wildlife
This month, delegates from over 140 countries gathered in Geneva and finalized the first international treaty to reduce emissions of mercury. The treaty — four years in the works and scheduled for signing in October — aims to protect human health from this very serious neurotoxin.
But barely considered during the long deliberations, according to those involved in the treaty process, was the harm that mercury inflicts on wildlife. While mercury doesn’t kill many animals outright, it can put a deep dent in reproduction, says David Evers, chief scientist at the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), who serves on a scientific committee informing the process. “It is a bit of a silent threat, where you have to kind of add up what was lost through studies and demographic models.”
Mercury plays havoc on vertebrates’ development and their neurological and hormonal systems, and doses too low to kill can cause problems that aren’t always obvious in the wild, experts say. “Methylmercury is one of most toxic environmental pollutants we’ve ever come upon,” says Gary Heinz, a recently retired federal wildlife biologist who studied it over four decades.
In the earliest studies of these sublethal effects in the 1970s, Heinz reported that captive mallards fed mercury-laced food laid fewer eggs than control ducks and laid them outside the nest. Also, their ducklings didn’t respond well to their calls. Numerous examples have accumulated since. Fish form loose, sloppy schools and are slow to respond to a simulated predator. Several bird species sing different songs. Loons lay smaller eggs, and they incubate their nests, forage, and feed their chicks less. Salamanders are sluggish and less responsive to prey, Hopkins and colleagues found. Egret chicks are similarly lethargic and unmotivated to hunt.
So one can only assume that it is everywhere, all from the benevolent coal industry.
I wonder when we are going to have trials in the Hague?!
I’m pretty sure mercury pollution falls under the crimes against humanity category, no?!
More importantly, crimes against nature (all species).
Yes, destruction of the environment is a crime against all species, including Homo sapiens.
E Fred M,
I bet Burmese python tastes like chicken. New possibility for street food in your area?
Always a silver lining somewhere.
E. Synapsid,
They may taste like chicken but they are very large predators at the top of the food chain so potentially accumulate a lot of toxins…
In my travels I have had the opportunity to eat some nice plump grilled Bothrops alternatus. They have very nice white meat! Though some care must be taken when collecting them. Happily its venom being a mixture of hemotoxins will not immediately affect synaptic functioning, leaving one with intact mental functions to contemplate the consequences, if bitten! 😉
E Fred M,
See? Always a silver lining in some way.
The problem won’t come from the warlord gangs, they will be too busy slogging it out between themselves. The problem will be the next valley’s group of survivalists who know how to snipe you off.
NAOM
I tend to agree with you. Security will be of an increasing concern in the future.
Before too long fossil fuels will be running down. We will burn most of the coal we can get our hands on.
Then the forests will be cut. It will take 12 years, or so, to complete that job by a cold and hunger humanity.
We have 7.7 Billion [plus 80 mill/yr], who will be scrambling for the scraps. Humans are very ugly, and even worse when they scramble for the scraps.
The point I have been trying to make this entire time, is that this will occur with or without renewables. And will in fact be worse with renewables, because renewables will allow our population and our economies to expand for longer, making the ultimate reckoning worse.
How about you, what is your path?
I’ve seen too much of human nature to think there is a way out. If there WAS a way out, it would involve immediate and severe austerity, deploying militaries to protect what’s left of nature, and reeducating the population to go back to more local ways of production. Billions would still die, but this is the only path I can imagine leaving something behind for the survivors.
This, of course, will not happen. I guess my only hope is that I can convincingly argue to people that it is no one’s fault, so as to prevent lynchings and decapitations when shit gets bad. I don’t want to see us turn on one another in our local communities. Unfortunately, I’m very near 100% certain that this is exactly what will happen.
And then, as you said, we will eat what little is left of nature. I guess my path is to observe. And be brave enough to find a quicker way than starvation if it ever comes to that.
I share your concerns for future famine. It seems to me that the combined impacts of climate change and peak oil will likely disrupt food production and distribution. My path is to prepare for that, as well as for other eventualities. I view it as investment diversification- sure I have my 401K, but I also have a wood lot up in the mountains that I’m turning into a bit of a fruit and walnut orchard. It’s actually something I enjoy doing and it’s good exercise. So far a good investment too! I got a good deal on the place.
My great-grandfather picked loads of walnuts until about 6 months before he died, age 100. They are really cool trees. Produce lots of nuts, super hearty. They secrete chemicals to suppress competing vegetation. He would walk around his neighborhood and ask the neighbors to enter their yards to pick the nuts that they weren’t picking. He picked so many we all got sick of them, and had to figure out how to store bags and bags of them that he would send everyone. I think walnuts are a solid retirement choice.
You’re right to be worried about famine. Here is a short explanation of why we should expect our agricultural system to fail on the order of a few decades.
Here is something a bit more involved you may find interesting. It’s a discussion with an organic farmer about how we can create sustainable agriculture and actually use it to increase, rather than harm, biodiversity. The context for the talk is the same as the last one: we are destroying the basis of our agriculture, it cannot last much longer.
The only thing that could save our ability to produce food is everyone becoming an organic farmer and following these practices, which restore biodiversity and replenish soil. So that’s a good joke. Clocks ticking.
Sorry, but this is a crock of shit. One doesn’t need to subscribe to “organic” ideology to conserve topsoil, etc.
New techniques in genetic engineering could completely revolutionize farming, but the organics gurus demonize it.
And with 7.7 billion people, we need a bumpersticker that says, No Pesticides, No Food.
I guess my path is to observe. And be brave enough to find a quicker way than starvation if it ever comes to that.
If you say so…
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please
That game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll some day play
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless
Theme song from M.A.S.H.
I recommend a tank filled with EAN 0% !
Should get you out of here in less than 5 minutes, no pain!
However it still leaves the rest of us with the task of disposing of your corpse…
Niko,
You and I see much of this in the same light.
When you say that your ‘path is to observe’, that is a proper stance.
Observe and learn.
And at some point then do!, what you can to adapt.
I have no brilliant scheme of action, or inaction.
However I have concluded that for me personally, and hopefully for my community and state, and perhaps country, that having affordable energy available as I ‘observe’, is a good thing. Fuel/Electricity that we take for granted at the pump or at the plug socket may become very expensive at some point (not to mention problems with CO2), and having supply of renewable energy may make the observation time you have more tolerable. I’ve finally got a PV array on the roof. It feels good and solid. That is worth something to me.
Also, its good to learn practical hands on skills. I regret nothing I’ve learned, like repair work, woodworking/construction, growing food, in addition to my technical/science work. Whatever you think would be useful in the world as it unfolds. Get to it.
And I choose to have no children. Boom. Stop this train (wreck).
You make your choice.
I hope your observation period goes well.
You and I see much of this in the same light.
That we do. My SO and I have already decided not to have kids. It’s one of my hard stops, so if her mind ever changed she would have to find someone else. She knows how strongly I think that having kids is the wrong choice. I am open to adopting down the road. I’ve been learning what I can about growing food, but my life situation doesn’t allow for too much experimentation at the moment. I’ve been growing some onions recently. My grandparent’s have a nice farm, if shit gets bad before they pass then I’ll be welcome there. If shit takes a while getting started, I’d be met by their neighbors with guns. Without them there, I don’t think anyone would accept an unrelated mouth to feed.
I’ve been doing what I can to spread the word. As I said, my biggest fear is that people who don’t understand what happened will turn on one another. Maybe, just maybe, with enough education that can be stopped. I seriously doubt it, but it’s the one great hope I keep.
As far as solar PV on your roof, well, I hope your neighbors don’t end up with a reason to take it from you. It will serve you well if you get to keep it.
For what it’s worth, the vast majority of farmers in industrialized countries don’t feed themselves.
Most of us actually lack any particular specific expertise in the art of producing a variety of foods in small quantities. Raising a few hundred acres of grain is an almost altogether different job from raising a large vegetable garden with a large variety of crops as different as beans and tomatoes….. which are not all alike in terms of growing them. Schedules are different, techniques are different, pests are different, etc. The needed equipment is different.
And unless you are planning on freezing, canning, pickling or drying your harvest, the harvest season for most foods you can raise on the subsistence scale are pretty short in most places. In my neighborhood for instance, I can harvest tomatoes only from the tail end of June to first frost, which usually arrives in October at my place. Raising and processing a variety food in sufficient quantities for year round household use is a hell of a lot of work, requires a hell of an investment in time.
Fortunately, gardening is one job that can be approached as a self financing, profitable HOBBY…… which takes most of the pain out of the work.
I know quite a few working farmers. Only a couple of them still bother with serious gardening, or with raising pigs or chickens for their own table. All the rest shop at the super market, like the rest of us.
This is not to say they, or their wives, don’t put in a few tomato or pepper plants, or whatever. In a good year, they get as many tomatoes and peppers as they can use for the duration of the harvest season. The rest of the year…… they get them at the super market.
Bottom line, anybody interested in the more or less self sufficient country lifestyle needs to understand that he must invest a substantial amount of time and some money into learning the ropes, and in selecting land in a location well suited to such a life style.
For now, there are still plenty of older people out in farm country who still have the necessary skills and equipment as well as suitable land and equipment. Anybody interested in small scale subsistence farming will do well to seek out such a person and help them with THEIR problems in exchange for their help.
“For what it’s worth, the vast majority of farmers in industrialized countries don’t feed themselves.
Most of us actually lack any particular specific expertise in the art of producing a variety of foods in small quantities. ”
How much has this changed over the last 100 years? One site I visit regularly is Shorpy and that frequently shows farmers of the previous age doing just that.
NAOM
Do a search on homesteaders, many of them raise a lot of their own food.
Hi GF,
Homesteaders who have a few years experience under their belts are excellent mentors……. If “pilgrims” can locate one.
They tend to believe a lot of things that just ain’t so when they first move to the country.
And even this sort aren’t as numerous as you might think, and can be hard to locate on the ground.
All the ones I know of personally are pretty much of a class. They have money, they’re sick of urban life, they’re past the point of having to work full time, or can work from home via the net at some sort of professional work. ETC ETC
So they buy a new four wheel drive diesel Kubota with all the bells and whistles, and new implements….. and the tractor and implements alone run into pretty serious money….. never mind land, a house, barns, fences, utilities, etc.
REAL homesteaders, in the sense most people think of them, are damned near as scarce as chicken teeth, at least in my part of the world.
Half to two thirds of everything I read on sites about homesteading and that sort of topic is partially and sometimes totally wrong, or else works well only under limited circumstances having to do with climate, soil, topography, distances to nearest possible small scale markets, etc.
This is not to say such sites aren’t well worth reading, because you only need to discover one new useful fact or technique once in a long while to make the effort worthwhile.I continue to read them .
I recently did a lot of harvesting of apples, pears, plums, figs and walnuts in my brother in law’s orchards in Southern Germany. We made lots of cider, dried fruits, made jam etc…even produced the legal 50L of schnapps allowed per person. Then at the end of November we tended to the trees, pruned them, whitewashed tree trunks, cut some old trees down and went shopping for new trees and planted them. We also tended to the bees! A lot of the neighbors raise chickens, goats, sheep, a few cows and horses and graze them under the fruit trees. There are fields of corn, sunflowers, and squash and pumpkins. All this in a mixed urban setting with some interspersed manufacturing and even high tech companies. Almost every house has at least some PV and solar heat collectors, there is some new construction but many of the houses and homes in the village are two to three hundred years old and are constantly being upgraded and maintained.
In contrast in Florida all I see is more and more strip malls being built! Something is wrong with this picture!
BTW this is where we took our fermented mash to be distilled to 43% by the local schnapps meister 😉
.
Fred, people can hardly afford to heat their homes in the winter let alone improve their houses.
That’s what the schnapps is for! 😉
Hi Fred,
What did you use to whitewash the trunks of the fruit trees?
Some of the old stand by chemicals we used to use to best effect here in Yankee Land aren’t legal these days, which is good.
We have alternatives, which are at least supposed to be safer for people and the environment, but I’m also thinking they appear to be safer for peach tree borers, lol.
Dunno, but given that Germany has very strict environmental regulations I’m going to bet whatever it was certainly complied. I could ask and find out.
As far as making a living from farming the answer is no. My sister still works a high paying job and my brother in law just recently retired from a government job so they can afford to keep the orchards going as a hobby. The neighboring small farms are the real deal and need to produce a profit.
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
I used to get down to Florida every once in a while. It sure is a sad place these days, and I have no desire to return.
Georgia is generally a nicer place to vacation in the winter,although maybe not warm enough for swimming and sunbathing. Still warm enough for me and a little closer too.
Do your friends and relatives in Germany actually make a LIVING on their small scale diversified farms?
Local people, including most of my extended family, used to be able to make a living, if nothing more than that, on such farms in my part of world, but everybody who is doing it these days seems to have a wife ( once in a while, a husband) with an off farm job that REALLY pays the bills and enables the necessary investments in equipment, land, and so forth.
I’m not well acquainted with German agricultural policies, but I know that sometimes some European countries have policies that enable small farmers to stay in business, via subsidies or tax breaks. Sometimes some countries simply close their borders to imported foodstuffs so as to protect local farmers who are too small to compete otherwise. Japan comes to mind.
If you are lucky enough to inherit( YOU WILL NOT BUY IT EXPECTING TO PAY FOR IT FARMING IT.) land situated close in to a prosperous city and suburbs here you can possibly make a go of small scale diversified farming here these days… because you can bypass the middlemen and sell a lot of your production directly, at retail prices, to restaurants and homemakers, maybe even to a VERY few independent stores. You can pretty much forget about selling to any chain store big enough to run ad inserts in the local paper. The manager may be interested, but corporate says NO.
If you don’t grow your own food, consider involving yourself in something like this, as many tens of thousands around the country do.
CSA- simply, you sign up with an individual local farmer, as their direct customer.
Community Supported Agriculture- consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a specific local/regional farm operation so that the grower and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.
In a traditional CSA model…
-Members share the risks and benefits of food production with the farmer.
-Members buy a share of the farm’s production before each growing season.
-In return, they receive regular distributions of the farm’s bounty throughout the season.
-The farmer receives advance working capital, gains financial security, earns better crop prices, and benefits from the direct marketing plan.’
By all means any consumer who can locate a CSA operation within a reasonable distance of home should join and support it if he or she is so inclined.
It’s possible to save some money and to eat better by doing so, as well as helping a little with the overall environmental problem.
But it seems that the vast majority of homemakers aren’t willing to deal with the inconvenience. They would rather just continue buying in small quantities as needed from week to week at their favorite supermarket. The cash savings aren’t enough to motivate them in most cases, and most women work outside jobs these days. This means they aren’t really in a good position to spend an entire day, or a couple of days, processing a large quantity of fruits and veggies for later use.
My folks used to run what could be considered the forerunner of a formal CSA operation. My Mom had dozens of customers who kept in touch by phone, people who came year after year to buy everything we could supply from apples to zucchini by the bushel, loading their cars to the limit, sometimes coming in pickup trucks. When they got back home, they went to work canning, drying, freezing, and pickling. They shared their purchases with other family members and friends. This worked like a charm for everybody involved……. until all these women went to work. After that……..
CSAs don’t make money. They are in decline here in Maine.
They were always overpriced to begin with, boutique food.
Not so fast MichealB. Many are thriving in the western states.
Many people get their meats, eggs and dairy this way.
@Hickory,
“Others will try to bargain with reality by attempting Survivalist mode, hoping to hold out to the last moment when the local warlord gang comes calling.”
Why not give it a try? There *will* be survivors, and it stands to reason that most of them will be rural. If the locals are better armed than a wannabe warlord, they can fend him off; if not, they will have to serve him, but most people would find that preferable to a perhaps lingering death in a collapsing civilization at an earlier date.
I really don’t understand this “we’re all in this together” mentality. That is usually not so. For almost all of our species’ existence, humans have thrived in small bands or clans or villages. Ape species are the same way. Sure, life is easier in strong centralized states that maintain law and order over a wide area and enforce contracts, with extensive trade networks and well developed markets and widely accepted currencies and a widely array of highly advanced products and services; but that does not mean it is the only way that man can survive. Less than a hundred years ago, my progenitors lived in much simpler conditions than today. Many people did, and many still do in some parts of the world. Even a pessimist does not need to give up in dismay. Many millions will live through the worst part of this transition, in some places probably most will live through it. Since most people disregard the threat, those who take it seriously have a chance to put the odds in their favor. The political structure will probably fragment, but civilization need not entirely cease to exist so long as local food surpluses are produced. The new order may not be to our liking, but to the next generation it will seem entirely normal.
Nehememiah,
you bundle alot discussion into one long paragraph, and that is overwhelming to your audience. My mother is an expert at that.
But to address one item there- standing together vs being a solo survivalist- take your pick. For me its the group. More likely to stand up to the warlord successfully, or stand up to the big corporation, or the bully in white house. Or the dictator, or the feudal boss who thinks he can push his way around.
And I do subscribe to the notion of ‘the common good’ when crafting policy. When you craft policy you are picking winners and losers, inherent to the process. No one individual should get a special pass, no matter how rich, or connected to the church, they are.
G7 fossil fuel subsidies worth $100bn a year to industry, study finds
Published on 04/06/2018, 4:12pm UK accused of masking subsidies to fossil fuels, ahead of meeting of G7 countries, which have agreed to end taxpayer support by 2025
“The UK does not provide national reports on its fiscal support for fossil fuel production and consumption and the government has repeatedly denied providing fossil fuel subsidies. However, the report states the UK is providing subsidies in the form of tax breaks for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and the decommissioning of oil.“
Fred,
Subsidies in the form of tax breaks.
I read you travel quite a lot, combining it with activities. Still you get the time to write much on this forum and watch/read many youtube videos/articles. Amazing !
Fred
As I said, there are people who cannot tell the difference between a tax break. I.E costs set against a tax bill. And getting tax payer money. I.E being subsidized.
You are obviously one of those unfortunate people.
You are obviously one of those unfortunate people.
Right!
Yet despite your British heritage, you seem to have a rather poor comprehension of the nuances of the written Anglo Saxon vernacular!
Perhaps an Americanism will help clarify my point.
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck!”
Semantic quibbles aside, a tax break can certainly function much like a subsidy and therefore have a perverse affect on the development of a particular technology over another. You can argue till you are blue in the face that the UK does not subsidize fossil fuels, however if it provides the industry with substantial tax breaks, which it obviously does, then it is still a duck!
Fred
Please describe the tax breaks that the oil and gas industry is getting which are unique.
Most ignorant people attack the oil industry for the tax breaks that every industry gets.
The UK oil and gas industry has provided over £300 billion in tax to the exchequer.
The wind and solar industry has received over £20 billion in money coming from tax payers.
Oil and gas revenue has provided the money for doctors, nurses, teacher etc.
The wind industry not only pays for none of the above but deprives us of thousands of these people who would be paid by the subsidies it gets.
Even you can understand the difference.
A tax break that cuts the tax bill by $100 million has about the same effect on a company as a subsidy of $100 million. You also seem to be forgetting that the sale of electricity from windfarms is taxed ie goes to the exchequer to pay for nurses etc.
NAOM
Sounds like a 3rd World problem. Why don’t they just dump their sewage into the ocean? /sarc
A $3 BILLION PROBLEM: MIAMI-DADE’S SEPTIC TANKS ARE ALREADY FAILING DUE TO SEA RISE
“Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning—the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse. As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk—and soon. By 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks (more than 67,000) could have issues every year, affecting not only the people who rely on them for sewage treatment, but the region’s water supply and the health of anyone who wades through floodwaters.”
It’s turkey hill time. Or time for all the “turkeys” to start migrating.
Just a reminder to all skywatchers, Jan 21st/22nd total lunar eclipse, totality of about one hour and a supermoon diameter. Do a clear sky dance for this one.
I presume everyone here knows this since it’s been common knowledge for awhile. Guess we need (hydro, wind turbine, and solar) electric charged cows?
“A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.”
Damn dams, they’ll screw you every time. I think I’ve seen more “good land” destroyed by dams than any other cause. Rivers that spawned fish, land that hosted farms or forests or beautiful river basins, etc.
SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF HYDROPOWER ARE UNDERESTIMATED
“Countries have not accounted for the environmental impacts of large dams, which include deforestation and the loss of biodiversity, or the social consequences, such as the displacement of thousands of people and the economic damages they suffer. These effects should be computed in the total cost of such projects. Worse still, these projects ignore the context of climate change, which will lead to lower amounts of water available for storage and electricity generation.”
“Solar, wind and other renewables, which currently make up around a fifth of global energy production, are growing faster than any other source. The shift from fossil fuels to renewables is driven by new technologies and falling costs, increasingly making renewables as competitive as conventional sources of energy,”
Commission chairman and former president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar, said the shift will likely cause China to eclipse the United States, place oil-dependent Gulf states at risk and help impoverished African nations achieve energy independence.
And while this is going on, we in the US have to watch the clown show in our government! We have a fake national emergency and the government will remain shut down until we let Trump build his wall…
I have no idea if this is good, bad, or indifferent but it does somehow seem newsworthy. Perhaps Dennis will comment?
RUSSIA BUYS QUARTER OF WORLD YUAN RESERVES IN SHIFT FROM DOLLAR
Russia’s central bank dumped $101 billion in U.S. holdings from its huge reserves, shifting into euros and yuan last spring amid a new round of U.S. sanctions. The central bank moved the equivalent of $44 billion each into the European and Chinese currencies in the second quarter, according to a report published on late Wednesday by the Bank of Russia, which discloses the data with a six-month lag. Another $21 billion was invested in the Japanese yen.
“Distinguishing between left-handed and right-handed (chiral) molecules is crucial in chemistry and the life sciences, and is commonly achieved using a method called circular dichroism. However, during biochemical reactions, the chiral character of molecules may change. EPFL scientists have now developed a method that uses ultrashort, deep-ultraviolet pulses to accurately probe such changes in real-time in biomolecular systems.”
The shifting state of planet earth and alien planets
Adam Frank, astrophysicist, describes the shifting state of planet earth and alien planets with journalist Chris Hedges for On Contact. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnhyO1xIS00
Where I’m from we consider economic growth only. Our county has multiple Chambers of Commerce and an Economic Development Corporation, and the City Council has a Commitee on Growth to attract businesses and young people to move in.
Sounds like you are from a community where everyone is an adept of neoclassical economics theory!
Sorry to burst your exponential bubble but you are all on a pathway to some pretty dire outcomes.
For the record humans have been building civilizations for about 10,000 years since the dawn of agriculture. Neoclassical economics has only been around as a concept since the late 19th and early 20th century. It is certain to be a short lived idea for the simple reason that something that can’t continue, won’t. I strongly suggest that the you and the people in your community take some basic math courses so you can understand the implications of the exponential function.
Where you live doesn’t have any of the things Charles mentioned? Google says otherwise…
Adding another 100 megawatt solar farm. 300,000 solar panels. Enough power for 28K homes.
The new project is the wholesale power supplier’s “largest, most cost-effective solar project to date,” Tri-State CEO Mike McInnes said in a statement.
Certainly sounds interesting and if its as good as advertised it might solve the water desalination problem that he claimed they couldn’t find a solution to, by providing enough energy backup…
Hi Fred and everybody else too,
You may remember that I have asked several times in the past for any information relating to running desalinization plants on an intermittent basis.
Such info is hard to come by, at least for a computer klutz like me.
So….. what I would like to know boils down to these things.
First off, CAN present day desalinization plants be turned on and off frequently, or at least say once every few days, without mucking up the machinery ?
I know that a lot of industrial processes that run on a continuous basis MUST be kept continuously running because any stoppage brings on killer headaches with the equipment that are costly and time consuming to fix.
On the other hand, many sorts of equipment and processes can be operated on a batch basis without creating serious problems…. other than those involving the capital investment, or getting the raw materials into the plant, and the finished materials out.
Getting sea water in, and fresh water out on a batch or stop and go basis is obviously a trivial problem, so long as a sufficiently large reservoir is available to hold any excess desalinated water until it’s needed. I doubt this will ever be much of a problem, since desalinated water can be pumped directly into a city reservoir or water towers.
But having hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in a desalinization plant that’s not running, and therefore not generating revenue, is another issue altogether.
Maybe this lack of continuous production capability is the key reason no desalinization plants have been built to run primarily on wind and solar power.
If this is the case, then it’s possible that eventually newer technology will make desalinization cheap enough that so long as a plant runs say fifty percent of the time, it will be economically feasible. In that case, no batteries or other electrical storage would be needed in nice sunny places such as the American Southwest or the Middle East.
And of course water might get to be valuable enough that pretty soon people will be willing to pay twice the current price……meaning today’s plants can run half the time on wind and solar, without fossil fuel backup…….. if the machinery doesn’t get mucked up from cycling on and off.
Any and all links that touch on such matters will be greatly appreciated, and thanks everybody in advance.
Bit of trivia for you:
SAUDI THIRST FOR WATER IS CREATING A TOXIC BRINE PROBLEM
“Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants produce about 31.5 million cubic meters of contaminated water each day. That volume of liquid, most of which is pumped back into the ocean, is equivalent to about 20 million barrels of oil a day, or, double the amount of crude it currently produces. The Kingdom is tendering seven desalination and waste-water projects as it tries to alleviate the impacts of depleted aquifers.”
“We have to address potentially severe downsides of desalination — the harm of brine and chemical pollution to the marine environment and human health,” said Vladimir Smakhtin, the director for the Hamilton, Canada-based UN Institute for Water Environment and Health.“
Regarding:
“The Kingdom is tendering seven desalination and waste-water projects as it tries to alleviate the impacts of depleted aquifers.”
The only way to address the downsides is to develop a clean desalination technology. And
“While countries can treat the toxic brine to remove chemicals and heavy metals, those processes are expensive and require even more energy, according to the report. Other countries have successfully used the brine to cultivate forage shrubs and dietary supplements, though at the cost of land salinization.“
Mac, having worked around desal plants the five years I was in Saudi Arabia, I know a little about them. The answer to your question is, yes, desal plants can be turned on and off without many problems.
Understand there are two types of desal plants, evoperation and reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis plants run on electricity, that is electric pumps. They simply pump, under high pressure, water through a micron filter. They are basically a large pipe with tiny plastic tubes branching off of the large tube. Tiny drops of fresh water form on the opposite side of the small tubes that branch off the large tube. They are thousands of them so overall you get a lot of water. Every few hours they must “backwash” the tubes to clear them out. But much of the water passes straight through the tubes, without being forced through the micron filters, and comes out the other end as brine. This brine was just dumped back into the sea. Reverse osmosis plants can be stopped and restarted without any trouble whatsoever.
Evoperation plants are a little different. They actually have a boiler, similar to a power plant boiler. Boiling water, which starts out as steam, is spilled down a flat sloping plane. Above that is many pipes that cold water is passed through. This water is room temperature, usually pumped directly from the sea. But under these cold water pipes are V shaped water collectors. The steam condenses into water when it hits the cold water pipes. The condensed fresh water drips off the outside of the cold water pipes and drips into the V shaped fresh water collectors.
Evoperative desal plants, in Saudi anyway, were all powered by natural gas of oil. I suppose they could be fueled by coal but the ones I worked around were all oil/gas. They could switch from oil to gas or vice versa without much trouble. And they could be shut down and brought back up without much trouble, though it did take a little longer than the reverse osmosis plants.
But the hot brine, the water that did not evoperate, was just dumped back into the sea.
One more point. The reverse osmosis plants were much smaller. They provided water for small compounds or isolated places. The evaporation plants were much larger and produced water for cities and industry. It was often piped hundreds of miles inland.
Thanks Ron,
I’m thinking it’s been some time since you have been around these plants, so things might have changed a lot.
But assuming you are right,and this seems likely, then the only real remaining technical reason for not building desalinization plants expecting to run them mostly or entirely on wind and solar power is that they cost too much to build unless they are kept running continuously.
It seems likely to me that the cost of building and operating such plants will be coming down as the desalinization industry scales up, and that before too long it should be possible to pay for them running them intermittently using whatever wind and solar power is available, especially if such plants are located in places where plentiful wind and solar electricity can be delivered to the plants.
This would be a marvelous way, a great way, to use any excess wind and solar power available….. and excess wind and solar power WILL be available at various times, as the renewable electricity industry scales up.
As a practical matter, a desalinization plant running whenever such otherwise unneeded juice is available will be serving as an ersatz battery…….. and a damned BIG one, because such plants consume a LOT of energy.
( For anybody who is not familiar with wind and solar power….The reason there will often be a surplus is that the wind and solar industries will have to overbuild in order to supply enough electricity at times when the wind and sun aren’t cooperating. When the wind is strong and or the sun is bright, there will be an excess of fossil fuel free electricity at times when demand is low, such as holidays, weekends, times when the weather is either cool enough not much AC is needed, or warm enough not much heat is needed, etc.
Water is very easily stored in large quantities. Storing desalinated water for days or weeks ahead won’t be any big deal. That’s what reservoirs are for. It can just be dumped as available into any fresh water reservoir supplying potable water to a nearby city or town. )
I’m thinking it’s been some time since you have been around these plants, so things might have changed a lot.
Not really. Desal plants are still pretty much the same as they were thirty years ago, just as power plants are.
But assuming you are right,and this seems likely, then the only real remaining technical reason for not building desalinization plants expecting to run them mostly or entirely on wind and solar power is that they cost too much to build unless they are kept running continuously.
Well, it would be very difficult to run an evoperative desal plant on solar or wind. You must boil a lot of water and most of the heat is waste heat that is just dumped back into the sea. However, a reverse osmosis plant could very easily be run with solar or wind. And a reverse osmosis desal plant can be shut down and started up on a moments notice with no problems whatsoever. You are just pushing water through a molecular filter. Water molecules will pass through but the much larger sodium chloride molecule will not. There would be no startup or shutdown problems.
It seems likely to me that the cost of building and operating such plants will be coming down as the desalinization industry scales up,…
There is no real reason the cost of construction of a desal plant should come down. The technology has been around for over half a century with no large improvement. It would be just like building any other plant with the major cost being labor and building materials.
Hi Ron,
I think maybe you are a little to pessimistic about the cost of building desal plants coming down as more and more of them are built.
I’m a rolling stone, world class, never had a conventional career. I worked a while at this and that and the other as circumstances and opportunities dictated, and so far as I can see, virtually EVERY sort of large industry manages to gradually but more or less continuously finds ways to reduce operating and capital costs.
Mac, all I am saying is that desal plants are no different from any other type of plant. There is absolutely nothing hi-tech about a desal plant. As general building cost go up… or down… so does the cost of building a desal plants go up… or down.
You seem to think they are like solar panels, that is as technology improves their construction cost go down. No, that is simply not the case. They are subject to the ups and downs of the general cost of plant construction, just as the cost of a coal or gas power power plant would be.
Hi Ron, back atcha
The last big local furniture plant still up and running here has cut the man hours per piece of furniture by thirty percent or so over the last fifteen years. The amount of wood winding up as scrap has been more than halved over that time frame. The manager is a neighbor and childhood friend, and we talk frequently, so I’m up on what’s happening there.
I cut the labor and most of the input quantities in our family orchard over fifty percent per unit of production over the last couple of decades, in real terms. Twenty five years ago, it took us all day to put on pesticides periodically as needed. When we retired,I was done well before lunch time,same sized orchard. I used far less than half the quantity of pesticides.The newer ones ARE much more expensive per unit volume or weight than the older ones, but allowing for inflation and using lesser quantities, the cost was about the same.
But of course using only half as much diesel fuel still costs more when the price of diesel quadruples, lol.
The reason tract houses are all built alike is that it saves time and money. A LOT of time and money, lol.
The component parts of desal plants can be made in factories that allow for greater automation once the volume is high enough for any particular part, such as the membrane filters, or maybe curved mirrors that focus the sun on pipes carrying the water to be heated. The filters can be made out of new materials using new processes, ditto mirrors, etc.
Smaller chain stores around here get built in thirty or forty days, using standardized plans, once the lot is cleared and graded.It’s hard to believe how fast they get them up, but they do it because there’s no lost motion, everything is cut and dried.
The same contractor building similar stores one off with a different set of plans for a similarly sized building take twice to four times as long to finish. That’s why the landscape is so depressing, with all the stores along the highway looking as alike as peas in a pod, only the signs being different.
Back in my younger days, I used to make and assemble parts on the job as a welder. Now on such jobs, the parts are generally made in a fab shop a dozen or a hundred or a thousand at a time, and partially assembled, right up to the limits imposed by truck or rail transport to the job site.
There’s no doubt in my mind that ten or twenty years ago, all the pipe in a diesel fired plant was cut, threaded, and or otherwise assembled piece by piece on the job. Ten years from now, a crane will be unloading sub assemblies as big as can be hauled to the job site from the biggest possible trucks, and they will be bolted together, with maybe a few welds here and there. It’ll be tinker toys on the grand scale, for all intents and purposes
Now of course this sort of change isn’t even remotely as fast as the change in computers or solar panels, etc. I didn’t mean to imply that it’s in that speed class.
But it probably occurs at anywhere from a couple of percent to five or six percent a year, depending on the industry.
If this holds for desal plants, the REAL cost of building one, meaning the inflation adjusted cost, will come down by as much as half over the next ten or twenty years.
I don’t think very many new ones will be built to run on oil, since oil is almost dead sure to go up, while the cost of wind and solar power is likewise just about dead sure to come down. It will be possible to buy wind and solar electricity for less than the market value of the oil saved at some point, which has likely been passed already in some places with excellent solar resources.
Now here’s a thought about solar power. The final installed price of it, small scale or large, is falling so fast that it’s actually sort of dumb to invest in it, NOW, as an individual owner.
I have yet to buy a solar system for my own place because from one year to the next, the PRICE of a given system is falling FASTER than the VALUE of the electricity the system can produce in a year.
So if the system I want can save me five hundred bucks worth of purchased juice, or even eight or nine hundred bucks worth,this year, but the PRICE of the system falls a thousand bucks…… well, the thing for me to do is to delay the purchase, which is what I have been doing annually for the last ten years or longer.
Plus the longer I delay the purchase, the better the quality of all the associated parts such as inverters, controllers, etc should be. If I opt for batteries, they will definitely be a lot cheaper.
I’m investing the money in OTHER improvements which do earn a significant return more or less immediately.
Thanks, Fred,
And everybody else who posted a helpful link.
I found this one, and some other good ones, on the IEEE site when reading the one you posted.
I have been thinking for a long time now that countries with excellent solar resource should be building solar farms in order to sell a substantial part of the oil and gas they currently burn to generate electricity.
There’s supposed to be some new carbon nano-tube technology coming along for desalinisation.
Any technology will have the brine issue. The process will always take fresh water out and concentrate the brine. The lower the concentration of the brine the lower will the efficiency and productivity of the plant be.
Looks intriguing for small applications, like cellphones, maybe bikes too? I’ve been waiting eagerly for an update for about a year.
An intriguing company with a larger scale battery (grid storage, commercial residential) is NantEnergy. Certainly worth a look at them- https://nantenergy.com/
and their news updates https://nantenergy.com/news/
New Jersey is a small state with major contrasts. Home to part of the megapolis but also a crucial wildlife region and part of the major eastern migrator flyway. A long coastline with large amounts of saltwater and brackish marshes, much of it actually protected. Another example is the Pinelands National Reserve which occupies 22 percent of the state total land area.
Just recently an addition was made. Bird habitat preservation initiative adds 1,700 acres of coastal N.J. land Ducks Unlimited recently announced the $4 million purchase of 1,700 acres of intact wetlands and marsh mitigation areas in Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem counties.
It’s the third phase of Southeast New Jersey Coastal Initiative, a program established in 2013 to protect, restore, and enhance critical coastal wetland habitat.
More than 7,600 acres of land have been protected under the initiative.
Americans love convenient recycling, but convenient recycling increasingly does not love us. Waste experts call the system of dumping all the recyclables into one bin “single-stream recycling.” It’s popular. But the cost-benefit math of it has changed. The benefit — more participation and thus more material put forward for recycling — may have been overtaken by the cost — unrecyclable recyclables. On average, about 25 percent of the stuff we try to recycle is too contaminated to go anywhere but the landfill, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group. Just a decade ago, the contamination rate was closer to 7 percent, according to the association. And that problem has only compounded in the last year, as China stopped importing “dirty” recyclable material that, in many cases, has found no other buyer.
Most recycling programs in the United States are now single stream. Between 2005 and 2014, these programs went from covering 29 percent of American communities to 80 percent, according to a survey conducted by the American Forest and Paper Association. The popularity makes sense given that single-stream is convenient and a full 66 percent of people surveyed by Harris Poll last October said that they wouldn’t recycle at all if it wasn’t easy to do.
Some experts have credited single stream with large increases in the amount of material recycled. Studies have shown that people choose to put more stuff out on the curb for recycling when they have a single-sort system. And the growth of single-stream recycling tracks with the growth of recycling overall in this country.
But it also pretty closely tracks with skyrocketing contamination rates.
Some of that is on us, tossing things in the bin that either don’t belong there or should have gone in the trash can to begin with. “We get a lot of diapers,” said Anne Germain, vice president of technical and regulatory affairs with the National Waste and Recycling Association. There are also electronics and batteries, plastic grocery bags and Christmas lights — all of which can be recycled, but only through specialty drop-off programs, not the curbside bin. There are perfectly recyclable cans and paper coated in food, grease or cleaning fluids that render them unrecyclable. There are plastic bottles full of glass syringe needles that break open at the sorting facilities like a piñata from hell.
San Francisco’s Dream of ‘Zero Waste’ Lands in the Dumpster
Ellen Airhart
By 2012, San Francisco had managed to recycle, compost, or reuse 80 percent of its waste—the highest rate of any US city; the countrywide average around that time was 34 percent. To get that far, the city relied on high-tech sorting and composting facilities. Now the San Francisco Department of the Environment says that if every resident sorted their waste into the right bins, the city could keep about 90 percent of its waste out of landfills.
But getting rid of the final bits of trash has proven challenging for San Francisco and the other cities trying to clean up their environmental footprints. San Francisco didn’t fail to meet its goal because it wasn’t following the most current and efficient methods of waste control, says Joan Marc Simon, the executive director of Zero Waste Europe. “It’s because they can’t recycle what is not recyclable.”
A lot of plastic still poses a problem. The recent uproar over plastic straws in the US—and subsequent legislation banning them in many places—helped highlight a small percentage of the plastics that we use only once, then throw away. These plastics are usually recyclable, but they became a more pressing issue after China stopped accepting the world’s contaminated recycling in November 2017. Researchers anticipate that this problem will add 111 million metric tons of plastic to the ocean by 2030.
Then there are the items that can’t be recycled at all, at least not easily. For example, some electronics and furniture contain flame retardants that are toxic if inhaled. That means they’re not accepted by some recycling centers, to protect their workers from exposure.
Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?
In the United Kingdom, we have car taxes that encourage people to buy fuel efficient cars.
F-series trucks and similar monster vehicles are very rare, I have seen 2 in as many years.
The tax system penalizes, energy hungry vehicles, this is why the average engine is 1.4litre petrol.
The United Kingdom with a population of 70 million uses 1.5 million barrels per day.
The United States uses 20 million barrels per day, if it had the same taxes as the United Kingdom it’s fuel consumption could be reduced to 8 million barrels per day.
Considering our GDP and PPP, the UK electricity consumption is low.
A hundred years ago there was no alternative to coal, even 20 years ago wind turbines were very basic and solar panels were very expensive. Today there is no excuse for any country to build coal fired power. Today, knowing what we do about climate change. There is no excuse for governments not placing high taxes on large petrol and diesel cars.
If every country followed the U.K example global CO2 emission would start falling dramatically.
Hi Hugo,
I am very much in agreement with you concerning the need to downsize Yankee vehicles, raise fuel taxes and so forth.
But I don’t think that even if we were to do so to the extent the Brits have that we could get our per capita oil use down to their level, at least not anytime soon.
The USA is a country with a hell of a lot of open space that requires the transportation of most goods considerable distances, and we have many tens of millions of people who have chosen to live quite some distance from the places they work, shop, and go to school. Vacant housing near these places is simply non existent as a practical matter.
Furthermore, we have an existing fleet of large and fuel hungry vehicles that will still be on the road for the most part for at least a decade or longer.
Did I mention that we don’t have much in the way of mass transit?
Bottom line, I don’t see us making very much progress on our per capita oil consumption anytime soon, barring some good luck of one sort or another.
We might get lucky, and electric cars and light trucks might actually get cheap enough to displace their ICE powered counterparts within the easily foreseeable future, but my guess is that this won’t happen for at least five more years, and even after that, it will take a LONG time for enough electric cars and light trucks to be sold to make a real difference.
The other sort of good luck I have in mind is that we just might get a series of what I refer to as PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP EVENTS such as a temporary oil supply crisis brought on by a regional war, or one or another of the oil exporting countries cutting off exports for one reason or another short of war.
A sufficient series of such broken bricks upside our collective head would get our attention to the extent necessary for us to actually really DO SOMETHING before it becomes obvious to even a Trump voter that the shit is IN the fan.
A super hurricane or super flood or super drought would be super expensive, but in the long run, experiencing such a disaster NOW would probably be good for us, collectively.
In case my little buddy what’s his name is still around, I’m signing as Trumpster, lol.
Thanks Trumpster
UK high fuel tax which i forgot to mention has been around for 26 years or so.
importantly frequency makes return journeys makes day returns possible
I think only plug in hybrids and electric cars can bring down oil consumption quick enough.
Unfortunatly as long as oil production increases in the US, I do not think take up of electric vehicles will be anything like what it needs to be.
That is great news about the UK emissions, amazing what a small country can do when they run out of energy sources. I agree, developed countries should all reduce their carbon emissions, including burning down forests to provide heat and electricity. Yes, GB provides a large chunk of it’s heat and electricity by burning US and European forest.
Learning lessons from the UK, not sure about that.
Start the industrial revolution and then give pointers late after they use up all their coal.
Lesson 1: Use up all your coal and then stop using coal. Now that is a lesson, use up all the coal you can.
Lesson 2: Wait until your oil and natural gas production goes into freefall then import more gas and just cut back on oil use rather than going over to full electric cars quickly.
Lesson 3: Import half of your food.
Lesson 4: Maintain a large trade deficit
Lesson 5: Have high household debt
Lesson 6: Have a large public debt
Lesson 7: Make 30 percent of your electric power and a lot of your heating by burning down other nations forests and ignore the CO2 from that because it’s “green”.
Nahhh, the US can’t learn much from the Brits. We already know how to make efficient cars and produce more electric cars every day than GB makes in, well forever. We put in more wind turbines, more solar panels too, by a large margin. Much of the technology was invented here and is still being invented here.
And Hugo said “If every country followed the U.K example global CO2 emission would start falling dramatically.”
But is that true? Even not counting the large amount of CO2 for all the imports or the “green” CO2, GB citizens produce 5.5 ton of CO2 per year. Globally it’s 5 ton per year per person. So if all the nations were like GB the CO2 level would rise.
In reality the actual emissions of CO2 (including biofuel) needs to be down near 0.5 ton per person per year, not eleven times as much.
Gonefishing
Just the sort of remedial comments I would expect from you.
Firstly we drive far more efficient cars than Americans and you could learn from that. If you care about global warming that is.
Also 10 years ago the battery technology which was practical was not available, so buying efficient petrol engines was the only option.
The UK is also building more wind power than any other country as a proportion of population.
Also you ignoramus.
We have not run out of coal.
The find under the north sea would bring vast amounts of jobs and money to the north east where it is desperately needed.
That is nice, but the solar panel technology we use today was invented in Bell Labs and has been developed from there.
“However, solar cells as we know them today are made with silicon, not selenium. Therefore, some consider the true invention of solar panels to be tied to Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson’s creation of the silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell at Bell Labs in 1954. Many argue that this event marks the true invention of PV technology because it was the first instance of a solar technology that could actually power an electric device for several hours of a day. The first ever silicon solar cell could convert sunlight at four percent efficiency, less than a quarter of what modern cells are capable of.”
So doped silicon photovoltaic systems were invented by someone before 1954? Since then there have been many improvements, which also fall under the full definition of invention.
I am really impressed the Scots didn’t proceed with that undersea coal gasification project. Too expensive and probably uncontrollable.
How mining for undersea coal gas could cause fires, quakes, explosions and pollution, according to Scottish government’s green watchdog Drawing on evidence from UCG facilities in Europe, the US and Australia, the reports list eight things that can go wrong. Groundwater can be polluted by toxins such as phenols, cyanides and radioactivity, they say.
Air can be polluted by highly toxic particles, ash, heavy metals and a series of hazardous gases, says the latest draft. Emissions of the greenhouse gases that disrupt the climate are estimated to be lower than those from coal but higher than those from natural gas though “large uncertainties remain”, it warns.
There is a risk of “induced seismicity”, as well as pollution. Underground explosions, which have been recorded abroad, could also occur, Sepa says.
Igniting the coal underground could lead to “uncontrollable fires”, which would worsen water and air pollution. The danger of underground “cavity collapse” could cause subsidence on the surface.
Hugo-
the answer is yes [Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?], certainly.
But here, many of these kind of policies happen on state by state basis.
And they vary widely.
Strong incentives in Calif (the biggest state).
No incentives in Wyoming (the smallest state).
States like California has had many referendums mandating cleaner energy production, and received strong voter approval, repeatedly.
A carbon tax. I think a national tax here would be supported, if it was crafted such that the proceeds were to used to be specifically for projects that were clearly designed for the common good.
U.S. citizens are different, on average. Love big cars. And for most who can afford to buy a 100k dollar truck, 200 dollar tax a month is peanuts. In most countries, most cars are small/economy cars already.
“Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?”
I have taken a keen interest in such questions, particularly during the 2016 election campaign, with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement. The short answer to that question is definitely, maybe, 😉
Closer observation of the 2016 election campaign shows that the USA is a deeply divided nation. The division is being fueled, in large part, by the extremely wealthy, the likes of Charles Koch, aided and abetted by their puppets in the US government. It is on record that Koch and his ilk have spent considerable amounts of money setting up conservative “think tanks” to spread their particular ideology, one grounded in the belief of “the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy, prosperous society”. A Google search for “think tanks supported by Charles Koch” brings up the following among others:
There are other organisations doing the bidding of the Kochs including The Heartland Institute, The Institue for Energy Research and The American Energy Alliance that, might not have been mentioned in the above links but also form a part of the Koch’s (mis)information campaign.
When one throws in support from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (Fox News) and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, you have an electorate that is being bombarded with conflicting views, often representing the interests of the very wealthy. As a result, policies such as those linked to by Hugo are viewed as “anti American” and are violently opposed in some quarters.
Another aspect of the division is the rural/urban divide. It has become quite clear to me that often less educated, rural population are more likely to fall for the Koch funded propaganda in greater numbers than their better educated urban counterparts (see point 7 in 7 surprising graphics about Trump voters)
I can speak from my personal experience about rural to urban migration. I grew up in rural areas despite having been born in the city. My parents were teachers and focused heavily on making sure my siblings and I got a sound educational footing. Most of my classmates in high school had parents or guardians (some Jamaicans emigrate, leaving their children behind, usually with grandparent) who shared a similar focus regardless of their occupation. With limited opportunities for employment, especially the kind of employment requiring tertiary education, most of my classmates do not live in the rural areas where we grew up and went to school. We have moved to the cities and some emigrated and established themselves in the US or the UK. Most of those whose parents had emigrated to the US, went to join their parents after high school and completed their education there. I would be hard pressed to locate any of my classmates in the rural area I grew up in. I run into them in and around the capital city quite frequently.
I would assume the same goes for the US. The more academically competent students go away to college and never return to live in their home towns, especially if they are small and far away from high tech centers of employment. This leaves the rural areas with a generally less educated, often less sophisticated and more easily mislead population.
US citizens in several jurisdictions, such as the states of California and New York, do ” vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels”. Younger, better educated voters (hence urban) also tend to vote along those lines as well, all of this despite the well funded PR campaign to try and convince them otherwise. That (partially Koch funded) PR campaign is probably why the US is so far behind most of the rest of the world on these matters but, there are signs that the campaign might be losing it’s effectiveness, the results of the 2018 mid-term elections, for example.
Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?
t was once one of Europe’s largest coal-burning power stations. Now, after replacing coal in its boilers with wood pellets shipped from the U.S. South, the Drax Power Station in Britain claims to be the largest carbon-saving project in Europe. About 23 million tons of carbon dioxide goes up its stacks each year. But because new trees will be planted in the cut forests, the company says the Drax plant is carbon-neutral.
There is one problem. Ecologists say that the claims of carbon neutrality, which are accepted by the European Union and the British government, do not stand up to scrutiny. The forests of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi — as well as those in Europe — are being destroyed to sustain a European fantasy about renewable energy. And with many power plants in Europe and elsewhere starting to replace coal with wood, the question of who is right is becoming ever more important.
Things to consider:
With a 60 to 100 year time for a tree to mature, many years of burning stays in the atmosphere.
Forests, even old growth are being destroyed and the whole ecology in them.
Is it even sustainable? Can the forest soil remain intact and support growth under these conditions for very long?
Your are right to bring this up GF. Wood burning is environmentally catastrophic, on anything but a small scale. Since when do 7.7 Billion people do anything on a small scale?
Other biofuels the same, whether it is corn, sugar cane or palm.
Except almost all governments are assuming BECCs is going to come along so they can overshoot any kind of emission limit and not worry because our kids will sort it out.
Everything better than fossil fuels, but like with the production of solar panels, proper recycling/waste management is necessary
“Unregulated recycling industries and informal methods of extracting lead – often conducted in homes or backyards – can lead to high levels of environmental lead contamination. These processes usually involve breaking the ULABs open by hand or with an axe, which can lead to direct dermal contact with lead and the improper release of battery acid into the surrounding soil. Pieces of the broken batteries are then left on the ground where they are exposed to the elements and can possibly spread toxins to people through dermal contact. Once the batteries are broken open, parts of the battery must be melted in order to recover the secondary lead. This process is frequently performed in homes and over informal kitchen stove flames. Lead-oxide, which accounts for 40 percent of the lead weight in each battery and is a particularly bio-available form of lead, is often improperly disposed of and left out in the open
On an annual basis, nearly 6 million tons of lead are used around the world, with over 4 million tons used in lead-acid batteries. Substantial quantities of this lead consumption come from recycled materials and ULABs, which, when done properly, is a very effective industry in terms of reducing lead pollution and the need for mining of virgin ore material. Recycling of secondary lead, however, when done without proper regulations or safety measures, can be very dangerous and can lead to high levels of toxic exposure for both those directly involved and for surrounding communities.
Because of the growing market for secondary lead, many low- and middle-income countries have begun to buy ULABs in large quantities in order to recover and resell the material. Many of the ULABs originate in industrialized countries and are shipped long distance in order to be recycled.49 Today, ULAB recycling processes occur in nearly every city in low- and middle-income countries, with many of the recycling and melting operations taking place in densely populated urban settings.
A large amount of the recycling processes in these countries, both small- and large-scale, is done with little knowledge of the health impacts these processes have. In many places, there are no environmental or health regulations that govern recycling, and lead is often released into the environment in very high quantities. Informal recycling is also disproportionately performed by people living in conditions of poverty who may not have other viable means of income and who are often unaware of the dangers posed by these operations. Currently, the Blacksmith inventory estimates that almost 1 million people are affected by lead pollution”
So think about this for a moment, before 1882 there wasn’t any electrical grid at all. I think in another 100 years, assuming human civilization and humanity survive at all, the grid will be 100% renewable, distributed and smart! 😉
Times change and right now things are really changing faster than ever. To assume that the future will be even remotely like the present is probably a really poor bet!
The “GRID” needs to be Only a Transport Service like NG Pipelines. I see one main use, to shift Solar Power across time zones. The Grid is NOT Needed for what it is being used for now. To power appliances that waste more energy than they use.
Rate of change is accelerating: Lots to chew on the latest Peak Oil Review: https://mailchi.mp/163f3fb1f9e1/peak-oil-review-13-february-48557?e=0fdd45430d
The newsletters Quote of the week.
“Global automakers are planning an unprecedented level of spending to develop and procure batteries and electric vehicles over the next five to 10 years, with a significant portion of their budgets targeted at China… Automakers’ plans to spend at least $300 billion on EVs are driven largely by environmental concerns and government policy, and supported by rapid technological advances that have improved battery cost, range and charging time.” Paul Lienert and Christine Chan, Reuters
from the PO Review:
Cadillac’s EVs: GM said that Cadillac will be GM’s lead electric vehicle brand and will introduce the first model from the company’s all-new global battery electric vehicle architecture (BEV3), GM’s foundation for an advanced family of profitable EVs. The mission of the new architecture is to support a range of more than 300 miles (482 km) and to be profitable. (1/12)
——————————–
Who the hell would be caught dead in a GD Cadillac? The dealers are the Mob. Might as well hand production over to Asia! Purchasing a Volvo/Geely may be a 1 click affair. Volvo’s Ecar as a service is sold out.
My bet is on startups! I just don’t see GM as being nimble enough, they have way too much ICE legacy baggage they need to shed.
Once one realizes the full implications of 2.3% methane leakage, the substitution of natural gas for coal as a source of power takes on a nightmarish quality.
Greenwashing- “Greenwashing is the use of marketing to portray an organization’s products, activities or policies as environmentally friendly when they are not. … Greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means to gloss over wrongdoing or dishonesty or exonerate without sufficient investigation or spurious data.”
Extreme greenwashing aimed at a naive public- ‘Airlines can run on biofuel’.
“Airlines are now experimenting with biofuels that can be carbon-neutral. The big hurdle right now is price, but if oil prices rise and if production costs come down, biofuels could become a viable way to decarbonize air travel.”
and
“A pioneer in the biofuel industry predicted that the federal investment will enable the Navy to reach its renewable fuel targets and create a “snowball effect” that will make it easier to start supplying commercial airlines with biofuel too.”
What if I told you it would take 80 acres of prime land to fuel one cross country flight on biofuel. Could you think of any reason it would be justifiable to divert this land from wilderness, watershed, wildlife or food production use, for a plane flight?
I say none. No purpose justifies that destruction.
Typical plants have a radiant energy to chemical energy conversion efficiency between 0.1% and 2%. < 10% of PV, Now if we can just trick PV Panels to reproduce.
The importance of science in society has no greater spokesperson than Lord Martin Rees. From his perch at Cambridge—and a centre he formed on studying existential risks—he has served as both a promoter, populariser and the moral conscience of scientific endeavour far beyond his academic field of astrophysics.
In “Our Final Century” in 2003 (retitled more breathlessly “Our Final Hour” in the American edition) he presented a range of global challenges, from bioterrorism to nuclear weapons. He put the risk of human extinction by 2100 from our technologies at around 50%. His latest book, “On the Future”, is more sanguine. It acknowledges similar threats, but emphasises the beneficial ways that technologies will improve lives, notably the positive uses of artificial intelligence.
The Economist’s Open Future initiative asked Mr Rees questions about humanity, space aliens and scientific discovery. In particular, we pressed him on how humanity might need to prepare mentally and institutionally for contact with extraterrestrial life forms (a reframing of liberalism on a galactic scale). He took a sober tack. Though he believes other life forms may indeed exist, they may be so different to us as to be incomprehensible. “I certainly don’t expect an invasion by green bipeds with eyes on stalks,” he says.
Will humans wipe out humanity? – yes, not sure if it will be AI, though I don’t much like what smart phones and social media are doing to us collectively and AI is a step more powerful. I’ve been to one of his talks, he’s very good, objective, kind of low key, which might put some people off, but convincing.
At some point, humans will turn over the human genetic toolkit [gene sequencing, crispr, etc] to AI for guidance and experimentation. I don’t know where that leads.
Far far from where we are now for sure.
Dunno. Maybe humans need to be wiped out . . . has this hit the overseas news?
Bloody disgusting . . . and more of this to come. This is the main river system in this dry nation and these bloody wankers reckon we need more people.
No cheers, I’m bloody crying.
The drop bears must be starving in that government department. 🙁
NAOM
Wow! I’m crying with you!
Recently I am becoming more and more convinced that trials at the ICC in the Hague are very much past due!
Governments in the rich world are now trying to promote greener behaviour by obliging developers to build new projects to “zero carbon” standards. From January 1st 2019 all new public-sector buildings in the European Union must be built to “nearly zero-energy” standards. All other types of buildings will follow in January 2021. Governments in eight further countries are being lobbied to introduce a similar policy.
These standards are less green than they seem. Wind turbines and solar panels on top of buildings look good but are much less productive than wind and solar farms. And the standards only count the emissions from running a building, not those belched out when it was made. Those are thought to account for between 30% and 60% of the total over a structure’s lifetime.
Buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be prefabricated in off-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials as exciting and overlooked as wood.
The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing, wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stuff. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are demolished, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for retrofitting older buildings to be more energy efficient, wood is a good insulator. A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.
“A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.”
and a LOT more termite fodder. Trees may remove CO2 but if they are cut down and removed they also remove other nutrients that need to be replaced. Also what happens to what is left after the useable wood is removed and shaped? Will the debris left behind decay to give more CO2 and Methane to replace what it removed?
NAOM
A house or building of wood can be made to last 200 years, longer if properly treated and maintained. That is similar to the life of tree, and returning any minerals or carbohydrates to nature would merely be a matter of how it was disposed.
All trees decay and give off gases, it’s part of the natural cycle. So why would lumber be any different or a problem? CO2 and methane (which decomposes to CO2) is part of a large natural circular system that can sustainably operate for millions of years.
The “problem” now is our releasing of long buried carbon at a high rate into the system, throwing off the current balance and moving the system to a new balance point.
Building skyscrapers out of wood: It sounds bizarre, unsafe, maybe even a bit twee. But it could actually be the future of construction.
But why the effort in the first place? Well, several reasons.
For one thing, wood is lighter and more flexible than steel or concrete. A wooden skyscraper will have more give in an earthquake, for instance. The lighter weight also opens up opportunities for cost saving throughout the construction process. Wood is an excellent insulator, which would save the building’s owners and residents on heating and cooling costs.
Obviously, there are aspects of construction that will emit CO2 no matter what material you use. But steel and concrete also have carbon emissions intrinsic to that material: Sixty percent of concrete’s emissions, for instance, come from the chemical reaction to make the concrete. Replacing a lot of steel and concrete construction with wood could save us a lot of CO2 output.
On top of that, timber is a cash crop, just like corn or potatoes. If demand for it goes up, the economic incentive to plant more trees increases too. If wooden construction became common, you’d certainly need regulatory oversight to make sure the timber came from cash crop planting and not from cutting down pre-existing forests. But planting more trees is an excellent idea for fighting climate change.
Highest-ever daily average CO2 | Maua Loa Observatory
2019 (as of January 12, 2019)
413.45 ppm on January 12, 2019 (NOAA-ESRL)
Nice start to the New Year!
Trapping more heat! For anyone not aware, CO2 levels have been at a record high ever since Mauna Loa Observatory began recording (in 1958). The level stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began there.
I thought all that stuff was going to be turned off due to the gov’t being shut down.
Mankind achieves another high point. To what heights will they aim for next?
Probably not good news for ice shelves?
UPPER-OCEAN WARMING IS CHANGING THE GLOBAL WAVE CLIMATE, MAKING WAVES STRONGER
“Sea level rise puts coastal areas at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, but new research shows they face other climate-related threats as well. In a study published January 14 in Nature Communications, researchers report that the energy of ocean waves has been growing globally, and they found a direct association between ocean warming and the increase in wave energy.”
UN WARNS OF RISING LEVELS OF TOXIC BRINE AS DESALINATION PLANTS MEET GROWING WATER NEEDS
“For every litre of freshwater output, desalination plants produce on average 1.5 litres of brine (though values vary dramatically, depending on the feedwater salinity and desalination technology used, and local conditions). Globally, plants now discharge 142 million cubic meters of hypersaline brine every day (a 50% increase on previous assessments).”
Given that most desalination systems can directly use thermal energy, concentrated solar thermal energy is very suitable for application to the water treatment. To avoid the potential negative impacts from disposing the concentrates, recovery of important minerals from concentrates to achieve zero discharge is a promising option. The recent technology development on solar thermal energy storages has shown that sea salts are very promising materials for large‐scale thermal energy storage.
“Globally, plants now discharge 142 million cubic meters of hypersaline brine every day”
I suppose the salt is just NaCl, a concentrate from the sea. But copper ? Added in the process ?
Fred’s post content could be the solution, if it is not considered too expensive.
I suppose the salt is just NaCl, a concentrate from the sea. But copper ? Added in the process ?
The largest component of salts is mostly NaCl but there is so much more to the composition of sea water than just NaCl. Even commercially available salt water aquarium sea salts have a long list of other salts and trace elements. And yes, there is even copper!
Many elements, including the essential trace metals iron, cobalt, and copper, show surface depletions but in general exhibit behaviour more complex than that of phosphate, nitrate, and silicate. Some of the complexities observed in elemental oceanic distributions are attributable to the adsorption of elements on the surface of sinking particles. Adsorptive processes, either exclusive of or in addition to biological uptake, serve to remove elements from the upper ocean and deliver them to greater depths. The distribution patterns of a number of trace elements are complicated by their participation in oxidation-reduction (electron-exchange) reactions. In general, electron-exchange reactions lead to profound changes in the solubility and reactivity of trace metals in seawater. Such reactions are important to the oceanic behaviour of a variety of elements, including iron, manganese, copper, cobalt, chromium, and cerium.
Side note, one of my favorite biological organisms are our proto vertebrate cousins, the ascidians. They start life as free swimming in their larval stage and have a notochord which they later lose as they become sessile. Interestsingly some ascidians are able to concentrate vanadium to a level more than 100 times higher than in the surrounding seawater.
“The largest component of salts is mostly NaCl but there is so much more to the composition of sea water than just NaCl”.
Fred,
I know. So the copper in the brine: its origin is the sea-water. That would make the brine toxic because it is hypertonic, not because elements are added in the desalination process.
I fought against a desal plant in Marin.
Really bad idea– over an ecologically sensitive area (owned by a gun club).
We defeated it– the gun people, and a bunch of radicals.
It was a development project, by stupid developers, with dollar signs in their eyes.
Ok, though that still leaves open the question, if all desal plants under all circumstances, regardless of where they are located, even if ways are found to make their impacts environmentally negligible, are always automatically a bad idea?
Desal works great for deep water sailing, and a few other drinking water dependent activities.
But that is about it——-
Then we be screwed^2….. Water scarcity will be a problem sooner than other climate change effects. Without desal many places will become uninhabitable pretty soon…
CHINA POWERS UP ELECTRIC CAR MARKET
“China has been aggressively pursuing New Energy Vehicles (NEVs), both to cut air pollution and to develop a strong industry. The Chinese government has had subsidies in place for nearly a decade, and these have been supplemented by subsidies from regional governments. In some cities, public transport has also led the way. Shenzhen’s fleet of 16,000 buses is now 100% electric and its fleet of taxis is almost completely electric too.”
“Automakers have promised to start selling hordes of electric cars in the next few years, but only two will be unveiled at the big Detroit auto show that kicks off this week — and those aren’t even ready for production. Meanwhile, there will be plenty of SUVs and high-horsepower sports cars on display as cheap gasoline helps SUV and truck sales continue their dramatic climb.”
There’s a thing called the skyscraper curse that says that more and bigger skyscrapers are built immediately before a recession (e.g. Singer building before 1908, Empire State before the great depression, Petronas Twin Towers before the Asian Crisis, Sears Tower and WTC before 1973 crash, Burj Khalifa and all sorts going up in China, US and Europe before 2008.
Last year more supertall (over 300m) skyscrapers were built around the world than ever, in total 18 plus another 30 to be completed this (3+5 in US, lots in China, a couple due in UK, others in St. Petersburg, Vietnam, Malaysia etc.) Make of that what you will.
Not to be left out, the Jeddah Tower, due to be completed next year. A 167 floor, 1 km tall monument to something, Saudi Arabia’s wealth and power supposedly.
Bardi has a post on Peak Cement (and Peak Diesel and Peak Coal).
May impact skyscraper work
And California’s PG&E apparently filed for bankruptcy
So we should expect a depression. Time to short the stockmarket.
Iron Mike,
I would not expect a serious recession (like GFC or worse) for 10 years or so. Feel free to short the stock market, though you may end up without a shirt. 🙂
Dennis,
If you actually believe there won’t be a recession for 10 years, you should invest in the S&P500, the Dow or NASDAQ. You could make a lot of money if you are right.
Iron Mike,
Mostly S&P 500 and Vanguard total stock market index, likely real rate of return over next 10 years about 5%/year. So if correct (assuming 2% annual inflation rates and a nominal annual ROI of 7%) $1000 invested in 2019 becomes $1629 in 2019$ by 2029.
Note that the nominal rate of return for the Vanguard index 500 fund from 9/30/1976 to 09/30/2018 was about 11.4%. Using chained CPI data we get an average annual inflation rate of 3.58%/year from Sept 1976 to Sept 2018, so the real rate of return for the Vanguard Index 500 fund over the 1976-2018 period was 7.87%.
I have assumed a 2.87% lower real rate of return than the long term performance of the S&P 500. Of course that estimate might be incorrect.
You can short the market and we will compare notes in 10 years. 🙂
Don’t know about a depression but if you’re Italian, German, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish or Lithuanian recession might already be here, and after Brexit maybe others – but in any case long term trends point to pretty well all OECD GDP growth numbers hitting zero before 2025 (short term noise just accelerates things) and China might be there by then as well if the real figures are as different from the official ones as seems to be the case. The FANG “to infinite growth and beyond” tech boost seems to have run it’s course (and as a lot of their income is advertising they get whacked early if there’s a slowdown). Almost all markets and most assets go up and down together based on geopolitical news rather than real business valuation so everybody is looking to governments to keep the ball rolling, but it’s not clear what’s left that can be done especially with the growing populist movements.
George,
I think you are right regarding the Eurozone. Add to those countries you mentioned France. Technically their PMI is below 50.
I am sticking to my prediction, i think next couple of years is GFC 2.0. But this time the central banks have no ammo.
Iron Mike,
Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.
Growth for advanced economies since 2000 has been about 1.6% per year in terms of real GDP, for nominal GDP growth has been about 3.5%.
For World real GDP the average growth rate from 2000-2018 was about 3.8%/year, growth in more mature economies is indeed slower, part of this is due to slower rates of population growth.
For World real GDP per capita growth was about 1.5% from 2000 to 2017 and for advanced economies real GDP per capita growth was about 1% from 2000 to 2017.
Chart for advanced economy real GDP growth below, based on IMF data
Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.
I believe that is what is euphemistically known as ‘kicking the can down the road’…
Fred, to see where the can falls off the edge see my earth overshoot graph below.
Yeah, I just replied to it…
It seems no one gets that without functioning ecosystems there can be no economy!
No economy? You mean no people and most life?
Dennis,
You may very well be correct. But i disagree. Lax regulation on the financial sector, especially after Trumps appointment have seen the corporate debt shoot to unprecedented levels.
Matter of time for the next financial crisis in my opinion. Also the world economy is an entangled web. There are a few dangers on the horizon this year.
Iron Mike,
Based on BIS statistics, not really anything to be concerned about.
I agree with Dennis on this, minor recession now or soon.
By 2030 or so, the flux of predicaments and problems will have integrated into a societal/environmental pressure that will make a full recession or depression appear as the most pleasant of times. No one will be able to separate economic problems from real problems.
None of these mainstream institutions saw the 2008 GFC. Only a handful of people saw it coming.
Even the Fed chairman at the time, Ben Bernanke didn’t know what was going on. There is news clips of him on youtube bragging on how great the economy is prior to the crisis.
I’d take what these institutions say with a large grain of salt.
And I am with you on this Iron Mike.
there are just too many unpredictable variables and low likelihood wildcards in the mix to rely on models and predictions. Big recession/depression could start any year, IMHO, for a variety of reasons.
Iron Mike,
It is very possible that many saw that there were problems, but did not foresee them coming together as they did in such a rapid fashion.
In 2007 there were major problems in credit markets evident. In 2018 there was some stock and bond market volatility in response to Italian and UK difficulties and US/China trade tensions as well as concern over Fed Reserve raising interest rates and reducing the size of the Fed balance sheet (reducing the holdings purchased during Quantitative easing).
The difference is striking between the two reports. In 2007 credit markets were tightening because of the mortgage crisis in the US, in 2018 they are tightening because the Fed and EU central bank are choosing to raise interest rates, a very big difference.
Hickory,
Recessions are impossible to predict in advance, one way of being right is to say there will be one tomorrow, eventually you will be right. 🙂
True enough Dennis. I am not predicting a very big [dep]recession in any particular year. Rather, I am saying the the risks of one beginning in any year are significant, and higher than typically acknowledged or forecasted.
Hickory,
I agree, especially on minor recessions. Really big recession/depressions don’t happen often (2 in the last 149 years).
One of the world’s leading authorities on economics and monetary policy, Claudio Borio (who happens to be the head of monetary and economic department at the BIS) gave a speech on August 14, 2018.
The title was fairly clear, “The level of global debt concerns me”
So I guess the head of economics at the BIS interprets their chart a little differently than you do!
Of course, from the chart above we can see that both the absolute level of debt and the recent increasing trend are greater than what preceded the crisis in 2008, and of course we also know that central banks have much less scope for action now than they had last time around (both economically and politically).
The U.S. is in better shape debt-wise vs. 2008-2009 (public debt is higher, private debt – which is the real danger – is lower), but the world as a whole is in worse shape, China in particular.
Also, your assertion downthread that interest rates increases weren’t impacting anything in 2007 is a little strange. Maybe pull up a historical chart on interest rates some time.
Read the BIS report from 2007, there was a credit crunch due to the mortgage debt crisis.
It is well known that this was primarily due to poor lending practices in the US.
As the risks became apparent interest rates (especially on Mortgage backed securities) began to rise as the price of these securities fell.
The reason for interest rates rising is what is important, context is needed. That is why reading the BIS quarterly report gives a clearer picture than looking at an interest rate chart.
In the Dec 2018 quarterly report, there was not nearly the level of concern expressed as in Dec 2007.
If you think otherwise listen to Federal reserve, they are a little concerned about Europe and China and will adjust their policy based on the data they see.
As I have said often there is always a risk of recession and when they will occur cannot be predicted.
If you predict one will start tomorrow and do so consistently, you will eventually be correct.
23.7 GW of new U.S. electric generating capacity, mostly from wind, natural gas and solar, are expected in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) inventory of electric generators.
In addition, EIA data shows 8 GW of primarily coal, nuclear and natural gas generation are expected to retire this year, though that number could increase as utilities continue to evaluate their generating portfolios.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the official source of data on the nation’s electricity system, and since it started tracking distributed PV a few years ago, solar is no longer an exception.
Last week the EIA announced its projections for new capacity to come online in 2019, including solar and wind. And while the organization did not include distributed solar in the graphics in a post it published for Today in Energy, it gave an estimate of new distributed solar via its Short-Term Energy Outlook. The two sources indicate 4.3 GWac of utility-scale solar and 3.9 GWac of distributed solar for modest market growth on what analysts think was installed last year.
Jim Anderson: Feedbacks that Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change
Climate Science Breakfast with James Anderson (2016). EPS/SEAS Climate Science Breakfast: “Coupled Feedbacks in the Climate Structure That Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change: Arctic Isotopes to Stratospheric Radicals” with James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3iqncCSvFk&t=2421s
Chronic shortages of fuel and foreign exchange, surging inflation and mass strikes have driven Zimbabwe to the brink of economic collapse and made a mockery of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s claim that the country is open for business.
Many shops and factories have shut their doors because of a lack of customers and those that continue to trade are open to haggling over prices to secure hard currency. At an appliance shop in the capital, Harare, a salesman whispers that a Whirlpool Corp. washing machine priced at about $5,000 if paid for electronically will sell for $1,500 in cash, while at a nearby electrical warehouse, a $600 invoice is whittled down to $145 for payment in dollar bills.
It’s a mess, very poor government management combined with corruption is a recipe for disaster.
Zimbabwe’s economy is characterized by instability and volatility, both of which are hallmarks of excessive government interference and mismanagement. Massive corruption and disastrous economic policies have plunged the country into poverty. An inefficient judicial system and general lack of transparency severely exacerbate business costs and entrepreneurial risk. The government will likely adopt desperate short-term measures to stave off economic collapse, possibly including a unilateral de-dollarization that would reopen the door to hyperinflation, further crippling the private sector and severely undermining macroeconomic stability.
The stability of the Holocene was several standard deviations away from the norm. This allowed for tech to develop enough to exploit fossil fuels en mass. The unlocking of basically free energy then condensed tens of thousands of years of progress into a stable period creating a statistical/probabilistic royal flush.
Between 1 trillion galaxies we could be a “big fish in a small pond”. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old (compare that to the universes heat death and we’re still in the womb).
I think that one thing the Fermi Paradox discounts is the question “20 billion years from now will the answer to this question be more evident to the hydrogen molecules participating in asking this question”.
I think the answer is yes.
In that case, we are early to the party.
I really do feel that this unique approach to the Fermi Paradox lends credence to the idea that we may be early to the Universal party.
The first? Unlikely.
Early? Most probably.
2019 Expected Electrical generation capacity changes in the USA-
Adios 3 mile. I was 80 miles away, downwind, when it started to melt in 1979. The news was slow to be released. The middle atlantic states got very lucky on that occasion.
Oyster Creek got shut down last September, oldest in US, 49 years of operation.
If CO2 peaks in 2019. We need a to cut emissions in 2021 by 3% alone, in 2024 cuts of 5% for that year.
That would require cutting global coal consumption by 350 million tonnes in one year and oil consumption by 4 million barrels per day. And we would need to repeat that the following year and the year after…
ANTARCTICA LOSING SIX TIMES MORE ICE MASS ANNUALLY NOW THAN 40 YEARS AGO
“The biggest driver of ice loss is circumpolar deep water (CDW), a mass of warm extra-salty water that has been increasingly pushed under floating ice shelves by stronger polar westerly currents. This water rapidly melts ice sheets and tidewater glaciers from below and is expected to continue exacerbating ice-melt off the continent.”
Meanwhile in other bad news from around the world, examples of things that could get really bad if and when civilization as we know it should collapse are uncontained epidemics like this latest Ebola outbreak!
The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s volatile east is now the second largest ever in recorded history, with 426 confirmed and probable cases thus far, resulting in 245 deaths since Aug. 1, according to the country’s health ministry.
The number of Ebola cases announced Thursday surpassed those of the 2000 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, making it second only to the 2014-2016 outbreak in multiple West African nations that infected 28,652 people and killed 11,325 of them, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
…The two provinces where cases in the latest outbreak are being reported share porous borders with South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda, raising the risk of national and regional spread.
Health workers are facing a number of other challenges to contain the virus, including sporadic attacks from armed groups operating in the mineral-rich, volatile borderlands as well as resistance from the local population in an area that never before had been affected by an Ebola outbreak.
What could possibly go wrong?!
After seeing Dennis’s plot of global GDP growth I immediately thought of it as a view of the rate of global ecological destruction. But how to represent it. Then I recalled, we have a measure of that, it’s called Earth Overshoot Day. So I plotted the values with time and extrapolated to Jan 1st.
You may not want to see this, so pantywaists and children look away.
TRANSFORMATION IS FEASABLE: A NEW REPORT TO THE CLUB OF ROME
The dual adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together with the Paris Climate Agreement, both in 2015, represents a global turning point. We have never before had such a universal development plan for people and planet. For the first time in human history the world has agreed on a democratically adopted roadmap for humanity’s future, which aims at attaining socially inclusive and highly aspirational socio-economic development goals, within globally defined environmental targets. Humanity’s grand ambition is surely to aim at an inclusive and prosperous world development within a stable and resilient Earth system. This human quest is to attain as many of the SDGs as possible by 2030, and then continue following a sustainable global trajectory well beyond the next 12 years. This report has identified one such possible, smarter pathway to success through five transformative and synergistic actions.
Though we already know that SDG #8 is a non starter because it repeats the growth mantra… as noted in your post:
FINAL WARNING!
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity & Business as Un-usual
Fred,
I am not advocating business as usual, but for those that are concerned about economic growth, it is possible for it to continue. The growth that occurs can be done in a less environmentally destructive way until human population peaks. In the mean time better standard of living tends to coincide with lower rates of population growth and often also coincides with improved political rights for women and greater political freedom (though China is an exception).
Without at least a small measure of smart economic growth it seems unlikely that a transition to non-fossil fuel energy occurs as quickly or easily, unless one hopes that an economic crisis brings about positive change (like the New Deal in the US), it can also lead to Fascism so is fraught with risk.
A gradual slow down in economic growth would be good and it is likely as that is what has occurred in more advanced economies.
There are no easy solutions.
I am not advocating business as usual, but for those that are concerned about economic growth, it is possible for it to continue. The growth that occurs can be done in a less environmentally destructive way until human population peaks.
I think that we are now on the slope of diminishing returns for economic growth as we have known it under neo-classical economic thinking. Growth now has more negative than positive consequences. While growth is healthy in an organism or ecosystem up to a certain point, it becomes malignant and destructive if it is allowed to continued unabated, which is where we seem to find ourselves currently.
I’ll again suggest getting acquainted with some of the more novel thinking about economics as espoused by advocates for circular economic and stable state economics thinkers.
I suggest reading Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics.
Ken Webster’s Circular Economy A Wealth of Flows
A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy
For those that are willing to listen to series of podcast related to the last of my suggestions they can go to https://circulatenews.org/2016/04/nd2-podcasts/
While I’ll accept your word in that you are not advocating for business as usual it does cause me to raise an eyebrow when you say this:
“Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.”
Do you seriously believe that?! Because I do not! I’m afraid it may be tried but the results at this point would be disastrous!
Fred,
Imagine a World with unemployment rates at 25%.
What is your solution to that problem?
Not sure doughnuts are the solution. 🙂
I am not suggesting something better won’t come along, but we need to get from point A to point B. So I am thinking, if there is a Great Financial Crisis that occurs in 2019-2020 as Iron Mike believes, do we wait for some new economic system that exists in a podcast, but nowhere in the real World, or do we attempt to solve the problem we are faced with using methods that are tried and true so that we are not faced with World War 3?
I would choose the latter and allow the World to gradually transform it’s economic system to something more sustainable. Change does not happen overnight, at the same time change is constant and the only thing that never changes is that things never remain the same.
My point is simply that without some response to a financial crisis we end up in the doughnut hole.
The concept is very nice, but not much of a plan for getting from here to there.
do we wait for some new economic system that exists in a podcast, but nowhere in the real World, or do we attempt to solve the problem we are faced with using methods that are tried and true so that we are not faced with World War 3?
I’m going with Albert Einstein on this one:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
As for imagining a world with unemployment rates at 25%.
I think about it all the time! I also think ecological and social collapse are going to be orders of magnitude worse that World War III, if we don’t start thinking and acting very differently than we have been until now!
What is your solution to that problem?
It might have to be something like universal basic income! All of the old ‘ISMS’ as far as I can tell are dead ends, with the emphasis being on DEAD!
The tried and true methods you speak of have so far failed miserably to solve our most dire problems! Time to try something else. Anyways it is difficult to have an intelligent discussion on any of this if people are not even willing to read a few books to see what some of the new ideas are about. We are in uncharted territory and no one has a road map at this point!
Cheers!
Fred,
I agree things need to change, just not clear how to effect those changes.
So with 25% unemployment perhaps universal basic income might pass some legislatures, which would be fine with me, if it occurred.
It is not clear we end up with a very efficient economy.
There have been many grand ideas of the past that did not work out that well in hindsight, such as Marxian economics ideas.
Things can be done differently, but based on the paper, there was not really a plan for getting from A to B.
The concept is a nice one as is the circular economy ideas.
Pounding the table with a shoe will not get it done. 🙂
Pounding the table with a shoe will not get it done. ?
True! sometimes to get to the other side, you have to walk across a bed of burning embers in your bare feet!
Fred,
Still not sure in the next few years that gets us any closer to the relative utopia proposed in Doughnut economics. It is a nice thing to aim for, but note that standard economics has ways of analyzing externalities which could be applied properly to take account of environmental damage as well as equity, it is simply a matter of applying the knowledge we have about ecology (outer edge of doughnut) and economics (doughnut hole).
Also note that an assumption that things are done the same today as they have always been done is incorrect (economic theory changes over time and the application of the theory also changes), so Einstein’s adage does not apply.
Not sure I agree that ecological and social collapse would be significantly worse than a nuclear holocaust, in fact WW3 is likely to be the fastest way to arrive at ecological and societal collapse. Stretching out the problem with gradual change seems one way to accomplish the gradual change in “thinking”, social structures, and societal norms that might lead to solutions about how to get from A (capialism destroying the environment) to B ( a doughnut/circular economy which minimizes environmental damage by humans).
Rome was not built in a day.
It is a nice thing to aim for, but note that standard economics has ways of analyzing externalities which could be applied properly to take account of environmental damage
Surely you jest!
Ok, then tell me how standard economics is going to analyze this example of a recent externality and properly account for the consequences?! And please do it quickly because time is running out really really fast!
How one heatwave killed ‘a third’ of a bat species in Australia
BTW, this is not some fluke or isolated incident. There are hundreds of examples I could cite that clearly show we are pushing the boundaries of our ecological systems!
The ways things are going I’m not worried about WWIII because there won’t be anyone around to fight in it!
Dennis, oh my God, I have to agree with Fred on this one. Standard economics is the problem, not the solution. Economics always looks out for the financial element at the expense of the environment.
Note that it is up to governments to address these problems, they choose not to.
I would choose to address these problems if I ruled the World, lucky for all, I do not.
Note that I agree that economic growth should stop for OECD nations and in fact as population declines output should fall.
For less developed nations I think economic growth to meet the needs of the people there combined with policies to reduce income inequality would be good policy (as it gets those people out of the “hole” in the doughnut). Most OECD nations need to adopt policies to reduce environmental damage.
Won’t happen overnight, but ASAP would be best.
Hey Fred,
I agree with Iron Mike, you and I are finally on the same page! Well said.
Fred spot on. We finally agree on something lol
Re: “kicking the can down the road”
So do you believe we have a sort of magic fix we should implement to make any difference at all for the quantity of co2 in the air? By which I mean a really viable fix that isn’t going to bankrupt our country. If you consider “kicking the can down the road” including future generations, I say our grandchildren have a far bigger risk being crushed by a mountain of unsustainable debt much sooner then rising sea levels will sweep them away. That debt should bother us all, a lot. But the problem is, most of the politicians just want to take our money and throw it at every problem without having a plan to fix a thing. Consider almost every big city in this country over the last 50 years, what has changed for the better for the people living in the inner city during those years? Not much aside from the cities on the verge of being bankrupt: financially and morally. We see that that kind of management is not the way to improve lives or businesses.
Pat Clogger,
Fossil fuels will reach peak output between 2025 and 2030 at the World level.
What do you propose will fix the problem of declining energy availability once that occurs?
One potential solution is to ramp up wind and solar energy and expand the electric grid as rapidly as possible so that all nations are not bankrupted by high energy costs.
I would note that Republicans were very much in favor of tax cuts, what do you think that does to government debt levels?
I say our grandchildren have a far bigger risk being crushed by a mountain of unsustainable debt much sooner then rising sea levels will sweep them away. That debt should bother us all, a lot.
You seem to have a lot of things pretty much backwards!
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
By Donella Meadows~
The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between sales force and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”
The classic example of that backward intuition was my own introduction to systems analysis, the world model. Asked by the Club of Rome to show how major global problems — poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, resource depletion, urban deterioration, unemployment — are related and how they might be solved, Forrester made a computer model and came out with a clear leverage point1: Growth. Not only population growth, but economic growth. Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs — among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, etc. — the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, much different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.
The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.
Seems like a reasonable projection to me. I am going to make a statement here were many including Dennis might disagree with, but GDP growth generally = environmental destruction. Keyword is generally.
Think of it loosely like a thermodynamic system. Let me make a very loose example on the small scale. Think of your house as an open thermodynamic system.
Every week we dispose of garbage(entropy) from our homes -> outside (to be picked up by the garbage trucks and transported to landfill or for countries with little to no regulation, into the ocean)
In essence you are removing the entropy from your house to keep it in order, while increasing the disorder of the outside. Extrapolate that on a mass scale. Surely from just this action there is some environmental damage.
Iron Mike,
I agree. Economic growth tends to reduce the quality of the environment, measures can be taken to minimize the damage, but it cannot be eliminated. Eventually human population will need to decrease to a level that is sustainable. If human “progress” continues so that the majority of people have equal rights (for men and women), and access to education and healthcare, women will choose to have fewer children (0-2) and population will decline to whatever level humans decide.
That is the logical route to a sustainable planet, in combination with an energy transition to non-fossil fuels, more recycling, cradle to grave manufacturing, quality products built to last a minimum of 25 years, better conservation of water and soil, and no doubt a long list of other ideas to solve problems I don’t know about.
Dennis said “Economic growth tends to reduce the quality of the environment”
You might want to amend that to ” the economic system causes environmental destruction and economic growth accelerates that destruction” to get a more realistic portrayal.
Gone fishing,
One could simply say that humans destroy the environment, we can attempt to minimize the impact and a smaller number of humans would help reduce the level of destruction.
No amount of impact or destruction is tolerable or allowable at this point in time. We are over the energy cliff, following that system is just a downhill run. We are well over the ecosystem destruction cliff. Further advancement in that direction could put the systems into freefall. A full reversal of direction is the only way to avoid (versus delay) the inevitable.
Comprehension of most of the forests being gone, most of the underground aquifers being depleted, most of the insects gone, most of the birds and fish being gone in 20 to 30 years or less is a hard thing to grasp. No amount of energy or capital will put that back.
Absent aggressive action, many effects once expected only several decades in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the report shows. “It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the report. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html
And we know that any predictions or extrapolations always get adjusted to shorter time scales (greater than expected). Just removing half the Amazon rain forest would disturb the rain cycle so much that the rest would collapse on it’s own and quickly. That is what studies do not take into account, the various feedbacks and cumulative effects in ecosytems. Ecosystems are fully interdependent.
For most of our existence as homo sapiens (200,000) we have had 1-10 million, with a near extinction 70,000 years ago.
7.6 billion?
Try not to laugh——
Gone fishing,
You suggested the economic system causes destruction, now generally humans will need some economic system to survive. You did not specifically state the capitalist economic system, perhaps that is what you meant.
So perhaps to reduce the level of contradiction between your comments (I am assuming you are not proposing sending the human population to the moon) we must assume you think their is a different economic system which will eliminate any environmental damage by humans. I tend to agree with Iron Mike that thermodynamics seems to argue against such a proposition.
The best we will do is minimize the damage caused. Reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible is a start, better energy efficiency, more recycling. more sharing of vacation homes, cars, other appliances, more cradle to grave manufacturing, better quality products rather than throwaway junk, higher tax rates on high income to lead to more equitable wealth distribution, equal rights for all people, better access to health care and education for all (these last 3 will lead to population peak and decline).
As far as I can tell this is the best we can do, we cannot change history, only the future.
Thermodynamics does not limit our ability to protect habitat, call fishing moratoriums, rebuild and protect soils, stop spraying toxic substances over much of the world landscape, eliminate GHG production, halt defaunation, reduce population, or greatly change our views and behavior.
The Earth is not a closed system, it receives vast amounts of energy everyday. What appears to be a closed system is the human mind.
Until people stop the giant Ponzi scheme of delusions they call civilization and realize that they are just one species among a vast system of species, they are truly doomed. No amount of modified BAU will be successful for very long.
Here are some warnings and ideas by others since you do not listen to what I say or appear to comprehend it.
Examples of diverse and effective steps humanity can take to transition to sustainability include the following (not in order of importance or urgency): (a) prioritizing the enactment of connected well-funded and well-managed reserves for a significant proportion of the world’s terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and aerial habitats; (b) maintaining nature’s ecosystem services by halting the conversion of forests, grasslands, and other native habitats; (c) restoring native plant communities at large scales, particularly forest landscapes; (d) rewilding regions with native species, especially apex predators, to restore ecological processes and dynamics; (e) developing and adopting adequate policy instruments to remedy defaunation, the poaching crisis, and the exploitation and trade of threatened species; (f) reducing food waste through education and better infrastructure; (g) promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods; (h) further reducing fertility rates by ensuring that women and men have access to education and voluntary family-planning services, especially where such resources are still lacking; (i) increasing outdoor nature education for children, as well as the overall engagement of society in the appreciation of nature; (j) divesting of monetary investments and purchases to encourage positive environmental change; (k) devising and promoting new green technologies and massively adopting renewable energy sources while phasing out subsidies to energy production through fossil fuels; (l) revising our economy to reduce wealth inequality and ensure that prices, taxation, and incentive systems take into account the real costs which consumption patterns impose on our environment; and (m) estimating a scientifically defensible, sustainable human population size for the long term while rallying nations and leaders to support that vital goal.
To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.
Anyone who thinks they are above the biosphere and can exist without a functional one, is in for a rude awakening in the near future. Although we have a huge amount of historical, paleontological and current evidence for this, the societal penchant to live in total delusion and believe that destructive progress is survivable seems omnipresent.
To reiterate the warning: but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.
Thermodynamics does not limit our ability to protect habitat,…. or greatly change our views and behavior.
With massive information programs, financed by the government, or perhaps philanthropic organizations, you may change the behavior of a few thousand people, or even a million or so. But the behavior of almost eight billion people is controlled only by human nature. You have absolutely no hope of changing human nature.
Me change human activity all by myself Ron? No, I have no such megalomaniac delusions. Maybe you should send your opinion to the the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates who penned the warning.
None of the above is outside human nature or human activity. Human behavior and action varies greatly.
In fact it is practiced by many humans now. People care for the soil, the water, and other species. So are they inhuman?
However, a large percentage of people have been trained from birth to follow a destructive system. Their actions may appear to be “nature” but are merely training and social acceptance. Industrial society driven by large excesses of energy is the major culprit but did not exist for most of human history.
GF, of course 1700 scientist penning a warning is not outside human nature. Convincing 7.6 billion people to hear and take action from that warning is beyond human nature. I have said it before and I will repeat it again: The vast majority of people do not hear a warning of coming disaster and act. They wait until the disaster has arrived then react. People will always take the easiest and most comfortable path. That path is almost always planning for the immediate future, one year out at most. The distant future is well down the list of their greatest concerns.
About humans being in the Americas 130,000 years ago. I would never argue against the preponderance of evidence. But I am not at all sure the preponderance of evidence supports that theory. I do think 13,000 years is too short. I tend to agree with those who say 23,000 years. But whatever the evidence winds up supporting is the theory I will say is most likely.
GF,
The earth is generally considered as a closed system. Though it receives a lot of energy via radiation from the sun, its mass since its formation has more or less remained constant.
And I agree with Ron with regards to human nature. I think we are biologically programmed to be somewhat parasitic in our behaviour.
At the same time education and philanthropic projects do have impacts, but they need funding which also comes from GDP/Tax revenue, which relies on the global economy again.
And I agree with Dennis. As far as i can see (which is very limited) we cannot wriggle out of the thermodynamics. The best we can do is limited the damage we have caused in a variety of areas. Assuming it is done somehow by some multilateral agreement, I cannot see how living standards can remain the same, there has to be at least some austerity involved in the clean up.
Thermodynamics is the study of heat and other forms of energy. The Earth receives a large amount of energy each day, so what is this thermodynamic limitation you speak of, photosynthesis?
Yes, I agree that population has limits in a biological system.
If you are attempting to say that thermodynamics implies that we can only pursue the current societal paradigm, I heartily disagree.
Energy is not the problem, nor is it a limit to our activities to enhancing the biosphere.
What I do see is increasing amounts of time, material and energy to maintain an unsustainable and destructive system while that system gets inherently more inefficient.
No problem though, the current paradigm will change whether societal values and activities change or not. That is guaranteed, since society is on a bio-destructive path on a global scale.
No we are not parasites, we are omnivores like bears. Man existed within the natural system for many millennia but when a certain portion of humanity became symbolic and delusional, they took over the planet essentially erasing what was mostly a set of balanced human cultures.
This vastly accelerated the population and footprint of humans, which might have taken many millennia to reach otherwise and certainly not have been so dramatic or rapidly changed the climate.
Natural boundaries are now being exceeded and that is the harsh reality, the boundary is mostly biological but is enhanced by physical changes in the atmosphere, soil and oceans.
All species that exceed boundaries react in one way, population falls. Humans may react technologically also, such as nuclear war or excessive attempts to alter the course of natural boundaries (which only exacerbates the problem). Still the result will be the same (or worse).
Dennis appears to believe tweaking the system will give successful results and Ron seems to think that nothing will change the course.
Since you agree with them, I see no further point in continuing communication on this subject.
Though I do wonder how all those ancient tribes and cultures survived for thousands of years if humans are incapable of not working with nature. Or how man ever made it at all.
Far too much quasi-invisible hand here for me.
GF,
The people of the hunter and gatherer stage of humanity survived because they lived within an ecosystem. You give (most of the time without even realising) and you take. Then we can define that species as an omnivore.
Ever since agrarian society the game started to change.
Today, the industrial, globalized man, though you may disagree, i don’t define them as omnivores. They are parasites living off the host (the earth), sucking as much resources to increase living standards. And they aren’t giving anything back other than pollutants, environmental destruction etc etc.
You maybe right, there might be an alternative economic system, not sure how it will work, but it would need to have relatively low surplus energy and little to no growth, i have to think about it more i suppose. The reason for the success of capitalism i think is because it fits in well with human nature.
I guess in someways, any animal who evolves consciousness and develops intelligence can become like us or follow the same path. All living things are programmed for EROI, basically conserving as much energy while receiving as much as possible. Hence no animal will refuse a free lunch. And we are no different it seems. Once we realised we can exploit the laws of nature for surplus useful energy we jumped on it without thinking twice. Now living standards in the west have gotten so high, it is taken for granted. Sometimes it blows my mind. For example, fashion. Wtf is fashion seriously, clothing is meant for comfort and warmth that is it. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, for people like me I see it as human sickness, humans deeply out of touch with reality. No such thing(s) would ever exist without ridiculous amounts of surplus energy.
It will surely be a chaotic time when living standards have to drop.
Gone fishing,
Actually I don’t really think tweaking the system is the answer, just that the needed changes will not happen overnight.
Note you said in an earlier comment “economic system”. I was simply pointing out that the current capitalist system is but one possible system of social organization. Other social arrangements are possible, not clear to me what is best as a replacement.
A hunter gatherer type social arrangement (which probably was common for the first 95% of homo sapiens existence up to about 10000 BP) works well for a few million humans and probably not so well for 7.7 billion.
I agree with you on the thermodynamics as the Earth system is not closed, it receives abundant energy from the Sun.
Perhaps peak fossil fuels and the ensuing crisis by 2030 as a Great Depression 2 arrives (or at minimum GFC2) might lead to some of the changes that you list, in the mean time individuals and potentially economic forces (caused by cheaper wind and solar and more expensive fossil fuel) might lead to some of the needed changes in carbon emissions and perhaps policies to address inequity and wasteful use of resources, improved education, access to healthcare, etc.
Humans need to realize they are part of an ecological whole and achieve balance with the natural world. Most humans seem to have lost this awareness.
Today, the industrial, globalized man, though you may disagree, i don’t define them as omnivores. They are parasites living off the host (the earth), sucking as much resources to increase living standards.
Sorry, but words matter, definitions exist for a reason and the term ‘parasite’ has a very specific biological definition! Humans do not fit that definition! While there are those who subscribe to the GAIA hypothesis and consider the earth to be a living organism, that is merely a metaphor for the synergy of all the earths systems necessary for maintaining life.
This is not some minor semantic quibble on my part.
In evolutionary biology, parasitism is a relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life.[1] The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as “predators that eat prey in units of less than one”.[2] Parasites include protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophically transmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation.
Like predation, parasitism is a type of consumer-resource interaction,[3] but unlike predators, parasites, with the exception of parasitoids, are typically much smaller than their hosts, do not kill them, and often live in or on their hosts for an extended period. Parasites of animals are highly specialised, and reproduce at a faster rate than their hosts. Classic examples include interactions between vertebrate hosts and tapeworms, flukes, the malaria-causing Plasmodium species, and fleas.
Source Wikipedia
Humans are highly social great apes. They are currently in state that can be characterized as being in deep biological overshoot but parasites, they are not!
Fred that is a fair point. I sit corrected.
Gone fishing,
Yes I suppose the 2nd Law would not apply to an Open system, my mistake.
Would you agree that approaching zero environmental impact for 7.8 billion humans will be difficult to achieve?
Several of the points on the list are things I have repeated over and over, so it is not clear why you think that I do not agree with them or any of the points on the list you quote, many of which are contained by my less well articulated “other policies to reduce human environmental damage.”
If I had the ability to make all of those policies a reality, I would do so.
Alas, I will just accept the insult, because I didn’t use the specific words you prefer…
Yes I suppose the 2nd Law would not apply to an Open system
It could, depends on the details of the system.
Again the earth is generally regarded as a closed system, since there is negligible mass transfer.
Iron Mike,
The Earth System is not an isolated system, it is both energy and mass that cannot cross the boundry of an isolated system.
I incorrectly used the term “closed” system earlier rather than isolated system.
For the second law of thermodynamics it is the isolated system with no mass or energy crossing the system boundry applies.
Ironically the opposite of green on a color wheel happens to be red… 😉
Here is my silly analogy for when overshoot day hits Jan 1st.
Just picture there are no grocery stores or farm stands to get food. Now the family is hitting the leftovers in the fridge and what is stored in the cabinets. Not long after that things get very interesting. (cubbords are probably fairly bare by then).
Scary part is the overshoot day estimation underestimates ecodestruction and overestimates biological replacement rate.
As usual it is important to keep in mind that there is no one size fits all. There are a lot of very different kinds of environments where hydropower has been implemented. Some of it works but it is also true that a lot of it is an environmental catastrophe! As we should all be acutely aware by now there are no silver bullets but we may be occasionally forced to choose between options that can only be characterized as the lesser of two evils. Going forward there will probably be very few easy straightforward black and white decisions that we can make. However we will still have to make those decisions somehow.
Cheers!
When there is plenty, there is no problem. When there is not enough our true nature comes to the surface and we will fight and kill to feed our children.
Fish stocks that would otherwise be sustainably fished by other countries are vanishing, thanks to China’s insatiable appetite.
And which countries might those be? With almost 8 billion humans on earth and counting…
The huge increase in fishing vessels in the 80’s and 90’s resulted in a plateau of wild fish catch, not a huge increase. That is indicative of desperate attempts to catch fish in a depleted system.
their sustainable lives are being destroyed by industrial fishing
The hardship endured is beyond most people’s experience
Unfortunately if projections of global population growth hold, then Africa is not going to be even remotely sustainable even if they resort to catching fish with only their bare hands and the hardships they endure now, will only become orders of magnitude greater.
By 2070, the bulk of the world’s population growth is predicted to take place in Africa: of the additional 2.4 billion people projected between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion will be added in Africa, 0.9 billion in Asia and only 0.2 billion in the rest of the world.
Of course that in no way excuses the rest of the industrial world powers, including China, for the crimes of raping the commons by over fishing the oceans!
Permafrost Is Warming Around the Globe, Study Shows. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.
By some estimates, the Arctic permafrost contains enough carbon to nearly double the amount of CO2 currently in the Earth’s atmosphere. A rapid meltdown would be disastrous because it could release a lot of CO2—in addition to methane, a powerful short-lived climate pollutant—to the atmosphere, where it would cause additional warming, said Ted Schuur, a permafrost expert at Northern Arizona University.
“This rate of warming suggests substantial change underway,” Schuur said. “This is important and often overlooked news. We often don’t think about what we can’t see deep under the ground.”
Schuur said the study indicates that even areas with very old and cold permafrost, including parts of Greenland, may be more vulnerable than previously thought, with signs of thaw changes, like areas of sinking land, visible at the surface.
…
The findings in the new paper reinforce results from other recent studies. In 2017, scientists found a huge seasonal surge in greenhouse gas emissions in Alaska during autumn months linked with warming temperatures. Emissions from the October-December period had increased by 73 percent since 1975, and that increase correlated with rising summer temperatures in the region.
There has been discussion that the permafrost melt wouldn’t be a problem until warming got to 1.5°C. I’m not sure if this was global average or local but either way I don’t see how the system can have a deadband – it’s at dynamic equilibrium. There may be long lags (though it looks like an order of only a decade or so) but equally there are positive feedbacks: a fast one means the heat from the decay warms and melts the surrounding earth faster, slower ones mean the extra GHG increases atmospheric warming, but also increased snow fall prevents heat loss in the winter (there are certainly others).
I’d say even if all fossil fuel burning stopped now we might still be on course for at least 550ppm CO2 and an unknown short term jump in methane, it’s just a question of time. If some of the sinks fail because of warming oceans and soils etc. then it could be higher.
WORLD’S OCEANS ARE TURNING INTO BATHTUBS
“The climate is changing, and we will not like what it looks like soon enough. Massive wildfires, drastic drought, powerful storms, coastal flooding, and mass migration due to all these-along with food and water scarcity-are not futures to look forward to. Neither are the wars that will inevitably result.
Luckily, the [US] president says it’s all a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. His head of the Environmental Protection Agency does not accept the scientific consensus that it’s happening, and humans are causing it. And all of us will have to explain to our kids what the hell we were doing.”
GLOBAL TRADE WARS AND POLITICAL TENSION UNDERMINING CLIMATE CHANGE EFFORTS
“As world leaders and business figures prepare to meet at the Davos summit next week, the Geneva-based organization said disintegration of international co-operation was the number one immediate risk faced by the world.”
Almost 11% of passenger cars in Norway are all-electric or plug-in hybrid
Norsk elbilforening reports that as of the end of 2018, there are now more than 200,000 all-electric passenger and commercial cars registered in Norway. The number includes about 160,000 new BEVs and about 40,000 BEVs imported as used.
The total number of BEV cars increased in the past year by 41% from 141,951 to 200,192:
194,900 passenger cars (about 7.17% of total 2.7 million passenger cars in the country)
5,292 commercial delivery vehicles (about 1.1% of vans)
Additionally, there are 95,993 plug-in hybrid passenger cars registered (3.53% of the total), which brings the all-electric fleet to 290,983 and 10.7% of passenger cars. The progress is rapid as we just a few months ago reported 10% share.
I think it is safe to say that, Norway is the only country in the world that has a plug-in car fleet that is more than 10% of it’s total car fleet. There is an interesting graphic showing the market share among the pure electrics.
To put things in perspective, it must be noted that 200,000 is just slightly more than the total amount of plug-in vehicles sold in the US in 2017 (361k in 2018) and that figure only represented about 1% of US car sales. A lot of very heavy lifting left to do to make a dent in oil consumption!
In the other hand there is somewhat encouraging news coming out of China:
According to data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), China’s new energy passenger vehicle (PV) wholesale volume in December hit a record high of 159,751 units, leaping 62% over a year ago. From January to December, a total of 1,016,002 new energy PVs were sold in the world’s largest automotive market with a splendid year-on-year (YoY) growth of 83%.
Dennis asked “Would you agree that approaching zero environmental impact for 7.8 billion humans will be difficult to achieve?”
Personally, people can have a positive effect on their environment. Just as the squirrel plants the oak tree but also eats the nuts and lives in the tree, we can assist nature, rebuild the soils, help the forests grow, protect the water, and much more.
However, we may never inhabit Mars and live in tin cans in a deadly space environment. We might have to give that up.
If society raised and educated you to be a Riverkeeper or Land Keepers, Forest Steward or Guardian of Species as part of a voluntary or paid (but expected) community system, would you help out and spend time rebuilding ecosystems, cleaning up problems, monitoring and reporting any negative activities? Most would, and it would give them a vested interest in the land and the community. It would give them a view of their connectivity to the world.
However, our educational system teaches us how to promote technology, finance and manufacturing not the world that actually works.
The key with humans is the early indoctrination and education which transmits the values of their culture. Wrong values, wrong results.
Most people do not want to harm the world or cause massive destruction, pain and loss. So whatever number of people are left when the invisible gun to our heads is done, they can value the actual good things in life and leave the “cargo cult” behind.
Read Wendell Berry, E.O. Wilson, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire for starters.
What is so hard about planting a cutting from a berry bush? Then the birds have more to eat. What is so hard about taking your vegetable trash and working it into the soil? What is so difficult about not using toxic chemicals on lawn and garden?
What is so difficult about not making those extra trips.
Everyone can start now and everyone can think of ways to improve nature, their world, can watch for toxic activities, can talk among their friends and neighbors about their activities. It can all start simple and grow, with the overruling thought of helping the world which helps them too.
Society now rewards the destruction, that needs to be flipped around. Society is teaching havoc and loss, all wrapped in a pretty package until one looks behind the curtain.
Basically it is not about us, we are not the center nor important at all. Maybe someday we can be important, but now we are much the opposite (in general) because we were raised, taught and rewarded that way.
Right from the horse’s mouth, an oil company predicting peak oil and production levels in 2050. From 60 million b/d to 120 million b/d in 2050.
“There’s a massive SSW event in the works over the Arctic, though. This could translate into a newsworthy unpredicted global cooling event in the Northern Hemisphere about a month or so from now.”
It is now one month later. The cold is on the way.
“There’s something big driving this signal and it’s tied to the stratospheric warming [or vortex split].”
Once this wintry pattern becomes entrenched, it may be difficult to dislodge.
“These impacts can last four to six, and maybe eight, weeks,” said Cohen, who expects the worst winter conditions to peak in February. After last year’s polar vortex disruption in February, abnormally cold and stormy weather dominated the eastern U.S. in March and well into April.
While forecasters cannot predict exactly how cold it will get this year, where and when big storms will form and who will get the most snow, Cohen said to expect “intense periods of winter weather becoming more frequent including more frequent episodes of arctic outbreaks.”
“planetary-scale pattern”
Yes, Accuweather shows February as about 3F below normal.
Gee Bobby, Tks for the weather update! But it is most definitely not a planetary scale event!
Forecasters have cautioned that there is “no reprieve” from the heatwave until at least the weekend as already record-breaking temperatures reach their peak.
Parts of Sydney will swelter into the 40s on Wednesday, just a precursor of a 45C high to come on Friday. Canberra could reach 41C today while 45C is likely in regional cities across New South Wales. On Tuesday, Hay, in the west of the state, almost touched 48C.
An extreme heatwave that poses a risk to even fit and healthy people is now in full swing in eastern parts of the state. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has warned of “oppressive conditions”.
Yes, it’s summer and heat is no stranger this time of year — but this is something else.
The NSW Health Department has said it’s now the worst heat the state has experienced for a prolonged period since 2011, when a heatwave increased the mortality rate by 13 per cent and hospital admissions by 14 per cent.
.
Yes i am copping it right now. It is relentless. Next week another one. We’ve had about 4 this summer, records are breaking. 2017-2018 was the hottest summer in NSW since records began.
I hope that record doesn’t break this year, many people will die due to these prolonged heatwaves. Humidity at night time is 90%+ and air quality is quite low due to high levels of ozone.
Sounds entirely nasty. Hope no fires come.
It is draining. There is a low pressure system coming through the next couple of days. There is a chance of dry lightning, hope not though.
Humidity at night time is 90%+
Damn with those temps and that kind of humidity you are approaching lethal wet bulb temperatures!
Stay cool dude!
Damn that wet bulb temperature is crazy, didn’t know about that.
Thanks Fred.
NSW warming is 1.2°C so far – predicted to be 1.5 to 4.8 and continuing to increase by 2100(though from the chart it looks well above trend and is 1.5 already – maybe localised and temporary). This site is pretty good to show localised past/present/future. This is for Denham NSW (chosen at random). Some islands in the Arctic have warmed 5+ and may go to 15.
Thanks for the link George. I am planning to move rural and south coast of NSW, the warming trend will most likely get worse. An interesting non factor is that Australia is slowly moving north-east at a rate of i think around 7cm a year towards the equator thanks to continental drift.
I’ve experienced 45C but in a desert, it was not nice. With 90% humidity, I feel for you. 90% is bad enough at 10C less! You may get some temperature regulation from the sea in a move to the coast but not much help with the humidity. The temperature projections seem to point towards your area becoming unlivable 🙁
NAOM
Grotesque Global Inequity Threatens Ecological Collapse and Horrific Death for All
The ecological and ethical conundrum is this: the comforts associated with consumption are being realized at a greater rate than nature can provide, even as many suffer from want. Either the rich will accept less in order that all can attain some basic measure of human well-being, even as sum consumption shrinks; or we face the final liquidation of nature and an appalling era of ecological collapse before the end of being.
It’s all quite predictable but no less scary for that. Environment issues dominate for probability and consequence (top right in diagram) as they have for three years now, and impact is given as about the same as nuclear war. I don’t know how they differentiate some of these categories but there are a couple of really complicated interconnection diagrams. They don’t really go into how the risks have quantitatively changed over the years but I’d guess risks like assett bubbles have stayed the same or increased a little, but have been overtaken by huge jumps in other categories. Peak extracted resources don’t really figure that I’ve seen so far from first perusal. The Future Shocks and Hindsights sections are good reading.
There’s a definite feeling that things aren’t going to get fixed and are likely to deteriorate (the 2016 Paris optimism has gone).
Is the world sleepwalking into a crisis? Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening. The world’s move into a new phase of strongly state-centred politics, noted in last year’s Global Risks Report, continued throughout 2018. The idea of “taking back control”— whether domestically from political rivals or externally from multilateral or supranational organizations— resonates across many countries and many issues. The energy now expended on consolidating or recovering national control risks weakening collective responses to emerging global challenges. We are drifting deeper into global problems from which we will struggle to extricate ourselves.
…
During 2018, macroeconomic risks moved into sharper focus. Financial market volatility increased and the headwinds facing the global economy intensified.
…
Geopolitical and geo-economic tensions are rising among the world’s major powers. These tensions represent the most urgent global risks at present.
…
Extreme weather was the risk of greatest concern, but our survey respondents are increasingly worried about environmental policy failure: having fallen in the rankings after Paris, “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” jumped back to number two in terms of impact this year. The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear. The accelerating pace of biodiversity loss is a particular concern.
Here’s something a bit new: … increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are affecting the nutritional composition of staples such as rice and wheat. Research suggests that by 2050 this could lead to zinc deficiencies for 175 million people, protein de ciencies for 122 million, and loss of dietary iron for 1 billion.
Meanwhile (since you seem determined to focus on negative news),
RUSSIA’S COAL EXPORTS, PRODUCTION HIT 5-YEAR HIGH IN 2018
“Russia’s production and exports of coal hit last year their highest levels since 2013, according to S&P Global Platts estimates of data from Russia’s Energy Ministry. Russian coal exports increased last year by 3.4 percent compared to 2017, to reach 191 million mt—the highest level since S&P Global Platts started collecting data on Russia’s coal industry in 2013. Coal production also reached its highest level since 2013—at 431.76 million mt, Russia’s production increased by six percent in 2018 compared to 2017. Russia plans to invest around $22.4 billion in its coal industry and port infrastructure.”
Andrew Wheeler, President Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate panel Wednesday that he does not believe climate change is the “greatest crisis” and vowed to continue the administration’s agenda of rolling back environmental regulations…
Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who replaced Scott Pruitt to become acting EPA chief last year, faced pointed questions from Democratic senators who sought to cast him as a lackey for the fossil fuel industry and polluters. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who focused on Wheeler’s previous work for a coal firm, described him as someone who has his “thumb, wrist, forearm and elbow on the scales” in favor of the energy industry.
A report published in November, compiled by 13 federal agencies — including the EPA — found that global warming poses a profound threat to human life, the environment and the nation’s economy. It warned that if significant measures are not taken to rein in climate change, the damage from more severe weather could shrink America’s economy to a tenth of its size by 2100.
Asked if he had read the report, Wheeler said he had been briefed once by his staff. He argued that the EPA is already taking steps to reduce carbon emissions, which a recent study found have increased in the last year after years of decline.
WTF!! The Trump nominee for the head of the EPA has just openly admitted at a hearing for his confirmation that he has not even bothered to read a report compiled by 13 federal agencies including the EPA on the profound potential threat to human life, the environment and the nation’s economy posed by climate change and there is no outrage?!
This would normally be the point where I would say something like history will not look back kindly at these people, At this point I believe that such comments are simply an exercise in futility. It is becoming increasingly clearer by the day, that the current US administration, its enablers and its supporters are a clear and present threat to all of humanity and they are traitors to the fundamental values and principles upon which the US was founded, they need to be dealt with accordingly!
I find it ironic the countries want to ‘take back control’ while, at the same time, insist on the availability of a world market (preferably one they won’t get taxed on) and need to import huge amounts of goods just to survive!
NAOM
The folks over at reneweconomy.com.au have been back at work since Monday following their annual holiday break. Here’s a story from Monday:
New data has confirmed 2018 as a spectacular year for solar in Australia, with a total of 3,775 megawatts (MW) installed of large- and small-scale solar installed over the 12 month period – a near tripling of 2017 installations. And things are not about to cool down.
A new report from Green Energy Markets has forecast Australia’s booming solar PV market will deliver a staggering total of 19 million MWh by 2020, which is 10 per cent of NEM consumption and “equivalent to the combined output of the Hazelwood power station (now closed) and the Liddell power station.”
As reported in the final months of the year, 2018 was a record-breaking year across all solar PV sectors in Australia.
I also frequently visit https://opennem.org.au for graphs on electricity production in Australia (somewhat similar to the German energy-charts.de/power.htm). Off the cuff, it would appear that with a peak contribution in the region of 16.8% from solar, Australia only needs roughly six times the amount of solar capacity currently installed for solar alone to eliminate FF use at the best of times, at mid day in the middle of summer. Of course the situation varies from state to state with the state of South Australia, the state with the lowest figures for total production, only needing four times times the currently installed capacity for solar to supply all the power needs at mid day in the middle of summer.
To put things in perspective, the amount of solar currently installed in Australia is somewhere around 11 GW compared to the more than 44 GW installed in Germany as of July 2018. If Australia had 50% more solar capacity than Germany has currently, all of their electricity could be produced by solar at mid day in the middle of summer at the best of times. Bearing in mind that for places like Australia with a generally good solar resource, solar PV is the lowest cost source of new electricity generation currently available. If Australians can ignore the propaganda from the FF industry and elect a federal government more open to doing something about carbon emissions in March, maybe Australia can become a role model for the rest of the world. I can only hope!
Hi, Island Boy
First off, thanks for all the great stuff you post here. You must be putting a substantial amount of time into this work.
Here’s a question you may be better positioned to answer than anybody else here these days.
How do you think the political situation regarding keeping legacy fossil fuel plants staffed and ready to run for the next couple of decades or so is going to play out?
It seems pretty likely that Aussies as individuals and as local communities ARE going to keep on installing solar systems at an incredible pace, but nevertheless fossil fuel backup WILL be necessary for quite some time, probably more than a couple of decades. I can’t see any way around it, considering the price of batteries and so forth. They may need some fossil fuel backup indefinitely, maybe even into the next century.
I’m thinking the likeliest scenario is that the national and or state governments, maybe even local governments, will either buy and operate existing fossil fuel generating capacity, or subsidize the owners to the extent necessary for them to stay in business.
Another possibility is that local or state governments could build and operate numerous but rather small gas turbine plants and keep them ready to run on a few minutes notice as necessary.
As far as solving the storage problem, another option that occurs to me that would go quite a long way would be that the government, national or local, require that appliances be made to operate well on intermittent electricity.
Refrigerators could for instance be super insulated, and include an ice reservoir of say thirty liters or so which would keep food cold for several days. The motor and controls could be built to run on either low voltage DC, straight off panels, or the usual higher voltage AC. This would cost a bit upfront, but with this design mandated, the cost would come down fast as production of the new models ramps up, and there would be a net savings, because the homeowner could get by more easily with fewer panels, fewer batteries, a simpler personal pv system, and less purchased grid sourced juice.
I don’t see any real reason why a new house in such a sunny hot country couldn’t be economically built with a large water reservoir underneath, and this water frozen using an ac system designed to freeze it as well as cool the house.
Then the chilled water could be used to cool the house at night and on the occasional rainy day. Considering that personally owned or community owned solar electricity may actually APPROACH being ” too cheap to meter” , lol, I don’t see any reason this isn’t truly a practical idea.
I don’t know about prices down under, but here I can buy a precast four thousand liter concrete tank ready to fill with water, delivered and set in place, for a thousand bucks. Digging the pit for it is extra, and plumbing it is extra of course.
Considering how cheap it would be to cool a new house this way for likely life of the proud new owner……. I’m thinking the upfront cost would be very reasonable, especially if bundled into a long term mortgage loan.
OR maybe the simpler and cheaper thing to do would be to just pile on the thermal mass and chill the house out a few degrees cooler than usual during the day, so it will stay cool overnight, or even for two or three days of cloudly hot wet weather.
But what about the decade ahead? Could Britain repeat its success since 2010 and reduce its coal and natural gas generation by a further 30 percentage points? Under this scenario, the country would then generate just a sixth of its electricity from fossil fuels.
It’s definitely possible, but the next decade will be more challenging for two main reasons: the demand for electricity is expected to rise rather than fall, and incorporating ever greater levels of variable renewable generation will need additional flexibility.
To achieve this, new renewable generation – new solar panels, new turbines, new hydro, tidal, marine and biomass generation – will have to replace an estimated 100 TWh per year (about four Hinkley Point Cs) from fossil fuels. That would require a build programme that was broadly 50% greater than the previous nine years.
Given the continued development of offshore wind in particular, this seems challenging but achievable. Solar and wind prices keep falling, which will help. Indeed, the UK’s business and energy secretary Greg Clarke recently said that “it is looking likely that by the mid 2020s, green power will be the cheapest power. It can be zero subsidy”.
What if all these cars were electric?
However, at some point over the next decade, electrical demand will stop falling as electric vehicles gain market share from fossil fuel vehicles, and electrical heating for homes becomes more popular. As an indication of the scale of the transport demand, in 2017 UK cars and taxis travelled 254 billion miles.
If all those journeys were taken in electric vehicles about as efficient as the latest Hyundai or Tesla then total electrical demand would increase by a quarter (over 80 TWh).
These vehicles would need the equivalent of three Hinkley Point Cs to charge them over the year.
A new post is up, OPEC December Production Data, along with a new Non-Petroleum thread.
OCEANS ARE WARMING EVEN FASTER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
“Heat trapped by greenhouse gases is raising ocean temperatures faster than previously thought, concludes an analysis of four recent ocean heating observations. The results provide further evidence that earlier claims of a slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years were unfounded. The new analysis, published Jan. 11 in Science, shows that trends in ocean heat content match those predicted by leading climate change models, and that overall ocean warming is accelerating.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-oceans-faster-previously-thought.html#jCp
It would be very interesting to see an analysis of average air temps exclusively from island/maritime stations. Places at the waters edge like Auckland, Lihue, Aluetians, Cape Verde, Reunion, Galapagos, Maldives, Guam, Faroe, Bermuda,Diego Garcia etc.
I wonder if their collective trend is slower to drift than the continental ones.
Does anyone know an open download site for this data? I wanted to get cvs data METAR MMPR data going way back for my local from Wunderground but they have totally firked up their site. Was to have been my summer project analysing the data.
NAOM
PS Incidentally this is a coastal station at the airport.
Seems like the good times be rollin’
Not sure for who or what, but surely, something will benefit from this change. It’ll probably suck for most things though.
So it goes…
DougL,
Wow! Lots of good stuff from the AAS meeting in Seattle, at Eurekalert. Crystallizing white dwarfs yet.
That observatory near Penticton: In the Spring of ’98 I was the Project Geologist for an archaeology project in the Columbia canyon just south of the border at Kettle Falls. A storm came in and became stationary over the region and flooded the site so I figured I’d drive up toward Northport (?) just for a look-see. This was during a storm that brought the water level in the canyon above the highway in another day or two but driving up the canyon that dayI was noticing the traces of drought in the vegetation on the canyon walls–before it hit me that it was hardly the time of year for drought. A moment’s thought, and aha, Penticton and environs and mining. I had remembered from twenty years before that it was really pretty around Penticton but maybe all the emissions were going down the Columbia?
I hadn’t seen anything that bad since I’d worked for a week out of Kellogg in northern Idaho. The surrounding slopes there, just east of Smelterville, had no vegetation at all.
If you want to see the effects of industry on vegetation just look up the New Jersey Zinc at Palmerton Pa. The zinc smelting went on for 80 years and completely denuded 3000 acres of nearby forest, right where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Lehigh River.
It’s a superfund site but recent studies shows it is still very dangerous, partly due to a recycling business there.
“The American Zinc Recycling facility, formerly Horsehead Corp., recycles electric arc furnace (EAF) dust.
“Our recycling and conversion of this EAF dust reduces a steel mini-mill’s exposure to environmental liabilities which may arise when the EAF dust is sent to a landfill,” Pittsburgh-based American Zinc Recycling says on its website. “We use the recycled material as low cost feedstock for our metal production operations, yielding a competitive cost advantage.””
“In summary, based on our preliminary spatial analysis of EPA’s air modeling results and available state monitoring data, ATSDR concludes that a public health hazard is likely for young children and/or pregnant women living within 3 miles of the American Zinc Recycling facility,” the report states. “Young children and/or pregnant women could experience long-term health problems from exposure to lead in the outdoor air.”
If trees ever grow there, the insects eating the leaves will transfer the metallic toxins to birds.
It’s been over 40 years since the plant shut down.
Saw a similar place in France, just devastation. In Wales there was steel works that chucked out so much pollution that the snow there was red, where did the rest of that pollution go especially when it was dry with no snow. The ground must be laden.
nAOM
GoneFishing,
In September of 1969 driving west across Canada we passed through Sudbury, the town with the huge nickel on the height overlooking it. I’d been told that Sudbury had been considered early on as an area for Apollo-astronaut training, it being closer than the Moon.
I went through again eastbound in 1974 and the hills were vegetated so I guess the problem was being dealt with. The nickel mines in Sudbury are associated with a giant impact structure that dates well back into the Precambrian but I never checked to see if the nickel itself was derived from the impactor.
“Lots of good stuff from the AAS meeting in Seattle, at Eurekalert. Crystallizing white dwarfs yet.”
Yeah been on it all day. I live for that stuff. Thanks just the same.
Has there been any time, when the oceans weren’t warming or cooling?
Regards,
-Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
I’m hoping that is a rhetorical question!
Ralph.
No , its forever changing, of course.
Now its changing fast.
Fast change is hard to adapt to, especially for animals like humans that rely on a fragile web of resources for life.
If there were far fewer humans, they could migrate away from trouble spots like flood and famine, to fertile plains and lush forests over the ridge.
But there are now 7.7B people, and very little fresh productive land to settle.
Big trouble coming from this climate disruption.
Will Pennsylvania take 27 million refugees to settle in the Susquehanna valley?
Did they teach you that some numbers are bigger than others at Cass Tech? It’s part of a kind of math called relation theory, but most children learn the basics in kindergarten.
There are Amazon tribes that only count to three. They have numbers for one, two three and many. Their math skills are weak.
Western civilization moved far beyond that thousands of years ago. For example, I can say “I have some money”, but it might means I have two dollars, and it might mean I have two million dollars. So taken out of context it is meaningless.
Is this too complicated for you? Do you need me to draw you a picture? Hope this helps.
“So I guess my bad number detector must still be working …
“Finally, Zeke says that the ocean temperature in 2018 exceeds that in 2017 by “a comfortable margin”. But in fact, it is warmer by only 8 zettajoules … which is less than the claimed 2018 error. So no, that is not a “comfortable margin”. It’s well within even their unbelievably small claimed error, which they say is ± 9 zettajoule for 2018.
“In closing, please don’t rag on Zeke about this. He’s one of the good guys, and all of us are wrong at times.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/11/a-small-margin-of-error/
So…
Is the world completely fvcked yet?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
IMHO, things aren’t looking good, but uncertainty remains.
What’s you HO (humble opinion) or NSHO (not so humble opinion) on the matter?
Do tell.
Or am I simply asking the wrong question?
I often forget the role that time plays in these things. From the perspective of now and the short human time horizon, things may look good or bad. In a different frame of time, deep time, or even simply the duration of a specie’s existence (average of 9 million years if I recall correctly), determining whether or not the world is fvcked means something entirely different and may not mean anything at all.
I often forget that our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, has been radically reshaped and altered many times, has seen calamities beyond reckoning, and keeps on trucking. The “world” being “fvcked” in light of this history is really rather meaningless. The fact that it will go on for billions of years yet, ought to inform my question as well.
Nonetheless, have at it.
I’m curious to hear what the wise folk who frequent this place have to say on the matter.
There is never a safe time. All safety is an illusion. We could get hit by asteroids or comets. Supervolcanos could erupt setting off earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanism around the globe. A species could arise that wipes out most of life on the planet and changes the climate to a whole new state.
The advantage we have is that we know a lot about what is going on and what causes the predicaments. That is a first.
Will it do much good? Time will tell. No sense in stopping trying and accomplishing what we can. At a minimum it really irritates and spoils the plans of those who don’t give a shit.
Doom Incarnate,
I sense that this period is a unique one time shot for a species on Earth to become a spacefaring civilization.
Technology and daily life wasn’t much different between someone living in 100 BC or living in 1600 AD. Fossil fuels essentially condensed tens of thousands of year of technological and societal development into a 150 year period.
97% of the population used to be farmers. This was true in 1800 AD and 300 BC. Combine that knowledge with the explosion in population that fossil fuels allowed and you have a one-time only opportunity of humanity taken off the fields and allowed to create new technologies on a massive scale.
Even on a deep time frame of reference the fossil fuel bonanza our species is experiencing is never going to be repeated because the conditions no longer exist for its creation.
I believe it to be true that, even though there will be other “smart” species in the Earth’s remaining 500 million years of survivable conditions for life they will not have the benefit of fossil fuels we had.
Condensing tens of thousands of years of technological progress into a 150-200 year period has an additional advantage – catastrophe’s happen that disrupt progress and civilization, the longer you take to develop the more likely you are to experience a “tech reset level event”.
If a knowledge/tech reset event happens more frequently than it takes to become a space colonizing species, then it will never happen again. Basically, if, without fossil fuels, it would take a species 30,000 years to develop space colonizing tech, but “tech reset level” always occur within a 20,000 period, then it becomes impossible.
It cannot be overstated how critical the one time party of fossil fuels was to allowing the development and implementation of technology. All future species will still encounter the laws of physics and how they impact communities. Most members of that species will be there only to provide the net energy needed to sustain themselves and thus development will be handicapped by the tiny part at the top of the pyramid that is free to create technology.
How do you develop solar panels, mine the materials for them (from disparate locations), have factories for them, then transport and distribute them when you don’t have fuels or free energy to begin with?
Just 150 years ago it took MONTHS to travel to Europe. Ambassadors were given the power and prestige of the highest order. Afterall, if a war started in the U.S. it would be many months before Europe would receive a message from the president and many more months until our allies and foes would have a formal response reach the POTUS.
That was reality for all of human history. It was fossil fuels that changed that. I really don’t see how another species, better equipped than us apes, can overcome that reality given a lack of the truly unimaginable power that fossil fuels has provided our species from a standpoint based on the immutable laws of physics.
Thank you. Your post, for whatever reason, sparked a very evocative thought stream for me. I’m sure there are many things I am not considering. Just giving a quick synopsis on an intriguing thought.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Hopefully others are curious to explore this, in a critical, supportive, or refining capacity.
How do you develop solar panels, mine the materials for them (from disparate locations), have factories for them, then transport and distribute them when you don’t have fuels or free energy to begin with?
Did you know that some of the largest mining machines in the world are electrically powered? (Bagger 288) It is noteworthy that the biggest of these goliaths was built for use in coal mining operations. If civilization does not collapse first, future humans will probably witness an almost entirely electrically powered civilization. Everything from mining equipment to ships and planes.
Here’s a glimpse of what the future might hold:
45-ton dump truck to become the world’s largest electric vehicle
When finished, the prototype will be put to the test using its 65-ton loading capacity to haul materials down from a cement works quarry on Switzerland’s Chasseral mountain 20 times a day. During each of those trips, regenerative braking will charge up the battery pack by 40 kWh, which the team says will provide more than enough energy to make it back up the hill with electricity leftover to feed back into the grid.
Because this project represents new territory for electric vehicles, the team will be watching closely to see how the truck performs and keeping an eye out for any malfunctions. This will mean running overcharging tests and purposely mistreating some of the nickel manganese cobalt cells with a steel nail to see how the batteries respond.
See also Trolleytruck
I somehow don’t think this technology will be developed (at scale) in time to support 8 billion plus people on the planet in the absence of FF. I could be wrong.
islandboy,
I’m not suggesting that we cannot transition. I’m just pondering – in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how would a civilization advance to the point where we have that level of technology to begin with.
In a world where the end of the line for free net energy is burning trees and peat moss you’d run out of energy long before you have the complex, integrated, long distance supply chains necessary to develop and manufacture colossal electric machinery.
I’m just hypothesizing, and I could definitely see how a civilization could get there with hydro, wood, and peat moss. I just think it would take so much longer that the occasional and very normal, very real phenomenon of civilization level collapse events would prevent the development of a space colonizing civilization.
I’m not suggesting that we cannot transition. I’m merely hypothesizing that in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how we would advance to the point where we have that kind of technology to begin with.
Without developing technology based on fossil fuels, things might have taken a very different turn. Nowhere is it written that fossil fuels were necessary to develop a technological civilization. Actually it may have been the worst thing to ever have happened to humanity!
https://www.crestcapital.com/tax/history_of_solar_energy
The history of solar energy goes back to 400 B.C., when the ancient Greeks and Romans used the sun to heat certain areas in their homes. Solar energy is the earliest form of energy that is still being used as a power source for many domestic, industrial, and technological operations.
https://news.energysage.com/the-history-and-invention-of-solar-panel-technology/
In theory, solar energy was used by humans as early as 7th century B.C. when history tells us that humans used sunlight to light fires with magnifying glass materials. Later, in 3rd century B.C., the Greeks and Romans were known to harness solar power with mirrors to light torches for religious ceremonies. These mirrors became a normalized tool referred to as “burning mirrors.” Chinese civilization documented the use of mirrors for the same purpose later in 20 A.D.
https://www.solarpowerauthority.com/a-history-of-solar-cells/
1839: Photovoltaic Effect Is Discovered
French scientist Edmond Becquerel first discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839. This process occurs when light is absorbed by a material and creates electrical voltage. Most modern solar cells use silicon crystals to attain this effect.
“I’m just pondering – in a world where fossil fuels never existed in the first place how would a civilization advance to the point where we have that level of technology to begin with.”
Some history for yer, oh, fossil fuel not required!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Galvani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery
NAOM
Brian – I tend to agree with FF being needed to allow a civilisation to progress to space flight (and maybe radio communication). I read something similar recently from someone trying to assess the probability of there being parallel such civilisations in our galaxy. Ancient Chinese, Arab and Greek maths and science and the European Renaissance and enlightments show we’ve always had the ideas and imagination but they couldn’t be converted to widespread technology and engineering before FF came along (ps something I learnt recently was that Burma had an oil industry with wells, distribution systems, a simple refinery – it was even nationalised forcibly – in the early 19th century; before any US discoveries).
In terms of our civilisation I think we also needed the relatively long (in human terms rather than geological) stable climate of the Holocene with no major bolide impacts, no extinction level volcanoes (a couple of smaller ones did plenty of damage) and all the continents well placed with lots of land spread out longitudinally in temperate zones and enough of it at or around the poles.
In terms of what comes after us: we’ve also used up most of the concentrated, easy to get near-surface metal ores.
George,
That’s an interesting chicken and egg situation.
The stability of the Holocene was several standard deviations away from the norm. This allowed for tech to develop enough to exploit fossil fuels en mass. The unlocking of basically free energy then condensed tens of thousands of years of progress into a stable period creating a statistical/probabilistic royal flush.
Would go a decent ways to understanding the Fermi Paradox. Our circumstances would be a series of royal flushes (plate tectonics allowing for fossil fuels, life on Earth starting not long after the universe got out of its explosive adolescent phase, creation of Eukaryotes by endocytosis of mitochondria, etc).
We’re likely unique in that we’re “early” (compared to 30 billion years from now), we hit several events in sequence that are a few standard deviations from the norm, AND that, due to those two realities, we are very far removed in space and time from any other lifeform that can inform us of their existence.
We could be the first in our galaxy and still be merely one in a trillion.
We may genuinely be among the first in the Milky Way, and would be forever ignorant of a species in another galaxy calculating the exact same dilemma.
The Fermi Paradox is perhaps mostly about limitation of scope. We could be a royal flush within our own galaxy while also being a laggard galaxy by galaxy.
Between 1 trillion galaxies we could be a “big fish in a small pond”. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old (compare that to the universes heat death and we’re still in the womb).
I think that one thing the Fermi Paradox discounts is the question “20 billion years from now will the answer to this question be more evident to the hydrogen molecules participating in asking this question”.
I think the answer is yes.
In that case, we are early to the party.
I really do feel that this unique approach to the Fermi Paradox lends credence to the idea that we may be early to the Universal party.
The first? Unlikely.
Early? Most probably.
Brian, yes, the Fermi Paradox is no paradox at all. It is more probable that only one in a billion stars has a planet where any type of life evolved. And perhaps only one in a hundred of these one in a billion stars developed intelligent life. That would mean only one or two such planets exists, or once existed in our galaxy.
Still, that would mean there would be about two hundred billion planets in the known universe where life evolved. But the distances would be so great and perhaps even separated in time, that there could be no communication between them.
The universe is almost 14 billion years old but civilizations likely lasts far less than one million years. And highly advanced civilizations likely lasts only a few thousand years. So intelligent civilizations, in any galaxy, are likely separated by hundreds to thousands of light years, but also separated in time by millions of years.
I’m all in favor of electric trucks, but there are very few trucking jobs that involve hauling the load DOWNHILL time after time, trip after trip, day after day, lol.
I drove big off road trucks that hauled fifty tons on a road job for a few months back in the seventies, hauling downhill, all day, back up the hill empty, boring as hell, but it paid well, for that time and place. Anybody interested can google an R50 Euclid, you can get pics and video.
Fuel consumption ran from ten to twenty plus gallons per hour, depending on how quick I could get loaded and unloaded….. sometimes I had to wait in line.
These trucks probably averaged about a hundred fifty gallons per shift, and we were running two ten hour shifts, six days per week.
At current prices, that would be well over three thousand bucks per week per truck JUST for diesel fuel. You definitely cannot run a heavy diesel dump truck continuously day in day out year around for less than sixty to a hundred thousand dollars per year for fuel, and at the low end, this means a LOT of waiting time rather than actual hauling time.
Anybody who has a long term downhill hauling job is most DEFINITELY going to be able to afford an electric dump truck, lol.
My guess is that the battery in a Tesla S is big enough to easily run one of these big trucks empty half a mile or less up a pretty steep hill, no problems. Such a battery definitely doesn’t cost more than thirty to forty thousand even today, and will no doubt be considerably cheaper within the next four or five years.
Another time, back in my U days, I had a part time job driving in a quarry for a while and there all the hauling WAS uphill.
If diesel gets to be expensive enough, a big dump truck could run with a small diesel or electric motor and battery while on level ground for the thousand feet or so that is typical each trip, and use an overhead line to supply power to a big on board electric motor to get UP the hill. There would be ample regenerative braking to recharge a small battery used just to get around near the loader at the bottom and the crusher at the top of the hill.
Big diesel trucks have been running at this quarry for at least sixty years, probably longer, and will be running there so long as there is a market nearby for gravel. There’s plenty of stone to be blasted and crushed, but the political situation is such that opening another MINING OPERATION, especially an OPEN PIT mining operation in that general area is simply out of the question. The local people would rather pay double to have gravel hauled fifty miles or more than to permit another quarry. The one open now is of course grandfathered.
I foresee a hot market for a few hundred or maybe a few thousand off road electric dump trucks per year as of now, if somebody is ready to deliver them.
Similar to these tractors except they also eliminate the driver.
https://www.electrive.com/2018/12/12/video-john-deere-premiers-electric-tractor-in-action/
Just watched an advertising video for Siemens:
Lumawan Copper Mine Zambia – Truck Trolley System and Gearless Mill Drives
Siemens Mining: http://www.siemens.com/mining The Truck Trolley System and the gearless mill drives for primary and secondary milling were installed and engieered from Siemens at the Lumwana copper mine, one of the largest in Africa – to increase speed and productivity, to reduce fuel consumption, maintenance requirements and also significant energy consumption during mining.
While the mining trucks in the video still use some diesel, it is conceivable that the technology being used in the Swiss experiment could be used to reduce the need for liquid fuel altogether. I am intrigued by these examples of thinking outside the box!
Doom Incarnate you aren’t a Buddhist, are you?! Doom Reincarnate, Doom Reincarnate, Doom Reincarnate… 😉
Nope. Atheist. I’m the guy formerly known as The Wet One. Life circumstances changed and thus the handle changed as well.
You could be a atheist and a Buddhist.
Huh.
I didn’t know that.
So far as I’m aware I’m not a Buddhist. Perhaps I should look up their beliefs and find out if I believe the same thing.
My question is ‘are we fucked or are we really fucked?’ but I do have a side order of wishful hope.
NAOM
Well, Doug, Then you’ll be pleased to know that Brazil, is hell bent on following Trump straight off the cliff!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-minorities-rainforest
Great combo, with an authoritarian military dictatorship complex, a neo-classical growth based policy, anti science especially climate change related and a pro evangelical anti abortion no need for population control ideas! Hates the LGBT community, despises people of color, wants to limit the rights of indigenous Brazilians to their native lands and wants to restrict the basic human rights of Brazilians that are written into the Brazilian constitution.
WTF could possibly go wrong eh?! For the record, I lived in Brazil through the last military dictatorship and the fact that at this particular juncture of human history we are back to this kind of mentality when we need exactly the opposite, makes me more than a little bit depressed!
So….
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Or no, not so much?
I guess time will tell.
Fred, from your link:
“Brazil has become the apocalyptic vanguard that signals how radical this moment is – one with the power to worsen the climate crisis at top speed and blight the entire planet.”
And,
“Without the world’s biggest tropical forest, there is no way to control global warming. If Bolsonaro’s messianic capitalism is not stopped, life on this planet will be much worse for everyone. For a contingent of neo-Pentecostal evangelicals, this may be welcomed as an apocalypse preceding the final salvation of “true believers”. For most of humanity, it will bring nothing but horror and suffering – perpetuated by the stupidity of a species with delusions of grandeur.”
Yeah, imagine my sense of doom being squared since I’m a dual US/ Brazilian citizen! And if that weren’t bad enough I have the whole Victor Orban asshattery to contend with as well. At a minimum, that’s doom cubed…
I think I might change my handle to (DOOM)^3
Dennis, some blogs let you tag new posts with something like new in capitals and square brackets, it makes new comment much easier to find, using a search, than the light blue background that can be missed when there are a lot of replies or when blue is turned down at night. Is it possible here?
NAOM
Just use “find” function and type in the date, such as 01/10. Will give you all the ones for that day. You could even get more specific than that such as the hour.
Well I do do that but when things get busy, like the last few days, then that gets harder. A simple tag of new (in capitals and square brackets) can be rapidly searched for and more obvious also avoiding issues when you have your screen blue turned down or using filter glasses. Here are just two ways
https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-highlight-new-comments-for-returning-visitors-in-wordpress/
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-highlight-new-posts-for-returning-visitors-in-wordpress/
NAOM
I strongly second that request. It would make life much easier.
NAOM,
Contact me at peakoilbarrel.com if you have the expertise to accomplish what you seek.
I tend to fear I will break things beyond repair, if I attempt to fix.
So mostly I follow the old adage, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix.
Any web gurus feel free to contact me with ideas for fixes that will work.
It is possible on many blogs but I don’t know WordPress well enough to do that at present. Take a look at those two articles and see if that gives any clues. I will be doing some with WordPress soon, for myself, and will get back to you if needed.
C’mon guys, someone must have some blog setup experience here!
NAOM
NAOM,
Took a look, I don’t know php and am afraid I will break things if I change them.
Tried it for comments, new post thing not really necessary.
Well, it looks good, but when I try to search for New using Ctrl-F, the “New” tag seems invisible. I can’t search for it, which was what I was hoping for.,..
Nick G,
It only shows up one time, when you search, it’s no longer new.
This will have to do, search kind of sucks in Word Press, I don’t have the skill to improve it.
Well, when you search the word “New” doesn’t disappear, as if you reloaded the page. It’s just…not there for search purposes.
In fact, if you try to copy and paste the comment, you can highlight the text above and below the word “New”, and you see the word in the stretch of highlighted text, but when you paste the word New is mysteriously not there. It seems to be how the html is formattted.
Now…I’m not complaining. This is a volunteer effort and I’m not complaining if you don’t have the time or resources to do more. But, if you or someone else happens to be into fixing this problem, that would be very nice.
It doesn’t show up as text in the page source as it is in the CSS code, am looking into it.
NAOM
Dennis, I think what NAOM and Nick G are referring to is the actual text “[New]” that was included in the timestamp of new posts at theoildrum.com web site. That allowed users to use the “find in this page” feature of their browser to search for new posts by entering “[n” in the search box. Those two characters almost never show up in the body of posts on any blog I have ever seen so, it was fairly easy to skip through new posts out of hundreds very quickly.
It is a feature I miss very much on this site especially once the amount of comments in a thread exceeds about fifty. Browsing through new comments becomes more tiresome as the count grows. The new tag you have added is a slight improvement over the original, subtle, light blue background in that it stands out more but, it appears to be an image rather than actual text, making it invisible to text searches.
IIRC theoildrum.com used/uses Drupal as it’s content management system, offering different features than WordPress used by peakoilbarrel.com. It may be just that WordPress does not offer the ability to create a text based tag for new comments while Drupal does. Since they are both open source projects, I find it a little surprising that an enterprising WordPress developer has not caught onto this yet. I would like to say that adding a “new” text tag to the timestamp should be just as easy, if not easier than adding an image to the new comment or changing the background colour of the post but, I really do not know enough about these things.
Incidentally, if you refreshed the page at theoildrum.com, the “[New]” tags disappeared from the timestamps of new comments, just like how the blue background disappears from new comments when you refresh the page on this site. In both cases, only comments that were posted since the last time you loaded the page will then show up as new.
Yeah, comments is what needs it but what @Nick said, it needs to be searchable. OTOH it does stand out quite well 🙂 I’m short of big time blocks to play on WordPress but I will play and see what I can find.
PHP
Always make a backup copy you can revert to but it is fairly easy to get the hang of. Comment it clearly so you see the changes eg
Oh!! Comments ignore the following line to make it work, I put the name of the symbol in single quotes in there to make the line visible and in the ‘end test’
‘left pointy bracket’!– Start test code –‘right pointy bracket’
<?php
echo "Hello World!"; // This will print out Hello World!
echo "Psst…You can’t see my PHP comments!”; // echo “nothing”;
// echo “My name is Humperdinkle!”;
# echo “I don’t do anything either”;
?>
‘left pointy bracket’!– end test code –‘right pointy bracket’
NAOM
How about if I get rid of the “New” marker, some people are complaining and it seems not to help.
Please keep the “New”! 🙂
Well, it is a big help in spotting new comments. If you can find the following
#FF000A;
in your code try replacing it with
#FFB3B3;
or
#FFCCCC;
which should tone it down a bit.
You may also be able to add the line, in the same section
font-size: 12px;
to cut the font size for the tag.
None of this, of course, allows a browser search to find it though 🙁
I will still look for a better way, had a look at the page source and CSS code yesterday, it seems to be event triggered in the DOM model.
NAOM
I did a little digging and found a bunch of plugins that supposedly enhance the commenting functionality of Word Press.
https://winningwp.com/best-commenting-plugins-for-wordpress/
This one claims to allow searching for newest comments among other features…
The wpDiscuz plugin is feature rich, with lots of cool functionalities that upgrade the default WordPress commenting system. The developers clearly think it’s a match for the competition, too, readily claiming it to be the best alternative to the other big names — Disqus, Facebook Comments, and Jetpack Comments included.
wpDiscuz comes equipped with all of the standard functionality you’d expect from a commenting plugin — an intuitive user interface, nested comments, and multiple comment sorting methods (newest, oldest, and most upvoted).
Disclaimer: I haven’t played with Word Press or its plugins for a couple of years !
Cheers!
Thanks, but I understand that wpDiscuz is, effectively, a replacement comments system so it would represent a big change to the web site and how people use it. I’m not sure all the details of what it would do to the site and it would need to be rolled out on a test version first. I think what we need is a modification to the PHP code in the functions.php though Dennis is, rightly, a bit nervous of this. I think that the basis of the code should be in there and just needs tweaking as it already marks new comments. It would need to be in the PHP code itself to add text to the page source as the current version works through the CSS code.
NAOM
Yep, I hear you and the concerns are valid and duly noted.
So back to PHP coding then 😉
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_new_comment
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/5.0.2/src/wp-includes/comment.php#L0
Maybe you could email me a copy of the functions.php file and I can take a look through it and suggest a mod. I may go a bit cross eyed on it as it is about 10 years since last used PHP 🙁
NAOM
I assume you are addressing Dennis and not me…
I looked at some of the sample code myself and it did make my eyes glaze over… So I went to an overview of the basics
https://wpshout.com/wordpress-functions-php/
Summary Limerick:
The brains of a theme, you should see,
Is one file: functions.php.
It adds crucial functions
At just the right junctions,
And it tells scripts and styles where to be.
Magyar’s quick trick:
But t’were it left up to me,
I’d gladly eschew the logical tree
No risk of dysfunction
Or website malfunction
A plugin may be well worth the fee!
😉
Cheers!
Thanks for that link, it is handy. It looks like functions.php is not what I need as it seems to be just for the CSS rather than the page build. I must dig more. Need to to see if I can get /var moved on my new ‘puter then I might try installing WP on it to play around.
NAOM
These are the words of our new Wyoming governor re: the war on the state’s coal. The west coast is going to get itself sued to the Supreme Court for the constitutional violation of interstate trade by refusing to build a coal export terminal. If RBG croaks within the next two years, the court can get the terminal built.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5QDlu63DmCiY1AwRnBsM3VuQlJtc01YWkVYUDVFdEhNVWI4/view
I want to take just a moment to talk about coal. Coal continues to power this country and, despite market trends and politics, it will remain an essential part of America’s energy portfolio for decades to come.
Around the globe technology keeps advancing, there is progress benefiting our world by burning coal more cleanly and efficiently. Japan and Korea have built the most efficient clean burning fleets of coal fired electric generation ever.
Technologies employed there, when paired with Powder River Basin coal, can reduce the overall carbon emitted to the atmosphere. That is progress that should be a gut cinch for those advocating to control carbon emissions.
And yet, our access to these Asian markets remains restricted, tied up in permit after permit. I believe this to be an unconstitutional restraint of trade. And I will strongly advocate for access to all markets.
I have invited my friend and a former colleague on the Environmental Quality Council, Wendy Hutchinson, to be with us here today. Wendy has been working for nearly a decade to open a coal port in Longview, Washington. This is a port that will expedite coal exports among other commodities to countries like Japan and Korea.
For her efforts, last year Wendy was named one of the 100 Most Inspirational Women in Mining in the world.
Wendy, I have asked you here today so that we can recognize you and the Millennium Bulk Terminal’s perseverance in navigating a complicated, time consuming, and inefficient, perhaps even now adulterated process. Would you please stand. Thank you.
There are promising new uses of coal that can provide advanced building materials and innovative new products. Some of these are being developed at UW and others by private industry.
Wyoming is the nation’s leader in advancing carbon sequestration and has launched the Integrated Test Center which is working on turning a byproduct like carbon dioxide into a valuable and marketable product.
Here in Wyoming, we will continue to seek innovative solutions that support coal, address climate change, and grow our economy.
Coal is far, far too expensive:
ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Issue: Ecological Economics Reviews
FULL COST ACCOUNTING FOR THE LIFE CYCLE OF COAL
Our comprehensive review finds that the best estimate for the total economically quantifiable costs, based on a conservative weighting of many of the study findings, amount to some $345.3 billion, adding close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated from coal. The low estimate is $175 billion, or over 9¢/kWh, while the true monetizable costs could be as much as the upper bounds of $523.3 billion, adding close to 26.89¢/kWh. These and the more difficult to quantify externalities are borne by the general public.
Still these figures do not represent the full societal and environmental burden of coal. In quantifying the damages, we have omitted the impacts of toxic chemicals and heavy metals on ecological systems and diverse plants and animals; some ill-health endpoints (morbidity) aside from mortality related to air pollutants released through coal combustion that are still not captured; the direct risks and hazards posed by sludge, slurry, and CCW impoundments; the full contributions of nitrogen deposition to eutrophication of fresh and coastal sea water; the prolonged impacts of acid rain and acid mine drainage; many of the long-term impacts on the physical and mental health of those living in coal-field regions and nearby MTR sites; some of the health impacts and climate forcing due to increased tropospheric ozone formation; and the full assessment of impacts due to an increasingly unstable climate. The true ecological and health costs of coal are thus far greater than the numbers suggest. Accounting for the many external costs over the life cycle for coal-derived electricity conservatively doubles to triples the price of coal per kWh of electricity generated.
http://www.chgeharvard.org/sites/default/files/epstein_full%20cost%20of%20coal.pdf
I want to take just a moment to talk about coal. Coal continues to power this country and, despite market trends and politics, it will remain an essential part of America’s energy portfolio for decades to come.
Sorry, but that simply can not be allowed! FULL STOP!
PHF-
People in Washington , Oregon and California have absolutely no interest in being host to thousands of trains hauling coal through their towns, across their rivers, over their farmlands and forests.
Or dumping their loads portside.
Or hosting all the ships it would take to plow their harbors.
No thanks, and they will fight it hard. Vast majority feel that way.
In a democracy the majority sometimes gets to win, despite the electoral college.
You want to ship coal out, maybe Mexico will take it. Better leave a hole in the wall for your trains.
Hickory,
There are mile-long unit trains carrying coal from the Powder River Basin north from the Columbia River near Longview all the way up the Puget Lowland to an export facility north of Vancouver BC. They run open to the air and pass through the large cities along the way. They go under downtown Seattle through a tunnel but north and south of its entrances they can hold up traffic.
Yes. People are very opposed to more of it.
That’s too bad, the railroads were there first and literally almost all the cities along the way wouldn’t even be there without the railroads building them up from scratch.
Some might consider that a feature and not a bug!
The following is an excerpt from the transcript of Arithmetic, Population and Energy – a talk by Al Bartlett
…Remember the historic figure on the preceding slide, 6% per year? If that could continue for one lifetime, the population of Boulder would be larger than the population of Los Angeles. Well, I’ll just tell you, you couldn’t put the population of Los Angles in the Boulder valley. Therefore it’s obvious, Boulder’s population growth is going to stop and the only question is, will we be able to stop it while there is still some open space, or will we wait until it’s wall-to-wall people and we’re all choking to death?
Now, every once in a while somebody says to me, “But you know, a bigger city might be a better city,” and I have to say, “Wait a minute, we’ve done that experiment!” We don’t need to wonder what will be the effect of growth on Boulder because Boulder tomorrow can be seen in Los Angeles today. And for the price of an airplane ticket, we can step 70 years into the future and see exactly what it’s like. What is it like? There’s an interesting headline from Los Angeles. (“…carcinogens in air…”) Maybe that has something to do with this headline from Los Angeles. (“Smog kills 1,600 annually…”)
So how are we doing in Colorado? Well, we’re the growth capital of the USA and proud of it. The Rocky Mountain News tells us to expect another million people in the Front Range in the next 20 years, and what are the consequences of all this? (“Denver’s traffic…3rd worst in US…”) These are totally predictable, there are no surprises here, we know exactly what happens when you crowd more people into an area.
Anyone who is still pushing for the continuation of the use of fossil fuels and the neo-classical growth based economic paradigm, should be safely put away in a padded cell in an asylum for the criminally insane!
You must be in the for-profit prison industry, because under your plan you would have to lock up at least tens of millions of people.
Do not confuse the users with pushers!
I’m not. Just consider all the politicians in the world, all the business executives, middle managers, financial consultants, business school professors, stock brokers, wealth managers, venture capitalists, economists, bankers, entrepreneurs and innovators. They all need economic growth to be prosperous.
Not really.
You don’t need fossil fuels for prosperity.
And…you don’t need growing amounts of “stuff” to have economic growth. Economic growth can consist of higher-performance, safer, higher quality vehicles (recycled and electric); recycled electric-arc steel; higher resolution and faster computers (but still using less power and recycled materials); better health services; better education; more and better communications, art, entertainment, etc.,etc.
We in the OECD have more than enough “stuff”.
@Daybeer
“They all need economic growth to be prosperous.”
Infinite growth in a closed system is impossible. The earth is a closed system. Growth WILL stop. They need to choose how abruptly that will be. They will not be prosperous if growth is not curtailed by choice.
NAOM
NAOM,
Growth in consumption of new “stuff” (steel, oil, coal, electricity, homes, cars, appliances, etc., etc.) has already stopped in the OECD.
This whole “exponential growth is impossible” thing is a strawman: it’s not necessary to have more “stuff’ to have continued economic growth: you can have higher quality stuff, and more services, and that’s actually what people want.
@Nick
So, once your stuff is perfect how do you improve on perfect? You might be waited up hand and foot by servants but who does that for the servants then for the servants servants? Even quality and service have a limit, infinite growth is not possible in these or anything else. Maybe a steady state in those could be achieved but if that depends on new material input (eg an improved and perfect cellphone using raw materials and the old phone junked) it cannot.
NAOM
You might be right, notanoilman, but, aside for those who post here, nearly the entire world would rather see economic growth than economic decline.
NAOM, that is what robots and machines are for, to serve mankind.
It’s about time we stopped serving the machines.
@Daybeer
My point is you will get decline one way or the other. It is for you to choose the path, easy or hard.
@Fish
So, I get a Roomba*, more consumption, more growth, another brick in the wall.
NAOM
*Can’t anyway, the cats would kill it 🙁
If you want to see what the end of a paradigm looks like, here’s one of the great right wing bulls***ers saying it’s all over:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-mitt-romney-supports-the-status-quo-but-for-everyone-else-its-infuriating
Be patient for the first two minutes and then just sit there stunned.
Maybe a steady state in those could be achieved
You’ve got the idea.
if that depends on new material input (eg an improved and perfect cellphone using raw materials and the old phone junked) it cannot.
Sure. And if you can just recycle the materials in the old phone??
@Nick
“Sure. And if you can just recycle the materials in the old phone??”
Fred’s circular economy.
NAOM
Fred’s circular economy.
LOL! Actually the circular economy is NOT about recycling. It is about systems thinking and open source design paradigm shifts from the ground up.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-10-2019/#comment-663766
In the video I posted about Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics just past the 25 minute mark she compares an I-Phone and an open source phone designed to be serviced and upgraded by the the end user.
Fred,
There specific design problems with the idea of open source, user upgradable iphone hardware – it’s a good idea in general, but I suspect it’s misguided in this case. The hardware is extraordinarily closely optimized: to allow the user to switch things out would require a much heavier, bulkier device.
I think that the idea of a circular economy would be satisfied by an iPhone designed to be recycled, accompanied by a tracking system that brought every discarded iPhone back to Apple (or an appropriate delegate) to be taken apart for reuse or recycling of every component.
Again, systems thinking, comprehensive approaches to optimal design, open source rather than proprietary IP…these are all good ideas. But, I don’t see why they’re necessary to a circular economy: the essential component to my mind is recycling: everything is reused in some way, either in its original form or in the form of it’s components, or in the form of the components melted down and recycled as a raw material.
Does that make sense to you?
Does that make sense to you?
No, it does not. Just this once, please watch the video and then come back to discuss!
Otherwise we will just be talking past each other. To be clear the I-Phone is not designed to be integrated into a circular economic paradigm and simply recycling every part of it will not make it so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U86VB28KYZg
@Fred
Sorry if I haven’t quite understood circular economy from your links, please send me a nice, straightforward one that I can re-educate myself from and no long videos please.
NAOM
NAOM,
I think there are some very short videos on the Ellen MacArthur website explaining the basics but Kate Rawort’s Doughnut Economics is not only about cicular economics principles and even though the video is an hour and a half long the presentation part is only 30 minutes followed by an hour of Q&A.
In any case sometimes a sound byte is not sufficient for getting accross a complex subject.
Cheers!
NAOM maybe try Ken Webster
This is from the Ellen MacArthur website
https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications/the-circular-economy-a-wealth-of-flows-2nd-edition
Fred,
Kate Raworth does give the example of the fair phone as a better way of doing things as it can be repaired and upgraded by the consumer and is designed to allow that.
Two key ideas are regeneration where the waste from a process (or product) is used as an input for some other process (as in nature) and distributive networks (as in the internet and solar PV and sharing economy rather than the traditional centralized networks).
I see what you mean about the tendency for neoclassical economic thinking which distorts how things are viewed. That model ignores the social and cooperative nature of human social behavior and simplifies economic analysis far too much.
The more complex systems approach to thinking about social problems is not widely taught and might be difficult to apply. Seems variables would be nearly infinite with infinity raised to the infinity power relationships amongst the variables, a rather intractable problem.
I would have no clue how to proceed with such an analysis. Complex systems analysis and/or chaos theory I have never studied.
SBBishop,
Yep, railroads have always been important. The post wasn’t about railroads though, it was part, a bit of information, of a discussion of coal and its transport.
PHF- chew on this man.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/colorado-could-save-25-billion-through-2040-by-replacing-coal-with-clean/545652/
PHF, send this to your governor
There is no such thing as clean coal when it comes to the consequences of CO2 emmissions! Burning coal is simply no longer an option!
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8952240/amp
Ocean Acidification Is Bad, and It’s Getting Worse
The ocean absorbs about 30 percent of the CO2 emitted from human activites. As the volume of atmospheric CO2 grows, the ocean collects its proportionate share. To give you an idea of how much that is, in 2013, countries emitted nearly 40 billion tons of carbon. According to the World Meteorological Organization, that represents the biggest surge in CO2 concentration since 1984.
That’s bad news for the climate, but it’s really bad news for the ocean. When the ocean absorbs CO2, it converts the gas into carbonic acid. Until the Industrial Revolution, there wasn’t enough carbonic acid in the water to unbalance the ecosystem. But after more than a century of unchecked carbon emissions, the ecosystem has been measurably upended. The pH level of surface waters has dropped from 8.18 to 8.07, an unprecedented shift in the last 300 million years of the fossil record.
@fred magyar,
This is why I am wary of politically oriented publications for science info. Both their editors and most of their readers are scientifically illiterate (and I do not mean the huffpost only). At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived. Oceans are in no danger of becoming excessively acidic. Pseudo-scientific hoakum.
Oceans are in no danger of becoming excessively acidic. Pseudo-scientific hoakum.
Says who exactly?! Please be so kind as to provide the links to actual peer reviewed papers in the scientific literature. BTW, whatever you may think of the political orientation of the Huffpost, if you read the article you will find dozens of embedded links that do provide scientific information to back up the article’s premise! Ocean acidification is a fact and to deny it by attempting to put a political spin on it is rather disingenuous!
I more often than not post links directly to scientific papers and I could sit here all day doing so but I doubt you would read those papers and I doubt they would change your mind.
I’ll just post two below and could easily post hundreds from multiple disciplines.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261771045_Rapid_and_sustained_surface_ocean_acidification_during_the_Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Abstract
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) has been associated with the release of several thousands of petagrams of carbon (Pg C) as methane and/or carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system within ~10 thousand years (ky), on the basis of the co-occurrence of a carbon isotope excursion (CIE), widespread dissolution of deep sea carbonates, and global warming. In theory, this rapid carbon release should have severely acidified the surface ocean, though no geochemical evidence has yet been presented. Using boron-based proxies for surface-ocean carbonate chemistry, we present the first observational evidence for a drop in the pH of surface and thermocline seawater during the PETM. Planktic foraminifers from a drill site in the North Pacific (ODP Site 1209) show a ~0.8‰ decrease in boron isotopic composition (δ11B) at the onset of the event, along with a 30-40% reduction in shell B/Ca. Similar trends in δ11B are present in two lower resolution records from the South Atlantic and Equatorial Pacific. These observations are consistent with significant, global acidification of the surface ocean lasting at least 70 ky and requiring sustained carbon release. The anomalies in the B records are consistent with an initial surface pH drop of ~0.3 units, at the upper range of model-based estimates of acidification.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29118135
Mass extinction in tetraodontiform fishes linked to the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
Arcila D1, Tyler JC2.
Author information
Abstract
Integrative evolutionary analyses based upon fossil and extant species provide a powerful approach for understanding past diversification events and for assessing the tempo of evolution across the Tree of Life. Herein, we demonstrate the importance of integrating fossil and extant species for inferring patterns of lineage diversification that would otherwise be masked in analyses that examine only one source of evidence. We infer the phylogeny and macroevolutionary history of the Tetraodontiformes (triggerfishes, pufferfishes and allies), a group with one of the most extensive fossil records among fishes. Our analyses combine molecular and morphological data, based on an expanded matrix that adds newly coded fossil species and character states. Beyond confidently resolving the relationships and divergence times of tetraodontiforms, our diversification analyses detect a major mass-extinction event during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), followed by a marked increase in speciation rates. This pattern is consistently obtained when fossil and extant species are integrated, whereas examination of the fossil occurrences alone failed to detect major diversification changes during the PETM. When taking into account non-homogeneous models, our analyses also detect a rapid lineage diversification increase in one of the groups (tetraodontoids) during the middle Miocene, which is considered a key period in the evolution of reef fishes associated with trophic changes and ecological opportunity. In summary, our analyses show distinct diversification dynamics estimated from phylogenies and the fossil record, suggesting that different episodes shaped the evolution of tetraodontiforms during the Cenozoic.
I assume you are scientifically literate enough to understand the information in these two papers and follow up on the vast available literature as well!
“At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived.” – not the life currently there though. Environment of evolutionary adaptation is maybe a new concept for you but worth trying to understand – it’s the speed that things are changing at that’s the problem not just magnitude. I’m putting your comment as another nail in the WASF coffin.
“At times, the air has had 10X and even 20X the current level of CO2 yet life in the oceans thrived.”
Yeah, said by the guy who complained about the politics and scientific illiteracy of both the editors and readers of the Huffpost while posting links upthread to the notorious climate science denialist blog ‘Whatsupwiththat’
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-10-2019/#comment-663982
Ah, a eunuch!
What did y’all expect from a bunch of apes?
Solar PV to power space engines, Starts near minus 3 hours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg
Awesome potential!
My oh my! Here is a kick in the ass to all the ICE pickup trucks. I’d love to see those rednecks blocking Tesla chargers face off with some of these vehicles. 100% US built, Amazing specs and not much more money than a typical US pickup with all the bells and whistles. Oh they also have an SUV built on the same platform. Towing capacity of over 5,000 lbs so those charger blocking bad boys won’t stand a chance!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMfxJEfb4lw
Rivian – Electric Adventure Vehicle | Fully Charged
Hugo, you out there?
Shenzen [next to Hong Kong, city of over 12 million]
has 21,000 taxis that are electric.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-taxi-fleet-shenzhen-china/545420/
Hickory
It does not matter how many electric vehicles there are. What matters is are there more petrol and diesel vehicles, ships and planes.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/brutal-news-global-carbon-emissions-jump-to-all-time-high-in-2018
At the very least we need to cut Co2 emission by half in 2030
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-14/antarctica-sea-level-rise/9859828
Antarctica, Greenland, the permafrost are melting now. As the amount of Co2 increases the melting increases. Even if we cut Co2 emission by half. We are still ADDING to the warming rate.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Americans need to reduce Co” emissions from 16 tonnes per person down to 5 tonnes by 2030. This would allow other nations who produce hardly anything(look at map) to burn some gas and oil.
What are the chances?
Hugo- ‘It does not matter how many electric vehicles there are. What matters is are there more petrol and diesel vehicles, ships and planes.’
Absolutely agree.
But when you see one city putting 21,000 electric taxis on the road, it is time to acknowledge that the excuse of waiting for the technology to mature is no longer viable.
The transition decade to electric doesn’t start in 2020, it started in 2018, and is gathering steam.
Nonetheless we are still on the hard path to global mass extinction, just because of our shear bulk and lack of foresight.
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-requiem-for-beautiful-earth.html
Anyone who thinks renewables have a chance in hell at saving us, or even at making this situation better, should read the linked post. Really take it in. Especially the part at the end about the way journalists are imprisoned or censored for photographing the environmental destruction that goes into creating your batteries.
And the part about the converging ecological trend lines leading to collapse. Only a SINGLE one of these problems can possibly be helped by renewables. Just ONE. The rest… still gonna get you, solar panel or no.
And to everyone else, it is a truly sad and haunting piece, I recommend it.
a pessimist is an optimist who shed his delusions and denial, and educated himself.
Concerning the future of the world, a pessimist is a realist, an optimist is a dreamer.
Human population is growing, getting worse
Human livestock population is growing, getting worse
Human consumption is increasing, getting worse for all but the consumers
Human ecological and war-victim refugees are increasing, getting worse
Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse
Wild flora / fauna diversity is shrinking, getting worse
Aquifers, and all freshwater resources are shrinking, getting worse
CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, getting worse for existing biodiversity
Acid content of oceans is increasing, getting worse
Human economic unpayable debt load (fake energy, fake “growth”) is increasing, getting worse
Quality and availability of every critical resource are shrinking, making these resources more expensive and more destructive to recover
Net energy from energy resources is shrinking
Habitats and food for wild fauna are shrinking
Carbon and nutrient content of arable soils are shrinking
Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles are disrupted and concentrated, creating dead lakes and dead ocean zones
Coral bed sea-life nurseries are shrinking
Tropical forest terrestrial nurseries are shrinking
Estuaries are shrinking
Ponzi schemes, stock swindles, and scams are increasing in frequency and monetary value
Forest fires and violent storms are increasing with CO2 and heating
War budgets are increasing, etc.
I have been preaching most of these things for years. Collapse is not something that will happen, collapse is something that is happening.
All true but, just think, everyone can keep track of it all with their latest-and-greatest smartphone(s).
“6.1 billion phones represents 70 percent of the global population, and Ericsson also estimates 90 percent of the populated globe will have high-speed mobile data coverage by 2020. What’s particularly interesting is where the majority of these new phones will be sold. Ericsson says 80 percent of the new smartphone owners will be located in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.”
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/smartphone-users-number-6-1-billion-by-2020/
I was at an event on Tuesday this week where one of Jamaica’s leading economists gave what I can only describe as a pep talk to a group of “financial advisors” aka life insurance salespeople. He started out by saying something big is happening in Jamaica and proceeded to lay out his reasons for optimism about future economic growth in the island. One of the points he made I found particularly convincing, that investments in road infrastructure have improved and will continue to improve productivity by reducing the amount of time people and goods spend in transit, underscoring the importance of not having people wasting time stuck in traffic. He prefaced that by pointing out that a significant portion of economic activity is “movement of goods and people”.
The older of the two national newspapers reported on the talk here:
Jamaica on track for economic surge, says King
The rest of the presentations were predominantly about what individuals need to do to have a successful year in sales so they can buy that nice new car or new house etc.
As far as that list of 21 problems goes, what problems? Most of these problems are not staring the folks in that audience on Tuesday or the general public in the face yet, so as far as they are concerned, they are not real problems. There is going to be no acknowledgement of these problems until and unless they get real, very real!
Finally a note on renewable energy and solar in particular. I have opined before and will repeat my opinion that renewable energy has prevented some of the problems facing humanity from being a lot worse. Just imagine what the situation would be like without the roughly 500 GW of solar PV installed worldwide? Add to that all the electricity being produced by wind turbines and you have a huge amount of CO2 emissions being avoided.
More importantly I see renewable energy as having put a cap on FF prices that will lessen the damage to economies that can happen from price increases due to supply issues. I am seeing more and more articles talking about the need for FF prices to remain low in order to prevent a more rapid transition to renewable energy and EVs. The fact is, under the current circumstances, any movement in FF prices beyond a certain point, will certainly result in more people taking advantage of the increasingly available alternatives.
And the destruction of the environment marches on! 🙁
Ron,
A pessimist is just a pessimist. Things change, always have and always will.
A pessimist thinks only negative change is possible and that even positive changes will simply lead to negative changes later and that things cannot possibly improve.
The “optimist” thinks that people can see those behaviors and policies that are negative and make changes in policies and behavior.
One only need look back at history to find examples.
It really comes down to a question, can positive changes occur and can people continue to enact more of those changes.
For the pessimist the answer is no, and for the optimist it is the opposite.
Anther problem with the pessimistic view point is that it can lead to a conservative or reactionary policy viewpoint. If one thinks that only negative change is possible, then one would tend to prefer no change or possibly even to go back to some earlier set of policies where things were “better” before all the negative changes that have occurred.
An optimistic viewpoint where positive change is deemed possible would be more amenable to trying to improve policy in an attempt to improve the world (make society more sustainable for example).
The pessimist would say such an attempt is a waste of time and more likely to make things worse.
It also assumes defeat before the battle has been joined, a sure fire way to lose.
Dennis, no comment except to remind Fred that he was dead wrong on this comment:
Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition.
I didn’t want to mention your name as one who does have such illusions. But what the hell, you do.
But arguing with an optimist is like arguing with a religious fanatic, reason plays no part in the debate. So as I said, no comment. What would be the point?
Ron,
I agree with Fred, all that I argue is that replacing fossil fuel use with solar and wind and electric transport is a better idea than business as usual.
I have never said it solves every problem that exists, nor have I said it will be easily accomplished.
The argument is pretty simple, fossil fuels will deplete, they will become more expensive than alternatives and people will gradually switch to non-fossil fuel energy because it will be cheaper.
Now you often say this will not happen overnight.
I agree and have never said or implied it would happen very quickly, an “optimistic” scenario (one that I think is not likely, perhaps a 5% probability) might see fossil fuel reduced to 5% of 2017 levels by 2045, a more realistic scenario is probably 5% of 2017 fossil fuel consumption in 2055-2060.
Note that nowhere have I ever said this solves any problem except the depletion of fossil fuels and perhaps reduces the extent of the Global Warming problem to about a 2 C rise in temperature above the 1850-1900 average.
There are many other problems and potentially other solutions to those, for human population, education would be a key, along with equal rights for women.
Dennis
Where is the optimistic angle here?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/brutal-news-global-carbon-emissions-jump-to-all-time-high-in-2018
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/03/drying-lakes-climate-change-global-warming-drought/
As the water runs out in various countries, these people will be forced to move. Can you imagine a billion environmental refugees?
https://watchers.news/category/drought/
Hugo,
There are plenty of problems, my point is to find solutions rather than simply focus on all that is wrong with the World.
There have always been refugees and this is likely to continue.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuel have been rising more slowly over time, they are likely to peak in 2025+/-2 and then decline. Data in chart from BP statistical review of World energy. The 2011-2017 rate of increase in C)2 emissions was 0.64%/year vs 1.78%/year in 1980 to 2010 and 3.6% per year from 1965 to 1979. The rate of decline in CO2 emissions will depend on fossil fuel prices, the prices of alternatives to fossil fuel, and economic growth, along with national policies. I expect CO2 emissions to fall to 5% of 2017 levels by 2050-2055.
Dennis
If CO2 peaks in 2025, then we will suffer the consequences of global temperatures rising above The 2c.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-set-to-rise-2-percent-in-2017-following-three-year-plateau
The interactive graph 2/3 of the way down shows what cuts would be needed.
Bare in mind the ice sheets are melting now at a high rate. What will stop them?
Emissions could peak in the coming decade, perhaps.
But the tail will be very long, and atmospheric concentration will likely peak several decades later due to long effective half life in the atmosphere.
Do you concur with this Dennis?
The effects will continue to mount long after the peak emission years.
Hickory,
Yes I agree. For a model with peak emissions in 2025 and using a Bern type model to estimate CO2 concentrations (likely to be an underestimate due to permafrost melting and other natural feedbacks), atmospheric CO2 peaks at about 485 ppm in 2065, total Carbon emissions (including cement production, fossil fuels and land use change) about 1047 Pg of carbon from 1800-2500.
To me this is the most likely scenario, though technically we might keep emissions as low as 800 Pg C.
There is not a lot of consensus on the future level of emissions from permafrost melt etc, many of the scenarios presented that I have seen are based on emissions scenarios that rely on 5000 Pg C emissions (RCP8.5). The RCP4.5 scenario (1600 Pg C emissions) is much more in line with available fossil fuel resources and should be the scenario that is focused on because it is more in line with mainstream fossil fuel resource estimates.
When cost reductions in wind, solar, batteries, etc are added to the mix, then 1000 Pg C emissions is quite reasonable and Tony Seba type optimism would lead to 800 Pg C emissions (I think odds of that are under 10%).
Chart can be clicked on for larger view
Hugo,
I am just reporting what I think is likely to happen, it is possible the peak will be sooner or later than 2025 (I think 2023-2027), I would prefer it to be sooner, but that will not make it so. Yes the ice sheets are melting, and they will continue to do so, not much can be done to change history.
Also correct that Global temperatures may rise to 2 C above the 1850-1900 mean temperature, though that was a relatively cold period over the past 6000 years. The Holocene Climactic Optimum was roughly similar to 1986-2010 temperatures (about 0.35C above 1961-1990 average Global temperature.)
The 1850-1900 average temperature was about 0.7 C lower than the Holocene Climactic Optimum average temperature from 9500 to 5100 BP (data from Marcott et al 2013 and BEST temperature data).
Thanks for the projection Dennis. Looks like a very reasonable effort. That is a long and nasty tail of atmospheric CO2- lots of time for amplification effects, such loss of albedo and permafrost melting.
Hickory,
Yes we will need to find a way to draw CO2 from the atmosphere, maybe in cement, or other processes, use excess solar energy to produce calcium carbonate?
The quicker we reduce carbon emissions the better.
“The “optimist” thinks that people can see those behaviors and policies that are negative and make changes in policies and behavior.
One only need look back at history to find examples.“
Dennis,
There is no situation to be found in history that compares to the last 100 years, with a human population explosion made possible because of fossil fuels.
There are positive changes in policies and behaviour, but the destructive forces, people making money out of ‘everything’ on earth, are much bigger. What to do ? People without a (normal) job, have to eat and need water too. And the number of those people is increasing rapidly.
Because of this, you now get presidents like in the U.S. and Brazil.
Han,
Probably advances in medicine played a part as well, child mortality decreased, life expectancy increased and it took a while for modern birth control to become widely used. Total fertility ratio (live births per woman) decreased for the World average from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2005.
Replacement rate is an average Total Fertility ratio of 2.1 (no population growth). The process is likely to reverse so that World Population will decline from a peak of about 9.5 billion in 2070 to 2.1 billion by about 2200.
Chart below from
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol28/39/
I assume eventually the World’s average total fertility ratio falls to 1.5 (for my family and my wife’s, in one generation the TFR fell from 5.5 to 0.9).
I think it’s very, very important to straddle that fence, to keep the right foot planted firmly on the “optimist” side, and to keep the left foot planted firmly on the “pessimist” side.
The problem now is my balls hurt.
Michael,
Find a lower fence.
@dennis coyne,
” trying to improve policy in an attempt to improve the world (make society more sustainable for example).”
Alas, unlike you apparently, I do not have the ear of society’s very small number of movers and shakers, and thus cannot hope to affect policy at that level, not even optimistically. I do think the vast majority of people who think they can make a difference–the “I want to change the world” types, I call them–are a bit delusional and would be better off concentrating on matters they can actually control, or trying to influence the few people that they both know personally and who can plausibly be expected to take them seriously. If enough individuals and households prepared in advance, the result might be a a relatively orderly, slower, pre-emptive collapse rather than a global trauma. Yet if not very many make pre-emptive adjustments, at least those few will have improved their chances of muddling through better than if they had used most of their spare time and resources to futilely petition their congressmen or whomever to rescue the world. No matter how many times they try, most of us have extraordinarily little influence on the larger world. Heck, even my congressman doesn’t have any serious clout. The people who do are few in number, and usually are not elected, and often do not even hold a government post. Like other people, they have their own opinions and their own concerns and I, like most of mankind, do not have their ear. And even if I did, I probably would have to persuade a considerable number of key individuals before there was any hope I might have an effect–you know, the sort of people who get invited to Bilderberger meetings. Since my friends are not on that list, I should probably be content to “brighten the corner where you are” and leave saving the world to those who have a snowball’s chance in hades of doing so. If you were a feudal serf, you could plead with your priest (who might be literate) to write a letter to the king asking him to exert his influence on the feudal lords to possibly abolish serfdom, or you could run away to the city and free yourself. Sort of where we are, except we should probably be running away from the city.
Nehemiah,
I do not expect anything I write will change anything. Just reporting on the changes I see and how I expect things might play out. Of the infinite possible paths the World might take the odds are pretty low any guess I would make will be correct as 1/infinity is approximately zero.
As I often say, the story is pretty simple.
Fossil fuel peaks (around 2025), they become more expensive, alternatives to fossil fuel continue to become cheaper, people switch to non-fossil fuel energy because it is relatively cheap, CO2 emissions decrease to approximately zero over time.
Also, women succeed in attaining equal rights, access to education and modern birth control becomes more widespread, total fertility ratio gradually declines to 1.5 live births per woman for the World average (from about 2.4 births per woman today) and human population decreases to about 2.5 billion by 2200 and 1 billion by 2300, stabilizing at whatever level human societies choose after 2300.
There are many other problems which will require other solutions, humans are pretty innovative and there will no doubt be technological breakthroughs and future problems that I cannot possibly foresee.
Really take it in. Especially the part at the end about the way journalists are imprisoned or censored for photographing the environmental destruction that goes into creating your batteries.
Really?!
Do they also get censored and imprisoned for photographing scenes like this?!
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/04/21/sweden-takes-canada-to-task-over-tar-sands-pollution/
And for the 10 millionth time!! Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition. What we do know for 100% certainty, is that if we stay on fossil fuels we are as sure as already dead! The only game in town at the moment is going 100% renewables and to argue against that is beyond disingenuous!
Meanwhile,
BP JUST DISCOVERED A BILLION BARRELS OF OIL IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
“BP’s investment in next-generation technology just paid off to the tune of a billion barrels. The British energy company has discovered 1 billion barrels of oil at an existing oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. BP also announced two new offshore oil discoveries and a major new investment in a nearby field.”
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/bp-just-discovered-a-billion-barrels-of-oil-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/ar-BBRZSkd
At one third recovery that is 4 days global supply. Which means a discovery like this has to happen 91 times every year to replace current consumption.
Since only 7 billion barrels of oil equivalent were discovered in 2017, there seems to be a problem.
Demand increases are outstripping oil supply increases by a rate of three to one.
Well, this should keep us going for awhile then, we have lots of coal and gas to fall back on: no worries mate!
SAUDIS BOOST OIL RESERVES AHEAD OF ARAMCO’S PLANNED IPO
“Saudi Arabia published the first audit of its vast oil reserves since it nationalized its energy industry about 40 years ago, saying its reserves total 268.5 billion, slightly more than the 266.3 billion figure that the government published previously.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-09/saudis-raise-oil-reserves-estimate-ahead-of-aramco-s-planned-ipo?srnd=premium-middle-east
So oil will continue for over 70 years or less.
The question now is who will own Saudi Arabia when the ROW starts sucking water in their oil fields, say around 2030 or so?
Or will that ignite WWIII?
Or will most nations just ignore it because it’s another dead end play.
It feels like an intelligence test.
Doug,
So of 3000 Gb, another 1 Gb is really going to make a big difference, that’s about 0.03% of likely URR for oil.
Nobody who advocates for renewables vs fossil fuels has any illusions about the dire circumstances humanity faces nor do they believe for a single second that those renewables will save us, or even that there are no environmental consequences to obtaining the resources necessary to make the transition.
I am sorry Fred, but that is just not the case. There are many people who believe renewables will be our salvation, some of them on this list. The vast majority of people on this earth do not realize there is even a problem. And of those who do realize there is a problem, the majority of them believe we will solve the problem… somehow… somehow.
However, the vast majority of people, even in this United States, just don’t want to hear from us. They call us “Doomsayers” and “Chicken Littles” or some other stupid name. They believe “science” or “technology” or even “God” will save us. Some even believe that governments will wise up and step in and save the day. Back on the Oil Drum, one guy told me, “The government will not let that happen”. So don’t worry, be happy.
I am sorry Fred but denial is more than just a river in Africa.
PV and wind power can solve much of the atmospheric carbon flux problem and a large chunk of the pollution problem. No one with a brain thinks it is a panacea for world problems.
I am sorry Fred, but that is just not the case. There are many people who believe renewables will be our salvation, some of them on this list.
Ok, I stand corrected… but even knowing the truth as long as I’m still breathing I will be advocating for renewables and against the continuing use of fossil fuels.
Gonefishing and Fred are correct, nobody who comments here believes that renewables are a panacea, simply a way to solve the carbon pollution problem. Other problems require other solutions. Population problem requires equal rights for women, better access to modern birth control methods and better education.
Not sure of the solution to soil problems, but likely there are better agricultural practices which would help and lower population will also help.
Ok, I try not to look at things with rose colored glasses as more often than not when you take them off you end up rather disappointed!
However this is an interesting discussion about soil and an innovative form of carbon capture. I’ll be the first to admit that It does sound too good to be true! But, the more I understood about the process and how it might scale the more intrigued I have become about this idea.
As usual, to be crystal clear, much more research is needed and the time we have is exceedingly short. Furthermore this is but one arrow in our quiver with the main emphasis still having to be on 100% elimination of CO2 emissions. This is not a final solution to all our problems by any means.!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAqxOMy61U
Getting off (climate disruption) with our Rocks
http://ScientistsWarning.TV/ – Dr. David Beerling from the University of Sheffield presents us with his current research into how we might trap gigatons of Carbon, using rock waste from previous mining, and a technique called ‘enhanced weathering’. The process appears also to increase the yield of crops. Trials have been very promising. There’s a huge quadruple win here… sequester bast carbon emissions, get rid of huge piles of rock, save on fertilizers, increase food yields, generate carbon credits.
I’m trying really, really hard to not worry and be happy.
I’m failing miserably Ron.
Got any advice on how to succeed with those activities?
BTW, sadly, I’m not ignorant anymore. I don’t know how to unknow what I know.
Any pointers?
Thanks in advance.
BTW, while you didn’t answer my question above at the spot provided above about whether we’re fucked or not, you did answer the question all the same.
Thanks for that! It’s appreciated!
Sorry Doom, but I have no advice. No one listens to my advice anyway. My kids don’t even believe it. I worry deeply for humanity but have no worries for my own ass. I am not worried because I am 80 years old and hope to be safely dead when the shit hits the fan. But it really hurts when I think of the future for my kids, and grandkids, and all the children of the world who will suffer so. It will be hell on earth. It hurts so bad even to think about it.
DI, since you apparently can ignore the many nuclear missiles aimed at you that could arrive in minutes, why are you so bothered about climate change and the state of the environment?
Face it, it was nature itself that produced the latest version of humans and provided the means of energy used to change the climate and wreck the ecosystems. It’s just evolution and sometimes evolution works, sometimes it doesn’t .
If it results in some mass extinction, would not be the first time. Listen to the Adam Frank video I posted below, he amplifies the fact that we would not even be here without a mass extinction event.
It’s been a good run for 65 million years, maybe time for a change.
Or we could actually use the brains we were given.
Hi Niko,
Lets assume the assertion that ‘renewables don’t have a chance in hell of making the situation better’ is true.
So then we’d be smart to not spend another dime on them, or on further innovation research.
Before too long fossil fuels will be running down. We will burn most of the coal we can get our hands on.
Then the forests will be cut. It will take 12 years, or so, to complete that job by a cold and hunger humanity.
We have 7.7 Billion [plus 80 mill/yr], who will be scrambling for the scraps. Humans are very ugly, and even worse when they scramble for the scraps.
If you subscribe to this series of events, even roughly, then how do you propose to react?
Some say get ready for a quick departure from life when things get ugly (for some, things are already ugly- Syrians for example).
Others will try to bargain with reality by attempting Survivalist mode, hoping to hold out to the last moment when the local warlord gang comes calling.
Others think that prayer can feed them.
Some just say what the hell, and go on as if things will be ok. ‘Lets not talk about it’.
Others stick with denial- ‘we’ve got no problem’. Overshoot oversmoot.
Some seek rationalization- we can make this work…
Others decide to make adjustments and hope to adapt to change. Hope to live in a community of like minded people who can find a way to live more sustainably. Set a new pattern of simpler life.
Constructive dreamers, I’ll call them.
Me, I suppose I choose elements of the first and last, while I find myself highly skeptical that humanity will find a smooth path down.
I’m sure I’m skipping some patterns of reaction to the reality of Massive Population Overshoot.
How about you, what is your path?
Lets assume the assertion that ‘renewables don’t have a chance in hell of making the situation better’ is true.
And just what does the term “making the situation better” really mean? Let’s just consider the first three things on the list:
Human population is growing, getting worse
Human livestock population is growing, getting worse
Human consumption is increasing, getting worse for all but the consumers
Would renewables solve any of those three problems? There are twenty items on that list. Renewables would help perhaps three of them. They are:
Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse
CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, getting worse for existing biodiversity
Acid content of oceans is increasing, getting worse
Going exclusively to renewables would help with these three items. For the other seventeen, renewables would be little, if any help.
Ron,
Possibly correct.
We also have the fact the Total Fertility ratio fell from about 5 live births per woman in 1965 (world average) to about 2.5 in 2005. When it falls to 2.1 births per woman on average population stabilizes, when it falls below that population eventually declines. Education, equal rights for women, access to women’s healthcare (especially modern birth control all tend to occur as economic development proceeds and the TFR tends to fall in economically developed nations.
I know the idea that improving the lives of millions of people might led to a positive outcome may seem strange, as in many cases economic development has lead to huge destruction of the environment. Much of the World’s population has a TFR of under 1.75 (about half of the World’s population). As the poorer half becomes less poor, the World’s population will become smaller as women choose to have fewer children.
With smaller World population many problems become less severe.
There are many problems and many solutions.
TFR…about 2.5 in 2005.
It’s now down to 2.4. Pretty darn close to replacement, at around 2.1.
Yep, only 10.1 New York Cities added to the world in 2019.
Global period for adding an additional billion people is slowing down but is still horribly fast.
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Sometimes a farmer’s perspective can add something to the discussion of collapse.
Farmers are quite accustomed to thinking about collapse at the local and regional level, in terms of their own economic survival.
One of the key takeaways of this thinking is that if you as an individual can hold on for a year, or two or three, circumstances generally improve.You may have sold ninety percent of your cows, but the rain returns, and you start building your herd again.
Tens and hundreds of millions of people will likely perish in various places, but there will be survivors, and with the population pressure substantially reduced, local farmers and or business men can again provide for the remaining people.
Another is that even if your community, or your country, falls victim to flood, drought,war, etc, other farmers in other countries generally have enough to sell assuming somebody is willing to pay.
My personal belief is that while substantial portions of the world will experience hard ecological and economic collapse.
There is plenty of reason to believe that this collapse will occur in piecemeal fashion, in various countries and regions over a period of a couple of decades or longer, rather than world wide over a year or two.
It follows that some countries, especially bigger, stronger, and economically more advanced countries, may pull thru without suffering any major violence or loss of life.
Consider for instance just how much the USA could accomplish if the people of this country ever come to understand and believe in renewable energy and in fossil fuel depletion, never mind climate issues.
We Yankees could build wind and solar farms out the ying yang without ever even really missing the money. We could as easily build a nationwide HVDC transmission system to deliver the juice as needed and where needed.
We could have cars and appliances that run on a small fraction of the energy used by current models.
And we could justifiably ease the pain of paying for these things by cutting back on military spending, because the less oil we need to import, and the less need our closest friends and allies have for imported oil, the less our need for the MIC.
Bottom line, the only prudent course of action is to work to speed up the transition to a sustainable economy. It won’t be easy, but we know it is at least theoretically possible to pull it off.
We can do it if we put our minds and our hearts into it, as we did in fighting WWII.
It won’t be easy, but we know it is at least theoretically possible to pull it off.
We don’t know this, and I in fact disagree strongly with this point. We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. Everything from the mining, refining, shipping, and erecting, at every step of the way fossil fuels are consumed to create renewables. Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a renewable company that performs 100% of operations with only their own product, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy.
The standard trick right now is to use fossil fuel energy, but then purchase the equivalent amount of renewable power to claim that you did it with only renewables. This is what Google did. Problem is, renewables and fossil fuels have different energy densities. You can’t run a mine, a container ship, or a refinery with renewables. You can run much of these processes with renewables, but there are parts where you simply cannot.
Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.
“Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.”
Niko,
When most of world electricity is produced by solar/wind/hydrogen and most cars are EV’s, world fossil fuel use is small compared to now. That quantity of liquid fossil fuels necessary then could be produced by for example algae.
If that situation can ever be reached is another story.
From the comment of islandboy in this threat:
“Did you know that some of the largest mining machines in the world are electrically powered? (Bagger 288) It is noteworthy that the biggest of these goliaths was built for use in coal mining operations. If civilization does not collapse first, future humans will probably witness an almost entirely electrically powered civilization. Everything from mining equipment to ships and planes.”
Letting small planes, for let’s say 50 passengers, fly on electricity, is at least two decades away. For big planes it is much more difficult
We don’t know this, and I in fact disagree strongly with this point. We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. Everything from the mining, refining, shipping, and erecting, at every step of the way fossil fuels are consumed to create renewables. Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a renewable company that performs 100% of operations with only their own product, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy.
I guess at one point it was also possible to say:
Until there is a single example, anywhere on Earth, of a heavier that air flying machine, what you say is “theoretically possible” is nothing but fantasy!
Yeah, and next the thing you know fantasy became a physical reality and the Wright brothers took flight at Kitty Hawk!
At least as I understand things, ‘Theoretically feasible’ for practical purposes, means that no physical laws are broken to accomplish a particular goal. So in that sense 100% percent renewable electrical systems are indeed feasible.
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-percent-energy-renewable-sources.html
In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, researcher Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100 percent renewable electrical systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.
Now, scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and collaborators have analysed hundreds of studies to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks to a 100 percent renewable future.
Here’s the Heard paper argueing against the theoretical feasability of 100% renewable electrical systems.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032117304495?via%3Dihub
Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118303307?via%3Dihub
I contend that:
We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop.
Is a demonstrably false statement. Whether we will find the political will to do it. is a whole nuther can of worms!
Cheers!
Niko,
I lean towards your point on this- “Until this problem is solved renewables are fossil fuel extenders and nothing more.”
But if that is indeed the case, then extending is our best game.
And I certainly agree with OFM, some areas will do better than others. Some of that is pure geographical advantage, and some of it is the choices local cultures make. In fact, I think the differences will be huge, like they have been during other times of global tumult.
Example- the Pacific NW has a huge supply of hydroelectricity, as does Norway.
“We do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. Full stop. ”
YOU do not know. A chemist like me actually does. Please, do not project your uneducated opinion. 🙂
Ulenspiegel,
Your comment reads as if you agree with Niko.
Based on past comments I think you would disagree.
In other words you believe that at some point a World that uses 99.99% renewable power is indeed possible.
Is that roughly correct?
We do know, but whether we have the will to accomplish the transition is unknown.
(My personal belief is that a substantial part of humanity can transition successfully…. IF motivated to do so. See my other comments mentioning WAKE UP events, lol.)
First off, we have at least fifty to one hundred years, and possibly a lot longer, supply of fossil fuel still in the ground.
IF we use this one time gift of nature wisely, then we can build out not just dozens and hundreds of wind farms, but thousands and tens of thousands of each.
Once we have a large enough base supply of wind and solar power, plus maybe tidal and geothermal power, etc, as well, we can easily use this power to run all ESSENTIAL industrial processes.If I’m wrong on this point, it will still be possible to run critical industries on renewable energy based on biofuels…… so long as we don’t WASTE biofuels driving three ton pickup trucks to work and to fetch a six pack.
( I foresee cars shrinking to less than half their current size and weight, and getting three times the current average fuel economy……running on the dregs of whatever oil is left before we switch entirely over to electrically driven cars. )
We know already, and many people are doing so already, how to build houses that use only trivial or NO net energy.
We know how to build cars that are three to five times as efficient as the cars we use now…. and we know how to get by with far fewer cars, even no cars at all…. IF WE MUST………. and maybe we must, unless we succeed in building electrically powered cars that last indefinitely and can be very close to one hundred percent recycled.
We know how to have one or two children, or none, per couple.
And despite the fact that many people, including some of the regulars here, spend a lot of time spitting on religious people, the vast majority of such people are having fewer and fewer children as time passes.
I live in the heart of the socalled Bible Belt. People here generally had rather large families, typically four to six kids, sometimes more, as late as the fifties. Since then, the average has probably actually dropped below two kids per couple in this area, even among the folks who attend church services several times a week, religiously, pun intended.
Do you understand that a new solar panel produces twenty times as much electricity, at least, over the first twenty years of its life, as was needed to manufacture it?
Do you understand that steel can be recycled at rates at least into the mid nineties percentage without any problems?
Do you understand that IF we decide to mandate that cars, appliances, farm machinery, etc, be made to last fifty years or longer, doing so is really a trivial exercise, from the technical and engineering pov?
I LOVE wrecking yards, since I create many useful objects from materials that are scrapped which I can buy AS scrap for less than two cents on the dollar sometimes, never more than five cents?
Except for rust damage, and cosmetic issues, ninety nine percent of the parts of a typical scrapped car are still perfectly serviceable.
Most automobile engines with well over one hundred thousand miles on them are still in like new condition, as measured by wear on internal components such as pistons, cylinder walls, and bearings. What this means is that if CARS were BUILT to be serviced and repaired, rather than scrapped, they COULD be built like commercial trucks…… DESIGNED to be easily and quickly repairable. I can replace most of the component parts of an eighteen wheeler truck easier and quicker by a factor of three than I can on a typical car, assuming I have lifting aids handy for the heavier parts. AND garages that service let us say Perkins diesel engines need stock maybe only four to six electric starter motors to service every Perkins diesel they are likely to see over the course of the next year. You would need a couple of dozen starter motors just to service this years crop of GM cars, maybe two dozen, all different in some way that prevents them from being interchangeable.
I’m the proud owner of a house full of hand made solid wood furniture, which has never been boxed, or shipped or sold in a store. It’s all now fifty to a hundred years old, and was made by hand by a relative during slow times farming, thru the winter. It will last indefinitely, centuries at least, so long as it’s kept dry. I have been offered enough for just a couple of pieces to refurnish the entire house with moderately priced throwaway junk.
The problem with assuming we CAN’T run an entire industrial economy on renewable energy is that you are ASSUMING we must continue to run on fossil fuels in the future as we do today.
LOTS of changes will be necessary, but making the changes won’t be nearly as tough as going back to the time when the economy was based on muscle power and expansion into new lands. There won’t be any new lands available for expansion within another half century, and that half century estimate is based on people taking over and moving onto most of the lands that are protected as parks and nature reserves today.
He agrees. He said: “YOU do not know. A chemist like me actually does. ”
What he meant was “YOU do not know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels. A chemist like me actually does know how to build renewables without combustion of fossil fuels.”
And, of course, he’s correct. The fact is that replacements for every application of fossil fuels exist right now, and almost all of them are in widespread use.
Here’s just one example: we know how to make fertilizer without methane. The methane supplies hydrogen to combine with nitrogen, and we absolutely know how to produce hydrogen without methane. Electrolytic H2 production is a bit more expensive, but it’s not orders of magnitude more expensive. In fact, about 4% of industrial hydrogen production is done via electrolysis.
It’s basic high school chemistry!
“Toxin load in biological systems is growing, getting worse“
Even growing with the growing world production of solar energy.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5650
Comparable with the tremendous pollution from coal ash and desalination plants. Proper waste management is very expensive.
This way it is rather easy to bring down the costs of solar power.
With regards to your concern for warlord gangs coming along; I’d recommend mountainous terrain for survivalist mode. Mountainous terrain favors the defender; channeling terrain (defiles) concentrate forces making it easier to have over watch on areas of vulnerability and to detect intrusions sooner.
Thanks for the tip. And to think I was planning to hole up in a swamp.
Swamps can be good if you have water craft and your opponents do not. Alfred the Great did ok holing up in a swamp for a bit. Lots of folks seem to have their heart set on the prairies as a retreat. They won’t do so well, and will waste a lot of energy doing it. My preference is cold weather and mountains, both of which really suck the ‘I wanna be a warlord’ out of most folks. Northern end of the Rockies might be a nice spot to hole up.
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2011/04/mountain_warfare/
First a disclaimer: To be clear, the Everglades are not a swamp! They are the better characterized as the river of sawgrass and the waters are not still, but flowing. The Seminole Indians at one time retreated to the Everglades when pursued by the US military during the Seminole wars of the late 1830s. They did quite well there even until relatively recently. Of course today they run the casinos…
But here is an interesting colorized video from 1949 about the Everglades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50q65WjJp4Y
Florida’s Native Americans: Seminoles of the Everglades 1949 Lorillard
Of course nowadays there are signs up everywhere warning people not to eat the fish there due to mercury poisoning… So even if one knew how to survive there, you’d probably still be in trouble.
Head for them there hills! 😉
Cheers!
All the hills and valleys around here are mercury poisoned. The state is kind enough to post signs near it’s lakes recommending a very limited diet of any fish caught there. So one can only assume that it is everywhere, all from the benevolent coal industry.
From 2013
Mercury’s Silent Toll On the World’s Wildlife
This month, delegates from over 140 countries gathered in Geneva and finalized the first international treaty to reduce emissions of mercury. The treaty — four years in the works and scheduled for signing in October — aims to protect human health from this very serious neurotoxin.
But barely considered during the long deliberations, according to those involved in the treaty process, was the harm that mercury inflicts on wildlife. While mercury doesn’t kill many animals outright, it can put a deep dent in reproduction, says David Evers, chief scientist at the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), who serves on a scientific committee informing the process. “It is a bit of a silent threat, where you have to kind of add up what was lost through studies and demographic models.”
Mercury plays havoc on vertebrates’ development and their neurological and hormonal systems, and doses too low to kill can cause problems that aren’t always obvious in the wild, experts say. “Methylmercury is one of most toxic environmental pollutants we’ve ever come upon,” says Gary Heinz, a recently retired federal wildlife biologist who studied it over four decades.
In the earliest studies of these sublethal effects in the 1970s, Heinz reported that captive mallards fed mercury-laced food laid fewer eggs than control ducks and laid them outside the nest. Also, their ducklings didn’t respond well to their calls. Numerous examples have accumulated since. Fish form loose, sloppy schools and are slow to respond to a simulated predator. Several bird species sing different songs. Loons lay smaller eggs, and they incubate their nests, forage, and feed their chicks less. Salamanders are sluggish and less responsive to prey, Hopkins and colleagues found. Egret chicks are similarly lethargic and unmotivated to hunt.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/mercurys_silent_toll_on_the_worlds_wildlife
So one can only assume that it is everywhere, all from the benevolent coal industry.
I wonder when we are going to have trials in the Hague?!
I’m pretty sure mercury pollution falls under the crimes against humanity category, no?!
More importantly, crimes against nature (all species).
Yes, destruction of the environment is a crime against all species, including Homo sapiens.
E Fred M,
I bet Burmese python tastes like chicken. New possibility for street food in your area?
Always a silver lining somewhere.
E. Synapsid,
They may taste like chicken but they are very large predators at the top of the food chain so potentially accumulate a lot of toxins…
In my travels I have had the opportunity to eat some nice plump grilled Bothrops alternatus. They have very nice white meat! Though some care must be taken when collecting them. Happily its venom being a mixture of hemotoxins will not immediately affect synaptic functioning, leaving one with intact mental functions to contemplate the consequences, if bitten! 😉
E Fred M,
See? Always a silver lining in some way.
The problem won’t come from the warlord gangs, they will be too busy slogging it out between themselves. The problem will be the next valley’s group of survivalists who know how to snipe you off.
NAOM
I tend to agree with you. Security will be of an increasing concern in the future.
Before too long fossil fuels will be running down. We will burn most of the coal we can get our hands on.
Then the forests will be cut. It will take 12 years, or so, to complete that job by a cold and hunger humanity.
We have 7.7 Billion [plus 80 mill/yr], who will be scrambling for the scraps. Humans are very ugly, and even worse when they scramble for the scraps.
The point I have been trying to make this entire time, is that this will occur with or without renewables. And will in fact be worse with renewables, because renewables will allow our population and our economies to expand for longer, making the ultimate reckoning worse.
How about you, what is your path?
I’ve seen too much of human nature to think there is a way out. If there WAS a way out, it would involve immediate and severe austerity, deploying militaries to protect what’s left of nature, and reeducating the population to go back to more local ways of production. Billions would still die, but this is the only path I can imagine leaving something behind for the survivors.
This, of course, will not happen. I guess my only hope is that I can convincingly argue to people that it is no one’s fault, so as to prevent lynchings and decapitations when shit gets bad. I don’t want to see us turn on one another in our local communities. Unfortunately, I’m very near 100% certain that this is exactly what will happen.
And then, as you said, we will eat what little is left of nature. I guess my path is to observe. And be brave enough to find a quicker way than starvation if it ever comes to that.
I share your concerns for future famine. It seems to me that the combined impacts of climate change and peak oil will likely disrupt food production and distribution. My path is to prepare for that, as well as for other eventualities. I view it as investment diversification- sure I have my 401K, but I also have a wood lot up in the mountains that I’m turning into a bit of a fruit and walnut orchard. It’s actually something I enjoy doing and it’s good exercise. So far a good investment too! I got a good deal on the place.
My great-grandfather picked loads of walnuts until about 6 months before he died, age 100. They are really cool trees. Produce lots of nuts, super hearty. They secrete chemicals to suppress competing vegetation. He would walk around his neighborhood and ask the neighbors to enter their yards to pick the nuts that they weren’t picking. He picked so many we all got sick of them, and had to figure out how to store bags and bags of them that he would send everyone. I think walnuts are a solid retirement choice.
You’re right to be worried about famine. Here is a short explanation of why we should expect our agricultural system to fail on the order of a few decades.
https://youtu.be/fApBgvG1pmw
Here is something a bit more involved you may find interesting. It’s a discussion with an organic farmer about how we can create sustainable agriculture and actually use it to increase, rather than harm, biodiversity. The context for the talk is the same as the last one: we are destroying the basis of our agriculture, it cannot last much longer.
https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-16-what-we-reap
The only thing that could save our ability to produce food is everyone becoming an organic farmer and following these practices, which restore biodiversity and replenish soil. So that’s a good joke. Clocks ticking.
Sorry, but this is a crock of shit. One doesn’t need to subscribe to “organic” ideology to conserve topsoil, etc.
New techniques in genetic engineering could completely revolutionize farming, but the organics gurus demonize it.
And with 7.7 billion people, we need a bumpersticker that says, No Pesticides, No Food.
I guess my path is to observe. And be brave enough to find a quicker way than starvation if it ever comes to that.
If you say so…
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please
That game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll some day play
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless
Theme song from M.A.S.H.
I recommend a tank filled with EAN 0% !
Should get you out of here in less than 5 minutes, no pain!
However it still leaves the rest of us with the task of disposing of your corpse…
Niko,
You and I see much of this in the same light.
When you say that your ‘path is to observe’, that is a proper stance.
Observe and learn.
And at some point then do!, what you can to adapt.
I have no brilliant scheme of action, or inaction.
However I have concluded that for me personally, and hopefully for my community and state, and perhaps country, that having affordable energy available as I ‘observe’, is a good thing. Fuel/Electricity that we take for granted at the pump or at the plug socket may become very expensive at some point (not to mention problems with CO2), and having supply of renewable energy may make the observation time you have more tolerable. I’ve finally got a PV array on the roof. It feels good and solid. That is worth something to me.
Also, its good to learn practical hands on skills. I regret nothing I’ve learned, like repair work, woodworking/construction, growing food, in addition to my technical/science work. Whatever you think would be useful in the world as it unfolds. Get to it.
And I choose to have no children. Boom. Stop this train (wreck).
You make your choice.
I hope your observation period goes well.
You and I see much of this in the same light.
That we do. My SO and I have already decided not to have kids. It’s one of my hard stops, so if her mind ever changed she would have to find someone else. She knows how strongly I think that having kids is the wrong choice. I am open to adopting down the road. I’ve been learning what I can about growing food, but my life situation doesn’t allow for too much experimentation at the moment. I’ve been growing some onions recently. My grandparent’s have a nice farm, if shit gets bad before they pass then I’ll be welcome there. If shit takes a while getting started, I’d be met by their neighbors with guns. Without them there, I don’t think anyone would accept an unrelated mouth to feed.
I’ve been doing what I can to spread the word. As I said, my biggest fear is that people who don’t understand what happened will turn on one another. Maybe, just maybe, with enough education that can be stopped. I seriously doubt it, but it’s the one great hope I keep.
As far as solar PV on your roof, well, I hope your neighbors don’t end up with a reason to take it from you. It will serve you well if you get to keep it.
For what it’s worth, the vast majority of farmers in industrialized countries don’t feed themselves.
Most of us actually lack any particular specific expertise in the art of producing a variety of foods in small quantities. Raising a few hundred acres of grain is an almost altogether different job from raising a large vegetable garden with a large variety of crops as different as beans and tomatoes….. which are not all alike in terms of growing them. Schedules are different, techniques are different, pests are different, etc. The needed equipment is different.
And unless you are planning on freezing, canning, pickling or drying your harvest, the harvest season for most foods you can raise on the subsistence scale are pretty short in most places. In my neighborhood for instance, I can harvest tomatoes only from the tail end of June to first frost, which usually arrives in October at my place. Raising and processing a variety food in sufficient quantities for year round household use is a hell of a lot of work, requires a hell of an investment in time.
Fortunately, gardening is one job that can be approached as a self financing, profitable HOBBY…… which takes most of the pain out of the work.
I know quite a few working farmers. Only a couple of them still bother with serious gardening, or with raising pigs or chickens for their own table. All the rest shop at the super market, like the rest of us.
This is not to say they, or their wives, don’t put in a few tomato or pepper plants, or whatever. In a good year, they get as many tomatoes and peppers as they can use for the duration of the harvest season. The rest of the year…… they get them at the super market.
Bottom line, anybody interested in the more or less self sufficient country lifestyle needs to understand that he must invest a substantial amount of time and some money into learning the ropes, and in selecting land in a location well suited to such a life style.
For now, there are still plenty of older people out in farm country who still have the necessary skills and equipment as well as suitable land and equipment. Anybody interested in small scale subsistence farming will do well to seek out such a person and help them with THEIR problems in exchange for their help.
“For what it’s worth, the vast majority of farmers in industrialized countries don’t feed themselves.
Most of us actually lack any particular specific expertise in the art of producing a variety of foods in small quantities. ”
How much has this changed over the last 100 years? One site I visit regularly is Shorpy and that frequently shows farmers of the previous age doing just that.
NAOM
Do a search on homesteaders, many of them raise a lot of their own food.
Hi GF,
Homesteaders who have a few years experience under their belts are excellent mentors……. If “pilgrims” can locate one.
They tend to believe a lot of things that just ain’t so when they first move to the country.
And even this sort aren’t as numerous as you might think, and can be hard to locate on the ground.
All the ones I know of personally are pretty much of a class. They have money, they’re sick of urban life, they’re past the point of having to work full time, or can work from home via the net at some sort of professional work. ETC ETC
So they buy a new four wheel drive diesel Kubota with all the bells and whistles, and new implements….. and the tractor and implements alone run into pretty serious money….. never mind land, a house, barns, fences, utilities, etc.
REAL homesteaders, in the sense most people think of them, are damned near as scarce as chicken teeth, at least in my part of the world.
Half to two thirds of everything I read on sites about homesteading and that sort of topic is partially and sometimes totally wrong, or else works well only under limited circumstances having to do with climate, soil, topography, distances to nearest possible small scale markets, etc.
This is not to say such sites aren’t well worth reading, because you only need to discover one new useful fact or technique once in a long while to make the effort worthwhile.I continue to read them .
I recently did a lot of harvesting of apples, pears, plums, figs and walnuts in my brother in law’s orchards in Southern Germany. We made lots of cider, dried fruits, made jam etc…even produced the legal 50L of schnapps allowed per person. Then at the end of November we tended to the trees, pruned them, whitewashed tree trunks, cut some old trees down and went shopping for new trees and planted them. We also tended to the bees! A lot of the neighbors raise chickens, goats, sheep, a few cows and horses and graze them under the fruit trees. There are fields of corn, sunflowers, and squash and pumpkins. All this in a mixed urban setting with some interspersed manufacturing and even high tech companies. Almost every house has at least some PV and solar heat collectors, there is some new construction but many of the houses and homes in the village are two to three hundred years old and are constantly being upgraded and maintained.
In contrast in Florida all I see is more and more strip malls being built! Something is wrong with this picture!
BTW this is where we took our fermented mash to be distilled to 43% by the local schnapps meister 😉
.
Fred, people can hardly afford to heat their homes in the winter let alone improve their houses.
That’s what the schnapps is for! 😉
Hi Fred,
What did you use to whitewash the trunks of the fruit trees?
Some of the old stand by chemicals we used to use to best effect here in Yankee Land aren’t legal these days, which is good.
We have alternatives, which are at least supposed to be safer for people and the environment, but I’m also thinking they appear to be safer for peach tree borers, lol.
Dunno, but given that Germany has very strict environmental regulations I’m going to bet whatever it was certainly complied. I could ask and find out.
As far as making a living from farming the answer is no. My sister still works a high paying job and my brother in law just recently retired from a government job so they can afford to keep the orchards going as a hobby. The neighboring small farms are the real deal and need to produce a profit.
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
I used to get down to Florida every once in a while. It sure is a sad place these days, and I have no desire to return.
Georgia is generally a nicer place to vacation in the winter,although maybe not warm enough for swimming and sunbathing. Still warm enough for me and a little closer too.
Do your friends and relatives in Germany actually make a LIVING on their small scale diversified farms?
Local people, including most of my extended family, used to be able to make a living, if nothing more than that, on such farms in my part of world, but everybody who is doing it these days seems to have a wife ( once in a while, a husband) with an off farm job that REALLY pays the bills and enables the necessary investments in equipment, land, and so forth.
I’m not well acquainted with German agricultural policies, but I know that sometimes some European countries have policies that enable small farmers to stay in business, via subsidies or tax breaks. Sometimes some countries simply close their borders to imported foodstuffs so as to protect local farmers who are too small to compete otherwise. Japan comes to mind.
If you are lucky enough to inherit( YOU WILL NOT BUY IT EXPECTING TO PAY FOR IT FARMING IT.) land situated close in to a prosperous city and suburbs here you can possibly make a go of small scale diversified farming here these days… because you can bypass the middlemen and sell a lot of your production directly, at retail prices, to restaurants and homemakers, maybe even to a VERY few independent stores. You can pretty much forget about selling to any chain store big enough to run ad inserts in the local paper. The manager may be interested, but corporate says NO.
If you don’t grow your own food, consider involving yourself in something like this, as many tens of thousands around the country do.
CSA- simply, you sign up with an individual local farmer, as their direct customer.
Community Supported Agriculture- consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a specific local/regional farm operation so that the grower and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.
In a traditional CSA model…
-Members share the risks and benefits of food production with the farmer.
-Members buy a share of the farm’s production before each growing season.
-In return, they receive regular distributions of the farm’s bounty throughout the season.
-The farmer receives advance working capital, gains financial security, earns better crop prices, and benefits from the direct marketing plan.’
Here is an example in my region-
http://www.eatwell.com/
National directory-
https://www.localharvest.org/csa/
By all means any consumer who can locate a CSA operation within a reasonable distance of home should join and support it if he or she is so inclined.
It’s possible to save some money and to eat better by doing so, as well as helping a little with the overall environmental problem.
But it seems that the vast majority of homemakers aren’t willing to deal with the inconvenience. They would rather just continue buying in small quantities as needed from week to week at their favorite supermarket. The cash savings aren’t enough to motivate them in most cases, and most women work outside jobs these days. This means they aren’t really in a good position to spend an entire day, or a couple of days, processing a large quantity of fruits and veggies for later use.
My folks used to run what could be considered the forerunner of a formal CSA operation. My Mom had dozens of customers who kept in touch by phone, people who came year after year to buy everything we could supply from apples to zucchini by the bushel, loading their cars to the limit, sometimes coming in pickup trucks. When they got back home, they went to work canning, drying, freezing, and pickling. They shared their purchases with other family members and friends. This worked like a charm for everybody involved……. until all these women went to work. After that……..
CSAs don’t make money. They are in decline here in Maine.
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/07/csas-in-maine-struggling-after-years-of-popularity/
They were always overpriced to begin with, boutique food.
Not so fast MichealB. Many are thriving in the western states.
Many people get their meats, eggs and dairy this way.
@Hickory,
“Others will try to bargain with reality by attempting Survivalist mode, hoping to hold out to the last moment when the local warlord gang comes calling.”
Why not give it a try? There *will* be survivors, and it stands to reason that most of them will be rural. If the locals are better armed than a wannabe warlord, they can fend him off; if not, they will have to serve him, but most people would find that preferable to a perhaps lingering death in a collapsing civilization at an earlier date.
I really don’t understand this “we’re all in this together” mentality. That is usually not so. For almost all of our species’ existence, humans have thrived in small bands or clans or villages. Ape species are the same way. Sure, life is easier in strong centralized states that maintain law and order over a wide area and enforce contracts, with extensive trade networks and well developed markets and widely accepted currencies and a widely array of highly advanced products and services; but that does not mean it is the only way that man can survive. Less than a hundred years ago, my progenitors lived in much simpler conditions than today. Many people did, and many still do in some parts of the world. Even a pessimist does not need to give up in dismay. Many millions will live through the worst part of this transition, in some places probably most will live through it. Since most people disregard the threat, those who take it seriously have a chance to put the odds in their favor. The political structure will probably fragment, but civilization need not entirely cease to exist so long as local food surpluses are produced. The new order may not be to our liking, but to the next generation it will seem entirely normal.
Nehememiah,
you bundle alot discussion into one long paragraph, and that is overwhelming to your audience. My mother is an expert at that.
But to address one item there- standing together vs being a solo survivalist- take your pick. For me its the group. More likely to stand up to the warlord successfully, or stand up to the big corporation, or the bully in white house. Or the dictator, or the feudal boss who thinks he can push his way around.
And I do subscribe to the notion of ‘the common good’ when crafting policy. When you craft policy you are picking winners and losers, inherent to the process. No one individual should get a special pass, no matter how rich, or connected to the church, they are.
In the last thread Hugo posted this comment:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-december-2018-edition-with-data-for-october/#comment-663644
Subsidizing any industry has a human cost. Not for politicians of course.
No shit, Sherlock!
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/04/uk-taxpayer-support-fossil-fuel-industry-exposed-ahead-g7/
G7 fossil fuel subsidies worth $100bn a year to industry, study finds
Published on 04/06/2018, 4:12pm
UK accused of masking subsidies to fossil fuels, ahead of meeting of G7 countries, which have agreed to end taxpayer support by 2025
“The UK does not provide national reports on its fiscal support for fossil fuel production and consumption and the government has repeatedly denied providing fossil fuel subsidies. However, the report states the UK is providing subsidies in the form of tax breaks for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and the decommissioning of oil.“
Fred,
Subsidies in the form of tax breaks.
I read you travel quite a lot, combining it with activities. Still you get the time to write much on this forum and watch/read many youtube videos/articles. Amazing !
Fred
As I said, there are people who cannot tell the difference between a tax break. I.E costs set against a tax bill. And getting tax payer money. I.E being subsidized.
https://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2015/03/18/radical-reform-of-the-north-sea-fiscal-regime-is-essential/
You are obviously one of those unfortunate people.
You are obviously one of those unfortunate people.
Right!
Yet despite your British heritage, you seem to have a rather poor comprehension of the nuances of the written Anglo Saxon vernacular!
Perhaps an Americanism will help clarify my point.
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck!”
Semantic quibbles aside, a tax break can certainly function much like a subsidy and therefore have a perverse affect on the development of a particular technology over another. You can argue till you are blue in the face that the UK does not subsidize fossil fuels, however if it provides the industry with substantial tax breaks, which it obviously does, then it is still a duck!
Fred
Please describe the tax breaks that the oil and gas industry is getting which are unique.
Most ignorant people attack the oil industry for the tax breaks that every industry gets.
The UK oil and gas industry has provided over £300 billion in tax to the exchequer.
The wind and solar industry has received over £20 billion in money coming from tax payers.
Oil and gas revenue has provided the money for doctors, nurses, teacher etc.
The wind industry not only pays for none of the above but deprives us of thousands of these people who would be paid by the subsidies it gets.
Even you can understand the difference.
A tax break that cuts the tax bill by $100 million has about the same effect on a company as a subsidy of $100 million. You also seem to be forgetting that the sale of electricity from windfarms is taxed ie goes to the exchequer to pay for nurses etc.
NAOM
Sounds like a 3rd World problem. Why don’t they just dump their sewage into the ocean? /sarc
A $3 BILLION PROBLEM: MIAMI-DADE’S SEPTIC TANKS ARE ALREADY FAILING DUE TO SEA RISE
“Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning—the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse. As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk—and soon. By 2040, 64 percent of county septic tanks (more than 67,000) could have issues every year, affecting not only the people who rely on them for sewage treatment, but the region’s water supply and the health of anyone who wades through floodwaters.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-billion-problem-miami-dade-septic-tanks.html#jCp
It’s turkey hill time. Or time for all the “turkeys” to start migrating.
Just a reminder to all skywatchers, Jan 21st/22nd total lunar eclipse, totality of about one hour and a supermoon diameter. Do a clear sky dance for this one.
I presume everyone here knows this since it’s been common knowledge for awhile. Guess we need (hydro, wind turbine, and solar) electric charged cows?
“A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-co2-from-cars-427843.html
Damn dams, they’ll screw you every time. I think I’ve seen more “good land” destroyed by dams than any other cause. Rivers that spawned fish, land that hosted farms or forests or beautiful river basins, etc.
SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF HYDROPOWER ARE UNDERESTIMATED
“Countries have not accounted for the environmental impacts of large dams, which include deforestation and the loss of biodiversity, or the social consequences, such as the displacement of thousands of people and the economic damages they suffer. These effects should be computed in the total cost of such projects. Worse still, these projects ignore the context of climate change, which will lead to lower amounts of water available for storage and electricity generation.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-social-environmental-hydropower-underestimated.html#jCp
Doug, do you ever post anything positive? Apart from neutron star collapse, black holes and other (albeit fascinating) arcana?
Oh, all right. How about this?
RAHAF AL-QUNUN: SAUDI TEEN GRANTED ASYLUM IN CANADA
A Saudi woman who fled her family and became stranded at Bangkok’s main airport is flying to Canada after being granted asylum status.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46844431
Thank you Doug 🙂
And,
RISE OF RENEWABLES CREATING ‘NEW WORLD’
“Solar, wind and other renewables, which currently make up around a fifth of global energy production, are growing faster than any other source. The shift from fossil fuels to renewables is driven by new technologies and falling costs, increasingly making renewables as competitive as conventional sources of energy,”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-renewables-world.html#jCp
Commission chairman and former president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar, said the shift will likely cause China to eclipse the United States, place oil-dependent Gulf states at risk and help impoverished African nations achieve energy independence.
And while this is going on, we in the US have to watch the clown show in our government! We have a fake national emergency and the government will remain shut down until we let Trump build his wall…
I have no idea if this is good, bad, or indifferent but it does somehow seem newsworthy. Perhaps Dennis will comment?
RUSSIA BUYS QUARTER OF WORLD YUAN RESERVES IN SHIFT FROM DOLLAR
Russia’s central bank dumped $101 billion in U.S. holdings from its huge reserves, shifting into euros and yuan last spring amid a new round of U.S. sanctions. The central bank moved the equivalent of $44 billion each into the European and Chinese currencies in the second quarter, according to a report published on late Wednesday by the Bank of Russia, which discloses the data with a six-month lag. Another $21 billion was invested in the Japanese yen.
https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/russia-dumps-101-billion-dollar-085753166.html
Fred, you might find this interesting?
CHIRALITY IN REAL TIME
“Distinguishing between left-handed and right-handed (chiral) molecules is crucial in chemistry and the life sciences, and is commonly achieved using a method called circular dichroism. However, during biochemical reactions, the chiral character of molecules may change. EPFL scientists have now developed a method that uses ultrashort, deep-ultraviolet pulses to accurately probe such changes in real-time in biomolecular systems.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-chirality-real.html#jCp
That’s interesting and by coincidence I had read something else about chirality not that long ago. Maybe it was a reference to this very paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-017-0038-z
The shifting state of planet earth and alien planets
Adam Frank, astrophysicist, describes the shifting state of planet earth and alien planets with journalist Chris Hedges for On Contact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnhyO1xIS00
Where I’m from we consider economic growth only. Our county has multiple Chambers of Commerce and an Economic Development Corporation, and the City Council has a Commitee on Growth to attract businesses and young people to move in.
Sounds like you are from a community where everyone is an adept of neoclassical economics theory!
Sorry to burst your exponential bubble but you are all on a pathway to some pretty dire outcomes.
For the record humans have been building civilizations for about 10,000 years since the dawn of agriculture. Neoclassical economics has only been around as a concept since the late 19th and early 20th century. It is certain to be a short lived idea for the simple reason that something that can’t continue, won’t. I strongly suggest that the you and the people in your community take some basic math courses so you can understand the implications of the exponential function.
Where you live doesn’t have any of the things Charles mentioned? Google says otherwise…
Sounds like every other place ok the planet.
Maybe think outside your box a bit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U86VB28KYZg
Kate Raworth: Creating a 21st century economy – Doughnut Economics
A little good news from Colorado:
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/11/tri-state-solar-project-trinidad/
Adding another 100 megawatt solar farm. 300,000 solar panels. Enough power for 28K homes.
The new project is the wholesale power supplier’s “largest, most cost-effective solar project to date,” Tri-State CEO Mike McInnes said in a statement.
Plight of humanity?
Five of the big climate unknowns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrnJwMPzY4
Very interesting video.
Yes, good discussions.
“amplifying feedbacks” just may be
It’s a free-for-all in the National Parks these days.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2019/01/joshua-tree-national-park-close-cleanup-repairs-vandalism-illegal-roads
https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery/
Opinions?
Certainly sounds interesting and if its as good as advertised it might solve the water desalination problem that he claimed they couldn’t find a solution to, by providing enough energy backup…
Hi Fred and everybody else too,
You may remember that I have asked several times in the past for any information relating to running desalinization plants on an intermittent basis.
Such info is hard to come by, at least for a computer klutz like me.
So….. what I would like to know boils down to these things.
First off, CAN present day desalinization plants be turned on and off frequently, or at least say once every few days, without mucking up the machinery ?
I know that a lot of industrial processes that run on a continuous basis MUST be kept continuously running because any stoppage brings on killer headaches with the equipment that are costly and time consuming to fix.
On the other hand, many sorts of equipment and processes can be operated on a batch basis without creating serious problems…. other than those involving the capital investment, or getting the raw materials into the plant, and the finished materials out.
Getting sea water in, and fresh water out on a batch or stop and go basis is obviously a trivial problem, so long as a sufficiently large reservoir is available to hold any excess desalinated water until it’s needed. I doubt this will ever be much of a problem, since desalinated water can be pumped directly into a city reservoir or water towers.
But having hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in a desalinization plant that’s not running, and therefore not generating revenue, is another issue altogether.
Maybe this lack of continuous production capability is the key reason no desalinization plants have been built to run primarily on wind and solar power.
If this is the case, then it’s possible that eventually newer technology will make desalinization cheap enough that so long as a plant runs say fifty percent of the time, it will be economically feasible. In that case, no batteries or other electrical storage would be needed in nice sunny places such as the American Southwest or the Middle East.
And of course water might get to be valuable enough that pretty soon people will be willing to pay twice the current price……meaning today’s plants can run half the time on wind and solar, without fossil fuel backup…….. if the machinery doesn’t get mucked up from cycling on and off.
Any and all links that touch on such matters will be greatly appreciated, and thanks everybody in advance.
Bit of trivia for you:
SAUDI THIRST FOR WATER IS CREATING A TOXIC BRINE PROBLEM
“Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants produce about 31.5 million cubic meters of contaminated water each day. That volume of liquid, most of which is pumped back into the ocean, is equivalent to about 20 million barrels of oil a day, or, double the amount of crude it currently produces. The Kingdom is tendering seven desalination and waste-water projects as it tries to alleviate the impacts of depleted aquifers.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/saudi-thirst-for-water-is-seen-creating-a-toxic-brine-problem
Mind-boggling quantities of toxic waste.
“We have to address potentially severe downsides of desalination — the harm of brine and chemical pollution to the marine environment and human health,” said Vladimir Smakhtin, the director for the Hamilton, Canada-based UN Institute for Water Environment and Health.“
Regarding:
“The Kingdom is tendering seven desalination and waste-water projects as it tries to alleviate the impacts of depleted aquifers.”
The only way to address the downsides is to develop a clean desalination technology. And
“While countries can treat the toxic brine to remove chemicals and heavy metals, those processes are expensive and require even more energy, according to the report. Other countries have successfully used the brine to cultivate forage shrubs and dietary supplements, though at the cost of land salinization.“
Mac, having worked around desal plants the five years I was in Saudi Arabia, I know a little about them. The answer to your question is, yes, desal plants can be turned on and off without many problems.
Understand there are two types of desal plants, evoperation and reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis plants run on electricity, that is electric pumps. They simply pump, under high pressure, water through a micron filter. They are basically a large pipe with tiny plastic tubes branching off of the large tube. Tiny drops of fresh water form on the opposite side of the small tubes that branch off the large tube. They are thousands of them so overall you get a lot of water. Every few hours they must “backwash” the tubes to clear them out. But much of the water passes straight through the tubes, without being forced through the micron filters, and comes out the other end as brine. This brine was just dumped back into the sea. Reverse osmosis plants can be stopped and restarted without any trouble whatsoever.
Evoperation plants are a little different. They actually have a boiler, similar to a power plant boiler. Boiling water, which starts out as steam, is spilled down a flat sloping plane. Above that is many pipes that cold water is passed through. This water is room temperature, usually pumped directly from the sea. But under these cold water pipes are V shaped water collectors. The steam condenses into water when it hits the cold water pipes. The condensed fresh water drips off the outside of the cold water pipes and drips into the V shaped fresh water collectors.
Evoperative desal plants, in Saudi anyway, were all powered by natural gas of oil. I suppose they could be fueled by coal but the ones I worked around were all oil/gas. They could switch from oil to gas or vice versa without much trouble. And they could be shut down and brought back up without much trouble, though it did take a little longer than the reverse osmosis plants.
But the hot brine, the water that did not evoperate, was just dumped back into the sea.
One more point. The reverse osmosis plants were much smaller. They provided water for small compounds or isolated places. The evaporation plants were much larger and produced water for cities and industry. It was often piped hundreds of miles inland.
Thanks Ron,
I’m thinking it’s been some time since you have been around these plants, so things might have changed a lot.
But assuming you are right,and this seems likely, then the only real remaining technical reason for not building desalinization plants expecting to run them mostly or entirely on wind and solar power is that they cost too much to build unless they are kept running continuously.
It seems likely to me that the cost of building and operating such plants will be coming down as the desalinization industry scales up, and that before too long it should be possible to pay for them running them intermittently using whatever wind and solar power is available, especially if such plants are located in places where plentiful wind and solar electricity can be delivered to the plants.
This would be a marvelous way, a great way, to use any excess wind and solar power available….. and excess wind and solar power WILL be available at various times, as the renewable electricity industry scales up.
As a practical matter, a desalinization plant running whenever such otherwise unneeded juice is available will be serving as an ersatz battery…….. and a damned BIG one, because such plants consume a LOT of energy.
( For anybody who is not familiar with wind and solar power….The reason there will often be a surplus is that the wind and solar industries will have to overbuild in order to supply enough electricity at times when the wind and sun aren’t cooperating. When the wind is strong and or the sun is bright, there will be an excess of fossil fuel free electricity at times when demand is low, such as holidays, weekends, times when the weather is either cool enough not much AC is needed, or warm enough not much heat is needed, etc.
Water is very easily stored in large quantities. Storing desalinated water for days or weeks ahead won’t be any big deal. That’s what reservoirs are for. It can just be dumped as available into any fresh water reservoir supplying potable water to a nearby city or town. )
I’m thinking it’s been some time since you have been around these plants, so things might have changed a lot.
Not really. Desal plants are still pretty much the same as they were thirty years ago, just as power plants are.
But assuming you are right,and this seems likely, then the only real remaining technical reason for not building desalinization plants expecting to run them mostly or entirely on wind and solar power is that they cost too much to build unless they are kept running continuously.
Well, it would be very difficult to run an evoperative desal plant on solar or wind. You must boil a lot of water and most of the heat is waste heat that is just dumped back into the sea. However, a reverse osmosis plant could very easily be run with solar or wind. And a reverse osmosis desal plant can be shut down and started up on a moments notice with no problems whatsoever. You are just pushing water through a molecular filter. Water molecules will pass through but the much larger sodium chloride molecule will not. There would be no startup or shutdown problems.
It seems likely to me that the cost of building and operating such plants will be coming down as the desalinization industry scales up,…
There is no real reason the cost of construction of a desal plant should come down. The technology has been around for over half a century with no large improvement. It would be just like building any other plant with the major cost being labor and building materials.
Hi Ron,
I think maybe you are a little to pessimistic about the cost of building desal plants coming down as more and more of them are built.
I’m a rolling stone, world class, never had a conventional career. I worked a while at this and that and the other as circumstances and opportunities dictated, and so far as I can see, virtually EVERY sort of large industry manages to gradually but more or less continuously finds ways to reduce operating and capital costs.
Mac, all I am saying is that desal plants are no different from any other type of plant. There is absolutely nothing hi-tech about a desal plant. As general building cost go up… or down… so does the cost of building a desal plants go up… or down.
You seem to think they are like solar panels, that is as technology improves their construction cost go down. No, that is simply not the case. They are subject to the ups and downs of the general cost of plant construction, just as the cost of a coal or gas power power plant would be.
Hi Ron, back atcha
The last big local furniture plant still up and running here has cut the man hours per piece of furniture by thirty percent or so over the last fifteen years. The amount of wood winding up as scrap has been more than halved over that time frame. The manager is a neighbor and childhood friend, and we talk frequently, so I’m up on what’s happening there.
I cut the labor and most of the input quantities in our family orchard over fifty percent per unit of production over the last couple of decades, in real terms. Twenty five years ago, it took us all day to put on pesticides periodically as needed. When we retired,I was done well before lunch time,same sized orchard. I used far less than half the quantity of pesticides.The newer ones ARE much more expensive per unit volume or weight than the older ones, but allowing for inflation and using lesser quantities, the cost was about the same.
But of course using only half as much diesel fuel still costs more when the price of diesel quadruples, lol.
The reason tract houses are all built alike is that it saves time and money. A LOT of time and money, lol.
The component parts of desal plants can be made in factories that allow for greater automation once the volume is high enough for any particular part, such as the membrane filters, or maybe curved mirrors that focus the sun on pipes carrying the water to be heated. The filters can be made out of new materials using new processes, ditto mirrors, etc.
Smaller chain stores around here get built in thirty or forty days, using standardized plans, once the lot is cleared and graded.It’s hard to believe how fast they get them up, but they do it because there’s no lost motion, everything is cut and dried.
The same contractor building similar stores one off with a different set of plans for a similarly sized building take twice to four times as long to finish. That’s why the landscape is so depressing, with all the stores along the highway looking as alike as peas in a pod, only the signs being different.
Back in my younger days, I used to make and assemble parts on the job as a welder. Now on such jobs, the parts are generally made in a fab shop a dozen or a hundred or a thousand at a time, and partially assembled, right up to the limits imposed by truck or rail transport to the job site.
There’s no doubt in my mind that ten or twenty years ago, all the pipe in a diesel fired plant was cut, threaded, and or otherwise assembled piece by piece on the job. Ten years from now, a crane will be unloading sub assemblies as big as can be hauled to the job site from the biggest possible trucks, and they will be bolted together, with maybe a few welds here and there. It’ll be tinker toys on the grand scale, for all intents and purposes
Now of course this sort of change isn’t even remotely as fast as the change in computers or solar panels, etc. I didn’t mean to imply that it’s in that speed class.
But it probably occurs at anywhere from a couple of percent to five or six percent a year, depending on the industry.
If this holds for desal plants, the REAL cost of building one, meaning the inflation adjusted cost, will come down by as much as half over the next ten or twenty years.
I don’t think very many new ones will be built to run on oil, since oil is almost dead sure to go up, while the cost of wind and solar power is likewise just about dead sure to come down. It will be possible to buy wind and solar electricity for less than the market value of the oil saved at some point, which has likely been passed already in some places with excellent solar resources.
Now here’s a thought about solar power. The final installed price of it, small scale or large, is falling so fast that it’s actually sort of dumb to invest in it, NOW, as an individual owner.
I have yet to buy a solar system for my own place because from one year to the next, the PRICE of a given system is falling FASTER than the VALUE of the electricity the system can produce in a year.
So if the system I want can save me five hundred bucks worth of purchased juice, or even eight or nine hundred bucks worth,this year, but the PRICE of the system falls a thousand bucks…… well, the thing for me to do is to delay the purchase, which is what I have been doing annually for the last ten years or longer.
Plus the longer I delay the purchase, the better the quality of all the associated parts such as inverters, controllers, etc should be. If I opt for batteries, they will definitely be a lot cheaper.
I’m investing the money in OTHER improvements which do earn a significant return more or less immediately.
Found this article interesting
https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/saudi-arabia-pushes-to-use-solar-power-for-desalination-plants
Thanks, Fred,
And everybody else who posted a helpful link.
I found this one, and some other good ones, on the IEEE site when reading the one you posted.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records
I have been thinking for a long time now that countries with excellent solar resource should be building solar farms in order to sell a substantial part of the oil and gas they currently burn to generate electricity.
There’s supposed to be some new carbon nano-tube technology coming along for desalinisation.
Any technology will have the brine issue. The process will always take fresh water out and concentrate the brine. The lower the concentration of the brine the lower will the efficiency and productivity of the plant be.
Looks intriguing for small applications, like cellphones, maybe bikes too? I’ve been waiting eagerly for an update for about a year.
An intriguing company with a larger scale battery (grid storage, commercial residential) is NantEnergy. Certainly worth a look at them-
https://nantenergy.com/
and their news updates
https://nantenergy.com/news/
New Jersey is a small state with major contrasts. Home to part of the megapolis but also a crucial wildlife region and part of the major eastern migrator flyway. A long coastline with large amounts of saltwater and brackish marshes, much of it actually protected. Another example is the Pinelands National Reserve which occupies 22 percent of the state total land area.
Just recently an addition was made.
Bird habitat preservation initiative adds 1,700 acres of coastal N.J. land
Ducks Unlimited recently announced the $4 million purchase of 1,700 acres of intact wetlands and marsh mitigation areas in Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem counties.
It’s the third phase of Southeast New Jersey Coastal Initiative, a program established in 2013 to protect, restore, and enhance critical coastal wetland habitat.
More than 7,600 acres of land have been protected under the initiative.
https://whyy.org/articles/bird-habitat-preservation-initiative-adds-1700-acres-of-coastal-n-j-land/
So maybe there will be some wildlife left.
People have commented on China’s rising coal use. This link shows an example of what is going on and why their energy use is increasing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-46782069
NAOM
The Era Of Easy Recycling May Be Coming To An End
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-era-of-easy-recycling-may-be-coming-to-an-end/
Americans love convenient recycling, but convenient recycling increasingly does not love us. Waste experts call the system of dumping all the recyclables into one bin “single-stream recycling.” It’s popular. But the cost-benefit math of it has changed. The benefit — more participation and thus more material put forward for recycling — may have been overtaken by the cost — unrecyclable recyclables. On average, about 25 percent of the stuff we try to recycle is too contaminated to go anywhere but the landfill, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group. Just a decade ago, the contamination rate was closer to 7 percent, according to the association. And that problem has only compounded in the last year, as China stopped importing “dirty” recyclable material that, in many cases, has found no other buyer.
Most recycling programs in the United States are now single stream. Between 2005 and 2014, these programs went from covering 29 percent of American communities to 80 percent, according to a survey conducted by the American Forest and Paper Association. The popularity makes sense given that single-stream is convenient and a full 66 percent of people surveyed by Harris Poll last October said that they wouldn’t recycle at all if it wasn’t easy to do.
Some experts have credited single stream with large increases in the amount of material recycled. Studies have shown that people choose to put more stuff out on the curb for recycling when they have a single-sort system. And the growth of single-stream recycling tracks with the growth of recycling overall in this country.
But it also pretty closely tracks with skyrocketing contamination rates.
Some of that is on us, tossing things in the bin that either don’t belong there or should have gone in the trash can to begin with. “We get a lot of diapers,” said Anne Germain, vice president of technical and regulatory affairs with the National Waste and Recycling Association. There are also electronics and batteries, plastic grocery bags and Christmas lights — all of which can be recycled, but only through specialty drop-off programs, not the curbside bin. There are perfectly recyclable cans and paper coated in food, grease or cleaning fluids that render them unrecyclable. There are plastic bottles full of glass syringe needles that break open at the sorting facilities like a piñata from hell.
San Francisco’s Dream of ‘Zero Waste’ Lands in the Dumpster
Ellen Airhart
https://www.wired.com/story/san-franciscos-dream-of-zero-waste-lands-in-the-dumpster/
By 2012, San Francisco had managed to recycle, compost, or reuse 80 percent of its waste—the highest rate of any US city; the countrywide average around that time was 34 percent. To get that far, the city relied on high-tech sorting and composting facilities. Now the San Francisco Department of the Environment says that if every resident sorted their waste into the right bins, the city could keep about 90 percent of its waste out of landfills.
But getting rid of the final bits of trash has proven challenging for San Francisco and the other cities trying to clean up their environmental footprints. San Francisco didn’t fail to meet its goal because it wasn’t following the most current and efficient methods of waste control, says Joan Marc Simon, the executive director of Zero Waste Europe. “It’s because they can’t recycle what is not recyclable.”
A lot of plastic still poses a problem. The recent uproar over plastic straws in the US—and subsequent legislation banning them in many places—helped highlight a small percentage of the plastics that we use only once, then throw away. These plastics are usually recyclable, but they became a more pressing issue after China stopped accepting the world’s contaminated recycling in November 2017. Researchers anticipate that this problem will add 111 million metric tons of plastic to the ocean by 2030.
Then there are the items that can’t be recycled at all, at least not easily. For example, some electronics and furniture contain flame retardants that are toxic if inhaled. That means they’re not accepted by some recycling centers, to protect their workers from exposure.
Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?
In the United Kingdom, we have car taxes that encourage people to buy fuel efficient cars.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables
F-series trucks and similar monster vehicles are very rare, I have seen 2 in as many years.
The tax system penalizes, energy hungry vehicles, this is why the average engine is 1.4litre petrol.
The United Kingdom with a population of 70 million uses 1.5 million barrels per day.
The United States uses 20 million barrels per day, if it had the same taxes as the United Kingdom it’s fuel consumption could be reduced to 8 million barrels per day.
We also have a carbon tax of £18 per tonne.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/budget-2018-key-climate-energy-annoucements
https://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=81000
Considering our GDP and PPP, the UK electricity consumption is low.
A hundred years ago there was no alternative to coal, even 20 years ago wind turbines were very basic and solar panels were very expensive. Today there is no excuse for any country to build coal fired power. Today, knowing what we do about climate change. There is no excuse for governments not placing high taxes on large petrol and diesel cars.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-carbon-emissions-in-2017-fell-to-levels-last-seen-in-1890
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/06/worlds-largest-offshore-windfarm-opens-cumbrian-coast-walney-extension-brexit
If every country followed the U.K example global CO2 emission would start falling dramatically.
Hi Hugo,
I am very much in agreement with you concerning the need to downsize Yankee vehicles, raise fuel taxes and so forth.
But I don’t think that even if we were to do so to the extent the Brits have that we could get our per capita oil use down to their level, at least not anytime soon.
The USA is a country with a hell of a lot of open space that requires the transportation of most goods considerable distances, and we have many tens of millions of people who have chosen to live quite some distance from the places they work, shop, and go to school. Vacant housing near these places is simply non existent as a practical matter.
Furthermore, we have an existing fleet of large and fuel hungry vehicles that will still be on the road for the most part for at least a decade or longer.
Did I mention that we don’t have much in the way of mass transit?
Bottom line, I don’t see us making very much progress on our per capita oil consumption anytime soon, barring some good luck of one sort or another.
We might get lucky, and electric cars and light trucks might actually get cheap enough to displace their ICE powered counterparts within the easily foreseeable future, but my guess is that this won’t happen for at least five more years, and even after that, it will take a LONG time for enough electric cars and light trucks to be sold to make a real difference.
The other sort of good luck I have in mind is that we just might get a series of what I refer to as PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP EVENTS such as a temporary oil supply crisis brought on by a regional war, or one or another of the oil exporting countries cutting off exports for one reason or another short of war.
A sufficient series of such broken bricks upside our collective head would get our attention to the extent necessary for us to actually really DO SOMETHING before it becomes obvious to even a Trump voter that the shit is IN the fan.
A super hurricane or super flood or super drought would be super expensive, but in the long run, experiencing such a disaster NOW would probably be good for us, collectively.
In case my little buddy what’s his name is still around, I’m signing as Trumpster, lol.
Thanks Trumpster
UK high fuel tax which i forgot to mention has been around for 26 years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Price_Escalator
We pay £5.20 per UK gallon.
Escalating car tax has been around for perhaps 15 years.
Combined over time, they have persuaded people to buy economical cars but it has taken time.
The build out of mass transportation, like we have in Europe would take too long.
https://about-france.com/france-rail-map-hi-res.htm
importantly frequency makes return journeys makes day returns possible
I think only plug in hybrids and electric cars can bring down oil consumption quick enough.
Unfortunatly as long as oil production increases in the US, I do not think take up of electric vehicles will be anything like what it needs to be.
That is great news about the UK emissions, amazing what a small country can do when they run out of energy sources. I agree, developed countries should all reduce their carbon emissions, including burning down forests to provide heat and electricity. Yes, GB provides a large chunk of it’s heat and electricity by burning US and European forest.
Learning lessons from the UK, not sure about that.
Start the industrial revolution and then give pointers late after they use up all their coal.
Lesson 1: Use up all your coal and then stop using coal. Now that is a lesson, use up all the coal you can.
Lesson 2: Wait until your oil and natural gas production goes into freefall then import more gas and just cut back on oil use rather than going over to full electric cars quickly.
Lesson 3: Import half of your food.
Lesson 4: Maintain a large trade deficit
Lesson 5: Have high household debt
Lesson 6: Have a large public debt
Lesson 7: Make 30 percent of your electric power and a lot of your heating by burning down other nations forests and ignore the CO2 from that because it’s “green”.
Nahhh, the US can’t learn much from the Brits. We already know how to make efficient cars and produce more electric cars every day than GB makes in, well forever. We put in more wind turbines, more solar panels too, by a large margin. Much of the technology was invented here and is still being invented here.
And Hugo said “If every country followed the U.K example global CO2 emission would start falling dramatically.”
But is that true? Even not counting the large amount of CO2 for all the imports or the “green” CO2, GB citizens produce 5.5 ton of CO2 per year. Globally it’s 5 ton per year per person. So if all the nations were like GB the CO2 level would rise.
In reality the actual emissions of CO2 (including biofuel) needs to be down near 0.5 ton per person per year, not eleven times as much.
Gonefishing
Just the sort of remedial comments I would expect from you.
Firstly we drive far more efficient cars than Americans and you could learn from that. If you care about global warming that is.
Also 10 years ago the battery technology which was practical was not available, so buying efficient petrol engines was the only option.
The UK is also building more wind power than any other country as a proportion of population.
Also you ignoramus.
We have not run out of coal.
The find under the north sea would bring vast amounts of jobs and money to the north east where it is desperately needed.
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/drilling-date-set-north-seas-6896191
But unlike the Americans with their shale oil, we decided the environment is more important.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/08/underground-coal-gasification-uk-gas-coal
Gonefishing
Bit of education for you.
French
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Becquerel
Scottish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blyth_(engineer)
That is nice, but the solar panel technology we use today was invented in Bell Labs and has been developed from there.
“However, solar cells as we know them today are made with silicon, not selenium. Therefore, some consider the true invention of solar panels to be tied to Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson’s creation of the silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell at Bell Labs in 1954. Many argue that this event marks the true invention of PV technology because it was the first instance of a solar technology that could actually power an electric device for several hours of a day. The first ever silicon solar cell could convert sunlight at four percent efficiency, less than a quarter of what modern cells are capable of.”
And then there was Charles Brush with his 12 kW wind turbine in 1888.
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/22/americas-first-wind-turbine-generated-electricity-1888/
Gonefishing
They were improvements.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/invention
Invention. Something never made before!
So doped silicon photovoltaic systems were invented by someone before 1954? Since then there have been many improvements, which also fall under the full definition of invention.
I am really impressed the Scots didn’t proceed with that undersea coal gasification project. Too expensive and probably uncontrollable.
How mining for undersea coal gas could cause fires, quakes, explosions and pollution, according to Scottish government’s green watchdog
Drawing on evidence from UCG facilities in Europe, the US and Australia, the reports list eight things that can go wrong. Groundwater can be polluted by toxins such as phenols, cyanides and radioactivity, they say.
Air can be polluted by highly toxic particles, ash, heavy metals and a series of hazardous gases, says the latest draft. Emissions of the greenhouse gases that disrupt the climate are estimated to be lower than those from coal but higher than those from natural gas though “large uncertainties remain”, it warns.
There is a risk of “induced seismicity”, as well as pollution. Underground explosions, which have been recorded abroad, could also occur, Sepa says.
Igniting the coal underground could lead to “uncontrollable fires”, which would worsen water and air pollution. The danger of underground “cavity collapse” could cause subsidence on the surface.
“The fundamental cause for concern with regards to UCG is that the conditions under which the reaction takes place are naturally variable and difficult to know (sometimes unknowable), placing an inherent limitation on process control,” says Sepa’s first draft. “This, combined with a number of significant environmental and human health hazards, creates risk.”
<https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14126944.How_mining_for_undersea_coal_gas_could_cause_fires__quakes__explosions_and_pollution__according_to_Scottish_government_s_green_watchdog/
Has not stopped these countries doing it
http://www.ergoexergy.com/about_us_ourb_projects_ae.html
Hugo-
the answer is yes [Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?], certainly.
But here, many of these kind of policies happen on state by state basis.
And they vary widely.
Strong incentives in Calif (the biggest state).
No incentives in Wyoming (the smallest state).
States like California has had many referendums mandating cleaner energy production, and received strong voter approval, repeatedly.
A carbon tax. I think a national tax here would be supported, if it was crafted such that the proceeds were to used to be specifically for projects that were clearly designed for the common good.
USA alternative fuel data center- all the incentives by fed and state-
https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/state_summary?state=WY&search_button=Go
Hickory
Yes I starting to realise how much power states have in doing there own thing.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/usa-election-carbontax/analysis-after-defeat-in-west-u-s-carbon-tax-push-looks-east-idUKL8N1XJ4JG
Hugo,
U.S. citizens are different, on average. Love big cars. And for most who can afford to buy a 100k dollar truck, 200 dollar tax a month is peanuts. In most countries, most cars are small/economy cars already.
“Would US citizens vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels?”
I have taken a keen interest in such questions, particularly during the 2016 election campaign, with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement. The short answer to that question is definitely, maybe, 😉
Closer observation of the 2016 election campaign shows that the USA is a deeply divided nation. The division is being fueled, in large part, by the extremely wealthy, the likes of Charles Koch, aided and abetted by their puppets in the US government. It is on record that Koch and his ilk have spent considerable amounts of money setting up conservative “think tanks” to spread their particular ideology, one grounded in the belief of “the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy, prosperous society”. A Google search for “think tanks supported by Charles Koch” brings up the following among others:
Political activities of the Koch brothers
Report: Think tanks tied to Kochs
Koch Brothers – SourceWatch
The Koch Brothers’ Covert Operations | The New Yorker
The Koch network’s integrated strategy for social transformation
There are other organisations doing the bidding of the Kochs including The Heartland Institute, The Institue for Energy Research and The American Energy Alliance that, might not have been mentioned in the above links but also form a part of the Koch’s (mis)information campaign.
When one throws in support from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (Fox News) and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, you have an electorate that is being bombarded with conflicting views, often representing the interests of the very wealthy. As a result, policies such as those linked to by Hugo are viewed as “anti American” and are violently opposed in some quarters.
Another aspect of the division is the rural/urban divide. It has become quite clear to me that often less educated, rural population are more likely to fall for the Koch funded propaganda in greater numbers than their better educated urban counterparts (see point 7 in 7 surprising graphics about Trump voters)
I can speak from my personal experience about rural to urban migration. I grew up in rural areas despite having been born in the city. My parents were teachers and focused heavily on making sure my siblings and I got a sound educational footing. Most of my classmates in high school had parents or guardians (some Jamaicans emigrate, leaving their children behind, usually with grandparent) who shared a similar focus regardless of their occupation. With limited opportunities for employment, especially the kind of employment requiring tertiary education, most of my classmates do not live in the rural areas where we grew up and went to school. We have moved to the cities and some emigrated and established themselves in the US or the UK. Most of those whose parents had emigrated to the US, went to join their parents after high school and completed their education there. I would be hard pressed to locate any of my classmates in the rural area I grew up in. I run into them in and around the capital city quite frequently.
I would assume the same goes for the US. The more academically competent students go away to college and never return to live in their home towns, especially if they are small and far away from high tech centers of employment. This leaves the rural areas with a generally less educated, often less sophisticated and more easily mislead population.
US citizens in several jurisdictions, such as the states of California and New York, do ” vote for policies to reduce fossil fuels”. Younger, better educated voters (hence urban) also tend to vote along those lines as well, all of this despite the well funded PR campaign to try and convince them otherwise. That (partially Koch funded) PR campaign is probably why the US is so far behind most of the rest of the world on these matters but, there are signs that the campaign might be losing it’s effectiveness, the results of the 2018 mid-term elections, for example.
Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?
t was once one of Europe’s largest coal-burning power stations. Now, after replacing coal in its boilers with wood pellets shipped from the U.S. South, the Drax Power Station in Britain claims to be the largest carbon-saving project in Europe. About 23 million tons of carbon dioxide goes up its stacks each year. But because new trees will be planted in the cut forests, the company says the Drax plant is carbon-neutral.
There is one problem. Ecologists say that the claims of carbon neutrality, which are accepted by the European Union and the British government, do not stand up to scrutiny. The forests of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi — as well as those in Europe — are being destroyed to sustain a European fantasy about renewable energy. And with many power plants in Europe and elsewhere starting to replace coal with wood, the question of who is right is becoming ever more important.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/carbon-loophole-why-is-wood-burning-counted-as-green-energy
Things to consider:
With a 60 to 100 year time for a tree to mature, many years of burning stays in the atmosphere.
Forests, even old growth are being destroyed and the whole ecology in them.
Is it even sustainable? Can the forest soil remain intact and support growth under these conditions for very long?
Your are right to bring this up GF. Wood burning is environmentally catastrophic, on anything but a small scale. Since when do 7.7 Billion people do anything on a small scale?
Other biofuels the same, whether it is corn, sugar cane or palm.
Except almost all governments are assuming BECCs is going to come along so they can overshoot any kind of emission limit and not worry because our kids will sort it out.
Everything better than fossil fuels, but like with the production of solar panels, proper recycling/waste management is necessary
“Unregulated recycling industries and informal methods of extracting lead – often conducted in homes or backyards – can lead to high levels of environmental lead contamination. These processes usually involve breaking the ULABs open by hand or with an axe, which can lead to direct dermal contact with lead and the improper release of battery acid into the surrounding soil. Pieces of the broken batteries are then left on the ground where they are exposed to the elements and can possibly spread toxins to people through dermal contact. Once the batteries are broken open, parts of the battery must be melted in order to recover the secondary lead. This process is frequently performed in homes and over informal kitchen stove flames. Lead-oxide, which accounts for 40 percent of the lead weight in each battery and is a particularly bio-available form of lead, is often improperly disposed of and left out in the open
On an annual basis, nearly 6 million tons of lead are used around the world, with over 4 million tons used in lead-acid batteries. Substantial quantities of this lead consumption come from recycled materials and ULABs, which, when done properly, is a very effective industry in terms of reducing lead pollution and the need for mining of virgin ore material. Recycling of secondary lead, however, when done without proper regulations or safety measures, can be very dangerous and can lead to high levels of toxic exposure for both those directly involved and for surrounding communities.
Because of the growing market for secondary lead, many low- and middle-income countries have begun to buy ULABs in large quantities in order to recover and resell the material. Many of the ULABs originate in industrialized countries and are shipped long distance in order to be recycled.49 Today, ULAB recycling processes occur in nearly every city in low- and middle-income countries, with many of the recycling and melting operations taking place in densely populated urban settings.
A large amount of the recycling processes in these countries, both small- and large-scale, is done with little knowledge of the health impacts these processes have. In many places, there are no environmental or health regulations that govern recycling, and lead is often released into the environment in very high quantities. Informal recycling is also disproportionately performed by people living in conditions of poverty who may not have other viable means of income and who are often unaware of the dangers posed by these operations. Currently, the Blacksmith inventory estimates that almost 1 million people are affected by lead pollution”
US State by State Electrical Generation Fuel Breakout
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html
Yeh, excellent source of info. Incredible variation between states.
Image from NYT Article above.
A little bit of historical perspective:
https://power2switch.com/blog/how-electricity-grew-up-a-brief-history-of-the-electrical-grid/
So think about this for a moment, before 1882 there wasn’t any electrical grid at all. I think in another 100 years, assuming human civilization and humanity survive at all, the grid will be 100% renewable, distributed and smart! 😉
Times change and right now things are really changing faster than ever. To assume that the future will be even remotely like the present is probably a really poor bet!
The “GRID” needs to be Only a Transport Service like NG Pipelines. I see one main use, to shift Solar Power across time zones. The Grid is NOT Needed for what it is being used for now. To power appliances that waste more energy than they use.
Rate of change is accelerating: Lots to chew on the latest Peak Oil Review:
https://mailchi.mp/163f3fb1f9e1/peak-oil-review-13-february-48557?e=0fdd45430d
The newsletters Quote of the week.
“Global automakers are planning an unprecedented level of spending to develop and procure batteries and electric vehicles over the next five to 10 years, with a significant portion of their budgets targeted at China… Automakers’ plans to spend at least $300 billion on EVs are driven largely by environmental concerns and government policy, and supported by rapid technological advances that have improved battery cost, range and charging time.” Paul Lienert and Christine Chan, Reuters
from the PO Review:
Cadillac’s EVs: GM said that Cadillac will be GM’s lead electric vehicle brand and will introduce the first model from the company’s all-new global battery electric vehicle architecture (BEV3), GM’s foundation for an advanced family of profitable EVs. The mission of the new architecture is to support a range of more than 300 miles (482 km) and to be profitable. (1/12)
——————————–
Who the hell would be caught dead in a GD Cadillac? The dealers are the Mob. Might as well hand production over to Asia! Purchasing a Volvo/Geely may be a 1 click affair. Volvo’s Ecar as a service is sold out.
My bet is on startups! I just don’t see GM as being nimble enough, they have way too much ICE legacy baggage they need to shed.
I kinda like these guys!
https://products.rivian.com/suv/
Didn’t GM just shed some baggage?
Once one realizes the full implications of 2.3% methane leakage, the substitution of natural gas for coal as a source of power takes on a nightmarish quality.
Greenwashing- “Greenwashing is the use of marketing to portray an organization’s products, activities or policies as environmentally friendly when they are not. … Greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means to gloss over wrongdoing or dishonesty or exonerate without sufficient investigation or spurious data.”
Extreme greenwashing aimed at a naive public- ‘Airlines can run on biofuel’.
“Airlines are now experimenting with biofuels that can be carbon-neutral. The big hurdle right now is price, but if oil prices rise and if production costs come down, biofuels could become a viable way to decarbonize air travel.”
and
“A pioneer in the biofuel industry predicted that the federal investment will enable the Navy to reach its renewable fuel targets and create a “snowball effect” that will make it easier to start supplying commercial airlines with biofuel too.”
What if I told you it would take 80 acres of prime land to fuel one cross country flight on biofuel. Could you think of any reason it would be justifiable to divert this land from wilderness, watershed, wildlife or food production use, for a plane flight?
I say none. No purpose justifies that destruction.
Typical plants have a radiant energy to chemical energy conversion efficiency between 0.1% and 2%. < 10% of PV, Now if we can just trick PV Panels to reproduce.
Will humans wipe out humanity?
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/01/04/will-humans-wipe-out-humanity
The importance of science in society has no greater spokesperson than Lord Martin Rees. From his perch at Cambridge—and a centre he formed on studying existential risks—he has served as both a promoter, populariser and the moral conscience of scientific endeavour far beyond his academic field of astrophysics.
In “Our Final Century” in 2003 (retitled more breathlessly “Our Final Hour” in the American edition) he presented a range of global challenges, from bioterrorism to nuclear weapons. He put the risk of human extinction by 2100 from our technologies at around 50%. His latest book, “On the Future”, is more sanguine. It acknowledges similar threats, but emphasises the beneficial ways that technologies will improve lives, notably the positive uses of artificial intelligence.
The Economist’s Open Future initiative asked Mr Rees questions about humanity, space aliens and scientific discovery. In particular, we pressed him on how humanity might need to prepare mentally and institutionally for contact with extraterrestrial life forms (a reframing of liberalism on a galactic scale). He took a sober tack. Though he believes other life forms may indeed exist, they may be so different to us as to be incomprehensible. “I certainly don’t expect an invasion by green bipeds with eyes on stalks,” he says.
Will humans wipe out humanity? – yes, not sure if it will be AI, though I don’t much like what smart phones and social media are doing to us collectively and AI is a step more powerful. I’ve been to one of his talks, he’s very good, objective, kind of low key, which might put some people off, but convincing.
At some point, humans will turn over the human genetic toolkit [gene sequencing, crispr, etc] to AI for guidance and experimentation. I don’t know where that leads.
Far far from where we are now for sure.
Dunno. Maybe humans need to be wiped out . . . has this hit the overseas news?
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-ignored-warnings-on-threat-of-fish-kills-20190113-p50r4v.html
Bloody disgusting . . . and more of this to come. This is the main river system in this dry nation and these bloody wankers reckon we need more people.
No cheers, I’m bloody crying.
The drop bears must be starving in that government department. 🙁
NAOM
Wow! I’m crying with you!
Recently I am becoming more and more convinced that trials at the ICC in the Hague are very much past due!
Why more buildings should be made of wood
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/01/05/why-more-buildings-should-be-made-of-wood
Governments in the rich world are now trying to promote greener behaviour by obliging developers to build new projects to “zero carbon” standards. From January 1st 2019 all new public-sector buildings in the European Union must be built to “nearly zero-energy” standards. All other types of buildings will follow in January 2021. Governments in eight further countries are being lobbied to introduce a similar policy.
These standards are less green than they seem. Wind turbines and solar panels on top of buildings look good but are much less productive than wind and solar farms. And the standards only count the emissions from running a building, not those belched out when it was made. Those are thought to account for between 30% and 60% of the total over a structure’s lifetime.
Buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be prefabricated in off-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials as exciting and overlooked as wood.
The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing, wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stuff. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are demolished, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for retrofitting older buildings to be more energy efficient, wood is a good insulator. A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.
“A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.”
and a LOT more termite fodder. Trees may remove CO2 but if they are cut down and removed they also remove other nutrients that need to be replaced. Also what happens to what is left after the useable wood is removed and shaped? Will the debris left behind decay to give more CO2 and Methane to replace what it removed?
NAOM
A house or building of wood can be made to last 200 years, longer if properly treated and maintained. That is similar to the life of tree, and returning any minerals or carbohydrates to nature would merely be a matter of how it was disposed.
All trees decay and give off gases, it’s part of the natural cycle. So why would lumber be any different or a problem? CO2 and methane (which decomposes to CO2) is part of a large natural circular system that can sustainably operate for millions of years.
The “problem” now is our releasing of long buried carbon at a high rate into the system, throwing off the current balance and moving the system to a new balance point.
200 years?
Here a church in Norway, 800 years old:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Stave_Church
The climate around here including insect life is somewhat more aggressive than Norway.
NAOM
The problem would be an increased rate of trees being cut down (dieing) increasing the rate of emission.
NAOM
How to build a skyscraper out of wood
Jeff Spross
https://theweek.com/articles/816653/how-build-skyscraper-wood
Building skyscrapers out of wood: It sounds bizarre, unsafe, maybe even a bit twee. But it could actually be the future of construction.
But why the effort in the first place? Well, several reasons.
For one thing, wood is lighter and more flexible than steel or concrete. A wooden skyscraper will have more give in an earthquake, for instance. The lighter weight also opens up opportunities for cost saving throughout the construction process. Wood is an excellent insulator, which would save the building’s owners and residents on heating and cooling costs.
Obviously, there are aspects of construction that will emit CO2 no matter what material you use. But steel and concrete also have carbon emissions intrinsic to that material: Sixty percent of concrete’s emissions, for instance, come from the chemical reaction to make the concrete. Replacing a lot of steel and concrete construction with wood could save us a lot of CO2 output.
On top of that, timber is a cash crop, just like corn or potatoes. If demand for it goes up, the economic incentive to plant more trees increases too. If wooden construction became common, you’d certainly need regulatory oversight to make sure the timber came from cash crop planting and not from cutting down pre-existing forests. But planting more trees is an excellent idea for fighting climate change.
Highest-ever daily average CO2 | Maua Loa Observatory
2019 (as of January 12, 2019)
413.45 ppm on January 12, 2019 (NOAA-ESRL)
Nice start to the New Year!
Trapping more heat! For anyone not aware, CO2 levels have been at a record high ever since Mauna Loa Observatory began recording (in 1958). The level stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began there.
I thought all that stuff was going to be turned off due to the gov’t being shut down.
Mankind achieves another high point. To what heights will they aim for next?
Probably not good news for ice shelves?
UPPER-OCEAN WARMING IS CHANGING THE GLOBAL WAVE CLIMATE, MAKING WAVES STRONGER
“Sea level rise puts coastal areas at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, but new research shows they face other climate-related threats as well. In a study published January 14 in Nature Communications, researchers report that the energy of ocean waves has been growing globally, and they found a direct association between ocean warming and the increase in wave energy.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-upper-ocean-global-climate-stronger.html#jCp
UN WARNS OF RISING LEVELS OF TOXIC BRINE AS DESALINATION PLANTS MEET GROWING WATER NEEDS
“For every litre of freshwater output, desalination plants produce on average 1.5 litres of brine (though values vary dramatically, depending on the feedwater salinity and desalination technology used, and local conditions). Globally, plants now discharge 142 million cubic meters of hypersaline brine every day (a 50% increase on previous assessments).”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-toxic-brine-desalination.html#jCp
We obviously need brine desalination/detoxification…
Maybe the brine can be used for energy storage instead of being discharged.
https://www.intechopen.com/books/desalination/solar-thermal-driven-desalination-pursuing-products-of-pure-water-and-salts-and-leaving-minimum-impa
Given that most desalination systems can directly use thermal energy, concentrated solar thermal energy is very suitable for application to the water treatment. To avoid the potential negative impacts from disposing the concentrates, recovery of important minerals from concentrates to achieve zero discharge is a promising option. The recent technology development on solar thermal energy storages has shown that sea salts are very promising materials for large‐scale thermal energy storage.
“Globally, plants now discharge 142 million cubic meters of hypersaline brine every day”
I suppose the salt is just NaCl, a concentrate from the sea. But copper ? Added in the process ?
Fred’s post content could be the solution, if it is not considered too expensive.
I suppose the salt is just NaCl, a concentrate from the sea. But copper ? Added in the process ?
The largest component of salts is mostly NaCl but there is so much more to the composition of sea water than just NaCl. Even commercially available salt water aquarium sea salts have a long list of other salts and trace elements. And yes, there is even copper!
https://www.britannica.com/science/seawater/Dissolved-inorganic-substances
Many elements, including the essential trace metals iron, cobalt, and copper, show surface depletions but in general exhibit behaviour more complex than that of phosphate, nitrate, and silicate. Some of the complexities observed in elemental oceanic distributions are attributable to the adsorption of elements on the surface of sinking particles. Adsorptive processes, either exclusive of or in addition to biological uptake, serve to remove elements from the upper ocean and deliver them to greater depths. The distribution patterns of a number of trace elements are complicated by their participation in oxidation-reduction (electron-exchange) reactions. In general, electron-exchange reactions lead to profound changes in the solubility and reactivity of trace metals in seawater. Such reactions are important to the oceanic behaviour of a variety of elements, including iron, manganese, copper, cobalt, chromium, and cerium.
Side note, one of my favorite biological organisms are our proto vertebrate cousins, the ascidians. They start life as free swimming in their larval stage and have a notochord which they later lose as they become sessile. Interestsingly some ascidians are able to concentrate vanadium to a level more than 100 times higher than in the surrounding seawater.
“The largest component of salts is mostly NaCl but there is so much more to the composition of sea water than just NaCl”.
Fred,
I know. So the copper in the brine: its origin is the sea-water. That would make the brine toxic because it is hypertonic, not because elements are added in the desalination process.
I fought against a desal plant in Marin.
Really bad idea– over an ecologically sensitive area (owned by a gun club).
We defeated it– the gun people, and a bunch of radicals.
It was a development project, by stupid developers, with dollar signs in their eyes.
Ok, though that still leaves open the question, if all desal plants under all circumstances, regardless of where they are located, even if ways are found to make their impacts environmentally negligible, are always automatically a bad idea?
Desal works great for deep water sailing, and a few other drinking water dependent activities.
But that is about it——-
Then we be screwed^2….. Water scarcity will be a problem sooner than other climate change effects. Without desal many places will become uninhabitable pretty soon…
CHINA POWERS UP ELECTRIC CAR MARKET
“China has been aggressively pursuing New Energy Vehicles (NEVs), both to cut air pollution and to develop a strong industry. The Chinese government has had subsidies in place for nearly a decade, and these have been supplemented by subsidies from regional governments. In some cities, public transport has also led the way. Shenzhen’s fleet of 16,000 buses is now 100% electric and its fleet of taxis is almost completely electric too.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46745472
Meanwhile, closer to home,
“Automakers have promised to start selling hordes of electric cars in the next few years, but only two will be unveiled at the big Detroit auto show that kicks off this week — and those aren’t even ready for production. Meanwhile, there will be plenty of SUVs and high-horsepower sports cars on display as cheap gasoline helps SUV and truck sales continue their dramatic climb.”
https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/detroit-show-suvs-horsepower-electric-111235074.html
There’s a thing called the skyscraper curse that says that more and bigger skyscrapers are built immediately before a recession (e.g. Singer building before 1908, Empire State before the great depression, Petronas Twin Towers before the Asian Crisis, Sears Tower and WTC before 1973 crash, Burj Khalifa and all sorts going up in China, US and Europe before 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper_Index
Last year more supertall (over 300m) skyscrapers were built around the world than ever, in total 18 plus another 30 to be completed this (3+5 in US, lots in China, a couple due in UK, others in St. Petersburg, Vietnam, Malaysia etc.) Make of that what you will.
Not to be left out, the Jeddah Tower, due to be completed next year. A 167 floor, 1 km tall monument to something, Saudi Arabia’s wealth and power supposedly.
Bardi has a post on Peak Cement (and Peak Diesel and Peak Coal).
May impact skyscraper work
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2019/01/what-happened-in-2015-that-changed.html
And California’s PG&E apparently filed for bankruptcy
So we should expect a depression. Time to short the stockmarket.
Iron Mike,
I would not expect a serious recession (like GFC or worse) for 10 years or so. Feel free to short the stock market, though you may end up without a shirt. 🙂
Dennis,
If you actually believe there won’t be a recession for 10 years, you should invest in the S&P500, the Dow or NASDAQ. You could make a lot of money if you are right.
Iron Mike,
Mostly S&P 500 and Vanguard total stock market index, likely real rate of return over next 10 years about 5%/year. So if correct (assuming 2% annual inflation rates and a nominal annual ROI of 7%) $1000 invested in 2019 becomes $1629 in 2019$ by 2029.
Note that the nominal rate of return for the Vanguard index 500 fund from 9/30/1976 to 09/30/2018 was about 11.4%. Using chained CPI data we get an average annual inflation rate of 3.58%/year from Sept 1976 to Sept 2018, so the real rate of return for the Vanguard Index 500 fund over the 1976-2018 period was 7.87%.
I have assumed a 2.87% lower real rate of return than the long term performance of the S&P 500. Of course that estimate might be incorrect.
You can short the market and we will compare notes in 10 years. 🙂
Don’t know about a depression but if you’re Italian, German, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish or Lithuanian recession might already be here, and after Brexit maybe others – but in any case long term trends point to pretty well all OECD GDP growth numbers hitting zero before 2025 (short term noise just accelerates things) and China might be there by then as well if the real figures are as different from the official ones as seems to be the case. The FANG “to infinite growth and beyond” tech boost seems to have run it’s course (and as a lot of their income is advertising they get whacked early if there’s a slowdown). Almost all markets and most assets go up and down together based on geopolitical news rather than real business valuation so everybody is looking to governments to keep the ball rolling, but it’s not clear what’s left that can be done especially with the growing populist movements.
George,
I think you are right regarding the Eurozone. Add to those countries you mentioned France. Technically their PMI is below 50.
I am sticking to my prediction, i think next couple of years is GFC 2.0. But this time the central banks have no ammo.
Iron Mike,
Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.
Growth for advanced economies since 2000 has been about 1.6% per year in terms of real GDP, for nominal GDP growth has been about 3.5%.
For World real GDP the average growth rate from 2000-2018 was about 3.8%/year, growth in more mature economies is indeed slower, part of this is due to slower rates of population growth.
For World real GDP per capita growth was about 1.5% from 2000 to 2017 and for advanced economies real GDP per capita growth was about 1% from 2000 to 2017.
Chart for advanced economy real GDP growth below, based on IMF data
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/02/weodata/index.aspx
Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.
I believe that is what is euphemistically known as ‘kicking the can down the road’…
Fred, to see where the can falls off the edge see my earth overshoot graph below.
Yeah, I just replied to it…
It seems no one gets that without functioning ecosystems there can be no economy!
No economy? You mean no people and most life?
Dennis,
You may very well be correct. But i disagree. Lax regulation on the financial sector, especially after Trumps appointment have seen the corporate debt shoot to unprecedented levels.
Matter of time for the next financial crisis in my opinion. Also the world economy is an entangled web. There are a few dangers on the horizon this year.
Iron Mike,
Based on BIS statistics, not really anything to be concerned about.
https://www.bis.org/statistics/totcredit.htm
I agree with Dennis on this, minor recession now or soon.
By 2030 or so, the flux of predicaments and problems will have integrated into a societal/environmental pressure that will make a full recession or depression appear as the most pleasant of times. No one will be able to separate economic problems from real problems.
None of these mainstream institutions saw the 2008 GFC. Only a handful of people saw it coming.
Even the Fed chairman at the time, Ben Bernanke didn’t know what was going on. There is news clips of him on youtube bragging on how great the economy is prior to the crisis.
I’d take what these institutions say with a large grain of salt.
And I am with you on this Iron Mike.
there are just too many unpredictable variables and low likelihood wildcards in the mix to rely on models and predictions. Big recession/depression could start any year, IMHO, for a variety of reasons.
Iron Mike,
It is very possible that many saw that there were problems, but did not foresee them coming together as they did in such a rapid fashion.
See BIS report from Dec 2007
https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt0712.pdf
Compare with report from Dec 2018
https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1812.pdf
In 2007 there were major problems in credit markets evident. In 2018 there was some stock and bond market volatility in response to Italian and UK difficulties and US/China trade tensions as well as concern over Fed Reserve raising interest rates and reducing the size of the Fed balance sheet (reducing the holdings purchased during Quantitative easing).
The difference is striking between the two reports. In 2007 credit markets were tightening because of the mortgage crisis in the US, in 2018 they are tightening because the Fed and EU central bank are choosing to raise interest rates, a very big difference.
Hickory,
Recessions are impossible to predict in advance, one way of being right is to say there will be one tomorrow, eventually you will be right. 🙂
True enough Dennis. I am not predicting a very big [dep]recession in any particular year. Rather, I am saying the the risks of one beginning in any year are significant, and higher than typically acknowledged or forecasted.
Hickory,
I agree, especially on minor recessions. Really big recession/depressions don’t happen often (2 in the last 149 years).
One of the world’s leading authorities on economics and monetary policy, Claudio Borio (who happens to be the head of monetary and economic department at the BIS) gave a speech on August 14, 2018.
The title was fairly clear, “The level of global debt concerns me”
So I guess the head of economics at the BIS interprets their chart a little differently than you do!
Of course, from the chart above we can see that both the absolute level of debt and the recent increasing trend are greater than what preceded the crisis in 2008, and of course we also know that central banks have much less scope for action now than they had last time around (both economically and politically).
The U.S. is in better shape debt-wise vs. 2008-2009 (public debt is higher, private debt – which is the real danger – is lower), but the world as a whole is in worse shape, China in particular.
Also, your assertion downthread that interest rates increases weren’t impacting anything in 2007 is a little strange. Maybe pull up a historical chart on interest rates some time.
Read the BIS report from 2007, there was a credit crunch due to the mortgage debt crisis.
It is well known that this was primarily due to poor lending practices in the US.
As the risks became apparent interest rates (especially on Mortgage backed securities) began to rise as the price of these securities fell.
The reason for interest rates rising is what is important, context is needed. That is why reading the BIS quarterly report gives a clearer picture than looking at an interest rate chart.
In the Dec 2018 quarterly report, there was not nearly the level of concern expressed as in Dec 2007.
If you think otherwise listen to Federal reserve, they are a little concerned about Europe and China and will adjust their policy based on the data they see.
As I have said often there is always a risk of recession and when they will occur cannot be predicted.
If you predict one will start tomorrow and do so consistently, you will eventually be correct.
2019 US renewable generation additions expected to far outpace gas: EIA
Dive Brief:
Same story, different source:
US will see more than 8 GW of solar come online this year
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the official source of data on the nation’s electricity system, and since it started tracking distributed PV a few years ago, solar is no longer an exception.
Last week the EIA announced its projections for new capacity to come online in 2019, including solar and wind. And while the organization did not include distributed solar in the graphics in a post it published for Today in Energy, it gave an estimate of new distributed solar via its Short-Term Energy Outlook. The two sources indicate 4.3 GWac of utility-scale solar and 3.9 GWac of distributed solar for modest market growth on what analysts think was installed last year.
The original EIA “Today in Energy” page:
New electric generating capacity in 2019 will come from renewables and natural gas
Jim Anderson: Feedbacks that Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change
Climate Science Breakfast with James Anderson (2016). EPS/SEAS Climate Science Breakfast: “Coupled Feedbacks in the Climate Structure That Set the Time Scale for Irreversible Change: Arctic Isotopes to Stratospheric Radicals” with James Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3iqncCSvFk&t=2421s
Another economy collapses. Another failed state?
Zimbabweans Are Left Reeling as Cash-Starved Economy Implodes
Chronic shortages of fuel and foreign exchange, surging inflation and mass strikes have driven Zimbabwe to the brink of economic collapse and made a mockery of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s claim that the country is open for business.
Many shops and factories have shut their doors because of a lack of customers and those that continue to trade are open to haggling over prices to secure hard currency. At an appliance shop in the capital, Harare, a salesman whispers that a Whirlpool Corp. washing machine priced at about $5,000 if paid for electronically will sell for $1,500 in cash, while at a nearby electrical warehouse, a $600 invoice is whittled down to $145 for payment in dollar bills.
It’s a mess, very poor government management combined with corruption is a recipe for disaster.
Zimbabwe’s economy is characterized by instability and volatility, both of which are hallmarks of excessive government interference and mismanagement. Massive corruption and disastrous economic policies have plunged the country into poverty. An inefficient judicial system and general lack of transparency severely exacerbate business costs and entrepreneurial risk. The government will likely adopt desperate short-term measures to stave off economic collapse, possibly including a unilateral de-dollarization that would reopen the door to hyperinflation, further crippling the private sector and severely undermining macroeconomic stability.
https://www.heritage.org/index/country/Zimbabwe
George,
That’s an interesting chicken and egg situation.
The stability of the Holocene was several standard deviations away from the norm. This allowed for tech to develop enough to exploit fossil fuels en mass. The unlocking of basically free energy then condensed tens of thousands of years of progress into a stable period creating a statistical/probabilistic royal flush.
Between 1 trillion galaxies we could be a “big fish in a small pond”. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old (compare that to the universes heat death and we’re still in the womb).
I think that one thing the Fermi Paradox discounts is the question “20 billion years from now will the answer to this question be more evident to the hydrogen molecules participating in asking this question”.
I think the answer is yes.
In that case, we are early to the party.
I really do feel that this unique approach to the Fermi Paradox lends credence to the idea that we may be early to the Universal party.
The first? Unlikely.
Early? Most probably.
2019 Expected Electrical generation capacity changes in the USA-
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37952
Adios 3 mile. I was 80 miles away, downwind, when it started to melt in 1979. The news was slow to be released. The middle atlantic states got very lucky on that occasion.
Oyster Creek got shut down last September, oldest in US, 49 years of operation.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/ps.html#r1
Implications for limiting warming to 2C
The near impossibility in achieving the CO2 cuts we need to make.
The interactive graph shows us how much we need to cut each year, depending on when CO2 emissions peak.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-set-to-rise-2-percent-in-2017-following-three-year-plateau
If CO2 peaks in 2019. We need a to cut emissions in 2021 by 3% alone, in 2024 cuts of 5% for that year.
That would require cutting global coal consumption by 350 million tonnes in one year and oil consumption by 4 million barrels per day. And we would need to repeat that the following year and the year after…
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-world-consumption-data.html
ANTARCTICA LOSING SIX TIMES MORE ICE MASS ANNUALLY NOW THAN 40 YEARS AGO
“The biggest driver of ice loss is circumpolar deep water (CDW), a mass of warm extra-salty water that has been increasingly pushed under floating ice shelves by stronger polar westerly currents. This water rapidly melts ice sheets and tidewater glaciers from below and is expected to continue exacerbating ice-melt off the continent.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-antarctica-ice-mass-annually-years.html#jCp
Meanwhile in other bad news from around the world, examples of things that could get really bad if and when civilization as we know it should collapse are uncontained epidemics like this latest Ebola outbreak!
https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/International/ebola-outbreak-democratic-republic-congo-now-2nd-worst/story?id=59495234
The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s volatile east is now the second largest ever in recorded history, with 426 confirmed and probable cases thus far, resulting in 245 deaths since Aug. 1, according to the country’s health ministry.
The number of Ebola cases announced Thursday surpassed those of the 2000 Ebola outbreak in Uganda, making it second only to the 2014-2016 outbreak in multiple West African nations that infected 28,652 people and killed 11,325 of them, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
…The two provinces where cases in the latest outbreak are being reported share porous borders with South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda, raising the risk of national and regional spread.
Health workers are facing a number of other challenges to contain the virus, including sporadic attacks from armed groups operating in the mineral-rich, volatile borderlands as well as resistance from the local population in an area that never before had been affected by an Ebola outbreak.
What could possibly go wrong?!
After seeing Dennis’s plot of global GDP growth I immediately thought of it as a view of the rate of global ecological destruction. But how to represent it. Then I recalled, we have a measure of that, it’s called Earth Overshoot Day. So I plotted the values with time and extrapolated to Jan 1st.
You may not want to see this, so pantywaists and children look away.
As I replied to Dennis upthread…
.
Or we can choose another path!
https://www.clubofrome.org/2018/10/18/transformation-is-feasable-a-new-report-to-the-club-of-rome/
TRANSFORMATION IS FEASABLE: A NEW REPORT TO THE CLUB OF ROME
The dual adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together with the Paris Climate Agreement, both in 2015, represents a global turning point. We have never before had such a universal development plan for people and planet. For the first time in human history the world has agreed on a democratically adopted roadmap for humanity’s future, which aims at attaining socially inclusive and highly aspirational socio-economic development goals, within globally defined environmental targets. Humanity’s grand ambition is surely to aim at an inclusive and prosperous world development within a stable and resilient Earth system. This human quest is to attain as many of the SDGs as possible by 2030, and then continue following a sustainable global trajectory well beyond the next 12 years. This report has identified one such possible, smarter pathway to success through five transformative and synergistic actions.
Though we already know that SDG #8 is a non starter because it repeats the growth mantra… as noted in your post:
FINAL WARNING!
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity & Business as Un-usual
Fred,
I am not advocating business as usual, but for those that are concerned about economic growth, it is possible for it to continue. The growth that occurs can be done in a less environmentally destructive way until human population peaks. In the mean time better standard of living tends to coincide with lower rates of population growth and often also coincides with improved political rights for women and greater political freedom (though China is an exception).
Without at least a small measure of smart economic growth it seems unlikely that a transition to non-fossil fuel energy occurs as quickly or easily, unless one hopes that an economic crisis brings about positive change (like the New Deal in the US), it can also lead to Fascism so is fraught with risk.
A gradual slow down in economic growth would be good and it is likely as that is what has occurred in more advanced economies.
There are no easy solutions.
I am not advocating business as usual, but for those that are concerned about economic growth, it is possible for it to continue. The growth that occurs can be done in a less environmentally destructive way until human population peaks.
I think that we are now on the slope of diminishing returns for economic growth as we have known it under neo-classical economic thinking. Growth now has more negative than positive consequences. While growth is healthy in an organism or ecosystem up to a certain point, it becomes malignant and destructive if it is allowed to continued unabated, which is where we seem to find ourselves currently.
I’ll again suggest getting acquainted with some of the more novel thinking about economics as espoused by advocates for circular economic and stable state economics thinkers.
I suggest reading Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics.
Ken Webster’s Circular Economy A Wealth of Flows
A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy
For those that are willing to listen to series of podcast related to the last of my suggestions they can go to https://circulatenews.org/2016/04/nd2-podcasts/
While I’ll accept your word in that you are not advocating for business as usual it does cause me to raise an eyebrow when you say this:
“Plenty room for more debt, both fiscal and monetary policy can be used to boost the economy. Innovative monetary policy such as quantitative easing can work in the absence of appropriate fiscal policy.”
Do you seriously believe that?! Because I do not! I’m afraid it may be tried but the results at this point would be disastrous!
Fred,
Imagine a World with unemployment rates at 25%.
What is your solution to that problem?
Not sure doughnuts are the solution. 🙂
I am not suggesting something better won’t come along, but we need to get from point A to point B. So I am thinking, if there is a Great Financial Crisis that occurs in 2019-2020 as Iron Mike believes, do we wait for some new economic system that exists in a podcast, but nowhere in the real World, or do we attempt to solve the problem we are faced with using methods that are tried and true so that we are not faced with World War 3?
I would choose the latter and allow the World to gradually transform it’s economic system to something more sustainable. Change does not happen overnight, at the same time change is constant and the only thing that never changes is that things never remain the same.
For those that don’t like videos
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/dp-a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-130212-en.pdf
My point is simply that without some response to a financial crisis we end up in the doughnut hole.
The concept is very nice, but not much of a plan for getting from here to there.
do we wait for some new economic system that exists in a podcast, but nowhere in the real World, or do we attempt to solve the problem we are faced with using methods that are tried and true so that we are not faced with World War 3?
I’m going with Albert Einstein on this one:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
As for imagining a world with unemployment rates at 25%.
I think about it all the time! I also think ecological and social collapse are going to be orders of magnitude worse that World War III, if we don’t start thinking and acting very differently than we have been until now!
What is your solution to that problem?
It might have to be something like universal basic income! All of the old ‘ISMS’ as far as I can tell are dead ends, with the emphasis being on DEAD!
The tried and true methods you speak of have so far failed miserably to solve our most dire problems! Time to try something else. Anyways it is difficult to have an intelligent discussion on any of this if people are not even willing to read a few books to see what some of the new ideas are about. We are in uncharted territory and no one has a road map at this point!
Cheers!
Fred,
I agree things need to change, just not clear how to effect those changes.
So with 25% unemployment perhaps universal basic income might pass some legislatures, which would be fine with me, if it occurred.
It is not clear we end up with a very efficient economy.
There have been many grand ideas of the past that did not work out that well in hindsight, such as Marxian economics ideas.
Things can be done differently, but based on the paper, there was not really a plan for getting from A to B.
The concept is a nice one as is the circular economy ideas.
Pounding the table with a shoe will not get it done. 🙂
Pounding the table with a shoe will not get it done. ?
True! sometimes to get to the other side, you have to walk across a bed of burning embers in your bare feet!
Fred,
Still not sure in the next few years that gets us any closer to the relative utopia proposed in Doughnut economics. It is a nice thing to aim for, but note that standard economics has ways of analyzing externalities which could be applied properly to take account of environmental damage as well as equity, it is simply a matter of applying the knowledge we have about ecology (outer edge of doughnut) and economics (doughnut hole).
Also note that an assumption that things are done the same today as they have always been done is incorrect (economic theory changes over time and the application of the theory also changes), so Einstein’s adage does not apply.
Not sure I agree that ecological and social collapse would be significantly worse than a nuclear holocaust, in fact WW3 is likely to be the fastest way to arrive at ecological and societal collapse. Stretching out the problem with gradual change seems one way to accomplish the gradual change in “thinking”, social structures, and societal norms that might lead to solutions about how to get from A (capialism destroying the environment) to B ( a doughnut/circular economy which minimizes environmental damage by humans).
Rome was not built in a day.
It is a nice thing to aim for, but note that standard economics has ways of analyzing externalities which could be applied properly to take account of environmental damage
Surely you jest!
Ok, then tell me how standard economics is going to analyze this example of a recent externality and properly account for the consequences?! And please do it quickly because time is running out really really fast!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46859000
How one heatwave killed ‘a third’ of a bat species in Australia
BTW, this is not some fluke or isolated incident. There are hundreds of examples I could cite that clearly show we are pushing the boundaries of our ecological systems!
The ways things are going I’m not worried about WWIII because there won’t be anyone around to fight in it!
Dennis, oh my God, I have to agree with Fred on this one. Standard economics is the problem, not the solution. Economics always looks out for the financial element at the expense of the environment.
Fred and Ron,
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Note that it is up to governments to address these problems, they choose not to.
I would choose to address these problems if I ruled the World, lucky for all, I do not.
Note that I agree that economic growth should stop for OECD nations and in fact as population declines output should fall.
For less developed nations I think economic growth to meet the needs of the people there combined with policies to reduce income inequality would be good policy (as it gets those people out of the “hole” in the doughnut). Most OECD nations need to adopt policies to reduce environmental damage.
Won’t happen overnight, but ASAP would be best.
Hey Fred,
I agree with Iron Mike, you and I are finally on the same page! Well said.
Fred spot on. We finally agree on something lol
Re: “kicking the can down the road”
So do you believe we have a sort of magic fix we should implement to make any difference at all for the quantity of co2 in the air? By which I mean a really viable fix that isn’t going to bankrupt our country. If you consider “kicking the can down the road” including future generations, I say our grandchildren have a far bigger risk being crushed by a mountain of unsustainable debt much sooner then rising sea levels will sweep them away. That debt should bother us all, a lot. But the problem is, most of the politicians just want to take our money and throw it at every problem without having a plan to fix a thing. Consider almost every big city in this country over the last 50 years, what has changed for the better for the people living in the inner city during those years? Not much aside from the cities on the verge of being bankrupt: financially and morally. We see that that kind of management is not the way to improve lives or businesses.
Pat Clogger,
Fossil fuels will reach peak output between 2025 and 2030 at the World level.
What do you propose will fix the problem of declining energy availability once that occurs?
One potential solution is to ramp up wind and solar energy and expand the electric grid as rapidly as possible so that all nations are not bankrupted by high energy costs.
I would note that Republicans were very much in favor of tax cuts, what do you think that does to government debt levels?
I say our grandchildren have a far bigger risk being crushed by a mountain of unsustainable debt much sooner then rising sea levels will sweep them away. That debt should bother us all, a lot.
You seem to have a lot of things pretty much backwards!
http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
By Donella Meadows~
The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between sales force and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”
The classic example of that backward intuition was my own introduction to systems analysis, the world model. Asked by the Club of Rome to show how major global problems — poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, resource depletion, urban deterioration, unemployment — are related and how they might be solved, Forrester made a computer model and came out with a clear leverage point1: Growth. Not only population growth, but economic growth. Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs — among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, etc. — the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, much different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.
The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.
Seems like a reasonable projection to me. I am going to make a statement here were many including Dennis might disagree with, but GDP growth generally = environmental destruction. Keyword is generally.
Think of it loosely like a thermodynamic system. Let me make a very loose example on the small scale. Think of your house as an open thermodynamic system.
Every week we dispose of garbage(entropy) from our homes -> outside (to be picked up by the garbage trucks and transported to landfill or for countries with little to no regulation, into the ocean)
In essence you are removing the entropy from your house to keep it in order, while increasing the disorder of the outside. Extrapolate that on a mass scale. Surely from just this action there is some environmental damage.
Iron Mike,
I agree. Economic growth tends to reduce the quality of the environment, measures can be taken to minimize the damage, but it cannot be eliminated. Eventually human population will need to decrease to a level that is sustainable. If human “progress” continues so that the majority of people have equal rights (for men and women), and access to education and healthcare, women will choose to have fewer children (0-2) and population will decline to whatever level humans decide.
That is the logical route to a sustainable planet, in combination with an energy transition to non-fossil fuels, more recycling, cradle to grave manufacturing, quality products built to last a minimum of 25 years, better conservation of water and soil, and no doubt a long list of other ideas to solve problems I don’t know about.
Dennis said “Economic growth tends to reduce the quality of the environment”
You might want to amend that to ” the economic system causes environmental destruction and economic growth accelerates that destruction” to get a more realistic portrayal.
Gone fishing,
One could simply say that humans destroy the environment, we can attempt to minimize the impact and a smaller number of humans would help reduce the level of destruction.
No amount of impact or destruction is tolerable or allowable at this point in time. We are over the energy cliff, following that system is just a downhill run. We are well over the ecosystem destruction cliff. Further advancement in that direction could put the systems into freefall. A full reversal of direction is the only way to avoid (versus delay) the inevitable.
Comprehension of most of the forests being gone, most of the underground aquifers being depleted, most of the insects gone, most of the birds and fish being gone in 20 to 30 years or less is a hard thing to grasp. No amount of energy or capital will put that back.
https://sites.psu.edu/2050destruction/2018/04/12/deforestation/
https://phys.org/news/2016-12-groundwater-resources-world-depleted-2050s.html
Absent aggressive action, many effects once expected only several decades in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the report shows. “It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html
And we know that any predictions or extrapolations always get adjusted to shorter time scales (greater than expected). Just removing half the Amazon rain forest would disturb the rain cycle so much that the rest would collapse on it’s own and quickly. That is what studies do not take into account, the various feedbacks and cumulative effects in ecosytems. Ecosystems are fully interdependent.
For most of our existence as homo sapiens (200,000) we have had 1-10 million, with a near extinction 70,000 years ago.
7.6 billion?
Try not to laugh——
Gone fishing,
You suggested the economic system causes destruction, now generally humans will need some economic system to survive. You did not specifically state the capitalist economic system, perhaps that is what you meant.
So perhaps to reduce the level of contradiction between your comments (I am assuming you are not proposing sending the human population to the moon) we must assume you think their is a different economic system which will eliminate any environmental damage by humans. I tend to agree with Iron Mike that thermodynamics seems to argue against such a proposition.
The best we will do is minimize the damage caused. Reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible is a start, better energy efficiency, more recycling. more sharing of vacation homes, cars, other appliances, more cradle to grave manufacturing, better quality products rather than throwaway junk, higher tax rates on high income to lead to more equitable wealth distribution, equal rights for all people, better access to health care and education for all (these last 3 will lead to population peak and decline).
As far as I can tell this is the best we can do, we cannot change history, only the future.
Thermodynamics does not limit our ability to protect habitat, call fishing moratoriums, rebuild and protect soils, stop spraying toxic substances over much of the world landscape, eliminate GHG production, halt defaunation, reduce population, or greatly change our views and behavior.
The Earth is not a closed system, it receives vast amounts of energy everyday. What appears to be a closed system is the human mind.
Until people stop the giant Ponzi scheme of delusions they call civilization and realize that they are just one species among a vast system of species, they are truly doomed. No amount of modified BAU will be successful for very long.
Here are some warnings and ideas by others since you do not listen to what I say or appear to comprehend it.
Examples of diverse and effective steps humanity can take to transition to sustainability include the following (not in order of importance or urgency): (a) prioritizing the enactment of connected well-funded and well-managed reserves for a significant proportion of the world’s terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and aerial habitats; (b) maintaining nature’s ecosystem services by halting the conversion of forests, grasslands, and other native habitats; (c) restoring native plant communities at large scales, particularly forest landscapes; (d) rewilding regions with native species, especially apex predators, to restore ecological processes and dynamics; (e) developing and adopting adequate policy instruments to remedy defaunation, the poaching crisis, and the exploitation and trade of threatened species; (f) reducing food waste through education and better infrastructure; (g) promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods; (h) further reducing fertility rates by ensuring that women and men have access to education and voluntary family-planning services, especially where such resources are still lacking; (i) increasing outdoor nature education for children, as well as the overall engagement of society in the appreciation of nature; (j) divesting of monetary investments and purchases to encourage positive environmental change; (k) devising and promoting new green technologies and massively adopting renewable energy sources while phasing out subsidies to energy production through fossil fuels; (l) revising our economy to reduce wealth inequality and ensure that prices, taxation, and incentive systems take into account the real costs which consumption patterns impose on our environment; and (m) estimating a scientifically defensible, sustainable human population size for the long term while rallying nations and leaders to support that vital goal.
To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229
Anyone who thinks they are above the biosphere and can exist without a functional one, is in for a rude awakening in the near future. Although we have a huge amount of historical, paleontological and current evidence for this, the societal penchant to live in total delusion and believe that destructive progress is survivable seems omnipresent.
To reiterate the warning:
but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.
Thermodynamics does not limit our ability to protect habitat,…. or greatly change our views and behavior.
With massive information programs, financed by the government, or perhaps philanthropic organizations, you may change the behavior of a few thousand people, or even a million or so. But the behavior of almost eight billion people is controlled only by human nature. You have absolutely no hope of changing human nature.
Me change human activity all by myself Ron? No, I have no such megalomaniac delusions. Maybe you should send your opinion to the the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates who penned the warning.
None of the above is outside human nature or human activity. Human behavior and action varies greatly.
In fact it is practiced by many humans now. People care for the soil, the water, and other species. So are they inhuman?
However, a large percentage of people have been trained from birth to follow a destructive system. Their actions may appear to be “nature” but are merely training and social acceptance. Industrial society driven by large excesses of energy is the major culprit but did not exist for most of human history.
To change the subject somewhat, what do you think of this?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/new-study-puts-humans-in-america-100000-years-earlier-than-expected/524301/
and this: (start at 21 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcb2crTRRFo
GF, of course 1700 scientist penning a warning is not outside human nature. Convincing 7.6 billion people to hear and take action from that warning is beyond human nature. I have said it before and I will repeat it again: The vast majority of people do not hear a warning of coming disaster and act. They wait until the disaster has arrived then react. People will always take the easiest and most comfortable path. That path is almost always planning for the immediate future, one year out at most. The distant future is well down the list of their greatest concerns.
About humans being in the Americas 130,000 years ago. I would never argue against the preponderance of evidence. But I am not at all sure the preponderance of evidence supports that theory. I do think 13,000 years is too short. I tend to agree with those who say 23,000 years. But whatever the evidence winds up supporting is the theory I will say is most likely.
GF,
The earth is generally considered as a closed system. Though it receives a lot of energy via radiation from the sun, its mass since its formation has more or less remained constant.
And I agree with Ron with regards to human nature. I think we are biologically programmed to be somewhat parasitic in our behaviour.
At the same time education and philanthropic projects do have impacts, but they need funding which also comes from GDP/Tax revenue, which relies on the global economy again.
And I agree with Dennis. As far as i can see (which is very limited) we cannot wriggle out of the thermodynamics. The best we can do is limited the damage we have caused in a variety of areas. Assuming it is done somehow by some multilateral agreement, I cannot see how living standards can remain the same, there has to be at least some austerity involved in the clean up.
Thermodynamics is the study of heat and other forms of energy. The Earth receives a large amount of energy each day, so what is this thermodynamic limitation you speak of, photosynthesis?
Yes, I agree that population has limits in a biological system.
If you are attempting to say that thermodynamics implies that we can only pursue the current societal paradigm, I heartily disagree.
Energy is not the problem, nor is it a limit to our activities to enhancing the biosphere.
What I do see is increasing amounts of time, material and energy to maintain an unsustainable and destructive system while that system gets inherently more inefficient.
No problem though, the current paradigm will change whether societal values and activities change or not. That is guaranteed, since society is on a bio-destructive path on a global scale.
No we are not parasites, we are omnivores like bears. Man existed within the natural system for many millennia but when a certain portion of humanity became symbolic and delusional, they took over the planet essentially erasing what was mostly a set of balanced human cultures.
This vastly accelerated the population and footprint of humans, which might have taken many millennia to reach otherwise and certainly not have been so dramatic or rapidly changed the climate.
Natural boundaries are now being exceeded and that is the harsh reality, the boundary is mostly biological but is enhanced by physical changes in the atmosphere, soil and oceans.
All species that exceed boundaries react in one way, population falls. Humans may react technologically also, such as nuclear war or excessive attempts to alter the course of natural boundaries (which only exacerbates the problem). Still the result will be the same (or worse).
Dennis appears to believe tweaking the system will give successful results and Ron seems to think that nothing will change the course.
Since you agree with them, I see no further point in continuing communication on this subject.
Though I do wonder how all those ancient tribes and cultures survived for thousands of years if humans are incapable of not working with nature. Or how man ever made it at all.
Far too much quasi-invisible hand here for me.
GF,
The people of the hunter and gatherer stage of humanity survived because they lived within an ecosystem. You give (most of the time without even realising) and you take. Then we can define that species as an omnivore.
Ever since agrarian society the game started to change.
Today, the industrial, globalized man, though you may disagree, i don’t define them as omnivores. They are parasites living off the host (the earth), sucking as much resources to increase living standards. And they aren’t giving anything back other than pollutants, environmental destruction etc etc.
You maybe right, there might be an alternative economic system, not sure how it will work, but it would need to have relatively low surplus energy and little to no growth, i have to think about it more i suppose. The reason for the success of capitalism i think is because it fits in well with human nature.
I guess in someways, any animal who evolves consciousness and develops intelligence can become like us or follow the same path. All living things are programmed for EROI, basically conserving as much energy while receiving as much as possible. Hence no animal will refuse a free lunch. And we are no different it seems. Once we realised we can exploit the laws of nature for surplus useful energy we jumped on it without thinking twice. Now living standards in the west have gotten so high, it is taken for granted. Sometimes it blows my mind. For example, fashion. Wtf is fashion seriously, clothing is meant for comfort and warmth that is it. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, for people like me I see it as human sickness, humans deeply out of touch with reality. No such thing(s) would ever exist without ridiculous amounts of surplus energy.
It will surely be a chaotic time when living standards have to drop.
Gone fishing,
Actually I don’t really think tweaking the system is the answer, just that the needed changes will not happen overnight.
Note you said in an earlier comment “economic system”. I was simply pointing out that the current capitalist system is but one possible system of social organization. Other social arrangements are possible, not clear to me what is best as a replacement.
A hunter gatherer type social arrangement (which probably was common for the first 95% of homo sapiens existence up to about 10000 BP) works well for a few million humans and probably not so well for 7.7 billion.
I agree with you on the thermodynamics as the Earth system is not closed, it receives abundant energy from the Sun.
Perhaps peak fossil fuels and the ensuing crisis by 2030 as a Great Depression 2 arrives (or at minimum GFC2) might lead to some of the changes that you list, in the mean time individuals and potentially economic forces (caused by cheaper wind and solar and more expensive fossil fuel) might lead to some of the needed changes in carbon emissions and perhaps policies to address inequity and wasteful use of resources, improved education, access to healthcare, etc.
Humans need to realize they are part of an ecological whole and achieve balance with the natural world. Most humans seem to have lost this awareness.
Today, the industrial, globalized man, though you may disagree, i don’t define them as omnivores. They are parasites living off the host (the earth), sucking as much resources to increase living standards.
Sorry, but words matter, definitions exist for a reason and the term ‘parasite’ has a very specific biological definition! Humans do not fit that definition! While there are those who subscribe to the GAIA hypothesis and consider the earth to be a living organism, that is merely a metaphor for the synergy of all the earths systems necessary for maintaining life.
This is not some minor semantic quibble on my part.
In evolutionary biology, parasitism is a relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life.[1] The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as “predators that eat prey in units of less than one”.[2] Parasites include protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophically transmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation.
Like predation, parasitism is a type of consumer-resource interaction,[3] but unlike predators, parasites, with the exception of parasitoids, are typically much smaller than their hosts, do not kill them, and often live in or on their hosts for an extended period. Parasites of animals are highly specialised, and reproduce at a faster rate than their hosts. Classic examples include interactions between vertebrate hosts and tapeworms, flukes, the malaria-causing Plasmodium species, and fleas.
Source Wikipedia
Humans are highly social great apes. They are currently in state that can be characterized as being in deep biological overshoot but parasites, they are not!
Fred that is a fair point. I sit corrected.
Gone fishing,
Yes I suppose the 2nd Law would not apply to an Open system, my mistake.
Would you agree that approaching zero environmental impact for 7.8 billion humans will be difficult to achieve?
Several of the points on the list are things I have repeated over and over, so it is not clear why you think that I do not agree with them or any of the points on the list you quote, many of which are contained by my less well articulated “other policies to reduce human environmental damage.”
If I had the ability to make all of those policies a reality, I would do so.
Alas, I will just accept the insult, because I didn’t use the specific words you prefer…
Yes I suppose the 2nd Law would not apply to an Open system
It could, depends on the details of the system.
Again the earth is generally regarded as a closed system, since there is negligible mass transfer.
Iron Mike,
The Earth System is not an isolated system, it is both energy and mass that cannot cross the boundry of an isolated system.
I incorrectly used the term “closed” system earlier rather than isolated system.
For the second law of thermodynamics it is the isolated system with no mass or energy crossing the system boundry applies.
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.
Ohh got ya.
Yes isolated system entropy always increases, like the universe.
Why Growth Can’t Be Green: New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment—but it’s hard to do both.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/why-growth-cant-be-green/
Ironically the opposite of green on a color wheel happens to be red… 😉
Here is my silly analogy for when overshoot day hits Jan 1st.
Just picture there are no grocery stores or farm stands to get food. Now the family is hitting the leftovers in the fridge and what is stored in the cabinets. Not long after that things get very interesting. (cubbords are probably fairly bare by then).
Scary part is the overshoot day estimation underestimates ecodestruction and overestimates biological replacement rate.
Its time for them to go—
Social and environmental costs of hydropower are underestimated, study shows
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190110141715.htm
Time for the salmon, and a healthy environment.
As usual it is important to keep in mind that there is no one size fits all. There are a lot of very different kinds of environments where hydropower has been implemented. Some of it works but it is also true that a lot of it is an environmental catastrophe! As we should all be acutely aware by now there are no silver bullets but we may be occasionally forced to choose between options that can only be characterized as the lesser of two evils. Going forward there will probably be very few easy straightforward black and white decisions that we can make. However we will still have to make those decisions somehow.
Cheers!
EV’s are less CO2 emissive than ICE’s even when coal is part of the electrical mix-
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-cars-seen-getting-cleaner-even-where-grids-rely-on-coal
interseting graph from the article-
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-cars-seen-getting-cleaner-even-where-grids-rely-on-coal
China subsidizes fishing fleet to the tune of $6.5.
This enables it’s fishing fleet to cross the world, decimating fish stocks off the coast of North and South America and Africa.
https://jsis.washington.edu/publication/fisheries-subsidies-china/
Fish stocks that would otherwise be sustainably fished by other countries are vanishing, thanks to China’s insatiable appetite.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/fish-stocks-are-used-up-fisheries-subsidies-must-stop/
China’s subsidy is greater than all the other countries put together.
https://dialogochino.net/10307-time-running-out-for-wto-to-act-on-fishing-subsidies/
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/climate-change-drives-fish-wars-science-environment/
When there is plenty, there is no problem. When there is not enough our true nature comes to the surface and we will fight and kill to feed our children.
Fish stocks that would otherwise be sustainably fished by other countries are vanishing, thanks to China’s insatiable appetite.
And which countries might those be? With almost 8 billion humans on earth and counting…
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/un-high-seas-conservation-treaty-ocean-protection-spd/
The huge increase in fishing vessels in the 80’s and 90’s resulted in a plateau of wild fish catch, not a huge increase. That is indicative of desperate attempts to catch fish in a depleted system.
Here is a tracking system map for fishing activity.
http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2018/018722/global-footprint-fisheries
And:
In addition, the report informs that for the first time the aquaculture sector’s contribution to the supply of fish for human consumption overtook that of wild-caught fish. At the same time, however, the authors of the report warn that natural marine resources are exploited so much that the whole system is not able to sustain.
https://mir.gdynia.pl/konsumpcja-ryb-i-owocow-morza-rosnie-szybciej-niz-swiatowa-populacja-raport-fao-food-and-agriculture-organization-z-lipca-2016/?lang=en
We have the double edged sword of quickly increasing population and at the same time a doubling of per capita fish consumption since 1960.
Gonefishing
Thanks for the links
https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/
They can monitor the destruction in real time.
Fred
There are many African countries that only fish with small boats and they get no subsidies
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46017359
their sustainable lives are being destroyed by industrial fishing
The hardship endured is beyond most people’s experience
Unfortunately if projections of global population growth hold, then Africa is not going to be even remotely sustainable even if they resort to catching fish with only their bare hands and the hardships they endure now, will only become orders of magnitude greater.
By 2070, the bulk of the world’s population growth is predicted to take place in Africa: of the additional 2.4 billion people projected between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion will be added in Africa, 0.9 billion in Asia and only 0.2 billion in the rest of the world.
Of course that in no way excuses the rest of the industrial world powers, including China, for the crimes of raping the commons by over fishing the oceans!
Permafrost Is Warming Around the Globe, Study Shows. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012019/permafrost-thaw-climate-change-temperature-data-arctic-antarctica-mountains-study
There has been discussion that the permafrost melt wouldn’t be a problem until warming got to 1.5°C. I’m not sure if this was global average or local but either way I don’t see how the system can have a deadband – it’s at dynamic equilibrium. There may be long lags (though it looks like an order of only a decade or so) but equally there are positive feedbacks: a fast one means the heat from the decay warms and melts the surrounding earth faster, slower ones mean the extra GHG increases atmospheric warming, but also increased snow fall prevents heat loss in the winter (there are certainly others).
I’d say even if all fossil fuel burning stopped now we might still be on course for at least 550ppm CO2 and an unknown short term jump in methane, it’s just a question of time. If some of the sinks fail because of warming oceans and soils etc. then it could be higher.
WORLD’S OCEANS ARE TURNING INTO BATHTUBS
“The climate is changing, and we will not like what it looks like soon enough. Massive wildfires, drastic drought, powerful storms, coastal flooding, and mass migration due to all these-along with food and water scarcity-are not futures to look forward to. Neither are the wars that will inevitably result.
Luckily, the [US] president says it’s all a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. His head of the Environmental Protection Agency does not accept the scientific consensus that it’s happening, and humans are causing it. And all of us will have to explain to our kids what the hell we were doing.”
https://ca.yahoo.com/entertainment/world-oceans-turning-bathtubs-142800025.html
Meanwhile,
GLOBAL TRADE WARS AND POLITICAL TENSION UNDERMINING CLIMATE CHANGE EFFORTS
“As world leaders and business figures prepare to meet at the Davos summit next week, the Geneva-based organization said disintegration of international co-operation was the number one immediate risk faced by the world.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/global-trade-wars-political-tension-135500270.html
Norway Celebrates 200,000 Pure Electric Cars
Almost 11% of passenger cars in Norway are all-electric or plug-in hybrid
Norsk elbilforening reports that as of the end of 2018, there are now more than 200,000 all-electric passenger and commercial cars registered in Norway. The number includes about 160,000 new BEVs and about 40,000 BEVs imported as used.
The total number of BEV cars increased in the past year by 41% from 141,951 to 200,192:
Additionally, there are 95,993 plug-in hybrid passenger cars registered (3.53% of the total), which brings the all-electric fleet to 290,983 and 10.7% of passenger cars. The progress is rapid as we just a few months ago reported 10% share.
I think it is safe to say that, Norway is the only country in the world that has a plug-in car fleet that is more than 10% of it’s total car fleet. There is an interesting graphic showing the market share among the pure electrics.
To put things in perspective, it must be noted that 200,000 is just slightly more than the total amount of plug-in vehicles sold in the US in 2017 (361k in 2018) and that figure only represented about 1% of US car sales. A lot of very heavy lifting left to do to make a dent in oil consumption!
In the other hand there is somewhat encouraging news coming out of China:
China Electric Car Sales Soar To Almost 160,000 In December
Sales are in for December
According to data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), China’s new energy passenger vehicle (PV) wholesale volume in December hit a record high of 159,751 units, leaping 62% over a year ago. From January to December, a total of 1,016,002 new energy PVs were sold in the world’s largest automotive market with a splendid year-on-year (YoY) growth of 83%.
Dennis asked “Would you agree that approaching zero environmental impact for 7.8 billion humans will be difficult to achieve?”
Personally, people can have a positive effect on their environment. Just as the squirrel plants the oak tree but also eats the nuts and lives in the tree, we can assist nature, rebuild the soils, help the forests grow, protect the water, and much more.
However, we may never inhabit Mars and live in tin cans in a deadly space environment. We might have to give that up.
If society raised and educated you to be a Riverkeeper or Land Keepers, Forest Steward or Guardian of Species as part of a voluntary or paid (but expected) community system, would you help out and spend time rebuilding ecosystems, cleaning up problems, monitoring and reporting any negative activities? Most would, and it would give them a vested interest in the land and the community. It would give them a view of their connectivity to the world.
However, our educational system teaches us how to promote technology, finance and manufacturing not the world that actually works.
The key with humans is the early indoctrination and education which transmits the values of their culture. Wrong values, wrong results.
Most people do not want to harm the world or cause massive destruction, pain and loss. So whatever number of people are left when the invisible gun to our heads is done, they can value the actual good things in life and leave the “cargo cult” behind.
Read Wendell Berry, E.O. Wilson, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire for starters.
What is so hard about planting a cutting from a berry bush? Then the birds have more to eat. What is so hard about taking your vegetable trash and working it into the soil? What is so difficult about not using toxic chemicals on lawn and garden?
What is so difficult about not making those extra trips.
Everyone can start now and everyone can think of ways to improve nature, their world, can watch for toxic activities, can talk among their friends and neighbors about their activities. It can all start simple and grow, with the overruling thought of helping the world which helps them too.
Society now rewards the destruction, that needs to be flipped around. Society is teaching havoc and loss, all wrapped in a pretty package until one looks behind the curtain.
Basically it is not about us, we are not the center nor important at all. Maybe someday we can be important, but now we are much the opposite (in general) because we were raised, taught and rewarded that way.
Right from the horse’s mouth, an oil company predicting peak oil and production levels in 2050. From 60 million b/d to 120 million b/d in 2050.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Equinor-Sees-Peak-Oil-Demand-Around-2030.html
They never predict zero in 2050. 🙂
Remember from December 17, 2018?
“There’s a massive SSW event in the works over the Arctic, though. This could translate into a newsworthy unpredicted global cooling event in the Northern Hemisphere about a month or so from now.”
It is now one month later. The cold is on the way.
The polar vortex has fractured, and the eastern U.S. faces a punishing stretch of winter weather
“There’s something big driving this signal and it’s tied to the stratospheric warming [or vortex split].”
Once this wintry pattern becomes entrenched, it may be difficult to dislodge.
“These impacts can last four to six, and maybe eight, weeks,” said Cohen, who expects the worst winter conditions to peak in February. After last year’s polar vortex disruption in February, abnormally cold and stormy weather dominated the eastern U.S. in March and well into April.
While forecasters cannot predict exactly how cold it will get this year, where and when big storms will form and who will get the most snow, Cohen said to expect “intense periods of winter weather becoming more frequent including more frequent episodes of arctic outbreaks.”
“planetary-scale pattern”
Yes, Accuweather shows February as about 3F below normal.
Gee Bobby, Tks for the weather update! But it is most definitely not a planetary scale event!
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/recordbreaking-conditions-as-extreme-heatwave-conditions/news-story/e85681a6b3417fcf6ee642fe41649218
Forecasters have cautioned that there is “no reprieve” from the heatwave until at least the weekend as already record-breaking temperatures reach their peak.
Parts of Sydney will swelter into the 40s on Wednesday, just a precursor of a 45C high to come on Friday. Canberra could reach 41C today while 45C is likely in regional cities across New South Wales. On Tuesday, Hay, in the west of the state, almost touched 48C.
An extreme heatwave that poses a risk to even fit and healthy people is now in full swing in eastern parts of the state. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has warned of “oppressive conditions”.
Yes, it’s summer and heat is no stranger this time of year — but this is something else.
The NSW Health Department has said it’s now the worst heat the state has experienced for a prolonged period since 2011, when a heatwave increased the mortality rate by 13 per cent and hospital admissions by 14 per cent.
.
Yes i am copping it right now. It is relentless. Next week another one. We’ve had about 4 this summer, records are breaking. 2017-2018 was the hottest summer in NSW since records began.
I hope that record doesn’t break this year, many people will die due to these prolonged heatwaves. Humidity at night time is 90%+ and air quality is quite low due to high levels of ozone.
Sounds entirely nasty. Hope no fires come.
It is draining. There is a low pressure system coming through the next couple of days. There is a chance of dry lightning, hope not though.
Humidity at night time is 90%+
Damn with those temps and that kind of humidity you are approaching lethal wet bulb temperatures!
Stay cool dude!
Damn that wet bulb temperature is crazy, didn’t know about that.
Thanks Fred.
NSW warming is 1.2°C so far – predicted to be 1.5 to 4.8 and continuing to increase by 2100(though from the chart it looks well above trend and is 1.5 already – maybe localised and temporary). This site is pretty good to show localised past/present/future. This is for Denham NSW (chosen at random). Some islands in the Arctic have warmed 5+ and may go to 15.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-every-part-of-the-world-has-warmed-and-could-continue-to-warm
Thanks for the link George. I am planning to move rural and south coast of NSW, the warming trend will most likely get worse. An interesting non factor is that Australia is slowly moving north-east at a rate of i think around 7cm a year towards the equator thanks to continental drift.
I’ve experienced 45C but in a desert, it was not nice. With 90% humidity, I feel for you. 90% is bad enough at 10C less! You may get some temperature regulation from the sea in a move to the coast but not much help with the humidity. The temperature projections seem to point towards your area becoming unlivable 🙁
NAOM
Grotesque Global Inequity Threatens Ecological Collapse and Horrific Death for All
The ecological and ethical conundrum is this: the comforts associated with consumption are being realized at a greater rate than nature can provide, even as many suffer from want. Either the rich will accept less in order that all can attain some basic measure of human well-being, even as sum consumption shrinks; or we face the final liquidation of nature and an appalling era of ecological collapse before the end of being.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/grotesque-global-inequity/
Electric pulse fishing’ is illegal and it’s turning the ocean into a graveyard — here’s why fishermen are doing it anyway
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/electric-pulse-fishing-hurts-marine-life-used-just-off-uk-2018-12?r=US&IR=T
The World Economic Forum (i.e. Davos) 2019 Global Risk Report is out:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2019.pdf
It’s all quite predictable but no less scary for that. Environment issues dominate for probability and consequence (top right in diagram) as they have for three years now, and impact is given as about the same as nuclear war. I don’t know how they differentiate some of these categories but there are a couple of really complicated interconnection diagrams. They don’t really go into how the risks have quantitatively changed over the years but I’d guess risks like assett bubbles have stayed the same or increased a little, but have been overtaken by huge jumps in other categories. Peak extracted resources don’t really figure that I’ve seen so far from first perusal. The Future Shocks and Hindsights sections are good reading.
There’s a definite feeling that things aren’t going to get fixed and are likely to deteriorate (the 2016 Paris optimism has gone).
Is the world sleepwalking into a crisis? Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening. The world’s move into a new phase of strongly state-centred politics, noted in last year’s Global Risks Report, continued throughout 2018. The idea of “taking back control”— whether domestically from political rivals or externally from multilateral or supranational organizations— resonates across many countries and many issues. The energy now expended on consolidating or recovering national control risks weakening collective responses to emerging global challenges. We are drifting deeper into global problems from which we will struggle to extricate ourselves.
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During 2018, macroeconomic risks moved into sharper focus. Financial market volatility increased and the headwinds facing the global economy intensified.
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Geopolitical and geo-economic tensions are rising among the world’s major powers. These tensions represent the most urgent global risks at present.
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Extreme weather was the risk of greatest concern, but our survey respondents are increasingly worried about environmental policy failure: having fallen in the rankings after Paris, “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation” jumped back to number two in terms of impact this year. The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear. The accelerating pace of biodiversity loss is a particular concern.
Here’s something a bit new: … increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are affecting the nutritional composition of staples such as rice and wheat. Research suggests that by 2050 this could lead to zinc deficiencies for 175 million people, protein de ciencies for 122 million, and loss of dietary iron for 1 billion.
Meanwhile (since you seem determined to focus on negative news),
RUSSIA’S COAL EXPORTS, PRODUCTION HIT 5-YEAR HIGH IN 2018
“Russia’s production and exports of coal hit last year their highest levels since 2013, according to S&P Global Platts estimates of data from Russia’s Energy Ministry. Russian coal exports increased last year by 3.4 percent compared to 2017, to reach 191 million mt—the highest level since S&P Global Platts started collecting data on Russia’s coal industry in 2013. Coal production also reached its highest level since 2013—at 431.76 million mt, Russia’s production increased by six percent in 2018 compared to 2017. Russia plans to invest around $22.4 billion in its coal industry and port infrastructure.”
https://www.rt.com/business/448706-russia-record-coal-exports/
C’mon George, Crisis?! What crisis?!
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-wheeler-epa-senate-20190116-story.html
Andrew Wheeler, President Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate panel Wednesday that he does not believe climate change is the “greatest crisis” and vowed to continue the administration’s agenda of rolling back environmental regulations…
Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who replaced Scott Pruitt to become acting EPA chief last year, faced pointed questions from Democratic senators who sought to cast him as a lackey for the fossil fuel industry and polluters. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who focused on Wheeler’s previous work for a coal firm, described him as someone who has his “thumb, wrist, forearm and elbow on the scales” in favor of the energy industry.
A report published in November, compiled by 13 federal agencies — including the EPA — found that global warming poses a profound threat to human life, the environment and the nation’s economy. It warned that if significant measures are not taken to rein in climate change, the damage from more severe weather could shrink America’s economy to a tenth of its size by 2100.
Asked if he had read the report, Wheeler said he had been briefed once by his staff. He argued that the EPA is already taking steps to reduce carbon emissions, which a recent study found have increased in the last year after years of decline.
WTF!! The Trump nominee for the head of the EPA has just openly admitted at a hearing for his confirmation that he has not even bothered to read a report compiled by 13 federal agencies including the EPA on the profound potential threat to human life, the environment and the nation’s economy posed by climate change and there is no outrage?!
This would normally be the point where I would say something like history will not look back kindly at these people, At this point I believe that such comments are simply an exercise in futility. It is becoming increasingly clearer by the day, that the current US administration, its enablers and its supporters are a clear and present threat to all of humanity and they are traitors to the fundamental values and principles upon which the US was founded, they need to be dealt with accordingly!
I find it ironic the countries want to ‘take back control’ while, at the same time, insist on the availability of a world market (preferably one they won’t get taxed on) and need to import huge amounts of goods just to survive!
NAOM
The folks over at reneweconomy.com.au have been back at work since Monday following their annual holiday break. Here’s a story from Monday:
Booming solar market triples in 2018, set to deliver “Hazelwood + Liddell” by 2020
New data has confirmed 2018 as a spectacular year for solar in Australia, with a total of 3,775 megawatts (MW) installed of large- and small-scale solar installed over the 12 month period – a near tripling of 2017 installations. And things are not about to cool down.
A new report from Green Energy Markets has forecast Australia’s booming solar PV market will deliver a staggering total of 19 million MWh by 2020, which is 10 per cent of NEM consumption and “equivalent to the combined output of the Hazelwood power station (now closed) and the Liddell power station.”
As reported in the final months of the year, 2018 was a record-breaking year across all solar PV sectors in Australia.
I also frequently visit https://opennem.org.au for graphs on electricity production in Australia (somewhat similar to the German energy-charts.de/power.htm). Off the cuff, it would appear that with a peak contribution in the region of 16.8% from solar, Australia only needs roughly six times the amount of solar capacity currently installed for solar alone to eliminate FF use at the best of times, at mid day in the middle of summer. Of course the situation varies from state to state with the state of South Australia, the state with the lowest figures for total production, only needing four times times the currently installed capacity for solar to supply all the power needs at mid day in the middle of summer.
To put things in perspective, the amount of solar currently installed in Australia is somewhere around 11 GW compared to the more than 44 GW installed in Germany as of July 2018. If Australia had 50% more solar capacity than Germany has currently, all of their electricity could be produced by solar at mid day in the middle of summer at the best of times. Bearing in mind that for places like Australia with a generally good solar resource, solar PV is the lowest cost source of new electricity generation currently available. If Australians can ignore the propaganda from the FF industry and elect a federal government more open to doing something about carbon emissions in March, maybe Australia can become a role model for the rest of the world. I can only hope!
Hi, Island Boy
First off, thanks for all the great stuff you post here. You must be putting a substantial amount of time into this work.
Here’s a question you may be better positioned to answer than anybody else here these days.
How do you think the political situation regarding keeping legacy fossil fuel plants staffed and ready to run for the next couple of decades or so is going to play out?
It seems pretty likely that Aussies as individuals and as local communities ARE going to keep on installing solar systems at an incredible pace, but nevertheless fossil fuel backup WILL be necessary for quite some time, probably more than a couple of decades. I can’t see any way around it, considering the price of batteries and so forth. They may need some fossil fuel backup indefinitely, maybe even into the next century.
I’m thinking the likeliest scenario is that the national and or state governments, maybe even local governments, will either buy and operate existing fossil fuel generating capacity, or subsidize the owners to the extent necessary for them to stay in business.
Another possibility is that local or state governments could build and operate numerous but rather small gas turbine plants and keep them ready to run on a few minutes notice as necessary.
As far as solving the storage problem, another option that occurs to me that would go quite a long way would be that the government, national or local, require that appliances be made to operate well on intermittent electricity.
Refrigerators could for instance be super insulated, and include an ice reservoir of say thirty liters or so which would keep food cold for several days. The motor and controls could be built to run on either low voltage DC, straight off panels, or the usual higher voltage AC. This would cost a bit upfront, but with this design mandated, the cost would come down fast as production of the new models ramps up, and there would be a net savings, because the homeowner could get by more easily with fewer panels, fewer batteries, a simpler personal pv system, and less purchased grid sourced juice.
I don’t see any real reason why a new house in such a sunny hot country couldn’t be economically built with a large water reservoir underneath, and this water frozen using an ac system designed to freeze it as well as cool the house.
Then the chilled water could be used to cool the house at night and on the occasional rainy day. Considering that personally owned or community owned solar electricity may actually APPROACH being ” too cheap to meter” , lol, I don’t see any reason this isn’t truly a practical idea.
I don’t know about prices down under, but here I can buy a precast four thousand liter concrete tank ready to fill with water, delivered and set in place, for a thousand bucks. Digging the pit for it is extra, and plumbing it is extra of course.
Considering how cheap it would be to cool a new house this way for likely life of the proud new owner……. I’m thinking the upfront cost would be very reasonable, especially if bundled into a long term mortgage loan.
OR maybe the simpler and cheaper thing to do would be to just pile on the thermal mass and chill the house out a few degrees cooler than usual during the day, so it will stay cool overnight, or even for two or three days of cloudly hot wet weather.
Britain has shifted 30% of its electricity away from fossil fuels in just nine years
Challenges ahead
But what about the decade ahead? Could Britain repeat its success since 2010 and reduce its coal and natural gas generation by a further 30 percentage points? Under this scenario, the country would then generate just a sixth of its electricity from fossil fuels.
It’s definitely possible, but the next decade will be more challenging for two main reasons: the demand for electricity is expected to rise rather than fall, and incorporating ever greater levels of variable renewable generation will need additional flexibility.
To achieve this, new renewable generation – new solar panels, new turbines, new hydro, tidal, marine and biomass generation – will have to replace an estimated 100 TWh per year (about four Hinkley Point Cs) from fossil fuels. That would require a build programme that was broadly 50% greater than the previous nine years.
Given the continued development of offshore wind in particular, this seems challenging but achievable. Solar and wind prices keep falling, which will help. Indeed, the UK’s business and energy secretary Greg Clarke recently said that “it is looking likely that by the mid 2020s, green power will be the cheapest power. It can be zero subsidy”.
What if all these cars were electric?
However, at some point over the next decade, electrical demand will stop falling as electric vehicles gain market share from fossil fuel vehicles, and electrical heating for homes becomes more popular. As an indication of the scale of the transport demand, in 2017 UK cars and taxis travelled 254 billion miles.
If all those journeys were taken in electric vehicles about as efficient as the latest Hyundai or Tesla then total electrical demand would increase by a quarter (over 80 TWh).
These vehicles would need the equivalent of three Hinkley Point Cs to charge them over the year.
A new post is up, OPEC December Production Data, along with a new Non-Petroleum thread.