Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please, thanks.
163 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 3, 2023”
So Musk has for some reason decided to cut way the hell back on expanding the Tesla charging network.
Question:
How much trouble will it be for other parties to use the Tesla technology to build charging stations?
Can other companies get a license to use the tech?
If they can, how long might it be before they can get a supply chain ramped up and start building chargers?
Could it be that Musk has lost interest in Tesla? He’s demonstrated his capacity to destroy the value in a popular product for reasons that are inscrutable but look a lot like a personality disorder.
It may be that he looks at BYD and CATL and knows he can’t compete. He sees that the Chinese EV tsunami may be delayed from crashing upon every market’s shore, but won’t be countered, won’t be stopped,
It may be that he looks at EV charging and understands that electricity is ubiquitous in industrialized countries, and at some point HVDC chargers will be also, so not a scarce commodity, and too competitive to be highly profitable as a business absent government granted monopolies.
A fleet of EV’s is a perfect match for a glut of excess solar energy production, and during the day utilities will exchange free daylight charging for V2G services. HVDC charging will be critical mostly along long distance travel routes.
HVDC lines established along these routes for charging are a transmission grid when interconnected. In the U.S., wireless charging will be embedded in roadways, and Advanced Driver Assistance systems will packet rout cars into lumbering defacto trains. The civilized world will continue to invest in high speed electric rail.
You’re talking sense……. and you may be right.
On the other hand…… Musk may have made some apparently senseless decisions that make sense to HIM. Consider that he’s lost a fortune ( which he didn’t actually need anyway) on Twitter/X …. but maybe he believes owning it, and making it over to suit his own desires, having it as a source of POWER of the political/ cultural kind, makes sense FOR HIM, as a mover and shaker on the world stage.
Billionaires are a dime apiece these days, according to some comedian I heard a few days back.
I’m with you on the likelihood that charging and electric car industries are at a point that the super fast growth stage is over, or will soon be over, and these will be commodity type industries within a few years. So Musk may very well be focusing on visionary projects such as self driving.
In his ambition to win this simulation, selling Tesla robotaxi automation to other EV manufacturer’s would accelerate the total installed base of transport vehicles potentially under his absolute control, ready to transport Optimus Prime and Neural-linked soldiers to points of ground engagement while Space-X satellites and Starships provide coms and air-cover. Xitter is for propaganda purposes of course.
You’re talking the plot for a movie or novel……. a runaway best seller.
I’ve read a few historical accounts that are based on the same general plot…. some individual for one reason or another, out of many possible reasons, wants MORE POWER, and is possessed of the tools to get it. I can’t imagine a better tool than X, or the possession of a few billion bucks, to go in the holster on the other hip of the black hat guy in the cowboy movie. Did you ever see the modern version of Romeo and Juliet?
I may lose some sleep tonight contemplating Musk as the next mad king. Fortunately the odds against him are pretty high……. but then so were the odds against all the other really bad guys making it to the top.
Besides which, I’ve been thinking about writing a novel for my personal amusement……..
With a plot this good, even a hack job written by one of the guys who churn out two new books a month, might sell pretty damned good.
Kings in trouble, kings in danger of being overthrown, have started wars specifically to enable them to muzzle their enemies and take tight control of public affairs….. in effect, imposing martial law to some extent.
This keeps them out of a dungeon, or out of the executioner’s axe or hangman’s noose….. if they win the war.
I wonder how closely I could model all the hot women on the actual hot women involved with trump, how close I could model the men after his various bootlicking supporters, etc.
The reader should be able to guess who each character is based on. I could have a lawyer posing a black man ( to run a scam or something) get into a situation where by his makeup starts coming off…… modeled on America’s Mayor of course, lol.
I heard a recent discussion where some tech experts were speculating about the most valuable growth sectors of tesla going forward were. Three areas got votes- autonomous driving, optimus humanoid robot, and energy management.
The last item it might be worth some time to consider what they are up to. Its a fascinating cluster of innovations. There are going to be many payers in this space, but I think they have a big head start. https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-software
or type in to google- “tesla energy management” to get more facets of it.
Microgrid Controller, Opticaster, Powerhub, Autobidder, …
“Human development has ushered in an era of converging crises: climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socioeconomic inequality. This review synthesizes the breadth of these interwoven emergencies and underscores the urgent need for comprehensive, integrated action. Propelled by imperialism, extractive capitalism, and a surging population, we are speeding past Earth’s material limits, destroying critical ecosystems, and triggering irreversible changes in biophysical systems that underpin the Holocene climatic stability which fostered human civilization.”
It’s as honest and thorough review of our predicament as possible and there is no pretence that technology will allow continuing with BAU. Well worth a thorough reading rather than a quick skim through. Their proposed solution is:
“A critical paradigm shift must occur that replaces exploitative, wealth-oriented capitalism with an economic model that prioritizes sustainability, resilience, and justice.”
I am fairly confident that is not going to happen, and if it did it would only be after a global event of extreme and sudden violence that killed several billion like a pandemic, war or co-ordinated uprising; so I don’t know where that leaves us all. At some level I think the authors must bee pretty uncertain as well, but see no alternatives.
It does highlight overpopulation, which has been rare but is maybe changing (although Prof. Rees’s treatment when he raised this would tend to discourage others), as well as overconsumption and shows how almost every issue is getting worse and that most negative data is under reported.
“Even as the vast majority of countries pledged to slash their climate emissions, their own plans and projections put them on track to extract more than twice the level of fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting heating to 1.5°C, and nearly 70% more than would be consistent with 2°C of heating. The world has a 67% chance of limiting warming to 2.9°C if countries stick to the nationally determined contributions …”
As the pathway projections have not yet included an explanation for the sudden warming of the last two years I’d guess the percentage is much lower than 67% and the expected warming to be higher (more towards 4 degrees). No rich nation is meeting its promises to meet net zero (which rely on non scalable carbon removal technologies anyway) and most are in the process of electing governments that will do even less. The current Asian heat wave is a foretaste of what’s to come.
Maybe someone could help me understand why many people focus their angst on capitalism as being a root cause of all ills when discussing these topics. Are other economic systems truly less damaging to the environment?
I suppose that any system that enforces slower growth would slow down the ‘human bulldozer’. Yet slower growth or contracting world stuck on coal and wood doesn’t sound less damaging to me.
Do people in non-capitalist economies have less children per capita?
Seems like the best system would be some kind of social democratic regulated market economy which governs against the externalization of costs, both public and private, but allows private business to compete for profit against each other, and against a public option that plays by the same rules.
Tax all financial transactions, and counter the regressive nature of this by providing a universal basic minimum income which is based on some fixed percentage of median income and wealth.
I doubt species going extinct owing (mainly) to human population overshoot, on a warming planet, spend a lot of time debating the pros and cons of various political “systems”. But who knows, learn to talk to elephants or dolphins and mayby they can enlighten you.
Doug. Policy decisions at every level (yes even in your own home) have everything to do with outcomes.
“The “one-child policy” is a name given to Chinese government laws for controlling population growth. According to estimates, it prevented about 400 million births in the country. Introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, the policy was enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions.”
They did this not protect elephants and dolphins. It was for their own sense of what was in their best economic interest, right or wrong. Its the common theme in the realm of humanity, regardless of whether they are classified as capitalist or something else.
It absolutely doesn’t help even if humans, like other species, will have a general tendency to grow. This, though, is more looking at humanity through the lens of the culture you’ve been raised in, like most people now, because of the West’s imperialist past.
China, for instance, did not think to go rampaging around the globe and colonise places when it could have readily done so pre-European expansionism. There is nothing inevitable about neoliberal economies.
If you want to see a good example, look at the Aral Sea from its tenure under communism to what happened under a free market liberalised economy one.
I don’t agree with the assumption that China could have gone on an empire building binge in historical terms. China was so big, in general terms, that the powers that were ( as opposed to todays the powers that be) had their hands full just fighting each other for control of China….. with the other nearby nations in those days having little or nothing of any serious value to China… with China unable/ unwilling to put together a big enough military enterprise in those days to make it worthwhile trying to subdue small neighbors.. who after all only had more of the same of what they ALREADY had……. I’m painting in very general terms, very fast of course.
Now that China is unified, and under good control by the existing powers that be, and industrialized, so that empire building is a PHYSICAL possibility….. they’re going for empire.
You need transportation, supplies, weapons, ships, planes, organization, WEALTH, in effect, in order to invade other countries. China now has those things…… including fifth generation fighters, a working aircraft carrier, nuclear bombs, a robust industrial base capable of building tanks and missiles, etc. Plenty of everything, excepting such items as oil, natural gas, metal ores, etc…… things which can be either bought……. or ….. seized by force.
I’m not actually saying in so many words that China is our greatest actual or potential enemy.
I’m just pointing out that this may be the case.
Zheng He’s fleet easily dwarfed any formed by the European powers at the time, and the Ming dynasty had 200 million under its control at height. They absolutely could have been expansionist if they so wished, especially given this was a very stable period for looking outward from domestic affairs.
While humanity has been making the biosphere suck that little bit more since we climbed down from the trees and doubly so after wiping out the Neaderthals, there are cultures that have accelerated this trend. Rome and Alexander the Great or the Moors and Genghis Khan for instance.
I guess if we go by the maximum power law, those that take advantage of their resources to bootstrap getting more, tend to over represent societies historically as they outcompete and conquer them. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma writ large.
Something that limited China compared to what happened in the UK later on, was that the coal fields weren’t close to the population centres.
That too. Though Rome not only had coal, they had basic steam engines. For some reason they never had anyone invest in utilising such for expansion of industry, which would have helped given their truly massive mining industry.
Hickory,
Capitalism has a problem with capturing the externalities as a cost of production, pollution, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, etc. These are the costs that are now manifest in the environment and are becoming a negative feedback. The delays inherent in these feedbacks also does not provide a market signal that would make alternative investments attractive when the investment decision is made. What type of economic system could do a better job has been a subject of academic discussion and some models have been explored, the topic is at least as old as Garret Harding’s essay on the commons. The externalities of pollution, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, etc are incremental in nature, microeconomics costs at the individual producer level always look attractive when these costs are ignored and passed along to society and the biosphere. Any system that addresses this issue must internalize these costs at the producer level. An example is a law that requires coal burning utilities to place scrubbers on their stacks, or including the decommissioning cost of a mine or nuclear plant into the current cost of the product. Other issues with capitalism involve incentives and disincentives. These are more an issue of how the taxes of the system are structured, An example is a tax on productive labor, while capital equipment is depreciated and a tax write off. Subsidies of course play their role but are not unique to capitalism.
It seems to me that unregulated, or poorly regulated, capitalism has many huge problems associated with it including lack of pricing in externalities and the propensity toward great disparities of wealth.
Yet any other system also has big problems.
Any system that optimizes for human economic success will be destructive to the biosphere considering our massive scale. Is that not true?
Policies of restraint are generally not tolerated by populations or rivals for long.
Capitalism leads to rent seeking. Rent seeking leads to profitability crisis. This is all ancient history and was a big part in the rise of fascism in the inter war years (the March on Rome was funded by industrialists worried about profits falling).
It’s a terrible ideology and it is always doomed to fail. Exactly as it is now.
“A critical paradigm shift must occur that replaces exploitative, wealth-oriented capitalism with an economic model that prioritizes sustainability, resilience, and justice.”
I am fairly confident that is not going to happen, and if it did it would only be after a global event of extreme and sudden violence that killed several billion like a pandemic, war or co-ordinated uprising; so I don’t know where that leaves us all. At some level I think the authors must bee pretty uncertain as well, but see no alternatives.”
I will argue that there’s at least a good to strong possibility that as things get progressively worse, some governments will realize it’s literally do or die time, and react appropriately, to the extent they can, to save whatever can be saved.
It’s not as if the nincompoop R politicians in this country don’t understand the reality of hurricanes, droughts , floods, depletion of oil fields, etc….. it’s just that they don’t BELIEVE in a coming hard crash, or else they don’t give a damn, expecting to do just fine for themselves, and their best buddy donor/owners in any case.
Remember that after Pearl Harbor, a hell of a lot of people in the street, and in politics, went from isolationists to warmongers within a matter of hours.
Even as screwed up as things are today in American politics, if large majority of people in the hard sciences were to come out with evidence that the shit will be coming hard within a matter of weeks, rather than years or decades, the dumbest trumpster politician, excepting a few like MTG, would stop to consider the evidence…… and it wouldn’t take very long for Congress to get behind the President and start working on wartime measure policies that MIGHT save our collective asses. Even a hard core Baptist tends to believe his physician when he says the fatal heart attack is on the way any day unless he gets the stents and the drugs etc.
Maybe the whole world will go down more or less in short order with little or no warning. I can’t say it won’t. Plenty of people believe it will.
But some of the better governed, richer countries might be able to do enough to save themselves from a crash and burn landing.
If the people of the USA were to come to an understanding, not too likely, but not impossible by any means, and go to a war time economic and political economy, we might be able to produce enough food for all of us to eat, enough oil to get food from farm to table, keep cop cars running, keep hospitals open and cops on the road, etc…… even though tens of millions of us would be unemployed, and tens of millions of us would have to switch to other kinds of work.
Austerity, blood, sweat, and tears are infinitely to be preferred to a swift death from violence or a slow death from starvation and exposure.
If we were to put a few million people back on the farm, and do whatever is possible to raise new tropical crops,as the climate gets worse, and move our current production of staples north or to higher elevations, we could probably maintain grain and vegetable production sufficient for all of us to eat, assuming the climate doesn’t go totally nuts. ( We could all eat on maybe a fourth of our total production right now, by eating down from beef to beans.)
If we were to spend fifty percent of what we currently spend on the MIC, we could have wind, solar, batteries, electric cars and light trucks, etc out the ying yang…. plus other storage from pumped hydro to compressed air, etc. I’m not saying this is necessarily a good idea, given the current day balance of power, I’m just pointing it out.
The price of one new cheap automobile is probably enough to get you half or three quarters of the way to energy self sufficiency in most houses in this country. The price of one nice new car appears to be enough to get to net zero above and beyond normal construction and or maintenance costs.
A hell of a lot of us naked apes are going to die hard before this century is out. But that doesn’t necessarily mean some or most of our own Yankee naked apes don’t have a shot at pulling thru. Ditto some Aussie, Canadian, some South American apes, European and Asian apes don’t have a shot too.
If you had a job, you had a roof over your head, and food in your stomach, back in the Thirties…… when my parents were kids. I can’t think of anything we have today that is ESSENTIAL to our survival that we didn’t have back then, excepting a couple of items such as imported natural rubber. We figured that one out pretty quick.
We could probably SURVIVE, in a planned war time economic scenario, without any imports at all, given time to make the necessary adaptations. Lets not forget that during times of war, Uncle Sam, or BIG BROTHER, or Comrade Stalin, or Chairman Mao, can tell you what to do………. and you’ll do it, or wish you had….. assuming you’re alive to wish at all.
The Union of Concerned Scientist wrote a Warning to Humanity many years ago (1992). It was pretty stark, to the point as i recall. Didn’t see any politicians taking notice, or hardly anyone for that matter. We are no different than the Easter Islanders who cut down every last giant palm tree to help move their carved stone Idols, but could no longer build the ocean going fishing canoes their population needed to survive. No difference at all between us and them, humans after all. We will fight amongst ourselves for the scraps, just as they did.
Essentially nothing that is written on this board is new since those 1700 scientists signed this warning 32 years ago. No i stand corrected, it is different, it is worse because we have not done nearly enough to get of the BAU track, squandered 32 years. Their warning is becoming our lived reality.
I agree the overall situation is dire in the extreme, and that nothing will be done to save what we can.
But the Easter Islanders didn’t have much if anything at all in the way of an educated elite of scientists able to communicate freely and spread the word.
I repeat…… the dumbest Bible thumping hillbillies I know go with their physician, rather than their preacher, well over ninety five percent of the time when the physician says the operation is literally a do or die issue. Jesus is relegated to Cap’n Cheerleader for the physicians.
There can and may come a time when technically educated people who are current day hard core right wingers, in terms of environmental issues, etc, come to see the light in absolute and total clarity……. that sea levels are rising, having ALREADY swamped a few key cities, that super storms and super droughts are getting to be the rule, rather than the exception, that small hot wars about access to oil, gas and coal are threatening to morph into grown up hot wars, that it’s ( gotten to be) hot enough that they don’t go outside anymore when they visit their homes and offices in down south, etc etc.
This sort of people have CLOUT when it comes to talking to bankers and politicians. I couldn’t tell my now deceased brother a lot of things he would accept as true if he were still living, due to his lack of formal education, wise man though he was in most respects.
But I don’t personally have any problem at all believing what my sister who has spent her life in ICU departments tells me about personal health issues strange to me…… because I’ve never met anybody suffering from them. I believe her… just as she believes me when I talk to her about the realities of industrial farming.
Short version, organized, educated, complex societies are very slow to react to NEW crisis situations, but they’re very good at dealing with old, known crisis issues. Hence we have huge MIC just in case we might HAVE to have our MIC.
Half or more of our leaders won’t listen to scientists, collectively, until they are literally FORCED to do so.
What I’m saying is that there may come a day, will come a day, when even an MTG will have to admit the climate has gone nuts.
The question then becomes as follows.
Is it too late to go proactive to save some significant portion of our current day industrial civilization ? Is it too late to take collective action?
By the time this day arrives, it will be too late, as many of us believe, for electrified transportation, etc, to save us from runaway climate, etc.
But it’s possible that the renewable energy industries, etc, may have by that day grown up to the point they can save our current day way of life for SOME of us.
The population IS going to crash, for one reason or another.
And Mother Nature’s treasure chest has already been pretty well plundered, for the most part……. but it’s not yet EMPTY, and there’s maybe enough treasure left for a few people, or a few countries, to pull thru the coming crash with the lights still on.
This could potentially be a game changer old tech updated within a decade or so, unless I’m mistaken, because there seems to be plenty of old salt mines or coal mines or even oil and gas wells that could be used for this purpose. The total storage potential is probably enough to make a really big dent in the intermittency problem with wind and solar….. assuming of course that it eventually gets built.
Maybe we have ten or twenty years to implement new technologies and change our ways to accommodate ourselves to lower energy, more sustainable lifestyles.
Maybe we don’t. Maybe we’re at about the point at which there won’t be much if anything in the way of new energy and or conservation policies and industries.
Or maybe……. some good, or at least better, new (in terms of scale} things will dominate in within ten years, such as electric cars and light trucks.
Or maybe a big blackout would result in some political ass kicking than in turn puts easy subsidies within reach of homeowners as well as wind and solar energy companies….. resulting in a quick doubling of renewable electricity and storage for the same.
I personally believe without a doubt that there’s a hard crash built into our naked ape future, and that it’s very likely to come within the next fifty years or so.
We are all pretty much agreed that the crash is coming, and that we’re seeing early but real signs( hot war, desertification, pandemics, flooding, crop failure, depletion of minerals issues,) things are starting to fall apart, are already falling apart.
So ……… how long might it be until things deteriorate to such an extent that even a trumpster would have to admit it’s real,that it’s not a demo/commie plot to run his life and take away his freedoms.
Thanks in advance for the opinion of any and all regulars here as to how long it will be before things get to the point even a trumpster realizes the poo poo is in the fan, for real.
My own guess is that things won’t get to this level of bad within less than a couple of decades or so nor longer than another four or five decades here in the good ole USA. ( They’re obviously already this bad or worse in many parts of the world.)
Maybe it changes things….. maybe not. Matter of opinion. Probably depends as much as anything else on HOW MUCH time passes before the shit is well and truly in the fan.
A country with a robust wind and or solar power industry, and sufficient storage, will be fairly well insulated from shortages of imported natural gas for electrical generation and space heat… and to a substantial but lesser extent insulated from the need for imported oil if electric cars and light trucks come to dominate in the motor vehicle market. There’s a possibility that given time some forward looking countries will electrify their trucking industries to the point they don’t need much oil at all… by putting rail back into the picture on the grand scale.
A hell of a lot can come to pass, or to be, within two or three decades……. and we may have that long before it’s simply too late to make some serious changes.
The game isn’t over, it’s still in the early innings, and it is possible that a crash and burn scenario can be avoided in some countries for quite some time….. maybe indefinitely.
This Hydrostor is a stupid idea. Why not just use the underground cavern as the lower dam in a pumped hydro situation?
All they would need is a reversible generator/pump turbine, that are already being used for pumped hydro, then generate power when the water falls into the cavern, then use excess solar or whatever to pump the water back up to the top reservoir. No need for an air compressor or heat exchangers or other equipment that all reduces efficiency of the operation.
Notice they don’t say anything about efficiency or cost as per usual for these boondoggles..
The weakness of all these plans to build more of whatever, is just that, it means a whole lot more energy used in the new mines, new processing facilities, new factories, new heavy vehicles transporting it all, new roads from remote mine sites, new port facilities to allow for more ships involved in the extra shipping all the raw materials around the world, and on and on…
It makes the ‘base’ of energy use much higher when implemented on a world wide scale, destroying a lot more of the environment in the process, releasing a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere in the process, as it’s all built with the energy from fossil fuels. ALL of it has a limited lifespan due to entropy, so will all have to be replaced on an ongoing basis. The underlying assumption is we will continue to add more and more, no-one is promoting we get to XYZ twh then stop..
I also hear about how we will recycle everything, yet again no numbers about where the energy comes from to build all the recycling facilities, the extra transport needed to collect ‘everything’, then the new facilities to separate items, the new machinery in all these new facilities etc.. It’s never, ever just one extra bit. We live in a complex system made up of complex subsystems, all using massive amounts of energy to build, maintain and operate. one addition on a world wide scale adds lots to most subsystems, but no-one wants to know about this complexity as it destroys the argument of just adding more XYZ.
The conclusion is we get to the stage when we have passed peak oil production, in our mad attempt to build more, with the world needing a higher energy supply base, that will still be mostly supplied by a higher fossil fuel use (to build it All!).
Why is it so difficult for people to understand the concept of building more XYZABC or whatever, doesn’t just mean more subsidies to make it happen?
It ALWAYS means more mines, more factories and more use of fossil fuels to make any of it happen on a world wide scale.
How about looking at the numbers involved in the concept of MORE, instead of just looking at whatever extra subsidy is needed?
The only numbers that count are the energy to build it, build it all, not just the one bit you are thinking of, but all the extras needed to make it happen, especially oil as that is what we go past peak in first.
Plus for a change also look at the extra damage done to the environment, in terms of species loss, CO2 gain, by the mining, processing, transport, manufacturing and deployment of solar, wind, nuclear, EVs, batteries, pumped hydro, hydroscams or whatever.
We have a world of less in our future, yet so many here seem to think the best answer is to use up what we have faster, by creating more damage to the remaining natural world in the process, then appear shocked as the situation gets worse, from the building of MORE.
OFM, you keep referring to a ‘war footing’, but don’t consider that the US had virtually unlimited energy available to build whatever they wanted back in WW2 days. At some point going forward we will be in a state of less energy available, sometime soon, when oil production starts falling year over year. It doesn’t matter what a government tries to implement, if the energy to build whatever ‘new’ is not there, it has to come from somewhere. Despite outlawing many things to free up enough energy, the next year, there will be less again and so on into eternity once our oil production starts shrinking.
Unfortunately people will vote for whoever promises MORE, even at the expense of ‘others’, which means eventually we get back to the war footing, to take from ‘others’ by force, firstly internally via Hitler’s example, then externally. That’s been humanities history.
Perhaps the coming collapse was the only path of human history possible, as human denial of a bad future, by failing to look at the total system and cooperate with each other on a species wide level, was always inevitable.
Hideaway has made his mind up, and no amount of argument or evidence is going to change his beliefs.
But I will point out for anybody who cares to consider my beliefs, one that I’m not saying there’s any guarantee of success, but rather that SOME people in SOME places may pull thru if they work together and make the necessary sacrifices.
Nobody has yet posted his personal opinion on how long it will be until things are LITERALLY falling apart in unmistakable fashion…… until there’s no food in some stores, the grid is down a lot in a prosperous country, there’s riots in the streets in LOTS of communities rather than a very small handful, as is the case today in the USA….. until there’s SERIOUS rationing of gasoline, etc etc.
We have some time to adapt, some time to change our ways, and when the time comes that we MUST, we’ll most likely still have enough of the critical natural resources to give it the old school try.
In twenty years peak oil will be way back there in the rear view mirror. But who is to say there WON’T be enough oil to run the American economy……… if we’ve switched to electric cars and light trucks, and put most of our heavy shipping back on trains?
It’s quite within the realm of possibility that we can run plenty of trains, and trucks using power from overhead lines down to the trucks on some major highways, and get our essential shipping done with a rather minor percentage of the oil we use on a daily basis, as of today.
I have easily organized my own personal consumption habits so that I don’t use very much at all in the way of disposable goods. I don’t use paper towels.. real ones are easily laundered in cold water with a bit of laundry detergent, and dried in the sun. I don’t eat a whole lot of highly processed foods……. hardly any, as a matter of fact.
I don’t do more than maybe ten or fifteen miles a week of non essential driving……. meaning any driving other than what’s needed to keep my little farm functioning. I get my groceries when I have to go to town anyway to get some hardware, etc…… which I’m now getting mostly by way of FED EX or the post office, except when time is critical.
My house is big enough for a family of five or six, easily. I won’t be occupying it too many more years, sad to say, but true. The road in front of my house was built back in the twenties and thirties…… and upgraded quite a bit since then……. but even a complete repaving job all the way to town won’t cost more than a VERY minor fraction of building a new equivalent road…. and with the population shrinking, within the next few decades, we won’t be needing much in the way of NEW roads, lol.
We won’t be needing much in the way of NEW houses , or apartment buildings, or shopping centers or airports. We’ll have to maintain existing water, sewer, electrical grid, other essential services…. but there won’t be much needed in the way of EXPANSION of such infrastructure after another twenty to thirty years or so.
And even though we may never actually go to a wartime planned sort of economy…… it’s likely that we can and WILL have some tough, even draconian regulations involving fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, a luxury tax on oversized vehicles……. appliances that use half as much or even less energy than the ones we have today……..
And let’s forget the doomer bullshit talking point about providing a rich western lifestyle for nine or ten billion people.
The doomer faction itself is telling us the population is going to crash. The survivors from richer more powerful countries will inevitably take what they want from survivors in any country too poor to defend itself. War can be a VERY profitable enterprise, assuming you win decisively and at low cost.
Survivors in a country such as the USA or Canada may have a century, or even two or three centuries, to figure out how to live well in a world depleted of cheap easily mined minerals, etc.
We currently have the capacity to build heavy duty trucks, loaders, drilling machines, etc, by the millions of tons annually…… with such machines being used mostly to build roads, shopping malls, etc. We can build more than enough of them to run mining and manufacturing industries for a long time to come.. and we’ll have diesel fuel enough for them for a long time to come, once we come to realize we have to ration it to essential industries.
Hint, hauling potato chips, soft drinks, and beer don’t fall into the ESSENTIAL category. Ditto horse trailers, ditto thirty or forty foot pleasure boats.
We will be able to get along, if we must, with half or less the current number of cars and trucks, maybe even a lot fewer than that. Autonomous cars will likely be a reality within another decade or so. Once they’re available in large numbers, we’ll need eighty or ninety percent fewer cars and light trucks…. and they’ll park themselves at charging stations anytime they’re not in use.
I have plenty of firewood, free for the exercise involved in harvesting and burning it……. but I typically let my fire go out, and wake up in a chilly house…… but I’m snug as a bug in a rug with an electric blanket that pulls only twenty or thirty watts. as opposed to running a heat pump that pulls hundreds of watts to maintain a constant temperature.
I do drive a gas hog old truck, but not very often or very far. I used to keep a compact car to save miles on the truck, and some gasoline, but I gave up the car as costing more than it saved a few years back.
If I live long enough to get another truck, it will probably get double the miles per gallon of the one I have now.
And in the event I might meet a couple of people who want to live a highly self sufficient live style, I’ll be glad to teach them how they can easily grow most of their own food, provide for their own water and sewer, etc.
Sure this is a LOT of work…… but it’s an option available to tens of millions of us Yankees …….. if that many turn out to be seriously interested in doing so.
Giving up is not an option. Just maintaining a dignified way of life for another generation or two is well worthwhile. There may be a few game changers within that time frame.
Actually Hideaway is one of the few here who has not already made up his mind. He looks at each case objectively on its merits, and can analyse it with some skill. Unfortunately those analyses always show things are worse than originally thought. It is an ad hominem fallacy to attack him because you don’t like his answers, you need to address his arguments to the same level of detail as he presents them, which I have so far not seen anyone even attempt, rather than some, as he says, “arm wavy”, motherhood statements and wish fulfilment.
Wrong think cannot be tolerated. The Green New Deal is what our betters have deemed is good and proper, so deferring from that is heresy. As it is with any mainstream narrative in the news.
Honestly, liberals gobble this thing up and think that the authoritarians on the right are different. There’s no actual left or truly progressive movement that will take hold and break away from this kind of “actually, Biden is better than Trump, so this is the best we can get” kind of mental disease.
I think about how genuine change via someone like Corbyn could have come about, but it got strangled in the crib, so lol. Guess we have far right or centre right liberal ideology of BAU and growth forever (for capital) to choose from. Awesome.
We really are just going to drive off the cliff at a higher speed than even I thought a decade ago.
OFM
Do more research critical infrastructure manufacturing has been offshored. Your entire premise is hypothetical based on what was not what is. The Yankee ingenuity won’t be saving the day because resources are to diffused.
Pay mor attention to what Hideaway is saying. Do your own research.
Do you support Biden’s U.S. industrial policy objectives?
“The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are key pillars of a transformative industrial policy platform.”
“Domestic content standards are protections that help ensure federal spending supports domestic production and manufacturing by requiring the federal government to purchase American-made products and recipients of federal funding on construction projects to use inputs made in the United States. As a result, strong domestic content and sourcing requirements further incentivize investment in American manufacturing and infrastructure, helping to prevent good jobs from being sent abroad. The Inflation Reduction Act’s, the CHIPS and Science Act’s, and the IIJA’s domestic content standards are an important step toward upholding these standards.”
But now our Mittelstand firms are under massive pressure … These small and medium-sized family-owned firms—lots of them specialist engineering works or makers of machine-tools, auto parts, electrical equipment—are really important for Germany. They’re mostly owner-managed or family-run, meaning they’re not listed on the stock exchange and often have quite a rugged character. But they have their own sort of business culture, focused on the longer term, the next generation, rather than quarterly returns. They’re embedded in their local communities, often doing business-to-business trading. They want to retain their workers, instead of exploiting every loophole, like the big corporations—of which we have plenty, too.
But Mittelstand firms have been under pressure for a long time … German governments, prodded by global capital, have been tightening the conditions under which they operate.
As ever you nail it yet again and I am glad that George Kaplan Has spoken out in your favour. Ther are many on this blog that cannot or will not accept reality. The laws of thermodynamics are immutable, and no amount of crackpot ideas is going to prove them wrong. Apart from unrelibale wind and solar there are those that now think that geothermal energy and tidal energy will be the next saviour of mankind. Hmm.
OFM is never short of opinions and there is much I agree with his vision of the future and much that I do no agree with, especially as he appears to be in favour of resource appropriation so that the good ol’ USA can continue with BAU for a while longer. As the dutch would say , ” He is East indies deaf”, only hearing want he wants to hear. Others might say groupthink, or cognitive dissonance. Never does OFM step up with plausible evidence, just arm waving and his trusty I believe’s. The hydrostor was a classic. Anyone with a basic undestanding of physics would realise that this approach would have a poor roundtrip efficiency, and to, marginally at best, boost efficiency the compressed air would be heated by a thermal store from the heat of compression of the air. Once again this is a nice try but the energy gain at the turbine will be minimal. The power output will be governed by the air mass flow, not unlike the air mass flow through a wind turbine. That means you will need a lot of air. One numpty idea I found was to combust the the air prior to entering the turbine, making the whole shebang a gas turbine, in which the compressor fed a storage tank. Some mothers do have them.
Then there is the geothermal energy plans for bountiful energy. Once again the efficency is conveniently ignored. There are several configurations, but so far no one on this blog as gone into detail. There are some very good papers on the subject but all would no doubt be above the comprehesion of many on this blog. I admit they are not an easy 3 minute read.
If you bother to look at these papers you will note several points:
Vey rarely is steam produced, it is mainly hot water that will flash into steam when the pressure is reduced. The hot water must be tapped at signficant depth and generally from basement rock (granite) There should be communication between the production well and the injector well. The well bore is genreally sighificantly larger than an oil well. A 17.5 MW facility requires a mass flow of about 15 tonnes per minute. About 10% of mass flow is flashed as steam which drives the turbine. The flashed steam is at about 11bar, which is LP steam at a around180 deg ( hot water was 230 deg C and 28 bar) and steam mass flow of about 23 kg/sec. Overall thermal efficeincy is about 10%.
To get a mass flow of 15 mt a minute is going to need some rather large mutiple well bores for the producer and injector wells. There will also be a make-up water requirement which will require treating to avoid scale formation. The produced water when flashed will also probably deposit scale so that there will be other costs. How long the well bore life will be is a guess, but produced water is likely to have high salinity.
Without spending too much time on the economics this looks to be a very high investment , and probably high maintenance. If it were economically viable it would already be in widespread use, and that goes for just about any process. All that is required is a subsidy.
As for tidal energy I am not going to waste my time as there are no operating projects of note. Just crackpot ideas. Again, all that is required is a subsidy.
That brings me to a quote by Upton Sinclair, ” You cannot make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it”.
OFM has made many unsubstatianted claims of future energy production, future fuel use, electrification of highways and rail, and above all recycling. Apparently everything can be recycled, even wind turbine blades. I would be intrigued to learn about the recycling of composite wind turbine blades and would ask that he provide me with sources of information and better still the location of recycling facilties.
Carnot…. “If it were economically viable it would already be in widespread use, and that goes for just about any process.”
Very simply put and exactly correct. The mere fact that every alternative to fossil fuels, including nuclear needs some type of subsidy, tells nearly all of the story. None of the alternatives are anywhere as cheap as fossil fuels to give us the useable energy required by our modern civilization.
Whenever any of us state this simple reality, all the promoters of renewables, geothermal, nuclear or whatever, immediately descend upon ‘us’ as fossil fuel shills or whatever, and completely ignore the reality that they are leaving us as well.
We have mined all the easiest to get fossil fuels and rely upon increasingly complex technology to gain access to the remainder. It’s a situation that clearly can’t last long term anyway and what we currently use is having a hugely negative effect on the environment, the only environment we know we can live in.
Despite decades of increasing ‘alternatives’ to fossil fuels being manufactured, the quantity of fossil fuels used, is at record high levels. This clearly would not be the case if ANY of the alternatives were ‘better’, as in cheaper, at producing the energy required by our modern civilization.
We don’t have a different civilization, we have this one, with multiple highly complex interactions between multiple millions of complex subsystems, that has grown over 200 years to the complexity of today with increasing energy use the whole time. It’s delusional thinking we can change one major part of the system without causing multiple cascades of changes throughout the system.
We don’t have one problem of too much CO2 into the atmosphere. We have multiple problems all arising at once (into our attention at least). Fossil fuels have a falling EROEI meaning less energy available for civilization. We have used all the high grade minerals, meaning we need to mine much lower grades than were economic in the past, meaning a lot more energy and materials required to mine the same quantity as before.
Despite destroying or seriously damaging just about every ecosystem on the planet, which is highlighted by every statistic on animal, insects, fish, plants numbers, diversity, species number and any other metric looked at, the only answer humans can come up with is we nee to mine a lot more, destroy a lot more fauna and flora by building roads to new wind turbines, solar farms, giant transmission lines, new mines, new processing plants and new factories to build an ‘alternative’ to what we currently use, without realising we do all this building with fossil fuels.
If none of it can happen without the use of fossil fuels, there is NO long term future in it at all, because the burning of all the fossil fuels to build it, just increases the climate problems, while gathering all the minerals destroys more of the natural world.
The reality is if we didn’t want a horrible crash and collapse of modern civilization, then a smart species would have worked out we needed a different path to MORE, many decades ago. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that we misnamed ourselves and should drop the ‘sapiens’ bit.
There are very few of us that want to think about the entire system, as it means modern civilization is not possible in perpetuity, just like every other civilization that has ever existed on this planet. Just because our civilization is gargantuan compared to every prior civilization that collapsed means ours will likely fall much faster, because of the multiple interdependencies and the main source of energy we totally rely upon.
It’s much easier and far more comforting to think of changing one aspect of modernity, with a hand wave, to believe in a happy ending with a future of modernity for everyone, and the occasional wind turbine or solar panel in the background on a nice sunny day, while food and goods materialise like magic in the supermarket.
Any new process will not already be in widespread use. In 2008 there was not very much tight oil production and lots of people claimed that if it were economically viable it would already be widely produced. Those folks were wrong. The technology that is proposed used the recent tight oil and shale gas fracking and drilling advances.
You are not the only person who has studied thermodynamics.
Keep in mind that in 1860 not a lot of petroleum was in widespread use as an energy source, so obviously it was not viable.
To a degree you are correct. When I was a mud logger MWD (measurement whilst drilling) was in it infancy. This led to geosteering, logging whilst drilling, horizontal laterals and extended reach horizontal laterals (of sorts) with fracccing and proppants. This was evolution of an age old technique. The early frackers used explosives.
But the big question is did these new techniques use more or less energy per recovered barrel. What additional resources were were required( pipe, water, proppants, chemicals, water disposal, drill cuttings, energy). Drilling and casing a 3000 metre vertical well IS and will remain cheaper than a 3000 metre vertical depth well with 3000 metre of horizontal lateral, multi staged cluster fracked and propped, with production tubing all the way to the surface. What about the EROEi. It obviously depends on the resource but simple wells are normally drilled into permeable, porous formations.
This is akin the the ore quality issue with metals. Declining ore quality requiring massive investment in mining and much higher energy input. What happens if a few years when shale rolls over? What are we going to do?
Technology does advance all the time but there are limits. How deep can we dig a mine? How big can we build a wind turbine? How will we produce fertilizers?( we can make ammonia but we can only mine K and P). What about fresh water?
Like Hideaway I was brought up with LtG in the 1970’s ( and I have met Meadows). Yes I work in the oil and petrochemical industries but I have always accepted that they are finite, and much is just wasted. Why do people want a 200HP car? Why do Tesla produce 400 HP EV’s – bonkers. These are the selfish people.
There are millions of people , both sides of the Atlantic who have no intention of reducing their profligacy. They buy useless gadgets, expensive watches, clothes that are worn a few time, vacations 3 x per, year. I could go on. These are the people that will accelerate the collapse, and these are the very self same people with little in the bank.
I fear for the future of mankind, but the survivors will be those that live a frugal lifestyle in a remote location, well away from cities.When the rot really sets in there will be no functioning government, a collapsing infrastructure, lawlessness and pollution on a scale that is unimaginable.
I will repeat what I keep saying. Climate is not the immediate problem. Resource depletion and overpopulation is.
Oh, and by the way the population in 1860 was under 1 billion and whales were being hunted to extinction, just like now with offshore wind turbines and shipping degrading their environment.
University of Massachusetts-Amherst Mechanical Engineering and also Statistical Physics in the Physics Department.
I was not referring to my knowledge of thermodynamics, just pointing out there are many experts in that field, many of them work on these energy projects. I am no expert, just took 2 undergraduate semesters of thermodynamics and a semester of Statistical Physics, decades ago.
Just pointing out that the claim that “it would be in widespread use already” if it were viable is nonsense.
In 1860 there wasn’t anything to use that petroleum. The move to oil based society was decades away at best. We’ve been an electrical society for nearly as long, so that argument doesn’t hold water.
I know there are guys here who think that the worlds people should not make the effort to develop and deploy energy sources other fossil fuels, or vehicles other than internal combustion engine powered.
Just let everything run on down (now that they have had their fill).
Sorry, but that is not how the story is going to play out.
Good luck with recruiting people to your dwindling campfire. Perhaps Ted Kaczynski could tell you bedtime stories.
In the meantime, 8 billion other people are going to keep at it. Soon it will be 9 billion.
And so it goes.
You each could have stopped 50 years ago.
Hickory,
This is exactly correct, which is why we collapse Everyone wants to believe in the fairy tales of a bright green future which is not physically possible.
Instead of trying to make a softer landing we will crash hard as oil production peaks, declines, then decline eventually accelerates to the downside. During this event of the accelerating decline, whenever that happens sometime in the near future, is when our modern civilization collapses because of all the feedback loops that invoke cascades of failure throughout the system.
Humanity has chosen to collapse in the future, by ignoring all the warnings..
Can you give us some specific mechanisms that would help move in that direction?
Thank you.
somewhat related, If you want to be constructive about ecosystem protection this is solid effort to get behind- 30 x 30
“For the first time in human history, the world has come together with a common goal to protect nature. In December 2022, over 190 countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (also known as The Biodiversity Plan) – an international commitment to better protect the planet that sustains us all.
The framework includes 23 targets aimed at reversing habitat and species loss. Target 3, colloquially known as “30×30”, specifically calls for the effective protection and management of 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas by the year 2030.
Put simply, 30×30 is the biggest conservation commitment the world has ever seen. To date, more than 190 countries have committed to achieving the global goal.”
Here is cumulative crude plus condensate production for the World with a projection to 2100 (cumulative output of about 2800 Gb in 2100). At the end of 1950 cumulative crude plus condensate World output was about 56 Gb.
Dennis, what’s the relevance of these projections? Aren’t you the first to say there is a 100% chance your projections are likely wrong?
It’s most likely we wont be able to gain access to a lot of the last few hundred billion barrels of oil due to lack of technology in the future when systems start breaking down.
The top model makes the ridiculous assumption that the rest of the world’s economy works normally and uninterrupted in a world that has gone from growing oil consumption for over 100 years to one of declining production, year over year, right when the world’s population is at maximum and still growing, where the grades of ore mined to make every machine used, has fallen greatly and is falling at an accelerating rate. This when the proposed alternative to oil, needs huge quantities of mined minerals, which will take an accelerating rate of energy use, mostly diesel to gain access to!!
During the last hundred years of oil production growth we have had massive efficiency gains, using all the ‘easy’ gains as oil became more expensive. In mines we went from 40 tonne dump trucks to 400 tonne dump trucks, however we wont go to 4,000 tonne dump trucks because we have reached metal fatigue tolerances.
We can increase metal strengths by adding lots more tantalum or niobium into metal alloys but these are rare and mined in relatively minor quantities, but they wont get us to 4,000 tonne dump trucks. We cannot ramp up production of specialist rare minerals either without vastly increasing oil use in the process.
Follow the system thinking for a change instead of one aspect. We have vast, complex, seemingly minor parts of the system, that are never accounted for in simplistic graph projections of the future, of one aspect.
Hideaway,
I use Dennis’s projections to temper my thinking about the timing of the long descent. You believe more in the Seneca Cliff as the negative effects of decline feedback into lower industrial production. Your view is more in alignment with LtG modeling of the BAU case, Dennis is more in alignment with the CT case of technologies moderating the decline. Neither of you can predict the future, and Dennis openly states this. Both views are valuable. My own view is that the truth probable lies between those two cases, at least thru about 2040, between 2040 and 2050 I think we would begin to have much more difficulty replacing the first wave of “renewables” that are being installed now and the decline rate of FF will really begin to bite. Of course Climate change and resource wars could be negative wild cards.
As Dennis has expressed even he has been too conservative in his earlier forecasts, and I have been surprised by how long the road that we kick the can down has become. Timing wise I have been always early to the parade.
That is also how I see these things (what Tom said).
And to reaffirm what has been said previously, these issues are going play out in wildly different ways in various parts of the world, and sometimes in the very same valley just separated by a hard border.
That part of the story is the big one, and the challenges and remediation actions for one area will likewise vary wildly. For example, PV deployment may be of marginal benefit in UK whereas it is a very sound operation in California. Overall, most places will have to deal with rapid contraction when they can no longer import all of the basics so readily as has been the case in a world that has defied finite limits up to now.
Careful of painting the picture with too big a brush.
You tend to focus on oil in your comments, so my charts focused on that. Yes my predictions of the future are certain to be wrong, this applies to everyone’s predictions. There are an infinite number of possible futures, one of them will occur, which is not possible to foresee in my opinion.
The problems you state have been occurring over the past 150 years, how fast oil, coal and natural gas output decline depends on many factors, perhaps you can give us your prediction for oil and we can see whose guess is more accurate?
You often state that there was a huge use of energy in the past, the cumulative oil chart shows that for oil the steep ramp began roughly in 1950. On a per capita basis oil consumption increased significantly from 1950 to 1972 and since then has been either decreasing or relatively flat.
Note that the 2800 Gb scenario is pretty conservative for C plus C output. Oil use can decrease as transport gets electrified. As mining becomes expensive, costs will increase and substitutes and recycling will mitigate the problem, also World population is likely to peak around 2050 and could decline and reduce the need for mining and energy use.
For fossil fuel and non-fossil fuel per capita energy use we find that the increase in non-fossil fuel primary energy use per capita was higher than the fossil fuel per capita increase from 2004 to 2022 (4 GJ vs 2.5 GJ). We will likely see non-fossil fuels replacing fossil fuel over time.
Dennis…
“we find that the increase in non-fossil fuel primary energy use per capita was higher than the fossil fuel per capita increase from 2004 to 2022 ”
No they didn’t, this is a complete fabrication that you repeat over and over.
Fossil fuel use, whether total or per capita increased in use a lot more than non fossil fuels over that period of time. We went through this several weeks ago, but it seems you want to believe it, so keep repeating this falsehood…
From V. Smil and Statistical review of world energy (formally BP) are the following numbers
Fossil fuel use in 2022 137,237Twh, 2004, 106,795Twh. The increase from 2004 to 2022 being 30,442Twh.
All from Our world in Data online.. Please go and check for yourself!!
That’s over 30,000Twh INCREASE in the 18 year period for fossil fuels. Divide this number by however many people to get per capita..
World total energy from all non fossil fuel sources in 2022 as electricity was 10,427Twh.
This includes Nuclear, Hydro, wind, solar and ‘other renewables’.
It doesn’t matter how you cut the numbers, whether you divide both by 8.1 billion or just use the raw numbers, 30,000Twh is always more than 10,427Twh!!!
Mind you the numbers for non fossil fuels are just the total raw numbers, I have not subtracted the 2004 numbers at all, because the GROWTH in fossil fuel use since 2004 is greater than all the renewables and nuclear combined at present.
In my method of math calculations, 30,000Twh is about 3 times as much as 10,000Twh, and always will be.
Nuclear and Hydro were around 5,500Twh in 2004, subtracting just this number from non fossil fuels energy would bring the increase in non fossil fuel energy gain from 2004 to about 4,500Twh.
There is nearly a magnitude difference in total primary energy added to the world since 2004 of fossil fuels over renewables.
We have only been able to build the renewables because of this huge increase in fossil fuel use. When fossil fuel use starts falling with a vengeance our ability to make new renewables will also fall precipitously, because they are all made with fossil fuels!!
I use the information from the Statistical Review of World energy only.
Population is found from Primary Energy and Primary Energy per capita tabs. Then we take coal, oil and natural gas consumption and add together to get fossil fuel, divide by population to get fossil fuel consumption per capita than deduct this from total Energy per capita to find non-fossil fuel production.
You will find my charts are exactly right if the data in the Statistical Review of World Energy is correct.
These are facts, you are wrong.
Hideaway,
You were wrong earlier, I explained why, I guess you don’t know how to use a spreadsheet. I will try again, but perhaps you do understand and are the one repeating false information. Keep in mind that population grows over time.
Population has grown since 2004, so the denominator is smaller in 2004 (6.47 billion) than in 2022(7.98 billion), perhaps you were not ware of this. So in 2004 fossil fuel consumption per capita was 59.4 GJ (384.5 EJ/6.47 B) and in 2022 it was 61.9 GJ (494.1 EJ/7.98 B). For non-fossil fuel consumption per capita in 2004 it was 9.42 GJ (61 EJ/6.47 B) and in 2022 it was 13.78 GJ (110 EJ/7.98 B).
Fossil fuel increase in per capita consumption=2.54 GJ (61.9-59.4) from 2004 to 2022 and non fossil fuel increase in per capita consumption= 4.36 GJ (13.78-9.42).
It’s no surprise to me that Buick comes in right up there with Toyota, and better than Honda, on repair and maintenance expenses. This is an open secret among people really into getting the most transportation bang out of their car dollars.
I’m willing to bet that gasoline prices rise faster over the next decade or so than electricity prices. EV’s own the future.
“China’s EV sales now over 50%” is one of the most popular headline articles there.
Referring to sales for the first 14 days of april 2024, where a good mix of electrical vehicles and hybrids according to this source made it to 50% of sales a little over 1 million vehicles on a monthly basis. The chinese are flooding the market with EV’s and hybrid cars at the moment. I see it at my local car dealership shop, where pure chinese manufacturers like BYD now price compact SUV’s with 60 kwh battery capacity (lithium iron phosphate) very low. At least 100 000 NOK or 10 000 dollars lower price for that kind of model compared to what it would have been a year ago. Well, poltiticans in Europe and the US asked for electric vehicles and here they are. The pace of what happens in China in any area continues to amaze.
The EU and US authorities are fuming over the prospect of cheap Chinese EVs flooding the market. I think you should consider that, actually, they don’t really care about the planet, but actually something else.
Otherwise yeah, you’d be fully onboard with having the workshop of the world make masses of cheap and efficient small vehicles for the masses. Wonder why they aren’t.
Of course you are correct about EV in the US. Luxury EV’s allow the wealthy to do virtue signaling which is very important in saving the Earth. I think that market is almost saturated.
In the US we have 5 million EV, China over 25 million and climbing rapidly. In the US we do not have the capability to fully recycle Lithium batteries. I have some old lithium bike batteries to recycle, the nearest place that will accept them is a 2 hour drive. We have a state law that says if a store sells Lithium batteries they must accept them at end of life, but it is not enforced. Their are a couple of firms looking at build and launch lithium battery recycling in the US and the the US Dept of Energy has a research facility aimed at optimizing the process, so there is some progress. The battery powered hand tool market in the US is $6 billion per year market, growing to $9 billion by 2028, it is a fairly mature market churning out millions of Lithium batteries per year with no capability currently to process the dead batteries. In the US I cannot conclude that we are really committed to a transition (even if it isn’t truly sustainable) it is more a muddle along, let the market figure it out, politicians putting lipstick on the pig.
“In the US I cannot conclude that we are really committed to a transition”
True, primarily because we have lots of fossil energy and therefore lack much motivation. This is a big difference between the US and China. They are big energy importers and they are fully conscious of the vulnerability. And so they have worked hard to build massive non-fossil generating capacity, battery industries, and EV industries.
Economic Motivation, and a measure of focused foresight/longer planning.
WOW the world is saved. Forget population overshoot, deforestation, species extinction, increasing heat, microplastics, etc. Just think about EVs and how the world has been saved. Must be nice living in a one dimensional universe.
Dealing with micro-concerns perhaps keeps us from going insane. The plastic-straw fallacy. Nothing we can do to stem the tide of the entire world from raising their standard of living so we think about chipping off the edges.
My own drop-in-the-bucket suggestion is to connect all dead-ends and cul-de-sacs with paths so that at least an e-bike or human can get from point A to point B without having to circumnavigate a la Magellan.
a estimate of countries with the highest population decline in 2023 …….note japan at 0.4 % of 125 million approx . equates to roughly 50, 000 fewer people per year
A forecast…….. I’ll await the data.
Here is the problem that EV fanboys fail to understand. Gasoline usage does not directly correlate to oil usage with regards to EV production and use. An EV actually takes more oil and FF energy to make than a comparable ICE (see Volvo study). The Net reduction in carbon footprint is in the last approx. 15% of its life. This is very dependent on how the electricity to charge the EV is produced. How is it possible that if we are to accelerate EV production that we will not consume more oil in the short term given their carbon payback schedule and break even point. The small handful of EV’s produced and sold 8 to 10 years ago are now only beginning to make their contribution to Net energy use, since we are now producing an order of magnitude more, how is it possible to see a reduction in oil and FF use???? It is simply not logical! This is were the wheels fall off, pun intended.
The energy used to produce a vehicle does not need to come from oil and may come from non-fossil fuel energy in some cases, as the World moves to non-fossil fuel sources of energy more of the energy used to produce a vehicle will be non-fossil fuel energy.
For the past decade World fossil and non-fossil fuel energy consumption have both grown by about 35 EJ, but the percentage increase for non-fossil fuel has been about 47% (from 75 to 110 EJ) and for fossil fuel the growth has been about 7.6% per decade. We may see a gradual replacement of fossil fuel.
Note that this is the period where EV production has ramped up (2013 to 2022) and fossil fuel consumption has increased at about 0.75% per year vs 4.1%/year for non-fossil fuel.
Note the scale from maximum to minimum on both the left and right axes is 50 EJ.
“This Hydrostor is a stupid idea (develop storage of electricity as compressed air). Why not just use the underground cavern as the lower dam in a pumped hydro situation?”
Maybe a little bit of nitpicking, but the situation is probably different in different countries. In Australia there is so much land and elevation to choose from. Pumped hydro is doable and there are several projects going on that I am sure that the ones from Australia are aware of. In the UK, there are some expansion projects in Scotland. But there are definitely limits for what can be done, and using salt dome mines to solve that is not the normal solution. It is at trial phase some places it seems, not unthinkable at all, but still a big ask to find the right location in the UK. So, in that scenario I support that the UK grant some some subsidies to see how far the Hydrostor idea or any other adjustment of that idea can go.
There is already focus on interconnector cables and the upgrading the grid to make most out of offshore wind in that country, and to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels in that regard. It is not ever likely to be zero reliance, but a low ratio will do.
The realists around here need to get the message out to US electricity companies that they are making a big mistake! According to data from the IEA’s most recent Electric Power Monthly US utilities have installed just over 3 GW of new generating capacity so far this year (January and February). Roughly 70% of this was solar PV, 25% was wind and 5% was batteries. In January 14 MW of natural gas fuel cell capacity was installed as well as a 2.2 MW natural gas fueled internal combustion engine.
It looks at how sudden and large scale environmental disruptions, specifically climate change, will impact mass extinctions through co-extinctions, especially in complex food webs. As far as I can tell five degrees warming at about the current rate will be equivalent to, or worse than, one of the previous big five extinctions in terms of loss of complex life. The authors do say their model is much simplified, but the results seem consistent with available observations. As most species loss is currently due to habitat loss, which is only partly due to temperature change and more a result of mono-crop agriculture practices, plus pollution and invasive species are having an effect on par with climate change, then presumably an actual mass extinction event is possible at lower warming.
It says: “Co-extinctions reduce the robustness of planetary life to catastrophe.” I increasing think that species extinction is the most serious threat that humanity faces, particularly because it is so insidious and difficult to quantify, especially in its immediate effect on us (unlike the photogenic impacts of extreme climate events).
From the point of view of the maximum amount of warming produced by CO2 emissions all that matters is how much total oil, gas and coal is burnt. Therefore from this one teleological aspect the only measure that counts for renewables is how much of those fossil fuels they (renewables) are causing to be kept in the ground. And I’d say the answer to that is: none. Therefore by this one measure they have so far been worthless. Whether they have such an effect going forward is arguable but I have seen no trend to indicate they will. Temperatures over the last two years are increasing two or three times faster than previously seen and CO2 concentrations are increasing as fast as ever. There may be some deceleration in the rate of increase of emissions but that seems to be more an impact of slowing of some large economies from a couple of percent growth before Covid to recession or only a few percentage points growth now. No posting of links to some minor improvements in EV technology or a tiny growth in recycled materials can change those data points.
I think many of those peak oil aware, especially long term, see renewables primarily from the perspective as a direct replacement for oil and gas as they begin to deplete, hence an over emphasis on personal EVs even when they represent a small proportion of total fossil fuel use, even in rich economies. I can see no argument that shows we would not have been much better off spending all the time and resources used on EVs to expand public transport (better infrastructure, better health, more disposable income, lower pollution, lower habitat destruction etc.) and yet there was really zero chance of that ever happening.
In the wider world renewables are ultimately just treated as another way to make a living with no particular environmental significance (however much politicians and industry chiefs may virtue signal otherwise). Hence they are always going to be treated as add ons to fossil fuels and will simply keep on increasing human kinds’ environmental footprint (aka overshoot) until something exogenous stops that from happening, and that will definitely not be some collective altruistic “choice”.
A lot of the comments here are just attempts to deal with the remarkable changes in technology we’ve been through in the last few decades. This change is accelerating, and it is not at all limited to the energy industry.
The economics of the energy industry have completely changed since 2010. The renewables industry isn’t a bunch of hippy dreamers trying to save the world, it’s high tech putting the fossil fuel industry out of business. It’s already happening, for better or for worse. Name calling and doomsterism isn’t going to change that.
It doesn’t matter how long an industry has existed or what benefits it brought. Once new technology replaces it, it dies. Changes in prices upend assumptions about which solutions are viable.
Alimbiquated … “. The renewables industry isn’t a bunch of hippy dreamers trying to save the world, it’s high tech putting the fossil fuel industry out of business. It’s already happening, for better or for worse. ”
People being “put out of business” means their sales are drying up because there is something better. Can you explain your comment in terms of why fossil fuel production is at record levels if it’s being put out of business??
Can you explain why gasoline usage is growing in China despite 50% of sales being EVs??
Can you explain why the Adaro Aluminium smelter in Indonesia to provide Aluminium for solar panels and EV bodies is being powered by new coal power plants?
If there was a word of truth in your statement of renewables “putting fossil fuels out of business”, then none of these things would be happening, but in the real world fossil fuel use is increasing and increasing in greater quantities than renewables over the last 18 years..
There is a huge difference between dreams and reality. Everyone advocating for MORE renewables is really advocating for more business as usual, which means more renewables built by an even greater quantity of new fossil fuels, doing all the work to make it happen, and you clearly don’t realise it. Nothing is being replaced on a world wide scale, they are all just additions to overall energy use and environment collapse.
This is in line with what I’ve learned from Art Berman: there are no “replacement” fuels, only add-ons to existing fuels. We burn more biomass then ever, even though coal was supposed to have supplanted biomass. We burn more coal than ever, even though oil and natural gas were supposed to have supplanted coal. And so, we will continue to burn more oil and gas than ever [until we can’t, of course, following peak], even though Alimb. dreams of “renewables” [ha] and “green tech” [ha] supplanting oil and gas. I think we are all in for big surprises . . .
Getting a free lunch tends to increase ones appetite for more. I make little raisin whole wheat rolls for me and the grandkids who are 2 1/2. They’re half way through one with a mouthfull and they ask for more. The idea that non-fossil electricity will reduce total fossil consumption doesn’t seem realistic to me.
LEEG The idea that non-fossil electricity will reduce total fossil consumption doesn’t seem realistic to me.
It could if non-fossil is cheaper.
When streaming music appeared, first with Naptser and later with Apple ad other streaming services, demand for physical music media collapsed and never recovered.
Nice anecdotes, but the plural of anecdote isn’t a synonym for data, even when followed by double question marks.
Gasoline consumption has peaked in China.
Investments in renewable power plants are more than six times as high as investments in fossil fuel power plants. In addition there is a massive investment in the grid and storage, much of which is aimed at improving supply in a renewable world.
Alimbiquated … “Look at the investment in new power plants worldwide.”
You don’t understand the problem do you? The “investment” you are talking about is more burning of coal, oil and gas, in every aspect of building the factories that the solar panels are made in, building new factories for the extra silicon, glass, copper and aluminium. This will take huge quantities of concrete, then there are the new mines, the new shipping, new trucks etc. ALL of it takes a lot more burning to make, before one new panel is made. Then a huge constant supply of raw materials and operation of the new factories, churning out mountains of new stuff onto diesel powered trucks…
All for adding to power supply that is only 20% of all energy used in the world, plus unlike fossil fuels that also give us massive quantities of products as well, solar and wind give us just electricity.
In 2023 solar and wind contributed 3934Twh of electricity while the world used an extra 121 Million tonnes of coal over 2022 use (IEA).
Explain how any of the new renewables are replacing coal please. We have had solar and wind at increasing rates of installation for 4-5 decades, yet the use of fossil fuels keeps increasing. Nothing is being replaced on a worldwide scale.
All that is happening is a higher base rate of energy use is happening every year…
HIDEAWAY —
No idea what you think you are talking about but it doesn’t have anything to do with what I was pointing out — that investment in fossil fuel electricity generation is falling and renewable electricity is rising. That means that the fossil industry is being squeezed out of the electricity business by the renewable energy industry. If the current pattern of investment continues, there will be a shift towards renewables in the future
Whether that means more or less energy in the future is an interesting question, but not what I was talking about. Also saying that the future didn’t happen in the past doesn’t mean the future won’t happen in the future. You’re all over the place.
And this isn’t just hopes and dreams. It’s happening whether I want it or not, because the money is going towards renewables, not to fossil fuel driven steam turbines.
Did you even look at the chart? Since 2019, about $2.7 trillion has been invested in renewable electricity generation, totally swamping fossil fuel generation investment. Power plants need constant investment, so the inevitable result is that fossil fuel electricity generation will decline. These are investments that have already happened, so they won’t require additional investments in the future to have an impact. The buck already stopped, so to speak.
That there is any investment in fossil power plants means the industry is not being driven out of business. As has been frequently pointed out fossil fuel power needs a lot less up front investment to get operating than renewables, it is one of its big advantages. The costs are spread over the lifetime to buy the fuel; such as the huge amount of investments that are going into the LNG required to keep existing power plants operating, to replace existing sources. A lack of discoveries is a bigger threat to oil and gas industries than renewables. Renewables are just trying to fill the gap when natural gas and coal can’t, provided outside subsidies and existing fossil fuel based infrastructure are enough to make them economic
GEORGE KAPLAN That there is any investment in fossil power plants means the industry is not being driven out of business.
Ah I think I’m starting to see what the problem is.
No, power plants don’t run forever after the initial investment. They need constant maintenance. That is investment. To keep the fossil fuel industry alive you have to spend enough money on maintenance to keep the power plants running.
As you can see from the charts I provided, investment in fossil fuel power plants is significantly lower than in renewables. Strictly speaking, this tells us nothing about whether the total fleet is growing, shrinking or staying the same size. But it does tell us that the percentage of the fleet that runs on fossil fuels is declining. And the fact that fossil fuel investment is declining while renewables investment is growing means that this trend is accelerating.
In addition, coal and gas provide about half the electricity worldwide, but renewables are getting six times the investment. To me that is a strong indicator that the fossil fuel fleet is aging. Shrinking is the next step, unless investors change their minds. But the longer they wait, the less viable the existing fleet will become.
Meanwhile, the price of renewables and batteries continues to fall. Why should investors rethink their positions?
In the world post 2008, sure, investment in REs was going to the moon. But we are not in that world anymore.
See also the failed auctions in the UK in the last six months with ZERO takers for the gov’t expected normalised pricing for green electricity projects. If they can’t sell the electricity and make a profit, that should tell you something about the economics of the situation currently.
Companies have said that the cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates, while the maximum price they can charge for the electricity they generate has been relatively low.
The removal of ZIRP as an environment is also why the tech sector in general is suffering. People actually have to consider what they throw money at now, making the app economy of the last few years with bullshit valuations and “move fast and break things” mentality over profitability somewhat unsustainable. This hits especially hard at infrastructure investment too if those projects aren’t locked in at lower rates.
But removing the interest rate hammer will lead to even higher inflationary pressure, sooo…
World coal consumption (measured in exajoules) has been flat for about the past decade after it had grown by about 52% in the previous decade.
Coal was mentioned so I did coal. Yes Natural gas consumption is up. Non-fossil fuel energy consumption is up by a similar amount over the past decade (2013 to 2022) as all fossil fuel consumption (about 33 EJ for both from 2013 to 2022).
Non-fossil fuel growth was about 4.1% per year over the past decade, I expect it will accelerate to about 5% per year and perhaps to 7% per year (similar to long term growth in oil consumption from 1933 to 1973). Lets take the 4.1% growth which is very conservative based on the history from the 20th century.
In the next decade with an assumed 4.1% annual growth rate, non-fossil fuel energy consumption grows by 55 EJ while total energy consumption grows by 70 EJ, so only 15 EJ of fossil fuel growth in output is needed, the following decade (2033 to 2042) non fossil fuel consumption grows by 83 EJ while total energy consumption grows by 73 EJ, so for this second decade fossil fuel consumption decreases as it is replaced with non-fossil fuel energy.
By 2055 half of primary energy consumption comes from non-fossil fuel and by 2076 fossil fuel as an energy source falls to zero (fossil fuel may still be used for some material inputs where alternatives cannot be found).
Another transition scenario “b” is added to the chart below, the non-fossil fuel scenario is based on the recent trends for wind and solar power consumption growth with other non-fossil fuel energy consumption assumed constant from 2023 to 2055. Wind and solar power growth is assumed to gradually decrease over time from recent growth rates. Non-fossil fuel energy consumption grows at an average annual rate of 6.4% from 2030 to 2053 and then slows in scenario “b”. The scenario “b” is compared with the scenario presented earlier (where non-fossil fuel annual growth rate was 4.1% per year). Reality might be between these two scenarios, but note that the growth rate for non-fossil fuel consumption for scenario “b” is lower than the growth rate in World oil consumption from 1933 to 1973, so a the faster decline in fossil fuel consumption might be possible. Some might argue that scenario “b” is conservative, but it looks optimistic to me.
There have been claims/worries expressed here that there is not/will not be enough fossil energy available to build non-fossil generating sources.
I am very skeptical of that notion, having the sense that the non-fossil energy production systems consume a relatively small amount of current fossil fuel global combustion load. And that this is a priority use of fuel combustion.
This assumes that people generally desire to avoid the the scenario of relying solely upon depleting fossil fuels.
Hideaway,
Thanks again.
Shining the light of truth again by simply looking objectively at the facts. ALIMBIQUATED trying to label the facts as “doomsterism” is simply living in denial, trying to marginalize the voice of reason, allowing his closed mind to return to the dream state of the accepted BAU narrative.
I have just completed a reading a review of the life cycle analysis studies of EV’s. They do have the potential to reduce GHG emissions, as in fact each individual EV does reduce GHG emissions during its lifespan, provided it lives long enough. Unfortunately Total GHG emissions and all of the other associated environmental ills of industrial production have only INCREASED since their introduction. This is because we continue to grow total energy use and industrial production. IF we had done all of this with ICE and NO “renewable” energy I believe a strong case could be made that the situation today would be even worse. So, have they made a contribution, yes. Here is the simple unvarnished truth of the matter: The green solution must also embrace a strategy of degrowth to be successful. NOW. This is unlikely to occur until it is forced upon us by depletion of resources and degradation of the Earths carrying capacity for life. This is commonly referred to as collapse. This is not a prospect I enjoy thinking about. It is not “doomsterism”, it is an objective view of the prospects for my own children and it scares the hell out of me.
How is the death of the energy industry BAU? I am not claiming that the world isn’t changing. Doomsters claim the world is on the wrong path and can’t change so it is doomed. You’re stuck in the 20th century.
I make no claims about whether we are all doomed. I do claim that the fossil fuel industry is.
The world is changing very quickly thank to improved manufacturing, materials and information technology. The ideas touted here that only raw materials matter is just silly. You don’t get a camshaft or a Rolex by dumping a bucket of oil onto a crate full of iron ore. That’s not how the world works at all.
Tom
I have long held a view similar to yours, human nature will drive us to collapse. It will be a messy, drawn out affair, faster in some places , slower in others, but in the final analysis a similar outcome for all because folks will move to the places with the best quality of living they can find and if the ones already there try to defend it they will spend so much on defense that their quality of existence will be no better than that of those trying to move in.
Kicking the can will last longer than any of us foresee at the moment ( barring catastrophic events). How long before offshore oil reserves in California, and Florida are tapped? Arctic oil even if only on a seasonal basis? Natural gas reserves in New York? Oil reserves under major cities? Geothermal power investigations get publicity these days, investigations into in-situ combustion of uneconomic coal reserves to generate power, not so much.
Most people are really reluctant to die and will hang on despite desperate circumstances. North Americans could get by with a lot less food, and a lot less variety in their food with out suffering greatly. At the peak of the Roman Empire, the average male was 5’4” tall, which says a lot about how much protein was in the diet.
I am reminded of a story told to me by a Finn who was a schoolchild during the second world war. There was no gasoline, so the loggers in his local village had rigged up a furnace on the back of their truck and used it to pyrolise wood and they ducted the pyrolisis gas to the air intake on the engine . He and other children used to catch a ride to school on the truck, and since the truck ran rather slowly on that fuel supply they just jumped off as they passed the school. On one occasion the furnace was really producing and the truck was running too fast for the kids to jump off, the loggers were joyful, and refused to slow down as the school approached, so one of the kids stuck his notebook on the air intake for the furnace. The kids jumped off accompanied by curses from the loggers.
For most of the old folks on this site Carpe Diem is the life style chosen ( myself included) and if you accept that we cannot alter the course of human behavior, a sensible choice. For our children and particularly grandchildren it becomes an issue of simple survival and in a future where perhaps one in ten will survive, what can be done to improve their chances?
During the pandemic lockdown period, I decided that the best I could do for them was to write up what I believe is coming up in the hope that they will recognize signs of deterioration and be early movers to protect themselves.
It will be up to them.
Old Chemist
Thanks for that. Some wisdom and sound advise for me to chew on there. I don’t want to be dragged into defending a position that will only be proven by the passage of more time than I have left!! Carpe Diem, with a nod to simplicity is how I intend to role. Fortunately I live in a beautiful place, one of the last great places.
Dennis, renewables have been with us for decades, and it’s the long term trend world wide that counts. The trend of both fossil fuels and renewables have been up in every long term trend, nothing is being replaced by anything else, as Tom stated upthread, even biomass burning is up a long way over a couple of hundred years.
We make all of it with fossil fuels, so to accelerate renewable growth means accelerating fossil fuel use to do it, leading to a much higher base of energy use for humanity on a decade by decade scale.
We wont be building more renewables when we have less fossil fuels, we’ll be building less as the manufacture of renewables will have to compete for a dwindling supply of energy needed, just like every other sector.
The economic output per unit of fossil fuel energy has been decreasing for years. Eventually population peaks and declines and real economic output either flattens (if output grows at the same rate that population declines) or perhaps if output and population reach a steady state, in a fully developed World with no population growth or decline.
In any case we don’t know what the future will be but the chart below shows historical fossil fuel energy consumption divided by real GDP in constant 2015$. Output per capita grows at about 1.5%, when population decline reaches 1.5%, economic output might reach a steady state. In the mean time fossil fuel use per unit of economic output will continue to fall as fossil fuel use is gradually replaced by non-fossil fuel energy.
Also keep in mind that energy costs are not all that high at present which does not really suggest dwindling supply relative to demand.
Dennis, “The economic output per unit of fossil fuel energy has been decreasing for years.”
Yes we have been having efficiency gains for decades, it tends to hide the problem of using a finite resource, I’ve raised this myself before, we have used the easy efficiency gains, like 40 tonne mining dump trucks going to 400 tonne dump trucks, but we wont be going to 4,000 tonne dump trucks.
The other effect of efficiency gains is of course Jevon’s paradox in that more oil gets used by a wider section of humanity..
Dennis … “Also keep in mind that energy costs are not all that high at present which does not really suggest dwindling supply relative to demand.”
I agree, I think the world will go on exactly as it has been until we get to the point of an acceleration in the decline of oil production, I’ve stated this many times.
In the not so distant future, we get to the point where we pass maximum possible fossil fuel production, starting with peak oil, where production will fall year over year after that point. This is a totally different world to what has existed over the last 200 years where the quantity of fossil fuels produced has always been able to grow.
Thinking that human ‘growth’ can continue ‘as normal’ in such a situation is beyond hubris, considering we clearly know we have mined all the high grade easy to get ores that we constantly rely upon. The mining of these minerals will become far more onerous on the available energy, so somewhere in the system there has to be massive contraction, despite only ever 15% of humanity gaining the modern western lifestyle.
A 1.5% decline in population is nowhere on the cards while the world continually adds around 80 million new people every year.
Every answer you ever give is a handwave, like we’ll recycle everything, yet never any numbers of how much energy this will take to build from almost scratch. Where does the energy come form to do it?? Where do all the new trucks, sorting plants and processing plants come from, in a world of less energy?
Likewise how do ‘renewables’, batteries and EVs increase in a world of less energy when we need to mine a lot more lower grade ores to build just the first generation? Where does the energy come from?
Hideaway,
Jevon’s Paradox is a situation where cost decreases due to efficiency gains and the usage of a good increases as a result, it assumes demand for the good in question is essentially unlimited. For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive, if cost for fossil fuel starts to fall it will be due a lack of demand for fossil fuel so many of the assumptions underlying Jevon’d paradox will not be met and it does not apply.
What you seem to not realize is that we have been producing a lot of stuff with less and less energy despite the obvious fact that fossil fuel resources have been depleting and will continue to do so. As prices for scarce materials rise there will be an increased incentive to recycle as it may become chaeper than mining scarce materials. Also some substitution will occur (for example fiberoptic cable and aluminum will replace some uses of copper in communications and electric power).
This is not hand waving, it is history.
The handwaving comes when the claim is made that there won’t be enough fossil fuel to accomplish a transition to non-fossil fuel for energy use. I expect the future will be different than the past just as you do, but we expect different future scenarios, nobody knows which future scenario is the correct one. And all of these involve sets of assumptions most of which will prove incorrect whether those assumptions are yours or mine.
The energy comes in part from a large fusion reaction that occurs at a safe distance (about 93 million miles). The fact is that fossil fuel use per capita has been falling since 1972 (this includes oil, natural gas and coal). As we move to non-fossil fuel sources of energy there is far less waste heat produced and primary energy needed per unit of GDP is reduced.
Also much of the energy will initially come from existing fossil fuel infrastructure as needed, there is plenty of coal, oil, and natural gas resources to accomplish the energy transition to alternatives to fossil fuel. As the fossil fuel resource depletes and becomes more expensive (if there is adequate demand,) the transition to fossil fuel alternatives will accelerate.
Eventually a lot of the fossil fuel resource will be stranded as the price will fall to a level that will not justify the extraction of the more expensive resources.
On 05/10/2024 at 7:50 am Denis Coyne wrote: For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive, if cost for fossil fuel starts to fall it will be due a lack of demand for fossil fuel so many of the assumptions underlying Jevon’d paradox will not be met and it does not apply.
This interpretation ignores the possibility that competition from renewables will moderate demand for fossil fuels, (resulting in a reduction in cost for them), and that the total production cost is inelastic. My feeling is that fossil fuel prices will drop until they find a buyer, and over the years they will ping-pong until the point where the EROI is negative. (In reality, probably at some point above zero, but I’m making a theoretical argument here.)
My point is that price matters. Renewables will alter the price of fossil fuels, and the people who own the deposits and who extract the resources will try to keep extracting until A) physical limits are reached, or B) social pressure and/or legislative controls force them to stop (and for the record, I think “B” is unlikely).
Dennis, your own arguments are contradictory…
” For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive,”
Can you explain why renewables would become cheaper when the energy inputs to make them become more expensive please? We already have the example of 2022 when fossil fuels went up in price and so did did renewables, because they were built with fossil fuels inputs!!
Plus there is the second part that you always ignore with your growth rates into the future, like they are as easy to happen as numbers on bits of paper.
Ore grades are getting lower, meaning MORE energy to produce the same quantity of materials needed to build the ‘renewable’ future. How come you always ignore this??
Overall fossil energy use would need to grow exponentially to keep up with the growth YOU plan for renewables, which wont be possible!! It’s not just the renewables that have to grow, it’s the entire system that needs to grow!!
We don’t live in part of the system, we live in a complete system, we need constantly more mines, processing plants, excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks, the factories they are built in, the minerals they are all made from, the people to drive them, more electronics made from more rare earths, which means more mines for this part needing even more mines… Plus we need all the experts for all the new mines and factories, plus new roads to mines, new concrete workers and fabrication for the culverts and bridges to the new mines and factories and on and on and on….
It all has to be built with fossil fuels, which you claim are going to be more expensive, and I agree. How can renewables become ‘cheaper’ in a world of more expensive fossil fuels once we are past peak production??
It wont just be a number on a nice looking graph or spreadsheet, it’s massive energy use in the real world to build everything for every year’s worth of 4% increase.
In the real world, we are building more Adaro Aluminium power plants and smelters to provide the materials for renewables. It’s the machines we build that gain access to the fusion reactor in the sky, without the machines modern civilization doesn’t exist and the pretense that it is ‘free energy’ ignoring the very real damage we are doing to the ecosystem in gaining this ‘free energy’ is nauseating.
In 2023 according to Our World in Data webpage 3934Twh was the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind world-wide. This is out of total electricity use of around 29,000Twh, which is a fraction of overall energy use being over 105,000Twh for all non electricity uses.
Unless you think damming every remaining pristine river system in the world is a good idea, then hydro electricity is not going to grow much, so your green ‘non fossil fuel’ future is all going to come from solar and wind, meaning digging up (mining!!) multiples of what we currently do for every doubling of solar and wind All from more remote locations, in lower average ore grades.
You’re the one that constantly does the hand wave away of the energy and materials needed. Numbers on graphs and spreadsheets are just handwaves, never looking at what has to happen in the real world to make ‘growth’ of anything happen.
Your whole argument seems to disregard reality of limits we are rapidly approaching, after living in a world of constantly ‘more’ (of everything!!) for over 200 years. Once we get past peak oil production in particular, the competition for EVERY raw material, for EVERY purpose. It wont just be renewables demanding the raw materials, it’s the whole world economy. There is always more demand for cars, trucks, fridges, building materials, toasters, washing machines, computers, factories, milling machines in factories etc, etc, etc… You ignore all this.
You hand wave recycling, without ever looking at what has to be built from scratch to make that happen!! The new trucks to transport wastes to various new factories all specifically designed and filled with new machinery to make it happen. It’s ALL more materials needed to make it happen, with more lower grade ores from mines, using more ‘industrial civilization’ to gain access to these low grade minerals.
Once we pass peak production, of oil in particular, the demands for ‘growth’ will continue, you’ve just stated 4% per annum for renewables, with every sector if the economy world wide trying to grow, just as they have for the prior 200 years.
It wont be physically possible, as there will be less energy available!! Even ‘steady state’ will not be possible because if the ever increasing demand for energy to produce the same quantity of minerals from lower ore grades at mines. Mines will be needing more of the shrinking pool of energy to just maintain production, so where does the ‘growth’ you envisage come from??
Your suggestion of keeping using the last of the fossil fuels for making renewables, just guarantees further destruction of the climate and environment. To get your 4% growth in renewables you have have to be in favor of more Adaro plants making cheap Aluminium, burning coal while they dig up the rainforest to grab the bauxite, and lots of similar happening around the world. Building it with solar and storage would cost more than 10 times as much, and destroy more rainforest, do you propose this instead?
The entire problem is the growth of industrial civilization, and the population to match, is rapidly depleting all resources and destroying the environment in the process.
Your answer to this problem, along with most others, seems to be more and faster industrial civilization.
Because it can’t physically happen, except on spreadsheets and graphs, then humanity will learn the hard way by collapsing our civilization, slowly at first from the periphery, then all at once when supply chains break down. (Assuming ‘leaders’ don’t decide to nuke us all first!!)
Hideaway,
I ignore the claim that everything will require more energy to produce in the future because in fact everything (as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced) is requiring less energy to produce rather than more as you claim.
I would ask you why do you choose to ignore the data? Costs for wind and solar have decreased over time.
I suspect this line in Hideaway’s response is key:
“Once we get past peak oil . . . “
MikeB,
Many claim we reached peak oil in 2018 (I disagree on this but may be wrong,) but my expectation is roughly a plateau in World C plus C output from 2016 to 2030 at roughly 80 to 84 millions of barrels per day of crude plus condensate production. The downslope will mostly depend on demand for oil which may fall faster than supply and could lead to a lot of oil being left in the ground. That is a good thing in my view, it would also be good if a lot of the coal and natural gas resource also remains in the ground.
Laughing at the idea we’re going to just replace all this fossil fuel created stuff with renewables in literally a fraction of the time it took to build out in a much more amenable environment.
Everyone is demented because economists have a spreadsheet that says “it’s fine, actually.” The same people who estimate 3 °C of warming will hurt GDP globally by a few percent and not just murder industrial civilisation. The worst people in the world running things into the ground, but at least I can buy an EV and drive past the tent cities in air conditioned luxury.
Or I must just be imagining all the social decline I see around. The economy and stock market are going great, I’m told.
But of course, Trump getting voted in is a total mystery and not at all related to the gaslighting from the idiot opposition looking out the window.
Lloyd,
The price will fall eventually for fossil fuel, I agree. In the short term there may be an increase in fossil fuel cost if supply does not keep up with demand at current prices. Fossil fuel prices will have to fall to a point where the fossil fuel is cheaper than the competing renewable or electric transport in the case of oil. In addition, as the climate crisis becomes clear to all (perhaps in 5 to 10 years time for those not paying attention now, with above average intelligence) then high carbon taxes will become the norm so that fossil fuels are priced to match their externality.
Much of the fossil fuel resource cannot be profitably extracted under such a scenario in my opinion.
Dennis, “I ignore the claim that everything will require more energy to produce in the future because in fact everything (as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced) is requiring less energy to produce rather than more as you claim.”
Do you ignore that a tonne of copper takes more energy to produce now than 20 years ago, despite there being peer reviewed data proving it to be true?? Calvo and Mudd 2016.
What evidence do you use to suggest all the minerals will continue to get cheaper AFTER we have well and truely passed peak oil production, when the cost of all the energy inputs will get more expensive?
Do you not understand metal fatigue meaning we can’t make larger more efficient dump trucks, unlike what’s happened in the past as we went from 40 tonne dump trucks to 400 tonne dump trucks??
You do understand that Adaro are building phase 1 of their coal power station and Aluminium smelter for just $US2B, while providing the SAME quantity of electrical power via solar would cost $US6.3B, just for the solar set up with no backup, yet you continually claim it’s cheaper when it’s clearly not!!`
You have to be living in a world of make believe to think when we are energy constrained, with fossil fuels falling fast in availability and prices correspondingly higher, that everything made from this same energy would be cheaper. It defies all logic and economics for that matter!!
It will be a totally different world to anything we have experienced over the last 200 years!!
Dennis “(as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced)”
Firstly the official inflation numbers used in GDP are incorrect, as they always below actual inflation, which is why the median person in the developed world is worse off today than 50 years ago, when a man, (most usually) could afford a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs and support an at home wife and several children all on a median wage, which is not possible in 2024, yet somehow GDP numbers show we are ‘better off’, when we clearly are worse off due to declining EROEI.
You also clearly don’t understand how Kleiber’s law applies to human settlements as energy growth increases at the 3/4 power to city size, and human cities have been getting much larger for the same 200 year period we have had increased fossil fuel use on average.
Last I looked, GDP was also measured in dollars not energy, and we’ve used every trick to get better GDP numbers by outsourcing most manufacturing to developing countries where the pollution and labor laws of the west don’t apply and the background energy use of society to produce another worker, engineer, expert is a lot lower. All ‘efficiency’ gains that allow GDP numbers to look better, while the median person continually gets worse off just due to declining EROEI.
The biggest weakness of the ‘renewable future’, is that it’s all made from fossil fuels, with no attempt to manufacture new ‘renewables’ by using just electricity produced from renewables to do it. Every new mine and factory to supply every aspect of the ‘renewable future’, is still totally relying upon oil, coal and gas. The simple reason is because they are much cheaper to use, just like Adaro is using new coal power to produce Aluminium, just one small part of the massive growth in materials needed for the ‘renewable future’.
All your arguments seem to rely upon just one bit, look x is ‘fine’ and if we continue to grow this at y% then everything is fine. We live is a total highly complex system with countless interactions. It has worked based entirely upon cheap easy to obtain, polluting fossil fuels, with zero evidence of it being possible without the use of these materials. Every small aspect of the systematic problem is a 100 page book to explain all the intricacies of interactions, yet the easy aspect is to completely gloss over every constraint.
If any of the future you continually promote was possible, we would be doing ‘some’ of it now, after having renewables for many decades, as in making solar panel farms entirely from electricity produced from solar farms, but no-one is bothering to even try anywhere in the world!!
Hideaway,
The change in median income is explained by changes in the distribution of income over time. The inflation numbers are fine.
How does non-fossil fuel energy become cheaper when some of the material inputs increase in price? By means of technological progress and we have the historical data showing that wind and solar power have become cheaper over time.
Also note that it is the relative cost that is important as input costs for wind and solar increase we also see increasing input costs for fossil fuels which will tend to make them both more expensive than before. The cheaper energy source will be the one chosen and over time this is likely to be the non-fossil fuel sources.
I am measuring GDP at the World level, as long as we are not doing a lot of interplanetary imports (excluding solar energy) and exports outsourcing is not an argument, I am looking at the economic output on planet Earth.
For a specific good (such as copper) of course prices will increase for mined copper. As that occurs it will become economic to recycle more of the existing scrap copper.
Also aluminum (in electric power uses) and fiber optic cable (for communication) will be used as substitutes for copper.
Other innovations such as the 48 volt system in land transport will reduce the amount of copper needed in the wiring harness in vehicles.
The fossil energy input is the total for all economic output, this does mean it is true for every individual product, it is the systemwide energy input which is the overall point.
Real Oil Prices in 2008 US$. In 2023 the average real oil price was similar to 2005.
My response is that population will peak and then decline and energy use per unit of GDP will continue to decrease, this leads eventually to a steady state economy or possiblt to a shrinking economy if population decline occurs more quickly than real GDP growth per capita.
I agree the economic system cannot grow indefinitely. It is a question of how the resources are utilized, do we continue to focus on fossil fuel or do we move to something that does less damage to the ecosystem over its lifecycle. You claim this cannot be done, I disagree based on the data that I see.
The 4% growth in non-fossil fuels is what has been occurring for the past decade and is almost half the rate that oil consumption grew from 1933 to 1973, as non-fossil fuel energy grows there will be reduced need for coal, natural gas, and oil (EVs and/or public transport can reduce much of the need for oil most of which is used for land transport).
You are quoting 2022 data. That is a long way off. To the tune of +3.6% yoy March 23 to March 24. IEA OMR April 24. the Inaccurate Energy Agency is forecasting a decline in 2025 but let us wait and see. I will reserve judgement.
Carnot the publication will occur on June 20, 2024 for 2023 data from the Energy Institute.
The ol’ “technology will save us” meme. A banger that one.
Really weird how I keep hearing about all these non-renewable plants being built everywhere. Perhaps you should inform the idiots running multinational energy concerns about how they’re literally burning money instead of ONLY doing renewables.
Didn’t Biden, most environmentally aware and business savvy president of all time, sign a load more fossil fuel leases in the last few years? What a dummy.
WORLD’S TOP CLIMATE SCIENTISTS EXPECT GLOBAL HEATING TO BLAST PAST 1.5C TARGET
Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed. Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met. Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck. Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
WORLD EXTENDS RUN OF HEAT RECORDS FOR AN 11TH MONTH IN A ROW
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month’s temperatures globally were 1.58°C (2.8°F) above historical averages and marked the hottest April on record. The past 12 months have been 1.61°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures, exceeding the 1.5°C threshold that policymakers and scientists say could threaten life on the planet. “While temperature variations associated with natural cycles like El Niño come and go, the extra energy trapped into the ocean and the atmosphere by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will keep pushing the global temperature towards new records.”
Currently, carbon dioxide levels are rising at near-record rates. According to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Laboratory earlier this month, last year had the fourth-highest annual rise in global carbon dioxide levels.
It’s very funny to think what those predicting 1.5 °C will be all we hit by 2100 are thinking. Based on simple inertia alone, we’re blowing well past 3, let alone 1.5.
Keep in mind, two years ago no one expected the global temperatures to massively spike and keep on climbing. It was all “we’ll hit 1.5 temporarily, then fall back to 1.1 or so after El Niño” and that just isn’t happening. A phase change has happened that no one predicted, so I’m just going to ignore the people that yell at the cynics telling them to get real (looking at you, Michael E. Mann, you useful idiot to BAU) and just accept that the pessimistic scenarios are actually still optimistic.
WORLD’S OCEANS SUFFER FROM RECORD-BREAKING YEAR OF HEAT
Fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds. Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era. Planet-warming gases are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas. The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching.
Teslas are the cheapest to repair according to OFM higher up. We’ll ignore their shit build quality and design by moron failings here. Also, their lunch is getting eaten by BYD and they gave up on the one thing they actually had going for them (Superchargers).
So yeah, the meme stock car, sorry, tech company is tanking and no one knows why.
According to Consumer Reports, not OFM, usually Consumer Reports is pretty objective. The build quality seems pretty good to me. Superchargers will expand more slowly, seems a dumb move, but Tesla is trying to cut costs. Maybe their hoping other car companies will step up, maybe BYD or some Chinese company will build out a charging network, supposedly the availability of EV chargers is better in China, though I have not seen this for myself.
It varies. I’ve seen a lot of surveys that routinely put companies I didn’t expect towards the top, for instance. Then I looked into the metrics of how CR and JD Power and others do their surveys and it can be drastically different.
Keep in mind that Polestar is an offshoot of Volvo that are typically built like tanks.
My concern would be buying a new Tesla now where there have been cost cutting exercises to keep profitability high. The Cybertruck is just a mess overall and shouldn’t exist, but even the Model S and X have had some really bad QC issues in recent years despite being much older designs.
I heard that they want to incorporate the battery pack into the chassis directly to save on costs, which is apparently a big no no for servicing and replacements should you need work done and why most companies don’t go that route.
Tesla could hire outside contractors to install more Superchargers, this is less than rocket science. Mercedes will be out of business soon if it does not find a way to produce EVs profitably, I suppose they could import cars from China or Korea.
Mercedes will be out of business like most German industry because of energy costs more than anything. Toyota isn’t hurting from not getting in on the EV buzz, and most car companies have been making a loss on EVs, hence the reviewed shift in output.
That’s over 70 MPG in Burgerland units for the first figure before I stopped for coffee and did the second half of the route (main mileage figure).
As for Tesla, they would need capital for that. Don’t see that being too likely given what’s been transpiring. They have nothing to offer the market over competitors.
Superchargers are expensive and I think there is a difference in having sufficient supercharger coverage to faciliate long trips to that of necessarily have that solution available in volume.
In order to be efficient overall, it serves a lot purposes to focus electric transport on:
– public transport and small scale delivery in urban areas
– small battery sizes, so that the grid does not have to be upgraded too much regionally or privately
The big EVs are questionable as a benefit to the environment, but should be an option at least as good as comparable models with an internal combustion engine. More light compact cars regardless of propulsion are a step in the right direction. There are too many big cars serving households with 1-3 persons that could be served with a light compact car regardless if it is electrical or has a small gasoline engine. Electrical propulation is much more suitable to urban areas though.
There is a lot of potential to recycle steel and produce cheap plastics. So to combine that with a small electric motor with a battery with the range of 50-90 km should bring a lot of benefits, due to most driving being small distance.
Kleiber,
The Tesla Supercharging network is better than the alternatives in North America. Perhaps competitors will catch up eventually, in the meantime Tesla can have others install the Superchargers to their standards and can run the network software with a small team and maintain the physical equipment with third party contractors.
Dennis, I don’t think any other company was clued in enough to get a universal standard charger that was worth a damn and supported. Tesla had the benefit of subsidising the charging network and having the better technology while everyone else went their own stupid proprietary route. People absolutely do not want to buy the car equivalent of Betamax, and with the other tech it was actually more like buying VHS (which was inferior to Betamax) and then also losing the ability to use that tech anyway. A costly mistake for a car purchase, as with Europe and the push to diesel cars over the last two decades.
If Musk wants to solidify Tesla as being a competitor in the market, the Superchargers are how he does it.
We have not heard from Mr Magyar for years, I thought Fred was great.
CANADA’S OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS
“As Canada’s oil and natural gas production hit record high levels, the country is taking pains to amplify its status as a global oil and natural gas superpower. One part of this greater initiative includes an ongoing effort to transform the sector to be less reliant on U.S. markets and infrastructure through strategic expansion of its own industry at a time when the United States is taking a step back.
Canada took a major step in that direction on May first when the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) finally became commercially operational after 12 years and 12 years and C$34 billion (USD$25 billion). Years of insufficient pipeline infrastructure have forced Albertan oil producers to sell their oil at a discount, resulting in tens of billions of dollars of revenue loss each year. The new TMX is set to change all of that by tripling the nation’s flow of crude.”
INDIA FIRES UP COAL USE AND EMISSIONS DURING ELECTION, HEAT WAVE
“India’s coal-fired electricity generation and power sector emissions hit record highs during the first quarter as above-average temperatures spurred higher air conditioner use and economic expansion drove greater overall power consumption. Coal-fired electricity output hit 338 terawatt hours during the first quarter of 2024, according to think tank Ember, which marked a 9.6% rise from the same quarter in 2023.”
I agree India is far from peak coal with average annual growth rate in coal consumption at about 5% per year from 1965 to 2022 (Data from Statistical Review of World Energy). For the past decade (2013 to 2022) the average annual rate of growth has slowed to about 3% per year and has looked fairly linear with an OLS trend with a slope of 0.51 EJ per year.
Coal power generation increased at a rate of 6.3% per year in India from 1985 to 2022, all power generation increased at a rate of 6% over the same period so the coal share of power generation has been increasing in India
Yes for Asia Pacific nearly 5% growth as well, though India’s rise is a bit more dramatic. Recent growth rate (2015-2022) has slowed to an annual rate of 2% per year.
RECORD-BREAKING INCREASE IN CO2 LEVELS IN WORLD’S ATMOSPHERE
“The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet. The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2 levels over a 12-month period. The increase has been spurred, scientists say, by the periodic El Niño climate event, which has now waned, as well as the ongoing and increasing amounts of greenhouse gases expelled into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.”
WILDFIRES IN OLD-GROWTH AMAZON FOREST AREAS ROSE 152% IN 2023
“According to surveys by the National Space Research Institute (INPE), the number of fires throughout the Amazon in the first three months of 2023 was 7,861, more than in any of the previous eight years and more than half the Brazilian total (followed by the Cerrado, with 25%). Until then, the highest first-quarter number recorded had been 8,240 (in 2016).”
Surprisingly lucid article in The Economist: “The liberal international order is slowly coming apart. Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible.”
economist.com/leaders/2024/0…
The irony is that, as they themselves describe in the article, the US is largely the prime culprit in the disintegration of their own order:
– “The World Trade Organisation turns 30 next year, but will have spent more than five years in stasis, owing to American neglect”
– “The UN security council is paralysed”, again largely due to US vetoes
– “Sanctions are used four times as much as they were during the 1990s; America has recently imposed “secondary” penalties on entities that support Russia’s armies”
– “The return of Donald Trump to the White House, with his zero-sum worldview, would continue the erosion of institutions and norms”
We are so hopelessly beyond even what we predicted in the direst reports ten years ago, and it’s only accelerating.
Talking about peak oil and weaning us off it with diminished demand to save the environment is like pointing out the non-meat options in a restaurant that’s currently on fire.
Yes, CMIP6 being the latest model that shows a higher ECS than what we were talking about ten years ago.
That’s what I said. The warming is going to go higher, faster, and with more unexpected feedbacks moving forward. Hence what Hansen has said, and why blubbering status quo endorsing buffoons like Mann have been shouting him down as a doomsayer, because it makes them look even more clueless and complicit in nothing happening. The real test is if, as Mann suggests, warming goes back down to the 2022 average after the past year’s El Niño. It’s not looking likely.
Keep in mind, even with a much lower ECS like in CMIP4 or 5, we’d still be talking about industrial civ destabilising temperature swings later this century. And they will happen, regardless because even stopping all CO2 pumping right as of now, will not alter the trajectory, currently a forcing of around 7ºC baked in.
The more recent acceleration may be down to permafrost thaw, Hunga Tonga eruption, the Amazon becoming a net emitter, and the loss of aerosols from bunker fuel and power plant clean up.
Please expand on your comment about 7C being baked in.
The literature I’ve read seems to suggest an ECS in the range of 2-6C, with something like 3-4C seeming to have the most support from current analyses and authors.
Can you point me towards sources that are leaning towards 7C?
I need to dig it up again, but I think it was a summing of all climate forcing impacts not just CO2 and if certain feedbacks kicked in e.g. albedo shift, stratospheric cloud formation cessation, AMOC collapse. I’m hoping it wasn’t like some papers using 7 °F instead from memory (bloody Imperial). Either way, it’s somewhat academic since even the optimistic lower ranges are still devastating to organised civilisation.
I mean, the arbitrary 2100 cut off for all model predictions is pretty annoying if anyone really cares about the civ. Warming isn’t going to just stop because it gets to the point where the youngest kids today will be elderly.
So Musk has for some reason decided to cut way the hell back on expanding the Tesla charging network.
Question:
How much trouble will it be for other parties to use the Tesla technology to build charging stations?
Can other companies get a license to use the tech?
If they can, how long might it be before they can get a supply chain ramped up and start building chargers?
Could it be that Musk has lost interest in Tesla? He’s demonstrated his capacity to destroy the value in a popular product for reasons that are inscrutable but look a lot like a personality disorder.
It may be that he looks at BYD and CATL and knows he can’t compete. He sees that the Chinese EV tsunami may be delayed from crashing upon every market’s shore, but won’t be countered, won’t be stopped,
It may be that he looks at EV charging and understands that electricity is ubiquitous in industrialized countries, and at some point HVDC chargers will be also, so not a scarce commodity, and too competitive to be highly profitable as a business absent government granted monopolies.
A fleet of EV’s is a perfect match for a glut of excess solar energy production, and during the day utilities will exchange free daylight charging for V2G services. HVDC charging will be critical mostly along long distance travel routes.
HVDC lines established along these routes for charging are a transmission grid when interconnected. In the U.S., wireless charging will be embedded in roadways, and Advanced Driver Assistance systems will packet rout cars into lumbering defacto trains. The civilized world will continue to invest in high speed electric rail.
Hi Bob,
You’re talking sense……. and you may be right.
On the other hand…… Musk may have made some apparently senseless decisions that make sense to HIM. Consider that he’s lost a fortune ( which he didn’t actually need anyway) on Twitter/X …. but maybe he believes owning it, and making it over to suit his own desires, having it as a source of POWER of the political/ cultural kind, makes sense FOR HIM, as a mover and shaker on the world stage.
Billionaires are a dime apiece these days, according to some comedian I heard a few days back.
I’m with you on the likelihood that charging and electric car industries are at a point that the super fast growth stage is over, or will soon be over, and these will be commodity type industries within a few years. So Musk may very well be focusing on visionary projects such as self driving.
Yes, could be power he’s after.
In his ambition to win this simulation, selling Tesla robotaxi automation to other EV manufacturer’s would accelerate the total installed base of transport vehicles potentially under his absolute control, ready to transport Optimus Prime and Neural-linked soldiers to points of ground engagement while Space-X satellites and Starships provide coms and air-cover. Xitter is for propaganda purposes of course.
Am I still talking sense? Hopefully not.
You’re talking the plot for a movie or novel……. a runaway best seller.
I’ve read a few historical accounts that are based on the same general plot…. some individual for one reason or another, out of many possible reasons, wants MORE POWER, and is possessed of the tools to get it. I can’t imagine a better tool than X, or the possession of a few billion bucks, to go in the holster on the other hip of the black hat guy in the cowboy movie. Did you ever see the modern version of Romeo and Juliet?
I may lose some sleep tonight contemplating Musk as the next mad king. Fortunately the odds against him are pretty high……. but then so were the odds against all the other really bad guys making it to the top.
Besides which, I’ve been thinking about writing a novel for my personal amusement……..
With a plot this good, even a hack job written by one of the guys who churn out two new books a month, might sell pretty damned good.
Kings in trouble, kings in danger of being overthrown, have started wars specifically to enable them to muzzle their enemies and take tight control of public affairs….. in effect, imposing martial law to some extent.
This keeps them out of a dungeon, or out of the executioner’s axe or hangman’s noose….. if they win the war.
I wonder how closely I could model all the hot women on the actual hot women involved with trump, how close I could model the men after his various bootlicking supporters, etc.
The reader should be able to guess who each character is based on. I could have a lawyer posing a black man ( to run a scam or something) get into a situation where by his makeup starts coming off…… modeled on America’s Mayor of course, lol.
I heard a recent discussion where some tech experts were speculating about the most valuable growth sectors of tesla going forward were. Three areas got votes- autonomous driving, optimus humanoid robot, and energy management.
The last item it might be worth some time to consider what they are up to. Its a fascinating cluster of innovations. There are going to be many payers in this space, but I think they have a big head start.
https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-software
or type in to google- “tesla energy management” to get more facets of it.
Microgrid Controller, Opticaster, Powerhub, Autobidder, …
Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/4/pgae106/7638480
“Human development has ushered in an era of converging crises: climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socioeconomic inequality. This review synthesizes the breadth of these interwoven emergencies and underscores the urgent need for comprehensive, integrated action. Propelled by imperialism, extractive capitalism, and a surging population, we are speeding past Earth’s material limits, destroying critical ecosystems, and triggering irreversible changes in biophysical systems that underpin the Holocene climatic stability which fostered human civilization.”
It’s as honest and thorough review of our predicament as possible and there is no pretence that technology will allow continuing with BAU. Well worth a thorough reading rather than a quick skim through. Their proposed solution is:
“A critical paradigm shift must occur that replaces exploitative, wealth-oriented capitalism with an economic model that prioritizes sustainability, resilience, and justice.”
I am fairly confident that is not going to happen, and if it did it would only be after a global event of extreme and sudden violence that killed several billion like a pandemic, war or co-ordinated uprising; so I don’t know where that leaves us all. At some level I think the authors must bee pretty uncertain as well, but see no alternatives.
It does highlight overpopulation, which has been rare but is maybe changing (although Prof. Rees’s treatment when he raised this would tend to discourage others), as well as overconsumption and shows how almost every issue is getting worse and that most negative data is under reported.
“Even as the vast majority of countries pledged to slash their climate emissions, their own plans and projections put them on track to extract more than twice the level of fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting heating to 1.5°C, and nearly 70% more than would be consistent with 2°C of heating. The world has a 67% chance of limiting warming to 2.9°C if countries stick to the nationally determined contributions …”
As the pathway projections have not yet included an explanation for the sudden warming of the last two years I’d guess the percentage is much lower than 67% and the expected warming to be higher (more towards 4 degrees). No rich nation is meeting its promises to meet net zero (which rely on non scalable carbon removal technologies anyway) and most are in the process of electing governments that will do even less. The current Asian heat wave is a foretaste of what’s to come.
Maybe someone could help me understand why many people focus their angst on capitalism as being a root cause of all ills when discussing these topics. Are other economic systems truly less damaging to the environment?
I suppose that any system that enforces slower growth would slow down the ‘human bulldozer’. Yet slower growth or contracting world stuck on coal and wood doesn’t sound less damaging to me.
Do people in non-capitalist economies have less children per capita?
What is your definition of Capitalism?
Seems like the best system would be some kind of social democratic regulated market economy which governs against the externalization of costs, both public and private, but allows private business to compete for profit against each other, and against a public option that plays by the same rules.
Tax all financial transactions, and counter the regressive nature of this by providing a universal basic minimum income which is based on some fixed percentage of median income and wealth.
I doubt species going extinct owing (mainly) to human population overshoot, on a warming planet, spend a lot of time debating the pros and cons of various political “systems”. But who knows, learn to talk to elephants or dolphins and mayby they can enlighten you.
“Which will turn out deadlier, a new H5N1 flu or the GOP? Stay tuned and stay vigilant…”
Doug. Policy decisions at every level (yes even in your own home) have everything to do with outcomes.
“The “one-child policy” is a name given to Chinese government laws for controlling population growth. According to estimates, it prevented about 400 million births in the country. Introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, the policy was enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions.”
They did this not protect elephants and dolphins. It was for their own sense of what was in their best economic interest, right or wrong. Its the common theme in the realm of humanity, regardless of whether they are classified as capitalist or something else.
It absolutely doesn’t help even if humans, like other species, will have a general tendency to grow. This, though, is more looking at humanity through the lens of the culture you’ve been raised in, like most people now, because of the West’s imperialist past.
China, for instance, did not think to go rampaging around the globe and colonise places when it could have readily done so pre-European expansionism. There is nothing inevitable about neoliberal economies.
If you want to see a good example, look at the Aral Sea from its tenure under communism to what happened under a free market liberalised economy one.
I don’t agree with the assumption that China could have gone on an empire building binge in historical terms. China was so big, in general terms, that the powers that were ( as opposed to todays the powers that be) had their hands full just fighting each other for control of China….. with the other nearby nations in those days having little or nothing of any serious value to China… with China unable/ unwilling to put together a big enough military enterprise in those days to make it worthwhile trying to subdue small neighbors.. who after all only had more of the same of what they ALREADY had……. I’m painting in very general terms, very fast of course.
Now that China is unified, and under good control by the existing powers that be, and industrialized, so that empire building is a PHYSICAL possibility….. they’re going for empire.
You need transportation, supplies, weapons, ships, planes, organization, WEALTH, in effect, in order to invade other countries. China now has those things…… including fifth generation fighters, a working aircraft carrier, nuclear bombs, a robust industrial base capable of building tanks and missiles, etc. Plenty of everything, excepting such items as oil, natural gas, metal ores, etc…… things which can be either bought……. or ….. seized by force.
I’m not actually saying in so many words that China is our greatest actual or potential enemy.
I’m just pointing out that this may be the case.
Zheng He’s fleet easily dwarfed any formed by the European powers at the time, and the Ming dynasty had 200 million under its control at height. They absolutely could have been expansionist if they so wished, especially given this was a very stable period for looking outward from domestic affairs.
While humanity has been making the biosphere suck that little bit more since we climbed down from the trees and doubly so after wiping out the Neaderthals, there are cultures that have accelerated this trend. Rome and Alexander the Great or the Moors and Genghis Khan for instance.
I guess if we go by the maximum power law, those that take advantage of their resources to bootstrap getting more, tend to over represent societies historically as they outcompete and conquer them. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma writ large.
Something that limited China compared to what happened in the UK later on, was that the coal fields weren’t close to the population centres.
That too. Though Rome not only had coal, they had basic steam engines. For some reason they never had anyone invest in utilising such for expansion of industry, which would have helped given their truly massive mining industry.
Hickory,
Capitalism has a problem with capturing the externalities as a cost of production, pollution, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, etc. These are the costs that are now manifest in the environment and are becoming a negative feedback. The delays inherent in these feedbacks also does not provide a market signal that would make alternative investments attractive when the investment decision is made. What type of economic system could do a better job has been a subject of academic discussion and some models have been explored, the topic is at least as old as Garret Harding’s essay on the commons. The externalities of pollution, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, etc are incremental in nature, microeconomics costs at the individual producer level always look attractive when these costs are ignored and passed along to society and the biosphere. Any system that addresses this issue must internalize these costs at the producer level. An example is a law that requires coal burning utilities to place scrubbers on their stacks, or including the decommissioning cost of a mine or nuclear plant into the current cost of the product. Other issues with capitalism involve incentives and disincentives. These are more an issue of how the taxes of the system are structured, An example is a tax on productive labor, while capital equipment is depreciated and a tax write off. Subsidies of course play their role but are not unique to capitalism.
It seems to me that unregulated, or poorly regulated, capitalism has many huge problems associated with it including lack of pricing in externalities and the propensity toward great disparities of wealth.
Yet any other system also has big problems.
Any system that optimizes for human economic success will be destructive to the biosphere considering our massive scale. Is that not true?
Policies of restraint are generally not tolerated by populations or rivals for long.
Capitalism leads to rent seeking. Rent seeking leads to profitability crisis. This is all ancient history and was a big part in the rise of fascism in the inter war years (the March on Rome was funded by industrialists worried about profits falling).
It’s a terrible ideology and it is always doomed to fail. Exactly as it is now.
“A critical paradigm shift must occur that replaces exploitative, wealth-oriented capitalism with an economic model that prioritizes sustainability, resilience, and justice.”
I am fairly confident that is not going to happen, and if it did it would only be after a global event of extreme and sudden violence that killed several billion like a pandemic, war or co-ordinated uprising; so I don’t know where that leaves us all. At some level I think the authors must bee pretty uncertain as well, but see no alternatives.”
I will argue that there’s at least a good to strong possibility that as things get progressively worse, some governments will realize it’s literally do or die time, and react appropriately, to the extent they can, to save whatever can be saved.
It’s not as if the nincompoop R politicians in this country don’t understand the reality of hurricanes, droughts , floods, depletion of oil fields, etc….. it’s just that they don’t BELIEVE in a coming hard crash, or else they don’t give a damn, expecting to do just fine for themselves, and their best buddy donor/owners in any case.
Remember that after Pearl Harbor, a hell of a lot of people in the street, and in politics, went from isolationists to warmongers within a matter of hours.
Even as screwed up as things are today in American politics, if large majority of people in the hard sciences were to come out with evidence that the shit will be coming hard within a matter of weeks, rather than years or decades, the dumbest trumpster politician, excepting a few like MTG, would stop to consider the evidence…… and it wouldn’t take very long for Congress to get behind the President and start working on wartime measure policies that MIGHT save our collective asses. Even a hard core Baptist tends to believe his physician when he says the fatal heart attack is on the way any day unless he gets the stents and the drugs etc.
Maybe the whole world will go down more or less in short order with little or no warning. I can’t say it won’t. Plenty of people believe it will.
But some of the better governed, richer countries might be able to do enough to save themselves from a crash and burn landing.
If the people of the USA were to come to an understanding, not too likely, but not impossible by any means, and go to a war time economic and political economy, we might be able to produce enough food for all of us to eat, enough oil to get food from farm to table, keep cop cars running, keep hospitals open and cops on the road, etc…… even though tens of millions of us would be unemployed, and tens of millions of us would have to switch to other kinds of work.
Austerity, blood, sweat, and tears are infinitely to be preferred to a swift death from violence or a slow death from starvation and exposure.
If we were to put a few million people back on the farm, and do whatever is possible to raise new tropical crops,as the climate gets worse, and move our current production of staples north or to higher elevations, we could probably maintain grain and vegetable production sufficient for all of us to eat, assuming the climate doesn’t go totally nuts. ( We could all eat on maybe a fourth of our total production right now, by eating down from beef to beans.)
If we were to spend fifty percent of what we currently spend on the MIC, we could have wind, solar, batteries, electric cars and light trucks, etc out the ying yang…. plus other storage from pumped hydro to compressed air, etc. I’m not saying this is necessarily a good idea, given the current day balance of power, I’m just pointing it out.
The price of one new cheap automobile is probably enough to get you half or three quarters of the way to energy self sufficiency in most houses in this country. The price of one nice new car appears to be enough to get to net zero above and beyond normal construction and or maintenance costs.
A hell of a lot of us naked apes are going to die hard before this century is out. But that doesn’t necessarily mean some or most of our own Yankee naked apes don’t have a shot at pulling thru. Ditto some Aussie, Canadian, some South American apes, European and Asian apes don’t have a shot too.
If you had a job, you had a roof over your head, and food in your stomach, back in the Thirties…… when my parents were kids. I can’t think of anything we have today that is ESSENTIAL to our survival that we didn’t have back then, excepting a couple of items such as imported natural rubber. We figured that one out pretty quick.
We could probably SURVIVE, in a planned war time economic scenario, without any imports at all, given time to make the necessary adaptations. Lets not forget that during times of war, Uncle Sam, or BIG BROTHER, or Comrade Stalin, or Chairman Mao, can tell you what to do………. and you’ll do it, or wish you had….. assuming you’re alive to wish at all.
The Union of Concerned Scientist wrote a Warning to Humanity many years ago (1992). It was pretty stark, to the point as i recall. Didn’t see any politicians taking notice, or hardly anyone for that matter. We are no different than the Easter Islanders who cut down every last giant palm tree to help move their carved stone Idols, but could no longer build the ocean going fishing canoes their population needed to survive. No difference at all between us and them, humans after all. We will fight amongst ourselves for the scraps, just as they did.
For your reading pleasure: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/1992-world-scientists-warning-humanity
Essentially nothing that is written on this board is new since those 1700 scientists signed this warning 32 years ago. No i stand corrected, it is different, it is worse because we have not done nearly enough to get of the BAU track, squandered 32 years. Their warning is becoming our lived reality.
I agree the overall situation is dire in the extreme, and that nothing will be done to save what we can.
But the Easter Islanders didn’t have much if anything at all in the way of an educated elite of scientists able to communicate freely and spread the word.
I repeat…… the dumbest Bible thumping hillbillies I know go with their physician, rather than their preacher, well over ninety five percent of the time when the physician says the operation is literally a do or die issue. Jesus is relegated to Cap’n Cheerleader for the physicians.
There can and may come a time when technically educated people who are current day hard core right wingers, in terms of environmental issues, etc, come to see the light in absolute and total clarity……. that sea levels are rising, having ALREADY swamped a few key cities, that super storms and super droughts are getting to be the rule, rather than the exception, that small hot wars about access to oil, gas and coal are threatening to morph into grown up hot wars, that it’s ( gotten to be) hot enough that they don’t go outside anymore when they visit their homes and offices in down south, etc etc.
This sort of people have CLOUT when it comes to talking to bankers and politicians. I couldn’t tell my now deceased brother a lot of things he would accept as true if he were still living, due to his lack of formal education, wise man though he was in most respects.
But I don’t personally have any problem at all believing what my sister who has spent her life in ICU departments tells me about personal health issues strange to me…… because I’ve never met anybody suffering from them. I believe her… just as she believes me when I talk to her about the realities of industrial farming.
Short version, organized, educated, complex societies are very slow to react to NEW crisis situations, but they’re very good at dealing with old, known crisis issues. Hence we have huge MIC just in case we might HAVE to have our MIC.
Half or more of our leaders won’t listen to scientists, collectively, until they are literally FORCED to do so.
What I’m saying is that there may come a day, will come a day, when even an MTG will have to admit the climate has gone nuts.
The question then becomes as follows.
Is it too late to go proactive to save some significant portion of our current day industrial civilization ? Is it too late to take collective action?
By the time this day arrives, it will be too late, as many of us believe, for electrified transportation, etc, to save us from runaway climate, etc.
But it’s possible that the renewable energy industries, etc, may have by that day grown up to the point they can save our current day way of life for SOME of us.
The population IS going to crash, for one reason or another.
And Mother Nature’s treasure chest has already been pretty well plundered, for the most part……. but it’s not yet EMPTY, and there’s maybe enough treasure left for a few people, or a few countries, to pull thru the coming crash with the lights still on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKVtkoLfxHc
2 minutes
Japan now has a “Blue Water Strike Navy”.
“Those expecting Peak Oil, also expect military conflict” – Andre
See my twelve twenty four am comment upthread.
Imagine being an oil tanker coming out of the Strait of Hormuz and trying to make it to Japan in a declining oil production environment.
Getting by Pakistan, India, China etc along with the “Full of Submarines” South China Sea.
Wouldn’t be worth the risk of the trip.
https://www.wired.com/story/hydrostor-compressed-air-battery-california-australia-energy-climate/
This could potentially be a game changer old tech updated within a decade or so, unless I’m mistaken, because there seems to be plenty of old salt mines or coal mines or even oil and gas wells that could be used for this purpose. The total storage potential is probably enough to make a really big dent in the intermittency problem with wind and solar….. assuming of course that it eventually gets built.
Maybe we have ten or twenty years to implement new technologies and change our ways to accommodate ourselves to lower energy, more sustainable lifestyles.
Maybe we don’t. Maybe we’re at about the point at which there won’t be much if anything in the way of new energy and or conservation policies and industries.
Or maybe……. some good, or at least better, new (in terms of scale} things will dominate in within ten years, such as electric cars and light trucks.
Or maybe a big blackout would result in some political ass kicking than in turn puts easy subsidies within reach of homeowners as well as wind and solar energy companies….. resulting in a quick doubling of renewable electricity and storage for the same.
I personally believe without a doubt that there’s a hard crash built into our naked ape future, and that it’s very likely to come within the next fifty years or so.
We are all pretty much agreed that the crash is coming, and that we’re seeing early but real signs( hot war, desertification, pandemics, flooding, crop failure, depletion of minerals issues,) things are starting to fall apart, are already falling apart.
So ……… how long might it be until things deteriorate to such an extent that even a trumpster would have to admit it’s real,that it’s not a demo/commie plot to run his life and take away his freedoms.
Thanks in advance for the opinion of any and all regulars here as to how long it will be before things get to the point even a trumpster realizes the poo poo is in the fan, for real.
My own guess is that things won’t get to this level of bad within less than a couple of decades or so nor longer than another four or five decades here in the good ole USA. ( They’re obviously already this bad or worse in many parts of the world.)
We’ve been here before.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/worlds-biggest-liquid-air-battery-starts-construction-in-uk
It’s nothing new. It doesn’t change anything of the outcomes facing us.
Maybe it changes things….. maybe not. Matter of opinion. Probably depends as much as anything else on HOW MUCH time passes before the shit is well and truly in the fan.
A country with a robust wind and or solar power industry, and sufficient storage, will be fairly well insulated from shortages of imported natural gas for electrical generation and space heat… and to a substantial but lesser extent insulated from the need for imported oil if electric cars and light trucks come to dominate in the motor vehicle market. There’s a possibility that given time some forward looking countries will electrify their trucking industries to the point they don’t need much oil at all… by putting rail back into the picture on the grand scale.
A hell of a lot can come to pass, or to be, within two or three decades……. and we may have that long before it’s simply too late to make some serious changes.
The game isn’t over, it’s still in the early innings, and it is possible that a crash and burn scenario can be avoided in some countries for quite some time….. maybe indefinitely.
Maybe not.
This Hydrostor is a stupid idea. Why not just use the underground cavern as the lower dam in a pumped hydro situation?
All they would need is a reversible generator/pump turbine, that are already being used for pumped hydro, then generate power when the water falls into the cavern, then use excess solar or whatever to pump the water back up to the top reservoir. No need for an air compressor or heat exchangers or other equipment that all reduces efficiency of the operation.
Notice they don’t say anything about efficiency or cost as per usual for these boondoggles..
The weakness of all these plans to build more of whatever, is just that, it means a whole lot more energy used in the new mines, new processing facilities, new factories, new heavy vehicles transporting it all, new roads from remote mine sites, new port facilities to allow for more ships involved in the extra shipping all the raw materials around the world, and on and on…
It makes the ‘base’ of energy use much higher when implemented on a world wide scale, destroying a lot more of the environment in the process, releasing a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere in the process, as it’s all built with the energy from fossil fuels. ALL of it has a limited lifespan due to entropy, so will all have to be replaced on an ongoing basis. The underlying assumption is we will continue to add more and more, no-one is promoting we get to XYZ twh then stop..
I also hear about how we will recycle everything, yet again no numbers about where the energy comes from to build all the recycling facilities, the extra transport needed to collect ‘everything’, then the new facilities to separate items, the new machinery in all these new facilities etc.. It’s never, ever just one extra bit. We live in a complex system made up of complex subsystems, all using massive amounts of energy to build, maintain and operate. one addition on a world wide scale adds lots to most subsystems, but no-one wants to know about this complexity as it destroys the argument of just adding more XYZ.
The conclusion is we get to the stage when we have passed peak oil production, in our mad attempt to build more, with the world needing a higher energy supply base, that will still be mostly supplied by a higher fossil fuel use (to build it All!).
Why is it so difficult for people to understand the concept of building more XYZABC or whatever, doesn’t just mean more subsidies to make it happen?
It ALWAYS means more mines, more factories and more use of fossil fuels to make any of it happen on a world wide scale.
How about looking at the numbers involved in the concept of MORE, instead of just looking at whatever extra subsidy is needed?
The only numbers that count are the energy to build it, build it all, not just the one bit you are thinking of, but all the extras needed to make it happen, especially oil as that is what we go past peak in first.
Plus for a change also look at the extra damage done to the environment, in terms of species loss, CO2 gain, by the mining, processing, transport, manufacturing and deployment of solar, wind, nuclear, EVs, batteries, pumped hydro, hydroscams or whatever.
We have a world of less in our future, yet so many here seem to think the best answer is to use up what we have faster, by creating more damage to the remaining natural world in the process, then appear shocked as the situation gets worse, from the building of MORE.
OFM, you keep referring to a ‘war footing’, but don’t consider that the US had virtually unlimited energy available to build whatever they wanted back in WW2 days. At some point going forward we will be in a state of less energy available, sometime soon, when oil production starts falling year over year. It doesn’t matter what a government tries to implement, if the energy to build whatever ‘new’ is not there, it has to come from somewhere. Despite outlawing many things to free up enough energy, the next year, there will be less again and so on into eternity once our oil production starts shrinking.
Unfortunately people will vote for whoever promises MORE, even at the expense of ‘others’, which means eventually we get back to the war footing, to take from ‘others’ by force, firstly internally via Hitler’s example, then externally. That’s been humanities history.
Perhaps the coming collapse was the only path of human history possible, as human denial of a bad future, by failing to look at the total system and cooperate with each other on a species wide level, was always inevitable.
Hideaway has made his mind up, and no amount of argument or evidence is going to change his beliefs.
But I will point out for anybody who cares to consider my beliefs, one that I’m not saying there’s any guarantee of success, but rather that SOME people in SOME places may pull thru if they work together and make the necessary sacrifices.
Nobody has yet posted his personal opinion on how long it will be until things are LITERALLY falling apart in unmistakable fashion…… until there’s no food in some stores, the grid is down a lot in a prosperous country, there’s riots in the streets in LOTS of communities rather than a very small handful, as is the case today in the USA….. until there’s SERIOUS rationing of gasoline, etc etc.
We have some time to adapt, some time to change our ways, and when the time comes that we MUST, we’ll most likely still have enough of the critical natural resources to give it the old school try.
In twenty years peak oil will be way back there in the rear view mirror. But who is to say there WON’T be enough oil to run the American economy……… if we’ve switched to electric cars and light trucks, and put most of our heavy shipping back on trains?
It’s quite within the realm of possibility that we can run plenty of trains, and trucks using power from overhead lines down to the trucks on some major highways, and get our essential shipping done with a rather minor percentage of the oil we use on a daily basis, as of today.
I have easily organized my own personal consumption habits so that I don’t use very much at all in the way of disposable goods. I don’t use paper towels.. real ones are easily laundered in cold water with a bit of laundry detergent, and dried in the sun. I don’t eat a whole lot of highly processed foods……. hardly any, as a matter of fact.
I don’t do more than maybe ten or fifteen miles a week of non essential driving……. meaning any driving other than what’s needed to keep my little farm functioning. I get my groceries when I have to go to town anyway to get some hardware, etc…… which I’m now getting mostly by way of FED EX or the post office, except when time is critical.
My house is big enough for a family of five or six, easily. I won’t be occupying it too many more years, sad to say, but true. The road in front of my house was built back in the twenties and thirties…… and upgraded quite a bit since then……. but even a complete repaving job all the way to town won’t cost more than a VERY minor fraction of building a new equivalent road…. and with the population shrinking, within the next few decades, we won’t be needing much in the way of NEW roads, lol.
We won’t be needing much in the way of NEW houses , or apartment buildings, or shopping centers or airports. We’ll have to maintain existing water, sewer, electrical grid, other essential services…. but there won’t be much needed in the way of EXPANSION of such infrastructure after another twenty to thirty years or so.
And even though we may never actually go to a wartime planned sort of economy…… it’s likely that we can and WILL have some tough, even draconian regulations involving fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, a luxury tax on oversized vehicles……. appliances that use half as much or even less energy than the ones we have today……..
And let’s forget the doomer bullshit talking point about providing a rich western lifestyle for nine or ten billion people.
The doomer faction itself is telling us the population is going to crash. The survivors from richer more powerful countries will inevitably take what they want from survivors in any country too poor to defend itself. War can be a VERY profitable enterprise, assuming you win decisively and at low cost.
Survivors in a country such as the USA or Canada may have a century, or even two or three centuries, to figure out how to live well in a world depleted of cheap easily mined minerals, etc.
We currently have the capacity to build heavy duty trucks, loaders, drilling machines, etc, by the millions of tons annually…… with such machines being used mostly to build roads, shopping malls, etc. We can build more than enough of them to run mining and manufacturing industries for a long time to come.. and we’ll have diesel fuel enough for them for a long time to come, once we come to realize we have to ration it to essential industries.
Hint, hauling potato chips, soft drinks, and beer don’t fall into the ESSENTIAL category. Ditto horse trailers, ditto thirty or forty foot pleasure boats.
We will be able to get along, if we must, with half or less the current number of cars and trucks, maybe even a lot fewer than that. Autonomous cars will likely be a reality within another decade or so. Once they’re available in large numbers, we’ll need eighty or ninety percent fewer cars and light trucks…. and they’ll park themselves at charging stations anytime they’re not in use.
I have plenty of firewood, free for the exercise involved in harvesting and burning it……. but I typically let my fire go out, and wake up in a chilly house…… but I’m snug as a bug in a rug with an electric blanket that pulls only twenty or thirty watts. as opposed to running a heat pump that pulls hundreds of watts to maintain a constant temperature.
I do drive a gas hog old truck, but not very often or very far. I used to keep a compact car to save miles on the truck, and some gasoline, but I gave up the car as costing more than it saved a few years back.
If I live long enough to get another truck, it will probably get double the miles per gallon of the one I have now.
And in the event I might meet a couple of people who want to live a highly self sufficient live style, I’ll be glad to teach them how they can easily grow most of their own food, provide for their own water and sewer, etc.
Sure this is a LOT of work…… but it’s an option available to tens of millions of us Yankees …….. if that many turn out to be seriously interested in doing so.
Giving up is not an option. Just maintaining a dignified way of life for another generation or two is well worthwhile. There may be a few game changers within that time frame.
Actually Hideaway is one of the few here who has not already made up his mind. He looks at each case objectively on its merits, and can analyse it with some skill. Unfortunately those analyses always show things are worse than originally thought. It is an ad hominem fallacy to attack him because you don’t like his answers, you need to address his arguments to the same level of detail as he presents them, which I have so far not seen anyone even attempt, rather than some, as he says, “arm wavy”, motherhood statements and wish fulfilment.
Wrong think cannot be tolerated. The Green New Deal is what our betters have deemed is good and proper, so deferring from that is heresy. As it is with any mainstream narrative in the news.
Honestly, liberals gobble this thing up and think that the authoritarians on the right are different. There’s no actual left or truly progressive movement that will take hold and break away from this kind of “actually, Biden is better than Trump, so this is the best we can get” kind of mental disease.
I think about how genuine change via someone like Corbyn could have come about, but it got strangled in the crib, so lol. Guess we have far right or centre right liberal ideology of BAU and growth forever (for capital) to choose from. Awesome.
We really are just going to drive off the cliff at a higher speed than even I thought a decade ago.
OFM
Do more research critical infrastructure manufacturing has been offshored. Your entire premise is hypothetical based on what was not what is. The Yankee ingenuity won’t be saving the day because resources are to diffused.
Pay mor attention to what Hideaway is saying. Do your own research.
Do you support Biden’s U.S. industrial policy objectives?
“The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are key pillars of a transformative industrial policy platform.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-bidens-american-style-industrial-policy-will-create-quality-jobs/
“Domestic content standards are protections that help ensure federal spending supports domestic production and manufacturing by requiring the federal government to purchase American-made products and recipients of federal funding on construction projects to use inputs made in the United States. As a result, strong domestic content and sourcing requirements further incentivize investment in American manufacturing and infrastructure, helping to prevent good jobs from being sent abroad. The Inflation Reduction Act’s, the CHIPS and Science Act’s, and the IIJA’s domestic content standards are an important step toward upholding these standards.”
Yeah, but it also makes money for shareholders, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad really?
“They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Wagenknecht: The Condition of Germany
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii146/articles/sahra-wagenknecht-condition-of-germany
But now our Mittelstand firms are under massive pressure … These small and medium-sized family-owned firms—lots of them specialist engineering works or makers of machine-tools, auto parts, electrical equipment—are really important for Germany. They’re mostly owner-managed or family-run, meaning they’re not listed on the stock exchange and often have quite a rugged character. But they have their own sort of business culture, focused on the longer term, the next generation, rather than quarterly returns. They’re embedded in their local communities, often doing business-to-business trading. They want to retain their workers, instead of exploiting every loophole, like the big corporations—of which we have plenty, too.
But Mittelstand firms have been under pressure for a long time … German governments, prodded by global capital, have been tightening the conditions under which they operate.
Hideaway,
As ever you nail it yet again and I am glad that George Kaplan Has spoken out in your favour. Ther are many on this blog that cannot or will not accept reality. The laws of thermodynamics are immutable, and no amount of crackpot ideas is going to prove them wrong. Apart from unrelibale wind and solar there are those that now think that geothermal energy and tidal energy will be the next saviour of mankind. Hmm.
OFM is never short of opinions and there is much I agree with his vision of the future and much that I do no agree with, especially as he appears to be in favour of resource appropriation so that the good ol’ USA can continue with BAU for a while longer. As the dutch would say , ” He is East indies deaf”, only hearing want he wants to hear. Others might say groupthink, or cognitive dissonance. Never does OFM step up with plausible evidence, just arm waving and his trusty I believe’s. The hydrostor was a classic. Anyone with a basic undestanding of physics would realise that this approach would have a poor roundtrip efficiency, and to, marginally at best, boost efficiency the compressed air would be heated by a thermal store from the heat of compression of the air. Once again this is a nice try but the energy gain at the turbine will be minimal. The power output will be governed by the air mass flow, not unlike the air mass flow through a wind turbine. That means you will need a lot of air. One numpty idea I found was to combust the the air prior to entering the turbine, making the whole shebang a gas turbine, in which the compressor fed a storage tank. Some mothers do have them.
Then there is the geothermal energy plans for bountiful energy. Once again the efficency is conveniently ignored. There are several configurations, but so far no one on this blog as gone into detail. There are some very good papers on the subject but all would no doubt be above the comprehesion of many on this blog. I admit they are not an easy 3 minute read.
https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/openengineering/article/doi/10.1115/1.4054038/1139681/Comparison-of-Thermodynamic-Performances-in-Three
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341592959_Thermodynamics_of_Geothermal_Energy
https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/db/GeoConf/papers/SGW/2022/Farndale.pdf
If you bother to look at these papers you will note several points:
Vey rarely is steam produced, it is mainly hot water that will flash into steam when the pressure is reduced. The hot water must be tapped at signficant depth and generally from basement rock (granite) There should be communication between the production well and the injector well. The well bore is genreally sighificantly larger than an oil well. A 17.5 MW facility requires a mass flow of about 15 tonnes per minute. About 10% of mass flow is flashed as steam which drives the turbine. The flashed steam is at about 11bar, which is LP steam at a around180 deg ( hot water was 230 deg C and 28 bar) and steam mass flow of about 23 kg/sec. Overall thermal efficeincy is about 10%.
To get a mass flow of 15 mt a minute is going to need some rather large mutiple well bores for the producer and injector wells. There will also be a make-up water requirement which will require treating to avoid scale formation. The produced water when flashed will also probably deposit scale so that there will be other costs. How long the well bore life will be is a guess, but produced water is likely to have high salinity.
Without spending too much time on the economics this looks to be a very high investment , and probably high maintenance. If it were economically viable it would already be in widespread use, and that goes for just about any process. All that is required is a subsidy.
As for tidal energy I am not going to waste my time as there are no operating projects of note. Just crackpot ideas. Again, all that is required is a subsidy.
That brings me to a quote by Upton Sinclair, ” You cannot make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it”.
OFM has made many unsubstatianted claims of future energy production, future fuel use, electrification of highways and rail, and above all recycling. Apparently everything can be recycled, even wind turbine blades. I would be intrigued to learn about the recycling of composite wind turbine blades and would ask that he provide me with sources of information and better still the location of recycling facilties.
Carnot…. “If it were economically viable it would already be in widespread use, and that goes for just about any process.”
Very simply put and exactly correct. The mere fact that every alternative to fossil fuels, including nuclear needs some type of subsidy, tells nearly all of the story. None of the alternatives are anywhere as cheap as fossil fuels to give us the useable energy required by our modern civilization.
Whenever any of us state this simple reality, all the promoters of renewables, geothermal, nuclear or whatever, immediately descend upon ‘us’ as fossil fuel shills or whatever, and completely ignore the reality that they are leaving us as well.
We have mined all the easiest to get fossil fuels and rely upon increasingly complex technology to gain access to the remainder. It’s a situation that clearly can’t last long term anyway and what we currently use is having a hugely negative effect on the environment, the only environment we know we can live in.
Despite decades of increasing ‘alternatives’ to fossil fuels being manufactured, the quantity of fossil fuels used, is at record high levels. This clearly would not be the case if ANY of the alternatives were ‘better’, as in cheaper, at producing the energy required by our modern civilization.
We don’t have a different civilization, we have this one, with multiple highly complex interactions between multiple millions of complex subsystems, that has grown over 200 years to the complexity of today with increasing energy use the whole time. It’s delusional thinking we can change one major part of the system without causing multiple cascades of changes throughout the system.
We don’t have one problem of too much CO2 into the atmosphere. We have multiple problems all arising at once (into our attention at least). Fossil fuels have a falling EROEI meaning less energy available for civilization. We have used all the high grade minerals, meaning we need to mine much lower grades than were economic in the past, meaning a lot more energy and materials required to mine the same quantity as before.
Despite destroying or seriously damaging just about every ecosystem on the planet, which is highlighted by every statistic on animal, insects, fish, plants numbers, diversity, species number and any other metric looked at, the only answer humans can come up with is we nee to mine a lot more, destroy a lot more fauna and flora by building roads to new wind turbines, solar farms, giant transmission lines, new mines, new processing plants and new factories to build an ‘alternative’ to what we currently use, without realising we do all this building with fossil fuels.
If none of it can happen without the use of fossil fuels, there is NO long term future in it at all, because the burning of all the fossil fuels to build it, just increases the climate problems, while gathering all the minerals destroys more of the natural world.
The reality is if we didn’t want a horrible crash and collapse of modern civilization, then a smart species would have worked out we needed a different path to MORE, many decades ago. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that we misnamed ourselves and should drop the ‘sapiens’ bit.
There are very few of us that want to think about the entire system, as it means modern civilization is not possible in perpetuity, just like every other civilization that has ever existed on this planet. Just because our civilization is gargantuan compared to every prior civilization that collapsed means ours will likely fall much faster, because of the multiple interdependencies and the main source of energy we totally rely upon.
It’s much easier and far more comforting to think of changing one aspect of modernity, with a hand wave, to believe in a happy ending with a future of modernity for everyone, and the occasional wind turbine or solar panel in the background on a nice sunny day, while food and goods materialise like magic in the supermarket.
Carnot,
Any new process will not already be in widespread use. In 2008 there was not very much tight oil production and lots of people claimed that if it were economically viable it would already be widely produced. Those folks were wrong. The technology that is proposed used the recent tight oil and shale gas fracking and drilling advances.
You are not the only person who has studied thermodynamics.
Keep in mind that in 1860 not a lot of petroleum was in widespread use as an energy source, so obviously it was not viable.
Dennis,
To a degree you are correct. When I was a mud logger MWD (measurement whilst drilling) was in it infancy. This led to geosteering, logging whilst drilling, horizontal laterals and extended reach horizontal laterals (of sorts) with fracccing and proppants. This was evolution of an age old technique. The early frackers used explosives.
But the big question is did these new techniques use more or less energy per recovered barrel. What additional resources were were required( pipe, water, proppants, chemicals, water disposal, drill cuttings, energy). Drilling and casing a 3000 metre vertical well IS and will remain cheaper than a 3000 metre vertical depth well with 3000 metre of horizontal lateral, multi staged cluster fracked and propped, with production tubing all the way to the surface. What about the EROEi. It obviously depends on the resource but simple wells are normally drilled into permeable, porous formations.
This is akin the the ore quality issue with metals. Declining ore quality requiring massive investment in mining and much higher energy input. What happens if a few years when shale rolls over? What are we going to do?
Technology does advance all the time but there are limits. How deep can we dig a mine? How big can we build a wind turbine? How will we produce fertilizers?( we can make ammonia but we can only mine K and P). What about fresh water?
Like Hideaway I was brought up with LtG in the 1970’s ( and I have met Meadows). Yes I work in the oil and petrochemical industries but I have always accepted that they are finite, and much is just wasted. Why do people want a 200HP car? Why do Tesla produce 400 HP EV’s – bonkers. These are the selfish people.
There are millions of people , both sides of the Atlantic who have no intention of reducing their profligacy. They buy useless gadgets, expensive watches, clothes that are worn a few time, vacations 3 x per, year. I could go on. These are the people that will accelerate the collapse, and these are the very self same people with little in the bank.
I fear for the future of mankind, but the survivors will be those that live a frugal lifestyle in a remote location, well away from cities.When the rot really sets in there will be no functioning government, a collapsing infrastructure, lawlessness and pollution on a scale that is unimaginable.
I will repeat what I keep saying. Climate is not the immediate problem. Resource depletion and overpopulation is.
Oh, and by the way the population in 1860 was under 1 billion and whales were being hunted to extinction, just like now with offshore wind turbines and shipping degrading their environment.
Dennis, where did you learn thermodynamics?
University of Massachusetts-Amherst Mechanical Engineering and also Statistical Physics in the Physics Department.
I was not referring to my knowledge of thermodynamics, just pointing out there are many experts in that field, many of them work on these energy projects. I am no expert, just took 2 undergraduate semesters of thermodynamics and a semester of Statistical Physics, decades ago.
Just pointing out that the claim that “it would be in widespread use already” if it were viable is nonsense.
In 1860 there wasn’t anything to use that petroleum. The move to oil based society was decades away at best. We’ve been an electrical society for nearly as long, so that argument doesn’t hold water.
Thanks for the geothermal links.
re: “As for tidal energy … there are no operating projects of note.”
What!? Did the Rance tidal barrage close?
Nope: still open since 1966, 240 MW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station
The marginally bigger (254 MW) South Korean system is running since 2012:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihwa_Lake_Tidal_Power_Station
But those are the only two I would consider “of note”.
The rest are small, demo type projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tidal_power_stations
here you go…..
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-makes-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-and-upcycling-reality-support
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHB2F2pOm_0
Mass fish death in Vietnam due to heat
I know there are guys here who think that the worlds people should not make the effort to develop and deploy energy sources other fossil fuels, or vehicles other than internal combustion engine powered.
Just let everything run on down (now that they have had their fill).
Sorry, but that is not how the story is going to play out.
Good luck with recruiting people to your dwindling campfire. Perhaps Ted Kaczynski could tell you bedtime stories.
In the meantime, 8 billion other people are going to keep at it. Soon it will be 9 billion.
And so it goes.
You each could have stopped 50 years ago.
Hickory,
This is exactly correct, which is why we collapse Everyone wants to believe in the fairy tales of a bright green future which is not physically possible.
Instead of trying to make a softer landing we will crash hard as oil production peaks, declines, then decline eventually accelerates to the downside. During this event of the accelerating decline, whenever that happens sometime in the near future, is when our modern civilization collapses because of all the feedback loops that invoke cascades of failure throughout the system.
Humanity has chosen to collapse in the future, by ignoring all the warnings..
“Instead of trying to make a softer landing…”
Can you give us some specific mechanisms that would help move in that direction?
Thank you.
somewhat related, If you want to be constructive about ecosystem protection this is solid effort to get behind- 30 x 30
“For the first time in human history, the world has come together with a common goal to protect nature. In December 2022, over 190 countries adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (also known as The Biodiversity Plan) – an international commitment to better protect the planet that sustains us all.
The framework includes 23 targets aimed at reversing habitat and species loss. Target 3, colloquially known as “30×30”, specifically calls for the effective protection and management of 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas by the year 2030.
Put simply, 30×30 is the biggest conservation commitment the world has ever seen. To date, more than 190 countries have committed to achieving the global goal.”
https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/protect-water-and-land/land-and-water-stories/committing-to-30×30/
When you pass away, if you have left over assets I suggest giving them to the Nature Conservancy.
https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/protect-water-and-land/
Hideaway,
Here is cumulative crude plus condensate production for the World with a projection to 2100 (cumulative output of about 2800 Gb in 2100). At the end of 1950 cumulative crude plus condensate World output was about 56 Gb.
World per capita oil consumption 1950-2022, with projection from 2025 to 2065.
Dennis, what’s the relevance of these projections? Aren’t you the first to say there is a 100% chance your projections are likely wrong?
It’s most likely we wont be able to gain access to a lot of the last few hundred billion barrels of oil due to lack of technology in the future when systems start breaking down.
The top model makes the ridiculous assumption that the rest of the world’s economy works normally and uninterrupted in a world that has gone from growing oil consumption for over 100 years to one of declining production, year over year, right when the world’s population is at maximum and still growing, where the grades of ore mined to make every machine used, has fallen greatly and is falling at an accelerating rate. This when the proposed alternative to oil, needs huge quantities of mined minerals, which will take an accelerating rate of energy use, mostly diesel to gain access to!!
During the last hundred years of oil production growth we have had massive efficiency gains, using all the ‘easy’ gains as oil became more expensive. In mines we went from 40 tonne dump trucks to 400 tonne dump trucks, however we wont go to 4,000 tonne dump trucks because we have reached metal fatigue tolerances.
We can increase metal strengths by adding lots more tantalum or niobium into metal alloys but these are rare and mined in relatively minor quantities, but they wont get us to 4,000 tonne dump trucks. We cannot ramp up production of specialist rare minerals either without vastly increasing oil use in the process.
Follow the system thinking for a change instead of one aspect. We have vast, complex, seemingly minor parts of the system, that are never accounted for in simplistic graph projections of the future, of one aspect.
Hideaway,
I use Dennis’s projections to temper my thinking about the timing of the long descent. You believe more in the Seneca Cliff as the negative effects of decline feedback into lower industrial production. Your view is more in alignment with LtG modeling of the BAU case, Dennis is more in alignment with the CT case of technologies moderating the decline. Neither of you can predict the future, and Dennis openly states this. Both views are valuable. My own view is that the truth probable lies between those two cases, at least thru about 2040, between 2040 and 2050 I think we would begin to have much more difficulty replacing the first wave of “renewables” that are being installed now and the decline rate of FF will really begin to bite. Of course Climate change and resource wars could be negative wild cards.
As Dennis has expressed even he has been too conservative in his earlier forecasts, and I have been surprised by how long the road that we kick the can down has become. Timing wise I have been always early to the parade.
That is also how I see these things (what Tom said).
And to reaffirm what has been said previously, these issues are going play out in wildly different ways in various parts of the world, and sometimes in the very same valley just separated by a hard border.
That part of the story is the big one, and the challenges and remediation actions for one area will likewise vary wildly. For example, PV deployment may be of marginal benefit in UK whereas it is a very sound operation in California. Overall, most places will have to deal with rapid contraction when they can no longer import all of the basics so readily as has been the case in a world that has defied finite limits up to now.
Careful of painting the picture with too big a brush.
Hideaway,
You tend to focus on oil in your comments, so my charts focused on that. Yes my predictions of the future are certain to be wrong, this applies to everyone’s predictions. There are an infinite number of possible futures, one of them will occur, which is not possible to foresee in my opinion.
The problems you state have been occurring over the past 150 years, how fast oil, coal and natural gas output decline depends on many factors, perhaps you can give us your prediction for oil and we can see whose guess is more accurate?
You often state that there was a huge use of energy in the past, the cumulative oil chart shows that for oil the steep ramp began roughly in 1950. On a per capita basis oil consumption increased significantly from 1950 to 1972 and since then has been either decreasing or relatively flat.
Note that the 2800 Gb scenario is pretty conservative for C plus C output. Oil use can decrease as transport gets electrified. As mining becomes expensive, costs will increase and substitutes and recycling will mitigate the problem, also World population is likely to peak around 2050 and could decline and reduce the need for mining and energy use.
For fossil fuel and non-fossil fuel per capita energy use we find that the increase in non-fossil fuel primary energy use per capita was higher than the fossil fuel per capita increase from 2004 to 2022 (4 GJ vs 2.5 GJ). We will likely see non-fossil fuels replacing fossil fuel over time.
renewables hit 30 % of worlds electricity supply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/renewable-energy-passes-30-of-worlds-electricity-supply
Dennis…
“we find that the increase in non-fossil fuel primary energy use per capita was higher than the fossil fuel per capita increase from 2004 to 2022 ”
No they didn’t, this is a complete fabrication that you repeat over and over.
Fossil fuel use, whether total or per capita increased in use a lot more than non fossil fuels over that period of time. We went through this several weeks ago, but it seems you want to believe it, so keep repeating this falsehood…
From V. Smil and Statistical review of world energy (formally BP) are the following numbers
Fossil fuel use in 2022 137,237Twh, 2004, 106,795Twh. The increase from 2004 to 2022 being 30,442Twh.
All from Our world in Data online.. Please go and check for yourself!!
That’s over 30,000Twh INCREASE in the 18 year period for fossil fuels. Divide this number by however many people to get per capita..
World total energy from all non fossil fuel sources in 2022 as electricity was 10,427Twh.
This includes Nuclear, Hydro, wind, solar and ‘other renewables’.
It doesn’t matter how you cut the numbers, whether you divide both by 8.1 billion or just use the raw numbers, 30,000Twh is always more than 10,427Twh!!!
Mind you the numbers for non fossil fuels are just the total raw numbers, I have not subtracted the 2004 numbers at all, because the GROWTH in fossil fuel use since 2004 is greater than all the renewables and nuclear combined at present.
In my method of math calculations, 30,000Twh is about 3 times as much as 10,000Twh, and always will be.
Nuclear and Hydro were around 5,500Twh in 2004, subtracting just this number from non fossil fuels energy would bring the increase in non fossil fuel energy gain from 2004 to about 4,500Twh.
There is nearly a magnitude difference in total primary energy added to the world since 2004 of fossil fuels over renewables.
We have only been able to build the renewables because of this huge increase in fossil fuel use. When fossil fuel use starts falling with a vengeance our ability to make new renewables will also fall precipitously, because they are all made with fossil fuels!!
Hideaway,
I use the information from the Statistical Review of World energy only.
Population is found from Primary Energy and Primary Energy per capita tabs. Then we take coal, oil and natural gas consumption and add together to get fossil fuel, divide by population to get fossil fuel consumption per capita than deduct this from total Energy per capita to find non-fossil fuel production.
You will find my charts are exactly right if the data in the Statistical Review of World Energy is correct.
These are facts, you are wrong.
Hideaway,
You were wrong earlier, I explained why, I guess you don’t know how to use a spreadsheet. I will try again, but perhaps you do understand and are the one repeating false information. Keep in mind that population grows over time.
Population has grown since 2004, so the denominator is smaller in 2004 (6.47 billion) than in 2022(7.98 billion), perhaps you were not ware of this. So in 2004 fossil fuel consumption per capita was 59.4 GJ (384.5 EJ/6.47 B) and in 2022 it was 61.9 GJ (494.1 EJ/7.98 B). For non-fossil fuel consumption per capita in 2004 it was 9.42 GJ (61 EJ/6.47 B) and in 2022 it was 13.78 GJ (110 EJ/7.98 B).
Fossil fuel increase in per capita consumption=2.54 GJ (61.9-59.4) from 2004 to 2022 and non fossil fuel increase in per capita consumption= 4.36 GJ (13.78-9.42).
Data at Energy Institute at link below
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
Excellent graph, thank you!
Tom,
You’re welcome.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/data-shows-that-tesla-is-outpacing-traditional-carmakers-in-one-key-area-and-its-rivals-are-not-even-close/ar-BB1lTltH?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=5e3bfff9d63e4f5ebb860186132e9d7c&ei=10
It’s no surprise to me that Buick comes in right up there with Toyota, and better than Honda, on repair and maintenance expenses. This is an open secret among people really into getting the most transportation bang out of their car dollars.
I’m willing to bet that gasoline prices rise faster over the next decade or so than electricity prices. EV’s own the future.
If you want to get a better sense of what is happening with cars in China, you might find this web site useful:
https://carnewschina.com/
A good link there.
“China’s EV sales now over 50%” is one of the most popular headline articles there.
Referring to sales for the first 14 days of april 2024, where a good mix of electrical vehicles and hybrids according to this source made it to 50% of sales a little over 1 million vehicles on a monthly basis. The chinese are flooding the market with EV’s and hybrid cars at the moment. I see it at my local car dealership shop, where pure chinese manufacturers like BYD now price compact SUV’s with 60 kwh battery capacity (lithium iron phosphate) very low. At least 100 000 NOK or 10 000 dollars lower price for that kind of model compared to what it would have been a year ago. Well, poltiticans in Europe and the US asked for electric vehicles and here they are. The pace of what happens in China in any area continues to amaze.
The EU and US authorities are fuming over the prospect of cheap Chinese EVs flooding the market. I think you should consider that, actually, they don’t really care about the planet, but actually something else.
Otherwise yeah, you’d be fully onboard with having the workshop of the world make masses of cheap and efficient small vehicles for the masses. Wonder why they aren’t.
Of course you are correct about EV in the US. Luxury EV’s allow the wealthy to do virtue signaling which is very important in saving the Earth. I think that market is almost saturated.
In the US we have 5 million EV, China over 25 million and climbing rapidly. In the US we do not have the capability to fully recycle Lithium batteries. I have some old lithium bike batteries to recycle, the nearest place that will accept them is a 2 hour drive. We have a state law that says if a store sells Lithium batteries they must accept them at end of life, but it is not enforced. Their are a couple of firms looking at build and launch lithium battery recycling in the US and the the US Dept of Energy has a research facility aimed at optimizing the process, so there is some progress. The battery powered hand tool market in the US is $6 billion per year market, growing to $9 billion by 2028, it is a fairly mature market churning out millions of Lithium batteries per year with no capability currently to process the dead batteries. In the US I cannot conclude that we are really committed to a transition (even if it isn’t truly sustainable) it is more a muddle along, let the market figure it out, politicians putting lipstick on the pig.
“In the US I cannot conclude that we are really committed to a transition”
True, primarily because we have lots of fossil energy and therefore lack much motivation. This is a big difference between the US and China. They are big energy importers and they are fully conscious of the vulnerability. And so they have worked hard to build massive non-fossil generating capacity, battery industries, and EV industries.
Economic Motivation, and a measure of focused foresight/longer planning.
Gasoline demand growth to slow this year on EV growth in China, U.S
EV technology is finally starting to “move the needle”. This is what the petroleum industry has been worried about.
WOW the world is saved. Forget population overshoot, deforestation, species extinction, increasing heat, microplastics, etc. Just think about EVs and how the world has been saved. Must be nice living in a one dimensional universe.
Hey! It’s not a one dimensional universe. It’s two!
https://www.gridstatus.io
Dealing with micro-concerns perhaps keeps us from going insane. The plastic-straw fallacy. Nothing we can do to stem the tide of the entire world from raising their standard of living so we think about chipping off the edges.
My own drop-in-the-bucket suggestion is to connect all dead-ends and cul-de-sacs with paths so that at least an e-bike or human can get from point A to point B without having to circumnavigate a la Magellan.
The world looks a lot better at 10-15 mph than 45 mph.
True!
I can testify that it looks even better just sitting outside in a highland rural garden.
a estimate of countries with the highest population decline in 2023 …….note japan at 0.4 % of 125 million approx . equates to roughly 50, 000 fewer people per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264689/countries-with-the-highest-population-decline-rate/#:~:text=In%20the%20Cook%20Islands%20in,population%20decline%20rate%20in%202023.
China also appears to have started population decline
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/05/key-facts-about-chinas-declining-population/
Yet the global population continues to grow at 80+ million persons per year. One Germany each and every year
0.4 % of 125 million approx . equates to roughly 50, 000 fewer people per year
Off by an order of magnitude. 0,4% of 125 m is 500,000.
Sure glad we don’t need diesel for anything.
A forecast…….. I’ll await the data.
Here is the problem that EV fanboys fail to understand. Gasoline usage does not directly correlate to oil usage with regards to EV production and use. An EV actually takes more oil and FF energy to make than a comparable ICE (see Volvo study). The Net reduction in carbon footprint is in the last approx. 15% of its life. This is very dependent on how the electricity to charge the EV is produced. How is it possible that if we are to accelerate EV production that we will not consume more oil in the short term given their carbon payback schedule and break even point. The small handful of EV’s produced and sold 8 to 10 years ago are now only beginning to make their contribution to Net energy use, since we are now producing an order of magnitude more, how is it possible to see a reduction in oil and FF use???? It is simply not logical! This is were the wheels fall off, pun intended.
Well, the company selling the most EVs in the US by far is Tesla see Tesla Still Sells More EVs In USA Than Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, & Toyota Combined. They operate three manufacturing plants in the US, one in Freemont California, one in Texas and a plant near Reno that makes their batteries. You can find out how carbon intensive the grids in Texas and California are by visiting https://www.gridstatus.io Yesterday (May 6) at midday California was getting more than 90% of it’s electricity from zero carbon sources. I couldn’t find real time data for Nevada but, there is some information available from the following EIA web page, https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=NV
Tom,
The energy used to produce a vehicle does not need to come from oil and may come from non-fossil fuel energy in some cases, as the World moves to non-fossil fuel sources of energy more of the energy used to produce a vehicle will be non-fossil fuel energy.
For the past decade World fossil and non-fossil fuel energy consumption have both grown by about 35 EJ, but the percentage increase for non-fossil fuel has been about 47% (from 75 to 110 EJ) and for fossil fuel the growth has been about 7.6% per decade. We may see a gradual replacement of fossil fuel.
Note that this is the period where EV production has ramped up (2013 to 2022) and fossil fuel consumption has increased at about 0.75% per year vs 4.1%/year for non-fossil fuel.
Note the scale from maximum to minimum on both the left and right axes is 50 EJ.
From up in the thread:
“This Hydrostor is a stupid idea (develop storage of electricity as compressed air). Why not just use the underground cavern as the lower dam in a pumped hydro situation?”
Maybe a little bit of nitpicking, but the situation is probably different in different countries. In Australia there is so much land and elevation to choose from. Pumped hydro is doable and there are several projects going on that I am sure that the ones from Australia are aware of. In the UK, there are some expansion projects in Scotland. But there are definitely limits for what can be done, and using salt dome mines to solve that is not the normal solution. It is at trial phase some places it seems, not unthinkable at all, but still a big ask to find the right location in the UK. So, in that scenario I support that the UK grant some some subsidies to see how far the Hydrostor idea or any other adjustment of that idea can go.
There is already focus on interconnector cables and the upgrading the grid to make most out of offshore wind in that country, and to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels in that regard. It is not ever likely to be zero reliance, but a low ratio will do.
The realists around here need to get the message out to US electricity companies that they are making a big mistake! According to data from the IEA’s most recent Electric Power Monthly US utilities have installed just over 3 GW of new generating capacity so far this year (January and February). Roughly 70% of this was solar PV, 25% was wind and 5% was batteries. In January 14 MW of natural gas fuel cell capacity was installed as well as a 2.2 MW natural gas fueled internal combustion engine.
I’ve been trying to understand this paper in Nature, which is more than a bit impenetrable:
Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35068-1
It looks at how sudden and large scale environmental disruptions, specifically climate change, will impact mass extinctions through co-extinctions, especially in complex food webs. As far as I can tell five degrees warming at about the current rate will be equivalent to, or worse than, one of the previous big five extinctions in terms of loss of complex life. The authors do say their model is much simplified, but the results seem consistent with available observations. As most species loss is currently due to habitat loss, which is only partly due to temperature change and more a result of mono-crop agriculture practices, plus pollution and invasive species are having an effect on par with climate change, then presumably an actual mass extinction event is possible at lower warming.
It says: “Co-extinctions reduce the robustness of planetary life to catastrophe.” I increasing think that species extinction is the most serious threat that humanity faces, particularly because it is so insidious and difficult to quantify, especially in its immediate effect on us (unlike the photogenic impacts of extreme climate events).
From the point of view of the maximum amount of warming produced by CO2 emissions all that matters is how much total oil, gas and coal is burnt. Therefore from this one teleological aspect the only measure that counts for renewables is how much of those fossil fuels they (renewables) are causing to be kept in the ground. And I’d say the answer to that is: none. Therefore by this one measure they have so far been worthless. Whether they have such an effect going forward is arguable but I have seen no trend to indicate they will. Temperatures over the last two years are increasing two or three times faster than previously seen and CO2 concentrations are increasing as fast as ever. There may be some deceleration in the rate of increase of emissions but that seems to be more an impact of slowing of some large economies from a couple of percent growth before Covid to recession or only a few percentage points growth now. No posting of links to some minor improvements in EV technology or a tiny growth in recycled materials can change those data points.
I think many of those peak oil aware, especially long term, see renewables primarily from the perspective as a direct replacement for oil and gas as they begin to deplete, hence an over emphasis on personal EVs even when they represent a small proportion of total fossil fuel use, even in rich economies. I can see no argument that shows we would not have been much better off spending all the time and resources used on EVs to expand public transport (better infrastructure, better health, more disposable income, lower pollution, lower habitat destruction etc.) and yet there was really zero chance of that ever happening.
In the wider world renewables are ultimately just treated as another way to make a living with no particular environmental significance (however much politicians and industry chiefs may virtue signal otherwise). Hence they are always going to be treated as add ons to fossil fuels and will simply keep on increasing human kinds’ environmental footprint (aka overshoot) until something exogenous stops that from happening, and that will definitely not be some collective altruistic “choice”.
Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point?
Prof. Rahmsdorf is the world expert on this subject and here are his latest thoughts.
https://tos.org/oceanography/article/is-the-atlantic-overturning-circulation-approaching-a-tipping-point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&si=Oc70_hCweGTscaOF&v=HX7wAsdSE60&feature=youtu.be
The tipping point explanation is very well presented and the exact difference between the Gulf Stream and AMOC was new to me.
A lot of the comments here are just attempts to deal with the remarkable changes in technology we’ve been through in the last few decades. This change is accelerating, and it is not at all limited to the energy industry.
The economics of the energy industry have completely changed since 2010. The renewables industry isn’t a bunch of hippy dreamers trying to save the world, it’s high tech putting the fossil fuel industry out of business. It’s already happening, for better or for worse. Name calling and doomsterism isn’t going to change that.
It doesn’t matter how long an industry has existed or what benefits it brought. Once new technology replaces it, it dies. Changes in prices upend assumptions about which solutions are viable.
Alimbiquated … “. The renewables industry isn’t a bunch of hippy dreamers trying to save the world, it’s high tech putting the fossil fuel industry out of business. It’s already happening, for better or for worse. ”
People being “put out of business” means their sales are drying up because there is something better. Can you explain your comment in terms of why fossil fuel production is at record levels if it’s being put out of business??
Can you explain why gasoline usage is growing in China despite 50% of sales being EVs??
Can you explain why the Adaro Aluminium smelter in Indonesia to provide Aluminium for solar panels and EV bodies is being powered by new coal power plants?
If there was a word of truth in your statement of renewables “putting fossil fuels out of business”, then none of these things would be happening, but in the real world fossil fuel use is increasing and increasing in greater quantities than renewables over the last 18 years..
There is a huge difference between dreams and reality. Everyone advocating for MORE renewables is really advocating for more business as usual, which means more renewables built by an even greater quantity of new fossil fuels, doing all the work to make it happen, and you clearly don’t realise it. Nothing is being replaced on a world wide scale, they are all just additions to overall energy use and environment collapse.
This is in line with what I’ve learned from Art Berman: there are no “replacement” fuels, only add-ons to existing fuels. We burn more biomass then ever, even though coal was supposed to have supplanted biomass. We burn more coal than ever, even though oil and natural gas were supposed to have supplanted coal. And so, we will continue to burn more oil and gas than ever [until we can’t, of course, following peak], even though Alimb. dreams of “renewables” [ha] and “green tech” [ha] supplanting oil and gas. I think we are all in for big surprises . . .
Getting a free lunch tends to increase ones appetite for more. I make little raisin whole wheat rolls for me and the grandkids who are 2 1/2. They’re half way through one with a mouthfull and they ask for more. The idea that non-fossil electricity will reduce total fossil consumption doesn’t seem realistic to me.
LEEG
The idea that non-fossil electricity will reduce total fossil consumption doesn’t seem realistic to me.
It could if non-fossil is cheaper.
When streaming music appeared, first with Naptser and later with Apple ad other streaming services, demand for physical music media collapsed and never recovered.
Nice anecdotes, but the plural of anecdote isn’t a synonym for data, even when followed by double question marks.
Gasoline consumption has peaked in China.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Sinopec-Says-Peak-Gasoline-Demand-Already-Passed.html
Look at the investment in new power plants worldwide. Today’s investment is tomorrow’s fleet.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/power-investment-2019-2023
Investments in renewable power plants are more than six times as high as investments in fossil fuel power plants. In addition there is a massive investment in the grid and storage, much of which is aimed at improving supply in a renewable world.
Alimbiquated … “Look at the investment in new power plants worldwide.”
You don’t understand the problem do you? The “investment” you are talking about is more burning of coal, oil and gas, in every aspect of building the factories that the solar panels are made in, building new factories for the extra silicon, glass, copper and aluminium. This will take huge quantities of concrete, then there are the new mines, the new shipping, new trucks etc. ALL of it takes a lot more burning to make, before one new panel is made. Then a huge constant supply of raw materials and operation of the new factories, churning out mountains of new stuff onto diesel powered trucks…
All for adding to power supply that is only 20% of all energy used in the world, plus unlike fossil fuels that also give us massive quantities of products as well, solar and wind give us just electricity.
In 2023 solar and wind contributed 3934Twh of electricity while the world used an extra 121 Million tonnes of coal over 2022 use (IEA).
Explain how any of the new renewables are replacing coal please. We have had solar and wind at increasing rates of installation for 4-5 decades, yet the use of fossil fuels keeps increasing. Nothing is being replaced on a worldwide scale.
All that is happening is a higher base rate of energy use is happening every year…
HIDEAWAY —
No idea what you think you are talking about but it doesn’t have anything to do with what I was pointing out — that investment in fossil fuel electricity generation is falling and renewable electricity is rising. That means that the fossil industry is being squeezed out of the electricity business by the renewable energy industry. If the current pattern of investment continues, there will be a shift towards renewables in the future
Whether that means more or less energy in the future is an interesting question, but not what I was talking about. Also saying that the future didn’t happen in the past doesn’t mean the future won’t happen in the future. You’re all over the place.
And this isn’t just hopes and dreams. It’s happening whether I want it or not, because the money is going towards renewables, not to fossil fuel driven steam turbines.
Did you even look at the chart? Since 2019, about $2.7 trillion has been invested in renewable electricity generation, totally swamping fossil fuel generation investment. Power plants need constant investment, so the inevitable result is that fossil fuel electricity generation will decline. These are investments that have already happened, so they won’t require additional investments in the future to have an impact. The buck already stopped, so to speak.
That there is any investment in fossil power plants means the industry is not being driven out of business. As has been frequently pointed out fossil fuel power needs a lot less up front investment to get operating than renewables, it is one of its big advantages. The costs are spread over the lifetime to buy the fuel; such as the huge amount of investments that are going into the LNG required to keep existing power plants operating, to replace existing sources. A lack of discoveries is a bigger threat to oil and gas industries than renewables. Renewables are just trying to fill the gap when natural gas and coal can’t, provided outside subsidies and existing fossil fuel based infrastructure are enough to make them economic
GEORGE KAPLAN
That there is any investment in fossil power plants means the industry is not being driven out of business.
Ah I think I’m starting to see what the problem is.
No, power plants don’t run forever after the initial investment. They need constant maintenance. That is investment. To keep the fossil fuel industry alive you have to spend enough money on maintenance to keep the power plants running.
As you can see from the charts I provided, investment in fossil fuel power plants is significantly lower than in renewables. Strictly speaking, this tells us nothing about whether the total fleet is growing, shrinking or staying the same size. But it does tell us that the percentage of the fleet that runs on fossil fuels is declining. And the fact that fossil fuel investment is declining while renewables investment is growing means that this trend is accelerating.
In addition, coal and gas provide about half the electricity worldwide, but renewables are getting six times the investment. To me that is a strong indicator that the fossil fuel fleet is aging. Shrinking is the next step, unless investors change their minds. But the longer they wait, the less viable the existing fleet will become.
Meanwhile, the price of renewables and batteries continues to fall. Why should investors rethink their positions?
In the world post 2008, sure, investment in REs was going to the moon. But we are not in that world anymore.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91069902/inflation-high-interest-rates-renewable-energy-projects
See also the failed auctions in the UK in the last six months with ZERO takers for the gov’t expected normalised pricing for green electricity projects. If they can’t sell the electricity and make a profit, that should tell you something about the economics of the situation currently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67430888
Companies have said that the cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates, while the maximum price they can charge for the electricity they generate has been relatively low.
The removal of ZIRP as an environment is also why the tech sector in general is suffering. People actually have to consider what they throw money at now, making the app economy of the last few years with bullshit valuations and “move fast and break things” mentality over profitability somewhat unsustainable. This hits especially hard at infrastructure investment too if those projects aren’t locked in at lower rates.
But removing the interest rate hammer will lead to even higher inflationary pressure, sooo…
World coal consumption (measured in exajoules) has been flat for about the past decade after it had grown by about 52% in the previous decade.
Cool. Now do natural gas.
EDIT: ha, record high. But don’t worry about it.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/global-coal-use-all-time-high-2023-iea-2023-12-15/
Kleiber,
Coal was mentioned so I did coal. Yes Natural gas consumption is up. Non-fossil fuel energy consumption is up by a similar amount over the past decade (2013 to 2022) as all fossil fuel consumption (about 33 EJ for both from 2013 to 2022).
Non-fossil fuel growth was about 4.1% per year over the past decade, I expect it will accelerate to about 5% per year and perhaps to 7% per year (similar to long term growth in oil consumption from 1933 to 1973). Lets take the 4.1% growth which is very conservative based on the history from the 20th century.
In the next decade with an assumed 4.1% annual growth rate, non-fossil fuel energy consumption grows by 55 EJ while total energy consumption grows by 70 EJ, so only 15 EJ of fossil fuel growth in output is needed, the following decade (2033 to 2042) non fossil fuel consumption grows by 83 EJ while total energy consumption grows by 73 EJ, so for this second decade fossil fuel consumption decreases as it is replaced with non-fossil fuel energy.
By 2055 half of primary energy consumption comes from non-fossil fuel and by 2076 fossil fuel as an energy source falls to zero (fossil fuel may still be used for some material inputs where alternatives cannot be found).
Another transition scenario “b” is added to the chart below, the non-fossil fuel scenario is based on the recent trends for wind and solar power consumption growth with other non-fossil fuel energy consumption assumed constant from 2023 to 2055. Wind and solar power growth is assumed to gradually decrease over time from recent growth rates. Non-fossil fuel energy consumption grows at an average annual rate of 6.4% from 2030 to 2053 and then slows in scenario “b”. The scenario “b” is compared with the scenario presented earlier (where non-fossil fuel annual growth rate was 4.1% per year). Reality might be between these two scenarios, but note that the growth rate for non-fossil fuel consumption for scenario “b” is lower than the growth rate in World oil consumption from 1933 to 1973, so a the faster decline in fossil fuel consumption might be possible. Some might argue that scenario “b” is conservative, but it looks optimistic to me.
There have been claims/worries expressed here that there is not/will not be enough fossil energy available to build non-fossil generating sources.
I am very skeptical of that notion, having the sense that the non-fossil energy production systems consume a relatively small amount of current fossil fuel global combustion load. And that this is a priority use of fuel combustion.
This assumes that people generally desire to avoid the the scenario of relying solely upon depleting fossil fuels.
Hideaway,
Thanks again.
Shining the light of truth again by simply looking objectively at the facts. ALIMBIQUATED trying to label the facts as “doomsterism” is simply living in denial, trying to marginalize the voice of reason, allowing his closed mind to return to the dream state of the accepted BAU narrative.
I have just completed a reading a review of the life cycle analysis studies of EV’s. They do have the potential to reduce GHG emissions, as in fact each individual EV does reduce GHG emissions during its lifespan, provided it lives long enough. Unfortunately Total GHG emissions and all of the other associated environmental ills of industrial production have only INCREASED since their introduction. This is because we continue to grow total energy use and industrial production. IF we had done all of this with ICE and NO “renewable” energy I believe a strong case could be made that the situation today would be even worse. So, have they made a contribution, yes. Here is the simple unvarnished truth of the matter: The green solution must also embrace a strategy of degrowth to be successful. NOW. This is unlikely to occur until it is forced upon us by depletion of resources and degradation of the Earths carrying capacity for life. This is commonly referred to as collapse. This is not a prospect I enjoy thinking about. It is not “doomsterism”, it is an objective view of the prospects for my own children and it scares the hell out of me.
How is the death of the energy industry BAU? I am not claiming that the world isn’t changing. Doomsters claim the world is on the wrong path and can’t change so it is doomed. You’re stuck in the 20th century.
I make no claims about whether we are all doomed. I do claim that the fossil fuel industry is.
The world is changing very quickly thank to improved manufacturing, materials and information technology. The ideas touted here that only raw materials matter is just silly. You don’t get a camshaft or a Rolex by dumping a bucket of oil onto a crate full of iron ore. That’s not how the world works at all.
Tom
I have long held a view similar to yours, human nature will drive us to collapse. It will be a messy, drawn out affair, faster in some places , slower in others, but in the final analysis a similar outcome for all because folks will move to the places with the best quality of living they can find and if the ones already there try to defend it they will spend so much on defense that their quality of existence will be no better than that of those trying to move in.
Kicking the can will last longer than any of us foresee at the moment ( barring catastrophic events). How long before offshore oil reserves in California, and Florida are tapped? Arctic oil even if only on a seasonal basis? Natural gas reserves in New York? Oil reserves under major cities? Geothermal power investigations get publicity these days, investigations into in-situ combustion of uneconomic coal reserves to generate power, not so much.
Most people are really reluctant to die and will hang on despite desperate circumstances. North Americans could get by with a lot less food, and a lot less variety in their food with out suffering greatly. At the peak of the Roman Empire, the average male was 5’4” tall, which says a lot about how much protein was in the diet.
I am reminded of a story told to me by a Finn who was a schoolchild during the second world war. There was no gasoline, so the loggers in his local village had rigged up a furnace on the back of their truck and used it to pyrolise wood and they ducted the pyrolisis gas to the air intake on the engine . He and other children used to catch a ride to school on the truck, and since the truck ran rather slowly on that fuel supply they just jumped off as they passed the school. On one occasion the furnace was really producing and the truck was running too fast for the kids to jump off, the loggers were joyful, and refused to slow down as the school approached, so one of the kids stuck his notebook on the air intake for the furnace. The kids jumped off accompanied by curses from the loggers.
For most of the old folks on this site Carpe Diem is the life style chosen ( myself included) and if you accept that we cannot alter the course of human behavior, a sensible choice. For our children and particularly grandchildren it becomes an issue of simple survival and in a future where perhaps one in ten will survive, what can be done to improve their chances?
During the pandemic lockdown period, I decided that the best I could do for them was to write up what I believe is coming up in the hope that they will recognize signs of deterioration and be early movers to protect themselves.
It will be up to them.
Old Chemist
Thanks for that. Some wisdom and sound advise for me to chew on there. I don’t want to be dragged into defending a position that will only be proven by the passage of more time than I have left!! Carpe Diem, with a nod to simplicity is how I intend to role. Fortunately I live in a beautiful place, one of the last great places.
Tom
China’s gasoline consumption from Statistical Review of World Energy. In 2022 consumption was 4 kb/d less than in 2018.
Dennis, …. It was Islandboy that linked to the article…
“”For this year Chinese demand will grow by only 10,000 bpd, due to higher EV uptake.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gasoline-demand-growth-slow-this-year-ev-growth-china-us-2024-05-06/
Dennis, renewables have been with us for decades, and it’s the long term trend world wide that counts. The trend of both fossil fuels and renewables have been up in every long term trend, nothing is being replaced by anything else, as Tom stated upthread, even biomass burning is up a long way over a couple of hundred years.
We make all of it with fossil fuels, so to accelerate renewable growth means accelerating fossil fuel use to do it, leading to a much higher base of energy use for humanity on a decade by decade scale.
We wont be building more renewables when we have less fossil fuels, we’ll be building less as the manufacture of renewables will have to compete for a dwindling supply of energy needed, just like every other sector.
Hideaway,
The economic output per unit of fossil fuel energy has been decreasing for years. Eventually population peaks and declines and real economic output either flattens (if output grows at the same rate that population declines) or perhaps if output and population reach a steady state, in a fully developed World with no population growth or decline.
In any case we don’t know what the future will be but the chart below shows historical fossil fuel energy consumption divided by real GDP in constant 2015$. Output per capita grows at about 1.5%, when population decline reaches 1.5%, economic output might reach a steady state. In the mean time fossil fuel use per unit of economic output will continue to fall as fossil fuel use is gradually replaced by non-fossil fuel energy.
Also keep in mind that energy costs are not all that high at present which does not really suggest dwindling supply relative to demand.
Dennis, “The economic output per unit of fossil fuel energy has been decreasing for years.”
Yes we have been having efficiency gains for decades, it tends to hide the problem of using a finite resource, I’ve raised this myself before, we have used the easy efficiency gains, like 40 tonne mining dump trucks going to 400 tonne dump trucks, but we wont be going to 4,000 tonne dump trucks.
The other effect of efficiency gains is of course Jevon’s paradox in that more oil gets used by a wider section of humanity..
Dennis … “Also keep in mind that energy costs are not all that high at present which does not really suggest dwindling supply relative to demand.”
I agree, I think the world will go on exactly as it has been until we get to the point of an acceleration in the decline of oil production, I’ve stated this many times.
In the not so distant future, we get to the point where we pass maximum possible fossil fuel production, starting with peak oil, where production will fall year over year after that point. This is a totally different world to what has existed over the last 200 years where the quantity of fossil fuels produced has always been able to grow.
Thinking that human ‘growth’ can continue ‘as normal’ in such a situation is beyond hubris, considering we clearly know we have mined all the high grade easy to get ores that we constantly rely upon. The mining of these minerals will become far more onerous on the available energy, so somewhere in the system there has to be massive contraction, despite only ever 15% of humanity gaining the modern western lifestyle.
A 1.5% decline in population is nowhere on the cards while the world continually adds around 80 million new people every year.
Every answer you ever give is a handwave, like we’ll recycle everything, yet never any numbers of how much energy this will take to build from almost scratch. Where does the energy come form to do it?? Where do all the new trucks, sorting plants and processing plants come from, in a world of less energy?
Likewise how do ‘renewables’, batteries and EVs increase in a world of less energy when we need to mine a lot more lower grade ores to build just the first generation? Where does the energy come from?
Hideaway,
Jevon’s Paradox is a situation where cost decreases due to efficiency gains and the usage of a good increases as a result, it assumes demand for the good in question is essentially unlimited. For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive, if cost for fossil fuel starts to fall it will be due a lack of demand for fossil fuel so many of the assumptions underlying Jevon’d paradox will not be met and it does not apply.
What you seem to not realize is that we have been producing a lot of stuff with less and less energy despite the obvious fact that fossil fuel resources have been depleting and will continue to do so. As prices for scarce materials rise there will be an increased incentive to recycle as it may become chaeper than mining scarce materials. Also some substitution will occur (for example fiberoptic cable and aluminum will replace some uses of copper in communications and electric power).
This is not hand waving, it is history.
The handwaving comes when the claim is made that there won’t be enough fossil fuel to accomplish a transition to non-fossil fuel for energy use. I expect the future will be different than the past just as you do, but we expect different future scenarios, nobody knows which future scenario is the correct one. And all of these involve sets of assumptions most of which will prove incorrect whether those assumptions are yours or mine.
The energy comes in part from a large fusion reaction that occurs at a safe distance (about 93 million miles). The fact is that fossil fuel use per capita has been falling since 1972 (this includes oil, natural gas and coal). As we move to non-fossil fuel sources of energy there is far less waste heat produced and primary energy needed per unit of GDP is reduced.
Also much of the energy will initially come from existing fossil fuel infrastructure as needed, there is plenty of coal, oil, and natural gas resources to accomplish the energy transition to alternatives to fossil fuel. As the fossil fuel resource depletes and becomes more expensive (if there is adequate demand,) the transition to fossil fuel alternatives will accelerate.
Eventually a lot of the fossil fuel resource will be stranded as the price will fall to a level that will not justify the extraction of the more expensive resources.
See paper below on population scenarios
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014001095?via=ihub
Chart below shows SSP1 scenario, data for SSP1 scenario from
https://dataexplorer.wittgensteincentre.org/wcde-v2/
On 05/10/2024 at 7:50 am Denis Coyne wrote:
For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive, if cost for fossil fuel starts to fall it will be due a lack of demand for fossil fuel so many of the assumptions underlying Jevon’d paradox will not be met and it does not apply.
This interpretation ignores the possibility that competition from renewables will moderate demand for fossil fuels, (resulting in a reduction in cost for them), and that the total production cost is inelastic. My feeling is that fossil fuel prices will drop until they find a buyer, and over the years they will ping-pong until the point where the EROI is negative. (In reality, probably at some point above zero, but I’m making a theoretical argument here.)
My point is that price matters. Renewables will alter the price of fossil fuels, and the people who own the deposits and who extract the resources will try to keep extracting until A) physical limits are reached, or B) social pressure and/or legislative controls force them to stop (and for the record, I think “B” is unlikely).
Dennis, your own arguments are contradictory…
” For fossil fuel energy we expect the cost will increase as the resource depletes and this will lead to non-fossil fuel energy becoming more cost competitive,”
Can you explain why renewables would become cheaper when the energy inputs to make them become more expensive please? We already have the example of 2022 when fossil fuels went up in price and so did did renewables, because they were built with fossil fuels inputs!!
Plus there is the second part that you always ignore with your growth rates into the future, like they are as easy to happen as numbers on bits of paper.
Ore grades are getting lower, meaning MORE energy to produce the same quantity of materials needed to build the ‘renewable’ future. How come you always ignore this??
Overall fossil energy use would need to grow exponentially to keep up with the growth YOU plan for renewables, which wont be possible!! It’s not just the renewables that have to grow, it’s the entire system that needs to grow!!
We don’t live in part of the system, we live in a complete system, we need constantly more mines, processing plants, excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks, the factories they are built in, the minerals they are all made from, the people to drive them, more electronics made from more rare earths, which means more mines for this part needing even more mines… Plus we need all the experts for all the new mines and factories, plus new roads to mines, new concrete workers and fabrication for the culverts and bridges to the new mines and factories and on and on and on….
It all has to be built with fossil fuels, which you claim are going to be more expensive, and I agree. How can renewables become ‘cheaper’ in a world of more expensive fossil fuels once we are past peak production??
It wont just be a number on a nice looking graph or spreadsheet, it’s massive energy use in the real world to build everything for every year’s worth of 4% increase.
In the real world, we are building more Adaro Aluminium power plants and smelters to provide the materials for renewables. It’s the machines we build that gain access to the fusion reactor in the sky, without the machines modern civilization doesn’t exist and the pretense that it is ‘free energy’ ignoring the very real damage we are doing to the ecosystem in gaining this ‘free energy’ is nauseating.
In 2023 according to Our World in Data webpage 3934Twh was the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind world-wide. This is out of total electricity use of around 29,000Twh, which is a fraction of overall energy use being over 105,000Twh for all non electricity uses.
Unless you think damming every remaining pristine river system in the world is a good idea, then hydro electricity is not going to grow much, so your green ‘non fossil fuel’ future is all going to come from solar and wind, meaning digging up (mining!!) multiples of what we currently do for every doubling of solar and wind All from more remote locations, in lower average ore grades.
You’re the one that constantly does the hand wave away of the energy and materials needed. Numbers on graphs and spreadsheets are just handwaves, never looking at what has to happen in the real world to make ‘growth’ of anything happen.
Your whole argument seems to disregard reality of limits we are rapidly approaching, after living in a world of constantly ‘more’ (of everything!!) for over 200 years. Once we get past peak oil production in particular, the competition for EVERY raw material, for EVERY purpose. It wont just be renewables demanding the raw materials, it’s the whole world economy. There is always more demand for cars, trucks, fridges, building materials, toasters, washing machines, computers, factories, milling machines in factories etc, etc, etc… You ignore all this.
You hand wave recycling, without ever looking at what has to be built from scratch to make that happen!! The new trucks to transport wastes to various new factories all specifically designed and filled with new machinery to make it happen. It’s ALL more materials needed to make it happen, with more lower grade ores from mines, using more ‘industrial civilization’ to gain access to these low grade minerals.
Once we pass peak production, of oil in particular, the demands for ‘growth’ will continue, you’ve just stated 4% per annum for renewables, with every sector if the economy world wide trying to grow, just as they have for the prior 200 years.
It wont be physically possible, as there will be less energy available!! Even ‘steady state’ will not be possible because if the ever increasing demand for energy to produce the same quantity of minerals from lower ore grades at mines. Mines will be needing more of the shrinking pool of energy to just maintain production, so where does the ‘growth’ you envisage come from??
Your suggestion of keeping using the last of the fossil fuels for making renewables, just guarantees further destruction of the climate and environment. To get your 4% growth in renewables you have have to be in favor of more Adaro plants making cheap Aluminium, burning coal while they dig up the rainforest to grab the bauxite, and lots of similar happening around the world. Building it with solar and storage would cost more than 10 times as much, and destroy more rainforest, do you propose this instead?
The entire problem is the growth of industrial civilization, and the population to match, is rapidly depleting all resources and destroying the environment in the process.
Your answer to this problem, along with most others, seems to be more and faster industrial civilization.
Because it can’t physically happen, except on spreadsheets and graphs, then humanity will learn the hard way by collapsing our civilization, slowly at first from the periphery, then all at once when supply chains break down. (Assuming ‘leaders’ don’t decide to nuke us all first!!)
Hideaway,
I ignore the claim that everything will require more energy to produce in the future because in fact everything (as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced) is requiring less energy to produce rather than more as you claim.
I would ask you why do you choose to ignore the data? Costs for wind and solar have decreased over time.
Wind costs from
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/84774.pdf
click on chart for larger view.
Solar chart at link below
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774808
I suspect this line in Hideaway’s response is key:
“Once we get past peak oil . . . “
MikeB,
Many claim we reached peak oil in 2018 (I disagree on this but may be wrong,) but my expectation is roughly a plateau in World C plus C output from 2016 to 2030 at roughly 80 to 84 millions of barrels per day of crude plus condensate production. The downslope will mostly depend on demand for oil which may fall faster than supply and could lead to a lot of oil being left in the ground. That is a good thing in my view, it would also be good if a lot of the coal and natural gas resource also remains in the ground.
Laughing at the idea we’re going to just replace all this fossil fuel created stuff with renewables in literally a fraction of the time it took to build out in a much more amenable environment.
Everyone is demented because economists have a spreadsheet that says “it’s fine, actually.” The same people who estimate 3 °C of warming will hurt GDP globally by a few percent and not just murder industrial civilisation. The worst people in the world running things into the ground, but at least I can buy an EV and drive past the tent cities in air conditioned luxury.
Or I must just be imagining all the social decline I see around. The economy and stock market are going great, I’m told.
But of course, Trump getting voted in is a total mystery and not at all related to the gaslighting from the idiot opposition looking out the window.
Lloyd,
The price will fall eventually for fossil fuel, I agree. In the short term there may be an increase in fossil fuel cost if supply does not keep up with demand at current prices. Fossil fuel prices will have to fall to a point where the fossil fuel is cheaper than the competing renewable or electric transport in the case of oil. In addition, as the climate crisis becomes clear to all (perhaps in 5 to 10 years time for those not paying attention now, with above average intelligence) then high carbon taxes will become the norm so that fossil fuels are priced to match their externality.
Much of the fossil fuel resource cannot be profitably extracted under such a scenario in my opinion.
Dennis, “I ignore the claim that everything will require more energy to produce in the future because in fact everything (as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced) is requiring less energy to produce rather than more as you claim.”
Do you ignore that a tonne of copper takes more energy to produce now than 20 years ago, despite there being peer reviewed data proving it to be true?? Calvo and Mudd 2016.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309731859_Decreasing_Ore_Grades_in_Global_Metallic_Mining_A_Theoretical_Issue_or_a_Global_Reality
What evidence do you use to suggest all the minerals will continue to get cheaper AFTER we have well and truely passed peak oil production, when the cost of all the energy inputs will get more expensive?
Do you not understand metal fatigue meaning we can’t make larger more efficient dump trucks, unlike what’s happened in the past as we went from 40 tonne dump trucks to 400 tonne dump trucks??
You do understand that Adaro are building phase 1 of their coal power station and Aluminium smelter for just $US2B, while providing the SAME quantity of electrical power via solar would cost $US6.3B, just for the solar set up with no backup, yet you continually claim it’s cheaper when it’s clearly not!!`
You have to be living in a world of make believe to think when we are energy constrained, with fossil fuels falling fast in availability and prices correspondingly higher, that everything made from this same energy would be cheaper. It defies all logic and economics for that matter!!
It will be a totally different world to anything we have experienced over the last 200 years!!
Dennis “(as in real GDP which is a measure of everything produced)”
Firstly the official inflation numbers used in GDP are incorrect, as they always below actual inflation, which is why the median person in the developed world is worse off today than 50 years ago, when a man, (most usually) could afford a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs and support an at home wife and several children all on a median wage, which is not possible in 2024, yet somehow GDP numbers show we are ‘better off’, when we clearly are worse off due to declining EROEI.
You also clearly don’t understand how Kleiber’s law applies to human settlements as energy growth increases at the 3/4 power to city size, and human cities have been getting much larger for the same 200 year period we have had increased fossil fuel use on average.
Last I looked, GDP was also measured in dollars not energy, and we’ve used every trick to get better GDP numbers by outsourcing most manufacturing to developing countries where the pollution and labor laws of the west don’t apply and the background energy use of society to produce another worker, engineer, expert is a lot lower. All ‘efficiency’ gains that allow GDP numbers to look better, while the median person continually gets worse off just due to declining EROEI.
The biggest weakness of the ‘renewable future’, is that it’s all made from fossil fuels, with no attempt to manufacture new ‘renewables’ by using just electricity produced from renewables to do it. Every new mine and factory to supply every aspect of the ‘renewable future’, is still totally relying upon oil, coal and gas. The simple reason is because they are much cheaper to use, just like Adaro is using new coal power to produce Aluminium, just one small part of the massive growth in materials needed for the ‘renewable future’.
All your arguments seem to rely upon just one bit, look x is ‘fine’ and if we continue to grow this at y% then everything is fine. We live is a total highly complex system with countless interactions. It has worked based entirely upon cheap easy to obtain, polluting fossil fuels, with zero evidence of it being possible without the use of these materials. Every small aspect of the systematic problem is a 100 page book to explain all the intricacies of interactions, yet the easy aspect is to completely gloss over every constraint.
If any of the future you continually promote was possible, we would be doing ‘some’ of it now, after having renewables for many decades, as in making solar panel farms entirely from electricity produced from solar farms, but no-one is bothering to even try anywhere in the world!!
Hideaway,
The change in median income is explained by changes in the distribution of income over time. The inflation numbers are fine.
How does non-fossil fuel energy become cheaper when some of the material inputs increase in price? By means of technological progress and we have the historical data showing that wind and solar power have become cheaper over time.
Also note that it is the relative cost that is important as input costs for wind and solar increase we also see increasing input costs for fossil fuels which will tend to make them both more expensive than before. The cheaper energy source will be the one chosen and over time this is likely to be the non-fossil fuel sources.
I am measuring GDP at the World level, as long as we are not doing a lot of interplanetary imports (excluding solar energy) and exports outsourcing is not an argument, I am looking at the economic output on planet Earth.
For a specific good (such as copper) of course prices will increase for mined copper. As that occurs it will become economic to recycle more of the existing scrap copper.
Also aluminum (in electric power uses) and fiber optic cable (for communication) will be used as substitutes for copper.
Other innovations such as the 48 volt system in land transport will reduce the amount of copper needed in the wiring harness in vehicles.
The fossil energy input is the total for all economic output, this does mean it is true for every individual product, it is the systemwide energy input which is the overall point.
Real Oil Prices in 2008 US$. In 2023 the average real oil price was similar to 2005.
Solar in US
from page 34 at link below
https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/emp-files/utility_scale_solar_2022_edition_slides.pdf
click on chart for larger view
Hideaway,
My response is that population will peak and then decline and energy use per unit of GDP will continue to decrease, this leads eventually to a steady state economy or possiblt to a shrinking economy if population decline occurs more quickly than real GDP growth per capita.
I agree the economic system cannot grow indefinitely. It is a question of how the resources are utilized, do we continue to focus on fossil fuel or do we move to something that does less damage to the ecosystem over its lifecycle. You claim this cannot be done, I disagree based on the data that I see.
The 4% growth in non-fossil fuels is what has been occurring for the past decade and is almost half the rate that oil consumption grew from 1933 to 1973, as non-fossil fuel energy grows there will be reduced need for coal, natural gas, and oil (EVs and/or public transport can reduce much of the need for oil most of which is used for land transport).
Dennis
You are quoting 2022 data. That is a long way off. To the tune of +3.6% yoy March 23 to March 24. IEA OMR April 24. the Inaccurate Energy Agency is forecasting a decline in 2025 but let us wait and see. I will reserve judgement.
Carnot,
Reliable data comes out in July or late June for 2023.
Carnot the publication will occur on June 20, 2024 for 2023 data from the Energy Institute.
The ol’ “technology will save us” meme. A banger that one.
Really weird how I keep hearing about all these non-renewable plants being built everywhere. Perhaps you should inform the idiots running multinational energy concerns about how they’re literally burning money instead of ONLY doing renewables.
Didn’t Biden, most environmentally aware and business savvy president of all time, sign a load more fossil fuel leases in the last few years? What a dummy.
WORLD’S TOP CLIMATE SCIENTISTS EXPECT GLOBAL HEATING TO BLAST PAST 1.5C TARGET
Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed. Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met. Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck. Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
Meanwhile,
WORLD EXTENDS RUN OF HEAT RECORDS FOR AN 11TH MONTH IN A ROW
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month’s temperatures globally were 1.58°C (2.8°F) above historical averages and marked the hottest April on record. The past 12 months have been 1.61°C higher than pre-industrial temperatures, exceeding the 1.5°C threshold that policymakers and scientists say could threaten life on the planet. “While temperature variations associated with natural cycles like El Niño come and go, the extra energy trapped into the ocean and the atmosphere by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will keep pushing the global temperature towards new records.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
And,
CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS HAVE PASSED A NEW MILESTONE
Currently, carbon dioxide levels are rising at near-record rates. According to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Laboratory earlier this month, last year had the fourth-highest annual rise in global carbon dioxide levels.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/20/upshot/carbon-dioxide-growth.html
It’s very funny to think what those predicting 1.5 °C will be all we hit by 2100 are thinking. Based on simple inertia alone, we’re blowing well past 3, let alone 1.5.
Keep in mind, two years ago no one expected the global temperatures to massively spike and keep on climbing. It was all “we’ll hit 1.5 temporarily, then fall back to 1.1 or so after El Niño” and that just isn’t happening. A phase change has happened that no one predicted, so I’m just going to ignore the people that yell at the cynics telling them to get real (looking at you, Michael E. Mann, you useful idiot to BAU) and just accept that the pessimistic scenarios are actually still optimistic.
WORLD’S OCEANS SUFFER FROM RECORD-BREAKING YEAR OF HEAT
Fuelled by climate change, the world’s oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds. Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era. Planet-warming gases are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas. The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68921215
How’s Enron Musk doing; any updates from the sycophants; are we saved yet; Fred Magyar et al?
Teslas are the cheapest to repair according to OFM higher up. We’ll ignore their shit build quality and design by moron failings here. Also, their lunch is getting eaten by BYD and they gave up on the one thing they actually had going for them (Superchargers).
So yeah, the meme stock car, sorry, tech company is tanking and no one knows why.
Kleiber,
According to Consumer Reports, not OFM, usually Consumer Reports is pretty objective. The build quality seems pretty good to me. Superchargers will expand more slowly, seems a dumb move, but Tesla is trying to cut costs. Maybe their hoping other car companies will step up, maybe BYD or some Chinese company will build out a charging network, supposedly the availability of EV chargers is better in China, though I have not seen this for myself.
It varies. I’ve seen a lot of surveys that routinely put companies I didn’t expect towards the top, for instance. Then I looked into the metrics of how CR and JD Power and others do their surveys and it can be drastically different.
For example: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/29/23188085/jd-power-initial-quality-study-2022-tesla-polestar-ev-decline
Keep in mind that Polestar is an offshoot of Volvo that are typically built like tanks.
My concern would be buying a new Tesla now where there have been cost cutting exercises to keep profitability high. The Cybertruck is just a mess overall and shouldn’t exist, but even the Model S and X have had some really bad QC issues in recent years despite being much older designs.
I heard that they want to incorporate the battery pack into the chassis directly to save on costs, which is apparently a big no no for servicing and replacements should you need work done and why most companies don’t go that route.
Forgot about posting this:
Biden built 7 of his 500k EV chargers
https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1773483981452759494?s=46
Aaaand this:
Musk to invest $500m in Superchargers despite firing all his staff.
https://x.com/coreybcantor/status/1788899744179253553?s=46
Finally: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/mercedes-retreats-to-gas-guzzlers-as-evs-fail-to-boost-profit
Kleiber,
Tesla could hire outside contractors to install more Superchargers, this is less than rocket science. Mercedes will be out of business soon if it does not find a way to produce EVs profitably, I suppose they could import cars from China or Korea.
Mercedes will be out of business like most German industry because of energy costs more than anything. Toyota isn’t hurting from not getting in on the EV buzz, and most car companies have been making a loss on EVs, hence the reviewed shift in output.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-posts-76-jump-q3-operating-profit-2024-02-06/
Going to trust the guys that invented the hybrid and being the largest car manufacturer with their stance on EVs being not all that great.
My Fiesta did 180 miles yesterday and got this mileage: https://i.postimg.cc/fRg00nyZ/IMG-5881.jpg
That’s over 70 MPG in Burgerland units for the first figure before I stopped for coffee and did the second half of the route (main mileage figure).
As for Tesla, they would need capital for that. Don’t see that being too likely given what’s been transpiring. They have nothing to offer the market over competitors.
Superchargers are expensive and I think there is a difference in having sufficient supercharger coverage to faciliate long trips to that of necessarily have that solution available in volume.
In order to be efficient overall, it serves a lot purposes to focus electric transport on:
– public transport and small scale delivery in urban areas
– small battery sizes, so that the grid does not have to be upgraded too much regionally or privately
The big EVs are questionable as a benefit to the environment, but should be an option at least as good as comparable models with an internal combustion engine. More light compact cars regardless of propulsion are a step in the right direction. There are too many big cars serving households with 1-3 persons that could be served with a light compact car regardless if it is electrical or has a small gasoline engine. Electrical propulation is much more suitable to urban areas though.
There is a lot of potential to recycle steel and produce cheap plastics. So to combine that with a small electric motor with a battery with the range of 50-90 km should bring a lot of benefits, due to most driving being small distance.
Kleiber,
The Tesla Supercharging network is better than the alternatives in North America. Perhaps competitors will catch up eventually, in the meantime Tesla can have others install the Superchargers to their standards and can run the network software with a small team and maintain the physical equipment with third party contractors.
Dennis, I don’t think any other company was clued in enough to get a universal standard charger that was worth a damn and supported. Tesla had the benefit of subsidising the charging network and having the better technology while everyone else went their own stupid proprietary route. People absolutely do not want to buy the car equivalent of Betamax, and with the other tech it was actually more like buying VHS (which was inferior to Betamax) and then also losing the ability to use that tech anyway. A costly mistake for a car purchase, as with Europe and the push to diesel cars over the last two decades.
If Musk wants to solidify Tesla as being a competitor in the market, the Superchargers are how he does it.
We have not heard from Mr Magyar for years, I thought Fred was great.
The coolest little side excursion to take our minds off . . . oil, climate change, extinction.
Oh, never mind.
https://youtu.be/9F-sb-12PvQ?si=vpjA-0zC6fCdGsqy
The sorrows of the Wyoming coal industry.
https://wyofile.com/wyoming-coal-production-nosedives-with-more-trouble-ahead/
Wyoming coal output 2008-2022, EIA annual data
A dose of reality!
CANADA’S OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS
“As Canada’s oil and natural gas production hit record high levels, the country is taking pains to amplify its status as a global oil and natural gas superpower. One part of this greater initiative includes an ongoing effort to transform the sector to be less reliant on U.S. markets and infrastructure through strategic expansion of its own industry at a time when the United States is taking a step back.
Canada took a major step in that direction on May first when the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) finally became commercially operational after 12 years and 12 years and C$34 billion (USD$25 billion). Years of insufficient pipeline infrastructure have forced Albertan oil producers to sell their oil at a discount, resulting in tens of billions of dollars of revenue loss each year. The new TMX is set to change all of that by tripling the nation’s flow of crude.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Canadas-Oil-and-Gas-Industry-Soars-to-New-Heights.html
Peak coal you say. Well, not in India.
INDIA FIRES UP COAL USE AND EMISSIONS DURING ELECTION, HEAT WAVE
“India’s coal-fired electricity generation and power sector emissions hit record highs during the first quarter as above-average temperatures spurred higher air conditioner use and economic expansion drove greater overall power consumption. Coal-fired electricity output hit 338 terawatt hours during the first quarter of 2024, according to think tank Ember, which marked a 9.6% rise from the same quarter in 2023.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-fires-up-coal-use-emissions-during-election-heat-wave-maguire-2024-05-09/
Doug,
I agree India is far from peak coal with average annual growth rate in coal consumption at about 5% per year from 1965 to 2022 (Data from Statistical Review of World Energy). For the past decade (2013 to 2022) the average annual rate of growth has slowed to about 3% per year and has looked fairly linear with an OLS trend with a slope of 0.51 EJ per year.
Coal power generation increased at a rate of 6.3% per year in India from 1985 to 2022, all power generation increased at a rate of 6% over the same period so the coal share of power generation has been increasing in India
Dennis
And it is not just India
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/05/08/asia_embraces_coal_as_the_us_rejects_it_1030384.html
Old Chemist,
Yes for Asia Pacific nearly 5% growth as well, though India’s rise is a bit more dramatic. Recent growth rate (2015-2022) has slowed to an annual rate of 2% per year.
RECORD-BREAKING INCREASE IN CO2 LEVELS IN WORLD’S ATMOSPHERE
“The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet. The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2 levels over a 12-month period. The increase has been spurred, scientists say, by the periodic El Niño climate event, which has now waned, as well as the ongoing and increasing amounts of greenhouse gases expelled into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-record
Not good.
WILDFIRES IN OLD-GROWTH AMAZON FOREST AREAS ROSE 152% IN 2023
“According to surveys by the National Space Research Institute (INPE), the number of fires throughout the Amazon in the first three months of 2023 was 7,861, more than in any of the previous eight years and more than half the Brazilian total (followed by the Cerrado, with 25%). Until then, the highest first-quarter number recorded had been 8,240 (in 2016).”
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-wildfires-growth-amazon-forest-areas.html
Empires die from suicide, not murder.
https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1788803961421758953?s=46
Surprisingly lucid article in The Economist: “The liberal international order is slowly coming apart. Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible.”
economist.com/leaders/2024/0…
The irony is that, as they themselves describe in the article, the US is largely the prime culprit in the disintegration of their own order:
– “The World Trade Organisation turns 30 next year, but will have spent more than five years in stasis, owing to American neglect”
– “The UN security council is paralysed”, again largely due to US vetoes
– “Sanctions are used four times as much as they were during the 1990s; America has recently imposed “secondary” penalties on entities that support Russia’s armies”
– “The return of Donald Trump to the White House, with his zero-sum worldview, would continue the erosion of institutions and norms”
‘Sad What We Are Doing’: Global CO2 Increase Sets New All-Time Record
Even MSM is sounding alarm
https://www.commondreams.org/news/mauna-loa-co2-record
This is the picture for why talking about a green transition is for the birds.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNDc8vjWwAAf7MF.jpg
We are so hopelessly beyond even what we predicted in the direst reports ten years ago, and it’s only accelerating.
Talking about peak oil and weaning us off it with diminished demand to save the environment is like pointing out the non-meat options in a restaurant that’s currently on fire.
Kleiber,
Clearly nothing should be done in that case.
Here is what Gavin Schmidt thinks
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/
Chart below from link above (this is the SSP2-45 Scenario, essentially a BAU scenario).
Yes, CMIP6 being the latest model that shows a higher ECS than what we were talking about ten years ago.
That’s what I said. The warming is going to go higher, faster, and with more unexpected feedbacks moving forward. Hence what Hansen has said, and why blubbering status quo endorsing buffoons like Mann have been shouting him down as a doomsayer, because it makes them look even more clueless and complicit in nothing happening. The real test is if, as Mann suggests, warming goes back down to the 2022 average after the past year’s El Niño. It’s not looking likely.
Keep in mind, even with a much lower ECS like in CMIP4 or 5, we’d still be talking about industrial civ destabilising temperature swings later this century. And they will happen, regardless because even stopping all CO2 pumping right as of now, will not alter the trajectory, currently a forcing of around 7ºC baked in.
The more recent acceleration may be down to permafrost thaw, Hunga Tonga eruption, the Amazon becoming a net emitter, and the loss of aerosols from bunker fuel and power plant clean up.
Please expand on your comment about 7C being baked in.
The literature I’ve read seems to suggest an ECS in the range of 2-6C, with something like 3-4C seeming to have the most support from current analyses and authors.
Can you point me towards sources that are leaning towards 7C?
I need to dig it up again, but I think it was a summing of all climate forcing impacts not just CO2 and if certain feedbacks kicked in e.g. albedo shift, stratospheric cloud formation cessation, AMOC collapse. I’m hoping it wasn’t like some papers using 7 °F instead from memory (bloody Imperial). Either way, it’s somewhat academic since even the optimistic lower ranges are still devastating to organised civilisation.
I mean, the arbitrary 2100 cut off for all model predictions is pretty annoying if anyone really cares about the civ. Warming isn’t going to just stop because it gets to the point where the youngest kids today will be elderly.
See also
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
A new open thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-11-2023-2/
A new update to World and Non-OPEC oil production has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/january-non-opec-and-world-oil-production-big-drop/