134 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 26, 2020”

  1. The US has far surpassed its original peak with 45K new positives yesterday. It’s been noted that one should multiply this by ten to estimate total number of new cases.

    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

    The curve is now as steep if not steeper than it was in March. FL, TX, CA, AZ are out of control. Should the north lock out the south? Should non-mask-wearers be shunned?

    We’re a failed state. Market crash, despair and civil war coming soon.

    1. Failed State – or Species?

      I could discuss this further – but those discussions are not popular.

    2. “Should non-mask-wearers be shunned?”
      Yes indeed, if they are inside anywhere or close to people outdoors (10 ft).
      Shunned, and fined- if they are in or from a county that has more than a few cases.
      That is, if the country would like to keep the economy functioning.
      Its been obvious to anyone with half a brain since mid-March.

        1. Wow. Do we really have a real live Russian trying to influence our elections??

          Somehow it seems too…obvious. But what would be the benefit of adding a fake Russian name? Infuriating Democrats to the point of making them irrational, and adding to the general atmosphere of fear and anger?

        2. Mikhail, you express the extremely selfish sentiment of the majority of republican voters in this country very well-
          Its all ‘me first’, and
          Who gives a shit about the ‘common good’.

          1. My sister lives in Orange County, and was informing me of the Repug anti mask outrage.
            With some search, I was astounded at the ignorance and selfish action from these ignorant rich a$$holes.
            Maybe just Darwin at work?
            Less would be better for humanity.

    3. There are more tests going around now than back in March and April. Ergo, more confirmed cases even though the daily average of US deaths is still slowly declining.

      1. The positivity rate is going up, too, Sherlock. Deaths rates lag behind positive test rates, dumbass.

      2. The daily average of deaths is still declining because 3 weeks ago the number of new cases was declining.

        Then states started reopening more and more, and just like everyone SHOULD have expected, cases shot up.

        In 2-3 weeks deaths will be going back up. This isn’t hard to predict. In 2 weeks when deaths are once again high and on the rise, remember I told you so.

          1. Richard Brockley:

            If the number of tests is 1000, and 10 come back positive, that means a ‘positivity rate’ of 1%

            If you now do 10 times as many cases, (10,000), and you get 10 times as many cases, i.e. 100, then the rate is the same. But if 1000 come back positive, that gives a positivity rate of 10%.

            In Arizona over the past couple of weeks, the positivity rate has climbed from around 9% to around 20%.

            The number of people being hospitalized is also increasing.

            Increasing testing can indeed mean a higher number of cases, but when the rate of positive cases is increasing, to what do you attribute that?

            The increasing rate of positive cases, and the increasing rate of hospitalization both point to the pandemic getting worse.

            Some people hope this is just a bubble that will diminish in a few days. I find it interesting that the new cases are skewing towards younger people, which i assume means older people are staying home??

            1. Some people hope this is just a bubble that will diminish in a few days. I find it interesting that the new cases are skewing towards younger people, which i assume means older people are staying home??

              My thought is that Nursing Home infections are a trailing indicator: Young people working in Homes become infected, bring it into the Homes, and infect residents. Deaths would follow initial spikes in young people by 4 or 5 weeks.

              This is an interesting demographic question: what percentage of Red State 80-year-old-plus seniors are in care facilities vs. their own homes?

              And if the young(er) people in their regions don’t wear masks, will being “in the wild”, as it were, protect them?

            2. You have it backward. Nursing homes are a leading indicator. The virus brought home by young people infect people in their own homes, not in nursing homes. They infect their older parents or even grandparents. But these folks are not in nursing homes.

            3. 82% of Candian Covid deaths were in care facilities. These people are not on the beach or hanging out in bars: someone had to bring the virus to them.

              The young people who are getting sick now probably won’t die. Some of them work in care facilities, however, and when they pass it to residents, that’s when you start to get deaths.

              It is this second transmittal of infection that will likely produce the majority of deaths. Looking at the current surge statistics can’t give us a true view of the death rate because it has not spread evenly through the population yet.

            5. Before this latest surge in Texas and Arizona, there was a news report that even with the state reopening, restaurants and bars were reporting their business was still down > 60% because people were nervous and staying away.

              I wonder if that group staying away would skew older, leaving the younger, invulnerable, sociable types to become the vector.

      3. Richard, you nicely explain with your post why the USA is in deep shit. 🙂

        1. Yes unfortunately it only takes one asshole to ruin a party. Lucky US…

    4. Funny about 6 months ago this site was all about Peak Oil production, now its a debate about when will CoVID peak!

      That said it does look like Oil production is going to be a huge problem with a global economic shutdown underway. Looks like the Debt isn’t about to peak either as gov’t go on borrowing binges and Central banks are buying stocks, gov’t bonds and corporate debt. Debt is growing faster than weeds all over the world.

  2. Modern Times

    The American Example

    Obvious Responses Will Not Suffice

    The dynamic characteristics of complex social systems frequently mislead people.… [Urban policies for example] are being followed on the presumption that they will alleviate the difficulties.… In fact, a downward spiral develops in which the presumed solution makes the difficulty worse and thereby causes redoubling of the presumed solution so that matters become still worse.

    The same downward spiral frequently develops in national government and at the level of world affairs. Judgment and debate lead to programs that appear to be sound. Commitment increases to the apparent solutions. If the presumed solutions actually make matters worse, the process by which this happens is not evident. So, when the troubles increase, the efforts are intensified that are actually worsening the problems.

    — Jay W. Forrester, 1973, pp. 93-94

    My bold.

  3. As of June 26 global Covid-19 known cases exceed 10 million.
    The USA comprises 4.6% of total world population,
    but accounts for 25.7% of total world cases.
    Active (sick) USA cases exceed the combined total of the next 9 worse affected countries combined!
    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

    Executive branch Failure! Failure! Failure!

    Where a damn mask.

    2. Interesting that we also consume about 25% of the worlds resources. Wonder if there’s a connection…

  4. Advantage #129 to having an electric (or plug-in hybrid) vehicle-
    You can charge at home and thus avoid getting Covid-19 at the gas station, or oil change facility.

  5. Ron and everybody,

    Here’s a quote from Richard Kinnear, head of Medical School at an English university:

    “I quickly learned that many patients with advanced COVID-19 disease bore none of the hallmarks of severe respiratory illness until they suddenly collapsed and died. The science behind this early lesson is now emerging, with a study from Wuhan, China, describing pathological lung changes on CT scans of completely asymptomatic patients.”

    He learned this after he’d examined a patient who tested positive for COVID-19 but seemed fine until he checked her blood oxygen saturation and found it 75%; she should have been “barely conscious.” She died suddenly that night.

    The Wuhan study of the CT scans of 58 asymptomatic patients showed lung damage in 55 of them. The study is linked to in Kinnear’s article found in today’s Links at the site Naked Capitalism. The title is Coronavirus: Asymptomatic People Can Still Develop Lung Damage.

    Now to check for other kinds of damage. Oh, and we should keep in mind that asymptomatic people are still carriers and can shed virus for 14 days.

    1. OFM, that was a great article. Thanks for posting it. An amazing history lesson.
      Read article on how German doctors first proposed that some people could be asymptomatic carriers. They were dismissed in the beginning too.

    2. I did rather speed read the article but I found a couple of issues worth commenting on.

      -I don’t think the research on lead’s direct effect on health was the entire story on banning tetra ethyl lead. As least as important was the fact that the lead contaminated catalytic converters. Environmentalists and politicians were much more interested in smog at that time.
      -Thomas Midgley, the inventor of tetra ethyl lead also invented Freon, killer of atmospheric ozone.
      -In general the entire concept of trusting business, large or small, to act responsibly in regard to matters affecting the short or long term health of our ecosystem, much less the health of individuals is a recipe for catastrophe. Yet it is a fundamental premise of American culture.

  7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/06/28/europe-travel-us-banned-14-countries-who-can-visit/#63c6742c2ee3

    “Other than the infection rates in other countries, and their Covid-19 response, another factor weighs in heavily: Whether the country has lifted travel restrictions on the EU. Something that is still not the case with President Trump’s Europe travel ban. Though the health situation rules out the U.S. for now in any case.

    For China it’s different. It represents a kind of no.15 on the initial list. But its inclusion is dependent on it opening up its borders to EU travelers. “Chinese travelers could enter Europe, but on condition that their country respects the principle of reciprocity by authorizing Europeans to travel to China,” reports Agence France-Presse. “This is not the case at this point, and is considered unlikely in the short term.”

    The Yankees are now discouraging visitors from Florida, lol.

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article243765137.html
    Trump fans seem to have forgotten it was the other way around only a few weeks ago.

  8. After all these years, the last southern state with a confederate battle flag, Mississippi, finally voted to change it’s flag.

    Change can happen…

      1. “And Putin is paying to kill Americans”

        With all due respect: What do you expect?

        After 1979 the USA delivered weapons to Afghan fighters which caused the death of thousands of Russian soldiers. It would be a surprise if Russsia did not support the mujahedin when the USA became the occupier.

        1. There’s two differences.

          First, it’s very common for countries to interfere in conflicts, from France helping the 13 colonies to China helping Vietnam. But this is an outsider incentivizing the conflict. Not helping. Not providing resources to an existing conflict, but sustaining old conflict and creating new levels of conflict. And making it very personal by paying for individual deaths.

          2nd, the Trump administration didn’t respond to this very personal escalation.

      3. Russians are ordinary people who do not remember evil, not Orcs as propaganda shows them.
        Putin is a pragmatist. What is the point of paying for dead soldiers. Today it’s not possible to hide the truth. There will be leaks. Why make enemies. Just think about it. Who benefits?

          1. I think the decision to intervene and overthrow the sovereign governments by military forces is a mistake. This is the decision of the USSR government, a bunch of senile old people, they thought that the United States would establish a friendly regime in Afghanistan. Besides the troop deployment, there was a huge program to create industrial enterprises, power plants, infrastructure. We’ve not calculated help “the United States, she decided everything, instead of secular civilization, there are fanatics. But Afghanistan did not cause the collapse of the Union, the reason was the arrival of traitors in the leadership. They created a tool for collapse: Independent leaders of the” presidents “of the Union republics. Of course, there were other mistakes. This long story does not fit into a large book.

  9. https://www.salon.com/2020/06/30/following-weeks-of-dismal-polls-fox-news-report-wonders-whether-trump-will-drop-out/

    The TLDR short version is that Fox management sees the handwriting is on the wall, as far as the orangutan is concerned, and scrambling to preserve at least some credibility for later.

    Read on for my personal interpretation.

    The fact that FOX would even CONSIDER running such an article or report must have the orangutan knashing it’s teeth and throwing dung, confirmed by his tweets, etc.

    My personal opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the older generation of the family that owns FOX was happy to sacrifice their “NEWS” network, being part and parcel of the Republican establishment, to get what the family, and the rest of the Republicans, wanted, namely tax cuts, fewer environmental and worker safety regulations, lots of right wing judges, etc.

    Generals and checker players do this sort of thing routinely, making minor sacrifices so as to win larger victories. I’ve been set up by a master checker player more than a few times who deliberately sacrificed three men one after another, in order to win on his fourth move. Needless to say I don’t play for money playing this little KID,who may grow up to be a ranked chess player.

    As I see it, the socalled “FOX NEWS” surprised the family by not only getting the job done politically, but also by becoming a gold mine in and of itself.

    But now there’s been a generational change in management,reported in other credible media, and the younger generation is looking forward to the post orangutan scenario, as I see it, and gradually disengaging from the orangutan orbit, so as to preserve SOME credibility, and as much as possible of its present and future audience, post orangutan.

    If I’m right about this disengagement and “social distancing”, we will be seeing more and more criticism of the orangutan administration as such, while seeing very little criticism of the remainder of the Republican establishment.

    The Democrats are going to win control of Washington and many a Republican held state and local office as well on election day………. assuming there aren’t any more major political surprises favoring the Republicans between now and November.

    It’s TOO LATE now for trump to bully Republican politicians by way of threatening them with his base in primary races, meaning they are now free to practice as much social distancing as they please in an effort to hold onto their own seats and offices.

    We will be seeing ever more Republican office holders practicing military grade social distancing from the orangutan administration from one month to the next, as sure as sunrise.

    I won’t be totally surprised if a few congress critters of the R stripe even admit publicly, in a round about way, that they should have voted to impeach trump or to convict him, as the case may be.

  10. On the other thread GF wrote- “PV and wind power are not even at the pilot plant stage. They are fully subsidized by fossil fuels which are subsidized by the economy and the environment.
    So, when all is said and done, the level of civilization support from PV and wind power is probably much lower than what we experience today. They also, so far, cannot produce themselves without fossil fuels and lots of other technologies that may be unsupportable in an all renewable/sustainable society.”

    Not so sure those grand pronouncements are true, or to what extent they have merit, , but that is not the point of my post here.
    Lets assume for the moment that they are true.
    What is the repercussion?
    To me, one conclusion is that the limited energy left with fossil fuel (10-30 years) should be used productively. Building of renewable energy sources at scale should be the number one priority in regard to energy consumption, energy and industrial policy. At least that is what I want my region to do.
    On the non-energy front, downsizing the population and economy needs to happen concurrently.
    Transition, adaptation, realization. Is better than nothing.

    1. When a human is born it’s completely dependant on it’s mother for life. The baby can’t protect, feed, house, educate and reproduce it’s self. Yet over a period of time and development the baby replaces it’s parent.

      Maybe GoFish just doesn’t remember the process, is a bot or has no realalistic vision.

    2. Hickory –

      “To me, one conclusion is that the limited energy left with fossil fuel (10-30 years) should be used productively.”

      So, you think we have 10-30 years to address the environmental crisis our little blue dot has entered? What do you think will be happening in the arctic, for example, in that time frame while we (mostly) procrastinate? And, how does one go about downsizing the world’s population?

      SIBERIAN FOREST FIRES INCREASE FIVE-FOLD IN [PAST] WEEK

      “The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire. It’s warming much faster than we thought it would in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and this warming is leading to a rapid meltdown and increase in wildfires.”

      https://www.ecowatch.com/siberian-forest-fires-2646281729.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

      1. Doug, I think we all agree that we should act as quickly as possible.

        If you were in charge of public policy, what policies would you implement?

        1. Well, any “public policy”, to be effective, would have to be global which is clearly impossible so is another fantasy concept, like the one whereby EVs and “green” energy will somehow save the planet. However, were I to oversee global policy, I might start by stopping (or God forbid, dismantling) the insane proliferation of weapons around world. As you probably know, global military expenditures rose to roughly $2 trillion in 2019 (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), which represents an increase of 3.6 per cent from 2018 and the largest annual growth in spending since 2010. This will almost certainly lead to a major war which might help a bit with human population overshoot but at the same time be a death knell to the small, and diminishing, areas suitable for struggling wildlife. Meanwhile, how much CO2 are the military forces adding to the atmosphere every year?

          1. “Well, any “public policy”, to be effective, would have to be global which is clearly impossible so is another fantasy concept”

            I’m calling Bullshit on this. If the three western industrial civilization powers agree to only build EV’s and not trade or buy with any country who didn’t also conform to EV’s. ICE would be a thing of the past. Except maybe Doug and his Lada.

            1. LOL Which are the three western industrial civilization powers who might agree to only build EV’s and do they include the US? China makes about 28% of all cars and trucks produced in the world.

            2. If the three western industrial civilization powers agree to only build EV’s and not trade or buy with any country …

              That’s a pretty big fucking IF HB.

            3. Europe, Japan and China don’t have an economic interest in the oil industry. Their all big time importers. Parts of the American auto manufacturing industry has faced near extinction twice in my life time in 1980 and 2008 because of the oil industry. The only thing needed is leadership from America. Which is politically hamstrung by the oil industry. That no longer has a monopoly on transportation fuel. Burning oil for transportation energy will go the way of the buggy whip. After America has tried all other options. It will pull it’s head out of the oil well and do the right thing.

              The word “can’t” is for losers and the Saudi’s aren’t going to become manufactures of ICE in your grand children’s life time. Maybe you can join Trump in Russia soon and enjoy a new Lada.

              The oil industry is on life support

            4. Europe, Japan and China don’t have an economic interest in the oil industry.

              Oh but they do. Their economy is powered by the oil industry, or more correctly, the fossil fuel industry. They will switch when the economics dictate that they switch and not one day before.

              Burning oil for transportation energy will go the way of the buggy whip. After America has tried all other options. It will pull it’s head out of the oil well and do the right thing.

              HB, total bullshit. All the hopeum in the world will not change reality. People will stop buying and driving ICE vehicles when, and only when, it is no longer economical to do so. People will always do what their pocketbooks favor.

            5. “Their economy is powered by the oil industry”

              But it no longer has too, because it can transform to clean sustainable renewables. The oil industry can’t sustain competitive world transportation energy. You are witnessing the collapse of the oil industry to compete. The writing is on the solar panel roof. All you have to do is look up instead of down.

              “People will always do what their pocketbooks favor”

              Now you sound like Trump. He also bet people would go back to work and play, while putting their health at risk. Fossil fuel is just as much of a killer as CoV-19. Money doesn’t “Trump” health.

              The oil industry is killing us. If your not part of the solution, your part of the problem.

              And BTW, Dennis bought a Tesla 3. Was it cheaper or is Dennis not a person ?

              Also, they have an economic interest in energy. The oil industry is going to have to compete for the first time in a century. Tell me, where are all the bankruptcies in the economy ? This is like an old folks home and 95% of them are on life support.

            6. Hi Ron,
              I must agree that people will mostly do what’s cheapest and works best for them, which is why I’m driving a ninety five f150, a ninety seven LeSabre, and a seventy two F700…… because these work for me. No payments, hardly anything in the way of repairs other than parts I can easily install myself, etc, and a significant amount of money ( significant to me at least) saved every month that can be invested rather than eroded away by depreciation.

              BUT nation states have a hell of a lot to do with what consumers do, which nobody can deny.

              One more oil supply crisis will be enough that a lot of countries that are dependent on imported oil in particular and imported energy in general will put tough policies into effect such that electric vehicles will dominate new sales very quickly….. as fast as they can be built.

          2. Doug,

            I agree that dismantling the world’s arms industries would be enormously beneficial. It would reduce the risk of war, and free up enormous resources (engineering talent, capital, etc) for doing other things. That’s a great thought – we tend to forget how important this issue is.

            But your answer raises many questions. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll ask just one: why do you put the green in “green” energy in quotes?

      2. Doug- “So, you think we have 10-30 years to address the environmental crisis our little blue dot has entered? ”

        Absolutely not. Its not what I said. I think we are 100 years /- late on that measure.
        That is why I said we need to prioritize downsizing.

        There are no great choices, but an orderly retreat is preferred over a chaotic one, to the extent we can manage it. My preference anyway.
        As I see it, an orderly retreat includes things like moving away from carbon emitting sources of energy production, restrictions on reproduction (global one family one child rule with heavy carrot and stick measures), high levels of taxation on luxury, frivolous, discretionary and destructive consumption and behavior, escalation of measures to protect land/soil/water and biotica, etc. In others words, taking the problem of overshoot seriously on a global level.
        And yes, this includes a huge shift to less energy consumption, and deriving as much of that energy as possible from low carbon and more sustainable sources.

    3. Yes, even if you grant the ideas in that comment it makes no sense to abandon an aggressive push on renewables, electrification, efficiency, etc.

      OTOH, that comment was entirely unrealistic. Even Hall agrees that wind and solar have high EROEI.

        1. Yeah, I looked at that point in the video. Hall does claim in this presentation that wind and solar both an EROEI of less than one.

          Sigh.

          15 years ago he was presenting sensible information, with values that were much higher. Now…he’s gone off the rails. One tiny clue: the slide refers to “windmills”, not wind, or wind power, or wind turbines. “Windmills” is a word used by ant-wind activists, kind’ve like “industrial wind”. I think you’d have hard time find sensible energy researchers referring to “windmills”.

          I did look at work done by the guy he refers to, Pedro Prieto. It was very low quality. He made basic mistakes like using cost of inputs instead of using energy units: if you’re going to do that, you’ve lost the thing that makes EROEI unique. And his boundaries are silly: if you include the whole society as part of the support needed by an energy source, you’re always going to get an EROEI of exactly 1, because society uses all the energy produced.

          Hall asks “do you include the paycheck of employees in EROEI”? He should know better: of course you don’t. People are an end in themselves, not an energy input. You have to feed, clothe and house them whether they’re working in the oil industry or in a nail salon.

          1. Nick, why do you lie about what Dr. Hall said and then make false claims about him and other researchers? Is it that important to you to be right? Everyone here knows you are delusional and misrepresent/twist reality, so no credibility, therefore no point.

            2. “why do you lie about what Dr. Hall said ”

              Hall used crappy references as input. In a scientific discussion you live or die with the used references.

              If the author of your references lies you lie, it is that simple.

  11. I have been told that PV and wind power are not subsidized by fossil fuels.
    I challenge anyone here to make the mining equipment, the explosives, the vehicles at the mine without using fossil fuel, let alone run the operation and deliver the goods.
    Build and run the refining operation with only renewables?
    Build and run the purifying operation of silicon using renewable energy, let alone maintain it.
    How about the glass factory, the aluminum producers, the buildings needed, the water supplies, chemicals, etc.
    Make the piping, pumps, compressors, gauges, sensors, ad nauseum with renewable energy.
    And on it goes, the roads, the ships the delivery trucks, the wires, connectors, electronics. All made with fossil fuels.
    Then there is the actual cost of the systems, financially subsidized from money made by people using fossil fuels.
    It just goes on and on.
    None of the systems are produced or maintained without fossil fuel energy.
    It takes a whole world of technology, materials and energy supported by FF and petro products, right down to the food, the clothing and the computers/paper.
    Remove the FF and no more “renewable” energy.

    As the EROI or net energy from FF falls, so does everything else. Nothing is isolated.

    1. It will be a global experiment, to see how much non-fossil burning energy production can be deployed and sustained over the rest of the century, a time period which can be seen as the grand transition time. In this time period, global human population will peak, and begin to decline.
      The world will be very different once fossil fuel energy is no longer on the upswing, while population is still on the upswing- these next 3 decades.
      Some areas will suffer badly (even worse than before), and others will do relatively well.
      Some areas will have oil, and gas, and coal longer than others.
      The ones that don’t, and don’t have the muscle or capital to take what they need, will get what wood they can, to burn. And probably burn all forests they can get to.
      And others will have hydroelectric, or left over nuclear.

      And some will have solar and wind, even in considerable abundance. Utility scale, and widely distributed. Those places will be very happy for each Mwatt of generation that have been purchased deployed.
      It will serve to sustain them to some degree, as the overall world goes through the early phases of a big downsizing.

      Beyond that, I sure don’t know. People who say they do are just speculating.
      Its all an experiment, as it has always been.
      How many people can live in each watershed, each of which has different capabilities and restraints, who knows. We will find out. Not through planning or speculation, but the hard way.

      In the meantime, a family, a community, a region, state or country can do things to increase resilience.
      For example,
      Regardless of whether a wind/solar based economy can be self sustaining enough alone to produce meaningful amounts of excess net energy (an important theoretical concern),
      you can purchase, at todays prices, wind and solar electricity generation capability in the USA for about $30/MWh. A new nuclear plant would cost you minimum 4 x’s that much/MWh. New coal, 2-5 x’s as much.
      So, for my house, my region, my state, even my country, and my younger relatives, its an easily mechanism to buy some resilience. Time to build it up quick, and a massive scale, while the sun is shining. And one way or another, the fossil energy is going to fade.

      A PV panel installed today will still be producing around 75% of its max power by 2050, and will have paid off all of its costs [energy, manufacturing, mining, installation, etc] by roughly mid 2020’s (depending on where it was installed).

      1. I think the title of a YouTube site best describes the situation.
        “Crime pays but botany doesn’t”.

        We go where we focus. Computers, machines, industrial production, chemicals and entertainment. That is where it all heads, that is what pays, that is what people want.
        Won’t matter what supplies the energy, people and their machines will demand more energy, a continuous supply.
        The fast energy transition never happened. Just 1.5% of global energy is PV and wind in forty years of development.
        Humans chose machines over biology. That is where it goes, until it breaks. It’s all so glamorous if one does not look behind the curtain. In reality, it’s a death cult.
        We are too far out on a limb to easily change course, actually out several limbs now.
        This Covid problem has been devastating to many, mostly economically. It is causing a lot of strife, anger and resentment. Imagine how nasty it will get when we get major problems.
        Just as cancer and heart disease has more victims than just the ill. The virus is eroding and harming many who don’t have it.

        Evictions via government demanded shutdowns
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R652nwUcJRA&t=293s

      2. The EROEI is a very interesting theoretical/policy/ ‘future of humanity’ issue and discussion. It has huge implications for consideration of issues such as population carrying capacity.

        But don’t confuse this with practical decision making for the near term future (30 years).
        On a practical basis regarding power planning there are other issues like price, availability, reliability of energy supply, and carbon emissions, that are what matters. As we all know, the big fossil fuel fade-away is beginning and will largely play out over the next 30 years.
        You and your county and your utility will be at the mercy of the market and geology and OPEC, and Exxon, or you can make strong moves to develop resiliency of the local energy supply.
        Hell, you can fairly easily become a net power producer at your home, or in your community for a reasonable price in much of the country.
        Here and now.

        But if you’d prefer to witness the worse case scenario, do nothing to replace coal and oil.

        1. Yeah.

          A quibble: EROEI really isn’t useful. Cost is useful. Net energy is somewhat useful. But EROEI is mightily misleading.

          If EROEI goes from 100:1 to 50:1, that sounds very important, right? But it’s a change from one unit of input for a return of 100, to an input of two units.

          Let’s say you’re drilling a well, and it takes 1 gallon of diesel to produce 100 gallons of oil. Let’s say diesel costs $2.50, oil sells for $60/barrel (or $1.50 per gallon), and it takes $30 of labor to produce your oil. That means that your cost to produce oil is $31 (labor plus .42 gallons of diesel for your 42 gallons of oil). Now….EROEI goes to 50:1. What’s your cost? It’s now $32. Not a big change.

          And…you started the day with 2 gallons, and at the end of the day you’re left with a net of 98 gallons of liquid fuel. Before you started with one gallon and ended with a net of 99 gallons. Your net energy has changed very little. Certainly not a 2 to one change.

          That’s why EROEI is misleading.

        2. Hickory, the natural world is sending us many obvious and strong signals that need to be heeded. The devastation and eradication of species continues at an accelerating pace. Soil loss, depleting water supplies, fires, storms, degraded skies, the list goes long.
          Maybe PV will help, it’s a fantastic technology, though it is more likely to just help in furthering natural destruction, producing more pesticides and continue the natural holocausts on ocean and land.
          Certainly PV and wind turbines will continue forward, along with battery technology. There is lots of money in them and it grabs the money from the existing technology as well as taps the general populace through governments.
          People are now fully empowered with all kinds of gadgets and technologies within their grasps. They can zoom down the road at 65 mph at their whim, switch on lights and all kinds techno systems, entertainment at their fingertips, talk and even see across vast distances in an instant. They will not give that up without a huge fight. They are empowered and entitled.
          At least those that can afford some of it. Which in the US is at least three quarters, to some degree. Or they at least are willing to go into debt for it.
          It will be a long hard road back to reality land. But the billionaires and would be billionaires will stand hard too.

          1. We don’t just get to shut of the consumption/growth switch because you and and I and others recognize the environmental catastrophe of overshot.
            Unfortunately, we are stuck with a situation over the next 30 years where growth in population is like a bulldozer going downhill without brakes.
            Consumption/destructive of the earth follows, with each person adding to the total.
            UN projects 9.7 B by 2050.
            And so the more this consumption that can be nudged towards efficiency, low carbon, low waste, and ‘essential’ uses the better.

            For example- According to the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, “EVs convert about 59%–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17%–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.”

            Even if the grid was all coal (worse case scenario)- Consider the example comparing a Tesla C and comparable 35mpg ICE vehicle like the toyota camry or honda accord-
            The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy.
            The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy.
            Thats a three fold gain in grid to wheel efficiency.

            1. “We don’t just get to shut of the consumption/growth switch because you and and I and others recognize the environmental catastrophe of overshot.
              Unfortunately, we are stuck with a situation over the next 30 years where growth in population is like a bulldozer going downhill without brakes.”
              Same story back in 1970, 1960, ….

              “Even if the grid was all coal (worse case scenario)- Consider the example comparing a Tesla C and comparable 35mpg ICE vehicle like the toyota camry or honda accord-
              The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy.
              The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy.
              Thats a three fold gain in grid to wheel efficiency.”
              Yep, much more efficient at the car, but the coal produces twice as much CO2 at the power plant as the Toyota produces at the tailpipe, per mile.
              Ooopsy.

            2. Remember, that was the worst case scenario I laid out, with only a roughly 30% gain in energy efficiency if you used 100% coal as your electricity source.
              In this country that percent coal is 23.5%, as a total of electricity generation.
              So that should be no excuse for inaction.

              The take home message. Simply-
              Quit driving on petrol, and coal!
              If you just sit and tolerate coal electricity from your utility,
              do you really give a shit?
              If you drive around in a petrol car,
              well, its just unfortunate when there are alternatives here and now.

            3. Now now, Hick. No need to get nasty and domineering. I know you wrestle with the fact that you will never get out of the carbon hole dug by that PV system and two EV’s. Your cognitive dissonance gets relieved a bit by being intolerant to others, I guess.
              You are doing the best you can, but your approach of fattening the wallets of rich industrialists and billionaires while adding more industrialization and commercialism to the world is not my cup of tea.
              I prefer to minimize and discourage further industrialization, ag destruction and commercial activity while helping animals and plants directly. I do that every day. If you feel that is wrong, that is fine. Our views of the world differ. You take the more acceptable herd meme that governments and industrialists are comfortable with. I can understand that, it makes one feel powerful. For me, to follow that path,would go against my beliefs and views about the world, and our place within it.
              So yeah, I won’t invest in a new e-vehicle or lots of new gizmos just to fit into the green tech group. Rather invest it in the living world. At least the shit I get from there will grow things.
              Enjoy these times, they are the most amazing and challenging. For the young, they have the greatest opportunity approaching. To actually become a positive force in the living world. Hope they figure it out despite their poor education, bad upbringing and the constant onslaught of misinformation from the corporate toadies . Maybe enough light is seeping through the cracks to turn the tide.

              You often get what you aim for. Be aware of what and who you are helping.

            4. GoFish quit playing the victim. I’m sure it can be arranged for you to have a real nasty experience. Mature up. You act like Trump and think it’s all about you. As long as you own a vehicle, use the internet and have a conventional home tied to the grid with running water. Your a hypocrite with selfish tendency of I have mine, but the rest need to live without. You don’t have a viable plan for the future. Your just noise

            5. HuntingtonBeach,

              Can you clarify the meaning of the following:

              I’m sure it can be arranged for you to have a real nasty experience.

              Sounds ominous and not particularly nice, are you off your meds? 🙂

            6. Hi Dennis, please let me know which part of Hickery’s comment that was nasty? Let’s set the standard at “are you off your meds” is a friendly jester.

              GoFish was just making a false claim with personal implications.

            7. Huntington beach,

              So your intent was to say that Hickory ‘s comment wasn’t nasty in your opinion?

              Probably better to say what you mean.

              Your comments to Gone fishing are routinely quite nasty, so perhaps you meant Hickory’s comment was nothing.

              Yes my comment was offensive, though probably less so than many of your comments.

    2. Yeah, it’s dumb, this newfangled stuff.

      Everyone knows that oil depends on horses. You need horses to turn the drills. You need horses to get the workers to the drill site. You need horses to move the oak barrels of oil to market.

      Get a horse!

      ——————————————————————-

      I couldn’t resist some humor, but the serious reply is this: there isn’t anything on that list that can’t be powered by wind or solar electricity.

      Fossil fuels are just hydrocarbons. Not especially clean hydrocarbons at that: even without the GHGs they have all sorts of annoying impurities that poison refineries (and other things). They’re low quality forms of energy, even though they can be convenient. Electricity, on the other hand, is very high quality, and it can do anything: even produce hydrocarbons and liquid fuels in the relatively rare cases when it’s especially convenient to have them.

    3. FWIW: At this point vehicle use is going to collapse as high unemployment and excessive debt will prevent people from purchasing new vehicles. The Pandemic has pulled forward the debt crisis. EV will never take off as the cost limit them the top 15% (or even less) of the population.

      Another issue is that commercial air travel has collapse and will remain that way for years. In the meantime probably half if not more of operating airlines will be forced to shutdown as the lost money hand over fist. I believe global oil consumption has collapsed by close to 25 mbpd.

      The world is now on track for a deep economic depression. Looks like excessive debt as beat Global Oil Production decline causing economic devastation.

      1. “I believe global oil consumption has collapsed by close to 25 mbpd.”
        Where do you live?

      2. Techguy, your economic prediction is highly likely, though there may be spurts of increased economic activity. It will be very difficult to promote and subsidize an energy transition in those circumstances, as capital may become restricted or lose value. However, as the world economy will slow down, a big drop in emissions will occur anyway.
        Government make-work programs could use tree and shrub planting and regenerative projects as a cheap way to not only feed people but to drawdown carbon at the same time. Thus doubling the effect and improving the environment.

        Here is a research article on the Great Depression that may flip many preconceived notions on their heads.

        Life and death during the Great Depression
        The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most important economic downturn in the U.S. in the twentieth century. We used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations of economic growth with population health for the period 1920–1940. We conducted descriptive analyses of trends and examined associations between annual changes in health indicators and annual changes in economic activity using correlations and regression models. Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites.

        https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290

    4. “Then there is the actual cost of the systems, financially subsidized from money made by people using fossil fuels.
      It just goes on and on.
      None of the systems are produced or maintained without fossil fuel energy.
      It takes a whole world of technology, materials and energy supported by FF and petro products, right down to the food, the clothing and the computers/paper.”

      But you obviously do not understand that the arguement is crap. Hint: How did oil industry start? With coal, wood and horses…..

      1. Oh, I see, you have a problem with measuring current reality. I am sure you can find references about the future, the library is full of them. Check the fiction section.

  12. Here is Dr. Charles Hall’s response to a question about the EROI needed to run civilization. From Researchgate.net/post
    Question: Why is quality of life limited by EROI with renewable Energy?

    1st Apr, 2015
    Charles A S Hall
    College of Environmental Science and Forestry , The State University of New York
    As the person who came up with the term EROI in the 1970s (but not the concept: that belongs to Leslie White, Fred Cotrell, Nicolas Georgescu Roegan and Howard Odum) let me add my two cents to the existing mostly good posts. The problem with the “stacked ” idea is that if you do that you do not deliver energy to society with the first (or second or third) investment — it all has to go to the “food chain” with only the final delivering energy to society. So stack two EROI 2:1 technologies and you get 4:2, or the same ratio when you are done.
    The second problem is that you do not need just 1.1:1 EROI to operate society. We (Hall, Balogh and Murphy 2009) studied how much oil would need to be extracted to drive a truck including the energy to USE the energy. So we added in the energy to get, refine and deliver the oil (about 10% at each step) and then the energy to build and maintain the roads, bridges, vehicles and so on . We found you needed to extract three liters at the well head to use one liter in the gas tank to drive the truck, i.e. an EROI of 3:1 was needed.
    But even this did not include the energy to put something in the truck (say grow some grain) and also, although we had accounted for the energy for the depreciation of the truck and roads, but not the depreciation of the truck driver, mechanic, street mender, farmer etc: i.e. to pay for domestic needs, schooling, health care etc. of their replacement. Pretty soon it looked like we needed an EROI of at least 10:1 to take care of the minimum requirements of society, and maybe 15:1 (numbers are very approximate) for a modern civilization. You can see that and the implications worked out in Lambert et al. below.
    I think this and incipient “peak oil” (Hallock et al. ) is behind what is causing most Western economies to slow or stop their energy and economic growth. Low EROI means more expensive oil (etc) and lower net energy means growth is harder as there is less left over after necessary “maintenance metabolism”. This is explored in more depth in Hall and Klitgaard book “Energy and the wealth of Nations” (Springer).
    Charles Hall chall@esf.edu
    References:
    Hall, C.A.S., Balogh, S., Murphy, D.J.R. 2009. What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have? Energies, 2: 25-47.
    Hall, Charles A.S., Jessica G.Lambert, Stephen B. Balogh. 2014. EROI of different fuels and the implications for society Energy Policy Energy Policy. 64,: 141– http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856?np=y htt??//authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0301421513003856
    Lambert, Jessica, Charles A.S. Hall, Stephen Balogh, Ajay Gupta, Michelle Arnold 2014 Energy, EROI and quality of life. Energy Policy Volume 64: 153- http://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0301421513006447
    Hallock Jr., John L., Wei Wu, Charles A.S. Hall, Michael Jefferson. 2014. Forecasting
    the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply:
    Validation. Energy 64: 130-153. (Article 12 in:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03605442/64/supp/C
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03605442/open-access

    This is called a comprehensive analysis.

  14. Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice…

    “Dear Helen Highwater:

    As I’ve writ elsewhere under my other moniker, Caelan MacIntyre, we are tragically out-of-scale as a fundamentally tribal/band/dunbar-number species and all held essentially (ideological, etc.) prisoners ‘of our own devices’ in these cells we call nation-states.

    ‘Women got the vote’ for their own imprisonment.

    JHK starts off his essay with the anarchy word, when that’s what we have all essentially grew up in as a species until now.

    Nate Hagens (The Oil Drum) apparently suggested that humans are a superorganism: But I suspect it is more like humans have been constantly trying to be one but they cannot because they are not ants or bees and are too complex for monotonous factory and office labour and whatnot, so they keep crashing their civs.

    It is not (just) the state thugs, the police, that have to go, but the state itself if humans cannot figure out how to make it work for everyone.

    Meanwhile we allow ourselves to let it and its assorted businesses to peddle and pimp us for our taxes, profit and mindless loyalty.

    At the very least, if you consider the butterfly effect, this is not a recipe for success over the long haul.

    The so-called wokesters or culture-cancellers or whatever aren’t going away anytime soon, and maybe they know more than JHK does in some regards than he may think he does while he literarily sucks at the teet of the current dystopia.

    Yours,
    ~ (The infernal gender truthiness of) The Man They Call Zazelle”

  15. There is a significant chance that Biden will win, and democrats will gain some strength in the Congress.
    If so, we may see a modern energy/climate policy emerge.

    To see what the core items of this may look like-

    The US house just released its big 547 page action plan on climate policy, which can be seen as a reflection of the democratic party’s overall thinking on these matters, and which will likely form the core of longterm energy policy over the next decade.
    “The 547-page staff report from the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis outlines a plan for the U.S. power sector to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, allowing an economy-wide reduction through building, transportation and industrial electrification by 2050. ”

    Here is an article on this bill from a utility news website-
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/house-democrats-release-sweeping-climate-proposal-calling-for-net-zero-us-e/580830/

    And the proposal itself-
    https://climatecrisis.house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov/files/Climate%20Crisis%20Action%20Plan.pdf

    1. Hello Hickory,

      Thanks for the link-

      Key Components of the Climate Crisis Action Plan

      To have a chance at limiting warming to 1.5°C and avoiding increasingly severe impacts from climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global net anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions must fall by at least 45% from global 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. As the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States must lead the world in confronting the climate crisis.

      The Climate Crisis Action Plan establishes a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide in the United States by no later than 2050; directs the president to set ambitious interim targets to meet or exceed progress toward that goal; and calls for achieving net-negative greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the century. To achieve these goals, the Climate Crisis Action Plan will build an American economy that protects public health and values workers, families, communities, and current and future generations who are depending on Congress to tackle the existential threat of climate change in a just and equitable way. The Climate Crisis Action Plan calls for congressional action across the economy and is based on 12 key pillars.

      Pillar 1: Invest in Infrastructure to Build a Just, Equitable, and Resilient Clean Energy Economy

      Pillar 2: Drive Innovation and Deployment of Clean Energy and Deep Decarbonization Technologies

      Pillar 3: Transform U.S. Industry and Expand Domestic Manufacturing of Clean Energy and Zero-Emission Technologies

      Pillar 4: Break Down Barriers for Clean Energy Technologies

      Pillar 5: Invest in America’s Workers and Build a Fairer Economy

      Pillar 6: Invest in Disproportionately Exposed Communities to Cut Pollution and Advance Environmental Justice

      Pillar 7: Improve Public Health and Manage Climate Risks to Health Infrastructure

      Pillar 8: Invest in American Agriculture for Climate Solutions

      Pillar 9: Make U.S. Communities More Resilient to the Impacts of Climate Change

      Pillar 10: Protect and Restore America’s Lands, Waters, Ocean, and Wildlife

      Pillar 11: Confront Climate Risks to America’s National Security and Restore America’s Leadership on the International Stage

      Pillar 12: Strengthen America’s Core Institutions to Facilitate Climate Action

      1. It makes for good reading, even if just the executive summary (starting page 11) to peak ones interest-
        “In this report the Select Committee lays out a framework for comprehensive congressional action to satisfy the scientific imperative to reduce carbon pollution as quickly and aggressively as possible, make communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change, and build a durable and equitable clean energy economy…”

      2. Those things all sound like typical socialist/liberal ideals. Consequently they’ll all be fought against at every step of the way.

        1. Build a cleaner and more resilient transportation sector

          The transportation sector—including cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, ships, rail, and other modes—is the largest source of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. Across modes, the story is similar: emissions are a function of the vehicle’s fuel efficiency, the fuel’s carbon intensity, and the number of miles traveled each year. Each part of the transportation sector, however, is at a different stage of zero-emission technological innovation and faces unique challenges to decarbonization and, as a result, may require a tailored policy approach. Well-designed policy should lead to new manufacturing and supply chain innovations that create good-paying jobs at home and bolster American competitiveness.

          In addition to contributing to the climate problem, transportation infrastructure is heavily exposed to extreme weather and climate impacts, from floods that wash out bridges and roads to heat waves that ground airplanes. Without proactive action to build resilience, climate change will compromise the reliability and capacity of even the cleanest transportation systems.

          ****************

          Move Toward a National Supergrid

          The costs of wind and solar energy have fallen dramatically, but some of the lowest cost resources are located far away from population centers. Moreover, much higher penetrations of variable-output renewable energy sources can be reliably integrated when the grid is able to draw from resources across wide geographic areas on an hour-to-hour basis. Modernizing and expanding the electric grid would allow more Americans to benefit from low-cost, zero-emission electricity. It would also boost the resilience of the power grid to climate change impacts.

          For these reasons, Congress needs a comprehensive strategy to address key electric infrastructure challenges, including transmission line siting.

          1. Barring major political surprises favoring trump and company between now and election day, the Democrats will again be in control of the federal government, starting in January.

            Shortly there after we will see some really serious new investments made in renewable energy, tougher energy efficiency standards, etc.

            1. Agree, it’s about policy. Not anyone individual. We need to get the ship pointed in the right direction.

        2. Larry,
          I have no doubt that republicans will fight these innovation and infrastructure programs every step of the way.
          And they will end up losing more and more voters as time rolls on, and be seen to be on the wrong side of history, once again.
          Wrong side of history, just like they are/were on
          -civil rights of women, and a multitude of ethnic and religious minorities
          -protection of the nations air, water, soil, wetlands and creatures
          -invasion of Iraq [Cheneys war has cost $2T]
          -culture of white supremacy, including KKK, Nazism, Trumpism
          -intrusion of religion into the everyday affairs of the nation
          -control of military assault weaponry on the streets and homes of the nation
          -enactment of enforcement of the Voters Right Act

          What an embarrassing legacy, you adhere to.
          Who among the republican party is not tainted by their acquiescence to trump, the most shameful politician in the history of the country?
          McCain would be the only one, but he is no longer with us.

        3. Larry B, the industrialists, business people, corporatists and their governments are starting to see the light. There is tons of money in the “new green” and it allows moving away from dying industries that are becoming money losers. Just as Texas put up lots of windmills, the rest are sniffing the new money makers. Power, storage, distribution, new tech production. Been building for a while, the money is huge. They think it will run the economies for decades, powered by the tech green dreamers. So don’t be so hard on the “greenies”, they are trying to keep people in jobs and continue the mining, smelting, production, distribution, and consumer systems. So many love those ways, it’s worth their time and effort to tap that new green profit.
          And at the same time one can wave the flag of being helpful and saving the planet (it’s hogwash or I mean greenwash, but it’s palatable to many).

          1. Doing without for 7 billion people is not a plan. It’s easy to complain. You don’t have a solution. Just noise.

            2. Huntington beach and Hickory,

              Consider the following, Gone fishing may not have an alternative solution, his argument may be quite simple.

              There is no solution and the solution we propose will only make matters worse, not better.

              Note that I am not convinced that he is correct, but his point is well taken that the experience of the last 50 years, where things have indeed gotten worse for the environment, not better certainly has the ring of truth to it.

              Continuing on the same high tech path that is dreamed of as a solution, might indeed be a path to destruction.

              It is certainly a position worthy of consideration in my opinion.

              Insults thrown back and forth certainly do little to elucidate the matter.

            3. Agree, and that goes in all directions.
              I do not always sit quietly when derogatory comments are directed at me, and even a hint of bullying gets my ire. Enough of that from white house.
              No thanks.
              I’m not/won’t be here for anything like that.

        4. Every time I see reasonable proposal called “socialist” I puke, then realize I’ve wasted time by reading the words of a brainwashed zombie.

  17. Everyone seems interested in the overpopulation problem and how to have less people.
    Simple, just keep doing what you are doing.

    ” 4°C world would support < 1 billion people"

    ‘Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome’:

    Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.

    Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen (pictured) told Voice of Action that there was already a chance we have triggered a “global tipping cascade” that would take us to a less habitable “Hothouse Earth” climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions.

    Steffen says it would take 30 years at best (more likely 40-60 years) to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points such as Arctic sea ice we could have already run out of time.

    Steffen, along with some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, laid out our predicament in the starkest possible terms in a piece for the journal Nature at the end of last year.

    They found that 9 of the 15 known Earth tipping elements that regulate the state of the planet had been activated, and there was now scientific support for declaring a state of planetary emergency.

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/

    1. “Everyone seems interested in the overpopulation problem and how to have less people.
      Simple, just keep doing what you are doing.”

      I presume you were being sarcastic (suggesting that doing nothing is the appropriate step), but that doesn’t really address the issue whatsoever.
      You recognize a the problem.
      Then what?

      1. Deep down, you know the answers. I have tried to stimulate some discussion in other areas, but the mocking and rambling arguments never allowed any real progress toward my real objectives. You and others are not ready to leave the techno-womb and venture out.

        Time to look at a legacy.
        I will paraphrase a tale of an old fellow from India.
        “When I was young, I could go out into the forest near my home and eat whenever I wanted. It all just grew there.
        Now it is gone, some forest still there, but nothing much to eat.”
        All in less than a lifetime.

        And a story from me.
        When I was young, I could go into the forest where I stayed with relatives in the summer. I could walk 9 miles out, not see a house, or even a person. I could find lots of berries to eat and some nuts. There were fish in the lakes, lots of them. Pine martens, beavers, otters, porcupines, and much more. Goshawks.
        Now some of the forest is left. Some berries still there and I can eat them, but it is illegal now to pick them. Half the forest is gone, developed, in less than a lifetime. Protected areas have houses right up against them. Beautiful natural lakes, wrecked by sewage. Water tables dropping. Less birds, less bugs, less fish, less mammals. No more otters, less beaver. Have not seen weasels or porcupines. Lots of ticks where there never were any before.
        Rattlesnakes gone, as are some of the other snakes. Goshawks, rare and not seen there lately.

        Without the protected areas, the whole region would have been
        completely developed. Villages of 500 became “towns” of 25,000 in a matter of a few decades.

        That is some legacy. Do people suddenly wake up tomorrow and start doing things differently?

        Or do they just let it all happen, get it over with?

        Where our stuff comes from.

        1. The story of the earth catastrophe brought on by man has been, and retold., and retold.
          Anyone who has half a brain and has been paying attention can see it.
          Its nice to see updates. Thanks to all on that regard.

          But how about using some of your creativity and smarts to focus on methods of adaptation, rather than just taking every opportunity to say , in effect-
          “not only are these adaptations of no interest to me, but here is why they are counterproductive and nobody else should do anything proactive (excepting insulation)…its all just failing apart”

          Do I have your message wrong on that?

            2. Hickory,

              Gone fishing would like to focus on efficiency, using less, and natural solutions, and believes more technology will make matters worse not better. Or that is my understanding.

              Seems to me we could do several things:

              Focus on education for women so total fertility rates for the World’s women decreases, reduce energy use as much as is feasible while replacing remaining fossil fuel use with some alternative, and most importantly protect the natural World from destruction by humans and their domesticated animals.

              Gone fishing would not agree with such a plan, but its the best I can devise (and is no doubt inadequate).

            3. Dennis, very astute observation on your part.

              I must agree with GoneFishing here. I am not sure your formula for fixing things would hurt, but they sure as hell will not save the world. But there is something you can do. There will be survivors. Folks, or at least the younger folks, should do what they can to be among the survivors.

              That is you should give up on trying to save the world. You are just wasting your time and money. Try to save yourself and your loved ones.

            4. Ron,

              Thanks. Seems to me a better approach is to attempt to convince others of the existential crisis, if people work together things might improve. I would agree that I as an individual cannot save the World, I do the best I can to try to make it a better place, like many others.

            5. Dennis, what’s the “natural” means of transportation? Barefoot walking or bareback horse riding? You know, it doesn’t matter. Humanity isn’t going back there.

              BTW, how does transforming to EV’s from ICE make matters worse?

            6. I drive an EV but it really is equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

              Resorting to barefoot walking and enjoying clean air and the stars at night instead of flying to Iceland to see an eclipse is probably a better way to spend your leisure hours.

            7. Huntington Beach,

              I believe it is simply a matter of focus. Work on reducing carbon emissions as much as possible by increasing energy efficiency, planting trees, sequestering more carbon in soil through better farming practices, institute creadle to grave manufacturing where products would not be built to become obsolete as quickly as possible, but are designed to be upgraded with parts designed for recycling at end of life, reuse as much as possible and recycle as much as possible. The list is no doubt very incomplete.

              As to the switch from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuel power, that would also be a good path forward, combined with the “natural solutions” approach.

              Also need for transportation can be reduced significantly with better urban design so that most trips could be made on foot, by bike or using public transport.

              In many cases new technology and in general high tech solutions result in unintended consequences that are only realized far in the future.

              Sometimes our attempts to improve things in fact have the opposite effect, so we should be cautious and focus on those approaches most likely to not make matters worse.

    2. “a “global [climate] tipping cascade””! Yes, I expect a majority of climate scientists have already agreed on this (depressing) scenario but have been reluctant to voice it. Isn’t it interesting how all the “non scientists” here seem to have a pocketful of solutions but I guess it’s the same with everything.

      1. “interesting how all the “non scientists” here seem to have a pocketful of solutions”.

        Doug, if you are lumping me in with that crowd, then you’ve got it wrong. My science education credentials are in league with anyone here, unless we have a double PhD lurking among us.
        Secondly, many of these issues take a hell of lot more than scientists to come up with solutions. Most solutions are in the realm of others, such as engineers, policy makers, farmers, and most important- the individual common person.

        Here are solutions for you, many of which have their roots based on science, thankfully.
        https://climatecrisis.house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov/files/Climate Crisis Action Plan.pdf

        1. Hi Hickory, Doug, Everybody,

          We all pretty much agree about the nature and scope of the problem, lol.

          The only real question is what, if anything, we can do, individually and collectively, to implement at least some partial solutions.

          Personally I am convinced that most of the human race is well and thoroughly fucked, barring a few near miracles on the technology front.

          I fully acknowledge that we collectively may ALL be up shit creek without that proverbial paddle.

          But even though the GREAT SHIP INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION is leaking like a sieve and may soon be dead in the water, there’s still a chance she might make port, and if not, there’s an excellent chance that some of her passengers will make port by way of her lifeboats.

          So…….. the RELEVANT question is what should we be doing, as individuals, and collectively?

          Some of us have apparently chosen to simply give up.

          Giving up is for losers. There’s still at least a fair to good chance that at least a few hundred million of us will pull thru the bottle neck more or less whole in terms of maintaining the best aspects of industrial civilization.

          Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining. CV19 is no more than a very mild sniffle compared to the Plague that swept away at least a third of the people in western Europe three times .

          I’m not proposing germ warfare as a solution, but suppose some super rich person decides to leave his fortune to be spent on free birth control programs, world wide?

          Suppose a hot energy war results in most or all the countries dependent on imported fossil fuels spending on renewable energy and conservation the way they are spending ALREADY on their military establishments, in VERY large part, simply to maintain access to fossil fuels?

          I was once upon a time an educator. Speaking as such, and as a life long observer of the political and cultural scenery, I can say that education DOES work, although it generally works a hell of a lot slower than expected by most people outside the field, if it works at all.

          I can remember when just about every hillbilly I know, or used to know, believed that the anti tobacco campaign was just another liberal hoax to take away our personal liberties and way of life. Ditto anti alcohol campaigns, but to a minor extent only, because there haven’t BEEN any major alcohol campaigns during my lifetime.

          The ones still around are mostly pretty damned quick to tell young people to stay the fuck away from alcohol and tobacco, lol, after seeing so many family members and acquaintances die young from smoking and drinking.

          Maybe the younger people who are taking the places of old farts like us will come to understand the stakes they’re playing for before it’s too late.

          Maybe they’ll come to understand that since younger women are having less than two kids each, on average, that they won’t be NEEDING more highways, shopping malls, gas and coal burning electricity generating capacity, ships, tanks, planes and machine guns.

          Maybe they’ll come to understand that well maintained brick houses will last hundreds of years. Maybe they’ll come to understand that if they buy the car that’s known to last the longest, they will have their choice of dozens of corrosion proof electric cars that will last their entire life.

          Or maybe I’ll sober up, and face up to reality, lol.

          But I nevertheless maintain that we should all be praying to the Rock, or Mountain, or Snake or Bear that pleases us best for a series of Pearl Harbor Wake Up Bricks upside or collective head……..

          Because it’s not NECESSARILY too late to change our collective ways.

          1. “The New Scientist article “Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable” from Issue 2650, which is based on the work of Jared Diamond, in particular Collapse suggests that killing as few as 2% of the workforce could initiate a cascade of failures in infrastructure and transportation systems sufficient to bring down modern western civilisation; if those who died were key staff with unique skillsets and/or knowledge in their vital workplaces. But you don’t even have to kill them, prolonged (read two weeks or more) absenteeism of a larger fraction of the workforce (as little as 10% in some sectors, up to 30% in more robustly staffed organisations) would have the same effect.”

            I guess we will find out shortly how resilient we are. The Government shutdowns due to Covid 19 is a pilot study on this proposal. Also the steady destruction of farmland, ocean fishing and effects of desertification are reducing our usable area too. Plus if populations fall, we might not have enough people to support a global system. It would have to become localized and that would mean severe changes.

            1. No problem, with American leadership we can beat this. Just look at the corona-virus. ?

              NEW US OUTBREAKS?

              As coronavirus outbreaks are slowly brought to heel in many places around the world, the US is among a handful of countries facing a surge of new infections. After nearly three months of new cases hovering between 1,000 and 2,000 each day – Texas’ infection count has spiked in the last two weeks, with up to 6,000 new illnesses reported in a single day. The sharp rise in cases has been mirrored by record highs in hospital admissions – reaching at 5,913 on Monday – and stoking fears that the state’s hospitals will soon be overwhelmed. If this trajectory persists, Houston, the state’s most populous city, “would become the worst affected city in the US”, possibly rivalling what’s happening now in Brazil, wrote Peter Hotez, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, on Twitter. “I cannot really see how things get better on their own.” Why the rise? Many point to the south-western state’s leading role peeling back lockdown measures.

              Meanwhile, Arizona may be the region with the most concerning surge in America. In mid-June, a Harvard epidemiologist noted the state had a higher case count and percent positivity rate than Brazil and Peru. It’s a familiar story here too: the south-western state’s spike follows its reopening timeline.

              https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53228134

        2. Hickory –

          Hic, you may have a doctorate in physics, hell, most climate scientists (and weather people) do; that doesn’t automatically make you an expert on the various crises currently facing our Mother Earth. Sometimes you come across as naïve but note, I didn’t place you in any special category, a tad gullible perhaps but that’s not too great a sin.

          1. Well, this conversation has become gradually more disappointing Doug. I was wrong to expect more apparently.
            Have fun with GF. Later.

  20. Have you planted your tree to save the planet yet?

    BRAZILIAN AMAZON SEES WORST JUNE IN 13 YEARS FOR FOREST FIRES

    “Deforestation in Brazil was very high this year before the dry season even began, with more than 2,000 square kilometers lost between January and May, a 34 percent increase on the same period in 2019, according to INPE. The Amazon environmental research institute estimates that 9,000 square kilometers of jungle already cut down since last year could go up in flames before August begins.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-07-brazilian-amazon-worst-june-years.html

    1. Maybe you should make that two trees.

      SIBERIAN WILDFIRES SWELL AMID HISTORIC HEATWAVE

      “Forest fires in Siberia have grown at least threefold amid a record-breaking heatwave in the region, according to Russia’s agency for aerial forest fire management Aviales. The figures state that 1.37 million hectares (3.4 million acres) were burning in areas unreachable to firefighters as of midnight Monday.”

      https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/29/siberian-wildfires-swell-amid-historic-heatwave-a70725

  21. What does the electrification innovation look like in this country.
    “A 1,100-acre solar project in Montana just secured a contract to sell power to Basin Electric Power Cooperative and its members. The project, Cabin Creek Solar Project, will be the largest of its type in the state”

    You might ask, how does solar PV work out so far north?
    It works out because the 30 yr levelized cost of PV energy is now cheap, compared to other sources of energy.
    The levelized cost of energy is how utilities and energy project develops evaluate the costs of any particular project, and takes into account all the tangible costs, from labor, to fuel, to concrete and copper.

    If it works in Baker MT, how about elsewhere?
    Other places in the country that have the same (within 3%) annual solar energy potential include Richmond VA, Omaha NE, Little Rock AR, for example.
    Other places in the country that have the slightly less (within 8%) annual solar energy potential include
    Boston, Phila, Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and a thousand other points between.

    [Global tilted irradiation at optimum angle] https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

  22. Recycle you say. Why bother, just dump it.

    GLOBAL E-WASTE SURGING: UP 21% IN 5 YEARS

    For perspective, last year’s e-waste weighed substantially more than all the adults in Europe, or as much as 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2, enough to form a line 125 km long. And, only 17.4% of 2019’s e-waste was collected and recycled. This means that gold, silver, copper, platinum and other high-value, recoverable materials conservatively valued at US $57 billion — a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Product of most countries –were mostly dumped or burned rather than being collected for treatment and reuse.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-07-global-e-waste-surging-years.html

    1. I’ve taken to long walks recently and seeing what is discarded along the road has really gotten me focused on the concept of trash. This is a classic case of companies generating short term profits at the expense of the “commons”. Now it actually angers me to get in the mail products “security packaged” because some store doesn’t want to deal with shoplifting. then I have to wrestle with an oil-based plastic package with a pair of scissors and then immediately throw the package in the trash because the county no longer recycles because China no longer takes our thrash.

      This is a civilization with a short half-life. The mountains of trash will be here centuries after we are gone.

  23. What does the electrification innovation look like in this country?
    “The State of Washington operates the one of the largest ferry fleets in world. Visitors to the Seattle area are well familiar with the sight of its green and white ferries crisscrossing Puget Sound all day every day, almost all of them powered by diesel engines. Combined, they suck down about 20 million gallons of diesel fuel a year, which means they are spewing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and particulate matter in their wake.”
    “Under the leadership of Washington Governor Jay Inslee — one of the few political leaders in the US who takes climate change seriously — the management of the state ferry system has made a serious commitment to reducing pollution from its ferries by converting some existing vessels to electric power and calling for any new ferries to be primarily battery electric vessels.
    The ferry operator has begun converting three of its Jumbo Mark II ferries to electricity. Those three vessels alone consume 5 million gallons of fuel a year.”

    Washington gets it electricity from Hydroelectric 71%, with nat gas, nuclear, wind and lastly/leastly coal making up the remainder.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/02/vigor-chooses-abb-battery-electric-power-for-new-ferries-in-washington/

    If you’ve every had the pleasure to use this ferry system, it is a gem!

    1. I wonder if it would be possible to move ferries the same way cable car systems move trolleys?

      1. I’m pretty sure it would possible SaraB, but probably not at all feasible. Many other ships pass through these sometimes very stormy channels. Preventing obstruction of access to the busy ports of Tacoma and Seattle would have be somehow engineered into such a system, and the cable systems would still need to be powered from onshore to move these very heavy loads. The ferries are often packed full, including with cargo trucks.
        Difficult, but beautiful topography.

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