166 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, July 3, 2023”

  1. Dennis
    A few weeks ago you suggested I look into the costs of providing backup power for a wind drought lasting weeks.
    A quick look at batteries came with the realization that the scale and costs were too astronomical to merit serious consideration, looking at stored hydrogen or ammonia identified that the energy recovery from those sources would most likely be via gas turbine technology with maybe a 40% efficiency and an overall energy efficiency of less than 30% from the original ‘ surplus’ . Fuel cells? Massive scaling problems.
    Focus on pumped storage. Quick calculation showed that 3 feet of water from the great lakes above Niagara Falls contains the energy to generate 30,000 megawatts for one month, nature refills the upper reservoir for free.
    Capital works required:
    Low level dam at inlet of Niagara River to maintain lake levels at maximum levels presently deemed appropriate ( to avoid resistance from present shoreline property owners)
    New generators at the site of the present station.
    Penstock from the dam to the new generators.
    Transmission lines.
    Construction would preferably utilize stainless steel rebar for the concrete, stainless steel piping, and other long lived construction choices to build a facility with a life expectancy of a couple of centuries ( coupled with decent maintenance).

    OPERATING CONSTRAINTS
    Minimum flow at all times consistent with downstream environmental requirements
    Maximum flow consistent with controlling downstream flooding risk.
    Manage flow required for touristic purposes

    SCOPING STUDIES REQUIRED
    Establishing maximum flow and minimum flow constraints, establishing maximum drawdown of lake levels. Establish realistic plot plan for the new facilities, identify permits and approvals required.
    Prepare feasibility grade cost estimate.

    COMMENTS
    This project will not increase electrical generation by any significant amount, it will only change the mode of operation from the present run-of-river to a peaking operation as needed. it is not justified unless wind and solar energy are built up to power the system the majority of the time.
    No risky developmental technology is required, good reliability can be expected

      1. Even here in Northern New England vast tracts of forest in our little town have been leveled and replaced with acres of solar panels surrounded by chainlink fences. Who knew “sustainability” could be so goddamned ugly?

        1. Mike B,

          From what I have seen most of the utility scale solar projects in New England have been installed on land that was cleared decades ago for farming.

        2. Got the coordinates of an example? I’d like a satellite view.

      2. “Is there a better way?”

        I can only think of one of way that would work for soon to be 9 billion hominids who are used to combustion as a way of life, in fact could not survive without it.

        That way would be an intentional downsizing as a grand mission…a spiritual journey. It would have to be such an endeavor or else no more than 1 in 100 would participate in such a life shortening and material sacrifice volunteer effort.

        You guys are old….why hanging around so long, knowing the damage that we all do?

        1. You guys are old….why hanging around so long
          True–
          World population has more than tripled from my birth.
          We need to get back to our historical population of 1-5 million.

          2. There was something like a billion before widespread use of fossil fuels,
            however I remind you all that those ‘pleasant’ days were marked by most of humanity being controlled as work animals through slavery, tenant farming, forced military, or forced industrial labor. And that vast areas of the world were completely deforested for the fuel, lumber and food conversion.

    2. Old Chemist,

      Thanks. It is possible that pumped hydro is the best way to store power, there may be enough excess power from wind and solar in the future that synthetic fuels produced near large scale wind and solar facilities when excess power supply is available can be burned in existing natural gas power plants and may be a more cost effective option compared to pumped hydro.

      1. Dennis
        Possible, but not probable. The overall efficiency of that approach is dismal.

        Another thought occurred to me while looking at the electrical system:
        When electric utilities were first developed in the US there was a debate on whether it should be DC or AC, with the decision somewhat arbitrary. With present technology much of power consumption is DC ( electronics, car batteries, electrolysis facilities, LED lighting, long distance power transmission etc.) On the generation side wind and solar are essentially DC. steam and gas driven generators and water turbine driven generators can be built to provide either AC or DC power. Considering the challenges of converting DC to power AC devices ( Power factor , reactive energy issues, phase control) , it is worth studying the phasing in of a conversion of the whole system to DC.

        Consider a new water hydrolysis plant being constructed 500 miles from solar arrays where power is being generated as DC, transmitted as DC and maybe 80% utilized as DC. Why not power the compressors, water pumps and ancillary systems with DC as well?

        1. Old Chemist,

          Sometimes the most efficient process will not be the least costly. I am not familiar enough with power systems engineering to assess the feasibility of such a transition from AC to DC. Seems like a big obstacle is the lack of experience in using a DC Power grid, it would require some research to make it work I imagine.

          1. Dennis
            Like you, I do not know the answer but there is significant experience with DC systems ( ships, submarines, paper machine drives and other major industrial applications and extensive experience with transmission lines.
            The whole system is facing major investment to accommodate a huge expansion in rebuildable power sources and a corresponding increase in end users. Without a visionary but practical system-wide engineering study the result will be a crazy-quilt of regional systems.

            https://energyskeptic.com/2023/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/

            1. Old Chemist,

              Yes there are systems that use DC, there is not a nation wide grid that is set up for DC transmission and distribution, I agree it may be more efficient, but more research is needed to accomplish this gridwide, from a quick bit of research I did for 30 minutes or so. A Power Engineer could tell us if it was feasible off the top of their head, I imagine. I just don’t know much about how the grid operates so smoothly and if their are significant obstacles to making a DC Grid work.

        2. DC power, using early twentieth century technology, was limited to use within no more than a mile or two from the generating plant.

          So…….. it was AC or do without, other than within a very short distance of a generating plant.

          The amps you can put thru a conductor are proportional to it’s cross section. PERIOD. But there’s no limit to the voltage, up to the limits of whatever insulation can be used. Transmission lines are suspended on large glass insulators in bare air making it possible to raise the voltage into the tens of thousands.

          At the abc level, you multiply volts by amps to get watts…….. and watts are the actual unit measuring power. Ten amps at twelve volts provides the same amount of POWER as one amp at one hundred twenty volts.

          DC requires very large conductors at any reasonably safe and workable voltage because in order to deliver lots of power at low voltages, you have to use huge conductors. ( This is why the cables to the starter motor on a car are big ones……. ten times the size of cables used to power an ac electric motor having the same horsepower running on 120 volts rather than twelve volts from the car battery.)

          In an AC grid system, you use STEP UP transformers to jack the voltage up well into the thousands, or even tens of thousands, reducing the amperes in proportion, so that small cables can carry huge amounts of power long distances at low amperes. This means relatively trivial losses due to voltage drop over long distances.

          Hundreds and thousands of miles of small cable plus transfomers are affordable. DC cables big enough to get the job done would look like the cables used on suspension bridges. Totally unaffordable.

          When the juice reaches it’s final destination, a STEP DOWN transformer is used to reduce the voltage back to customary levels, these being 120 volts up to around eight or nine hundred volts here in the USA, with the amperes going up again in proportion to the reduction in voltage.

          Switches capable of handling DC current are very expensive, compared to AC switches rated for the same power level.

          So…….. we aren’t going to a DC grid, at least not within the easily foreseeable future, because the conversion would be astronomically expensive…… many times more than we could afford. Damned near every thing used at the consumer level, other than electronics, would have to be replaced, houses would have to be rewired, etc.

          But we WILL be seeing more and more HVDC high voltage direct current transmission lines built, because they work like magic over really long distances, with very little energy lost along the way. HVDC can be built up to a couple of thousand miles long, if necessary.

          As the cost of hvdc comes down, it will be feasible to convert the central or major large transmission lines in a national or large regional grid to dc. This means we can eventually use conventional ac lines for only the last fifty miles, or maybe the last hundred miles, without having to rewire existing buildings or throwing out old ac powered equipment and replacing it with DC powered equipment.

  2. Thanks O C.
    You’ve put some serious time and thought into this analysis.
    And you’ve got me thinking that we can potentially convert quite a substantial amount of hydro capacity from base load to peaking if we can deal with the political side of the problem.

    There must be at least a couple of dozen big hydro plants in the country that could be re engineered this way at a reasonable cost.

    An overall energy efficiency using hydrogen or ammonia of only thirty percent sounds discouraging at first glance but it’s my personal belief, assuming the wheels don’t fall off, that we will eventually have so much otherwise surplus wind and solar capacity that using it to manufacture ammonia and or molecular hydrogen on the grand scale will be practical and profitable.

    We will have at least double the nominal wind and solar capacity we will need to run the national grid, so as to have enough renewable juice MOST of the time, so that when the wind and sun are “cooperating” the “surplus” will be there at the necessary scale.

    Furthermore, most people modeling such problems tend to leave out the rather obvious fact that in the future we will be doing one hell of a lot of load shifting, which means that we’ll have de facto batteries out the ying yang in a manner of speaking.

    Just doubling the size and doubling the insulation of domestic hot water heaters nationwide would be equivalent to adding a ton of gas peaking plants to the grid.

    1. “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins. . . . If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making. He will make himself an exile from the earth and then will know at last, if he is still capable of feeling anything, the pain and agony of final loss.”

    2. OFM
      It seeems to me that Lake Powell and Lake Mead could be converted to at least a partial peaking operation at minimal cost, if desired ,and small holding reserves could be built downstream of these dams, with the water pumped uphill during the midday and released in the evening when solar fades out and the load demand increases.
      I am not as optimistic as you about using excess hydrogen for power generation. The demand for hydrogen to produce nitrogen fertilizer, smelt iron and other metallic ores, to produce ceramics and cement will probably make it far too valuable for power generation.

      1. “It seeems to me that Lake Powell and Lake Mead could be converted to at least a partial peaking operation at minimal cost”

        That’s not going to work

        1. How so?
          I know for a fact that water turbines, spinning or not, are much faster to regulate power output, and also hence grid frequency, than nuclear or coal plants are, just as an example.
          Edit: on the other hand there is the water rights quagmire that might impact operations, but on a short, say day to day operation, accumulated flow would be more or less the same.

        2. HB wrote: “That’s not going to work.”

          Could you elaborate a bit on your thinking HB? It appears that they are working towards implementing that goal:

          http://gcdamp.com/index.php/HYDROPOWER

          “LTEMP Resource Goal for the Hydropower Resource
          Maintain or increase Glen Canyon Dam electric energy generation, load following capability, and ramp rate capability, and minimize emissions and costs to the greatest extent practicable, consistent with improvement and long-term sustainability of downstream resources.”

          The historical discharge below the Glen Canyon Dam is:

          Statistics for Thursday, July 6, 2023 based on 8 years of data (Ft3/s)
          low (2000) 25th percentile median 75th percentile high (1991)
          8400 11400 14500 15000 18500

          This implies that they could vary the discharge flow as much as 5000 Ft3/s based on demand variability; curtailing flows during periods of high solar and or wind output, and increasing flows for peaking. I couldn’t readily find any data showing the relationship between discharge and generation. Would be interesting to know what that would translate to as far as dispatch is concerned.

          1. I’m sorry Bob. I should have copy and pasted more of my belief of what won’t happen. I should have included this part also:

            “if desired ,and small holding reserves could be built downstream of these dams”.

            Yes, both dams can and are used primarily during peak demand. Lake Powell sets just up stream of the Grand Canyon. I don’t see holding reservoirs being built just down stream of Glen Canyon Dam. You would need a reservoir something in the size of Lake Havasu( 500,000 acre feet) to handle the kind of volume that is released from Glen Canyon. Glen Canyon Dam is 700 feet tall. There no place south of the dam for some “small holding reserves”. It would require another dam of hundreds of feet high down stream to be meaningful. Even if by chance you got that passed the environmentalist and your not going too. They would prefer to remove Glen Canyon Dam. Who is going to absorb the loss or waste of the vital water resource of another lake ? All these lakes don’t have some kind of plastic lining underneath them. Not to mention it’s estimated 5 to 6 feet of evaporation annually. Lake Powell looses almost 10 percent of it’s intake to these issues. Another lake on the river could lose 100’s of thousands of acre feet of water or more annually.

            The Colorado River water storage system has been losing about a million acre feet of stored water reserves per year for the last 20 years. Prior to this years heathy snowpack. Powell was going to reaching minimum power pool last year and needed up stream abnormal releases to continue to generate last year.

            Lake Mead is a little different story than Powell. Lake Mojave backs up to almost the base of Hoover Dam. There would be no need to build any additional reservoir.

            Good website regarding storage- https://lakepowell.water-data.com/

            “Total inflows for water year 2023: 10,469,032 acre feet”
            “Total releases for water year 2023: 6,222,634 acre feet”

            During WY 2023, water storage has risen by 3,867,391 AF and total inflows have exceeded total outflows by 4,246,398 AF( We are entering the hottest 3 months of the of the water year with the biggest loses.)

            “Current Operations
            Hourly releases during June 2023 will fluctuate from a low of approximately 13,200 cfs during the early morning hours to a high of 19,500 cfs during the afteroon and evening hours. The June release volume volume is 1,064,000 acre-feet. The anticipated monthly release volume for July is anticipated to be 1,150,000 acre-feet and will be confirmed toward the end of June.”

            https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/gcd.html

            http://gcdamp.com/index.php/GCDAMP_Glen_Canyon_Dam

            https://www.mwdh2o.com/your-water/how-we-get-our-water/

            https://www.mwdh2o.com/media/liwpccsm/pumpingplants.pdf

            1. Thanks.
              I agree that adding additional separate storage below Powell and Mead for purposes of pumped hydro isn’t tenable, and long term severe drought will likely be the death of Powell.

              If vast arrays of floating PV were deployed on the lake, they could help decrease evaporation now, and continue to generate power in the future when they come to rest on the silt flat after the water is gone. /s

      2. Hi Old Chemist,

        You may very well be correct that hydrogen will be so much in demand for other uses that we won’t have enough of it at a low enough price to burn it to generate power.

        There’s no way of knowing for now.

        There’s this to consider. Suppose you burn enough very expensive hydrogen OCCASIONALLY , in so called peaker plants, so as to avoid having to build EVEN more generating capacity.

        Using hydrogen, locally or domestically produced, could potentially free a lot of people and countries from depending on buying imported natural gas in large quantities.

        The same thing holds true for gas itself……. it’s a primary feedstock used to manufacture everything from acids to ammonia…….. these being the basic feed stocks needed by the chemical industries. Without nitrate fertilizers made using natural gas, a billion or more people would starve within a year.

        I can’t really come up with a clear idea as to just how much wind and solar power capacity we will eventually have…… but my guess is that we will eventually build it out to three times at least what would be needed during ideal weather……. assuming of course that the wheels don’t fall off before it happens.

        1. OFM
          If the wheels.. The most likely outcome in my opinion. Lots of smart things could be done, but are basically unaffordable without serious sacrifices in the present standard of living. Deficits and debts cannot keep growing indefinitely on the fiction that future increased GDP will enable repayment.
          There is no appetite in any population for a reduced standard of living – look at France and the turmoil of an increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64, a move that will only partially fix a specific small section of the economy that impacts every person for the better in the long run.
          I consider hydrogen to be the only possible successor to natural gas – at a much higher cost, especially if hydrogen has to be produced using intermittent power supplies. Rather than peaking power I would expect load shedding to become the standard for managing the supply/demand balance for electrical power, already a standard in many countries.
          Challenge for the future- learning how to get by on intermittent power.

          1. “Challenge for the future- learning how to get by on intermittent power.”

            I call that learning how to make hay when the syn shines!

          2. OLD CHEMIST
            Lots of smart things could be done, but are basically unaffordable without serious sacrifices in the present standard of living.

            The idea that we need to waste vast amounts of energy to have a high standard of living is simply wrong.

            International comparisons make this clear. IT’s true that poor countries suffer from energy shortages, but among rich countries energy consumption varies wildly.

            1. Alimbiquated
              I agree we can live well on less energy, but GDP and energy consumption have nearly a 100% correlation. Try convincing an American that taking the bus is equivalent to driving a private car in terms of standard of living. Or living in a 800 sq.ft. condo is just as good as living in a 2000 sq.ft. stand alone house.

            2. Old Chemist
              Contrary to the usual claims in this kind of discussion, Americans live in sprawling suburbs because of government mandates,not because they prefer it that way, or because of some”free market” magic.
              Not only has almost nobody tried persuading Americans to live in more convenient neighborhoods where you don’t have to drive everywhere,it has actively been forbidden for decades.

          3. I’m in total agreement about load shedding.
            But we don’t hear all that much about load shifting, which I believe will be practiced on the grand scale in countless industries and businesses.

            Not everybody will be able to afford such measures, but consider that an ordinary domestic heat pump could easily be designed to chill water to freezing ……… as well as chilling air in air conditioning mode.
            Adding a few cubic meters of water in a tank and freezing it and using the resulting ice to cool the house would serve as a defacto battery in hot weather………. and when it’s really hot, the sun is usually out.

            And running this add on feature in reverse would enable the home owner to heat his water reservoir when the wind is blowing well during cold weather. Heat pump water heaters are already getting to be common, but only to heat domestic water, not to heat the house.

    3. Are we getting a glimpse of the future in Europe

      “Crazy world” of EU power – negative prices across western Europe, all day in Germany

      Wholesale electricity prices went into negative territory across much of western Europe over the weekend, and for the entire day in Germany, according to energy analysts.

      Energy analyst and commentator Gerard Reid noted the negative pricing and posted a screen shot on LinkedIn of prices quoted on the epexspot exchange.

      “Free electricity across all of Europe today … any takers?” Reid wrote on his LinkedIn post, before adding: “PS: It will be the same every weekend in summer!”

      Australian electricity markets are already used to long periods of negative prices, particularly during the day when rooftop solar sucks up much of the domestic demand, leaving large scale wind, solar and the remaining thermal generators to battle to be dispatched.

      Solutions include more storage and demand management (switching more loads to times when renewables are producing their highest.

      There is at least one academic that predicted this scenario.

  3. Australia reaches record 36.8 pct renewables in 22/23, lowest coal this century

    Australia finished the last financial year with a record 36.8 per cent share for wind, solar and hydro on its main grid – reducing the share of coal fired power to just 57 per cent of all power generation – its lowest this century.

    Data from OpenNEM reveals that in the past financial year there was 207 terawatt hours of electricity produced on Australia’s main grid – known as the National Electricity Market (NEM) – in 2022/23.

    Of this, some 77TWh came from renewable sources: Wind was the biggest renewable contributor with 13 per cent of the overall production, rooftop solar came in with 10 per cent, and utility scale solar with 6.1 per cent, Hydro contributed another 7.6 per cent.

    Gas generation came in at just 5.2 per cent, according to OpenNEM, its lowest share since 2006 and less than half its market share of a decade ago, reflecting the fact that gas generation is used more to fill gaps in renewables rather than the “baseload” it once sought to deliver.

    Wind to the south, solar to the north: Renewable generation records blown away in June

    The latest table of the top ranking wind and solar assets in Australia for the month of June shows the impact of winter on the country’s renewable assets: Wind is performing best in the south, and solar in the north.

    These latest tables from analyst David Dixon at Rystad Energy show that Queensland solar farms accounted for the top 11 best performing utility scale solar assets in June (rated on capacity factors), and 17 of the top 20.

    The best performing solar farm was the Blue Grass solar facility, followed by the always strong performing Kidston solar farm, next to the former gold mine that will host the country’s newest pumped hydro facility.

    See more on this story: Small Victoria wind farm sets stunning new capacity factor record of 65 pct for June

    Only three assets from other states – the Gunnedah and Nyngan solar farms in NSW, and the Greenough River solar farm in WA reached the top 20. Greenough and Nyngan were among the first solar farms built in Australia, so age has not wearied them.

    What are the odds that the transition in Australia will slow down?

    1. To islandboy

      At 6pm solar was producing zero and wind was producing 1.4Gw. Coal was producing 17Gw and gas 4Gw.
      There was no solar until 7am the following morning and wind did not improve much. same for next evenging and the next.

      How would you make up the difference without coal. How would electric trains run, hospitals and restuarants function?

      https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=3d&interval=30m

      In Germany on the 28th at 9pm restaurants, shops, factories, hospitals were using 55,000Mw. solar output had stopped til the next morning and wind managed 2,000Mw out of 67,000Mw of installed power

      https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&week=26

      Any idea how many batteries like Tesla home power you need to power one hospital or one train from Berlin to Frankfurt?

      2. Let’s not forget that every kilowatt hour the Germans get from wind and solar power is a kilowatt hour they don’t have generate with Russian gas. The Germans are keeping an ever larger percentage of the money they used to spend for imported fuel home, where it contributes to local employment and tax revenues.

        Nobody is saying we can go totally renewable in the near future, at least not anybody who is seriously looking at the facts.

        Furthermore, we’re still in the early days when it comes to finding ways to build better batteries, and ways to use intermittent wind and solar power more efficiently.

        With a little luck, a lot of Western Europe is going to be getting a substantial portion of the necessary electricity from places such as Spain, where there’s ample space and the sun is out nice and bright nine out of every ten days.

        Long distance power lines are already a big thing, and if the wheels don’t fall off, they’ll be a REALLY big thing within another ten to fifteen years, bringing power from the sunny ( and often windy) parts of Europe and Africa on the grand scale.

        There’s no question such lines can be built. A fair number of them have been built already. Building them is a no brainer, in practical terms. The only real problems involved with them are political…… striking the necessary agreements with the various countries involved.

        Note that a lot of this potential electricity will be available during hours that solar output is low or even zero in some parts of Europe.

        1. OFM
          “The only real problems involved with them are political”
          I agree.
          Recently I was looking at the congressional resistance to spending on climate change mitigation and came across an interesting data set.Here’s a link to a list of 197 scientific organizations that hold the position that Climate Change has been caused by human action:

          https://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html

          Heres a link to the most significant organizations opposed to the position that climate change has been caused by human action:
          https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/global-warming-skeptic-organizations

          You will notice that all of the organizations on the first list are respected scientific organizations and that none of the organizations on the second list are respected scientific organizations.
          Nonetheless the second list holds sway today in the US House of Representatives.
          Yes, a political problem, but why?

    2. Thanks, Islandboy.

      Australia finished the last financial year with a record 36.8 per cent share for wind, solar and hydro [UK 32.9%] on its main grid – reducing the share of coal fired power to just 57 per cent [UK 1.1%] of all power generation

      UK data from 5th July 2022 to present:
      https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical

    3. This is good but then I look at a chart of Australian electricity prices, and it makes me wonder how (financially) sustainable this transition is.

  4. Ron, and others might appreciate this, a quote from Cormac McCarthy:

    “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” McCarthy told The New York Times in 1992. “I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.”

    We’ve had a long run, the human species, without a lot of selective pressure. In fact, it’s been more “Idiocracy” than Survival of the Fittest for a while now. At least in our ‘civilized’ parts of the world.

    But we haven’t been without violence. Male against female violence will always persist, overshoot and collapse won’t greatly affect that. Bullying, violence by the strong against the weak, I predict persistence there.

    Violence from desperation, that will pick up. Stealing food, or money to buy food, or drugs. Retribution will also greatly increase, from both the state and individuals.

    State violence will increase greatly. Against other states, and against the refugee masses. I could see state violence increasing against its own citizens in some countries, and a more benign collapse in others. In the USA I don’t think state violence against its own citizens will be great.

    Citizen on citizen violence will increase, and to the extent guns are available, it will be lethal. At some point, violence will replace lifestyle diseases as the number one killer across all groups, except for maybe starvation.

    I don’t think I agree with McCarthy, looking back in time, and applying what he states to most people in our societies. But for those afflicted with violence, and the many who will be, I guess I agree. It’s a real Hobson’s choice however – accepting we can’t all get along while going deeper into collapse vs a futile effort while wishing it were so.

    1. Got2Surf , ” It’s a real Hobson’s choice however – accepting we can’t all get along while going deeper into collapse vs a futile effort while wishing it were so. ”
      Simpler still ” Only in a world of abundant resources can men live as brothers ” . The wolf is at the door and the dogs of war are unleashed .

      1. It would be ironic if in the end the wolves finished off the humans. Talk about a 4th quarter comeback win!

        It’s a nuanced position one must take, I like this guy, doomer/activist/realist:

        https://youtu.be/bsOlvXXiXRY

    2. I have been surprised at how easily people will forget about the life of slavery, of ethnic ‘cleansing’, of massacre in the night, of death squads at the roadblocks, of a dominant warlord, or the nation state as the armed tyrant, and of living a base level poverty with no chance for rest even earned by a life of hard labor.
      So easily people seem ready or even eager to let a civil society, with rules of law and some ability to preserve ones self self against the killing bully, to be torn away by those who seek to profit on the blood and physical labor of everyone else.

      A measure of goodness is an easy thing to lose.

    3. I think that there never will be a perfect, peaceful human civilization but the fight to achieve that impossible goal is worth the effort because it is so clear that we can move the needle in that direction. Sadly, as you say, there are always elements pushing in the other direction for their own short term profit and there are always followers of those elements.
      We really have no choice but to fight the battle, even as we slink into chaos.

  5. I have been keeping some tabs on ideas that people raise as mechanisms to adjust our system of energy/economy.
    Here are a few that so far look like big thermodynamic (net energy cost) losers to me.
    -algae for biofuel (with corn biofuel a very weal net positive…maybe)
    -warehouse vegetable growing
    -much of the remaining ‘small’ yet to be produced oil pockets of the world
    -hydrogen as a energy storage medium
    -most of what people do

    On the hydrogen comment- all batteries are net energy losers on the process, even a hydroelectric dam. But that doesn’t mean they are not a good thing for the right situation. I put hydrogen on this list because it is getting a lot of development attention and money without being properly vetting on a reality basis, and the particulars don’t look to promising to me. More of the momentum for the hydrogen industry is based on a combination of desperation and wishful thinking.

    1. Hydrogen can be used for other things than being electrolyzed, stored and then re-electrified in fuelcells or gas turbines, even though the efficiancy of such is improving quite a lot.
      One example is steel manufacturing, as I´m sure you´ve heard of, reducing CO2 significantly.
      But whatever the efficiancy percentage is, it´s better to have some storage than none in my view, especially if the power is really cheap at times.

  6. Headline mix of the day-
    -“What the actual F*CK??? First time the global average temperature reaches 17°C [62.6F]!”
    -““The Earth Energy Imbalance from NASA satellite data broke through 1.8 W/m² (12-month mean)! This is faster than many experts thought possible. I call this the most important graph in the world. A lot more heat is accumulating!”
    -“If a few decades ago, some people might have thought climate change was a relatively slow-moving phenomenon, we are now witnessing our climate changing at a terrifying rate,”
    -“Dimming Sun’s rays should be off-limits, say experts”

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2023/07/04/4th-july-2023-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/

  7. BC’s Donnie Creek wildfire has burned over 5,715 square kilometres as of July 2, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service and is expected to continue burning through the Fall and into winter. This is the biggest fire in our history — so far. No idea how much CO2 is being added to atmosphere from this event.

    1. A sampling of the effects of climate change, perhaps. All those far-flung forests of the North American West igniting and burning for years until all the fuel’s consumed, to lie dormant for centuries until the wet period returns – restarting the cycle that’s been ongoing for thousands, if not millions of years …

  8. China and India coal consumption.

    https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review

    Islandboy and others claimed that China and India investment in renewables would make coal mines and coal fired power station stranded assests. Five years ago a gave up trying to explain that intermittent renewable power could not possibly keep up with countries like China and India, where electricity production is increasing so fast.
    Coal consumption in India is now 300 million tonnes higher than in 2014 and China has exceeded all worst case expectations. Burning 4,560 million tonnes last year, 1.1 billion tonnes more than 2014.

    Globally coal consumption has never been higher.

    1. So what you are saying is that the bureaucrats attending climate summits didn’t do shit other than have expensive dinners at fancy hotels. Who would have thunk.

      1. I think of it more like the charge of the Light Brigade. They tried to do the right thing and deserve more praise than sneer.

    2. This Monday, 3 July 2023, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

      Well comrades——

    3. I believe it.

      There’s an occasional train that rolls by, headed West, near my hometown in Eastern Washington, that I get stopped by when riding my Harley over to Idaho to get gas (a good reason to ride), and this train comes along … it’s got five engines pulling, three in the middle, and five engines pushing. And all the cars are heaping full of coal, and they’re all coal cars, a very long sobering black train … it goes on and on and on and on … then finally those last five locomotives huffing and puffing diesel …

      That’s all going to China, I tell myself. Probably right, too.

  9. The sacrifice you speak of has been made, via self-selection [the only humane way].

    Few doses are immediately lethal. Population decline will be gradual, but consistent, year-on-year. Fertility rates are also set to decline significantly.

    We’ll be back to a sub-billion population base by 2100. It won’t be pretty, but at least it’s a managed decline. With Peak Oil, difficult decisions had to be made. . .

    1. The population decline you describe…over 8 billion in the next 77 years,
      will not be a managed decline.
      Maybe that would have been feasible if the job had started in earnest at 1970
      when the population was less than 4 billion and there was an additional 50 years to ‘manage’ the decline.
      No, it would/will be a forced decline as messy as you could imagine.

      And no….people don’t choose to be born on the wrong side of the wall.

      1. I personally think it will be quite uniform, so the decline would somewhat mirror the growth rates.
        So from my perspective it won’t be managed as well.

      2. Reminds me of an article on TheOilDrum by Gail the Actuary (I think) that described how this die-off debacle will proceed, in the near future, in terms of excess-deaths-per-year. The graph had a peak of something like 200 million per year occurring in my children’s lifetime, eventually subsiding to a 1.5B member human race covering something like 25 years from onset – all caused by cessation of oil production.

  10. Wednesday morning trivia

    MONDAY MAY HAVE SET A GLOBAL RECORD FOR THE HOTTEST DAY EVER. TUESDAY BROKE IT

    For two straight days, the global average temperature spiked into uncharted territory. After scientists talked about Monday’s dramatic heat, Tuesday soared 0.17 degrees Celsius (0.31 degrees Fahrenheit) even hotter, which is a huge temperature jump in terms of global averages and records.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-07-monday-global-hottest-day-tuesday.html

  11. Greenlands getting ready for a bump

    Day 1 through 3
    https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/todays-weather/d1-3/gfs_arc-lea_t2max_d1-3.png

    4 through 6
    https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/todays-weather/d4-6/gfs_arc-lea_t2max_d4-6.png

    7 through 10
    https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx_frames/todays-weather/d7-10/gfs_arc-lea_t2max_d7-10.png

    What ever happened to Javier? The dude was pure comedy gold.

    https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/

    1. Thanks Islandboy. UK BEV sales for June = 17.9%, PHEV = 7.2% => 25% EV (by CT’s definition)

  13. Not good

    SHRINKING ARCTIC GLACIERS ARE UNEARTHING A NEW SOURCE OF METHANE

    A study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard, Norway, identified large stocks of methane gas leaking from groundwater springs unveiled by melting glaciers. The research suggests that these methane emissions will likely increase as Arctic glaciers retreat and more springs are exposed. This, and other methane emissions from melting ice and frozen ground in the Arctic, could exacerbate global warming.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-07-arctic-glaciers-unearthing-source-methane.html

    1. “With a *minimum* temperature of 103.3F at Adrar, Algeria, where the wind blew all night, allowing little chance to cool by irradiation, Africa has a new all-time minimum temperature record.”

  14. I decided to update the spreadsheet used to generate the Electric Power Monthly report I used to compile. Despite not doing the report I occasionally update the spreadsheet and the graphs. Some interesting things have happened in April:

    Wind generated more electricity than coal fired plants over the month in the US for the first time ever. (since the electrical grids were established)

    More electricity was generated by solar (CSP, utility and distributed) than by conventional hydroelectric for the month of April. The first time this happened was in the months of September and October 2022.

    All renewables, excluding conventional hydro (non-hydro renewables) generated more electricity than nuclear having done so for the first time in April 2022.

    Wind has generated more electricity than conventional hydro each month since September 2020

    The contribution from all renewables to the total electricity generated was 26.86%, slightly less than the record 28% set in April 2022.

    I just thought some people might find this information interesting.

        1. Agreed, I miss those updates as well. They were a good reality check against both utopians posting how any day now we would leave fossil fuels behind, and deniers who didn’t think any change was happening at all.

      3. Agree with Stephen – the posts are helpful for grounding debates. Maybe a quarterly update would be more appropriate? And are other countries’ data (Eurozone, England, China) available? I think it’s really hard for the average person to tell where the heck various regions are truly at with The Transition given that most of the debate on the Oil Side is PO 2018 vs PO 2024-2028, and decline rates 2% vs 5%, etc. Every percentage on the renewable side could be another hour of power on a given day. And without power how am I gonna post?!?!

  15. Another important paper: Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38906-7

    Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security. Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger such events, but so far this has not been quantified. Specifically, the ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. Here we find an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models.

    1. Thanks George, It’s been a while since a fresh paper on near term multiple breadbasket failure secondary to climate change.
      I’m not into the factory food buckets and all that nonsense, but I sure do like a stocked pantry. I’m thinking about 5 years worth, and knowing how to keep a low profile should come in handy.

  16. Antarctic sea ice conditions keep getting worse, area is 4 million square kilometers less than 2014, down 30%. I think this is a big influence on why the earth energy imbalance is increasing. It is maybe not doing so much now, with low insolation, but if the drop is maintained so that there are some weeks of no ice next March then there is going to be another spike in warming (as El Nino is reaching its highest and sun intensity reaches the sun spot peak). The EEI sets the rate of temperature rise so if it is going more than linearly then temperature is increasing more than quadratically. With the Southern Overturning Circulation slowing significantly any heat picked up is more likely to stay in the surface waters rather than carried deeper down, which means more rapid land ice loss, less sea ice formation and higher atmospheric temperatures (reinforcing feedback and tipping points in action).

      1. makes you wonder how much of this super-charged climate change was brought on by Peak Cheap Oil and the ramping of LTO/flaring/methane. many said peak oil would be the end of “civilization” but could it be climate change delivering the bill? the people here who have been watching this unfold for the past 20 years (wow – crazy to think) are about to not be that surprised.

  18. Global Food Price Index (red line is 2023) continues to fall…

  19. Not good — global temperatures continue to break records in July

    UN SAYS CLIMATE CHANGE ‘OUT OF CONTROL’

    “Chances are that the month of July will be the warmest ever, and with it the hottest month ever … ‘ever’ meaning since the Eemian [interglacial period], which is indeed some 120,000 years ago,” Dr Karsten Haustein, a research fellow in atmospheric radiation at Leipzig University, said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/07/un-climate-change-hottest-week-world

      2. By my calculation, which I hope is wrong, that is 3.7% of Canadian forests, so it could end up 5% or more. Imagine walking down a street and one day you find every twentieth house has been gutted. And I’m still not clear what is going to grow back or when.

      3. And yet in BC, last year was pretty much a record low for forest fires. Nobody talked about it. Randomness is challenging to deal with. Got to stand back a ways to get a good sense of where things are going ( and how fast).

        1. OLD CHEMIST —

          Thats a misleading comment. 2021was also a record year when we had 869,300 hectars burnt costing $718.8 million. So two records in three years — and counting. Please don’t undermine the seriousness of these fires. NB Since April 1, 2023, 457 wildfires have burned 869,861 hectares here and we are midway through the fire season.

          BTW as a geophysicist I have spent many thousands of hours looking for signals in (random) noise. Doesn’t help when water bombers are flying over your house all day.

          1. Doug
            Not saying it is not serious. I worked the first half of my career in the forest industries, I know how serious it is for the mills when their raw material supply goes up in smoke and local towns are burned out, but if you look at decadal losses to forest fires in North America, 100 years ago losses were multiples of what we see in recent decades.
            The reduction was a result of forest fire suppression activities. When I was young, the air in Vancouver was thick with smoke in the fall as companies were forced to burn the slash from their operations, then environmentalists deemed that to be bad and the forest companies were happy to save the cost. In those days a healthy male driving down the road near a forest fire could be stopped and legally forced to fight the fire – much faster response than flying someone in from Australia or South Africa. Since then governments, companies and environmentalists have all moved to either save money, or to contribute to a buildup of combustible material in the forest. Rising carbon dioxide levels cause increased growth rates and rising temperatures make fires more difficult to suppress, and decadal losses are increasing, but still nowhere near historical levels.
            Will Government mandate more active biomass control? Will environmentalists accept biomass reduction in sacred ancient forests?
            I have long ago accepted that humans will burn through fossil fuels until the economically recoverable portions are gone – all we can do is prepare to deal with the consequences

            1. OLD CHEMIST —

              Thanks, I appreciate your long term perspective which I mostly agree with. I was once pulled off a construction project to fight fire. That would have been 65-ish years ago.

            2. “I have long ago accepted that humans will burn through fossil fuels until the economically recoverable portions are gone”

              And then the remnant of the forests that still stand.
              Homo pyrensis would have been the more accurate name.

  20. With climate change now apparently “out of control” we continue feeding the furnace.

    COAL DEMAND TO REMAIN ROBUST IN 2023

    • According to the IEA’s Coal 2022 report, coal demand was expected to increase by 1.2 percent in 2022, hitting an all-time high and surpassing 8 billion tonnes for the first time.
    • A shortage of natural gas due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the primary reason for coal demand soaring, with a 2% increase in coal use for electricity production.
    • Even if Europe is able to reduce its reliance on coal by 2025, demand for the energy source in Asia looks set to grow for years to come.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Coal-Demand-To-Remain-Robust-In-2023.html

  21. Beware alarmists who weaponize every weather event as a CO2 climate crisis!

    No matter what the alarmist politicians try to tell you, the jet stream NOT CO2 is our weather control knob

    Below is the satellite data from June 28, 2023 showing (above) the wavy behavior of the jet stream and (below) how the troughs coincide with cool temperatures and the ridges with heat domes and high temperatures. On the same dates the public was given very different weather news.

    Experts reported for Los Angeles under the jet stream’s trough:

    Records from Downtown Los Angeles, where records date back to 1877, show June 2023 being the coolest such month since 1965.

    But in Texas, where the jet stream generated a heat dome, the news misleadingly reported:

    “Climate change has sent temperatures soaring in Texas”

    While along the east coast in Connecticut beneath a trough reported:

    “What’s behind Connecticut’s unusually cool weather in June — and what’s coming next ?
    Jim Steele .

    1. Weather records are now routinely getting shattered across the United States, with recent severe rainstorms in California, freezing temperatures in Texas, and a warm January thaw for the northeast. Jennifer Francis, Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, joins Host Steve Curwood to explain why a climate disrupted jet stream is behind much of this extreme weather.

      Jennifer Francis.

    2. The proximate cause may be a wavy jet stream but ultimately that is caused by climate change which heats the poles faster than the equator so lessening the energy gradient that keeps the jet stream tight, and that is caused mostly by CO2 emissions.

    3. If the weather pattern is persistent, then it will be an atmospheric blocking.

    1. “Beware alarmists who weaponize every weather event as a CO2 climate crisis!” 7/7 12:14pm; “After a long time I visited Paul Beckwith on YT for latest news on climate .” 7/7 12:52pm. Are there multiple people who have access to the HiH account? You are the most inconsistent poster I have ever met. If you are just really old or actually have a hole in your head I do apologize. Keep posting I guess – your posts are good about 50% of the time.

  23. It seems that an inverted yield curve in the bond market has just about always been associated with a recession shortly afterwards.
    It’s inverted now.
    Any and all comments about the near term to mid term future of the economy will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

    2. OFM – you are correct – https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y – 1981-1982: -2.7% GDP, Early 90’s: -1.4%, early 2000s: shallow recession but dot.com collapse. And of course the GFC. The inversion we have now, since July of LAST YEAR was only outdone by the 1980s.

      I’ve listed some of the economic stats that are either disinflationary or contractionary. They include but are by no means limited to: ISM Services, ISM Manufacturing, Red Book Retail Sales, Service Sector CMI, ISM New Orders, Global Trade Volume, Capex, Leading Economic Indicator index, Labor Overtime Hours, Purchasing Power Growth (Negative 26 months), Percentage of Gen Z living paycheck to paycheck, Buy Now Pay Later, Credit Card Balances, Bankruptcies, Bank lending, and I’m only about halfway through just LISTING the disinflation/contractionary elements in the economy. If you want details about a specific economic indicator we can discuss further. And this is global so no need to stick with just the US, especially since what happens in the US does not STAY in the US.

    3. I have no crystal ball, but when you look at past recessions, there is usually quite a lag between when the central bank starts raising rates and when the economy starts to be impacted.

      E.g. The Federal reserve raised rates from Summer 2004 to Summer 2006, spent most of 2007 wondering why nothing was happening in response, and then late 2007 said, oh crap, and started lowering rates but it was too late and in 2008-2009, the recession really hit. The most recent rate rise cycle started in early 2022, so maybe next year or the year after you might expect the recession to hit, if we follow previous patterns?

      The cause and effect from higher rates to recession usually goes through the housing market, so keep an eye on housing permits and starts, when those decline, construction slows, people get laid off, and it ripples through the economy.

      But every cycle is different (many things are different than previously – now we’ve got more inflation than before, this cycle of rate increases was much sharper than the previous one, we’ve got a wave of boomer retirements keeping labour markets tight, we have a hangover of Covid stimulus, and a hangover of long covid illness and death, a huge federal government deficit, etc.), so who really knows.

      1. So if a mid 2024 recession causes DJT to get elected, which alternative would be most attractive to you?
        1. suicide
        2. heavy drinking
        3. binge watching TV
        4. lobotomy

  24. The whole North Atlantic Ocean has continuously been record warm for 4 months now.
    Where did the blue colors go?
    Almost all 40,000,000 km² have Sea Surface Temperatures above (1971-2000) normal.
    In the meanwhile the Belgian train system has to run extra trains to the coastal cities during the weekend . They all want to enjoy the sun and the water . Sometimes ” Ignorance is bliss ” does work . 🙂

    1. Well, the overheating in Biscaye bay will fuel thunderstorms bringing much needed precipitations in France.

        1. HiH – that was a good article. it’s a tough subject to try and summarize. can’t go wrong with Rome comparison.

          1. The writer–who uses “LOL” and the phrase “civilizational collapse” far too often–makes the point that it took 500 years for Rome to collapse.

            And yet the entire Mediterranean world–the Mycenaeans, the Egyptians, the Hittites, Babylon, etc.–went tits up in a mere 50 years, circa 1200 BC. And back then the world population was around 20 million.

            1. Good point Mike B . Never can say thanks multiple times for guiding me on the collapse of the Bronze age .

            2. Rome had a population of over 1 million in about 400 AD.
              No other city did again until London in the 1800’s, as I remember.

    2. Latest forecasts are for a bad hurricane season fuelled by high sea surface temperatures and ocean heat. The normal El Nino wind patterns that cause the shear that kills off Atlantic cyclones aren’t forming because, while the Pacific is heating, the rest of the oceans are too, so the energy gradients that create the winds aren’t getting steep enough.

    3. Beyond comprehension .
      ” Historically, this is the time of the year we should really start to see the effects of El Niño on global Sea Surface Temperatures.

      But there is no historic precedence of what’s happening now.

  25. It is likely that we will look back at the temperature conditions of this year as being quaintly cool.
    This years ‘peak’ will be below the trough before too long.

    1. The whiplash we’ve experienced in northern New England lately is not to be believed. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see this.

      I’m a small apple grower and am stuck on weather like a tick. We just came out of five springs with extreme drought: select a month–April, May, June–and between 2016 and 2022 one of those months, and more, was rain-free. The trees were stressed. We had heavy June drop.

      Then, this years, Macintosh king bloom happened two weeks early (this the measure Extension uses to gauge the season.) Lo, and behold! On May 18 were had a hard freeze that devastated most plantings. We pulled through, as we have multiple heritage varieties that bloom at different times. I’m still pulling deformed and russeted apples off my trees, though.

      And now here we are, halfway through July, and it rains and rains and rains, with no let-up in sight. My sprays continually wash off the trees. I can’t get in the orchard to hand-thin. Neighbors can’t get their hay in.

      WTF’s with this whiplash?

      1. We should not be surprised by a meandering jet stream, perhaps even more so than ‘normal’ because of increased heat energy in the system that is being redistributed from source to sink with increased dynamics.

  26. “I have long ago accepted that humans will burn through fossil fuels until the economically recoverable portions are gone” Old Chemist Vol 17, 2023

    To his point, the chart below is a rough depiction of fossil fuel combustion over the past 60 years from 1962 to 2022.
    And we are not yet at Peak Global Combustion. Ten more years before that, I estimate.
    But peak is not the end of it.
    Probably at least another 1/3rd to be added to the cumulative ash pile.

  27. Coming material shortages are starting to be recognised in more mainstream sources:

    The net-zero materials transition: Implications for global supply chains

    Even with the current decarbonization trajectory trending toward 2.4° Celsius, the supply of many minerals and metals embedded in key lower-carbon technologies will face a shortage by 2030. While some materials such as nickel may experience modest shortages (approximately 10 to 20 percent), others such as dysprosium, which is magnetic material used in most electric motors, could see shortages of up to 70 percent of demand. Unless mitigation actions are put in place, such shortages would likely hinder the global speed of decarbonization because customers would be unable to shift to lower-carbon alternatives. Moreover, these shortages would lead to price spikes and volatility across materials, which in turn would make the technologies in which they are embedded more expensive and further slow adoption rates.

    https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/metals-and-mining/our-insights/the-net-zero-materials-transition-implications-for-global-supply-chains

  28. Reading that low sulfur at sea is one of the reasons we’re in a heat wave. Took 30+ years to get rid of SO2 to eliminate acid rain, now turns out the extra sulfur was a partial buffer against solar warming .. Anne K .
    Global dimming effect . Loss of aerosols and particles in the atmosphere due to deindustrialization pre covid ?

  31. Lots of juice (oil and gas) from Norway for foreseeable future. My niece confirmed this. Sounds as though the UK won’t be following suite.

    NORWAY MAKES BIGGEST HYDROCARBON DISCOVERY IN 10 YEARS

    “Norway is the gift that keeps on giving. Carmen proves there are important discoveries still to be made and Norway’s oldest oil company, DNO, will be part of this next chapter of the country’s oil and gas story,” said DNO’s Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani.

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Norway-Makes-Biggest-Hydrocarbon-Discovery-In-10-Years.html

    2. The high end estimate for this new field is roughly enough to supply the world for ONE DAY at current consumption rates.

      And we hear about such discoveries only at fairly long intervals……… maybe once or twice a year.

    3. A trillion scf would be pretty marginal as a stand alone development but it. is in the Troll area so would have the use of existing infrastructure and is likely to be developmed along with a couple of other medium sized gs discoveries. The amount of condensate and/or presence of any oil rim would also be important for the economics.

  32. Something for the cornucopians among us to ponder

    CHINA IS PUMPING OUT CARBON EMISSIONS AS IF COVID NEVER HAPPENED.

    Carbon emissions from China are growing faster now than before COVID-19 struck, data show, dashing hopes the pandemic may have put the world’s most polluting nation on a new emissions trajectory. the increase was driven by emissions from China’s industrial and energy sectors. Average daily emissions from industry rose between 2019 and 2023 by 1.1 million tons or 11%. From energy, which includes electricity generation, they rose by 1.75 million tons or 14%.

    Separate data show the growth of coal production in China has accelerated. In the two years prior to the pandemic, coal production variously fell or only grew slightly. But coal production grew during the pandemic, and this has continued. In the year to April 2023, coal production increased by about 5%.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-07-china-carbon-emissions-covid-bad.html

    1. Meanwhile,

      June CO2
      June 2023 = 423.68 ppm
      June 2022 = 420.99 ppm

    2. We do not need to eliminate ALL emissions (nor will we ever be able to), we just need to make some reductions to a sustainable level so that more carbon gets stored than released. The renewable energy revolution is making this possible, and provides enormous optimism for sustainably growing our economies well into the future.

      2. One of the most out of touch comments I’ve seen on this blog. And everyone here knows that is saying something.

        1. I like the idea of growing our economies. But wait: what does that mean?
          -Economies only grow by adding people and/or productivity.
          -Adding people increases consumption
          -Growing productivity creates more “stuff”
          What could possibly go wrong?

    3. So when it becomes evident to even the most ardent climate change denialists that Global Warming was/is not a hoax but, a very real phenomenon, what is going to be done? My understanding is that we are way past time to do anything about the amount of greenhouse gases mankind has put in the atmosphere and are into the era of adaptation.

      For the past week or so In my neck of the woods, once the sun has been up for a few hours, one gets drenched in sweat if you are not in an air conditioned space and the air is still. How do you adapt to that?

      1. It’s the first sentence that is throwing you off: “when it become evident”. I recommend Fantasyland as a decent summary of this issue – https://www.kurtandersen.com/fantasyland – I’m not saying the US is the only problem, but it has exported an extreme amount of delusion as well, and the world wasn’t exactly delusion-free without it. As just one teenie tiny example, There are 22 million Seventh Day Adventists in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment – a religion based on a failed prophecy from 1844. 175 years of failed prophecy has not destroyed this religion. How can you imagine anything from reality will become “evident” to the 100s of millions of people worldwide that think like this?

        1. Twocats , as a student/ follower of journalists and writers like Chris Hedges , Morris Bremmer , JHK , Gore Vidal (RIP ) etc , I had never heard of Kurt Anderson . Thanks for the link . I saw the video 60min+ on the site . Impressed . I am going to order his book . Muchos Gracias , Shaukriya , Koszonem .

      2. IslandBoy- “How do you adapt to that? [heat]”

        Its a great question. If you are a farmworker or other critical outdoor worker, it can be a life or death issue when the wetbulb temp gets over 35 C.
        And if you live in a massive concrete/asphalt city that loses electricity it may turn into a mass casualty incident.

        Of course there are measures people can take, like planting shade trees, storing emergency water, or creating underground relief chambers.
        But its going to be a rough ride over the next decades, with lots of casualties.

        1. Horticulturalists on the golf courses can work 0400 to noon if temps are causing unsafe work conditions. I imagine some agriculture workers can adopt the same administrative control, and adjust hours worked. Wildfire workers, and indeed many others, cannot adjust schedules so easily.

          1. Most agricultural workers of the world don’t have the luxury of working short days or adjusting hours, especially during the months of crunch times.
            Golf courses can simply be abandoned with no loss of anything…I was thinking about food production.
            South Asia looks to be ground zero for this, but all food growing regions will be facing it at times.
            Lots of urban workers all over the world also are on a constant work to live scenario.

            https://www.thenation.com/article/world/india-heat-wave-farmworkers-climate-change/

            https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/climate/blackout-heat-wave-danger.html

        2. From wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature :

          “Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32°C”

  33. Solar generated 7% of US electricity in April

    The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has issued its latest Electric Power Monthly update, which provides data through the end of April. The update reveals that solar generation rose by 16.6% from April of the previous year, accounting for just over 7% of total US electricity generated that month, up from 6% in 2022.

    I had not noticed this when I posted my comment on the EPM further up. It is in fact the highest share ever contributed by solar at 7.27%.

      1. Hi Hickory, Islandboy,

        You’re two of the guys I follow closely, and I’m always glad to see anything you put up.

        I’m personally convinced that although a world wide fast economic and or ecological collapse is possible, the odds are that the really bad times will arrive piecemeal, from year to year, and place to place, regionally, starting anytime…… maybe this year, considering the fires, floods and droughts coming so fast, the oceans being so warm indicating a really bad storm season, etc.

        One point I keep hammering on is that if the political cards fall favorably, we MIGHT actually go proactive with a vengeance in certain respects…… such as looking at renewable energy as a national security issue, an employment issue during slow times, and a local control issue.

        The Leviathans of the world, the bigger and more powerful nation states, have almost unimaginable economic power……. once they’re sufficiently aroused to bring it to bear on a given issue.

        Consider the size of most countries military establishments. If the political winds blow favorably, maybe ten or twenty percent of the money being spent on tanks and planes and training men to use them will be diverted to building out renewables, and encouraging greater energy efficiency and conservation.

        I’m thinking this would at least double the annual rate of deployment of renewable energy infrastructure.

        There are quite a few high ranking military people in western countries who believe this would be in our best interests.

        The more oil and gas we DO NOT import, the smaller the armed forces we need to maintain free access to the same.

  34. https://www.teslarati.com/the-boring-company-vegas-loop-westgate-station-2/

    Although I have pretty much lost all respect for Musk at the personal level, I’m not about to knock him as a businessman……. even considering Twitter. ( His goal in this instance maybe being political power rather than profits.)

    The tunneling business is getting off to a slower start than most people expected, but it’s going to be a REALLY BIG THING one of these days.

    The public catches on slow, but it eventually catches on.

  36. I’m not actually confident that the Democrats are going to win in twenty four, but I’m very hopeful, considering that the Red versus Blue vote is so close in a great many states, meaning the so called independent or casual voters will determine the outcome in such states and districts.

    The steady drip of dirty Red laundry is having an undeniable effect, based on my own observations of people I know and encounter in the community. The drip seems very likely to turn into a gusher between now and next summer.

    Maybe this guy knows whereof he speaks.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay48Hmzyx60

    Demographics ARE destiny, given time. The Red core voter, at least among people I know, is old, white, and very poorly educated. Half of them will be in urns or six feet under within another twenty years.

    And a few million of them will come to understand that the safety net benefits they’re counting on in their old age are at risk with red politicians in office, compared to blue ones.

    All opinions welcome.

    1. OFM
      Reading economic news lately I am terrified that the thin “purple line” is very suseptable to economic downturns. A few noisy corporate layoffs could mean that those casual voters will go right, not because it makes any sense, long or short term, but because they will blame the current administration for any economic bad news. Add that to the Republican manipulation of voting in red states and the situation could be pretty scary. Our democracy simpy will not withstand another bout with DJT.

      1. Hi JJHMAN,
        I’m afraid you’re right. As cynical as I am, when it comes to the voting public, I’m constantly forced to increase my estimate of the number of people who vote Red or Blue based on the simplest possible and usually erroneous reasoning.

        The course of our national history, and the history of the world, may be determined by nothing more than a random economic hiccup favoring either side between now and our next national election.

  37. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/equitrans-midstream-evaluating-legal-options-after-court-blocks-project-2023-07-11/

    Sometimes I wonder just how smart our leading environmentalists actually ARE, given the fights they pick.
    This kind of fight wins elections for Red politicians.

    And beyond that, the obvious fact is that we NEED all the gas we can put our hands on, because we use it as the single most important feedstock for the chemical industries, and without those chemicals…… the economy grinds to a halt. Fast.

    We would be better off using such leverage as we have to get some more land added to our state and local park systems. Allowing a few miles of pipeline thru the National Forest could easily be leveraged to getting a few SQUARE miles of land paid for to be added to the Jefferson National Forest, or some other nearby protected area.

    This is NOT to say we shouldn’t stay pedal to the metal on renewables. We should, and we must.

    But keep in mind what half the regulars here say……….. that we’re going to run out of resources , money, and manpower before we can ever manage the transition to renewable energy.

    As bad is it looks at first glance……. that gas might mean we have another year, or two or three, to get the renewables industries built up to the point they can shoulder the load.

    1. Yep… there is plenty of naivety which plays into the other guys hand.

  39. Canada forest burn so far already exceeds worst year on record and is 10x annual average…

  41. “At a finance summit in Paris last month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called on lenders to show more “understanding” of his country’s deteriorating debt crisis. The previous week, Sisi appeared to have ruled out a future devaluation of the pound, which has lost half of its value since February 2022.”

    Is this how a country ‘learns’ to begin downsizing, so that its population declines to a point where its internal economy and domestic resources can sustain the number of people that live within its borders?
    If so, these headlines are going to get much more common, much more severe, and be replicated globally as the great Overshoot starts to taste the consequence of far exceeding the solid foundations of economy and human life.
    I don’t see how ‘failed state’ status can be avoided for most countries over the next 2-5 decades.

    1. Hi Hickory,

      Half of the regulars here apparently believe that just about every country in the world will be a failed state, or worse, within the foreseeable future.

      They may be right.

      Personally I believe that with some luck a number of countries that are well situated in terms of population, resources, geography and so forth have at least a fair to good shot at pulling thru the bottleneck more or less whole, with the lights on, food in stores, and cops on the street.

      The lights will likely be on only when NECESSARY, the stores will likely have mostly basic foods with minimal processing and packaging, and the cops will be riding electric bikes or electric minicars…….. but that’s a hell of a lot better than a society run by local warlords.

      But suppose the worst comes to pass, in terms of the climate running wild?

      I’m beginning to seriously wonder if this year’s fires and floods are indicative of the climate going nuts within the next five or ten years.

      Up until now, I’ve been thinking I wouldn’t live long enough to see the shit hit the fan hard and fast.
      But if climate problems continue to get worse at this year’s pace………

    2. Hickory
      When you fly over Egypt, you get an excellent perspective of what the country really is: a narrow ribbon of green along the Nile river in a massive stretch of desert. They have been living on charity for decades now, and el-Sisi is asking for that to be increased. If that is denied, Egypt will default on their debts to multiple countries around the world and the developed countries will have to stop pretending those loans are assets on their balance sheets. Get ready for millions of Egyptians to start wearing out shoe leather on a trek north.

      1. Actually, Egypt is relatively rich in natural resources, at least compared to many countries. For example, as a key player in the gas sector it has attracted substantial investments, boosting this nation’s economy and reinforcing its regional influence. (When it comes down to it, few places rival it for solar power potential). Crude oil is found primarily in the Gulf of Suez and in the Western Desert. And, not many are aware that Egypt is home to an incredable wealth of mineral resources including gold, copper, silver, zinc, platinum and a number of other precious and base metals. These are found beneath Egypt’s Eastern desert and the Sinai Peninsula, part of a geological setting known as the Arabian-Nubian shield. Plus, as almost everyone knows, tourism is one of the most important sources of income for Egypt which accounts for more than 10% of GDP, apparently.

    3. On Eqypt- they may have some very good resources, but like many countries those things aren’t owned by the vast majority of the citizens. And they are a huge food (water) importer. The wealth disparity is enough to bring millions onto the streets. Stability is a thin veneer.
      Its just one example of dozens of countries that are in a similar state.

      OFM, we live in a country with relative abundance and grace. The climate disruption is already making things desperate for a few hundred million in fragile zones.

      Climate migration and the failure of nations are going to be the big early stories of this new era of Peak Combustion.

    1. As the article discusses, the primary means are kites and sails, but turbines would work just like any other source of electricity. If you’re sailing along at 8 knots, and the wind is blowing at 25 knots, there is excess energy that can be extracted. Not so useful maybe in a headwind, but other wind directions would work. Many sailboats already use wind turbines for energy.

      Whether these can be developed to be economic is another question

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