EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – September 2019 Edition with data for July

190 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – September 2019 Edition with data for July”

1. Looking at wind and solar output combined, production year round is up to about half of all nuclear, or about equal to 35 nuc plants. Its a start.
   Thanks Island boy.

   1. Anybody here super savvy on nuclear plants? What’s the global outlook for new starts, decommissions, types, overall deliverables, that kinda thing.

      1. Here is something on nuclear- one company is way out in front on new design small modular reactors, from Oregon. NuScale

         https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/press-release/company/nuscales-smr-design-clears-phases-2-and-3-nuclear-regulatory-commissions-revie

         https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology

      2. World Nuclear has a lot of info

         https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles.aspx

      3. thanks a lot for the links you two. I really appreciate it.

      4. tl;dr:
         Global nuclear capacity could start shrinking around 2025 (several assumptions, none of them unrealistic)

         https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/

         and subpages like: https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstructionReactorsByCountry.aspx

         The nuclear lobbyist at the World Nuclear Association have comprehensive lists, but are overly optimistic, e.g.:
         http://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx

         Check the Wayback Machines archive for this URL to see HOW overly optimistic they are regarding future builds.

         A realistic and comprehensive look at the nuclear industry:
         https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-The-Annual-Reports-.html
         Very worth a read.

   2. You’re welcome. There’s a big new record that I did not notice but looking at both of the first two charts, NG had a big month in July. Record absolute amount of electricity generated at 174,063 GWh and record percentage contribution at 42.35%. If the build out of NG facilities is based on their ability to ramp up and down quickly, in anticipation of a lot more intermittent renewable on the grid, then maybe there might be a lot less resistance to renewable energy on the grid in the US. This would be in stark contrast to Australia, where the coal lobby is fighting tooth and nail to have their dominant position on the grid protected by the Federal Government.

      1. Hi islandboy, I have a basic doubt. Do you include the estimated small scale solar to the total renewables and renewables excluding large hydro before calculating the respective percentages or is the percentages are that of only the utility scale facilities?

         Also, can you please do the charts for August too? The report has been released. While the solar didnt break the July record, nat gas is going for the stratosphere. (Around 44% I think). Hopefully, the percentage starts coming down since the total generation would start coming down from next month.

         1. Yes, I include the estimated small scale (behind the meter) production in the charts. With the estimated amount making up roughly 30% of the total solar production, my thinking is that it would not make sense to omit 30% of the production or almost 1% of the grand total. With my expectation that solar will continue to show robust growth, if I were to omit it there would be a growing gap between what the charts show and what is actually being produced.

            Thanks for the heads up. I have been quite busy off line and hadn’t noticed. I have a busy weekend so, I cant promise that I will have anything before sometime next week.

            I did a quick download and yes the percentage contribution fo NG is in fact 43.96%. The rest of the charts will take a little more time especially the capacity changes.

            1. Thank you ?

2. seeking clarification from Survivalist regarding late last thread-in response to a
   note I posted on an upcoming PHEV.
   “You seem really fixated on personal vehicles. The future might throw you a couple curve balls lol”

   What do you have in mind?

   1. … that comment was for Nick, I may have miss sub commented. But since you asked… anticipate for curve balls? I’d suggest a steeper Down Sizing than most folks anticipate, especially the cornucopian gang. I have no doubt, despite deep down sizing, that future economies will consist of cores and peripheries, and that cores will no doubt be centers of resource consumption, including EV tech; but I think personal vehicles are a pipe dream, EV public transport is far less resource intensive (aka realistic), and I’m not betting on a big uptick in auto sales once GFC2/economic depression reoccurs. Unfortunately for HB, I see a world where, at best, in the core, one has to take the bus 2 miles to the gym for spin class. Read Dr Jason Bradford’s The Future is Rural. I subscribe to his analysis, not Elon Musk’s.

      I found this comment by Caelan to be rather sanguine:
      “The only way that renewables might make sense at this juncture is in an enlightened world where certain critical applications for them are prioritized and relatively limited to them, rather than for frivolity like battery-powered vacuum cleaners or electric Tesla ‘limos’ for the single-occupant ‘well-to-do’. Anyone see any indications of that?”

      http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-october-6-2019/#comment-689692

      1. What do you mean by the term ‘personal vehicles’?

         Electric scooters/skateboards/bikes/mopeds/motorcycles/micro-cars/cars/whatever can all function as both privately owned vehicles, or publicly shared vehicles, and will play a role in the future of transportation.

         Fixed route transit has a time efficiency problem, and typically require longer total travel distances as they are not point-to-point.

         The Mountebank himself has said that once they have fully autonomous self-driving vehicles, Tesla will stop selling to private owners and become a ride share service; in effect transitioning Tesla Motors to a public E-transit provider of sorts.

         1. In fact Musk has never been interested in selling luxury cars. It’s always been a stepping stone to the mass market. He has been saying this very publicly since 2010 or so.

            He (and a lot of people in the car industry) are expecting autonomous cars to greatly reduce demand for vehicles, by running cars 24/7 instead of buying them and parking them 90% of the time, which is standard practice currently.

            What Musk is trying to do is combine solar energy and autonomous cars to greatly reduce the oil industry and the car industry. You may be skeptical, but that is definitely his position. It’s ridiculous to claim he is trying to do something different.

            BTW, the reason some people think it is feasible is that there are three main costs of transportation (not including the infrastructure): Fuel, a driver, and the cost and maintenance of the vehicle. Solar greatly reduces fuel costs. Autonomy eliminates the driver. Autonomy also reduces the purchase price of the vehicle by using vehicles more consistently. EVs reduce maintenance costs per kilometer by have fewer moving parts.

            The theory goes that autonomous solar fueled EVs summoned by a mobile device should be so cheap and convenient by 2030 that nobody buys a private car any more, except as a bauble. Skepticism is inevitable, but claiming that Musk has a different goal is just lying.

            1. Solar and wind, combined, can and might wipe out the automobile and trucking industry fuel problem, given time.

               I can remember when it was a bragging matter that a car reached fifty thousand miles without burning oil ( it’s own lube oil ), rather than just gasoline. And my old Daddy can remember when tires lasted five or ten thousand miles, if you were lucky, and engines commonly needed an overhaul job at forty or fifty thousand miles.

               My grand parents on both sides gave up horses for transportation during the twenties, when they could first afford cars, and there were roads good enough here that they could actually drive something along the lines of a Model T on them, assuming it was dry weather, lol.

               And they started switching to tractors in the thirties, when it got to the point that you could use a tractor cheaper than you could horses and mules. The switch in that case was delayed by the fact that you didn’t need to plow or cultivate, etc, nearly as often as you needed transportation, plus the horses and mules could be fed without spending any money, using hay and grain produced right on the farm.

               Contrary to the memories and myths about how everything was better in the old days, the first couple of generations of motor vehicles required DAILY maintenance and frequent repairs. BUT they were nevertheless FAR superior to horses and mules, all things considered.

               What I’m getting at is that while it might be expensive, compared to buying gasoline today, it will still be economic to build out wind and solar farms, and use electric vehicles, compared to any alternative I can easily imagine.

               Will we use them more for essential work and less for fetching beer? For sure, but unless the industrial economy collapses sooner, we will be running electric vehicles by the tens of millions, and we will ADAPT our lifestyles to using them when we CAN, if we must, rather than when we merely want to.
               It’s not going to be any bigger job building enough wind and solar farms than it was to build highways, or water and sewer systems, or aircraft carriers and jets to fly off of them.
               We could build out all the wind and solar we need here in the USA, and the HVDC power lines and enough pumped storage and so forth to give up oil as motor fuel for less than we spend making sure we have access to imported oil.

               1. Absolutely. All the ingredients are on the table.
                  Battery improvement (cost/power/durability) would be a useful upgrade on the menu.

            2. alimbiquated

               Actually there are many people in the industry who think that self driving vehicles are a long long way off.

               https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/29/1556557142000/Scoop–the-questionable-economics-of-autonomous-taxi-fleets/

               You only have to think of how and when most people use their car.

               How much would it cost to hire an autonomous car to pick the kids up and take them to school every day and parents to work.
               Firstly if there were enough autonomous taxis to take everyone who drives to work, they would have practically nothing to do until the evening rush hour.

               https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252461838/Autonomous-vehicle-tech-is-too-costly-and-unreliable-for-production

               Even the most basic logic tells us these things are in their infancy.
               Try and buy one now.
               get in one and drive at 70 miles an hour in the rain or fog or at night and see what happens.

               1. Hugo,

                  The driver assist is not perfect, but it works pretty well on motorway in rain and fog and at night at least for the Tesla Model 3.

                  There is need to pay attention as the technology is imperfect, but it makes long trips far easier and safer as long as one pays attention.

                  The technology is likely to improve over time. I would agree that it will take some time, perhaps 10 years before the technology becomes safer than human drivers.

               2. Dennis glad to hear that.

                  I would say motorways are the easiest places to start. Wide lanes, few junctions and everyone going in the same direction.
                  Driving along roads like this between small towns with hidden entrances and blind bends is another thing entirely.

                  https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/24323

                  I think that would only work with smart roads

               3. Hugo,

                  Yes the Tesla need as least a line down the middle of the road in order to work. You drive 70 miles per hour on that road? You must have a Ferrari or Porsche. 🙂

                  The technology has a long way to go, it detects the edge of the road pretty well, but ragged pavement edges make me nervous so I place close attention on a road with just a centerline and poor maintenance, drives passengers nuts, usually better to just drive the car on windy back roads with poor lane markings.

               4. UK national speed limit for dual carriage ways and motorways is 70mph and, barring holdups, that is the normal speed used.

                  NAOM

               5. Dennis

                  The 70 miles an hour referred to a motorway in a self driving car. I would not do that even on a sunny day.

                  They cannot even get level 2 right, with cars braking at shadows etc.

                  https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/research-reveals-safety-problems-in-driver-assistance-systems

                  https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/heres-why-people-still-crash-with-driver-assistance-systems/

               6. Hugo,

                  It is not perfect, but as I have said it works well on motorway at 70 mph as long as there are proper lane markings, etc, in a construction zone with no lane markings it does not work perfectly and sometimes exit ramps at a curve in the road cause the driver assist to get confused, so as I said one pay’s attention if smart. It will improve over time, my car has the older computer which will be upgraded at no cost in the future, supposedly by the end of 2019. That hardware can handle higher resolution images and may improve the driver assist software.

               7. notanoilman,

                  Did you look at the picture linked by Hugo? I wouldn’t drive 70 on that road, even in a Porsche unless it had been closed for my private use, even then I probably would not be skillful enough to attempt it.

                  What is a dual carriage way? Is that what Americans call a two lane road?

                  The roadway that Hugo posted looked like a one lane track like many that I have driven in Scotland and Ireland, and I wasn’t going 70.

               8. @ Dennis
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_carriageway
                  Shows it better than I can describe. The road in Hugo’s photo would have a maximum of 60mph and may well only be 50 mph or less. Yeah, you would be bloody stupid and breaking the law to do 70 on that road and there are a LOT like that in the UK.

                  NAOM

               9. Dennis

                  I did not say drive at 70 miles per hour on the country lane.

                  Country lanes often have no centre marking, because they are not wide enough. They have passing places, which drivers have to pull in to and often reverse back too. There are thousands of these roads connecting smaller towns and villages.

                  https://www.instantstreetview.com/@51.908225,0.453003,117.46h,-7.73p,1z

                  It will take a long time to get the computers to work properly on these roads

               10. Hugo,
                   The topic of road markings is an interesting one. Volvo had the problem that cars trained in Sweden could find the road (or even city streets) in America because of the lack of markings and general poor street design, with wild shifts in lane size, poorly marked construction sites etc. The problem doesn’t exist in Northern Europe, where it is normal to mark all the roads. The rollout of autonomous vehicles is likely to be uneven for reasons like this.

                   Generally speaking, cars learn to drive by imitating drivers. That leads to questions such as whether cars trained to drive on the right can function in countries where driving is on the left. Also four way stops are common in the US, but unknown in most of Europe, which uses the right before left rule to deal with similar intersections.

                   Tesla showed off its autonomous driving recently with a video. In the video, the car passed several cars on the right. This was terrible driving.

                   It is often said that autonomous vehicles would be safer than human drivers, but if the autonomous vehicles learn bad driving habits from humans, the improvement may be less than expected. For example, cars cutting corners at city intersections is a major cause of pedestrian casualties. Anyway, if the government does not insist on safe driving, it won’t happen, so places where traffic is dangerous now will stay dangerous.

                   But the purely visual side of things should not be much of a problem. In fact, computers already score higher than humans on many visual tests. The trick will be to train them on that kind of road.

               11. @Hugo
                   re your previous image of a junction. It is probably quite safe, no signage so no deaths. Local councils only put warning signs up at places like that if there have been deaths. More signs mean more deaths.

                   NAOM

               12. Hugo,

                   I agree. The country lanes in the UK will be a problem for self driving cars, as will dirt roads etc.

               13. @Dennis
                   Despite being a large town, we have many dirt roads and roads in very poor condition especially cobbled roads. It would be interesting to see what such cars would make of this. Also, chaotic Mexican drivers may present yet another challenge.

                   NAOM

               14. Hugo,
                   Of course nobody is really sure when autonomy will come. I work in the area of machine learning myself, and can tell you that gut feelings aren’t much to go by. That is all your sources have to offer. The car industry is making big bets that it will happen though.

                   Your worries about driving 70 MPH in rain and fog or at may not be a great example. Maybe it isn’t really where the systems will have weaknesses, and maybe they will just slow down.

                   You don’t drive 70 MPH in America at night in rain or fog very often. If self driving cars were much cheaper than buying your own car, would the entire market refuse to use them because of they are slower in an edge case like this? I doubt it.

                   I have spent 30 years designing and marketing high tech products, and if the best objection someone can come up with is an edge case, then the product is looking good. It doesn’t matter how many people say they won’t buy the product. The question is whether enough people say they will that you can do a first iteration and then can move on to the next evolutionary step.

                   There are significant legal hoops to jump through. Some jurisdictions are gung ho. Uber ran over and killed a woman in Tempe AZ and the police said in their official statement that “she looked like she was homeless”. In other words, they didn’t care. Other governments are worried about safety.

                   It’s always hard to predict if a new product will be a success, but here is one: Look for success in niche markets. New products very rarely hit the mainstream without filling a series of niches first. Tesla is promising full blown taxi service in 2020. I have my doubts. But if successful more limited projects work out, a big rollout will seem more likely.

                   A final point: Everyone seems to approach this thinking that nothing will change except that cars will drive themselves. I suspect that the technology will result in a massive redesign of cities. Why will people be willing to make the redesign? Because an electric autonomous car would be dirt cheap transportation per kilometer.

               15. Within dense urban areas, shared autonomous vehicles (SAV) are more likely to look like the vehicles below, than the oversized under-utilized privately owned ego wrappers of today.

                   SAV’s won’t be a thing unless they fully deliver on the promise of significantly improved safety, including the safety of pedestrians, and those on vehicles rather than in them. Once they do, cities will be incentivized to ban human drivers, and insurance companies will be incentivized to charge extremely high rates for human attention required motoring (HARM).

                   This will push the commoners into adoption (compliance?), whilst the plutocrat class floats overhead in their air taxis.

                   Meanwhile, in suburbia, soccer moms can be freed from parental taxi duties and devote more time to shopping.

                   I’m not particularly interested in self driving cars, but yesterday I was heading back to the office from a client meeting and had a long stretch of fresh asphalt in front of me with a really alluring slope. I had my longboard in the back, and at that moment, I did wish that I could just hop on the board and have my car meet me at the bottom, possibly more than once.

                   And thus the superhighway to the precipice is paved with frivolous whim at full throttle.

                   

               16. I’m pretty sure everyone in Manhattan would benefit if they banned all private traffic except in slightly overpowered golf carts with one seat per row. The traffic would probably flow faster too.

                   The main impediment is private car ownership, which forces consumers to make a choice between a city car and a long distance car.

               17. If the goal of autonomous vehicles is perfection, that will be very hard to achieve in this sloppy world.
                   If the goal is to be safer than human drivers, the industry is probably already close to achieving that low goal.

               18. alimbiquated

                   It is disingenuous to say that the people in the articles I found were speaking from a gut feeling.

                   The CEO of Toyota research is probably an expert in what has been achieved and knows how long getting from 1 to 2 has taken.
                   People who are developing the software say that the hardware and software are not up to it.

                   https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/29/experts-say-its-at-least-a-decade-before-you-can-buy-a-self-driving-car.html

                   I will accept what they say, I am sure they will be the first to publicize breakthroughs as they happen.

               19. Hugo,

                   There are different opinions on the matter by experts, clearly you have chosen opinions that you agree with which you will accept. Those experts you disagree with you dismiss.

                   We do not know the future, it really is that simple.

               20. I know “gut feeling” sounds a little harsh, but that’s the way it is. You don’t know how good your machine learning system is until you feed it with data. It isn’t like engineering where you figure out in advance what is going to happen. It’s more like an experiment.

                   The head of Toyota doesn’t have the data he needs to make that kind of judgement. Nobody has the data. The so-called tests they do with self driving cars are actually training the cars. Tesla collects data from all its cars, which is why it probably has a head start on the industry.

                   I’d also like to point out that your link says robo-taxis will be a thing after 2025. It’s just that “private buyers” won’t get the vehicles until later.

                   That is in line with Musk’s timeline, give or take a few years. I don’t know. But Musk thinks that everyone will use his own Tesla to start a taxi business. I think that would be his disagreement with your link.

               21. As a side note, I would also like to point out that Tesla doesn’t really know yet either, because they don’t have the data.

                   So Hugo is right that there are doubters. My point was that huge bets were already being made that autonomy is coming.

                   That’s what I meant when I wrote “He (and a lot of people in the car industry) are expecting autonomous cars to greatly reduce demand for vehicles”. I meant that is where big bets are going currently.

         2. By personal vehicle I mean the opposite of public transport. Cars.. that kinda thing. Perhaps the down sizing will see everybody get an EV skateboard. I’m sure the fan bois will croon over that as a big win from Musk’s corner.
            Self driving taxi’s won’t do much for humanity that taxi’s driven by people aren’t already doing, whether EV or not.
            I don’t see the energy being available (you know, the down sizing…) for all these little drive-about-dreams of the future.
            Fixed route has problems yes, but in the future it’ll likely be that or walk. See which has less problems I guess. People who want to pretend robo cars (not covered in puke and cigarette burns) are coming to take them everywhere they need to go, like 2 miles to the gym to work out, are in for some curve balls.
            Musk say’s a lot of things… he always seems to have a lot of great plans for everybody to be saved. I’m not a believer.

            FWIW- If all the pretend EV enthusiasts on here would perhaps mention Warren Buffett and BYD (a co that made batteries for 20 years before they got into EV’s) as much as they drool over Tesla, it might come off more as EV market analysis and not paid shills for Musk. China will crush Musk once the EV market shakes out.

            https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/chinas-ev-market/

            1. Who ever says the Tesla founders name the most is the one hung up him, perhaps?

               1. That would be Nick and HB then. Fred too when he was here. Balls deep in Tesla stock is my guess. They sure seemed to miss the Warrenn Buffett BYD story. Quite remarkable for such keen EV enthusiasts. I doubt the cornucopians have traveled much outside of Silicone Valley. Unworldliness seems to be a common characteristic with them.

                  I give some push back to the Cornucopians and I get hit with the ‘well you said his name so you’re hung up….’ defense; what is this, grade 8 debate club lol? Weak tea dude. Tesla is a doomed to be defeated by China, Musk is a mountebank, Nick is a shill, and the cornucopian gang is in denial (it’s hard to admit your gonna die in a famine, so people cling to all kinds of faint magical hopes).

                  https://un-denial.com/2019/10/19/by-ronald-wright-a-short-history-of-progress-revisited/

               2. Well, I’m more than happy to move beyond discussing E Musk. Was never too thrilled with ‘big’ guys, or luxury brands.
                  But regarding famine, between now and then I hang onto to the idea that its going to be useful for an individual, like you or me, to have a vehicle that doesn’t need petrol from some far away refinery to get around. I’m talking EV.

               3. Thanks for that un-denial link. Great stuff there, and it led to wildancestors.blogspot.com, which is also thoughtful great writing.

               4. Thanks for that link. Listened to it while gardening and it was a great ‘education’. I wonder if anything like that is taught in schools. It’s an excellent overview and helps to have a big picture that is that big. He’s a good presenter as well.

            2. Spare me the sophomoric insults. It makes you sound like the proverbial drunk Republican uncle browbeating his niece at Thanksgiving dinner, not like the man of the world you seem to imagine.

               Self driving taxis will significantly downsize the car industry. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone in the industry. EVs will significantly downsize the energy business. I make no claim that it will save the world. That’s you putting words in my mouth.

               Whether Tesla survives or not is irrelevant. The car entire industry sees the same trend coming and is adjusting. For example the world’s biggest car company, VW, sees is new ID3 EV platform as its third big platform after the Beetle and the Golf. Hence the 3.

               The puke and cigarettes remark is part of the desperate American attempt to justify spending all day in traffic in a car they can’t afford. A slave needs to look down on a free man so he can respect himself. If the price is right, Americans will forget it and start finding robotaxis cool, just the way they find the pathetic habit of drinking coffee from a paper cup cool now.

               1. alimbiquated

                  and further reading to points made above

                  https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2019/05/21/self-driving-automobiles-how-soon-and-how-much/#952e0838bd28

                  DR Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota’s Research Institute, charged with developing an autonomous system for the Japanese manufacturer spoke cautiously about its arrival. “This is a wonderful goal, and someday we may achieve it,” he said.

                  So the day that you’ll summon a car without a steering wheel, hop in and lie down for a snooze are still some way off – and some experts believe it may never happen – but the technology is slowly creeping into the cars on our roads.

                  https://www.buyacar.co.uk/cars/976/driverless-cars-when-will-self-driving-cars-arrive

            3. The main advantage of public transportation is space savings. If a city runs a fleet of autonomous single passenger vehicles, it muddles the picture.

   2. this comment isn’t against anything hickory has said but is a comment of the “steeper downsizing” comment – Well said survivalist. It appears to me we are coming up against another test of the “system” (short hand for well -functioning financial, economic, political, etc order). The system has been extremely resilient since 2009. Ten good years is nothing to scoff at. But clearly there are emerging fault lines.

      The US Fed has moved back into QE / balance sheet expansion, and might even still be considering another rate cut. This despite market valuations at all time highs and unemployment low. What are they afraid of? ECB continues QE. China injects in moments of panic regularly. BOJ has been a reliable buyer for decades (though is supposed to be pulling back in the coming months – we shall see). Without these moves there would have been a non-zero chance of a civilizational collapse due to the onset of peak oil (peak cheap oil, whatever floats your boat). There has been a globalized, synchronized general slow down (manufacturing and retail in US, for example). Can another bolus of QE overturn that deceleration? Who knows.

      If you follow Doug Noland (credit bubble bulletin) then you are probably aware that most metrics of “bubble economics” have surpassed the 2007/8 bubble metrics. Any downturn would make GFC look quaint by comparison since it now involves so many governments/Central Banks directly with asset purchases. http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2019/09/weekly-commentary-q2-2019-z1-and-repos.html . Concepts that seem like distant childhood nightmares, like CDOs, are likely to make a comeback with a vengeance.

      Geopolitical/economic issues (which are often resource based – peak oil / climate change – if you follow Nafeez Ahmed) are also escalating in recent years – UK (Brexit), US (impeachment), Argentina (default), Venezuela (collapse), Chile (recent protests), Spain (Catalonia), Hong Kong (protests), Turkey/Syria/Kurds, India/Pakistan/Kashmir, China/Vietnam (south china sea), China/Taiwan, US/North Korea, Iran/Israel/Saudi Arabia, SA/Yemen, Libya, Guatemala/Honduras/Nicaragua (general decay).

      Even normally sunny, if not inconsequential, metrics like EV sales are turned sour, with both US sales (YOY declines for last three months) and Global sales (YOY decline in August). Which leads to the peak oil aspect – that consumption is bumping up against production. Presumably OPEC or Shale can turn that around pretty quickly, but again, it adds to uncertainty, and when things are uncertain it can destabilize already shaky markets.

      Again, re-emphasize that the system has shown resiliency. I imagine no powerful elite wants a downturn, or at least, wants to be the epicenter of it. If someone else collapses – well there may be an eventual upside to that even with some short-term pain. These aren’t the type of people that lightly are just going to “blow the system up” out of frustration. But everything has limits. Take Brexit – shit’s been going on for 3.5 years. Will the EU grant another six month extension? Probably. Will they grant another one after that? Well – at some point these paralysis points in state/global governance break free, and when it does it is usually a violent breaking.

      1. twocats,

         Great comment. There have been lots of periods of instability in the past, the QE problem seems to be central banks trying to do too much to manage the economy, this should be saved for periods of true crisis. Unfortunately the Fed seems to have been bullied by the Bully in chief into a poor course of action, they should have simply continued to let their asset positions unwind and reduced their balance sheet.

         Let Trump reap what he has sewn and not bail out the moron.

         1. thanks dennis – this would have probably constituted the “elaboration” you asked for in a previous thread. certainly on a lot of metrics – like debt-to-gdp, you are correct, that the system is humming along as if nothing changed in the past two decades. I see peak oil (and climate change from the other end) as a rolling, rumbling, unstoppable phenomenon that is slowly consuming our civilization through dynamic processes that can’t be reduced to a chart (inequality, leading to resentment, leading to blaming outsiders, leading to isolationism, leading to Trump, as one very crude example). Am I hallucinating that things only appear to be getting worse? Am I propagandized by all the doom-porn in our movies and culture (Zombie movies, disaster movies, nightly news)? Both real possibilities. And I think your insistence on keeping an eye on the facts is certainly an admirable quality especially if things seem to be chaotic.

            1. twocats,

               Things do seem to have gotten worse in some respects, but from the perspective of conservatives, they see the opposite. The rise of the right which seems so terrible to those on the left is in some cases a reaction to gains by the left.

               I am most familiar with the US and certainly things have improved for the LGBTQ community in the past 20 years, to the dismay of many conservatives, some gains have been made in racial and gender quality as well. Support for Trump is a reaction by those wishing to return to past inequality. It is unfortuntate, but it is the reality, people don’t like things to change, but change will of course occur nonetheless in ways that are impossible to predict.

               I have no doubt that there will be a severe financial crisis in the future.

               Just going by the numbers over the past 140 years we have had two very severe economic crises that were Global in scope (1929 and 2008), so roughly one every 60 years or so. The future may be different and perhaps peak oil and climate change will change the calculus in ways we cannot predict.

      2. Even normally sunny, if not inconsequential, metrics like EV sales are turned sour, with both US sales (YOY declines for last three months) and Global sales (YOY decline in August).

         This isn’t true of Tesla:
         https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/

         Tesla appears to still be production/delivery constrained. Tesla doesn’t have a single serious competitor yet. It is easy to conjecture that the car market overall is possibly suffering from a Tesla effect: lots of folks holding off on buying a combustion car because they want to upgrade to electric, recognize that the market is set to change rapidly in the near future, and either don’t like or can’t quite make the stretch for a Tesla.

         1. So is Tesla production constrained or are they at record deliveries? And if they are at record deliveries than why are YOY sales down? I’m not going to go model by model to try and figure out which models are up vs. down. I imagine last year people were still buying the Model S because there were still people who could afford a model S. Once the Model 3 started going people started buying the model 3. That market may be slimmer than people imagined, or there is a global economic slowdown.

            https://insideevs.com/news/373812/ev-sales-scorecard-september-2019/

            so are you saying people aren’t buying model 3s now because they can’t get one? or is it because they are waiting for a better EV? even though no other EV manufacturer has as good of a charging network even though that’s the primary complaint by most critics? or are you saying that actually Tesla is the market and since Tesla hasn’t experienced a dip (even though their production constrained) that somehow magically the market isn’t dipping YOY even though it is? It’s really not clear what you are getting at here.

            1. twocats,

               You have to be careful with the sales numbers. In the US Tesla sales are down YOY, globally they are up. Some of the downturn in the US may be the expiration of the 3750 tax rebate at the end of June (fell to 1875) and might also be people waiting for the Model Y, or offerings from other producers besides Tesla. Difficult to know. Sales of vehicles in general have been down, perhaps Tesla has been affected by that trend.

               In China buyers are waiting for the cheaper cars from the new Shanghai Tesla factory which is supposed to be starting production soon, that can also affect sales.

            2. Tesla is both at record deliveries, and are production/delivery constrained. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.

               My main point was that Tesla YOY sales have NOT declined, as per the linked source. I’ll try to post a graphic, but that only works sometimes.

               And yes, I believe there are many people who:
               Want a Tesla but the supply is currently constrained in their market.
               Want a Tesla but can’t afford one and are waiting for the used Tesla market to reach their price point rather than buying a new non-Tesla.
               Want a future Tesla model (Y, Truck), and are waiting.
               Want an EV but don’t want a Tesla and are waiting for true competitors to show up; there are lots of promises from other manufacturers about their upcoming models which will compete with Tesla, but there isn’t any true competitor yet. Not one.

               So yes, I suspect that the EV market overall is being affected by Tesla’s dominance, and I suspect that the car market overall is being affected by a form of Osborne Effect from EV’s.

               

               1. “So yes, I suspect that the EV market overall is being affected by Tesla’s dominance,“

                  Aren’t Tesla cars much more expensive ?

               2. Aren’t Tesla cars much more expensive ?

                  Tough question to answer, because: compared to what?’

                  https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/07/comparing-electric-vehicles-on-price-per-range-mile-you-know-who-wins-infographic/

                  https://insideevs.com/reviews/344001/compare-evs/

                  Throw in access to the fast charging network that no one else has, and there is nothing comparable at any price.

            3. Tesla was never interested in the luxury car market. It was always just a way to grow the company enough to get into the mass market.

               Source: https://www.tesla.com/de_DE/blog/master-plan-part-deux

               There is little reason to doubt Musk here. He has been saying the same thin for ten years. It is a standard strategy in Silicon Valley outlined in the classic marketing book “Crossing the Chasm”. Tesla’s strategy seems strange in the car industry but in the high tech industry it looks normal and obvious. Everyone in the VC world he inhabits thinks just like this.

               >> So is Tesla production constrained or are they at record deliveries?

               I would answer “Both”. I’m not sure why you think there is some contradiction here. EVs are certainly not demand constrained, for the time being anyway, as long waiting lists show.

               The constraint is battery production. Despite double digit growth of worldwide production, supply can’t keep up with demand.

         2. It is not just EVs/Tesla where people are holding off. Market wide there seems to be a sense of waiting and this can be seen in truck sales that have fallen off due to customers wanting to see how the market goes. As far as Tesla goes, I think we will have to wait until GF3 is in production before we see where things are going, in the USA I suspect many are interested that a SUV and pickup are on the way and that may affect their thinking.

            NAOM

      3. Agree two cats. I saw an article on this (financial fragility) recently- here is an excerpt-

         “Third, monetary and fiscal stimulus is proving less effective. Not that it was so great last time, but it helped. It also had side effects that may have reduced its usefulness. You can’t force credit on those who don’t want or need it [or in my words- can’t afford it], even at zero or negative rates. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan are learning this the hard way.”

         All of these issues can be seen as symptoms of a system in overshoot, starting to round the top. I’m sure people have thought this in the past, but one of these times, it will be upon us.

         1. Hickory,

            One needs to make a clear distinction between monetary and fiscal policy.

            Your comment mostly focused on problems with monetary policy, when interest rates are low, people may still choose not to borrow. For fiscal policy, if we cut taxes for the wealthy they many simply save their money which does very little to stimulate the economy, especially in a low interest rate environment.

            Government spending or tax cuts for poor or middle class are very effective for stimulating the economy, but concern over government deficits or anti-government sentiment may prevent these types of fiscal policy from being implemented.

            If people are concerned with government deficits taxes should be raised or spending should be reduced. Best to do this when the economy is doing well as it will tend to reduce the economic growth rate.

            1. Dennis,

               On a Dutch tv news program someone said that low, close to zero, interest rates make a lot of people with low to middle class income save nevertheless, because for them those interest rates are a sign that something is wrong with the economy. In this case no stimulation for the economy from them.
               Known already is that a lot of those people/families have debts, and are unable to save anyway.

               1. Han,

                  I had not heard that, generally people will be more willing to borrow at a low interest rate than at a high interest rate, but it may be different in the Netherlands.

                  It would be a little like raising the price of a good so people will buy more, generally when businesses want to sell a good they reduce the price, at least in the US, Europe may be different. 🙂

            2. I was trying to express the belief that the whole financial system seems to have weak underpinnings. Economic growth is slow in much of the world, yet assumptions for investment return for banks, funds, pensions are all based on higher growth and yield.
               Risks for large shortfalls seem very high.
               I was trying to point out that these are the kinds of manifestations we should expect to see in a world where demographic and energy supply constraints begin to work against the ‘growth forever’ model that the economic order is based on.
               S Korea population peak is now expected to be 2023. Good thing, since they important something like 90% of net energy use.

               An additional concern I’d seen written about indicates that each dollar of stimulus ‘buys’ much less growth than in the past. Its another indicator, like negative interest rates, that the system is faltering.

               1. don’t worry hickory – when your neighbors turn to cannibalism to survive the debt to gdp ratios will be very reasonable and pent-up demand for Tesla Y models will be through the roof. 🙂

               2. Oh great. Feeling much more optimistic now. Guess I’ll stock up on BBQ sauce.

               3. Make mine hickory flavored, well done, fries and a Coke Zero

               4. “hickory flavored, well done”
                  Not sure how to take that.

               5. Hmm
                  Just heard in radio news that in Holland the pensions are cut 8% due to pension companies’ poor shares performance.
                  Our (finnish) pension companies are not concerned as their investment strategies are different. Future issues are the low birth rate and increasing number of pensioneers outside the work force if I got the short statement right…

               6. Low interest rates are the natural result of globalization and productivity increases.

                  Every year millions of workers enter the labor market in places previously shut out of the world economy — Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, South America. This creates huge deflationary pressure. High interest rates really aren’t an option. Although labor productivity hasn’t been too impressive in rich countries, it is skyrocketing in poor countries.

                  In addition, technical change is depressing demand for commodities. In the past, high demand for raw materials was a sign that economic activity was declining. Now it is now so clear.

                  Another source of confusion is improved supply chain efficiency, thanks to better software and better management. It decreases the need for companies to maintain large inventories as they shift to Just In Time delivery. Inventory swings are the primary cause of the up and down of the business cycle.

                  Despite all the gloom you hear, America has just gone through its longest ever uninterrupted expansion. Energy consumption and carbon emissions about flat in that period. So economic ground under our feet is definitely shifting. What that will bring remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t count on straight line projections from the past.

               7. Hickory,

                  Trump’s policies on trade have slowed GDP growth Worldwide from about 3.6% in 2018 to 3% in 2019. Better policy could lead to better growth, unfortunately the World has to suffer the stupidity of the US electorate. Hopefully the US will choose wisely in the future, but I am not holding my breath.

               8. Dennis,

                  Depends on perspective. GDP growth correlates well with environmental destruction and energy consumption.

               9. That’s why God invented regulations to protect his work. Now it looks like the South will burn in hell for their sins.

               10. The North likely will too

               11. Iron Mike,

                   That is correct. Much of that destruction is due to a poorly run industrial system, environmental regulations that are enforced can help to mitigate much of the environmental damage, also population growths slows as economies become more developed and reducing population growth to zero and beyond will go a long way to reducing both growth in GDP and environmental destruction. For the past 50 years average growth in real GDP per capita for the World has been 1.4% per year. When we get World population declining by 1.4% per year we reach steady state with zero economic growth if per capita real GDP continues at the average rate of the past 50 years.

                   When population starts to fall faster than 1.4% per year, World real GDP starts to decrease. That would be a good thing, but the economic system will need to adjust to falling output.

               12. Dennis-“but the economic system will need to adjust to falling output.”
                   True, but extremely understated.
                   I’m pretty sure we’ll be kicking and screaming as we drag ourselves through the process.
                   Trump is the prologue.

               13. Hickory,

                   Yes I agree, it was understated. It is unclear how the problems of a shrinking economy will be solved, people will need to be prepared to support themselves in retirement and taxes on the wealthy may need to increase so that government pensions can support those in need. This problem will not arrive for 50 years (when I expect we will reach peak population) and it may be another 25 to 50 years beyond that until population starts to fall at 1.4% per year so that the economy reaches steady state (that assumes the 1.4% growth in real GDP per capita from 1970 to 2019, continues for the next 100 years, a dubious assumption at best).

               14. Dennis, Economic contraction could come long before population contraction, in fact I think it is likely. S. Korea population is expected to peak in 2024. Cheap fuel will peak in the coming decade. I expect economic contraction to force population contraction.
                   Maybe I’m way pessimistic on this, but I am.

               15. Hickory,

                   I doubt that the economy will permanantly contract prior to population peaking, I am speaking in World terms. As fossil fuel reaches a peak people will begin to use the expensive fuels more efficiently and they will switch to other energy sources gradually over time.

                   That is over the long term, over the short term there may be a severe recession/depression due to the shock of lower fossil fuel supply, but eventually we will adjust. That is the way I see it, I could of course be wrong. Humans despite their stupidity can also be pretty innovative and resilient.

               16. “Humans despite their stupidity can also be pretty innovative and resilient.”

                   Well, hopefully that will include deliberate downsizing from this current condition of population overshoot, and all of its destructive manifestations.

               17. If we look at human footprint calculations, we see that the primary element is GHG emissions.

                   The average US light vehicle uses about 1.5KWH per mile. The average EV uses about .25KWH per mile. So, electrification actually downsizes GHG emissions by 85% (or more, with dynamic charging to move demand to times of peak renewable generation).

                   A heat pump downsizes by about 70%.

                   A PassivHaus downsizes by 100%.

                   Then, of course, we’d need to finish moving to renewable electricity to eliminate most of the rest of GHG emissions…

               18. Jared diamond wrote an interesting book about this called Collapse.

                   The subtitle is How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

                   Humanity will be faced with a lot of difficult decisions in the next century. Doom is not inevitable. It depends whether people make good choices or not.

                   There is plenty of room for pessimism, but don’t blame the laws of physics for human stupidity.

               19. That’s very well said

               20. Of course the tariffs and trade barriers (Iran oil restrictions for example) slow global economic growth, but I’m not so sure fast growth is what we should aim for anyway.
                   In fact it may be time to think (and act) towards a managed contraction. Contraction of population, of the human footprint on the planet, and contraction of economic activity to be in-line with a lower energy consumption.
                   Better a managed contraction than a forced one.
                   I know its political suicide to bring up this contrary position, but I’m not running for office, or popularity.

               21. I agree that we need to reduce the human footprint on the planet, and lower fossil energy consumption.

                   But…it’s better to target that directly. Humans could live on a small percent of the planet, eliminate fossil fuels, slash methane emissions from meat production, etc. . Then we’d see where we landed as far as standard of living goes. I suspect our daily comfort would be just fine – e.g., EVs are quieter and faster than ICE’s, trains are faster and safer than cars, zero-carbon Passiv Hauses are more comfortable, etc., etc.

                   As far as caring for the environment goes: the very first step is to make that a priority for both the average person and our leadership. Right now it’s not really a serious priority.

                   We might need….zoning!

                   The horror.

               22. Humans could live on a small percent of the planet

                   Really now? Have you ever been to Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka, or Pakistan, Or India, or Hong Kong, or Shanghai, or anywhere else where the teeming masses crowd into slums and live at the very edge of survival? On what tiny percentage of the world are you going to put almost 8 billion people.

                   And on what tiny percentage of the world are you going to grow food for all 7.7 billion people?

                   The world is dying because we are turning it into farmland and pasture. We are cutting trees and clearing the land to grow food and fiber. Cleared land and heavy rains are washing the topsoil away.

                   It is a myth, a horrible myth, that says we could pack the world’s population into a small space and they would survive. Human overpopulation is destroying the earth. We are destroying the earth because we need every acre of arable land to grow our crops and graze our animals.

               23. Oh come on Ron, after forever amount of years of Caelan permacluture stories you have ask. You will need two South facing window boxes.

                   You have to stop digging first, zoning is a start.

               24. What American cities need is a lot less zoning. Most cities in America are about 80% zoned for single family residences only, often on quarter acre lots. This is completely nuts, an is the main reason Americans spend so much time in their cars.

                   About half of the 1500 shopping malls built in the last 60 years in the US are now dead. Mayn could have been saved if they had been converted to anything other than chain stores and vast empty parking lots.

                   The best way to cut carbon emissions is to move into town to a smaller apartment. So build apartment buildings on downtown or mall parking lots, and let people walk to work or shop.

                   I often shepard American businesspeople around German cities, and they are amazed at how pleasant city life can be. People spend a lot of time in well groomed outdoor areas eating and drinking with their neighbors.

                   Americans proudly carry their throwaway Starbucks coffee mugs around. They are symbols of a nomadic life, where you spend so much time commuting that you don’t have time to sit down with friends to eat.

                   Eating in your car is quintessentially American. There is also a lot of American pornography about having sex in you car (according to a friend of mine!).

                   It’s usual to say that Americans love cars, but that fails to explain the prevelance of road rage, and the incessant complaints about traffic and fuel prices. In fact Americans are victims of the Stockholm syndrome, held captive by dirt stupid city planning and defending it to the death. The solution is to commute shorter distances.

               25. You have to stop digging first, zoning is a start.

                   Zoning? Are you shitting me? Of the 30 largest cities in the world, one, Number 27th in population, New York, is in the USA.

                   What is zoning going to do for Sao Paulo, or Manila, or Mumbai, or Delhi, or Mexico City, or Dhaki, or Karachi, or…..? More than half the population of each of these cities live in slum shacks. Zoning is going to help these people?

                   I have come to the conclusion that more than half the contributors on this blog live in a dreamland. It’s far past the time you guys should wake up and get real. You seem to have no idea to the conditions of the real world.

               26. Alimbiquated,

                   I agree with your general idea. But, here’s a few thoughts.

                   First, you’re more thinking of suburbs, somewhat more in the East of the US. Places like Houston have no zoning at all, little mass transit, and a lot of driving. So, I agree that we need higher density housing, but we also need land-use planning that limits urban sprawl.

                   I’m pretty sure that German towns have very detailed, very restrictive land planning and construction/facade requirements. Some of their good urban planning is just historical accident, but much of it comes from very conscious decisions and public policy.

               27. Ron,

                   I’m not sure what point you’re making, when you talk about slums. Yes, there’s lot of poverty in the world. But, I was talking about preservation of wildlife habitat. When you crowd a lot of people into large cities, that helps keep them away from areas where wildlife do best.

                   Now, farming is another matter. Here’s a couple thoughts for the US: The US has 3.8M Square miles. About 37% is farm and ranches (900M acres). But only 12% is farms, probably half of that supplies feed for ranches. So…6% of the land area is needed to feed humans. And, yes, that would likely mean greatly reducing meat eating. Which is something people might do if they actually prioritized wild land…

               28. I’m not sure what point you’re making,

                   My point is you have no idea how the world really works.

                   Nick, people crowd into cities because that is the only place they can survive. They pick the dump for cardboard, paper, and plastic that they can sell for a few dollars. Some take menial jobs or become prostitutes or just beggars. Things they could not possibly do in the open countryside.

                   How much of the Earth’s land is farmable?

                   At the time of this writing, the most recently available statistics pertain to 2010, at which point the World Bank reported that about 37.7 percent of the world’s total land area was considered agricultural land, while approximately 10.6 percent was considered arable. A significant distinction can be drawn between how much of this land is used for crop production versus livestock production. Satellite images compiled by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison show roughly 17.6 million square kilometers (6.8 million square miles) used to grow crops, with between 32 and 36 million square kilometers (12 and 14 million square miles) used to raise livestock. All told, this equates to a land area about three times the size of the South American continent.

                   10.6% of the earth’s land is arable. Arable means “suitable for farming”. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Most of the earth’s grazing land is not suitable for farming. Camels, goats and some cattle can graze on just about anything, and that includes desert scrubland, totally unfit for growing crops. So everyone eating no meat would subtract, not add, to the earth’s supply of food.

               29. Ron,

                   Yes, many people in urban areas are poor. How does that relate to the question of setting aside non-urban land for wild habitat?

                   Yes, only a percentage of the world’s land is arable. But, a large percentage of grains are eaten by livestock – beef in particular converts about 6 grain calories to only about 1 meat calorie. Eat less grain-fed meat and you need to grow less grain.

                   And, if only 11% of land is arable, that leaves roughly 89% of land. Use another 10% for ranching, and you still have about 80% available for wildlife habitat.

                   If people were to live at a moderate density like 5,000 per square mile (or only about 8 per acre), you’d only use about 2% of land for residential housing.

               30. And, if only 11% of land is arable, that leaves roughly 89% of land. Use another 10% for ranching, and you still have about 80% available for wildlife habitat.

                   Well no, most of that land is mountains, deserts, and frozen ice or non-cultivatable tundra. However arable land does not include rain forest or boreal or dry forest. That land is not suitable for cultivation until the forest is cut down. And it is being cut down at an alarming rate.

                   Yes, many people in urban areas are poor. How does that relate to the question of setting aside non-urban land for wild habitat?

                   Oh my goodness, I agree. We should set aside non-urban land for wild habitat. The problem is you are trying to convince 7.7 billion people. Nick, they ain’t listening!

               31. Ron,

                   Yeah, I think we’re roughly in agreement here: most people don’t understand the value of wildlife, or of wild habitat. They think wildlife is dangerous, or carries disease, and things would be safer and more convenient if we just eliminated most of “nature” and replaced it with something along the lines of very carefully curated English gardens and lawns.

               32. Nick –

                   you are quite wrong about zoning in America. Every city in America has it, including Houston, which likes to pretend not to. And single family housing zones are the norm in cities, not just suburbs.

                   Here’s an interesting article about it:

                   https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-created-one-of-americas-worst-housing-crises

               33. The statistic which finally convinced me that the human species is in the final stages of population overshoot is the percentage distribution of vertebrate biomass.

                   “Today, the biomass of humans (≈0.06 Gt C; SI Appendix, Table S9) and the biomass of livestock (≈0.1 Gt C, dominated by cattle and pigs; SI Appendix, Table S10) far surpass that of wild mammals, which has a mass of ≈0.007 Gt C (SI Appendix, Table S11). This is also true for wild and domesticated birds, for which the biomass of domesticated poultry (≈0.005 Gt C, dominated by chickens) is about threefold higher than that of wild birds (≈0.002 Gt C; SI Appendix, Table S12). In fact, humans and livestock outweigh all vertebrates combined, with the exception of fish.”

                   https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506

                   This is not remotely sustainable. Population is still expanding. As a species we are eating more and more meat. All other vertebrate species must be considered at risk of extinction. Add in climate change, habitat loss, environmental contamination by our industrial wastes, the spread of invasive species, etc. and we have well and truly destroyed our primary habitat.

               34. These issues are explored in an interesting piece, that is worth your consideration if you have the time. I agree strongly with the author in his analysis of these issues-
                   https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
                   #156

      4. Thanks twocats, good comments yourself. At the risk of being accused by Nick of ‘pushing fossil fuel talking points’, my suggestion is that the down sizing will be more steep and less gentle than anticipated.

         1. Well, we may need a better phrase than “talking points”. “Talking points” carries the implication that the speaker is aware that the ideas are unrealistic, and that the speaker intends to help the FF industry. Probably most of the time that’s not the case – in particular, I wouldn’t suggest that you’re trying to help the FF industry.

            Motivations can vary – sometimes people are sincerely trying to communicate a serious danger, unaware that the idea that civilization can’t live without FF is unrealistic and tends to help prolong our unhealthy addiction to FF.

            Sometimes people are trying to scare other people so they can sell them gold and silver.

            1. “Fossil fuel talking points” is your phrase, and I got it from you when you provided your opinion on Dr. Jason Bradford’s essay called ‘the future is rural’.

               1. I know.

                  And now, I’m saying we might need something better, that doesn’t seem as judgmental.

                  Language is important. People aren’t ready to listen to ideas when they feel criticized, or in some way attacked.

               2. We? It’s all about you dude.
                  You seem to have a history of labeling all those who don’t believe in your cornucopian fantasies as shills for fossil fuel.

                  Unfortunately, you appear to draw no distinctions between those who don’t agree with your cornucopian fantasies, and those who actively oppose renewable energy development. To put it mildly, it seems kinda fanatical on your part.

               3. I’ll say it one more time: I see a distinction between active opposition to renewables, vs people who argue sincerely against renewables being viable.

                  So.

                  You expect that Peak Oil will cause disastrous disruption, and that renewables won’t help much?

               4. Much as you have a history of labelling those who say anything positive about Tesla as being paid shills or “balls deep” in the stock. Seems like fanaticism on your part also.

3. Food for thought as President Trump moves to loosen methane emission standards:

   WHO ARE THE BIGGEST U.S. METHANE EMITTERS?

   “Shale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased emissions from fossil fuels globally. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly one-third of U.S. methane emissions come from oil and gas development. However, the EPA has proved to be less than thorough when it comes to tracking methane emissions. One study published in Science last year found that the U.S. is producing about 60% more methane than the agency estimates, largely due to leaks along the supply chain.”

   https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-are-the-biggest-us-methane-emitters/

4. GLOBAL IMPACTS OF THAWING PERMAFROST IMMINENT

   It’s here now, according to research published today by a large team of scientists in Nature Climate Change. By pooling observations from more than 100 Arctic field sites, scientists from the Permafrost Carbon Network estimate that permafrost released an average of 1662 teragrams of carbon each winter from 2003 to 2017 — double past estimates. Meanwhile, during the summer growing season, other surveys have found that the landscape absorbs only 1032 teragrams — leaving an average of more than 600 teragrams of carbon to escape to the atmosphere each year. Researchers say, it’s a sign that the permafrost feedback — which would see carbon emissions from permafrost lead to warming that would in turn thaw more permafrost — is already underway.

   NB one terragram = 1,000,000 metric tonnes

   https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/global-impacts-thawing-arctic-permafrost-may-be-imminent

   1. buh bye

      1. goodbye

   2. On the weather depends the harvest. On the harvest depends everything

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

      1. Question for you Survivalist, or anyone else with a relevant comment
         In order to improve your chances of ‘weathering’ this bottleneck, did you stay put where you are from, or did you intentionally select an area you considers more sustainable or survivable to move to? I ‘m interested to hear peoples take on this.
         Myself, I am living in a spot that that I consider far from ideal in this regard, for family and social reasons. I know its vulnerable to a pretty big variety of risks. Most places are, different flavors of risk.

         1. I live in a city just east of the Great Divide. It’s a job thing.
            My retreat is just west of the Great Divide in the northern Idaho area.
            TBH I just kinda got lucky with the retreat location… but I do tend to like mountains with lots of good fishing and hunting, and a reasonable climate for gardening. Mountainous terrain favors the defender, should it be required.
            My retreat is reasonably remote, and well stocked. My ‘Bug Out Bag’, so to speak, is a tank of gas. Although it’s unlikely I’ll need to ‘bug out’. I plan to be relaxed and in place at the retreat with a van full of my city stuff well before things get out of hand.
            My current project is to lay in an orchard at the retreat; lots of fruits and nut trees are being established. I’m bullish on food.

            1. Its a good area of the country.
               Did you know that Idaho gets over 80% of its electricity from Hydro, Wind, Solar [majority hydro]?

         2. Hi Hickory,
            Maybe I’m just fooling myself, but I’m going to stay put where I am, for a variety of reasons.I’m in the Southwestern corner of Virginia, near the NC state line, in the Blue Ridge Mountains near the BR Parkway.

            I’m here because my family is here, for the most part. It’s just a matter of luck that it’s a good or maybe even ideal location.

            If the shit hits the fan before I’m gone, this is a good place to live a more or less self sufficient life style. We have plenty of timber, plenty of farmland, lots of skills, lots of guns, a macho don’t mess with us culture, plenty of springs that run pure water, and nothing much, except our farms, which will attract desperate people ready to do whatever they must to survive.

            We will be able to produce enough food for our own use, and SOME to barter for whatever other goods might be available, even without much or anything in the way of purchased in puts. The biggest single problem, other than our own personal safety, in terms of simple survival, will likely be getting enough fuel to keep some tractors running until we can raise some draft animals, which is a slow job when you have to start with a mere handful of horses.

            And it probably won’t get any hotter than Georgia within the next twenty years. I will be gone by then.

            1. Its pretty country too. I like that whole hill valley ridge territory.

            2. Not too far from Kingsport, TN, where I come from, OFM.

5. Possible contender to challenge lithium for grid storage-
   https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/highview-power-is-developing-first-major-cryo-storage-plant-250mwh-in-uk

   1. Li batteries are nice for EVs, for stationary applications as short term storage their energy density is no real advantage, therefore, one can expect here other better battery solution.

      The use of liquid air as storage, which offers a long term component which batteries don’t, is a quite old approach, I have seen some Austrian stuff many yaers ago, the question still is of round trip efficiency.

6. Arctic ice back in record low for date territory

   https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/blog/polview.html

   1. It doesn’t look like the arctic ice level is having an impact one way or the other for winter temps because right now predictions are for another brutal cold winter like last year’s.

      1. “It doesn’t look like the arctic ice level is having an impact one way or the other for winter temps ”

         Umm, I think you you have the cause and effect backwards.
         Like, you get wet because you take a shower.
         I can give you more examples if it would help.

         “right now predictions are for another brutal cold winter like last year’s.”

         Umm, I’ve been around for a while. Every winter has been brutally cold. Its one of the big reasons they call it winter. That, and its darker.

         Keep trying.
         Harder.

      2. Not to worry Bradley! Unless you have an expiry date that is within the next couple of decades, you should live to see a ice free arctic in the summer. That’s when I expect things could get really interesting! 🙁

7. Which policy can help EVs most?
   http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/10/which-policy-can-help-evs-most.html?m=1

   1. If was king, and had to come up with one most effective policy to help EV’s,
      it would be an incentive big prize type program for battery technology improvement.
      Its the key.
      With cheaper or stronger battery,
      all other economic incentives/policies would be entirely unnecessary.

      1. I have a very strong hunch you have less than six months to wait for some significant news. My feeling is that there are some people out there trying very hard to avoid the Osbourne Effect!

         1. Yes. Tesla To Produce Its Own Batteries, Reports South Korea News Outlet “The Elec”
            https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/22/the-elec-tesla-to-produce-its-own-batteries/

            Tesla have also acquired Hibar Systems, a battery manufacturer with factories in North America, Europe, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and China…

            1. I saw that the small tesla sedan (less than $40K) outsells the tesla luxury models by over 8:1 now. Oh, and the aftermarket tesla stock move is up 20% after reporting quarterly earning. Ford down.

      2. Whoever makes a major battery breakthrough will be in the tall cotton and they know it. Don’t know how a prize would add incentive at this point. The payout will be huge for anyone who is successful. Plenty of folks are working very hard.

         It’s important I feel to recognise that the batteries we have are actually good enough for basic ground transport. It will only get better from here, at least until the famines hit.

         1. Good point Bob.

            1. such as this perhaps

               https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/20/uk-man-invents-aluminum-air-battery-in-his-garage/

               1. This really looks too good to be true. But maybe…

                  Here is it’s company https://www.metalectrique.com/

               2. >>This really looks too good to be true.<<

                  It is. Its a primary battery and can't be recharged.

                  Now, in other news…

               3. Not having to pay (at) regular visits to a ‘fueling’ station is something I very much love about having an electric car, so, I’m not sold.

                  Could have application for aviation apparently, and that would be an easier market for standardization of swappable battery modules, perhaps than passenger cars.

               4. In general, fleet applications would make the most sense. Long-haul trucking, aviation, and blue-water container shipping.

         2. The lithium ion battery came into production by the Japanese in the early 1990’s.
            It has been a while comrades.

      3. Isn’t there already a huge prize for battery technology? First one to do it cheaply will become unfathomably wealthy.

         Incentives are not what is holding back battery development.

         1. Yeh good point, as Bob Nickson also pointed out.

            1. Its been quite a while—-

8. Tesla shares up 18% to $300.50 after Q3 earnings report showing a rare (up to now) profit.

   1. Tesla is now more valuable than GM, according to a Yahoo Finance article.

9. islandboy, something to remember next time you decide to prattle on about the wonderful solar energy developments happening in Australia.

   “Australia’s per capita emissions are highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development a group of rich and developed countries. Australia has higher emissions than forty other countries with larger populations. Australia is also the third largest exporter of fossil fuel emissions in the world, after Russia and Saudi Arabia.”

   https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/10/22/australia-admits-using-cringe-carbon-loophole/

   1. Funny how you bring that up at this time I was just looking at the following stories from reneweconomy.com.au:

      Solar, wind to drive Australia emissions lower, but so much more could be done

      Two leading energy academics from the Australian National University have predicted that Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions will fall over the next few years, driven by surging investment in renewable energy projects, in an analysis that has been widely panned by senior figures in the clean energy sector.

      Professor Andrew Blakers and Dr Matthew Stocks have made the prediction in a new analysis published by the university, that is likely to be leapt upon by the Morrison Government as proof that its policies are working. But the analysis simply reinforces how much more could and must be done given the technologies at hand.

      “This is a message of hope for reducing our emissions at low cost,” professor Blakers said.

      “Solar and wind energy offers the cheapest way to make deep cuts in emissions because of their low and continually falling cost.”
      Credit: ANU

      Under the Coalition government, Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing since it canned the carbon price, despite substantial falls in emissions from the electricity sector driven by renewables.

      Australia solar market set for “big pivot,” not slow-down, says Nextracker

      Australia’s booming big solar market is not set to slow down any time soon, according to top executives from smart solar tech company Nextracker, despite the various road-blocks currently facing some NEM-connected PV projects.

      US based Nextracker, which opened an office in Australia in 2016, this week passed the 3GW-mark of projects installed with its smart solar trackers across Australia’s utility and commercial and industrial solar market.

      The company’s president, Bruce Ledesma, and VP of Australia, Peter Wheale, told RenewEconomy this week that since their first Australian project in 2015, things have not slowed down for the company, and show no sign of doing so any time soon.

      As you already know, I tend to focus heavily on developments that may someday change the situation you highlight.

10. Another benefit of moving away from coal:

    “For every megawatt of electricity produced using natural gas instead of coal, the amount of water withdrawn from local rivers and groundwater is reduced by 10,500 gallons, the equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a typical American household,” said Andrew Kondash, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke, who led the study.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Best-Thing-About-The-Death-Of-Coal.html

    1. Wow. So, coal uses about 200x as much water as LTO (10,500 gal per MWH is 10.5 gal per KWh, while LTO uses about 1-2 gal of water per gal of oil, so roughly .05 gal of water per LTO KWh).

11. U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says ~ By Nafeez Ahmed

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmkz8/us-military-could-collapse-within-20-years-due-to-climate-change-report-commissioned-by-pentagon-says

12. Hugo.
    China/India
    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41533

13. Rare piece of good news:

    Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/25/scientists-glacial-rivers-absorb-carbon-faster-rainforests

14. Food for thought,

    WHY THERE’S MORE GREENHOUSE GAS IN THE ATMOSPHERE THAN YOU MAY HAVE REALIZED

    This week brought news that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa atmospheric observatory have risen steeply for the seventh year in a row, reaching a May 2019 average of 414.7 ppm. the amount of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is higher still. If we factor in other greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide, we find that the world has already ticked past yet another milestone: 500 ppm of what we call “CO₂-equivalent”, or CO₂-e. In July 2018, the combination of long-lived greenhouse gases measured in the “cleanest air in the world” at Cape Grim Baseline Atmospheric Pollution Station surpassed 500 ppm CO₂-e. Since the Southern Hemisphere contains less pollution than the north, this means the global average atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is now well above this level. As all the major greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) are rising in concentration, so too is CO₂-e. It has climbed at an average rate of 3.3 ppm per year during this decade – faster than at any time in history. And, it is showing no sign of slowing.

    https://theconversation.com/why-theres-more-greenhouse-gas-in-the-atmosphere-than-you-may-have-realised-118336

15. islandboy, just for you! 😉

    AUSTRALIA HITS OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION RECORD, OVER A BILLION BARRELS

    “Australia’s oil and gas industry has hit new production records with liquefied natural gas output expected to continue rising significantly over the next quarter. In its newly released Energy Quarterly September 2019 report, the firm recorded Australian petroleum production lifting 16% year-on-year to pass one billion barrels of oil equivalent for the 2019 financial year.”

    https://smallcaps.com.au/australia-oil-gas-production-record-over-billion-barrels/

16. Five Energy Innovations To Transform The World

    https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Five-Energy-Innovations-To-Transform-The-World.htm

    #1 California’s Solar Mandate – One of the potentially largest energy innovations is not technology based. Instead, it is

17. Largest planned wind farm in US gets key federal approval

    Dive Brief:

    The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Monday released for public comment its last environmental analysis of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Project in Wyoming after more than a decade of reviews.
    At 2,500 MW to 3,000 MW and up to 1,000 turbines, Chokecherry and Sierra Madre will be the largest wind farm in the United States once completed. Its output would be sent to California through a $3 billion high-voltage transmission line that is still under development.
    The federal approval comes despite President Trump’s opposition to wind power and a 2018 BLM rejection of another large-scale wind project.

    1. https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/26/these-2-stunning-numbers-show-that-renewable-energ.aspx

       The total amount of renewable energy coming online is continuing to grow a far faster pace than conventional generation, and almost for sure will continue to grow faster for the easily foreseeable future.

       It’s amazing how many arguments I used to hear about renewables being impractical that are heard no more.

       I think maybe if I live to be a hundred, or even ninety, that EVERYBODY will be claiming he ALWAYS believed in and supported renewables, lol.

       1. OFM, you might find this interesting?

          THE COMING ELECTRIC VEHICLE TRANSFORMATION

          “How far electrification will go depends primarily on a single factor—battery technology. In comparing electric with gasoline vehicles, all the downsides for electric arise from the battery. Purchase price, range, charging time, lifetime, and safety are all battery-driven handicaps. On the upside, electric vehicles have lower greenhouse gas emissions, provided the electricity grid that supports them is powered by renewable energy [the renewable share of global electricity is up from 22% in 2001 to 33% today, with Europe at 36%, China at 26%, and the US at 18%]. Moreover, the operation and maintenance costs of electric vehicles are substantially lower than for gasoline cars. Today, for high-mileage cars such as taxis, which typically travel 70,000 miles/year, the total cost of ownership of an electric vehicle, including purchase price, insurance, fuel, and maintenance, is much lower than for a gasoline car. This means that government and commercial fleets used for local service likely will convert to electric to save money, a major step in the electrification trajectory. To reach cost parity with personal gasoline cars, which typically travel 12,000 to 15,000 miles/year, battery prices must decline to near $100/kWh from the present value of $180 to $200/kWh. Projections of the year of cost parity for electric vehicles with gasoline cars globally range from 2022 to 2026). At that point, economics could well take over as the primary impetus for electrification, and electric vehicles would then be on a path to transportation dominance.”

          https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6464/422

          1. Hi Doug,

             Thanks, this kind of reasoning is right down my philosophical alley.

             And I’m willing to go even further, in terms of predicting what’s going to come about.

             Personally I believe there will be plenty of people who will be perfectly happy to buy a new electric car with a sixty to seventy mile range, once we collectively get over the range fright. Ten bucks says at least one well known manufacturer will be marketing such CHEAP short range cars in the USA within six or seven years.

             There are people who use their LEAF to run deliveries around town all day long, making up to ten or more short trips that all add up to only sixty or seventy miles or less.

             I know at least a dozen people that could easily get by with a sixty to seventy mile range and charge up only every third or fourth day.

             And this would of course have the same effect, in terms of the price, as reducing the cost per kWh by a factor of three. This could actually eliminate the price premium we pay for an electric car today.

             Beyond that, it would have the effect of expanding the market for batteries, and so causing the industry to scale up faster, which will eventually mean much lower battery prices.

             Personally I would market such a car so that the installation space and connections are there to attach a second and third identical battery, later on, when the purchaser might actually need a two hundred mile range.

             It frequently takes a long time for the obvious to become obvious to corporations.

          2. A point that is not made very often is that in two car families, the second car as the household battery for the family would be a cost effect use. That way the family cars are used for their specialization and there is still a paying use for the sidelined car. Even I in the wilds of Nevada have two vehicles, one (old but 4 wheel drive) for dirt roads and one (new and smooth) for paved. One vehicle is always home.

             1. Good point Jay.

                I’ll need to seek technical assistance to pull it off, but when I upgrade to a better, longer range EV at some point in the future, I’ll put my little Fiat to work doing load leveling and backup duties for my house. Maybe I’ll pull out the power pack, maybe I’ll keep the car registered and licensed so it can do double duty, or maybe I’ll just bolt the whole car to the wall like a power wall and call it an art installation.

                I can imagine a day in the mid to long term future in OFM’s neck of the WOODS where all the derelict abandoned vehicles scattered AROUND the farm yards are actually providing storage services for distributed power networks. 😉

       2. OFM

          Total electricity produced last year was, 26,614 TWh, solar and wind produced 2,480.

          https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-full-report.pdf

          Nobody said you cannot produce electricity from wind and solar. It was and still is a storage problem. Storage at the moment amounts to about 0.01% of consumption.

          1. Hi Hugo,

             I must disagree about that “Nobody said you cannot produce electricity from wind and solar.”

             Nobody has said that RECENTLY, except a few die hard anti renewable types.

             But going back five years on into the past, there were MILLIONS of people saying it can’t be done.

             This is the point I failed to make in so many words in my original comment.It seemed obvious enough to me, but now I realize it was not obvious at all.

             I could probably come up with a list of fifteen or twenty arguments that were made up until recently supposedly proving that wind and solar power was not only totally impractical but also that it would crash the grid.

             I don’t see these being posted anymore, because they have been so thoroughly disproven that the people who made them know better than to post them again.

             So they have to come up with new ones, if they can, or just stick to old standbys such as wind farms are killing all the birds.

             When I run across that one, I post about the number of birds killed by “Kitty” and the amount of bird habitat that’s destroyed by mining coal.

          2. “It was and still is a storage problem.”

             That is at least debatable. IMHO even nonsense.

             There are no larger countries where added RE capacity needs much storage. Even in Germany with 45% RE the available pumped storge, built for baseload NPPs, are still sufficient.

             1. Add demand management and need for storage is reduced.

                NAOM

    2. Yep. Fantastic news. It’s coming at a place with one of the best wind resource in USA with capacity factor expected to be atleast 40% and probably even 50% if turbines with 100m hub height are used (which will be done in all probability). To put it in perspective, it will produce atleast 10 to 12 TWH of electricity per year compared to the annual California demand of around 250 TWH.

18. China’s 2019 coal imports set to rise by more than 10 percent, to around 320 million tons
    https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/10/chinas-2019-coal-imports-set-to-rise-by-more-than-10-percent-to-around-320-million-tons.html
    win some, lose some

    1. Base effect. Chinese government really cracked the whip on imports last year. It’s just reverting to the mean this year.
       Infact, the total coal consumption peaked in China in 2014 and is falling since. It has been creeping up for the last 2 years but hasn’t reached the 2014 peak yet. Hopefully, it never does.

       1. Hopefully it never does

       2. China’s CO2 emissions.

          2008 was 7,378.5
          2009 was 7,708.8
          2010 was 8,135.2
          2011 was 8,805.8
          2012 was 8,991.5
          2013 was 9,237.7
          2014 was 9,223.7
          2015 was 9,174.6
          2016 was 9,119.0
          2017 was 9,229.8
          2018 was 9,428.7

          and this year is due to be even higher

          https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2174146/chinas-melting-glaciers-are-wake-call-world-greenpeace-says

          China has pledged to bring CO2 emissions to a peak by 2030, only 20 years too late.

          1. It’s worth noting that China’s GDP nearly tripled in dollar terms between 2008 and 2018, the period you cite.

             According to the World Bank it went from $4.598 tr to $12.24 tr in that period.

             So in billions of dollars per whatever your units are, it went from 0.62 to about 1.33, nearly doubling its carbon efficiency. It’s always a good idea to include units when citing numbers.

             But I don’t know if my number include inflation. I got them by googling China GDP. Assuming just under 2% inflation, you get about an 80% improvement in carbon efficiency.

             1. Chinese government put GDP growth above everything else. Burning as much cheap coal as possible, the consequences are being paid by ordinary people.

                https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2166542/air-pollution-killing-1-million-people-and-costing-chinese

                The rise in sea levels will wipe out trillions of Dollars of infrastructure.

                https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/rising-sea-levels-pose-threat-to-homes-of-300m-people-study

                unfortunately people will find out too late that GDP is not as important as many other things, like food and water

                1. Calm down. You don’t know what the Chinese government thinks. You don’t even speak Chinese.

                2. alimbiquated

                   what a stupid statement

                   https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal?t=1572505116207

                   https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-china-coal/china-plans-226-gw-of-new-coal-power-projects-environmental-groups-idUSKBN1W40HS

                   The Chinese government is a dictatorship.

                   They decide exactly how many coal fired power stations are built. It is policy.

                3. In the 80s I lived in Bonn, then the capital of West Germany. I was a student, and I had a job working for a major American newspaper. The job was to comb through German newspapers every day and cut out articles mentioning Nazis and pasting them into a notebook. No news of any other description was of interest.

                   The journalists in charge spoke no German and were completely ignorant of German history and current events. I occasionally went out to have beer with them and the main topic of conversation was how they could get free NBA season tickets, which is apparently a perk you get as a journalist. Also it’s important to get “box seats” or something. That’s all they really cared about.

                   What I learned was that you should not rely on American media to explain the situation in foreign countries. They aren’t even interested.

                   China is definitely a nasty dictatorship, and unfortunately it seems to be getting worse in recent years, mostly thanks to Xi, who is a bit of a thug. But the central government doesn’t have a great grasp on the economic policies of the provinces. The provinces tend to compete with each other to dominate fashionable industries, which is part of the reason why solar panels are being massively overproduced. There are many other examples of massive overshoots in recent Chinese history, like whole cities being built and nobody moving in.

                   One of the big myths of communism is that an enlightened dictatorship of the proletariat can make all the decisions needed to run the economy. In his memoirs, Gorbachev says he once met an old man on a visit to some town in Siberia. The old man complained that trucks from a local factory were dropping sharp metal shards on the roadside, and people were stepping on them and cutting their feet. He asked Gorbachev to use his power as General Secretary to deal with the problem.

                   That was the moment Gorbachev decided the Soviet Union was doomed. There was no way he could deal with problems at that level. No government can. It is nonsense to imagine that countries submit completely to the will of the government.

                   What are the motivations of the Chinese government? They are afraid of civil insurrection, and a lot of people in China are seriously pissed off about urban pollution. The government is also actively looking for ways of leapfrogging over the West, so they like renewables and EVs. They hate importing coal and oil, so they support local fossil fuel production. They need to increase electricity output, so all production is welcome, and they have issues with keeping the grid up. They are nervous about crackdowns on polluters, because it allows local governments to shake down businessmen, further pissing the populace off. So crackdowns come and go. Officials react very twitchily to social media. And then there is the seesaw of the provinces vs the central government, with the provinces competing against each other.

                4. Do you speak Chinese?

                5. yes

19. islandboy,

    I know you like to trumpet all those wonderful solar energy developments in Australia (while ignoring fossil fuel exports) but, coal aside, this country is now the largest gas exporter in the world and natural gas reserves just keep expanding: MORE GAS HAS BEEN DISCOVERED AT WEST ERREGULLA.

    “Earlier this month, West Erregulla-2 became the deepest onshore well ever drilled in Australia, passing 5,000 m in depth after already making what was a described as an “exceptional” gas discovery the week prior. Now, project operator Strike says the High Cliff sandstone formation was encountered with a gross gas column of at least 22 m and an average porosity of 10.3 per cent and sections up to 16 per cent.”

    https://www.gastoday.com.au/2019/09/11/even-more-gas-at-west-erregulla/

    1. Meanwhile,

       CARBON BOMB: CLIMATE IMPACT FROM LOSS OF INTACT TROPICAL FORESTS GROSSLY UNDER-REPORTED

       A new study in the journal Science Advances says that carbon impacts from the loss of intact tropical forests has been grossly under-reported.

       https://phys.org/news/2019-10-carbon-climate-impact-loss-intact.html

       1. The smallest impact would be near the equator if CO2’s raise the temperature. This is relevant for discussing because the region around the equator is where most of the world’s tropical rainforests are found, and the temperature in that region has stayed pretty stable for millions of years. Another thing, warming due to CO2’s would also increase rainfall near the equator, which would actually expand tropical forests. For more info, read up on the Holocene Thermal Optimum, the geology eon when what is now known as the Sahara use to be a savanna.

          1. “which would actually expand tropical forests”
             Not at the rate they are chopping them down, mate.

             NAOM

    2. Doug, many of your post show all the more reason why the whole world needs to double down on reducing carbon emissions. Since it seems very unlikely that there are any immediate measures that will slow population growth, EVs and renewables look like the best shot we have at reducing carbon emissions in the short to medium term. Maybe I’m being hopelessly optimistic but, what are the options? Should we all throw our hands up in the air and say, “we’re screwed”?

       I prefer to look at anything that has potential to reduce carbon emissions in the short to medium term, without requiring major sacrifices from the public at large, and encourage it. From my vantage point, the alternative is partying on, BAU untill global civilisation hits a brick wall. I think I’m in good company when you listen to the utterances of the likes of Jerry Brown:

       ‘General Motors better wake up’ before China takes EV market, former California Gov. Brown tells Congress

       Dive Insight:

       The Trump administration’s efforts to prevent California from enforcing implementing its own fuel standards is a national threat to the electric vehicle market, say EV advocates. Some 15 states, representing almost 40% of the automobile industry, have adopted California’s standard, which also provides a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency that states rely on in part to provide zero emissions vehicle rebates.

       “The California waiver is important. It means California can set higher standards. It means California can be a laboratory of energy innovation, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” said Brown.

       1. Agree

20. islandboy — DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE!

    “Thanks to the efforts of climate activists, the climate and ecological emergency has never been more prominent. But acknowledging the problem is just a starting point. Now this momentum must be harnessed to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse habitat destruction. To accelerate this transition, we need a vision of the future — and there are many out there. The problem is that some of these visions severely misunderstand and underestimate the nature of the crises we face. If we rally behind the wrong one, we may end up propelling the planet all the more quickly towards destruction.”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-10-techno-fix-futures-climate-chaosdont-hype.html

    Meanwhile,

    MEGA-INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS IN AFRICA, ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA ARE RESHAPING DEVELOPMENT

    Infrastructure networks, of transport, communication and energy, are expanding rapidly and increasingly extend across national borders. The Lamu Port — South Sudan — Ethiopia Transport Corridor in East Africa boasts plans for a deep-water port, international airports, highways, resorts and oil pipelines. Narendra Modi’s “Make In India” initiative includes the establishment of five industrial corridors that connect India’s most economically dynamic cities and “offer effective integration between industry and infrastructure.” Leaders with diverse political ideologies are embracing investment in infrastructure as a strategy for unlocking growth potential. According to Forbes the legacy of Philippines strongman president Rodrigo Duterte may be a “golden age of infrastructure” whose slogan is “Build, Build, Build!”

    https://phys.org/news/2019-10-mega-infrastructure-africa-asia-latin-america.html

    1. Doug,

       What’s your vision (in your own words)? What do you think should be done?

       1. …. or perhaps more importantly, Doug, instead of contemplating fantastical cornucopian response options, what do you think WILL be done, and what will be the impact of that?

          Escape options narrowing for world caught in ‘progress trap’: Ronald Wright

          https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/saving-ourselves-from-a-progress-trap-ronald-wright-on-extricating-humanity-1.5288833

          1. “Escape options narrowing for world caught in ‘progress trap’”

             Meanwhile,

             BRAZIL: BLAZE ADVANCES ACROSS PANTANAL WETLANDS

             “A 50-kilometre-long wildfire is advancing across Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands. The governor’s office in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul said the fire was “bigger than anything seen before” in the region. At least 50,000 hectares of vegetation have already been destroyed.

             Located in the southern part of the country, this is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world and a popular tourist destination. The fire began on 25 Oct. and is advancing rapidly due to the combination of high temperatures and high winds. Over 8,000 fires have been recorded in the Pantanal to 30 Oct., up 462% on the same period last year.”

             https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50257684

             1. Yes, Wright sees big risks, and the fire is bad.

                So…what’s your vision? In your own words,

                what do you think should be done?

                1. For starters, I’d suggest that HB could perhaps start walking or cycling the 2 miles from his home to the gym, rather than drive.

                2. By the way Doug seems unable to write a response beyond cutting and pasting from some random article someplace on the internet, it’s almost like he’s AI trying to stimulate discussion and generate clicks (the links could be monetized in one of those work-from-home arrangements). Anyway, it’s all such strange behavior.

                3. Posting comments with quotes and links is a common practice here.

       2. I believe islandboy answered for Dougie: throw our hands up in the air and say, “we’re screwed”

          1. And so it goes. Non-viable mutations don’t persist. Other organisms will fill the niche we vacate, and those we’ve vacated.

             It’d be interesting to drop back by in a million years or so and see what’s up.

             Happy Samhain y’all.

       3. Ronald Wright is cheering on those taking action:

          “Although he is more pessimistic about our chances to get out of this “progress trap,” Wright finds hope in those who stand up to those in power, from the global protests of the Extinction Rebellion movement, to teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg.”

          https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/saving-ourselves-from-a-progress-trap-ronald-wright-on-extricating-humanity-1.5288833

          1. Ronald Wright: Can We Still Dodge the Progress Trap?
             Author of 2004’s ‘A Short History of Progress’ issues a progress report.

             https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/20/Ronald-Wright-Can-We-Dodge-Progress-Trap/

Comments are closed.