196 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 11, 2024”

  1. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251283

    Karl ( who was one of the founders of the Tea Party in the USA ).

    Is drinking himself to death ( not really….notice how skinny he is, he gave up carbs and sugar and just eats meat and green veggies).

    He abandoned the Tea Party (which was founded on fiscal responsibility) when it was hijacked by nut jobs ( to Karl’s credit )

    He thinks USA is about to collapse.

    His economic view is that the economy is THERMODYNAMICS and the USA governent can go bankrupt (contrary to MMT theory).

    Entertaining watch.

      1. He thinks the government can print credit, not money (which is based on economic productivity).

        I tend to agree with him on that.

        Don’t agree with his Climate Change denialism. But think its funny that all his podcasts now he is drunk in them.

        1. Can you walk me through the exact steps of how this “printing credit” actually works, down to which accounts are debited and which ones are credited?
          Thanks
          Vince

          1. You’ve heard of inflation?

            It’s about too many dollars chasing actual economic productivity.

            The governent can’t print pigs or chickens or labor.

            If all you had to do was print money every country on the planet could be infinitely “wealthy”

            A USA dollar is a 0 interest liability of the fed and an asset to the holder.

            It is simply a unit of measure.

            1. But can you please walk me through how the government prints all that money – which accounts are credited, debited, how that money gets into circulation etc?
              I think that making broad, sweeping statements is one thing but actually understanding, step by step, how various monetary processes actually work, is extremely important. Just like how here on POB people go into very detailed explanations of various aspects of O/G processes I think that having a very granular understanding of money creation/destruction is important.

              Thanks in advance.

            3. Money gets into circulation when the Fed buys a government debt instrument ( Treasury or MBS ).

              You can’t describe inflation with Debits and Credits. You use the CPI or PCE or something else.

              All Karl is saying is the economy is like the universe. There is no free lunch.

              Printing credit (0 interest federal reserve notes) doesn’t print any economic prodcutivity.

              Seems pretty obvious to me. But MMT disagrees with it.

              The Fed ran QE for many years and now we are dealing with rampant price inflation.

            4. That was funny – thanks.
              The Fed doesn’t print money aside from the physical currency that the Mint creates at the request of private banks. Think about it – if governments could actually create deposits out of thin air there would be no need to borrow money – the debt would simply not exist. So we know that that’s not how it works.
              Most (to the best of my knowledge) monetary systems started out as exogenous but over time have become more endogenous even though many exogenous elements remain. Is that concept that I think the guy in the video is tripping over (as do most people, even experts).
              Here is a primer on how we’ve moved from an exogenous to endogenous monetary system.
              https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4637150

            5. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is publicly available info.

              It is ful off Treasury bonds and MBS on the asset side. These were bought with credit (federal reserve notes in computer form) that is floating around the economy now.

              Liability side of the balance sheet is federal reserve notes.

              Banks giving out loans also creates credit (though even this is debated).

              Federal Reserve Notes that are digitially floating around and don’t get sequesterd off shore (leaves the country and sits in China’s reserves) might cause price inflation if it is not matched by an increase in economic productivity.

              Take out a USA paper dollar and it says FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE on it. A note is a credit/liability, in this case 0 interest.

              I will read your paper. Looks interesting. thanks!

    2. Poor Karl.
      And his anecdote for “about to collapse” is going out to eat at usually busy restaurant that wasn’t on a wait?
      If we’ve learned anything, it should be that the can will be kicked further than anyone thought possible.
      WP that is a very literal interpretation of printing money. Not even the Fed would agree with you. Every “open market operation designed to increase liquidity” can be called printing money, for this reader.

      1. @ Duanex
        Open market operations have 2 steps. In the first step the Fed announces a tender offer for a cusip, or a range of cusips, based on a VWAP basis (Volume Weighted Average Price of all trades during the day plus say 1/16. The primary banks will tender their securities and in return get an equivalent increase in reserves at the Fed. These reserves and not spendable on any consumer good – they can only be used to settle transactions with other Fed system members.
        This increase in reserves enables banks to lend more IF THEY ARE RESERVE CONSTRAINED. If not they simply park those reserves at the Fed and get paid on them. Given that the banking system hasn’t been reserve constrained in a long time this step doesn’t really do much to add deposits to the system.
        However…. Where do banks get the treasuries that they tender to the Fed? Well, when the Fed is buying, banks will ping their customers and offer to buy those same treasuries at say VWAP 1/32. The banks are guaranteed a risk free profit. This is where monetary effects occur. The seller of the treasury – say a pension fund – now has a deposit instead of a treasury and will ( often by mandate) purchase another security, thereby driving down the yield on a whole section of the bond market.
        So open market operations are not so much about “printing money (deposits really) but more about manipulating interest rates. And because the Fed can target specific maturities it can be used to twist the curve into whichever direction they see fit.

        Rgds

        1. You are a Eurodollar guy. Not disagreeing with it, just don’t understand.

          Why are bank reserves not spendable in the Economy?

          Never met anyone who can explain this.

          why would you take customer deposits and convert them to something that can’t be spent???

          thanks!

          1. for some reason my comment went to spam?

            @ATG ( are you DNA?)
            I’m not a/the Eurodollar guy – that is HHH I believe.
            The reserve / deposit separation is something that comes from the pre-private / endogenous money era. Before authorities finally recognized that resesical) reserve in case note holders wanted to exchange their notes for physical gold/silver. Several bank blowups ensued and the Federal reserve was created as a backstop for all these banks issuing more notes than reserves aren’t lent out (and therefore reserve requirements don’t make any sense ( the Fed realize that in March 2020 and set the reserve requirements to zero – not so dissimilar to the Texas Railroad Commission setting the allowed output to 100% in the 70’s). Back in the day when there was a very real separation between what was considered to be money (gold and some silver) and credit ( bank notes, which were effectively receipts for gold/silver on deposit) reserve requirements made sense. Any given bank was required to have some percentage of notes in circulation in physical collateral.

            The Fed operated with the same concept of reserve banking in mind – they would hold gold and silver in RESERVE in case they needed it to bail out some banks which got into trouble. In addition to holding reserves the Fed also started issuing bank notes – Federal Reserve Notes – the green stuff you have in your wallet. Over time the population started to have more confidence in FRNs than locally issued notes and FRNs became the defacto physical currency.

            Behind the scenes if you had a deposit at bank A and wrote a check which was deposited at Bank B the check was sent by Bank B to their local Federal Reserve Bank and then shipped to the Federal Reserve bank where Bank A held its deposits. After netting all the periodic back and forth deposit flows gold would be moved between the Federal reserve banks to settle the net balance between bank A and B. That was pretty cumbersome and risky ( losses, robbery etc) so over time it was agreed that instead of moving physical gold the gold was held in a few places – mainly ( fort Knox ( Goldfinger knew that) and the NYC Fed – ledger entries would be used to move reserve assets between banks. This also gave regulatory bodies the benefit of having a good look see into the health of individual banks as well as the banking system as a whole.

            Lending activities by local banks in the meanwhile had become less paper based and more deposit based. A bank would take a house for 100k as collateral and create a deposit for say 80k. This action would not do anything to the reserves because net-net nothing was created or destroyed. Now, as the recipient of the 80k deposit ( for example the seller of the house) would receive the deposit behind the scenes reserve balances would be exchanged. In order to avoid panics, if a particular bank didn’t have enough reserves to settle transactions they were ( and still are) able to borrower them from either other banks or, in the case of real trouble, from the Fed.

            So as you can see the reserves move back and forth but never enter or leave the system ( except for the Fed buying and selling securities which, as you pointed out, creates or destroys reserves.
            HTH

            3. Thanks for that!
              Bitcoin is an exogenous currency with ongoing losses in the quantity available, and no mechanism to meaningfully add to the supply. Plus, there is zero connection between bitcoin and the real economy. Blowhards like Karl are irritatinb btw – lots of conviction mixed with not too much knowledge. Wolfstreet often has good stuff.
              Rgds

    1. The whole “economics is thermodynamics” meme is based on a naïve understanding of manufacturing. Manufacturing is much more than adding energy to raw materials.

      I think the view is symptomatic of America’s loss of manufacturing know-how. It’s no coincidence that union bashing goes hand in hand with this viewpoint. Americans are losing the culture of manufacturing. Nobody want to work in a factory, and nobody realized or cares how factories work. Nobody sympathizes with factory workers or dreams of working in a factory.

      This video is a tour of a (Chinese) LED factory. Manufacturing culture is alive and well in Asia. Note how the key to all the processes here is precision — precisely locating tiny components in a larger system.

      https://youtu.be/pMjhJ9kcaU4?t=111

      The goal here is to add information to the system, not energy. And the bandwidth is huge — a pick-and-place machine that precisely places 50,000 components an hour is adding information about the exact 3D location and orientation of the component and the glue that holds it in place at a high rate. If it’s 32 bits per location and orientation parameter then is 6×32=192 bits per component, or 9,100,000 bits per hour. That’s a lot for a mechanical process.

      Of course information processing this requires energy. After all, they bake the glue on the components five times in the process. The question is what is the minimum amount of energy needed to process a bit of information. The answer turns out to be extremely small. From the point of view of physics, we are nowhere near the theoretical limit of what we can manufacture given our current (insanely bloated) energy consumption.

      1. What?

        EDIT: Sorry, I mean, can you elaborate on the inefficiencies within manufacturing currently.

        1. inefficiencies within manufacturing currently.
          Well we could start from the top: Compare the results we get with what we know is possible.

          A fancy $1000 smart phone contains millions of components and does wonderful machines, but compared to carrot, which costs a few cents, it is a crude and clumsy device. One difference is that a phone contains exotic metals, but these actually only made up a small percentage of the total costs. So it’s clear we could do much better.

          It’s hard to generalize when there are so many different manufacturing processes. In general, manufacturing tends to improve the more units are produced. These “experience curves” are pretty much universal, suggesting that all manufacturing can be improved. Manufacturing is often inefficient when inputs are expensive. Japanese car companies showed in the 80s that what was thought to be state of the art in the West was an illusion based on wasting cheap inputs.

          I think an interesting case is the attempt in Germany to replace gas with het pumps to provide heat in industrial processes. It’s being done for political reasons, but if it is successful it could mean significant reductions in primary energy consumption for many industrial products. The political motivation would have triggered the savings if that happens.

          1. I mean, a carrot and a phone are quite different. One has the benefit of literally billions of years of evolutionary tinkering to make it, while the other is through human industry primarily of the last few decades. But you can’t say there are orders of magnitude worth of increases in efficiency to be gained here, even if there are improvements. To go back to another example already mentioned, LED lighting is about the most efficient possible way of producing light electrically we know. There are no orders of magnitude cost savings or boosts in output efficiency we could glean, we’re well into diminishing returns. But the existence of bioluminescence in fireflies and their assumed “cost” of creation does not translate to us missing some big picture that nature sussed out. Nature, for instance, has no wheels or gears and so locomotion is way more inefficient there.

            The ’80s saw the Toyota system of Kaizen come into popular usage and the West started to look to adopt this. There were indeed big inefficiencies with how certain businesses were operating, and this process helped somewhat. However, it was primarily brought about because of the circumstances that Japan was subjected to with limits on space available for storage of components for a production line, unlike say, the US where such limits are non-existent or not readily concerned with. The trade off, as 2020 and afterwards have shown, is that you trade off resilience for efficiency. You cannot run a logistics chain like what Toyota had developed without every cog in that machine working optimally and having little room for delay, because one shipment of transmissions from Miyoshi being delivered literally hours late to an assembly line in Tahara, means the whole line is stopped and costing money. You have no fat to trim, which is good, unless you find yourself out in the wilderness and need to survive by yourself, in which case it’s not so good.

            As with capital seeking profit, there is incentive to seek efficiency. As we all know, Jevons paradox makes these improvements hit a new barrier sooner or later as the ability to do more with less is seized upon, because after all, if you’re not taking advantage of the increase in output etc. then why do it? Some would argue that, as with high prices being the solution to high prices, less efficient cars, for instance, would curtail inefficient usage of vital fossil fuels for flagrantly superfluous car journeys. If a true societal cost is seen, instead of being externalised or subsidised as it is within our economic system today, then people may reconsider certain behaviours. The sugar tax in the UK, for another example, or capital gains on buying a second property. The methods are there, just not the will to do it to a good degree, like carbon taxes.

            There can also be new problems that arise. From personal experience, we have moved our labs to more computerised systems to improve productivity and comply with data integrity regulations. The unexpected side-effect (although anyone who has worked with computers will probably have seen this coming a mile off) is that we spend more time doing the same task because it isn’t just pen and paper, and on top of that, any hiccup with the network or the PC being used means you now have a bigger headache to contend with. There’s also added costs in the software admins looking after the system itself and the hardware that takes energy and requires other upkeep.

            I’m not savvy with the German instance with heat pumps, which is a curious use for them given industrial heating needs on demand high density heat like gas or electric arc furnaces for such things. Regardless, the impact of the cost of gas in Germany and loss of nuclear and move back to coal is very sub-optimal for Europe’s workshop nation, and I don’t see how they can turn it around to a pre-2022 state without some kind of a miracle. Especially with their current leadership, or lack thereof.

            1. KLEIBER —
              To be clear, I don’t think iPhones will grow on trees any time in the near future. But I think it is physically possible. The point to the remark is that I think we are far away from optimal production methods. The incremental improvements in energy efficiency and labor productivity of recent decades could see step changes.

              I agree that LED efficiency won’t improve tenfold. But new designs may totally reshape the way we build things. For example the US Air force is experimenting with computer control of fighter planes. Without a pilot, planes would shrink in size by half at least. The current drone wars in Ukraine are an eye opener.

              I disagree with your take on resiliency vs efficiency. It’s true that Just In Time production can have the problems you mention, but a lot of what Toyota taught the world in the 80s was about building quality into production instead of building broken vehicles and repairing them before selling them. JIT is only part of that. It is mostly things like designing vehicles to be easier to build. There’s a good book about this called “The Machine that Changed the World”.

              JIT and computerized management of inventory and sales have led to massive reduction in inventory levels throughout the supply chain in recent decades. Filling and emptying warehouses is the main driver of the business cycle, so boom and bust cycles are less and less severe. Mostly we just have to deal with financial bubbles these days.

              It is not true that Germany has “moved back to coal” although that’s a popular internet meme. Coal consumption has fallen significantly.

              Electric arc furnaces, as the name implies, are already electrified. A lot of process heat is under 150 C, well within the range of heat pumps. Germany makes heavy use of district heating to supply that heat, including heat from coal and nuclear plants, which are shutting down. Replacing that with gas seems like a bad plan.

            2. Alimbiquated,

              I’d be curious to know what kind of step changes are on offer. It does presuppose that industry has a lot of low lying fruit left to pick, which given the leanness of modern processes, seems a little hard for me to believe. It rather reminds me of people thinking they can find better arbitrage opportunities in current financial markets, when in actuality they’re about as efficient as you can get now, especially with HFTs acting as liquidity providers.

              I would agree about the drones angle. In fact, I recently watched the movie Toys again, purely because I remembered how Sir Michael Gambon’s general character in that basically foreshadowed the drone warfare of 30 years hence.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=yGYM8bWN0pW_0Ci_&t=46&v=sHRbX3gDba8&feature=youtu.be

              This naturally ends up with other conversations happening like the end of tanks or gunships etc. which have been going on for decades. There will always be a need for armoured vehicles, but maybe they have different armour (the “cope cages” we see today, which is slat space armour that has been used since at least Vietnam by the US, so Russia has nothing new there) or their own drones to protect against other drones. It’s absolutely terrifying to see in the Ukraine war having to deal with FPV drones. As if being in infantry wasn’t hard enough. And there’s also unmanned ground drones too now going mainstream.

              But this is still just miniaturisation, which has drawbacks too. We don’t have AI that is anything like human level, so basic guidance and commands can be done and anything more advanced is via human control remotely, which is prone to EW attack.

              Modern cars are pretty well developed now. EVs even more so, since they have far fewer moving parts (literally a few hundred to thousands for an ICE) and the simplicity is how you get BYD going from phone batteries to making a whole vehicle. I’m not quite sure, aside from using new battery chemistries or making smaller vehicles, what major gains there are. Certainly we can move away making things like the electric Hummer.

              Regarding Germany, they’ve kept coal on the cars rather the increase output. What they did was delay mothballing power plants that had been penned in for decommissioning. While they’ve produced lower CO2 the last year, that’s primarily down to their heavy industry flailing. Last I read they had to keep coal about until later this decade.

              Point taken on the heat pumps. I thought you were talking about high heat, to which we already have electric arc furnaces so that’s pretty much a solved green way of doing things (assuming you don’t go the Port Talbot route and cannot process iron ore, only recycle scrap).

            3. KLEIBER —
              I’d be curious to know what kind of step changes are on offer. It does presuppose that industry has a lot of low lying fruit left to pick, which given the leanness of modern processes, seems a little hard for me to believe.

              Well I’m in the computer business. I worked for Taiwanese companies in the 90s wholesaling PC components in Europe. That industry has seen a number of changes.

              Are you old enough to remember when word processors killed the typewriter? The entire occupation of typist more or less died.

              Digital cameras killed the film industry, and smart phones killed the digital camera industry.

              The switch from vinyl to CD was huge. Then came streaming, which killed the business altogether. The book and newspaper industries have suffered similar fates. The cassette tape business also just roadkill now. I worked for a Japanese company that pretty much controlled the cassette tape read head business. Oops.

              I used to sell cathode ray tube PC monitors by the container for another company. Flat screen technology was a hammer. In retrospect, CRT technology was insane — a giant glass tube with a 25,000 volt cathode throwing electrons at a carefully painted screen (tiny red green and blue dots). Manufacturing was fiddly, and service was a nightmare. It’s all gone now. Vanished over night.

              More recently, SSDs have all but killed the hard drive business. Before that, there were floppies, but that business vanished too.

              ATMs were a step change as well. The massacre of bank branches is an ongoing event. No need to replace the bulbs with LEDs if you are shutting down anyway.

              Also online retailing is sort of bad for shopping malls, as you might have heard.

              There were many smaller steps along the way. I sold many thousands of “multi-IO cards”, with two serial and one parallel connector. At first it was a big a big card with a bunch of chips. The card kept shrinking, till it was finally one chip. Then vendors started putting the chip on the mainboard. Then it got integrated into another chip. Then someone invented better interfaces.

              A step change in the car industry is the switch from 12 V to 48 V electrics, though it is not going to be a big bang. There is too much vested interest in 12 V onboard gadgets. 48 V reduced the weight of the wiring harness in the vehicle, but also gives you enough power for drive-by-wire (and 4 wheel steering) instead of power steering, active brakes instead of power brakes, active instead of passive suspension, electric power instead of engine power for pumps and the AC, hybrid engine design etc.

              And of course there are EVs, which upend the entire car industry. A car deals with fluids — air for cooling the engine, air conditioning, fuel, oil, brake fluid, exhaust. EV reduce or eliminate all of these, and the industries that produce the systems.

              Electrification in general is expected to lead to a significant reduction in primary energy consumption, but you know that, it’s already part of the culture wars.

              Plenty of household and office gadgets have disappeared — alarm clocks, pagers, radios, record players, cameras, faxes (which replaced mail) answering machines, record players, land line phones calculators, phones books etc. Uptake in industry has been patchy, but is proceeding.

              Here are some software projects I have worked on in recent years:

              A printing company. They print brochures for all takers. Their machines run 24/7. Their main cost is ink. They didn’t know how much ink each job cost them. We helped them calculate it. This allowed them to set prices better, and saves a lot of ink.

              A retailer wanted to know how many T shirts to send per package to their stores, for example 3, 5, or 7 in a package. The goal was to reduce losses due to product out of stock and to avoid overstock. Lots of math and computing power involved. Huge savings potential.

              Another retailer wanted to know when to cut prices on existing apparel, to avoid having unsold goods.

              Train scheduling. We are very far from the optimum in this area. One project I worked on was trying to harmonize the data between multiple neighboring commuter train systems so they could coordinate their schedules.

              Quality improvements in glass manufacturing. Glass bottle making machines make a lot of defective bottles, and companies are trying to deal with this using better sensors and digital controls. Slow progress and many problems in that project.

              A few years ago I also worked with a major pharmaceutical company that wanted to know how many pills their machines were producing. They have huge factories full of machines spitting out pills and they just didn’t have a good overview. They are still trying for an IoT (internet of things) solution. The idea is to hook up the machines to the internet and have them report back to HQ every time they produce a pill. The data volume is huge.

              I also worked on a project some years ago dynamically moving stock around a warehouse to reduce travel time for low volume trips. We used RFM chips to track the movement of boxes around the warehouse. Few warehouses operate close to optimum.

              Then there is the topic of predictive maintenance and digital twins, which I have not worked on.

              But anyway, there is no point in me going on. The idea that we are anywhere close to living in a perfect world that can’t possibly be improved upon is ludicrous. But it seems to be widespread around here.

      3. What you describe Alim explains much of why the cost of PV production has plummeted over the past decade, under Chinese manufacturing sytems. And also why the EROEI on PV is much higher for current systems than were calculations made prior to 2015, upon which many commentators conclusions are based.

      4. Alimbiquated …. “The goal here is to add information to the system, not energy. ”

        Do you not understand that every machine and every part used in that factory is made of materials that wear out and break down over time. It is all built with fossil fuels and all suffers from entropy. It all has to be replaced over time or production stops.

        Go forward a ‘few’ years to a time when getting replacement parts or new machines simply isn’t happening for any of several reasons. One crucial part of any machine in the process and the entire factory comes to a complete halt, game over.

        Like so much of the modern complex world it is extremely fragile due to one simple aspect not being available. One part from one machine, and that source of LEDs electronics is out of action, and every machine in the world that needs constant supply of those electronics is out of business when they can’t get the replacement.

        This video is a fantastic example of why the collapse of modern civilization will be fast when it comes, because of the interdependence of so much working correctly in order to supply everything we use today. What will it take to wake people up that this type of complexity is so fragile that it only lasts while everything is growing, especially energy, to continue the flow of materials to make every little bit available for every machine?

        1. Tiny example: In the fall of 2021, I hit a deer with my truck in Maine. It wiped out the driver’s side. Had it towed to my driveway, where it sat for three weeks until an adjuster could be dispatched (COVID). Finally had it towed to the shop . . . where it sat for over a month (no chips available for things like airbags, etc.) Insurance stopped paying for my rental.

          It sucked.

            2. LEEG —
              I’ve heard this excuse before. It’s basically nonsense. It’s made by people who have no experience with roads that have been fenced in, abut are still sure of their opinions. Sort of a knee jerk reaction.

              Fences wouldn’t stop all deer, but it would stop most of them. The reason it hasn’t been done is that safety and wildlife have low priority. So the cost is deemed too high. The road network is overextended, so the roads are in a crappy state.

            3. Ok Alim. I’m in rural Tennessee and last week I was riding my bike along a tree covered ridge road w fences on both sides and had a deer bounced over one fence and another in front of me. No time for jerky knees. Yes fences can help as can channeling deer to million dollar crossings but wild animals and open terrain don’t always conform to the wishes of fence builders. Securing the safety of Homo Automotive is a worthy effort. Just need taller fences. And signs, lots of signs. Problem solved.

            4. Alimbiquated,

              Maine has low population density (for humans) and not very high income, there are a lot of rural roads and fences would be expensive. Occasionally deer get hit, just a reality here.

            5. Dennis —
              It’s too expensive is just another way of saying the road network is overextended. The transportation system is failing.

              The country brags about being rich and “the greatest country in the history of the world” but fixing obvious problems that don’t exist elsewhere is “too expensive”.

            7. SURVIVALIST —
              I don’t even sell computers — way to material for my taste. I sell software which weighs exactly zero.

              Rural roads in America a extremely dangerous. Roads that are used too seldomly used to be made safe should be downgraded to reduce speed.

            8. Alim, I live off a chip seal rural road. There are no speed signs, no centerline. 25-35mph is a normal driving speed and two opposing vehicles have to slow down to 10 mph to pass safely. What does “down grading” mean in this application?

    2. Waymo doesn’t release how frequently human supervisors intervene: we do know that Cruise used humans for 2 to 4% of it’s driving.
      “Cruise AVs [autonomous vehicles] are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments,” Vogt wrote. “This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.” (https://www.theverge.com/23948708/cruise-robotaxi-suspension-trust-remote-assist)

      Waymo’s system is probably uneconomical: the accuracy of maps required, the cost of the vehicles (estimates up to $150,000 each) and the use of human operators is unsustainable. Also, the amount of data they are gathering is tiny when compared to Tesla. One of Tesla’s current concerns is that the number of miles driven to encounter an edge case and learn something new is increasing.

      Tesla is making an announcement re: Robotaxis on August 8th. They have delayed the $25,000 consumer car: my guess is that they are prioritizing the Robotaxi, which is built on the same platform (with very similar costs). Full Self Driving 12.3.6 is the current software release (lots of videos of it on YouTube). 12.4 is supposed to be out this week, and they are testing 12.5 and 12.6 internally. I think these versions have convinced them that they will solve autonomy in the next two years, and they want to have a fleet of vehicles ready for their own use.

      Waymo is going to be dead technology, because they will be unable to compete on cost. Tesla is going to eat Waymo’s lunch in the markets where it operates now, and then expand…to everywhere else.

      1. Don’t hold your breath. They’ve been pushing full self-driving for a decade and I still see plenty of videos of people praising it just before, and then immediately after for some reason, it nearly drives them into a barrier/truck/pedestrian. The SEC is investigating Tesla for wire fraud regarding FSD because, frankly, it’s full of shit and when your own board say “disregard what Musk says because he knows not of what he speaks”, I’m inclined to believe them.

        There is not enough compute or fancy transformer advancement to make this change. Most robotaxi projects have been shitcanned in the decade since Silicon Valley venture capital got involved, and oh yeah, generative AI being the golden boy for the present totally not a bubble craze is also a dead end. Just as expert systems in the ’80s.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDUC-LqVrPU&list=WL&index=1

        1. Musk got the idea from Waymo and overhyped it to pump Tesla’s stock price. That doesn’t say anything about the tech per se.

          Generative AI works better because they have better training data. AI is extremely data hungry. That’s why AI is so good at games — it generates its own data by playing against itself. After tens of millions of games it gets good.

          1. The paper cited in the Numberphile video seems to find that the training data required to get much better starts to balloon exponentially for lesser and lesser improvements. Given what Big Tech has been doing in this space, namely vacuuming up any text, video and audio content whether copyrighted or not from the web at huge cost, I wonder how much longer they can maintain the facade.

            Teslas have a combined driving distance globally that must be in the many, many millions of miles. Adequate training data must be there by now, but I imagine computer vision is one of the bottlenecks still. The beef Musk had against LiDAR and also the genius move to get rid of radar and ultrasonics in recent models, makes it phenomenally harder to do self-driving well. Those systems do add significant cost and they do work better than the not-even-very-good cameras most Teslas have. It seems a very short sighted (lol) move if FSD is the USP of TSLA as the SEC of the US gov’t sees it.

            1. It’s hard to say how much training data is needed, because nobody knows what the neural networks need to learn. I wouldn’t be so sure that Tesla has enough data.

              A related problem is the number of parameters. A neural network is just a black box with a bunch of knobs on it. Each knob can be twisted from zero to max. Set all the knobs just right, and it will do the calculation you want, but the harder the calculation, the more knobs you need.

              Training is figuring out automatically how all the knobs should be set, because that task is beyond human capability. If we knew how to solve the problem, we would write the code in a human understandable computer language. We use neural networks because we have found a training algorithm, not because they are particularly good at doing calculations.

              These things are exploding in size. Alphago had maybe 30 million parameters. It played maybe 50 million games to master the game of go. Tesla’s self driving vehicle probably has 100-120m. ChatGPT 3.5 has 1.5 billion. Chat GPT4 is said to have a trillion parameters. But the biggest models are said to have hundreds of trillions of parameters.

              I saw an interview recently where Mark Zuckerberg was talking about building a nuclear power plant just to train a neural network, but that’s Zukunftsmusik at this stage. The biggest training tasks are in the low megawatt range.

              The more parameters you have, the more training data you need to train the machine. That will probably be the bottleneck. Alphago played 50 million games against itself, because humans haven’t played that many games in all history. That’s fine for a board game, but more difficult for machines navigating the real world.

            2. I think energy and water usage for some of these models now in the many billions of parameters, are going to be a big bottleneck going forward. Even if there is a suitable pathway to train them to a suitable output, how economical is it? We’re already seeing startups have issues financing such toy models after investors dried up and expected some kind of payout. The big guys are still propping things up, the question is: how long for?

              Even Microsoft and Google need to see some return on these things. The likes of what DeepMind has achieved is good given they’ve got actual products delivering on something, if not AGI (which few are seeing as achievable via LLM transformers anyway). It’s the other stuff being shoved into everywhere that is a little concerning, because it’s all so obviously bloat to game investor dollars.

          2. “Musk got the idea from Waymo and overhyped it to pump Tesla’s stock price.”
            Considering that self-driving has been “a thing” since the DARPA Grand Challenge of 2004, and Tesla has been working on self-driving since at least 2014 (and will spend $10 billion on FSD development this year), both thoughts seem unlikely.

            1. LLOYD —
              WAYMO’s (Then Google) idea was to build a fleet of vehicles with sensors and collect data to train a neural network. Before 2011, when neural networks started winning the image recognition contests, few people took them seriously as an option.

              Maybe Tesla didn’t get the idea from WAYMO though. It could have been just a standard idea everyone in Silicon Valley was talking about.

  3. Why solar isn’t taking off without massive subsidies is it’s DOA

    https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82413767.pdf

    It’s been known for a long time all the green energy advocates are actually industrialists being played by corporate interests. It’s not about going green it’s about not losing this way of life.

    1. Lets assume that your last statement is true-
      “It’s not about going green it’s about not losing this way of life.”

      Well, if we don’t develop and deploy massive amounts of non-fossil energy then
      it will be an even quicker loss of ‘this way of life’.
      Learning to live with less energy will be necessary one way or the other.
      Huge amount of work to do on adjusting to that reality.
      You would think that people would glad to have a mechanism to capture free energy that falls on their land or on their roof. Free once they put in the equipment.

      The way some people react negatively to solar it seems as if they see it as a threat to not just their fossil fuel investment,
      but also to their political stance and their masculinity.
      Is this a sign of fragility?

      1. I think you’re always going to get those holdouts who are against REs and EVs because they’re different and/or impact an industry they’re part of (Insert Upton Sinclair quote here). There is nothing wrong with improving on the gross inefficiencies found in the world. It just won’t help if, as we have seen in lighting, we eat any gains by using more of the thing we’re meant to cut back on. Same goes for EVs. What good is moving from a 1 tonne ICE to a 2 tonne EV when we’re talking about environmental harm and cost reduction? Especially when a golf cart or e-bike would be applicable for most cases.

        The problem isn’t necessarily the resources. It’s the economic system we’re a part of, which is predicated on growth and which absolutely will not change without popular dissent and people within power taking ownership of their actions. The absolute best case is the multi-polar world with China in the lead brings about a death to GDP-growth-at-all-costs-for-the-next-quarter thinking and brings about longer term considerations. Basically, the end of the neoliberal rent seeking order that is catabolically dismantling everything the West has to improve profitability, which is a futile task.

      1. I wonder what they use to power that boat and the helicopter that rides on it. Has Greta approved?

        1. JT.
          Imagine that you understood that oil and gas were critical resources and that it would be smart to extend availability for priority uses for as long as possible into the future.
          In that scenario, which is the one in which the world actually finds itself, you would be smart to build as much non-fossil energy production capability as you could manage.
          We have a mixed source energy system. Be glad for it.

          1. So far it hasn’t been demonstrated that renewables are diminishing fossil fuel demand . Actually just the opposite and that’s my point. That ship and helicopters wouldn’t be needed or built. Nor would the waste of resources be spent on technology that doesn’t work. It’s really not worth debating that’s why I seldom comment. Plus Hideaway and Carnot have it thoroughly covered.

            1. I’m going to get us off fossil fuels by totally rebuilding the globe’s vital infrastructure using more energy intensive mined minerals than humanity has ever used. Who’s with me?

    1. From the article….
      “Just last year, the country opened two new coal power generators “

  6. I’m hoping to read the opinions/ beliefs of the anti renewables camp in respect to how long they think it will be before the shit is well and truly in the fan in terms of the environment and energy considering fossil fuel depletion.

    By “well and truly” I mean daily headlines, widespread or lasting electrical grid failure in modern countries, staple crop failures that mean some grocery store shelves are empty , etc.

    I’m well aware that the overall situation is already critical in lesser developed countries.

    1. They either don’t think it will, in which case good luck getting any acknowledgement. Or they don’t think it will matter, in which case see above.

    2. I’m not ‘anti renewables’, I’m up to my 4th solar installation over the last 4 decades.

      I’m realistic about what solar can and can’t do. It can’t build, operate and maintain modern civilization. It’s a nice addition to overall energy use, for retail electricity customers, at the expense of the climate and environment in the process.
      Because I pay around 40c/kwh of electricity at ‘peak times’, which is $400/Mwh, and I can buy subsidised solar setups in this country, it makes perfect sense as a retail customer. I have to be economically rational to survive in our modern world.

      To answer your question about when the shit hits the fan for modern civilization is easy. It’s not a time or date, it’s circumstances. It will be when oil production decline is accelerating to the downside, as in one year it might be 4 million bbls/d below peak, then the next year 6 million bbls/d below peak the following 8-10 million bbls/d below peak.

      It’s the accelerating decline phase, despite much higher prices and despite more money being poured into investment of mostly low EROEI oil (tar sands etc) at this time, it will be the high EROEI oil declining too rapidly for increases of the dregs to overcome.

      I’d suggest most people, even on this website, don’t really understand what’s happened with oil production over the last 60 years. We had ‘normal’ growth in production of an exponential nature up until the early 70’s, all conforming with a Hubbert Linearization curve, just like individual oil fields or countries, then it all changed when OPEC realised they had something the rest of the world needed. Since peak oil became a ‘thing’ 25 years ago, every man and his dog has tried to apply the HL curve to the linear increase in oil production since the late 70’s.

      World oil production has simply not complied with an HL curve, it’s been a linear increase for decades as we have brought forward production of a lot of low quality oil because of human factors (economics, borders, taxes, subsidies etc).

      Expecting any type of HL curve to the downside of production is unrealistic. Because we brought forward so much lower quality oil production, when the fall starts happening in earnest, the fall will look much more like a Seneca cliff as feedback loops constrain production from the remaining lower quality sources, despite plenty of money that will be thrown at this type of production.

      I’m sure many of the headlines will read “No-one could see this coming”, yet stand back and look at the big picture and it was always easily visible to anyone that wanted to pay attention.

      I’m also certain that most people will continue to point to growth in renewables, batteries and EVs, in the meantime, as we use more oil in accumulating MORE ‘stuff’ as a sign we can exit fossil fuels, despite overall fossil fuels continuing to increase in production at a faster quantity of energy use over a decade by decade scale.

      1. Hideway,

        Spot on again. Like you I am not anti-renewables but they are not going to save mankind. I too have a solar system but all it does is emphasise it limitations, of which there are many.

        Few people understand the power grid and the need for stable frequency and voltage, neither of which unreliables are any good at maintaining. The greater the capacity that wind and PV occupy in the supply then the greater the risk and the more redundancy that is required to form the grid.

        1. I’m too poor to have a PV system, cool as it would be. The people on my street that have them are all retirees with ample savings, though only one EV with a PV setup.

      2. There’s quite a bit we can do to prepare ourselves, individually and collectively, for the tough times ahead.
        And nobody here seems to be willing to put his opinion as to how long it will be before things turn sour to the point we won’t be able to engage in any large scale proactive programs to help us save whatever might have been saved…… EARLIER.

        I believe, for very good reasons well known to all the regulars here, that there’s a time coming when even the talking heads at outfits like Faux News have to acknowledge that the shit is well and truly in the fan, that oil and gas supplies are iffy and declining, that crop failures are more common every year, that regional hot wars are so common that there’s little time for them on the news, that the grid goes down for hours and days or weeks when it used to go down for minutes and hours, etc.

        What I’m trying to say, in fewer words, is that there’s probably a time coming when even the dumbest trumpster hillbilly has to understand that the climate HAS gone to hell, etc, etc.

        If this comes to pass within the next decade or so, we’re REALLY up shit creek without a paddle.

        If it comes to pass twenty, thirty or forty years down the road, we will have inevitably made quite a bit of progress, potentially mind boggling progress, in fields such as renewable energy generation and storage, greater efficiency in the use of depleting raw materials, recycling, low energy personal and social lifestyles, etc.

        There will be substantial technological progress is in for instance sodium as opposed to lithium batteries, which are already on the market.

        People by the tens of millions, by the hundreds of millions maybe, will be thinking hard about their own long term prospects, and arranging their affairs as they see fit to live as well as they can.

        I’m too old to do much in the way of long term planning and investment myself, but if I were younger, I would be remodeling my house to pretty close to net zero energy in terms of heating and cooling, installing a fair sized solar pv system with plenty of spare parts, putting a couple of extra washing machines in a barn, fencing a couple of hectare plus garden spots well enough to keep deer and naked ape thieves out, at least for the most part, etc etc.

        The real action will hopefully come about once large enough numbers of people realize it really is do or die time, and put enough pressure on local, state and federal government to go proactive to whatever extent remains possible.

        The people who say a sustainable economy is an impossibility keep on talking about billions of people wanting and fighting for the impossible……. a rich western lifestyle.

        Well, those billions aren’t going to get that life style. They’re going to be pretty damned lucky just to be alive in half or more of the world. The population in places such as the USA is going to peak and decline, in my personal opinion, considerably sooner than expected.

        We’re smart enough, and knowledgeable enough, to change our ways, and if we have time enough, we WILL change our ways, so as to live ok, even well, using far less energy, far less steel, concrete, fertilizer, diesel fuel, and a thousand other critical materials or products.

        I’m no engineer, by any means, other than the backyard variety, but in a few hours I could put together a basic automobile design that would SUFFICE to meet the NEEDS of just about anybody at all…… an automobile that would last indefinitely, that would be very easily repaired, that would go far enough on a charge or maybe a gallon of biofuel, to be AFFORDABLE to just about anybody…… including people who drive today’s old clunkers because that’s all they can afford.

        When somebody laughs, and says nobody would buy such a car, they haven’t stopped to consider the fact that during WWII, they couldn’t by a car AT ALL, because none were built except for the military.

        It’s impossible to say that the economy won’t fall apart unexpectedly in very short order, the way an apparently healthy man has a fatal heart attack or a stroke that leaves him in a wheel chair.

        But it seems more likely, to me at least, that there will be a plateau period, and then decline that starts fairly slow, but speeding up every year thereafter. It’s possible that we will have time enough to come to our collective senses, and get our collective ass in gear, and do some things that at first glance, from today’s perspective, appear impossible.

        We don’t really need copper to build a few billion electric cars. We’ll have enough to build a few tens of millions, in the richer countries that will have falling populations. We don’t need throwaway aluminum beverage containers……. or even plastic containers. We got by without such things in the past, and we can get by without them in the future. We got by without commercial air travel as a practical matter until well after WWII.

        Of course one hell of a lot of people believe that the general public will never agree to any voluntary austerity measures…….. but the public can and probably will come to understand that austerity on the one hand versus chaos on the other is a no brainer decision.

        I’ve lived owning only a couple of pairs of blue jeans, one coat, one jacket, two or three shirts, two pairs of shoes, without replacing more than one or two items any given year. Nearly all of my furniture will last for generations. I’m doing most of my cooking using pots and pans fifty years old.

        Back when my parents were kids, we had a local guy who picked up anybody who wanted a ride along our road to town, on a regular basis, Saturday mornings, in his farm truck, for a dime, and dropped them off to shop on the old Main Street, where most of the the stores were back then, and picked them all up in a couple of hours and brought them home again. He didn’t make any money, but he got enough to buy a couple of gallons of gasoline……. enough for the trip…… and he was going anyway.

    3. Do Ukraine and Lebanon count as “modern countries” by your definition, or do they have to speak English?

      1. Hi George,

        I get your point of course. Ukraine is a special case due to war….. something I constantly harp about as an inevitable part of collapse.

        Lebanon is not a country that matters very much, either way, in terms of the point I’m trying to make….. that some richer countries have a fair to good shot at pulling thru what’s coming our collective way, if the cards fall in their favor, if the climate doesn’t go entirely nuts, etc.

        I can’t see any real hope for the people in a country such as Egypt , because they depend on imports that won’t be arriving, and even now, they don’t have any thing to export that’s really valuable…… valuable enough to buy food for the country.

  7. If you were like me when you first heard the term “virtual power plant’ you’ have would reacted with a thought along the lines it sounding like ‘marshmallow meat’.

    Now I understand it a little more, and to have come to see how there is a huge gain to made in grid stabilization.
    This article contains a description of some the features to illustrate the concept at work in its early phase.
    Simply, this is system to integrate excess point source of energy production like your roof into a collective fluid block that is managed second by second and integrated with the grid at large. Its a win-win, for the individual point source and for the regional grid as a whole.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2024/05/11/largest-virtual-power-plant-in-usa-supports-californias-grid-with-16200-home-solar-plus-storage-systems/

  8. Record-breaking increase in CO2 levels in world’s atmosphere-

    “The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet.
    The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2 levels over a 12-month period.”

    1. Hickory,
      Do you expect anything different?

      What about next year, when we have another record year of building and deploying solar, wind, geothermal, batteries, EVs and whatever else?

      I don’t expect anything different, than another new record in CO2 emissions, likewise for the year after that, and the following one, etc. Plus of course there will be more species extinctions, more habitat loss, greater population of humans and higher energy demands of ALL types, all in an effort to build MORE industrial civilization, in an insane attempt to keep economies growing and make the world ‘a better place’…

      1. No I don’t expect different.
        Peak Global Combustion Day will be in about 10 years.
        (yes of course I do know the exact date).
        The peak will be achieved not for lack of trying to have it delayed, but for lack of purchasing power and a loss of unhindered trade between nations, and of course simple depletion.

        I ask you- Australia imports something like 90% of its liquid fuels. If it quickly (a few years) loses the ability to receive these imports then what will it do? Will it wish that it had aggressively built an electric transport industry while it had some time, and capability?
        Will Australia be essentially locked in?
        What kind of rationing system for petroleum products will be instituted?
        The era of oil importation for many countries will be soon winding down, perhaps very rapidly if the fragile international framework of tense relations and monetary cold war reaches a breaking point.
        Keep in mind that none of the crude oil exporting countries need Australia’s coal or nat gas.

        1. Plans, Australia?? LOL, we also have politicians that say a lot and do nothing of any relevance for the future. We are in a very desperate situation when imports of oil and oil products, because we are busily closing down refineries, become scarce.
          Our ‘strategic’ stockpile of oil, recommended by IEA, United Nations etc, of 3 months is kept in the USA. The plan for when TSHTF here is to announce that “no-one could see this coming”, then make some panic decisions..

          While the oil exporting countries do not need our oil and gas, without oil here they will not find grain very cheap on world markets, as we export most grain produced, a lot to the middle east. Assuming grains also become constrained on export markets, when oil is unobtainable for imports, all the grain importers run into serious trouble. more than likely it will accelerate oil production decline as the oil exporters, whoever is left, have increasing domestic troubles, similar to the MENA spring only worse.

          Of course in a world of close to zero oil exports, it means Australia can’t mine and send huge quantities of raw metals, minerals, coal and gas to China and SEA, which means they will not be able to make all the products they do from the raw materials, so everywhere in the world becomes pretty much in the same boat, whether they built lots of solar, wind, and EVs or not….

          When you work out feedback loops upon feedback loops, of shortages of everything, without growing supplies of oil, industrialised civilization falls apart fairly quickly. We can’t keep growing use of oil because of depletion issues and climate issues, so it’s not possible anyway, yet the only ‘answer’ offered by anyone is to build more EVs, solar and wind using an increasing quantity of oil to do it.
          It’s not economically possible to build the EV transport system with anything other than cheap fossil fuels especially oil, so it’s not happening. Once oil is in serious production decline, we wont be able to build more EVs because the system to do it relies totally upon oil!!

          1. It’s very funny to see you guys got a strategic petroleum store and let the Americans hold it for you. It’s like the people investing in gold to avoid currency collapse, but they basically have an IOU and the gold is physically in a safe on another continent.

          2. Crude plus condensate supply hasn’t grown Worldwide since about 2018. The World is getting by with less and less.

        2. CTL. South Africa got oil embargoed and turned to CTL and it worked.

          Australia consumes 1 mbpd oil. But atleast 50% of that is waste.

          A 250 kbpd CTL facility would secure the country.

          The Beetaloo basin is a monster (natural gas) and huge kerogen oil shale.

          I am not minimising the risk here. It is huge. But not insurmountable.

        3. Hickory,

          My guess is a plateau at roughly 500 EJ plus or minus 10 EJ from 2019 to 2032 for World fossil fuel consumption. From Energy Institute Data. Log scale is chosen to indicate the change in growth rate over time (1965-2022).

          1. The graph shows that peak global combustion is imminent- 2030’s.
            Before that I expect international trade global in liquids to become constrained due to geopolitical friction.

            The example of Australia as an importing country of liquid fuels was raised to point out that to fail to replace as much of the mechanisms of a countries economic function with electrified processes is a path to guaranteed failure. And that replacement needs to happen fast while the window is still open. Vulnerability only escalates as we move towards the time of post-peak supply.

            Australia is more fortunate than most since it has options for a mixed system.
            Whether or not you give a crap about climate instability due to a hotter earth, the pursuit of economic resilience and local/domestic supply of energy is reason enough for getting rid of internal combustion engines in every application that is can be accomplished.

  9. CTL is a money pit. The SA plants are now running on gas.

    The largest GTL plant is in Qatar(Pearl Project) and is about 150 kbd and cost a staggering $25 billion 15 years ago. These plants are good for middle distillates but need to be dosed with aromatics and lubricity improvers. Otherwise expect fuel leaks and fuel pump wear. The gasoline is low octane.

    No-one has yet made a viable process for kerogen maturation.

    1. Do you think that a country like Australia with huge coal resource, could develop a CTL program with the goal of specifically supplying particular industrial applications that are more difficult to electrify. Examples would include large scale farming and certain mining operations, construction, shipping.
      Even if the derived fuel was much more expensive than current comparisons, it will likely be much cheaper/reliable than imported liquids in the 2030’s and beyond.

  10. BANKS HAVE GIVEN ALMOST $7TN TO FOSSIL FUEL FIRMS SINCE PARIS DEAL

    “Many countries have since promised to reduce carbon emissions, but the latest research shows private interests continued to funnel money to oil, gas and coal companies, which have used it to expand their operations. Eight in 10 of the world’s most eminent climate scientists now foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, according to the results of a Guardian survey published last week – an outcome expected to lead to devastating consequences for civilisation.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/13/banks-almost-7tn-fossil-fuel-firms-paris-deal-report

    1. Meanwhile,

      ASIA EMBRACES COAL AS THE U.S. REJECTS IT

      “Vietnam and other Asian countries are on a coal spree! Given the dynamics of energy use in the rapidly developing industrial sector there, it is no surprise that these nations have backpedaled on big promises made at international climate conferences to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.”

      https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/asia-embraces-coal-us-rejects-it

  12. Another country example- Ethiopia with a projected population of 150 million by 2030.
    Its current ICE vehicle fleet is very old. This country has capacity to be a huge exporter of electricity to the region.

    “Late last year, the Ethiopian govern announced that it was finalising the process to ban all ICE imports in the extremely near future. A total ban on ICE imports! Not a plan to phase out new ICE vehicle registration by 2035 or 2040, no, but an impending immediate ban! Drastic but understandable. Ethiopia spends over $5 billion USD annually on petrol and diesel imports, precious foreign currency it does not have. Ethiopia has also recently started generating electricity from the first units at the 5-gigawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, adding to its other hydro and renewable energy resources. Electricity is ridiculously cheap in Ethiopia at under 1¢ USD per kWh in many cases. Ethiopia therefore wants to save as much foreign currency from that fuel import bill as possible, and EV drivers of course will be benefiting from some unbelievably cheap electricity, which will lower their transport costs.”

    https://cleantechnica.com/2024/05/13/ethiopia-shows-us-just-how-fast-the-transition-to-electric-mobility-can-happen-in-africa/

    And no, this doesn’t ‘save the world’.
    Actions taken indicate that this has never been one of the goals of humanity. Humans do sometimes try to protect the biosphere if they perceive that the local damage directly threatens their particular ability to extract the maximum harvest. Rarely beyond that.

    1. Hickory, … ” Ethiopia spends over $5 billion USD annually on petrol and diesel imports, precious foreign currency it does not have.”

      How would they import all the EVs needed each year without spending the precious foreign currency?

      Same applies to Australia, we import all EVs and just about every electronic piece of equipment. Come to think of it, we import just about everything manufactured in every field, we exported the ability to manufacture everything. Even the one small solar panel manufacturer we have, is really just an assembler, they import all the component parts mainly from China.

      In a world of next to no oil exports, not much else is going to be moving around the world either, so any country that relies upon imports is going to be in serious trouble, which means everyone in our globalised world.
      Back in the 90’s we were owners of a small manufacturing business, yet most of the components we used had to be imported, from the machinery we used to materials. There were some bits and pieces from locally, but without the imports we were quickly out of business.

      1. As the article points out, they are far ahead of their planned EV adoption schedule. They realize time is of the essence. So do the Chinese.

        1. You should never take such an article at face value. The ‘spend’ on fuels doesn’t make a lot of sense with the number of cars in the country. I would suggest that trucks and machinery use the vast quantity of fuel imports. Plus reading the comments section under that article we find that EVs are hugely subsidised, and so is the Electricity cost in Addis, as the governments tries to get a return on their huge investment.

          Considering the quoted Mercedes as one of the EVs coming into the country, it isn’t hard to imagine a roughly $50k cost per EV, meaning 500,000 EVs over the next few years will cost the country $25B in foreign currency.
          Assuming the existing fleet drives around 100km on average every day (probably high!), then the fuel use of current ICEs would still be under $1B, leaving the bill for the rest from trucks and heavy machinery, and likely generators in rural areas not yet connected to the grid. This $4B will go on unaffected by the new rules, with rural areas likely to purchase the ICEs being replaced in the city, as there is no grid for EV power in these rural areas.

          Like most articles painting one side of the story, trying to show how great a green future will be, they leave out the meat of the story and the reality on the ground..

          As per usual the residents of the country are likely to be much worse off with the huge bill for importing lots of EVs, while left wondering why their ‘fuel’ bill is not receding much, plus how long will the subsidies last for a very cash strapped government? It’s probably why sales of EVs are higher than expectations, the wealthy that can afford a new EV are all taking up the government largesse before it abruptly ends..

          1. Citing Ethiopia as an example to follow is even less useful than using Norway. Its electricity supply was more than doubled when that new Nile dam started. It suddenly needed a lot more customers. There is no country around that is going to come close to doing the same thing any time soon.

            1. The day ahead auction price for electricity in Germany is currently below -40€ /MWh, so I guess there is some room for increased consumption.

              https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE

              Solar is generating over 50GW in Germany today. The peaks have gone up by about 20% since last year.

              https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&legendItems=lyf&bw=1&by=1&be=1&bb=1&interval=week&year=2024&source=total&week=20

            2. Yes, Ethiopia has a huge untapped hydroelectric potential yet to be developed (on top of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam).
              Another importing country with huge untapped non-fossil energy reserve is Argentina.
              And Australia, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, India, Egypt, USA, Sudan, Ireland are also strong examples of a much larger list.
              This does not include nuclear or geothermal deployment.

              Or, perhaps there will be a change evolutionary behavior of humanity and and they will just sit on their hands while fossil fuels deplete. So far most seem to be following this new path, but I suspect it is for lack of awareness and focus rather than some abrupt change in collective behavior. People have many distractions, and false impressions.

  13. CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF NATURAL CO₂ RISE OVER THE LAST 50,000 YEARS SHOWS THAT TODAY’S RATE IS 10 TIMES FASTER

    Today’s rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide increase is 10 times faster than at any other point in the past 50,000 years, researchers have found through a detailed chemical analysis of ancient Antarctic ice. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide important new understanding of abrupt climate change periods in Earth’s past and offer new insight into the potential impacts of climate change today.

    “Studying the past teaches us how today is different. The rate of CO2 change today really is unprecedented,” said Kathleen Wendt, an assistant professor in Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and the study’s lead author.

    https://phys.org/news/2024-05-chemical-analysis-natural-years-today.html

  15. “Nixon sabotaged Vietnam peace talks. Reagan asked Iran to hold the hostages. We never know about these things until years later. So: What will Trump do?”

    While not the brightest porch light on the block, he does have a talent for crime.

    1. Stop meaningful bipartisan legislation to address issues at the border, while sleeping, farting, and shitting his pants while on trial for multiple felonies?

  16. Biden is making EVs more expensive because China is too good at making them. Best climate change president.

    1. Yes, spot on, can’t compete, just slap on some tariffs. Still like Biden, some, and will vote for him, but will cringe doing it…

    2. Kleiber,

      I’ve not been following you to any serious extent, so I don’t really know where you’re coming from, hard left, left, middle, right, hard right, etc.

      Your four twenty eight could be read as hard left or as hard right. Not pure enough on environmental issues, climate in particular….. or hard right, in terms of scoring trumpster type talking points. ( Hard right talking points generally do not need to be logical or internally consistent. )

      If you will take a minute to think the political landscape thru, nothing is ever as simple as you’re making your point to be.

      Biden and the Democrats have to win elections in order to stay in office and make policy.

      Doing so means it’s critical that they curry favor with the domestic working class, especially the ones who are in the auto and truck industry, and especially all those who are unionized.

      FURTHERMORE….. SOMETIMES, and NOW is such a time, in my opinion, it’s necessary, even critical, to our own survival as a dominant society, a power on the world stage, to look after our national interests in such a way as to prevent other countries from OWNING CRITICAL INDUSTRIES, pretty much lock, stock and barrel.

      I think most of the regulars here are familiar with the rare earth metals market situation…. the Chinese, by manipulating the market, more or less OWN the rare earth industry today and for a good many years past.

      They’re in a position to recover rare earths as additional salable product from their other metals industries…. and every once in a while, when it looks like somebody has been willing to put the money into opening a few rare earth mines in OTHER countries, and build some processing capacity……. they’ve lowered their price so that such development plans have been abandoned.

      THEN they raise the price again, even as they continue to hold the rest of the world by the family jewels, in terms of being in a position to simply THREATEN to cut off exports.

      I’m painting fast here with a broad brush, but you can take this comment to the bank, in general terms.

      The time is pretty much gone, historically, when a major new heavy infrastructure industry can break thru the barriers posed by scale, capital, and time, and establish itself on competitive terms on the world stage without serious assistance, which is most likely only going to be available from a national government, or a coalition of such governments.

      Such assistance usually comes in the form of tariffs and or subsidies.

      I don’t personally want the Chinese to own the essential industries that enable us to compete on the world stage. The auto and truck industry is absolutely without a shadow of a doubt such an industry.

      There’s a rare exception here and there, Tesla for example, but all Tesla has REALLY done is drive the transition from ICE engines to battery electric. And lets not forget that Tesla hit the lottery in being able to buy a nearly brand new state of the art car factory for peanuts. Plus Tesla was in a position to raise money by the ton, with Musk being as arguably good at this game as trump, lol. Plus no pension problem, no benefits problem, no union problem, at least up until the last year or two, and still only trivial problems of this sort, compared to say GM or Ford, etc.

      So…… I’m with Biden, for all intents and purposes, all the way. I can’t see how he can expect to win, how the Democrats can expect to win, other than by doing more or less just what they ARE doing, or at least trying to do, on the national stage.

      We’re in a tough enough situation as it is, with our very survival as a society and nation already at grave risk due to problems out the ying yang, with climate being one of the biggest or worst, but by no means the only existential risk issue.

      And if the trumptards get control of the federal government this fall, we’re fucked.

      1. Agreed. We need to be energy independent as much as possible. This means domestic supply chains. It’s worth taking longer and doing right. We saw what happened in the 70s when we were not producing as much oil and the Middle East had us over a barrel (literally). We have to produce our own energy infrastructure. For the future, this means renewables and EVs.

        https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-US-Battery-Boom-Is-Revolutionizing-Renewable-Energy.html

      2. That’s a lot of words for: https://i.redd.it/oglg2vok6kdb1.jpg

        And so it doesn’t matter who you vote for: Trump or Biden. It doesn’t matter at all. You can pretend Biden is better by all means, while Trump means the end of the world (which is exactly what happened in 2016, I recall).

        When you guys en masse wake up and realise that the system is running things, not your elected head of state or the cadre he/she has at beck and call, then maybe change will happen. First past the post is one of the horrible pieces of rot the Anglophone nations have taken to heart and refuse to be rid of, and it’s poisoned British politics now. We have an incoming Labour Party leader who not even 20 years ago would have been a hard right Tory. The Overton window has moved only one way in the West, and it sure as shit ain’t the one that forbids fascism.

        Meanwhile, China will be taking advantage of the US hegemony dismantling itself through overproduction of failsons trying to run things like it’s still 1948 and they have all the leverage in the world to make up for incompetence.

    1. Well, this time around I’m sure the warning will be heeded, now that the world is experiencing early signs of collapse, which is exactly what was conveyed >50 years ago in the original L-t-G study (overshoot and collapse).

      Here’s the comparison of the models:

      The biggest difference is pollution will peak in 60-70 years (not 15-20).

      Food, health and welfare, oil production, and industrial decline since ~2019.

      1. An important point to keep in mind is that the LTG is a socioeconomic model, rather than a physical model. So for those that have little faith in social science, you may want to keep this in mind. Society changes over time and socioeconomic relationships also change, often in highly unpredictable ways. The author of the paper also points out that once the “peak” is reached the future path cannot be predicted, the model path shown (beyond the peaks) assumes model parameters remain unchanged, which may well be incorrect.

        My educational background is in both physical and social sciences, so I am a little less skeptical of social science in general than some people here. I also recognize that social science is exceedingly difficult as there are no controlled experiments and an understanding of how society functions, once understood by humans, causes changes in human behavior by those trying to “game” the system and thus invalidates the model. The only model of a socio-economic system that could remain valid is one that remains a secret withheld from human society.

    2. World could get by on about a quarter of its current grain consumption. Meat eating is the real problem. Fortunately massive quantities will become available as EVs are adopted and ethanol is phased out in the US. Don’t lie to yourself. Every time you eat beef the planet burns and someone starves.

      1. The land will probably be used for aviation biofuel….and then the saying will be every time you fly
        a town goes hungry and the soil erodes.

      2. Complete and utter nonsense. It’s the bacteria in a cow’s gut that breaks down plant material into short chain fatty acids which is what a cow absorbs.

        If there were no cows the process happens anyway As bacteria breaks down plant material in nature. It’s going to happen either inside the cows gut or outside. The methane is going to get released by the bacteria regardless.

        Red meat is not evil.

        We should outlaw mowing grass and cutting hay. 😂

        1. The problem arises when cows are fed grain (corn) instead of grass, which is their natural diet. The digestion process switches to produce methane rather than CO2. Cows are essentially sick their entire lives. Many would not live past age three. It is a man made problem that would not exist without industrial agriculture.

          Biofuels are just a means of turning organic soil into a fossil fuel, similar to how peat is burned.

          Reducing incentives for mowing grass is a brilliant idea. 20 million acres of land in the US along could be producing easily grown organic local foodstuffs: figs, blueberries, persimmons, pawpaws, pomegranates, etc.

          Not eating (much) meat, biking or driving electric, converting lawn to edibles and trees for carbon capture, these are literally that lowest hanging fruit. If you are climate disruption and peak oil aware and are not focused on accomplishing these goals, you have been defeated by your own cynicism.

        2. Back to Stephens point about cattle raising and land use-
          both protein/acre and calories/acre produced with cattle is much lower than other options on crop land. On marginal grazing lands where crop production is not feasible (dry, rocky, steep, poor soil) it is a different story
          Here in the US we graze cattle when young and then about 95% are then fed grain to increase the meat production.
          Much higher yields of protein and calories per acre for cropland comes from a variety of crops.
          Also ranking higher are poultry and dairy production.

          This is a pretty good data article on this-
          https://humaneherald.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/calories-and-protein-produced-per-acre-1.pdf

          1. There’s not yet a well researched body of work on feeding out snakes for human consumption, although this is done at least occasionally in a few places.

            Snakes and other reptiles are incredibly efficient at turning their food into tasty, healthy edible flesh, because being cold blooded, they expend almost no energy at all regulating their body temperature. There’s a potential for getting three or four times as much high protein food per unit of feed, and it seems to be the case that snakes will eat food containing a substantial percentage of butchering by products commonly used in pet foods, etc. It’s also likely that some vegetables can be used in snake rations.

            Keep your eye on this one. It’s a coming thing.

    3. “It is no longer a case of fertiliser or arable land, but having an amenable climate to grow food in.”

      For now, fertilizer is not a constraint if you can afford it.
      There is a gain to made on arable land acreage by halting biofuel production,
      although I would argue to put most of that land back to wild status rather than back to food production
      (easy for me to say since I am well fed, and don’t own that land).

      But not mentioned is a very big factor on food production- that being fossil fuel.
      Harvests around the world will decline in step with a decline in the availability of petrol, agriculture petrochemicals/fertilizers . Also impacting food supply will be loss of cheap farm to table food handling/processing/refrigeration/transportation, as fuel becomes more expensive scarce.
      Its shows up first as food inflation.

      In America only 20% of food production energy is used on-farm, with the other 80% used along the rest of the chain. Other countries of the world will have higher or lower such partition of energy use in food production.

      1. True enough, the outbreak of war in Ukraine made fertiliser prices spike and inputs will not be getting cheaper going forward. And they will be needed more than ever if yields drop from other factors.

          1. That is so in N America which is flush in hyrdocarbons for the time being,
            however in other parts of the world, and in the next decade even more so
            the price of fertilizers are/will be high and higher.

            1. Hickory,

              See figure 14d on page 27 of following World bank report, this is for the World not just US, I believe the fertilizer market is a World market like the oil market. Once natural gas is converted to ammonia and then to fertilizer it is easily shipped worldwide, so cheap fertilizer produced in the US, Russia, Iran, or Qatar can be shipped anywhere in the World.

              https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/10913920-7b3d-4323-8ccc-43e764336dd2/content

    1. I don’t buy into all this plateau stuff, doesn’t make sense in the context of overshoot/collapse:

      World life expectancy is back to 2012 level:

      1. “this plateau stuff,”
        what are referring to? From sea level the Tibetan Plateau looks huge, but it looks flat from space.

      2. Kengeo,

        In 2023 average life expectancy for the World was 73.4, the previous high was 2019 at 72.9, in 2020 and 2021 World average life expectancy was reduced due to high death rate from the pandemic. The Human Development Index (HDI) returned to the 2019 level in 2022, the 2023 data is not yet available.

        See

        https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL

        The SW scenario is one of the LTG scenarios SW= Stabilized World where action is taken to reduce population and economic growth.

        The author proposes that we might take action to make such a scenario a reality by reducing fossil fuel use as much as possible and as quickly as possible, investing in education for girls and women so that fertility ratios decrease, give better access to birth control for those who want it, increase taxes on the wealthy to create a more equitable distribution of income, increase the use of regenerative agriculture, and reduce the amount of meat in the diet.

        1. Holy shit Dennis! All things that seem very unlikely:
          >>> reducing fossil fuels
          >>> birth control access
          >>> tax the wealthy
          More likely:
          FF consumed are therefore reduced (will disappear before humans do)
          Population reduced will be control births
          Wealthy will be consumed, taxing them won’t be needed/possible.

            1. Dennis, we have been continuing BAU for the last 50 years (or more) since we became aware that we couldn’t keep on with it forever. In that time we have added a bit more industrial civilization on average every year to be at record levels of energy use (all forms), record levels of ecological damage and record level of population.

              What changes do you envisage to what we have been doing? Who is going to implement them?
              By changes it has to be different to what we have been doing…

            2. “A study was published in Nature just two years ago showing that the recent warming of the planet is unprecedented in more than 20,000 years,”
              @MichaelEMann

            3. On taxing the Wealthy, in the US the highest marginal income tax rate was 70% or more from 1936 to 1981, those were the good old days. From 1981 to 1993 the Gini Index in the US went from 35.5 to 40.4. In the UK the Gini Index rose from 27.4 in 1979 to 35.7 in 1990. UK also reduced the high marginal income tax rates that had been in place before she became Prime Minister in 1979.

              Less progressive income taxes tend to result in a less equal distribution of income (reflected in a higher Gini Index.)

            4. Hideaway,

              Not enough has changed in the past 50 years we have tracked the LTG BAU scenario fairly closely, though are also pretty close to both the CT an SW scenarios as presented on the paper linked below

              https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-ltg-model/

              See

              https://earth4all.life/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Earth4All_Exec_Summary_EN.pdf

              or for something more brief

              https://earth4all.life/the-five-extraordinary-turnarounds/

              For policies that might move us towards a more sustainable path.

            5. Dennis, firstly the E4All changes have the usual claptrap numbers from the usual sources. I spent yesterday reading through their stuff on energy, and going to the references they use, and the references of the references, because the original references also just made up numbers.

              It’s all the usual, providing we leave out most of the energy cost of building renewables by setting ‘boundaries’ of what is counted, and use the magical assumption that all energy is fungible with every other form at no energy cost between forms, except for downgrading fossil fuels when turned into electricity, we can come up with a nice sounding fairytale…

              Apparently in the make believe world of Earth4All, that raises the entire world’s population out of poverty, using a lot less materials and energy than present, all without using fossil fuels and using regenerative agriculture, all while rewilding massive areas of the planet, by waving our magic wands..

              What’s actually happening on real planet Earth, is that we continually mine more raw materials, destroying more ecosystems in the process, while using cheap coal powered industrial processes like the Aluminium smelters in Indonesia to provide the raw materials to make solar panels and light car bodies for EVs as part of the process of BAU.

              Building the combination of renewables and nuclear, at an accelerating rate over the last few decades, is all part of BAU. It all comes at a cost of needing more raw materials and more industrial processes using more fossil fuels to build and operate it.
              We haven’t replaced any fossil fuel use on a world scale by trying to be ‘green’ in certain areas. The Keeling curve is clear evidence of what our BAU does to the climate, which includes the madness of the attempt of building MORE, yet expecting a different result.

              Every cornucopian and just about every ‘Green’ political group around the world has been sucked into the thinking of building a lot MORE by high energy industrial means, will somehow magically change the course we are headed, yet can’t see it’s just MORE BAU!!

              None of you are promoting LESS. The only possible solution to the course of BAU to eventual collapse was totally changing course, from a world of MORE humans and human built world, to one of LESS.
              Less as in strict population control, less complexity, a simpler life of less damage to the environment, living locally with a falling population. This would by definition mean less goods and services of all types and what is considered a lower standard of living, most likely shorter lives, because of less medical services, less refrigeration, smaller houses made of renewable, sustainable local materials.

              No-one will ever vote for a politician that promised a world of less, so they all promise a world of MORE, which is just BAU and means collapse, guaranteed, built in to the process of industrial civilization, of which none of us can escape…

            6. Hideaway,

              We have been building renewable power (wind and solar net generation in TWh has increased at an average annual rate of 16.5% for the past decade). Fossil fuel primary energy consumption has increased at an average annual rate of 0.7% over the past decade, the absolute increase in fossil fuel energy has been 39.2 EJ from 2012 (454.8 EJ) to 2022 (494 EJ) about an 8.3% increase over a decade. Wind and solar consumption increased by 26 EJ from 2012 to 2022.

              The previous decade (2002 to 2012) wind and solar consumption increased by 5.67 EJ, which is 4.6 times less than the most recent decade. Your claim is that wind and solar are simply derivatives of fossil fuel so in the most recent decade we should have seen a significant increase in fossil fuel use compared to 2002-2012 in order to create the increased the wind and solar capacity.

              From 2002 to 2012 fossil fuel primary energy consumption increased by 103 EJ, about 2.6 times more than the increase from 2012 to 2022. It seems the more wind and solar consumed the lower the rate of growth in fossil fuel and that what we in fact see is that wind and solar are replacing some of the fossil fuel consumption despite your claims to the contrary.

              I presented too many links, the link below is best

              https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/5111/

              The plan could work, we just need to get started.

            7. Dennis, where do you keep getting these incorrect numbers from??

              Solar and wind energy between 2012 -2022 did NOT increase by 26 Ej in that period!!
              26 EJ equals 7,222 Twh, use any simple energy converter.

              Total wind and solar increase from 2012 to 2022 was 2795Twh, that’s it!! That is 10.06 Ej or around a quarter of the increase in fossil fuel use..
              The increase in fossil fuel use during those same 10 years was 10,897Twh, which is the 39 Ej you mentioned..
              All numbers from Energy Institute (formerly BP) Statistical Review of World energy 2023.

              You continually seem to fall for the ‘substitution’ method, which are not real numbers, and you seem to think that all energy is fungible without cost which is total nonsense.
              Try to make a liquid fuel from just electricity with 100% efficiency. To believe and use the ‘substitution’ method numbers means you believe such rubbish.

              You keep trying to quote these incorrect numbers every week with different starting dates, why??
              The rhetoric you want to believe is just wrong!! How can I get through to you that fossil fuel use has increased faster than solar and wind over the last 10, 15 or 20 years or whatever long time frame you want to choose!!

              Dennis, “The plan could work, we just need to get started.”

              No it can’t work. We’ve been activating the plan for over 20 years, which is why the increase in renewables is so large year over year, we’ve spent trillions of dollars on it, yet all it’s done is increase fossil fuel use over that period of time..

              The exact reason why the ‘plan’ is not working is we need cheap materials to build all the renewables, and we get the cheap materials by building things like coal fired power plants to power Aluminium smelters in Indonesia for the increasingly needed Aluminium for solar frames and EV car bodies.

              If we made it compulsory to build all new Aluminium smelters from just solar wind and battery back up, it would no longer be cheap Aluminium, the solar panels would cost more and the EV bodies would cost more.

              OK so here is your challenge, to keep growing renewables at 16%/a means doubling capacity in 5 years, which means a lot more materials will be needed and larger or more factories for every aspect, from the panels and all the components to electronics for inverters and copper wire for connecting it all.

              Without increasing fossil fuel use to make it happen, what do you suggest gets cut elsewhere to free up the fossil fuels?
              What laws have to be implemented world wide to make it happen?
              What are the chances of the new world wide rules you want enforced happening?

              You continually ignore we are in a highly complex system, where scaling laws apply, lower ore grades apply, papers that ignore reality to show ‘nice’ answers apply. You cannot take one aspect and expect it to grow without affecting the rest of the system in dynamic unpredictable ways.

              Your ‘referred paper’, The Earth4All one, looks at energy use in western societies and thinks higher GDP/capita means less energy use, only by ignoring facts like most of these countries outsourced heavy industry and most manufacturing to China and SEA, but then doesn’t count embedded energy in imports, and thinks this is a reasonable way to make assumptions about the future.

              It’s all GIGO, because reality is too unkind about our future. I’m sure it’s nice living in fantasy land, until it all ends….

            8. Hideaway,

              I used primary energy consumption data from the Energy Institute. When comparing fossil fuel with wind and solar primary energy consumption the substitution method is used. This accounts for the fact that wind and solar output is in TWh and the equivalent fossil fuel primary energy used to produce that electric power output would be about 2.5 times higher, as about 60% of the fossil fuel energy on average is just waste heat.

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

              https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/energy-charting-tool/energy-charting-tool

              The numbers are not incorrect it is an apples to apples comparison of primary energy consumption in exajoules.

              The substitution method is what has been used by the Statistical Review of World Energy for at least 20 years.

              If you would prefer we could adjust the Oil Primary energy by subtracting the 70% of energy lost as waste heat and 55% of the natural gas used for electric power and 65% of the primary energy used for coal fired electric power. Using that methodology we find the increase in Fossil fuel useful energy was about 9 EJ in the most recent decade and about 98 EJ the previous decade and for wind and solar combined the net generation increased by 10 EJ in the most recent decade and about 2 EJ the previous decade.

              Using our world in data

              https://ourworldindata.org/energy

              for primary energy consumption for wind and solar and converting to EJ I get 2002=0.57 EJ, 2012=6.24 EJ and 2022=32.17 EJ, so for 2002-2012 the change in primary energy consumption of wind and solar is 5.67 EJ and for 2012 to 2022 it is 25.94 EJ. The more recent decade had growth that was 4.57 times higher than the previous decade.

              Clearly this does not result in higher growth in fossil fuel use as fossil fuel consumption grew by 2.6 times less in the 2012-2022 period compared to 2002-2012.

              Nice try changing the subject though.

              The wind and solar can substitute for coal and natural gas used in electric power plants and can also be used to power electric vehicles where no liquid fuel is needed.

              The fact is that the increase in net generation increased by a factor of 4.57 in the most recent decade compared to the previous one while the increase in fossil fuel consumption decreased by a factor of 2.6 for the most recent decade compared to the previous decade, this is true whether or not we use the substitution method.

              Your claim is that the larger increase in solar and wind output for the most recent decade should have led to a larger increase in fossil fuel use when the increase was smaller by a factor of 2.6 (39 EJ vs 103 EJ) for the most recent decade. The facts suggest you are wrong.

              You are aware that Randers was one of the original LTG authors, he has been considering system dynamics for quite a long time. Yes growth must stop, the suggested policies are a path to accomplish this.

              At the World level (where imports and exports are a wash) primary energy use per unit of real GDP has decreased from about 10.6 MJ per 2010$ real GDP in 1980 to 6.7 MJ/2010$ real GDP in 2022, roughly a 1% average annual rate of decrease.

            9. Dennis,
              Electricity accounts for about 20% of all energy uses, so using the ‘substitution’ method makes the assumption that electricity is fully fungible with all other uses of energy.

              Like I already explained and you totally missed in your long answer, try making a liquid fuel with electricity at 100% conversion. It is not possible. It seems to be something you don’t understand.

              Let’s try to turn electricity into plastic, a product that comes from fossil fuels and is counted in total energy production as one of the fractions from oil and gas. Without plastics, there is no insulation for the wiring in your electric world that is free from fossil fuels. Again it’s not possible without huge energy losses.

              A true substitution method would be a 2 way street. It would account for the energy loss of heat in burning fossil fuels to make electricity, plus it would also account for the losses of turning straight electricity into the products we gain from fossil fuels.

              Performing only a half of the necessary calculation, of what’s needed to run an industrial civilization is giving a false answer, yet so many seemingly intellectually smart people fall for it.
              As I keep stating, we live in a total system where everything interacts with everything else, you can’t take one bit and expect it to change mightily without having major repercussions throughout the system. Being intellectually lazy to prove a point on paper, which doesn’t go close to stacking up in the real world, is totally meaningless, such is the substitution method using only half of the real equation, that gives a nice looking answer to lazy energy analysts, of which we have plenty around the world, including many university professors.

            10. Hideaway,

              Nobody has claimed that liquid fuel could be created with no energy losses, so you have introduced a straw man. Much of the use of petroleum is for land transport, about 90% of that can be replaced with EVs and much of the rest with electrified rail, so no liquids required. It is possible that biofuel or synthetic fuel may eventually be able to replace the other 10%.

              If we deduct the waste heat from fossil fuels in ICEV and power plants then electricity production is about 28% of total useful energy as of 2022. This will likely increase over time as fossil fuel electricity production gets replaced with non-fossil fuel power. In 1985 electricity was about 16.5% of useful energy consumption (ignores waste heat from primary fuels that is not used for useful heat).

              Fossil fuel could continue to be used to produce plastic and other petrochemicals where needed or alternatives may be found as plastic is an environmental pollution problem and it would be best to produce less of it or find less environmetally damaging substitutes.

              I understand well that the system is complex and most University Professors understand this as well.

              If we stop burning as much fossil fuel for energy there will be plenty available for products where no substitute can be found, most plastic is made with ethylene which mostly is produced from ethane which is separated from natural gas in NGL plants.

            11. Dennis, again you miss the point. The substitution method assumes energy is fully fungible which is why they effectively downgrade ALL fossil fuel use instead of only the component used to make electricity.

              Plus the substitution method makes no allowance that the ‘energy’ content is counted in total energy, but a lot of that energy is in reality ‘product’, which would have to be also substituted for in energy calculations.
              As I now mentioned plastics, you ignored plastics, and went to liquid fuels, being replaced by electrical applications, which avoided the question.

              Can you do the energy calculations of building everything you mentioned (with the usual hand wave), to replace liquid fuels with, made from renewable energy sources only.
              That’s the world you are promoting, where everything can be done with renewable electricity, so do the calculations on a world wide scale to see if it’s possible!!

            12. Hideaway,

              You seem to be assuming BAU, I am not, so everthing will not necessarily be produced in the same way in the future. Plastics were not used in the past, and might not be in the future. You are correct that all coal, natural gas, and oil are counted as primary energy when some fraction is not used as an energy product. I don’t have good numbers for that, some of the oil produced may also be consumed by the refinery process (probably on the order of 15% of the energy content). Carnot might have a better idea of the average percentage of refinery inputs that actually are transformed into energy products. Most plastics are produced from Naptha and NGL (ethane and propane).

              Looking at Energy Institute statistics in 2022, about 22% of oil consumption was naptha. LPG, and ethane and 67% was liquid fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel/kerosene, and fuel oil) by volume, with the rest being “other” products (asphalt, petroleum coke, still gas, wax, lubricating oils, etc (11% by volume). It would be better to have this on a mass basis as that tracks better with energy content. Note that some of the LPG and naptha may be used as fuel, not clear how much goes to the petrochemical industry.

              My earlier estimate for the percent of useful energy that is electricity was off a bit, the correct number is 25% rather than 27% in 2022, in 1985 it was 15.5% rather than what I quoted earlier (16.5% from memory).

              I understand how the substitution method works and your objection, so I estimated fuel used for electricity production and deducted from coal and natural gas (oil used for electicity production is not significant so I ignored this), then I found actual EJ from electricity production directly (1 TWh=0.0036 EJ) to calculate energy from coal and natural gas (here the rest of coal and natural gas were assumed at 100% efficiency, probably a better estimate would be 90% on average for heat processes. For oil I assumed 30% useful energy, with 70% as waste heat, but this ignores the large proportion of “oil” (which includes NGL in Energy Institute data) which is used for plastic and other petrochemicals, and asphalt, wax, lubricant, etc. Only about 68% of “oil” is used as liquid fuel (at STP) so the 30% of all oil may be an overestimate of the exergy share for all oil, probably some thing like 26% would be better after we drop the non energy products.

              As I suggested if we need the fossil fuel to make certain products where no substitutes can be found, then fossil fuel will be extracted for those purposes.

              Perhaps you can produce an input output matrix for all production in the World to show what is possible, you hand wave just as much as I do on suggesting change cannot occur.

              There are many opinions on this, I think change happens continually, I think the future change should be directed towards a sustainable solution to the current crises.

              I did mention plastics, either fossil fuel can continue to be used to produce them (perhaps natural gas would continue to be produced for fertilizer production and the ethane from the ethane extracted from the natural gas could be used for plastic where necessary, much of plastics are cheap disposables which should not be produced in any case.

              The renewables will not replace fossil fuel overnight, the system will gradually change, the point is to try to speed the transition with higher investment levels both public and private. Higher taxes on the wealthy will provide some of those investment dollars, high income tax rates of 70% or more on the wealthy (while closing tax loopholes on investment income, etc) would provide some of this public funding.

            13. Hideaway,

              You mentioned both liquid fuel and plastics, both were addressed, liquid fuel replaced with electricity by EVs and perhaps some biofuels or synthetic fuel where necessary (and of course there would be energy losses in those processes.)

              On plastics, there can be recycling to reduce the need for plastics, and substitutes for plastic because of the high levels of plastic pollution and where they are absolutely necessary fossil fuel can be extracted and used to produce plastic.

  20. For the folks who believe building fences to keep deer out of roads ……….

    It works to a very limited extent, and it’s affordable, at the absolute best, in maybe one tenth of one percent of our highway system. The practical difficulties, such as paying for the fences, obtaining permission from land owners to build them, objections from people who don’t want to look at them, etc, are deal killers before you even get started.

    But the IMPORTANT thing to keep in mind is that we have more problems than we will ever be able to solve, and that ” Every solution creates two new problems”.

    It follows that the only really rational way to spend public moneys on problems is to rank them in order of importance and costs, and spend the money where it provides the biggest bang of relief.

    The cost of building a couple of miles of deer fence is enough to regrade a dangerous curve, or put in a turn lane at an intersection that needs one…… thereby saving human suffering and lives, as well as saving a portion of the money spent on repairing cars that hit deer.

    Every body seems to love Bambi these days, but in reality, Bambi is no more and no less than a pretty oversized rat. Ask any farmer in deer country, such as yours truly, lol.

    Mother Nature deals with deer by way of wolves, bears, big cats, starvation, contagious diseases, etc. We’ve mucked up Mother to the point predators, other than human, are scarce to non existent. Deer are born to die a hard death.

    Spending time worrying about deer hit by cars indicates a truly serious lack of understanding of every day reality, given countless SERIOUS problems that get zero or near zero attention.

    1. Well said OFM. Another way to avoid crashes is to drive so slowly that deer see the car… I have read that moose can ’see’ (or understand) car if it drive slower than 47 km/h or so. Perhaps deer have similar limitations – wolves can probably run at that speed so they have no natural need to understand something that comea at you faster than that…

  21. Consider that if it costs a million bucks to build some highway deer fencing, that same million bucks could be spent buying a tract of land to be left to return to it’s natural state, publicly owned and managed by the local, state or federal government as park land.

    Such management need not involve anything more than posting no trespassing signs, and enforcement of the same.

    1. OFM —
      One solution is to simply cut investment in rural roads. That would lead to more potholes and cut speeds, which would go a long way towards protecting wildlife.

      The fact is that America vastly overinvests in rural roads with very little economic benefit to show for it. The money would be much better spent fixing urban transportation infrastructure.

      1. I fully agree Alimbiquated, we should make all rural roads impassable, it’s not like cities need anything from rural areas. Everyone in cities knows that food comes from supermarkets not rural areas… (insert sarcastic emoji)…

        1. As with so many other topics relating to infrastructure and transportation in particular, America is in denial. Sarcasm can’t hide that.

          Here’s an article about the economics of Iowa’s rural roads.
          https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-to-pay-for-rural-iowas-roads/

          Keeping up with an overbuilt infrastructure stock in shrinking counties stretches budgets thin.
          Strip away the ideology and it just means it’s way past time to stop maintaining these roads.

          1. Alimbiquated,

            How much to spend on roads is the choice of the citizens in those states, the politicians have to drive on the roads as do their constituents. For now the US is a representative Democracy, though this may change in 2025 depending on the results of the Nov 2024 election.

            1. DENNIS COYNE —
              Ah yes, the old “freedumb” argument. We don’t do dumb stuff because we’re dumb, we do it because we’re free!

            2. Alimbiquated,

              If you want to drive on unpaved roads, that’s fine by me, just get your fellow citizens to agree. We could just skip the roads altogether where you live, if you think that’s the smart thing to do. Just let me know where that is and I will steer clear.

            3. Dennis —
              It’s not me making this stuff up. The reason people want paved roads is that they don’t know how much they cost and in the case of rural communities, don’t have to pay for them anyway. Cities subsidize the countryside.

              The state DOT of just about every American state is broke and in the Midwestern states in particular it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there is no economic benefit is replacing rural roads. They are being downgraded. It’s already happening.

              One reason to downgrade rural roads is to decrease speed. They are very dangerous, not just to wildlife.

              https://www.ghsa.org/resources/GHSA/Rural-Road-Safety22

              Here is a US congressional report on the topic:

              https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45250

              In states with declining rural populations there may be more roads and bridges in some areas than can be sustained financially. Closing lightly used roads and bridges or pulverizing their pavement back to gravel could save maintenance and resurfacing costs, allowing states and counties to devote their funds to maintaining a smaller, more heavily used network of local roads.

              Notice the map on page eight showing the widespread depopulation of rural American counties.

              Here is a document about the situation in North Dakota, with a discussion of how to make it politically palatable:

              https://www.ndltap.org/resources/downloads/asphalt-pavement-ends.pdf

              Here’s a study of rural road economics in Kansas. Note the cost /benefit table on page iii.

              https://transport.ksu.edu/files/transport/imported/Reports/2010/KSU105_Final.pdf

              People here think I’m nuts, but they simply don’t know what’s currently happening in their own country, mostly because the get their Weltanschauung from cable TV and loony websites. The country isn’t the one you got to know in your “Dick and Jane” reader in first grade.

            4. Alimbiquated,

              I am not familiar with the situation in all parts of the US, I live in a state with a fairly low population density (43 people per square mile), the roads are not great and occasionally vehicles hit deer or moose, as I suggested the people of individual states elect representatives that make these decisions. North Dakota is much less densely populated (9.7 people per square mile) than my state, Texas has 105 people per square mile, Kansas has about 35 people per square mile. Massachusetts has 839 people per square mile. Some rural roads in my state are unpaved or badly in need of resurfacing in less densely populated areas. About 47,000 miles of roads in my state(1.32 miles of road per square mile) and 179,000 miles of roads in North Dakota (2.5 miles of road per square mile.)

              I agree urban areas subsidize rural roads, but urban areas also depend on goods produced in rural areas and are wealthier, generally there will be a flow of funds from more wealthy to less wealthy areas through taxes and redistribution by governments. It is the way society works.

          2. Alimbiquated

            Replying to your 5/19, 9:27AM post. Thank you for sharing some interesting source material links.

            You note that “Cities subsidize the countryside”. This is the same type of assertion that I questioned you about elsewhere on this thread.

            I haven’t digested every page of your links, but don’t see this conclusion jumping out at me. The sources you cite do discuss the costs and challenges to maintaining some of these transportation system links. I’d note that the Kansas study looks at some VERY low traffic volume routes with generally less than 100 ADT and with decent alternate routes. Not a big lift for decision making. However, the inference you draw about who pays (or should pay?) what for the infrastructure does not seem to be supported by these references.

            This isn’t a simple question. For example, to answer this question you’d need to know information about where the revenue comes from along with what drives the demand. Transportation revenue in the US varies significantly by government level. At the federal level, the gas tax long ago stopped raising enough funds to support current federal expenditures, thereby requiring supplemental funds from other sources. On the demand side, deterioration for flexible pavements is generally understood to be related to the 3rd or 4th power of axle weight (e.g. see pages V3 and V4 at the link below). So, for those Kansas roads in your cited study the damage by local auto traffic is almost inconsequential in comparison to the large truck hauling grain. The majority of that grain shipment causing the majority of pavement damage is likely serving urban areas, not where it is grown or hauled to rail/barge.

            https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/Vol3-Chapter5.pdf

            Also, what makes you think maintaining urban infrastructure is a lighter lift? I would assert that is almost certainly not.

            I would certainly concur that the types of energy availability and energy transition issues discussed on POB bear on the affordability of our built environment. I have yet to find a compelling accounting with sufficiently wide boundaries that shows how these costs (financial or energy) are truly distributed. Have you?

            1. THILL
              My links didn’t provide any direct evidence of cities subsidizing the countryside. I did mention the study that the roads aren’t paying for themselves. The money must be coming from somewhere.

              The view urban infrastructure can are a better investment comes from the organizations that pay for it – governments. To stay above water a city has to build streets, sewage etc that generate enough tax revenue to pay for the investment and subsequent investment. That is the key problem for much of the development in America in recent decades.

              Huge streets that represent massive investment are surrounded by huge parking lots which generate almost no tax revenue and mostly stand empty. These parking lots surround modest single story retail buildings whose tax revenues will never cover the cost of the roads. But even these are more tax revenue efficient than country roads that go on for miles generating almost tax revenues.

              The other point is that country roads are poorly designed for hauling freight. For that, gravel roads on deep foundations supporting low speed and heavy vehicles would be appropriate. Instead you see weakly supported paved roads which seduce motorists to high speed. This is combined with a complete lack of safety measures such as wildlife fences, wide shoulders, safe curves and intersections, paths for bikes and pedestrians, etc. Furthermore these surfaces are expensive and brittle and need constant repair, especially if they are being used by heavy vehicles.

              The whole argument that the current rural road system is needed for freight is garbage, because the roads aren’t designed for freight. They are apparently designed for people to kill themselves on, which they do.

              You need to be exact about who benefits from roads and how they are financed, not just wave your hands vaguely about the common good. One topical example is how the frackers in the Bakken are totally trashing the rural roads in the region and aren’t footing the bill. Who is going to pay? The Federal government?

      2. Alimbiquated-
        Your point here seems to reflect the argument that I often see made about the relative efficiencies of urban vs. rural areas. These often look at infrastructure and population density when making this conclusion. I have been skeptical about the validity of these cases because the boundaries on their analyses seem flawed. How many resources (food, water, wood, minerals….) come from or are dependent upon locations well outside of the urban footprint. What share of the infrastructure investment outside of these urban footprints should be attributable to them vs. what is needed for the rural population themselves?

        I have not been able to find any fully satisfactory evaluations of these questions.

        Have you?

  22. Recent CPI data excluding shelter costs (because the shelter cost estimate lags badly compared to actual shelter cost data) for April is about 2% YOY. Shelter cost inflation is estimated at 5.5% by BLS, but if we look at rents as a proxy for shelter cost, it is more like 1% inflation for shelter cost YOY for US average. See links below for median rent inflation in the US.

    https://www.rent.com/research/average-rent-price-report/

    https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data

    https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/united-states/

  23. I’m still waiting to hear the opinions of the doomer camp as to how long it will be before the general public in places such as the USA, Canada, Western Europe recognizes that the end of our modern day fossil fuel based civilization is OBVIOUS……. even to such people as Faux News fans, etc.

    One decade, two, three, four, five?

    1. OFM,

      Although I am not likely who you have in mind, my guess is that within a decade it will be obvious that fossil fuels are depleting to the intelligent half of the population, it might take 2 decades for the less intelligent to be convinced, perhaps by that time 75% of all people will be aware that climate change is a problem (just as most people today realize that smoking is not good for your health, though real scientists knew this in 1965).

    2. I did answer your question, but you ignored it, because it wasn’t a ‘time’.
      IMHO it’s an event, when average oil production obviously is in massive decline year after year by millions of barrels/per d/yr.
      Everyone will become very aware just as modern civilization is in an acceleration of collapse…

      Every politician will also state that “no-one could see this coming”, as headlines in the press at the time as they implement emergency panic moves to save themselves….

      1. So……. WHEN do you guess or estimate this “event” will come about? Within ten years? Twenty? Thirty?

        There’s a lot that can and will be done that will have a huge impact on how well survivors pull thru.
        Tens of millions, potentially hundreds of millions of people who are paying no attention now will come to understand that they need to undertake individual action, and push their society to take collective action.

        1. OFM, We don’t have the information of VERY accurate reserves of oil for a lot of OPEC countries, so everyone guesses in making predictions. I prefer my predictions to be based upon facts. As the exact reserves seem to be ‘state secrets’ in some important oil producing countries, the world is effectively held hostage to their lack of information sharing.

          So far oil production peak world wide has made a fool of every prediction from every oil ‘expert’, meaning either guesses of reserves were horribly wrong, and/or the extraction process has advanced so far technically that we are producing near peak a lot closer to steep decline than at a slower decline after the 50% level of URR. (IE a Seneca cliff type production curve after 70-80% of URR being recovered).

          I suspect we are dragging future oil use into the present, as in near a Seneca cliff type scenario of oil production, but we simply don’t have the information, so making a WAG on which year is a fool’s errand.

          When we get an accelerating decline in oil production by 3, 4, 5 millions of bbls/d year after year, the EROEI will crash much faster than can be replaced by ‘cutting back’ or being efficient or more EVs.

          It will trigger financial collapse, which will accelerate oil production decline further, all while farm yields collapse because of too expensive fertilizer and too expensive diesel for tractors. At the same time mineral production will collapse for the same high cost reason and investment in new mines or expansions will also decline.
          The above makes no allowance for severe climate events likely to make the entire situation potentially much worse from droughts, heat waves, floods, cold snaps, etc, as each year passes.

          The longer we go until it happens, means we fall from a greater level of oil production and use, with a higher population more dependent upon increasingly complex systems that unravel during collapse.

          The warning sign of collapse dead ahead will be oil going to $200-300/bbl while actual production declines, without an upward response in production, then as recession kicks in due to central banks increasing interest rates to curb inflation, oil prices stay relatively high as production falls faster than decline in demand. Then when governments do the stimulus bit again, oil prices rocket again but production remains flat or continues to fall..

          During this period investment capital will dry up. Basically everything spirals out of control too quickly for civilization to handle as EROEI from energy crashes washing across every human activity.

          1. Hideaway,
            Thanks for your well reasoned reply. I’m quite willing to agree with your reasoning and caveats.
            But nevertheless…… I would like to have your own wild ass GUESS as to how long business as usual ( similar to today) will last until it’s obvious even to Faux News talking heads that forced climate change is real and a VERY REAL threat to our way of life, oil depletion is real and the end game of the personal six thousand pound plus ICE vehicle is playing out, etc.

            1. OFM.

              He is unwilling to guess, it seems. If we see a sharp decline of say 4 Mb/d for C plus C (he didn’t specify) this would be about 5% per year, in my view this is highly unlikely, my guess is a decline of 1 to 2% intitially (2033 to 2042) followed by annual decline of 2% from 2043 to 2052. This assumes recent estimates by Jean Laherrere are correct (somewhere in the 2700 to 3500 Gb range for World C plus C URR). Scenario below has a World C plus C URR of 2900 Gb. Output declines at an average annual rate of 1.63% per year from 2033 to 2042 for this scenario. The World may be able to adapt, though it would be best if the transition were faster than this due to good government policy worldwide to try to avoid climate/environmental catastrophe.

              The fall in output in my scenario is fairly linear from 2030 to 2070 from 82.6 Mb/d in 2030 to 35.6 Mb/d for World C plus C output, about 1.2 Mb/d each year on average.

              Generally Jean Laherrere’s estimates for World C plus C URR have been fairly conservative (though his 2022 estimate of 3500 Gb seems high, 2800 to 3000 Gb seems reasonable in my view.

    4. Hi OFM, forget Faux News. Look at all the advertising for new fossil fuelled vehicles. The advertising industry is happy to be paid by the manufacturers to make propaganda that assures car buyers that you only need to think about the same things when buying an internal combustion engine vehicle today as the things you thought about 60 years ago
      Cheers, Phil

      1. Hi Phil,

        You’re dead on……… for now. But there’s a time coming when gasoline and diesel fuel are going to be in short supply, and deliveries will be iffy as hell….. at any price, except maybe a sky high rationed price.

        Then even Faux talking heads will have to admit to this coming reality.

    1. It’s funny how nearly 250 years ago when people overthrew a corrupt government and dictatorship they were called freedom fighters and those that did it are now revered as national heroes, but those that try and do the same thing in Africa, in modern times, they are called terrorists…

  25. Here is what is happening in Australia with too much solar coming into the grid during peak solar hours…

    “The tariff does include a 2.19¢/kWh charge for solar exports between 10AM-2PM,”
    https://www.amber.com.au/ausgrid

    You read that correctly, a charge to send power into the grid for solar panel owners, while the government still offers subsidies to put solar on house rooves.
    Plus they will pay 26.6c/kwh for energy sent back into the system in the evening. The 26.6c will not cover the lifetime cost of owning the battery of something like the Tesla powerwall 2 and the solar installed to charge it.

    In other words the grid owning companies are trying to curtail solar as it is making the grid more unstable with every solar addition and no solution in site for night time windless nights except for fossil fuel use. I expect the rest of the world to go close to catching up with the AEMO grid problems around the time civilization collapses due to oil production decline.

    The South Australian part of the AEMO grid is often held up as the shining light for renewable energy use, except for the times when they have to operate large diesel generators to keep the lights on during windless nights…
    To put the 2.19c/kwh they are charging for sending solar energy into the grid, into perspective, the local Aluminium smelter pays 1.4c/kwh for guaranteed power 24/7 provided by coal generators…

    This is one of my predictions, from a couple of years ago, that ‘they’ would have to charge for solar sent into the system from householders eventually. Eventually came a lot sooner than I expected…

    1. Hideway, the whole point of the link you provided is in its headline, “Eligible NSW customers can earn a bonus 26.6c/kWh on exports during peak times with Amber for Batteries and Ausgrid’s two-way tariff” . The link is all about a particular business trying to get their customers to install batteries to export to the grid during peak demand! Great job on extrapolating that to claims about grid owning companies trying to curtail solar and it making the grid unstable.

      For me, the rest of your rant shows how fossil fuel generators are playing the market in Australia. They forward sell their electricity production, and keep generating when spot prices are negative. I know the whole argument about the need for a reliable baseload, but if the coal fired generators lost when spot prices went negative, there would be a massive market based incentive for them to develop technology to be more “demand responsive”. That they can sell electricity to an aluminium smelter for 1.4c/kwh 24/7 only shows how they are gaming the system!

      1. Phil Scanlon, perhaps you should read my post again as I did discuss what you claimed I didn’t.. The 26.6c/kwh return will cost owners money over the life of their battery system, as I explained…

        The coal generators are not gaming the system. They can’t turn off the coal power plants and then turn them back on just for night time use. To cycle coal power generators takes a lot longer than 12-15 hours because of metal expansion and contraction during ramp up and down.

        The governments have contracts with them (secret commercial conditions), to keep operating. If they had to pay negative prices during the daytime, they would go out of business and would close down, leaving the country without power most nights and any remaining industry would be leaving the country.

        Batteries and pumped hydro are very expensive additions to renewables on the grid, raising the overall wholesale electricity price. The amount of batteries the Australian grid would need is in the Twh range, spread around the country. Victoria alone would need 600-800Gwh of storage to cover 3-4 days of cloudy still weather in winter that happens often. That’s at current electricity use. Add in lots of EVs and heat pumps replacing gas for both hot water and heating and that number rises. Even though the grid extends over 3,000km in total from outback Queensland areas which should be sunny during the winter down south, the grid capacity to get from there to the very south would be less than 1Gw.
        Building HVDC transmission for 8-10Gw capacity over 3,000km is also not going to happen for 15-25 days a year only!!

        Renewables on the grid by themselves with storage is not a solution that modern civilization can afford, and neither can the environment with all the extra materials and therefore mining needed to build it!!

        We built and operated our system of complex modern industrial civilization from very cheap and dirty coal. As Australia becomes more reliant on renewables the power price is going up and the Aluminium smelters are leaving for places like Indonesia, where new coal fired power stations are being built for Aluminium smelters..

        That’s the reality, and people mostly don’t like reality.

        1. The solution to the ten to twenty days a year of limited power availability has been used in many developing countries, and continues to be used at present – non-critical users will experience involuntary power interruptions. Take a look in the mirror if you want to see a non-critical user.

    2. Hideway- your complaint would be properly focused on grid policy makers, not on solar itself. Its like blaming wheat for pricing difficulties with rice imports.
      There are others ways to deal the ‘problem’ of too much energy.

      Australia could get rid of most of its coal use, just like the US and UK have done. And it would be good if they cut coal exports by 90% as well. Thank you.

      1. Hickory, “And it would be good if they cut coal exports by 90% as well.”

        Good for who? You tell the countries that import that coal, sorry you can’t have any more.

        Hickory … “There are others ways to deal the ‘problem’ of too much energy.”

        It is not a consistent too much energy that’s the problem, it’s too much energy for 4 hrs/d on 200-250 days a year.
        What do you suggest, build some type of industrial plant that only operates for 4 hours/d for ‘most’ days? This is possibly the very definition of being inefficient. I’m all ears, what do you suggest??

        1. You have repeated called the cessation of industrial activity related to energy production.
          I was simply suggesting that we start your project with the worst- coal.
          Doesn’t seem to sit well with you, even despite global warming.

          1. What you are doing is avoiding the 2 questions I asked about the 2 statements you made.

            I agree Australia should stop exporting coal, but so should everyone else. Everyone should also stop exporting, oil, gas and fertilizer which would quickly lead to the complete stop of all exports of grain and widgets. This would take a metaphorical 10 minutes to cause collapse of industrial civilization, something that is going to happen anyway.

            How about an actual answer to the question I asked about your off the cuff statement…”There are others ways to deal the ‘problem’ of too much energy.”

            I’d really like to know what you are thinking when making such a statement. Was it just without thinking or is there something real we could do with intermittent energy that occurs over 4 hrs/d over around 75% of all days?

            I’ve read on this forum many times about using excess energy production from renewables to make hydrogen or synthetic fuels, but not one person who has ever mentioned it, ever bothered to look at the waste of industrial plant sitting idle over 90% of the time, yet still suffering from entropy and having a limited lifespan. It’s all crap and you and I both know it, which is why I suspect you didn’t answer the question.

            1. At this point it looks like peaker nat gas power plants, and a variety of long duration storage mechanisms are the plan. None of these are optimal…nothing is, including coal. I’m skeptical about hydrogen as a mechanism.
              There are probably a dozen long duration storage mechanisms being worked on hard.

              https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/21/next-big-thing-in-energy-storage-hotshots-pick-hot-bricks/
              https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-storage-long-duration-hydrogen-iron-air-zinc-gravity/698158/

            2. Hideaway,

              In the US about 48% of installed coal power capacity is utilized at electric utilities and for natural gas it is 36% of capacity, farm tractors are not used 24/7, most personal vehicles sit idle most of the time, not every investment has 100% up time, this is simply the nature of things.

            3. We have trillions of dollars worth of commercial and industrial infrastructure that sits idle a substantial part of the time.. and we’re quite accustomed to dealing with the cost of doing so……. so accustomed to this cost that we hardly ever even think about it.

              Highways are busy part of the day, almost deserted at other times, as often as not. Ditto lots of factories.They frequently run one or two shifts, five days a week, rather than around the clock.

              Construction and farm machinery typically sits unused far more hours than it IS used.

              Sports stadiums ? Used a few hours per month on average on paying events.

              Military equipment? On standby, but other than for training, used only a minute percentage of the time, in the case of most countries.

              ( Right now for instance, we Yankees are getting rid of our mostly outdated and quite possibly dangerously obsolete weapons and ammo by donating it to Ukraine…… the actual cost of this stuff running into the billions, the actual value of most of it possibly near zero, when our OWN next war happens. In any case, the cost of these donations is trivial, in respect to the cost of our MIC.

              And yes, some of it IS up to date, or new. We’re learning all about how well it works while the Ukrainians are spilling the blood rather than the money. The info gained thereby is priceless. We now know more than ever before about Russian capabilities on the battle field.)

              What people like you simply IGNORE is that the population is going to crash, meaning that we don’t have to think about supplying an industrial life style for eight or ten billion. That cuts the natural resource supply problem by as much as three quarters or more… depending on how many people you think will survive the crash, and be in a position to continue using such resources.

              Then there’s the rather obvious fact that when it’s necessary, we can cut back one hell of a lot simply because it’s cheaper to do so. We used to run the AC hard at my house, when I had my elderly parents depending on me. I ran the oil heat hard too,to keep them as comfortable as possible, when it wasn’t a good time to be getting in firewood, etc.

              Now I seldom ever turn on the oil furnace…… it’s strictly for emergency backup in case I have to be away from home, or sick or injured.

              I don’t run the ac except in one room at a time, WHEN I’m in that room, unless I have company. I set it at seventy six, rather than seventy. Cool enough.
              I use an electric blanket and let the fire go out, or nearly out, in moderately cold weather.

              We CAN and we WILL cut way the hell back on consumption, and we can and we will be building out more wind and solar power than you would ever dream , depending on HOW LONG it is before the shit is really and truly in the fan.

              And perhaps most of us here lack my own sense of historical perspective.
              Among military people, it’s quite commonly accepted, to the point it’s seldom even mentioned except to lay people who bother to read about such things, that one of the critical factors that allowed us to train and lead our soldiers and sailors and airmen during WWII was that we had a substantial number of well seasoned, highly experienced, officers, both commissioned and non coms, capable of GETTING the job of training and then fighting DONE. We had the industrial capacity to manufacture ships, planes, and weapons because we had automobile, truck and shipbuilding industries that could be put on the job.

              Without this industrial base….. the RIGHT base for that time and war.. and those experienced men…… It’s quite possible Hitler could have won and maintained more or less permanent control of most of Europe.

              Now we’re looking at a time when we still have at least two extremely important enemies….. Russia as of yesterday, today, and tomorrow… and China in the not so distant future. China now has the world’s biggest navy, and de facto control of some of the most critical raw materials, a robust space industry, fully modern air craft, etc etc. Hopefully we can peacefully co exist….. hopefully.

              My point is that we, in order to be reasonably safe over the longer term, simply have to have a robust renewable energy industry, one that’s fully capable of shouldering the load as fossil fuels gradually get to be so expensive as to simply be unaffordable, even if we simply ignore the climate issue.

              I’m not arguing that renewable energy can shoulder the load carried by fossil fuels today. I AM arguing that that load is inevitably going to decrease, as the population inevitably decreases, and as tough times headed our way FORCE us into economic austerity on a personal day to day basis and on a governmental policy basis.

              Assuming some good luck ( for instance the climate doesn’t go entirely nuts in the next decade or two) there’s seriously a real chance we can go renewable, in terms of energy, recycling, conservation, etc, at least to the extent some pockets of people, maybe some nations such as AHEM, the USA, Canada, etc, can pull thru with the lights on and the water and sewer systems working. They WILL after all still have SOME oil, SOME gas, and coal if they have no choice but to use some of it.

              I’m a PRO farmer, retired. You can take it to the bank that we CAN, if we MUST, live ok on a fourth or so of our current grain production. We can live without steak and burgers every day but maybe have some beef once in a while as a special treat… beef produced on grass lands unsuitable for ordinary cropping purposes.

              We can, once we HAVE NO CHOICE, live with one car for every ten we have now, and with electric cars no bigger than golf carts that will go fifty miles on a charge.

              We can live indefinitely, beginning within the next ten or fifteen years, with hardly anything in the way of new housing construction….. because so many old farts such as yours truly live in houses that will last a hell of a long time…… houses built for six, occupied by one, maybe two people. New highways won’t be NECESSARY. Ditto new shopping centers, new sports stadiums, new airports….. or new jumbo passenger planes.

              The ten percent of cars that we WILL really need can be built to last indefinitely. We know all about that…… my farm equipment was built that way half a century ago.It’s still running just fine with some occasional repair work and regular maintenance.

              Batteries can be made to be interchangeable between makes and models….. just like TIRES. JUST as easily swapped out for new. An electric car need never be scrapped because the battery goes bad. We don’t scrap cars just because they need new tires, lol.

              Contraction is in my opinion inevitable.

              It’s also my opinion, for what it’s worth, that with some luck on the political front, contraction can be managed to the extent that we can avoid a crash and burn landing in at least some parts of the world.

              During the Soviet era , trucks dropped off sacks of cabbage and potatoes on street corners, and bags of grain to people out in the boonies. We could, if we HAVE to, do something equivalent today, even here in the USA, depending on how bad things get.

              And ( sarc light ON) if we get to shooting each other in substantial numbers, well…… the bright side of THAT scenario is that the population, and therefore the load on the environment, will shrink that much faster.

              I expect plenty of hot war over the next few decades, and plenty of violence short of war in numerous countries, including ADDITIONAL such violence here in the USA.. substantially MORE than we have already….. but hopefully not so much that gangs take over entire cities, as they have already in numerous other countries.

              IF we go to a managed war time economic plan, we can have enough of the critical raw and finished materials to keep the wheels on and turning for quite some time……. possibly two three four or more generations, as we learn how to get by with less, recycle more, etc.

              You may remember that I used to post frequent comments to the effect that we should be praying for figurative PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP EVENTS…. sharp chunks of broken brick upside our collective head sufficient to get our COLLECTIVE ATTENTION …… so that we can go proactive to the extent possible as soon as possible.

              Maybe the best thing that could happen to us, collectively, here in the USA, would be blight that takes out the corn crop, or a super drought that hits the farmers of the South and South East, thereby REALLY getting the attention of the public when beef goes to twenty bucks for burger and seasonal tomatoes and watermelons just aren’t THERE at the stores.

              Giving up is simply not an option.

            4. OFM: “We can live without steak and burgers every day but maybe have some beef once in a while as a special treat… beef produced on grass lands unsuitable for ordinary cropping purposes.”

              May I suggest Bison?

              OFM: “We can, once we HAVE NO CHOICE, live with one car for every ten we have now, and with electric cars no bigger than golf carts that will go fifty miles on a charge.”

              Considering that there were about 280 million registered vehicles in the United States in 2022, we could practically live with one electric BIKE for every car we have now. In winter, just add a track kit.

  26. Factor this into your budget projections-
    “The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.”

    And its just starting.
    Any effort to keep coal in the ground, other than deforestation, is worth the effort and cost.

    Would you build or rebuild a house, a factory or a commercial building if the insurance costs were higher than your property taxes, or mortgage? Or maybe you simply couldn’t get any insurance at all. You will have an asset simply at complete personal risk of loss. And any government that attempts to backstop the commercial insurance industry is on a time limited path to budget failure/ unfulfilled mandates.
    For example, Houston just had a thunderstorm that did $5-7B in damage.

      1. Yes, hail damage is a big deal in the plains/midwest. No doubt about it. Newer installations are using trackers that go into a protection position mode in attempt to deal with this. Certainly something to keep an eye on. Nextracker and Array are the big guys in PV utility scale solar tracker field.
        -https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2024/03/array-technologies-debuts-autonomous-hail-protection-system-for-solar-trackers/
        -https://www.pv-tech.org/nextracker-unveils-new-products-targeting-hail-uneven-terrain-and-fast-atmospheric-changes/

        Also, I forgot to mention an important aspect of the insurance story. You can’t get a mortgage without insurance. You can’t build a nuclear plant or any big project without insurance. Unless perhaps if have $70 billion cash collateral hanging around, or some such thing.

    2. Did you see that hurricane level thunderstorm that hit Texas the other day and downed power lines to one million people? Totally normal weather.

  27. SUMMER 2023 WAS NORTHERN HEMISPHERE’S HOTTEST FOR 2,000 YEARS, TREE RINGS SHOW

    “Across this vast area of land, encompassing Europe, Asia and North America, surface air temperatures were more than 2°C higher in June, July and August 2023 than the average summer temperature between AD1 and 1890, as reconstructed from tree ring records. As greenhouse gas emissions rise, enhancing Earth’s greenhouse effect, people can expect more frequent and severe climate events. In the past, very warm years globally generally happened during El Niño events, such as in 2016. However, greenhouse gas levels are now so high that, for the first time in 2017, the planet experienced a very warm year during El Niño’s opposite, the La Niña phase, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures. The new study found that 2023 even broke the 2016 record as it was 0.23°C warmer than the last El Niño-amplified summer. Greenhouse gas emissions are now so high that, when climate records are broken, they break in large step changes, rather than small increments.”

    https://phys.org/news/2024-05-summer-northern-hemisphere-hottest-years.html

  30. “The depth of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. …He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

    Guess who?

  31. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/05/18/catl-shenxing-battery-strikes-fear-into-the-hearts-of-governments-automakers/

    I can’t say how much of this piece is click bait and commercial puffery or fearmongering.

    But I have no reason at all to believe that such batteries AREN’T ON THE WAY, and available at some price to people who can afford them on the grand scale within a decade or so, maybe within the next couple of years.. assuming the economy holds up that long.

    This is a victory for the sustainability camp.

    We have legislated fuel economy standards now….. but unfortunately too many loopholes.

    Suppose we have a law that every car and truck company build a set percentage of total company production to bare bones standards in terms of electric vehicles with limited range, say fifty miles?

    There are class eight trucks that don’t run over fifty miles per day, and not even every day at that. I see a couple on the road every day where I live. They haul a load or two of gravel from a nearby quarry to a ready mix concrete plant, as needed. Another one (burning diesel of course) drops off lumber from a big milling operation to nearby big box stores. The driver tells me he hardly ever makes more than two trips per day, because it takes a while to get loaded to order, and unloaded at the store, each part of the load going to a certain spot, as the yard guys get to him, between customers.

    The vast majority of Yankees can get by, commuting and shopping, with a fifty mile range vehicle, plugging it up at home at night. They’ll buy such a vehicle, and learn to like it, once that’s all they CAN BUY, except by going the used car route.

    Sure HVDC power lines are expensive as hell…… but compared to fifth generation war planes, nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, main battle tanks, and millions of trained soldiers… they look pretty damned cheap to me, in terms of national security…. maybe not for us Yankees as of today, but for many of our best friends and allies all over the planet.

    There’s only ONE real reason preventing us from having a near universal smart electrical grid within a very few years….. lack of the political will to mandate it becoming a reality sooner, rather than later.

    This alone could go quite a way towards reducing the need for back up fossil fuel generation or electrical storage capacity in the form of batteries, or pumped hydro, or whatever.

    Smart appliances and HVAC systems can be programmed to run mostly on any available renewable electricity that would otherwise be surplus and curtailed, by chilling or warming the house more than usual in order to use less power than usual LATER over the next hours or day.

    A mandated double size, double insulated SMART electric water heater holds enough to last most households at least a day or two… without needing any grid juice for that long.

    IF WE MUST, and if the economy holds up long enough, we can relocate SMALL coal fired power plants to cities big enough to take advantage of the waste heat for half the year…… by way of district heating systems.

    And it seems possible, to me at least, that some other industries CAN BE relocated near to such power plants so as to make good use of that wasted heat…… by way of LOWERING the amount of fuel or electricity they need to get their own equipment up to operating temperatures.

    Practical …….. maybe never. Possible…. for sure if deemed to be necessary in order to keep the wheels from falling off.

    The truth is that technology allowed us to get into our current overshoot mess.

    And the truth is that technology has the potential to help us get OUT of this same mess, if we’re smart enough to make use of it.

    We have a window available to scale up what we have already, and to develop new renewable energy technologies. How long that window will be open…… nobody wants to say.

    My own guess is that with luck, we’ll have another twenty to thirty years or so before things get to the point we can’t invest much if anything in new renewable technology, maybe a little longer to continue scaling up whatever is in mass production within that same time frame.

    Depending on the size of the renewable industries within this time frame, and especially the number of men and women who possess the necessary skills involved, we could potentially ramp up renewable energy production on a wartime economic basis, doubling the output within as little as three or four years….. if we get the necessary chunk of sharp brick upside our collective head before it’s simply too late.

    1. Bring it on.
      And HVDC lines are a great investment considering the economic value they provide, and as long as armed drones or some sort of anarchists don’t intentionally destroy them they are very durable.

  32. OFM and Hickory
    Stop reading headlines and start reading articles.

    From the article

    Through breakthroughs in materials and structure, the Shenxing battery system’s energy density surpasses the 200 Wh/kg threshold for the first time, reaching 205 Wh/kg, making ranges over 1,000 kilometers a reality.

    Tesla battery is 250-260Wh/kg

    The technology is life cycle cheaper but heavier. No game changer.

    As far as infrastructure vulnerabilities before we apply SciFi how about we read the news.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/thieves-are-targeting-tesla-charging-stations-for-copper-in-california-causing-approximately-1-billion-in-losses/ar-BB1mAfho

    You think those guys carried of the copper on bicycles? Something you guys simply don’t understand is how critical the secondary auto market is at the lowest level. People can still buy an ICE for under $1000.00 that can get them to work. That will never happen with EVs. The batteries require expensive replacement and high density housing doesn’t provide space needed for charging.

    Now perhaps you’re thinking that the government will just step in and provide cars and charging systems and make everything work. Why can’t they fix pot holes and bridges? In an energy declining economy it would require enormous debt. So much that eventually the interest couldn’t be serviced.

    Oh I forgot we’re already there. The US government borrowed $10billion dollars today and will tomorrow and the next day until the market breaks. That’s approximately $1,000.00 per month for every man woman and child. The vast majority have a net worth of less than $400.00. Now if you take that $12,000.00 per year per person and compare it to inflation you actually have a pretty good idea of where we’re headed. Not some techno utopia with flying cars. Rather a world that is trying to trade in there smart phones for a loaf of bread.

    1. JT,

      The $1000 car can be found, but it often breaks and repairs are expensive, not everyone is a backyard mechanic that can fix their own car. Most of the cars at 1000 or less have around 200k or more miles on them. On Cars dot com there are about 42 cars listed for the entire US with prices of 1000 or less. There are fewer of these choices then you imagine. About 8 EVs in US listed at 4000 or less, over time there will be higher number of used EVs on the market, it will take some time. In the new car market EVs are quite competitive, many people do not live in densely populated places, if one has a driveway to park a car, charging can be installed, in the future higher end rentals will likely have charging available. Installation of level 2 charging is not a big deal, 240 V, 40 A circuit is all that is needed with a 4 prong dryer outlet. Can be installed in a garage or outside a home for those without a garage.

      1. My guess is that there will never really be a $1000 used electric car.
        If we get 20 years into the future, we will all be in Robotaxis. Transportation as a service, run by huge corporations. There will be exceptions, like farm and service vehicles, but it’s going to be too cheap not to. Once we have autonomy, it will be less expensive and safer (lower accident rates and insurance premiums) to let the car drive.

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