Peak Oil Barrel

Open Thread Non-Petroleum June 4, 2025

Ovi

Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thank you.

Ovi

80 responses to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum June 4, 2025”

  1. Doug Leighton

    So much for peak coal.

    CHINA’S COAL POWER PLANT APPROVALS REBOUND

    “After last year’s first annual decline in coal power plant approvals since 2021, the Chinese pipeline of newly-approved coal-fired electricity generation rebounded in early 2025, Greenpeace East Asia said in new research on Thursday. China approved 11.29 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity in the first quarter of 2025, Greenpeace’s review of official documents showed. This pace of coal-fired electricity approvals already exceeds the 10 GW China approved in the first half of 2024.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Coal-Power-Plant-Approvals-Rebound.html

    1. Sheng Wu

      Meanwhile, at the end first quarter 2025, total capacity of wind and solar installations at 1.483Peta Watt, already higher than coal fired installations at 1.451Peta Watt.
      Total wind and solar electricity now at 22.5% or 4.3% higher than last year; and non FF electricity at 39.8% or 4.8% higher than last year.

      West extremists like GreenPeace never had a plan a fraction as decent as China or Pakistan or Saudi, they are just ideaologists implementing energy plans that are driving up inflation and unreliability.
      China,Pakistan and Saudi only started ramping up solar and wind when cost is going down, and storage become economic, and FF cost keeps goind up.
      The west extremists never gave half cent thought on these.

    2. Alimbiquated

      The solar energy boom got kick started when German Greens got into government and push the feed-in tariffs policy that provided favorable rates to early adopters of (then) expensive solar panels.

      The explicitly stated goal of the policy was to push down prices of solar by increasing production. It worked.

      Here is a country ranking of solar energy as a percentage of total national electricity production in 2024. China ranks 34, Pakistan 80 and Arabia 88.

    3. Loadsofoil

      Yes been great for German industry and household

      https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-german-companies-mull-relocation-due-high-energy-prices-survey-2024-08-01/

    4. JJHMAN

      Fossil fuel extremists choose to ignore the external costs of continued burning of fossil fuel. This is consistent with the long term conservative moral philosophy so endearingly quoted by a life-long conservative: “Let them eat cake”.
      Short life, though.

  2. hightrekker

    “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

    1. JJHMAN

      Idealistic thoughts but I am reminded that the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years. I think their greed and arrogant ideology prevented them from achieving their objectives but it wasn’t second class scientists or generals.
      Likewise Stalin accomplished a lot for the USSR if you ignore the human suffering.
      I think Mao did a pretty good job of bringing China into the 20th century, that is for the people who survived his murderous ways.
      Trump is different. Unlike Hitler, Stalin and Mao he isn’t smart enough to discern talent from servility.
      I think the problem never seems to be competence, it’s values. The dictators just surround themselves with terrible people. Often what decent people call terrible results are the objective.

    2. Iron Mike

      JJHMAN,

      Totally agree with that view. Furthermore i’d add Hitler and Stalin were born into poverty and abuse. Both experience extreme hardships. I’d say both were above average intelligence and unique though goes without saying they caused an enormous amount of suffering.

      Trump was born into a wealthy family. He didnt experience hardships anywhere near these men. I’d also make a conjecture that he is below average intelligence.

    3. Kleiber

      Stalin caused an immense amount of suffering to Nazis, and this is good and I thank him every day for it.

    4. JJHMAN

      Stalin probably caused more suffering inside the USSR.

    5. Alimbiquated

      the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years.
      Not really, they were dumb as dirt. But the highjacked what was arguably the world’s leading scientific power at the time.

    6. Iron Mike

      Alim,

      That is not true. During the Nuremberg Trials, U.S. military psychologist Gustave Gilbert administered IQ tests to the Nazi leaders on trial. The results showed that all of them had above-average intelligence, with some scoring significantly high.

      And also if they were dumb why were the Russians and Americans scrambling to get their scientists at the end of ww2 ?

    7. Mike G

      Certainly Speer, Goebbels (PhD), and probably Goering the junky were of high intelligence. Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.
      Quite obviously, Werner von Braun, Rommel, and others of that ilk were well bove average intelligence.
      History is littered with the names of “great” men and women whose indisputable intelligence was not matched by high personal moral and ethical codes.

    8. Iron Mike

      Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.

      Of course. Intelligent evil is much more potent and dangerous than dumb evil.

    9. Alimbiquated

      Haha Americans are always so quick to play the white knight if anyone insults Nazis. Just look how many responses my comment got. Nobody is ready to just shrug his shoulders at a remark like mine.

      I first noticed this decades ago when I took German classes at the University of Tennessee. Very creepy.

    10. Iron Mike

      Alim,

      I am not American, haven’t even been to America. Stop projecting your biases on others when your bullshit remarks get called out.

    11. Kleiber

      Very smart people.

      “Let’s go invade Russia!”

      Just the biggest brains.

    12. JJHMAN

      Just following orders. The great German cultural failure.

    13. JJHMAN

      Alim
      So you weren’t impressed by the Stuka, the buzz bomb, the V2, the MG42 machine gun, the Bf109, the wolf pack, the 88 or the ME-262? The Germans were defeated by the industrial strength of the US, the grit of the British and the human endurance of Russia. German weapons, training and tactics were top notch.
      Overall cultural and military goals were insane, not dumb.

    14. Kleiber

      Aside from the Wolf Pack, MG-42 or 88, the rest are in the category of barely impactful or the wunderwaffen category of Hail Marys that feed into the narrative that the Nazis had amazing tech that could take on multiples of the Allied equivalent. You see this all the time with the tanks, especially that fucking King Tiger that is emblematic of a machine that was made like an artisanal piece of tech that was never meant to win a war with peer powers with larger industrial bases. I say this as someone who personally squealed when I saw the only thing existing one at Bovington decades ago.

      You see this stupid bullshit thought pattern with Ukraine today, where every new weapon delivery is hailed as The One That Will End The War. And they all achieve minimal changes because, amazingly, everyone in the West learnt the wrong lessons from WWII from the captured idiot Nazis who filtered into NATO roles, because they could never admit that an agrarian nation they turned against made simpler and more effective weapons, and clobbered them by churning those out by the million.

      Count how many functioning T-34s exist. Now how many Panzers (all varieties) exist. QED.

    15. JJHMAN

      Note that I didn’t mention the German tanks. Russian tanks were far superior, as were the later American ones. On the ground in the USSR “simpler” weapons were indeed smarter. No one here, including me, has suggested that the Germans were smarter than anyone else, but they weren’t stupid. They were captured by a perverted story of their history and by the cultural norms that included an extreme adherence to hierarchy.
      The later American airplanes were far superior to the German ones. None of this takes away from the talent the German engineers and manufacturers demonstrated building up to the war. Nor does it justify or support the evil that virtually the entire German nations supported and defended until the very end.
      As an American I am horrified to see such a large fraction of my own nation support an individual who is clearly capable of the same evils as the Nazis. So far we are lucky to see a little protection from his lack of competence and that of those he has chosen to fulfill his ambitions. With impeachment impossible until 2027 and the 24th amendment out of the question it is not clear what can be done to stop the madness.

    16. Alimbiquated

      Dictatorships inevitably fail because they run out of ideas. Democracy’s strength is its ability to adapt by bringing in new ideas. As a rule of thumb, any country ruled by the same person for 20 years is in trouble. No matter how good or smart he was twenty years ago, he’s stuck in a rut by now.

      That is why democracy is about much more than just elections. Free press, free markets and anti-corruption/government openness are just as important. You can see it in America now, where Trump isn’t just a threat to elections, he constantly attacks the press and uses his cryptocurrency to sell pardons and other favors.

      Most dictators just end up trying to steal more money when they get bored from being at the top. It’s really weird. My favorite example is Spain’s king Juan Carlos, savior of democracy back in the day, taking bribes from the Saudis. WTF does the king of Spain need more money for? Makes no sense. But the pattern repeats itself over and over.

      Republicans say

    17. Kleiber

      Right, except we live in a capital led system that suffers from BEB thinking where your idea to change the system is to vote for the other side of the same coin.

      Do we want the fascist Trump, or the war criminal Biden? They both shafted you on the economy and made pumping as much oil out of the ground as possible their mandate, while saying something about the climate. What a choice! Pay no heed to the decline in sentiment in almost every nation polled regarding democratic systems in the West. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

      Democracy with the present government economic system is WORSE than a dictatorship, because it leads to the manifestation of “just VOTE!” magical thinking and kicking the can down the road on the assumption maybe the next favoured political party to get in will fix things. While people are uselessly handwringing over which party of the elites to tick a box for, the neoliberal rot continues apace.

    18. JJHMAN

      Kleiber
      I disagree 100% with you statement that a dictatorship would improve anything. Clearly our economic system needs improvement. It is out of date and does not match the needs of the country. Dictatorships generally operate to match the needs of dictators. The current Trump administration is attempting to operate in that mode and it is clear that it is making matters worse.
      My own interpretation of the present situation is that there is too much money in politics and that the monied interests have, as a result, too much sway in policy making. As a result many policies are driven primarily by short term considerations that benefit “investors” and others who operate only on the basis of greed.
      There is a downside to democracy that is worth bearing. That is the inertia to change. A good example is the length of time it took to get the US into WW2. But when we did enter the war it made a big difference.
      Yes, the economic system needs a change but the change can and must be done within the scope of democracy. I see signs that a movement is growing to get past the zig zag of swapping parties in control while the parties are both moving the wrong way, towards the right.
      Biden was a big mistake for the Democrats. Calling him a war criminal is just a waste of syllables, you could probably say that about every political leader since Hammurabi with some justification. On the up side you can see how much better the government performed under Biden than it would have (is) under Trump. Biden upgraded America’s underwhelming health care system, he invested in environmental protections, he invested in improving the employment situation, he improved our international relationships. Yet he now gets no credit for it because Trump will do everything he can to destroy the Biden legacy just because he feels chagrined by having lost an election to him.

  3. Andre The Giant

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14784545/elon-musk-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein.html

    Trump and Elon in the Epstein files.

    Elon attacks Trump as a P**do.

    If Elon knew this about Trump, why did he support him??

    Tesla shares down 18 %

    1. Alimbiquated

      Trump says he ‘ll cancel all government contracts with Musk companies, Musk decommissions the Dragon, apparently immediately.

    2. JJHMAN

      As if we needed any more proof that these two are completely transactional. Neither moves a muscle unless personal gain is afoot.

    3. Alimbiquated

      Musk already changed his mind about Dragon. Some random dude on X told him to calm down and he obeyed. They’re like little kids.

      Meanwhile he’s calling for Trump’s impeachment. Musk wants Vance, who is Peter Thiel’s creature, to replace Trump.

      Peter Thiel financed Paypal and facebook and has led Silicon Valley’s charge into the extreme right. The theory is that the are so rich they must be much smarter than the rest of us. They want to shut down democracy for the good of mankind, since only they are smart enough to know the way forward.

    4. Sheng Wu

      Rumor says the real cause of breakup is after Trump called Xi — they agreed to cancel EV subsidies in both countries.

    5. Survivalist

      Now that musk has shot his bolt, who are the cornucopians attaching themselves to? Who’s the new Messiah?

    6. Iron Mike

      I am sure they will find some other tool to worship.

    7. Hickory

      I thought everyone knows there never has been and never will be a “Messiah”
      Keep dreaming if harboring the delusion makes you feel good, I suppose.

  4. The Wet One

    Haven’t been around here in a long while.

    Are Ron Patterson and Old Farmer Mac (OFM I think was the nym he went by) still around?

    Did one or both of them pass away?

    I felt I learned a great deal from them both over the years.

    Could anyone say?

    Thanks!

    1. Hickory

      OFM hasn’t chimed in for a few months, and less and less for about the last 9 months.
      Ron occasionally chimes in.

    2. D C

      I tried to get in touch with Old Farmer Mac in January, but there was no response to my email.

      Ron just commented today, but he now has other interests so he does not comment often.

      OFM’s most recent post was April 9, 2025 at link below

      https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787703

  5. Loadsofoil

    U.S. Debt and tax

    https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/

    If U.S. debt in 1979 was the equivalent to $3 trillion today. Why has it increased so much.

    Here is a clue.

    https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates

    The richest half has saved trillions in tax over the last 50 years. Some have calculated that the tax cuts are equivalent to the debt increase.

    Some economists in the pay of the elite say that the debt does not matter. Really?

    The trillion dollars of debt interest comes out of tax money that would have gone into schools, police, roads etc. it is the poor who pay the price of poor schools and lack of police and social care.

    Millionaires are not affected, in fact they now have far more money for private schools and hospitals.

    https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-4/#:~:text=By%201970%2C%20the%20top%201,both%20sides%20of%20the%20Atlantic.

    Scum economists told us in the 1980s and today that if you tax the rich less they pay more tax. Exactly what the Rich and powerful wanted us to believe. Now everyone is saddled with massive government debt that falls upon the majority who rely on state schools and police. Etc. more taxes less and less services.

    Who owns the debt? The rich!!

    One day riots will come that will not stop until those that have created this unjust system are removed.

    1. JJHMAN

      Another important factor in our financial dilemma is that the reduced taxes incentivize the wealthy to support the politicians that are so generous to them. It creates a vicious cycle that today has the top 1% owning and earning a greater share of the nation’s wealth than the bottom half while taking away any good that the government has done both at home and abroad. And the Trump regime is almost a caricature of that distortion. He longs for the “good ole days” of the robber barons.

  6. John Norris

    Global Food Price Index falls in May on lower cereal, vegetable oil and sugar prices…

  7. WeekendPeak

    A new(?) energy dense ( 1kwh/kg) energy storage:
    https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(25)00143-6?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2542435125001436?showall=true

    This is what ChatGPT has to say about the total energy efficiency:

    To assess the energy efficiency of the sodium-air fuel cell described in the paper — including the energy cost of producing the consumable sodium metal — we need to compare:

    * **Energy input**: The energy required to produce 1 kg of sodium metal.
    * **Energy output**: The energy delivered per 1 kg of sodium when consumed in the fuel cell.

    —

    ⚙️ Step 1: **Energy Output (Useful Work)**

    From the paper:

    * Theoretical energy density of sodium: **3.63 kWh/kg**
    * Practical energy delivered (including system inefficiencies): **2.1 kWh/kg**
    * Operating efficiency: **\~58%**

    So, from 1 kg of sodium, we can extract approximately **2.1 kWh of usable electricity**.

    —

    ⚡ Step 2: **Energy Input (Production of Sodium Metal)**

    Sodium is typically produced via electrolysis in a Downs cell:

    * **Thermodynamic minimum energy**: \~4.0 V per mole (per Faraday’s law)
    * **Practical operating voltage**: \~5.5–7.0 V
    * **Faradaic efficiency**: \~90%

    Energy required to produce 1 mole (23 g) of Na =

    E = \frac{(Voltage \times Charge)}{\text{Efficiency}} = \frac{(6 \, V \times 96485 \, C)}{0.90} = 643,233 \, J

    Convert to per kg:

    {Energy per kg-Na} = \frac{643,233 \, J}{0.023 \, {kg}} \approx 27.97 \, {MJ/kg} = 7.77 \, {kWh/kg}

    🔁 **Overall Energy Efficiency (Energy Out / Energy In)**

    {Efficiency} = \frac{2.1 \, \{kWh}}{7.77 \, \{kWh}} \approx 27\%

    This means for every unit of energy used to produce sodium, you recover about 27% as electricity via the fuel cell. This aligns with typical thermochemical-to-electrical conversion systems.

    🧮 Summary Table

    | Component | Value |
    | ——————————– | ———— |
    | Theoretical Na energy (OCV) | 3.63 kWh/kg |
    | Practical delivered energy | 2.1 kWh/kg |
    | Energy to produce Na | \~7.8 kWh/kg |
    | Round-trip energy efficiency | \~27% |
    | Faradaic efficiency (production) | \~90% |
    | Fuel cell electrical efficiency | \~58% |

    🧩 Notes

    * **Economic viability** improves with co-product utilization (e.g., chlorine, NaOH).
    * **Environmental impact** is offset by CO₂ capture via NaOH discharge products.
    * **Efficiency can improve** with better voltage matching and heat integration.

    Rgds
    WP
    edit – cleanup formatting

    1. kolbeinih

      WP

      Energy density is important – regardless of what AI has to say about it.

      Regards
      KIH

  8. Hickory

    Trump is pushing for Tip income to be tax-free.
    If it gets signed into law then expect many wealthy system players like law firms to shift toward tip billings/income.

    Trump knows a lot about this subject-
    How does a bride differ from a tip?
    A tip is paid after a service,
    A Bride is paid before a service is rendered.

  9. Doug Leighton

    A bit of Saturday morning coal trivia.

    TRUMP’S COAL COMEBACK GOES GLOBAL

    “In a move that fuses domestic revival with international strategy, the Trump administration has greenlit the expansion of Montana’s Bull Mountains coal mine—unlocking nearly 60 million tons of coal destined for key U.S. allies Japan and South Korea.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trumps-Coal-Comeback-Goes-Global.html

    1. Doug Leighton

      Meanwhile,

      CO2 LEVELS JUST BROKE ANOTHER RECORD.

      “When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm). By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm. This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.”

      https://ca.news.yahoo.com/co2-levels-just-broke-another-080000039.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink

  10. Loadsofoil

    This is what happens when immigration checks are not carried out for years.

    Now illegal immigrants are so many they violently try and overthrow the rule of law.

    https://www.foxnews.com/

    Backed up by democrats who have been defunding law and order for years.

    1. JJHMAN

      Wow. 150 rioters. We better get Hegseth to send in those Marines. Maybe they can send those 150 guilty rioters to Guantanamo. We don’t need no stinkin’ trials. We know that they are guilty because they were arrested. Why can’t those nasty immigrants obey the law like the administration does? Immigrants are so illegal they would probably even defy court orders.
      Yeah. Those darned Democrats they hate the rule of law so much they let a convicted felon become president. In 2021 those law-hating Democrats forced over 10,000 normal Americans to violently attempt to overthrow the government by not electing the same not-yet-convicted-but guilty-anyway felon.

    2. T HILL

      HAH!

    3. Loadsofoil

      It’s not immigrants. It is illegal immigrants who by their nature work illegally undercutting workers from the country who then struggle.

      But of course people like you don’t actually care about people you care about a creed. A creed’s with no law and order structure.

      Perhaps the BBC is fake news also.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvg7vxx888kt

    4. Mike

      Oh, so that’s it. Justify your laws by appealing to a creed. The creed I favour says Jews are not German. So make Jews Illegal. And ship ’em off to Auschwitz.
      The creed says Hispanics are not welcome. So make Hispanics illegal. Then send ’em to El Salvador. We don’t want no Poor Huddled Masses.

    5. Loadsofoil

      You don’t care about people who lose their jobs to illegals who work for less.

    6. JJHMAN

      Yes, some of them do take jobs from citizens but that is a small minority and, don’t forget, they are virtually all hired by well-to-do citizens who know what they are doing. Why aren’t you demonizing them? they are the ones who make it attractive to avoid the law and they benefit as much as the immigrants.
      Most of the jobs taken by “illegals” are jobs that no self-respecting macho gringo would take if he was starving to death. He would more likely hold up a liquor store. Law breaking in immigrant communities is, on average, at a lower level than in communities of native born.
      What do we see first generation Hispanic immigrants doing? Picking crops, washing dishes, sweeping floors, landscape labor. These are hard, low paying jobs and in most cases they have zero benefits. Those that do pay into Social Security rarely get any of the benefits.
      A few years ago a large Midwest slaughterhouse was picking up immigrants at pre-arranged locations on the Texas border and bussing them to a homeless shelter near their plant. After they were rested overnight and fed by the local charity they went to the slaughterhouse and went to work at jobs the locals wouldn’t do.
      But, surprise, I think we need to find a way to reduce illegal immigration to a minimal level. This country needs immigrants for many reasons but they should be permitted at some reasonable level. It can be done humanely without demonizing desperate people.

    7. LeeG

      Maybe Don Taco can release another few billion gallons of Central Valley irrigation water to show he can tell the Army Corp of Engineers what to do. Even if that water just runs down a dry ditch unused.

    8. got2surf

      No, this is what happens when your media literacy is zero.

      How high do you jump when Fox news tells you to jump? How many protests around the world were there, with 1000’s more people, that your beloved fake news mouthpiece failed to tell you about, or lie to you about?

      If you’re going to spend your life basing your beliefs on what Fox news tells, you are a lost cause.

    9. Loadsofoil

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvg7vxx888kt

      BBC is independent and described thousands of rioters waving Mexican flags and attacking police.

      Why don’t you have some of those people live in your house.

    10. Mike

      Peterloo. 1819, Manchester, England. 18 slain, 500 injured in crowd of men women and children when the authorities ordered the mounted militia to charge, sabres drawn, into a crowd of 60,000 protesters demanding parliamentary reform. One wonders how the BBC might have reported the affair with impartiality.
      How would they have reported the “treasonous” Easter Rising, Dublin, 1916, and the execution of the law breakers Pearce and others. Another muartyr for old Ireland, another murder for the crown.?

    11. Loadsofoil

      These people throwing petrol bombs are illegal criminals and should be deported.

      Do you know an estimated 300 million people want to come to the United States

      Would you let them all in.

    12. JJHMAN

      If that response was to me, as it seems, I may have pushed the sarcasm too far.

    13. LeeG

      Were you around LA in the 60’s? How about the Rodney King riots?
      It’s not pretty, there are people who riot there but turning this into Donald’s showdown against illegal immigration is step one for his police state as that’s the level of militancy required to deport the millions of people he rants about. You know, the Haitian Americans in Springfield Iowa that are eating the pets.

      Sure as chit deporting millions will do NOTHING to address the existential problems facing Amurica.

    14. Sheng Wu

      yes, LEEG,
      US has been facing urban and social problems left by decades of democrat left extremists’ policy, from CA’s $1k-theft-no-crime to homeless problem.
      When I first came to the US in 1992, US just woke up from similar mess left by democrat, e.g. NYC crime rate was going down and the mayor/Trump’s ex-lawyer was taking charge on crime like today’s LA. Lots of cities metro area revived from decades of abuse by going back to law and order. Today, you could still find lots of fancy shops/resturants have old wall and roof with memory of the messy 80’s. The MAGA started by Reagan, and carried on by Bush Senior and Clinton finally bear fruit in late 1990’s and thru 2008.

      I agree the riot started by King’s death is caused by racial injustice, and the police chief then bear the responsibility in the riot.

    15. JJHMAN

      “democrat left extremist” Make me laugh.
      Democrats do often try too hard to help people and the results are not always perfect but no Democrat has ever caused the damage to society that the average Republican social or financial policy has done WITH INTENT.

    16. Bob Nickson

      Without immigrants the United States will go into population decline. The U.S. total fertility rate in 2023 was 1.62 children per woman, down from 1.66 in 2022, which is below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to maintain the population. Whether or not this is a pro or a con could be a matter of some interesting debate on this forum.

      The U.S. benefits from immigrants, but it should not tolerate illegal immigration in my opinion, primarily because it creates an exploitable and vulnerable underclass. Illegal immigrants come to to U.S. because we want their labor. It is illegal to employ illegal immigrants, so where are the arrests of the employers? Remove the job demand for undocumented labor, and illegal immigration will decline.

      https://jabberwocking.com/illegal-immigration-is-mostly-driven-by-availability-of-jobs/

      I’ve worked with Latino immigrants, both by hiring them to help me with construction, and also at a manufacturing business that was staffed largely by Mexican immigrants. I Also live in a neighborhood with a lot of Latinos, and all of them that I know and have worked with personally are great people, are friendly, loyal, take care of each other, and work hard. First generation immigrants engage in crime at lower rates than native born.

      https://jabberwocking.com/liberal-and-conservative-myths-about-illegal-immigration/
      https://jabberwocking.com/immigrants-are-pretty-law-abiding-people/

      Obama and Biden deported significantly more immigrants during their terms than Trump did during his first term, without inciting riots, or invoking dubious legal pretexts to justify deploying soldiers against civilians.

      https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-week-ahead-88c
      “the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military (including federalized National Guard troops) from being used for domestic law enforcement.”

  11. Doug Leighton

    16 percent. Not very impressive! Maybe next year?

    U.S. ELECTRIC VEHICLE ADOPTION PLUMMETS

    Just 16% of American drivers say they are likely to buy an electric vehicle (EV) as their next car—the lowest share recorded in AAA’s annual surveys since 2019. High battery maintenance costs, high purchase prices, and concerns about range continue to be major deterrents for U.S. consumers to consider buying an EV, according to AAA’s latest survey released earlier this month.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Electric-Vehicle-Adoption-Plummets.html

    1. JJHMAN

      No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

      H. L. Mencken

  12. hightrekker

    “More than 47,000 acres of land along Northern California’s Klamath River was recently returned to the Yurok Tribe in the state’s largest land back deal to date.”

    No humans would be even better

  13. Doug Leighton

    If this doesn’t depress you nothing will.

    ‘TICKING TIMEBOMB’: SEA ACIDITY HAS REACHED CRITICAL LEVELS

    “We are coming to terms with an existential threat while grappling with the difficult reality that much suitable habitat for key species has already been lost. It’s clear that governments can no longer afford to overlook acidification in mainstream policy agendas.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/09/sea-acidity-ecosystems-ocean-acidification-planetary-health-scientists

    1. T HILL

      Thanks Doug.

      Not a biologist. I don’t have a good understanding of the implications and consequences of this. Do you have any recommended & authoritative sources for more detail?

    2. Doug Leighton

      T Hill —
      Try this.
      https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/ocean-acidification

  14. Sheng Wu

    there are still 2 trillion tons of coal in Xinjiang under 1km deep, and estimated shallow <200meter coal at 730 Billion tons, over 40% of the total reserve in China. Most of the shallow coal are low ash long flame coal. In 2024, Xinjiang produced just over 0.5 billion tons of coal, but could ramp up to 2 billion for 2 decades easily.

    In fact, Xinjiang is already producing over 60% of the solar silicon in China, and the electricity there is only 0.023~0.037 dollar/kwh for solar silicon manufacturers.
    Xinjiang also is producing over 35% of aluminum in China, and the electricity usage in Xinjiang with population only 26million is larger than the largest province, Henan or Sichuan with population about 100 million, ranking #5 in China only after Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong. Per capita electricity production in Xinjiang is 5~6 times China per capita average, and even higher than US per capita average!
    Per capita GDP in Xinjiang is already higher than China national average, and will be top 3 by 2030.

    Several ultra-high voltage DC-DC transmission lines from Jungeer Basin to East Coast will be delivering electricity that could supply close to 200 million population metro usage by 2030.

    The projection is that Xinjiang could supply over 80% of global solar silicon panels and with 50% renewable by 2030.

    1. JJHMAN

      …and we can count on the Trump administration and enablers in Congress to make sure that China stays ahead of us in dominating that technology while both countries do everything possible to make sure we need the technology but we will probably not get there in time to limit the fifth extinction.

    2. Sheng Wu

      ‘In America, impossible is what we do best,’ says Trump.

    3. K

      ‘In America, impossible is what we do best,’ says Trump.

      True, until Trump came along and is harming U.S. scientific research here in a massive scale, and his asinine polices that come out on a nearly daily basis are making us the laughingstock of the world. I said years ago republican voters will vote for a rabid dog if that was their nominee. And here we are!

    4. JJHMAN

      “harming scientific research?
      That’s more like a hobby to him. His primary goal is grifting, his life time avocation. Second in priority is enabling his “base” of racists, the willfully ignorant and those who have always been the yes-men to bullies. All for the benefit of his other benefactors, the ethics free obscenely wealthy.
      So all of the hobbies come after that; hobbies like destroying scientific research, destroying an already third rate health care system, enabling environmental destruction, destroying worker protections, destroying international relations. Things like that. Just for fun.
      It could take a generation to recover what he cand ruin in four years and we may not have a generation’s worth of time to recover.

    5. K

      JJHMAN
      Very well-articulated, and yes, we are in deep shite.

  15. shallow sand

    Dennis. I finally bought an EV!

    Granted it’s a golf cart. But in our small town golf carts are somewhat becoming the norm in all but the cold winter months. There are almost 1k registered in a city of 6k.

    It’s very fun to drive. Maybe I’ll take the bigger step someday. But I bought a new truck in 2023 and hopefully will drive it until at least 2030. So an EV truck is a ways off for me.

    1. D C

      Shallow sand,

      What did you get? My brother calls my M3 a golf cart, but its a fast one. Enjoy.

    2. shallow sand

      A Sierra AX2. A new company based in Georgia.

      It has a high and low setting. The high setting allows it to reach 25 mph, but I only use that on streets.

      The low setting is 15 mph, which I use for golf and around the neighborhood. The charge lasts a lot longer on the low setting.

    3. D C

      Cool. A used Chevy Bolt might have been an option, you can get those for about 14K, more expensive but probably 200 mile range and can definitely go 15 MPH, ride might be similar.

  16. Jt

    The green movement isn’t about saving the planet it’s about saving the unsustainable industrial way of life. As such it’s doomed to failure.

    Bright Green Lies https://a.co/d/527DqPd

    Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Derrick Jensen and his coauthors argue, has been distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy need to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but with the sanctity of the Earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth―we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly. ‘Tell me how you seek, and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies: It asks the questions most refuse to ask, and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”

    1. Hickory

      JT. “it’s about saving the unsustainable industrial way of life”
      Given that, do you advocate simply skipping the efforts and rather working toward a quicker de-industrializing/population downsizing path?
      How do you propose the US gets going on that? Who (which tribe or party) champions that path?

    2. Iron Mike

      Hickory,

      Depends on what you mean by “efforts”.

      If you mean destroying the biosphere further so we can sustain BAU and destroying any chance for future generations then no.
      If you mean stopping consumerism and spreading our plague of greed and selfishness biologically and culturally, then yes.

  17. Ovi

    A new Open-Thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-june-11-2025/

    An update to World and Non-OPEC has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/february-world-and-non-opec-oil-production/

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