EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – April 2020 Edition with data for February 2020

171 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – April 2020 Edition with data for February 2020”

1. Any non-Petroleum comments should be posted in this thread, thanks.

2. Well, Trump has performed a miracle with coal.

   1. Yes he does. As always!

      A coal fleet of 220 GW produced a embarrassingly low 56 TWh. It translates to a capacity factor of around 36%!!

      To put it into perspective, US would have required only 80 GW of coal plants running full steam to produce the same quantity of electricity. But wait, it gets interesting

      First of all, this was in February, when coal usually runs at a higher capacity. Even last year, it generated 80 TWh. Before that, it was never less than 100 TWh.

      There are a few states like Wyoming, WV and Kentucky where coal is pretty much the only source of power and are almost always running. If the capacity factor of the whole fleet is 36% and some states have capacity factors in the 80’s and 90’s, try to imagine the fate of coal plants in other states.

      Second, this was before the pandemic hit. Infact the total generation went up marginally compared to last February. There are now reports that March and April were even worse for coal and the coal holding at the plants are at record levels. There is a very real chance the CF falls to 25% in April. Means 3/4th of the fleet is theoretically idle.

      Who will in their right mind will still hold on to these liabilities on their balance sheet? Now the Republicans might try to influence in places they can to delay the closure announcement till November but a wave of closure is coming once the plants burn through the coal in hand through the summer peak.

      It would be convenient for the wingnuts to blame it on the dems if Biden gets elected (most probably he will) but there is no denying that atleast 40 to 50 GW is going to close by this time next year. By the time of next election in 5 years, not more than 60 or 70 GW of fleet is going to survive. To put it in perspective, 150 GW that will retire is larger than the fleet of all countries except China and India.

      Trump indeed has performed a miracle!!

   2. Meanwhile in UK:

      Coal is currently generating 0% of Britain’s power. The coal-free run has lasted 23 days and 18 hours so far.
      https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/28/britain-breaks-record-for-coal-free-power-generation

      The collapse of coal and rise of renewable energy sources have led to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions from the UK power sector. Since 2012, the average carbon intensity of the grid – the amount of emissions required to produce one kilowatt hour of energy – has declined by more than two-thirds, from 507g of CO2 to 161g.

      Final turbine installed at UK’s East Anglia offshore wind farm
      https://www.smart-energy.com/renewable-energy/final-turbine-installed-at-uks-east-anglia-offshore-wind-farm/

      Beginning in June 2019, a total of 102 Siemens Gamesa SWT-7.0-154 offshore wind turbines have been installed at the windfarm site, 43km off the Suffolk coast.

      9 months. It’s all that takes.

      Now the next one:
      World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm: Dogger Bank
      https://www.azocleantech.com/amp/article.aspx?ArticleID=1072

      The Hornsea One project, which is set to open in 2020, will produce 1.2 GW in energy generated by turbines, making it the world’s largest offshore wind farm. However, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm will overtake this once it opens in 2023 with a capacity of 3.6 GW.

      Btw, UK went coal free for 18 days last year. That was a record. Anyone wants to guess how long will UK be coal free this year? My guess: 180 days.

      1. “The collapse of coal and rise of renewable energy sources have led to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions from the UK power sector.”

         1) What is the share of imports and how are the projections for imports? 🙂

         2) Where would the imports come from. 🙂

         1. I found some data here: https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2019/sep/01/uk-energy-price-fears-as-electricity-imports-climb-to-record-high

            The four high-voltage power cables linking the UK to Europe’s energy markets imported a sixth more electricity than the year before, after a new interconnector opened in January.

            In total, European electricity imports made up almost 7% of the UK’s total demand, and the government hopes to increase imports to about 20% by 2025

            This link has an image on the source country for electricity consumed in UK: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/electricity-imports-at-record-high-as-new-link-allows-cheaper-deal-jfscq995m

            Its UK 90%, France 5% and the remaining split between Netherlands and Belgium.

            1. Portugal has been coal-free for 52 days now.

               https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/050620-portugal-goes-coal-free-in-april-as-demand-drops-12-amid-lockdown

3. Islandboy, concerning The Planet of Humans. The primary message of the film was that Wall Street has taken over the renewable energy movement, and in the process, they are increasing the rate that the planet is being destroyed. There is little doubt that, in the case of biofuels, this is true. They are clearcutting forests for woodchips to generate electricity. And they are destroying entire forest to grow palm oil trees.

   Hydro, why no mention? The reason is obvious. All the available hydropower has been in place for decades. Very little has been added for half a century or more. The environmental destruction brought on by dams has long been done and long been forgotten. It is not getting either better or worse. Why discuss it now?

   You say: One take away from the movie for me was that all this environmental destruction was happening with very limited benefit. Then you go on to talk about CO2 emissions as if that were the only environmental problem being discussed. Yes, the CO2 increase has been slowed. Some because of wind and solar and some because of switching from coal to natural gas. But that is just one of the many environmentally destructive problems discussed by the film. Why, in your reply, did you ignore all the other environmentally destructive problems brought up in this film?

   The renewable energy movement has become a cult, a cult that will book no criticism whatsoever. Surely they must be fully aware that the entire movement has been taken over by Wall Street, a Wall Street that does not give a damn about preserving the environment. But when this point is presented to them, they simply ignore it or resort to calling those who point this out, vile names.

   From Salon, bold mine.

   As if the Koch Brothers profiting from green energy weren’t disturbing enough, “Planet of the Humans” then runs down the slimy ties between Wall Street and green energy advocates. We see shots of Goldman Sachs execs explaining how to turn forests into profits; we learn that Sierra Club partners with Aspiration Funds, which despite its green projects also includes a number that profit from the destruction of the planet. And we see Al Gore team up with former Goldman Sachs asset manager David Blood, touting the idea that capitalism gives people an incentive to do “their best.”

   McKibben promotes divesting from fossil fuels and investing in green options, like Green Century Funds. But the film reports that less than 1 percent of their stock is invested in solar and wind energy.

   The film argues that even left-leaning, pro-planet activists can become elitist oligarchs shilling for corporate capital. Underscoring that these developments are anything but subtle, Gibbs remarks to viewers that “the takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete.”

   That, Islandboy, was the subject of the film. Why, dear God why, is everyone ignoring that very obvious point?

   1. Ron, right on!!!
      Perhaps this fellow can help you understand the psychology of much of entitled humankind (and get a laugh too).
      Millenial
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00FDR1E0zvE

      Flat Earth (a real mind bender)
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAk9718Jo8

      Tesla Owners
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxPAwIeL0w

      1. GF,

         LOL I love the way that guy just shits on everyone. Brilliant.

   2. Ron, overfishing, urban sprawl, deforestation, water pollution, population growth, waste production, ocean acidification, lowered biodiversity, sea level rise, wars, pandemics, etc. are almost always ignored by the Electric Cult who keep trying to convince us that a scattering of EVs and rooftop solar panels will somehow save our poor planet.

   3. Ron,

      Brilliantly said.

   4. Ron,
      It will take a hell of a lot of money to wean humanity from fossil fuel. And that is going to happen one way or the other -depletion with shortfall of energy, either with or without significant measures at attempted adaptation.
      Whether the money is spent on measures to improve energy use efficiency or build out new systems of energy generation and storage, it is a huge sum hard to contemplate.
      On a personal level, just get a quote for replacing your windows and re-insulating your home, new efficient furnace/heat pump, solar on the roof, batteries at the home or in the car. And then apply a similar process at larger scale to a small or large business, or a hospital or manufacturing plant.
      The only way any of this is going to happen, just like hydroelectric and the grid in the 20th century, is with massive capital inflow from either government, wall street with all of its bond, savings, and pension money, or from the largest companies in the world.
      For lack of will, the USA has taken a back street to China on this innovation job.
      Lack of capital will join lack of intelligent long-term energy policy as the biggest hurdles to adaptation. It is no longer a technological problem, save battery capacity and sustainability.
      So, when massive capital is needed, where do you get it? From Mother Earth News reader contributions or donations at the farmers market?

      Seems as though some are so invested mentally and self-identity into being right regarding the idea of collapse, that they will grasp at straws to deride any attempt at adaptation to the current situation.
      I don’t roll that way.
      I don’t see the problem as wall street, the chinese, cobalt supply, etc.
      I see it as massive overshoot, and dismal lack of appropriate focus on the problems at hand.

      Note- wall street did not force the EU to enact the policies of biofuel mandate that is a huge tragedy for the environment on many continents. It was politicians with a severe form of greenwashing policy-
      Burned- Are trees the New Coal
      https://vimeo.com/286550378?ref=fb-share&1&fbclid=IwAR3UHGOBaxqdhWjb8maecXUksvpPXksqxrS1wWfL8vlBD99b3de8qlZYCaY

      1. I don’t see the problem as wall street, the chinese, cobalt supply, etc.
         I see it as massive overshoot, and dismal lack of appropriate focus on the problems at hand.

         Of course. No one is blaming Wall Street, the Chinese, or anything else for the situation the planet finds itself in today. They didn’t cause it, they are just aggravating the problem by trying to make lots of money while telling everyone that they have the fix for all the world’s problems. They lie.

         The real problem is the evolutionary success of one rapacious great ape. But that is a very long story and one that I hope to tell at a later date.

      2. Hickory,

         Our energy systems are very large: BAU is very, very expensive, so a new system is also not cheap. But…a large part of the transition will be as cheap or cheaper than our current systems, even ignoring external costs and savings. Think of passengers vehicles: they turn over roughly every 15 years. EVs have a total cost of ownership that’s as low or lower than ICEs. Just stop building ICEs, and in 15 years you’ve transitioned to a lower cost fleet.

         Similarly, power plants very very roughly have a life of about 30 years, and renewables are already as cheap or cheaper (and that difference will get bigger). Stop building FF power plants, and in 30 years you’re at least 90% there. If you want to transition faster, then you’ll have some accelerated depreciation and stranded assets: that, of course, would be a good problem to have.

         And, of course, efficiency has a very good E and $-ROI.

   5. “Why, dear God why, is everyone ignoring that very obvious point?”

      Well there is the matter of scale. The scale of the problem is huge. The amount of electricity being consumed is huge and growing. When trying to transition from one huge system to another, how can it be done without capitalism and Wall Street? Part of the goal of the green movement is to get free market investors to stop investing and even pull out of fossil fuel burning projects and instead fund projects that at least show the promise of reducing carbon emissions.

      As can be seen from the data presented in these reports on capacity additions and retirements, that is beginning to happen, first with coal but, Natural Gas cannot be far behind. All this is happening, not because of any green movement but, as Tony Seba likes to point out, for pure economic reasons. Generating electricity using fossil fuels is becoming increasingly uncompetitive and that is just capitalism at work. My hope is that biofuel production will suffer the same fate as fossil fuel production.

      There is some work being done in Germany and in Australia that is focused on using a surplus of very cheap wind and solar energy to make hydrogen and even make synthetic fuels. If synthetic fuels, made using solar and wind were to make palm oil, sugar cane ethanol and all other biofuels uncompetitive in the free market, would that not be a positive outcome? That is what I think should be the ultimate goal and the sooner it happens the better. An Internet search for “the economics of synthetic fuels” shows that there is a lot of research going on in this area. We will eventually see how this plays out if we stick around long enough.

      1. Regarding funding of big projects, I have thought for years just how useful it would be to have a mechanism where individuals, small groups, towns and organizations could buy into big projects, and thereby have direct ownership of power production facilities.
         Such as a big solar PV production right outside of Las Cruces NM, or some such blazing bright place. A so-called Solar Bond, earning 5% (or more) for 30 years.
         $10,000 @ 5% in 30yrs becomes 44K.
         Many average people would be empowered by such a deal.
         No fancy wall street action need be involved in such a deal.
         Its not complicated.

         1. “Outside of Las Cruces”

            Instead of destroying more natural environment, every roof attached to the grid should be solar. Do it in the suburbs.

            1. I’ve flown over the desert Southwest and it looks like God forsaken place, except for the few places where humans have altered the natural environment by irrigating. Las Cruces is actually a case in point. It’s obvious from the image below that were it not for the Rio Grande, it would probably not exist!

               

               1. It’s also worth mentioning that a lot of the American Southwest is anything but pristine, and only a desert thanks to overgrazing in the 19th century, and “flood control” measures that drain off all the scant rainwater as quickly as possible, instead of allowing it to seep into the soil.

                  Remember the Texans marched West at the beginning of the Civil War, because they wanted Mexican slaves and ample grazing in what’s now Arizona. And I guess because they were afraid of a real fight.

               2. I live in Las Cruces. There is nothing here but desert. There is no agriculture here. Nothing grows but cactus and dry weather scrub brush. There are some cattle here but all their food is shipped in. All the people food must be shipped in also.

                  But there are many other such places all over the world. If there is ever a collapse of the world supply chain, now global, billions of people would die.

            2. Can you spot the Solana (Solar Thermal) Generating Station in the image of the area around Gila Bend, Arizona? Again, all of the green in the image obviously depends on the Gila River.

               

            3. Here’s the area around Lake Powell and Page, Arizona. Lake Powell is a man made lake, formed behind the Glen Canyon Dam and hydroelectric station, Can you spot the site of the now closed Navajo Generating Station?

               

            4. The Ivanpah solar facility is in the image below. Can anybody spot it?

               

               1. Hello Island,

                  One man’s desert is another boy’s Island

                  I believe it’s wrong to view the south western states deserts as a “God forsaken place”. That may have been my view 40 years ago, but not today. There is a lot of wild life out there. I have crossed parts of these deserts hundreds of times by vehicle and after time one learns to see the beauty. It’s also gives guys like Doug ammunition that the green EV group miss understand the big environmental problem. Expanding mans foot print needs to be minimized at all levels including American deserts.

                  Forty year ago you could travel 100 mile from Indio to Blythe on Interstate 10 and the only man made structure was an old broken down gas station at Desert Center. Now there are lots of human intrusions, even a prison. I’ve seen the solar array near Primm near the California and Nevada boarder. It includes roads, fencing, concrete footings, bulldozer leveling, steel structures to support the panels and man. In my view, an eye sore like a tattoo a cross a beautiful woman’s chest or a tramp stamp on her lower back.

                  Why not cover 99% of current structures with 75% panel roofs ? When currently the LA basin uses about 10% of it’s structures with about 10% coverings.

                  I agree with Bob on parking lots were the power is closer to it end user and makes more environmental sense.

                  Deserts are not a waste land for solar panels and Goldman Sachs. We can do better.

               2. While I agree that there is lot’s of built up space that could be covered with PV, I stand by what I said about the desert southwest based on my vantage point in a commercial airliner at 30,000 feet! Every time I have visited California, I have looked at the vast expanses of light brown nothingness en route and thought to myself, “I would not like to be stranded down there!”

                  The distinct lack of greenery betrays the absence of water and human beings can only last three days or so without water. Under the blistering desert heat, probably less. Any life in these places must be uniquely adapted to survive there and these areas are so vast that it is very unlikely that any life displaced by PV would be driven to extinction.

                  I looked into how much land would be needed to power the US with PV alone. According to this article a square of land 154 miles each side would do the trick (see graphic below). That’s no wind, no hydro, no nuclear, no biomass, just solar PV.

                  The (solar thermal) plant near Primm, Nevada is just visible as brownish dots against the background, just southwest of Primm. Almost exactly in the center of the image. That plant is unlikely to last very long in it’s current form. It lacks any storage so, it is susceptible to sudden drops in power output if a cloud passes over. These plants also operate at fairly high temperatures so they are subject to all sorts of issues regarding fatigue from daily cycling. I am not optimistic that it will remain operational for another ten years.

                  The long and short of it is that even at the scale required to provide a sizeable share of US electricity I suspect the environmental impacts of PV are going to pale in comparison to biofuels and even FF extraction, coal, oil sands etc.

                  

            5. Here’s a image of the desert southwest with all the areas above included. Las Cruces is where the tag is.

               

            6. Finally, here is an image taken from the Global Solar Atlas web site, showing the solar resource in all the areas in the images above. Again Las Cruces is tagged. The image below shows why the aera just north of the mountains north of Los Angeles is a “popular” site for solar farms. From the looks of it, sokar farms in that area should generate on average, more than 6 kWh of electricity per day per installed kW of capacity. That would suggest a capacity factor of >25% for a plant that produces nothing half the time (at night)!

               

            7. The point I am making with all these images is that it seems a bit hypocritical to look at most areas in the desert southwest and cite environmental concerns as reasons to oppose solar energy. It is quite obvious that humans have been messing about with the environment, primarily for agriculture, for a long time. Below is a satellite image of North America for some more context. Notice how green the middle and the east is compared to the desert southwest.

               

            8. Yes HB, roof tops are a great place to install, when they are clear of obstruction, properly oriented, unshaded, and ready to go without maintenance for 30 yrs. I had a fresh roof installed (1st redo in 60 years) on my place just a year before the panels went up. Zero shade, SW exposure, only a few damn pipes and chimney in the way.
               Yet there is no denying that a big flat space , hopefully with a transmission line (that has excess capacity) and substation right nearby, in a prime sunny locale is unbeatable for low cost electrical generation.
               Contrary to first guess, much of the southwest has limitations to installations of large solar facilities. Things like nature reserves, military installation, rough terrain (very rough territory), road and transmission line sparsity (not sure if that is a real word), ownership (especially BLM).
               But it is sunny as heck, and it will be a long time before good sites are used up.

               Here is the kind of place solar developers are looking to work on. This a BLM location that they are considering opening for solar development. The BLM website is very good. You can see their criteria, and search by state.
               http://blmsolar.anl.gov/sez/nv/dry-lake/

               Here a sample report for Nevada indicating the kind of factors that development has to take into account.
               http://water.nv.gov/hearings/past/Spring – Cave – Dry Lake and Delamar Valleys 2011/Exhibits/SNWA Exhibits/SNWA_Exh_457_Slide_Show_Linvill_and_Candelaria.pdf

               1. Solar parking lot canopies seem like a win-win-win situation.

               2. Yes indeed. The big artificial reservoirs in the west, like Lake Mead and San Luis, are also prime locations for floating installation.
                  What I hate to see is forests, or places where forests could grow, being diverted to PV. Gross Primary Productivity of a Biome is a strong measure of the capacity of a site to support life. All landuse decisions should be taking this factor into account, as a paramount concern.
                  Here is a snapshot of GPP (not an annual average). The upper great plains looks worse than an annual average due to winter dormancy during this data set acquisition I believe. Gives you an idea though.
                  https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/0/636/us-psn.jpg

                  Also, on a related note, corn ethanol is produced on about 25% of the USA best farmland, and provides less than 5% (?) of transport needs. Could be for food or wildlife instead.
                  Similar situation in Brazil with sugar cane.
                  Policy choice.

   6. The real point to “The Planet of Humans” is that Michael Moore is (rightly) worried about UAW jobs. He got his start with “Roger and Me” a takedown of the CEO of GM. He was born in a suburb of Flint and has seen what big business disinterest can do to a community.

      EVs are much simpler and cheaper to build than ICE. They are also much cheaper maintain and fuel. Both the car industry and the liquid fuel industry will be hit hard in the coming decade, costing millions of jobs worldwide.

      Elon Musk is a flaming asshole, as he has demonstrated amply in recent days on Twitter, “morally” no better than Roger Moore. But he is a lot smarter, and has a (mostly) realistic view of where the industry is headed.

      The problem in America is that the government doesn’t intervene to protect worker rights, or even provide basics like health care, a transportation system, public safety, education and clean water. Attacking technological change won’t fix that.

      Rants about windmills won’t help. Even if battery shortages mean there won’t be many pure EVs for a while (a distinct possibility) partial electrification will have a similar effect. For example, active suspension is much simpler mechanically than the the current tech, fly-by-wire could replace power steering, etc. Software is eating the world, industrial jobs are disappearing.

      The movie is an attempt to swim against the tide. You could argue that it is anti-capitalist, but it seems more Luddite to me. It is weakly argued with ten-year-old footage.

      1. Roger Smith, not Roger Moore, obviously.

      2. I always suspected that corporate guidance communications via Elon Musk’s stream of consciousness on Twitter might be a poor strategy. But he was so fucking brilliant I guess that it couldn’t be stopped.
         Trump and Musk are both good examples of what happens to people who surround themselves with sycophants. The Trumpsters and the buy-and-hold fanbois may beg to differ.

   7. PCI has a nice podcast called Crazy Town. Jason Bradford is on the show. You might remember him as the guy that Nick accused of parroting fossil fuel talking points because, in his report The Furure is Rural, JB acknowledges that society will have to reduce its energy consumption. I guess that’s not cornucopian enough for Nick. Anyway, here’s the link. The most recent episode discusses Michael Moore’s film.

      https://www.postcarbon.org/crazytown/

   8. 1. the film wants to smear renewables because they’re “taken over by capitalism”: well, bully.

      Michael Moore hates capitalism, and renewables trade fuel costs for up-front capital costs.
      And where do you get the capital from? Duh – capitalists.

      How does one get to anywhere near the scale needed to replace fossil fuels with renewables?
      Gonna require a lot of capital.

      Are a lot of capitalists (now and historically) guilty of trashing the water, trees, etc.? Sure.
      Are they ALL (now)? No – and their investments in real renewables (e.g. not woody biomass burning) proves it.

      Also, the film mocks people for failed investments – why is this? Should people be shamed for trying to learn and explore?

      Labeling all capitalists as all evil all the time is just plain stupid and silly.
      Think about these two scenarios:
      s1: activist to Enbridge exec: “You’re evil and ought not be allowed to invest in renewables. You’re company must go bankrupt and you must be on the streets to be punished for pipeline oil spills, etc.”
      s2: activist to Enbridge exec: “It’s good you got into renewables. The more and faster you do, the more likely you get to keep your job and avoid heavy handed regulation once the impacts of climate change and peak fossil fuel become even more apparent.”

      If they want to trash capitalists who are harming the planet, why not go after the ones promoting over consumption like fast fashion? Coca Cola gets a 5 second blurb, while PV is trashed for minutes.

      2. the film tells a huge amount of lies about renewables and the organizations/people involved. THIS is what’s upsetting a lot of people.

      https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/films-for-actions-statement-on-planet-of-the-humans/
      There’s a good selection of critiques at the above link.

      Some favorites:
      https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/04/24/planet-of-the-humans-a-reheated-mess-of-lazy-old-myths
      It’s been updated – particularly relevant are the pics of the turbine site in Vermont vs. true mountain top removal, and the note that it was filmed during fog, so there’s no scale/perspective, so calling wind turbine installation “mountain top removal” is a lie.

      The film claims that they got Bill McKibben to stop promoting biomass burning. WRONG!
      Here’s his review, with references going back to 2016, where he changed his mind way before the film was released.
      https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/bill-mckibbens-response-to-planet-of-the-humans-documentary/

      My own effort – I found too many lies to get to:
      http://thingsidlikepeopletoknow.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-documentary-planet-of-humans.html

      3. Why the false assumption that everyone in favor of renewables ignores trees and other land-use issues, or population or consumption? Yes, we need to stop cutting down forests in a frenzy, and yes, we ought to plant a bunch of trees, but where will the electricity come from to power our (likely powered-down, degrowthed) lives? Michael Moore/Jeff Gibbs seem to think that doing nothing is an option.

      It’s not – people are going to try to run their lives as well as they can, we like our pumped water and refrigeration. If we wait until fossil fuels run low, then we don’t have time/money to build out renewables, so have a hard crash, the forests will vanish in a final frenzy along with the animals and most of humanity.

4. @Islandboy
   To a standard eyeball, that coal decline looks more like a downward curve than a descending line ie the decline in coal is accelerating.

   NAOM

5. @SW
   From your comment on cell technology in the last thread. Can much higher efficiency panels be made at the same or lower cost than the same output power of existing panels? That is the production cost while ignoring the “The Valley of death”. For example can a 40% efficient panel be made for the same cost as 2 x 20% panels?

   NAOM

   1. I believe that the process is playing out more or less like that but, more incrementally. Currently, commercially available modules max out at 22.8% while in 2010, premium modules might have been less than 18% efficient. At the same time costs have fallen. The result is that for a given area you can get up to 50% more power (assuming the base line efficiency is ~15.5%) and for a given cost you can get more than twice the amount of power. See:

      How solar panel cost and efficiency have changed over time

   2. No. Overcoming “the valley of death” is about driving down manufacturing costs. It is about the economy of scale that can be achieved only by large scale manufacturing processes that are guaranteed to loose money on a massive scale initially, therefore no for profit company is going to invest in them. The single minded focus on profit and the current cost of a product is what creates “the valley of death”. When the Chinese started manufacturing solar panels they were not profitable and they were accused of dumping them on the market. But that is what is necessary. Government intervention in the market to get a new technology a foothold in a marketplace that is dominated by a legacy technology. Hell, the government subsidized the transcontinental railroad to supplant the pony express. Initially these superior technologies are more expensive. Until they aren’t.

   3. 40% will require 2 or more “junctions” – the interface between two regions of a semi-conductor that have different “doping”. So one requires different semiconductors, with different “band-gaps” – the energy difference between the “valance-band” electrons that are stuck in the bonds between the atoms/molecules, and the “conduction-band” electrons that have high enough energy to move about the material. The electrons get that extra energy when light of a high enough frequency (energy) is absorbed. Light of a lower than band-gap energy just passes through. Light of higher than band-gap is absorbed, but the extra energy turns into heat.

      A single band-gap cell is limited to about 30% in the real world. Max theoretical is 33.7 percent, but that ignores some loss mechanisms. Max for silicon real world is about 29% from the latest I’ve read. Silicon’s band-gap is slightly non-optimal. The band-gap is a property of the semi-conductor material, like a metal’s conductivity.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit

      But when one picks two or more semi-conductors to stack in a multi-junction cell, one has to deal with current matching of the different junctions, because the current will be limited to the lowest current generating junction. But the temperature coefficients of different materials vary, and as solar cells get hotter, their band-gaps shrink, changing how much current and voltage they produce.

      Then with multi-junction cells, one has to either have current collectors on each side of each junction (which likely causes shading losses), or to physically and electronically join the sub-cells, but then one runs into issues of crystal lattice mismatch between different materials. Any kind of crystal defect in a solar cell will trap charge carriers and cause losses.

      This is a pretty good writeup:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-junction_solar_cell

      What SW says about the “valley of death” is true, but there are also other issues that determine a technology’s viability. Silicon is the 2nd most abundant element in the earth’s crust, is non-toxic, not moisture sensitive, high temperature resistant, has an oxide that is insoluble in water, etc.

      Tellurium (as in cadmium-telluride cells, like from First Solar), is very rare, and Cd-Te is moisture sensitive. Because it’s a multi-crystalline material, it’s not as efficient as a single crystal, so even though it’s a “direct” band-gap material (no “phonons” – vibrations – required to assist the photon absorption) thus requiring only a few microns thick layer vs. ~100 microns for silicon, it hasn’t caught on.
      Also – because the whole module is deposited at once, it and other thin films suffer because the module only has as much current as it’s worst cell. Silicon PV allows one to sort the cells so one current matches them in different modules.

      It would be lovely to make a 40% panel for the same cost as 2 20%, but I don’t see that in the cards.
      The MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapor deposition) used to build most multi-junction cells is slow and the precursors expensive and toxic.

      Crystalline silicon is pretty cheap these days.
      You can get an idea of the steps and costs in this:
      https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/72134.pdf

      While efficiency is good, and higher efficiency drives down the cost of module glass/frame/mount/installation/etc. on a per-watt basis, the efficiency can’t cost more than it brings in gains.

      And note the “almost 50% cell” being touted uses concentrated sunlight.
      But concentration requires “direct normal irradiation” (DNI) – sunlight coming straight from the sun entering the concentrating optics parallel to its optical axis. It varies, but DNI is only about 800-850 watts/m^2, while global irradiance (including scattered light) is about 1000 watts/m^2. So right off the top, concentrators loose 15-20% of total sunlight.
      And anything but very low concentration requires two-axis tracking, increasing the expense.

      1. Thanks for that, the NREL pdf is interesting. The way my thinking is going is ‘is it really cost effective to produce 30-40% cells as they come off the production line ignoring all the costs of getting to that point?’. ‘If production costs of a 30% cell are 2x that of a 20% cell, is there a real advantage to moving to them?’ I am taking the investment to reach a mature production cycle out of the equation for this as well as ignoring balance of system since most of the large BOS costs are in the inverter (same), switchgear (same), connection to house/grid (same) while the only real saving is a little racking. On the other hand, if a 30% cell can be turned out at a similar cost to a 20% then maybe it might be worthwhile.

         NAOM

6. Global PV capacity additions hit 115 GW in 2019, says IEA

   Last year, PV developers throughout the world installed 114.9 GW of new solar power, according to fresh statistics from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

   In its Snapshot of Global Photovoltaic Market 2020 report, the IEA said that last year’s total represented a 12% increase from 2018, with significant growth across all continents. Overall, a total of 629 GW of solar was installed throughout the world by the end of 2019.

   In terms of new capacity, China was the largest PV market for the third year in a row in 2019 with 30.1 GW, followed by the United States with 13.3 GW and Japan with 7.7 GW.

   This makes a mockery of a forecast published by Fitch Solutions Macro Research about 18 months ago:

   Solar sector to add 552 GW by 2027 led by China

   Over the coming decade, the global solar market is in line for 138% growth, from 395 GW at the end of 2017 to 942 GW at the end of 2027, shows a new outlook produced by Fitch Solutions Macro Research – a unit of Fitch Group.

   So 18 months on and we’re more than two fifths of the way there!

   1. Fitch Solutions Macro Research forecast

      We need a new phrase – ‘Tony Seba’ed’ – Urgh, can’t figure the right spelling or punctuation.

      NAOM

   2. The net additions/retirements year to date graph for 2020 YTD shows 2019 YTD.

      1. Thanks. Fixed.

   3. Abu Dhabi’s 1.5 GW tender draws world record low solar bid of $0.0135/kWh

      https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/04/28/abu-dhabis-2-gw-tender-draws-world-record-solar-bid-of-0-0135-kwh/

      Just 1.35 cents. For 1.5 GW capacity. Will be ready in Q2 of 2022.

7. islandboy,
   Great charts thanks.

   I also agree with the last point you made about the pandemic and renewables — zero marginal cost energy sources have much better survival chances in situations like this.

8. The IMF is predicting -3% growth for the world economy in 2020, and 5.8% growth in 2021. This is based on the assumption that the pandemic “fades in the second half of 2020”.

   https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020

   But what happens if we fail to find a vaccine?

   https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/covid-19-crisis-this-is-what-happens-if-a-coronavirus-vaccine-is-never-developed-c-1013813

   1. The only way how we will get out of this is by developing immunity, however the only way how we will do that is through contracting the virus. The reality is, you can’t catch it or any virus for that matter if you’re standing 6 or more feet apart from another person. Obviously we know what has to be done because, as was mentioned earlier today, these lockdowns at this point are doing more harm than good for the low-risk majority of the population.

      1. Don’t be in such a rush to get Covid.
         People didn’t have Polio parties for a reason.
         This thing can kill you at any age, and organ damage- lung, heart, liver- can happen in even comparatively mild cases. We have no idea how long the organ damage will last. With SARS, many survivors continued to deteriorate, and a study they did on treatments essentially said “nothing helps”.

         This is not just a few old people dying. This is millions of people with ongoing debilitating illness, and people who once had active lives and careers being limited despite surviving.

         And those are only the things we know about or have suspicions on.

         “Dying” is generally a worse outcome than “your business closes”.
         Not being healthy enough to run a business is also more than possible.

         1. Let anyone who wants to exit lockdown or re-open their business register that they believe coronavirus is an imaginary, hoax disease. When they try to go to hospital, tell them they cannot be treated for an imaginary illness – goodbye!

            NAOM

            1. I’m not hearing any ideas from you guys as to what should be done to reopen the economy. What are your ideas, exactly?

               1. Listen to Dr. Fauci.

                  You seem to have this fantasy that “I’ll catch it, I’ll get better, all the old people will die, we’re back to normal.”

                  There is no normal, and it’s not coming back.

                  There are no easy answers. There may never be a vaccine. There is no guarantee that getting Covid confers immunity.
                  Listen to the epidemiologists, and ignore the moron in the White House.

               2. The way to beat an epidemic is by collecting information about it, and using that information to slow down the rate of infection. That is how the WHO beat smallpox.

                  Massive testing and isolation of anyone testing positive will stop the spread. Social distancing and face masks will slow it down as well. As long as we don’t have enough testing, it is the only solution. I have read quite a few remarks recently about how testing will “make us feel safe”, but that isn’t the point at all.

                  It is important to keep in mind that the rate of spread is the key problem. For example, Ebola is a horrible disease, but it isn’t that dangerous, because it doesn’t spread very quickly.

                  So to answer your question, the way to reopen the economy is testing. That is what countries where there has been some success like Greece and Germany and South Korea did.

                  Killing millions in the vain hope of establishing herd immunity sounds a lot like Fascism to me. Cough cough ,excuse me, I meant to say Eugenics. Also, keep in mind that Mexico lost about 95% of its population in the sixteenth century, thanks to the introduction of European disease.

                  Here’s a nice story about a young Broadway actor whose leg was amputated due to COVID-19 complications.
                  https://smashnewz.com/broadway-actor-nick-cordero-has-positive-news-in-his-battle-covid-19-deadline/
                  After the the tracheostomy, his wife is confident he will one day wake up to be with his kids. Heart warming isn’t it?

                  After WWII, Germany rebooted itself and wrote a new constitution. The first line is “Human dignity is unimpeachable”. What they meant that you should first make sure your fellow man is doing well. After that you can start thinking about economic progress, national glory and Mars colonies.

               3. The data that will be difficult to propagandize will be anomalous deaths over normal averages.

                  Financial Times has a nice piece on it:
                  https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c

                  Some of the scary ones:
                  Guayas, Ecuador: 10,100 extra deaths, 347% of normal
                  Bergamo, Italy: 4,100, 463% of normal
                  NYC, USA: 12,700, 299% of normal

                  Keep in mind, those numbers are with lockdowns and social distancing.

                  The Spectator has a hopeful article:
                  Herd immunity may only need 10-20 per cent of people to be infected

                  https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

                  The usual health warnings apply. Gomes’ work is theoretical modelling and, in common with a lot of material on Covid-19 that is being pre-published at the moment (including Ferguson’s paper of 16 March), it has not been peer-reviewed. But it is interesting that it gives an estimate for herd immunity of between 10 and 20 per cent, because that echoes real-life experience. The closest we have to a controlled experiment on the spread of Covid-19 was the cruise ship Diamond Princess, where the disease was able to spread uncontrolled in January, and almost all were later tested for the disease. Out of the 3,711 passengers and crew, 712 – or 19 per cent – were infected.

               4. herd immunity is not calculated for what happened on a cruise ship, or a report in the spectactor.
                  For a scientific view, I stick with those with expertise on the issue-
                  https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html

               5. Well, at least it’s not The Daily Mail. ;^)

                  I don’t know if you had an opportunity to read the article I linked, but the idea explored by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine team is that:

                  The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus. In reality, there is a wide variation in an individual’s susceptibility to becoming infected.

                  Does this hypothesis not have any merit?

                  The article states “[…] the team then looked at real-life data to try to deduce what the coefficient of variation really is […]”, so it doesn’t appear that the Liverpool researches used the cruise ship data for the calculations, that seems to be an observation by the article author that the cruise ship data, which is unique, happened to be in the range that the Liverpool teams model predicted.

                  Also, even the term ‘herd immunity’ has some ambiguity of meaning.

                  Abstract
                  The term “herd immunity” is widely used but carries a variety of meanings [1–7]. Some authors use it to describe the proportion immune among individuals in a population. Others use it with reference to a particular threshold proportion of immune individuals that should lead to a decline in incidence of infection. Still others use it to refer to a pattern of immunity that should protect a population from invasion of a new infection. A common implication of the term is that the risk of infection among susceptible individuals in a population is reduced by the presence and proximity of immune individuals (this is sometimes referred to as “indirect protection” or a “herd effect”). We provide brief historical, epidemiologic, theoretical, and pragmatic public health perspectives on this concept.

                  https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077

                  And from that paper:

                  […]an important paper by Fox et al in 1971 [1] argued that emphasis on simple thresholds was not appropriate for public health, because of the importance of population heterogeneity[…]

                  And that is what it appears to me that the Liverpool team is exploring with their model.

               6. “Herd immunity may only need 10-20 per cent of people to be infected”

                  That is nonsnese. Corona virus experts point to the fact that at 60% of the people having been infected infection rate will drop, but most likely more than 90% of all people would get infected. 20% is nonsense, or requires lock down. 🙂

               7. Hey Sprouse I got an idea. Let’s wait til the virus settles down then we’ll reopen. Duh!

         2. Have you ever been without a job for a lengthy period of time? Without a job, you have no identity or dignity.

            1. Without a job, you have no identity or dignity.

               If your “dignity” requires killing your parents, well, that’s another set of issues.

               1. If parents expect their children to sacrifice their future, so the parents can have a few more years (perhaps to go on a cruise?), the parents have issues too.
                  My understanding is nomadic hunter-gatherer societies acknowledged we all eventually die, and adult children at some point would have to make their parents comfortable, and then leave them to die when the tribe moved on.
                  Being able to acknowledge when your time is up, on balance for you and your society, is not something it seems modern western society is capable of discussing.
                  Working in aged care for a couple of years helped me realise modern western society really needs to think a bit more about life for life’s sake, and “going with dignity”.
                  So let’s be a bit more nuanced than “killing your parents”.

               2. So let’s be a bit more nuanced than “killing your parents”.
                  My response was in relation to the trite “no identity or dignity” comment. My thoughts are more nuanced farther up the thread.

                  Many of the commenters here are over 60. We are not dottering around waiting to “die with dignity”. Catching Covid, for us, is not “the last step down”: it is essentially being hit by a bus.

                  Roughly 15% of the population is over 65: nearly 50 million people.

                  That’s a whole lot of voters to endanger just to get Trump re-elected.

            2. Without a job, you have no identity or dignity.

               No, don’t you know it’s what you own that matters.

            3. Great system. You have become a useful tool. A disposable useful tool. The system we have depends on people adopting exactly this attitude. If I don’t have a job, making money for someone else I am not a real human being. Uncertainty sucks. Not knowing how you will be able to provide for your material needs sucks. But identifying your intrinsic worth with your ability to do some bullshit act of labor for some other entity’s enrichment is pathetic.

   2. For those who missed it the last time here’s Amory Lovins take:

      Don’t Just Avoid the Virus — Defeat It by Strengthening Your Immunity

      On March 10 (though not in later pathfinding articles), The New York Times broke the silence, endorsing five of eight standard immune-boosting methods: sleep, calm/hope/de-stressing (yes, meditation may help prevent colds), nutrition, exercise, and reducing alcohol (an immune suppressant). Next, add hydration, nontoxicity, and physiological balance. All are vital: your health and immunity depend on what you eat, drink, breathe, do, and feel.

      The article also edged more controversially toward two of the half-dozen supplements that can boost immunity — vitamin D and zinc. Otherwise, news organizations’ standard advice is “skip unproven supplements” that “probably won’t help, and may harm” — notably vitamin C, a “myth” and “fallacy” that doesn’t protect. So our best newspapers say supplements can’t boost immunity. Maybe they’re not reading the research right.

      Meanwhile, one to six grams per day (g/d) of a certain substance was proven to shorten the use of a ventilator for 471 patients needing more than ten hours of ventilator support, by an average of 25% (even more for the sickest patients). That reduction in patient requirements is like discovering a lot of unused ventilators. An average of about 2 g/d of the same substance shortened ICU stays by 8.6%, equivalent to a lot more ICU beds. A day’s dose costs 58¢ (top quality, retail price), so there is now good evidence we can spend a few dollars to reduce an ICU stay that costs thousands.

      Well-controlled trials found the same substance could prevent and help treat pneumonia. When sepsis or influenza A pneumonia caused life-threatening respiratory failures, tens-of-g/d intravenous doses of the same substance proved safe and effective. The Shanghai Government Medical Association and a top Xi’an hospital use and recommend it for COVID-19, with three clinical trials underway (one already posted). Fifty tons of it just got shipped to Wuhan, where success has now led many New York hospitals to adopt this therapy in severe COVID-19 cases, with encouraging results.

      What’s this mysterious substance? The same vitamin C that mainstream media dismiss as having little or no benefit against viral respiratory infections! Based on modern studies and recent rigorous evaluations, vitamin C is far more than just a “vitamin”; it is a foundational molecule that protects and regulates every cell, and actually seems to be the most effective antiviral agent known. So why do some say to take none a day?

      In 2018, Dr. Paul Marik of the Eastern Virginia Medical School published a paper (Doctor—your septic patients have scurvy!), in which he observed that ALL patients with sepsis had extremely low, sometimes undetectable levels of vitamin C in their blood plasma despite being given the RDA while in hospital. This strongly supports the idea that these patients should receive doses of vitamin C that are sufficient to raise the levels in their blood back to “normal” levels. It’s a no brainer. I would bet a considerable amount that, if the levels of vitamin C in the blood plasma of critically ill COVID-19 patients were measured, it would be observed that the levels are extremely low, Are these measurements being done and if not, why not? I think that the reason is that the medical establishment is so invested in their dogma that, vitamin C, above the RDA has no health benefits, that they just don’t want to know!

      In the meantime, people who are part of the “gig economy”, myself included, are watching whatever savings they had dwindle away. What are we supposed to do when we run out of money? I could conceivably go to my 6 acre homestead in the rural parts of the island where I live and try to survive on whatever is available there but, in light of the Lovins article, linked to above, are all these restrictions (shelter in place etc) the best we can do? I think not!

   3. Additional fresh evidence that we’re passing the second wave of coronavirus infection because the first wave came in Q4 2019. ?

      Italian scientists investigate possible earlier emergence of coronavirus
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D2IG?__twitter_impression=true

      Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 may be a signal that the new coronavirus might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

      There’s someone in the Chicago area who just got tested for antibodies. Said person would have, most likely, been infected around Christmas last year, and their mother died of “pneumonia” in January.

      1. Here’s a case in France on December 27th:

         https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/french-hospital-discovers-covid-19-case-december-retested

         And a report about it in the French press.

         https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/ce-que-l-on-sait-sur-le-cas-de-covid-19-repertorie-en-france-des-le-mois-de-decembre-2019_3947787.html

         Des prélèvements de PCR sur un patient montrent bien qu’il a développé un Covid. Nous avons bien eu un premier cas en France dès le 27 décembre. Ces prélèvements PCR dans les poumons avaient été gardés et on a pu les réanalyser”, ajoute dans les colonnes du Parisien le docteur Olivier Bouchaud, infectiologue à l’hôpital Avicenne.

         So, definite Covid19 confirmed via PCR test of sample from the patients lungs taken end of December. He had tested negative for the flu.

         It also appears that he was infected from community spread. Didn’t sound like he had traveled anywhere, or had any direct Chinese contacts.

9. Wind is now the main source of electricity in Ireland

   https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-energy-overtakes-gas-to-be-leading-source-of-electricity-in-ireland-23116/

10. Masks Become a Flash Point in the Virus Culture Wars
    By Rick Rojas

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/us/coronavirus-masks-protests.html

    As the nation edges away from lockdown and people once again share public spaces in the middle of a pandemic, wearing a face mask — or refusing to — has become a flash point in a moment when civic rules are being rewritten, seemingly on the fly.

    The result has been dirty looks, angry words, raw emotions and, at times, confrontations that have escalated into violence.

    In Flint, Mich., a security guard at a Family Dollar store was fatally shot on Friday afternoon after an altercation that the guard’s wife told The New York Times had occurred over a customer refusing to wear a face covering, which is required in Michigan in any enclosed public space.

    In Stillwater, Okla., an emergency proclamation mandating face coverings led to so much verbal abuse in its first three hours on Friday — and a threat involving a gun — that officials swiftly amended it. Masks became encouraged, not required.

    Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio had included a face-covering mandate as part of plans to reopen businesses, but he changed course. “It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far,” Mr. DeWine, a Republican, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do.”

    Rafael Palma, 43, does not wear a mask, and he and his wife, a health worker, have been going out in public and to church. They also participated in a protest this weekend in Sacramento to push California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to reopen more of the state.

    “People argue that we’re careless and not thinking about others — that we’re spreading the disease,” Mr. Palma said. “But in order to do that, you have to have it.”

    Elsa Aldeguer waved a Trump flag as she gathered with others protesting in Huntington Beach, Calif. The economy, she said, was the genuine crisis. She said the pandemic had claimed her job as a home health worker.

    “I’m sure the virus is real,” Ms. Aldeguer, 46, said, but she also contended that the danger it posed had been overblown. “Why do we have the beaches closed?” she said. “Why the parks? This is like a punishment to us. We the people need these things to keep our sanity.”

    1. I was at a Lowe’s last week, all the employees were wearing gloves and masks. When going to check out, I witnessed a man in front of me start chewing out the cashier for enforcing social distancing and wearing a mask because doing so over a “fake virus” was upending normal world order. When I got to the cashier, I asked her if such behavior is common nowadays, and she said she’d never been cussed at and ridiculed as much in her life as since management required employees to wear masks. Apparently a lot of people are treating the virus mitigation strategies as affronts to God.

       1. God is getting lonely up in heaven, needs more dumb rednecks for company.

          1. Won’t help Him, they are destined for a warmer, lower place.

             NAOM

       2. At least they’ve only yelled at her. Could be worse:

          https://www.wxyz.com/news/video-man-wipes-face-on-michigan-store-clerks-shirt-after-being-told-to-wear-mask

          https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/security-guard-shot-and-killed-after-asking-family-dollar-shopper-to-wear-mask/

          1. Covid-19– Navigating the Uncharted
             by Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D.New England Journal of Medicine

             “If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

       3. We are much more civilised down here, no complaints that I have seen and people respond appropriately when I tell them to keep their distance. I thought it was the USA that was supposed to be the advanced, civilised nation.

          NAOM

          1. Virus of Mass Destruction

             “These facts did not matter, not in the slightest. By that time, Westerners were totally immersed in the official War on Terror narrative, which had superseded objective reality…

             Apparently, this mandatory wonder vaccine will magically render us immune to this virus against which we have no immunity (and are totally unable to develop immunity), which immunity will be certified on our mandatory ‘immunity papers’, which we will need to travel, get a job, send our kids to school, and, you know, to show the police when they stop us on the street because we look like maybe we might be ‘infected’…

             Hysterical little fascist creeps are reporting their neighbors to the police for letting their children play with other children…

             In Spain, they bleached an entire beach, killing everything, down to the insects, in order to protect the public from ‘infection’.

             The Internet has become an Orwellian chorus of shrieking, sanctimonious voices bullying everyone into conformity with charts, graphs, and desperate guilt-trips, few of which have much connection to reality. Corporations and governments are censoring dissent. We’re approaching a level of manufactured mass hysteria and herd mentality that not even Goebbels could have imagined.

             What there is, is a new official narrative, the brave new, paranoid, pathologized ‘normal’. Like the War on Terror, it’s a global narrative. A global, post-ideological narrative…”

             1. Caelan MacIntyre,

                Off topic: My reply to your last comments back in March (?) did finally post, twice. (Just in case you didn’t see it.)

                (Vain? Why, no. Why do you ask?)

                1. Hi Synapsid,
                   Got it, and thanks. I’ll be looking into them.

                   Incidentally, there is no ‘vain’ in a word-search anywhere in that entire thread, that I’m assuming you are referring to, so what are you talking about?

                2. Hi Caelan.

                   The “Vain” bit was a feeble attempt at humor: (“Am I vain to think that something I wrote two months back should be of such interest that I ought to remind…bla bla.”)

                   Looks like I launched the proverbial lead balloon.

                3. ‘u’
                   Understood but, still, I appreciated it, and of course it got me to do a reminder search and get the info. These days and times, too, I’ve increasingly been feeling like a port (or whatever have you)… and the ridiculous lineups at all the liquor stores add to that feeling.

                4. Is there a supermarket available with a wine section? I request special orders occasionally and that way (heh heh) I have had the local market begin to carry what I like, I think in order to reduce the paperwork I was causing. Now they actually ask my advice on Ports, I being (ahem, polishing nails on lapel) their main Port customer.

                5. Impressive!
                   They will give you the keys before long if they haven’t already.
                   I’m unsure they have the lineupless wine-access thing here, except at the local farmers’ markets as well as a nearby grocery store that has a separate little wine/cider store attached, all which seem closed due to the apparent virus-rationalization.
                   And, alas, I’m without any honorary keys, special lapel, or Very Important Port consultant credentials.
                   (‘Oh well, what can you do.’)
                   Oh I know! As I’m waiting in line, I will speak subversively about the status-quo. ‘u^

                   “All the world’s a stage…” ~ William Shakespeare

11. GF
    About desert ecosystems, see my post above. Much if the aridity in the American Southwest is due to human intervention. Also there is no hope that solar will ever be as extensive as agriculture, so it will never be a problem on the same scale. For example, instead a burning vast areas of Nebraska, they could be putting in solar. It is much more valuable and less intrusive.

    https://www.1011now.com/content/news/DHHS-issues-smoke-advisory-for-SE-Nebraska-569734661.html

    In California ( e.g. in the Imperial Valley and Antelope Valley) they are ending the insane practice of irrigating the desert with subsidized water and putting in solar instead.

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Calexico, CA, USA/@32.677604,-115.6361607,14396m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80d765d2aacf9b05:0x5e4e302c616fb897!8m2!3d32.6789476!4d-115.4988834

    1. alimb, previous destruction does not justify further destruction nor does it justify the permanent forcing of dead zones. I agree, get rid of the cattle, chicken, pig farming. We don’t need them, we harm they and they harm us as well as cause lots of unnecessary environmental damage.

       As far as PV goes, show me the oil, gas drilling, and coal strip areas being covered with it. Sure if a farm area has been destroyed, maybe some PV will be put there, but the farmland will just go elsewhere. By the time the dream of 100 percent “renewable (industrial)” energy is fulfilled we are talking about an area the size of California being covered since demand is increasing faster than population. More cheap energy means more demand to run all the machines to produce more cheap products and more cheap energy. A downward spiral toward more junk and waste.
       PV does not replace combustion energy, it merely adds to it and combustion is used along the whole chain including to support it’s daily losses of power output.
       If one is interested in actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere and helping improve the environment planting trees is more than 100 times more cost effective than the EV-PV_battery-wind scenario and they actually help and improve, not just avoid. They also reseed themselves making them last thousands of years with nothing needed from us other than restraint of the sociopaths from destroying them.
       But I think what is going on here is not a drive for improvement, or cheap and easy helpful methods of acting. I think what we have here is a bunch of technophiliacs who are bent on maintaining and increasing a global industrial civilization. Maybe they think we are headed to Star Trek land. However, the LImits to Growth, toxicity, environmental degradation are all being reached at once within the next two decades. It’s already become obvious. So none of that is going to come to fruition.
       Why? Because we want to spend 100’s of trillions on new machines instead of actually correcting the problems. Unlike the media propaganda it won’t be the poorest that suffer the most, the “developed” countries will be the worst hit since they are farthest out on the limb and going further all the time.
       They will crash the fastest and be the least prepared.

       I have already survived several deadly epidemics so will probably survive this one and live long enough to see a lot more destruction of the environment. A war against Nature cannot be won, in fact it is being lost now, despite the hype.

       To all those ignorant of desert biology or just plain technophile sociopaths:

       

       1. Meanwhile,

          While the solar and EV technophiliacs champion their nonsense an area of forest the size of the British Isles is permanently removed from our planet every year. But lets ignore this and keep talking about about how “green” technology will save the world.

          AMAZON FACES ‘PERFECT STORM’ OF FOREST CLEARANCE, CORONAVIRUS AND WILDFIRE

          “From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 51% compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary satellite data from the space research agency INPE. Combined with a low rainfall forecast for the May to October dry season, this forest clearance creates the conditions for rampant wildfires, according to the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam). “This year’s fire could be 50% worse than what we had last year,” Paulo Moutinho, a senior scientist at Ipam, told Climate Home News by video call from Brazil.”

          https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/05/05/amazon-faces-perfect-storm-forest-clearance-coronavirus-wildfire/

          1. Hmmm, logging, mining, ranching are the main reasons behind the forest clearing. I bet there is money in there somewhere.
             So we stop eating meat, buying their wood and reduce our use of metals including gold. I bet soybean farming is also in there somewhere, to feed the cattle up northern hemisphere.
             This makes it difficult to counter the industrial culture by planting trees. Shoveling against the tide we are. But shovel we must.
             The US cut down most of it’s forests before it became slightly enlightened. I don’t think there is time left to cut down all of the Amazon, the global demand will dry up before that (fingers crossed). However, it might reach a tipping point and with global warming turn back to savanna. 🙁

             1. Let’s face it, you and Doug have no solutions yourselves and are pretty much all bluster, no bite. It’s sad to think about what miserable lives you two must live.

                1. SB, why on earth do you think that just because someone doesn’t have a solution to all the earth’s problems, that they must lead miserable lives? I am sure you live a delightful life in your blissful ignorance. Most very ignorant people do live very happy lives.

                   I don’t have a solution either. However, Mother Nature has one. But you will notlike it one bit.

                2. I agree Ron, I have what I consider to be a fairly realistic and pragmatic approach to the various future scenarios that may unfold. I think about it no different than most people might think about how they decide to invest for the future. It astounds me to no end when online folks assume that I therefore must be an angry downer. I’m actually rather optimistic for myself, although I’m sure most other folks are kinda fucked. And FWIW, the feedback I’ve received so far in life is that I’m actually rather good comic relief when the shit hits the fan.
                   The ‘miserable lives’ bit from SBBishop is textbook deflection.
                   https://www.learning-mind.com/psychological-deflection/
                   The cornucopians of various stripes here engage in deflection regularly, as in when the fanbois question my character because I question their data and interpretation. The alternative for them is reflection, but it’s not their strong suit.
                   It’s perhaps worth noting that I can discuss shorting pretty much anything in the market as a strategy to earning a profit, but if I mention shorting Tesla, although perhaps a valid strategy worthy of consideration, then it means that I’m a ‘bad man’ (because I don’t want to buy-and-hold I guess). It’s all very cult like, and quite frankly pathetic too.

                3. +1

                4. I must have missed where you discussed shorting any other company other than Tesla. Can you point me to your comments on that? I just see where you have attempted lame attacks on them by posting articles from known Tesla shorting traders.
                   When I asked why you focused on them, you said your postings were “notable”. I would call that pathetically mis-leading. Your cult is just one of making money by attacking Tesla and Musk.

                5. I think I’d rather have no solution that an anti-solution (passed off as a solution).

       2. Gone fishing,
          I doubt the farmland “will just go elsewhere”. Much of the farming in rich countries only exists thanks to hefty subsidies. Dumb policies are widespread, but not inevitable.

          Farm productivity is outgrowing population. Despite all the bruhaha about “saving farmland”, most of it is unneeded. It it were really short, we would start farming our lawns. Lawn grass is the biggest crop by area in America.

          Of course one big problem is the general incompetence of most farmers. If the whole world farmed as well as the Dutch or Israelis, a lot less farmland (and a lot less of other inputs like fertilizers, irrigation water and pesticides) would be needed. Much of this incompetence is supported by bad policy. It is also the reason why so much top soil has been washed away in North America and other regions, and why deserts have spread.

          In addition, traditional farming is only one way to get food. Fake meat and lab grown meat are on the verge of disrupting the low end of the meat business, where all the volume is. The dairy industry is already being undermined by milk-like products. since farming is mostly about producing animal feed, the area farmed is likely to shrink in coming decades.

          Total land use for agriculture and grazing peaked about 1990, and my guess is that it will start declining in the next decade. Here are some nice charts for you:

          https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

          1. I thought we were talking about the new land grab of more than 10,000 square miles in the US by upcoming PV farms.
             However, ag and ranching is an interesting topic too. My take is eat real food, stop eating meat and dairy and we all get healthier, use lots less energy/materials and the amount of land used to supply food drops dramatically.
             The rest is just commercial interests trying to sell you products you don’t need or should want. Food is not an industrial product.

             Craving for meat and dairy goes away in a month and is permanent in three months, from my own and friends’experiences. So no big deal for anyone interested in their own health and the environment/animals.

             1. We were talking about the balance of land use. Renewables are a much more profitable and less intrusive use of land than agriculture, which is why it is so popular with farmers. As farming recedes, some farmland will go to renewables.

                In America there is also lots and lots of brownfield in cities which is more suitable for solar than farmland, because it is closer to infrastructure. The EPA estimates there are between a half a million and a million sites. So there’s really no shortage of land.

                1. Let’s not forget to ask the rest of the planet’s living biota what they think.

12. Global Energy 2019
    Oh look at the great success so far, by separating out all the combustion energy by source, one can actually now see the contribution of solar to promoting the global industrial growth of energy and materialism! 50 years of effort is finally paying off!?

    

    1. Thanks, Fish, that really puts things in their correct perspective. Below is what it looked like the year I was born. In case it’s too small to read, it’s:
       Coal
       Natural Biofuels
       Crude oil
       Natural Gas
       Hydropower

       Natural Biofuels, back in those days was mostly wood. Back then it was 7,305 TWh. In 2019 it was 10,736 TWh. Deforestation has gotten much worse, not better.

       

       1. Global primary energy consumption in 1940 was 22,528 TWh. In 2018 it was 157,018 TWh. That is all energy expressed in TWh. Energy consumption (less than energy generation) has risen by 700 percent in that period of time. Population tripled.

          1. It’s all those bloody air conditioners. 😉

             1. That must be it. That is the one thing we didn’t have back in the 50’s. Except for computers, but we have to keep them cool or they don’t work. It’s a conspiracy! 😕

                1. Yes, on current trend computing and cooling computers will be most of electricity consumption by 2050. It’s just a guess though.

    2. Fish, could you possibly post the link where you found this graph?

       Ron

       1. Ron,

          Try this link: ~ 2:41 mark.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELYeTo2HqYY

          1. Thanks, Mike. I just wanted to make sure that the graph indicates energy produced. The idea that this includes wasted energy is just silly. Does total solar energy include the 80% of sunshine that is wasted in heat that hits the solar panel? I really don’t think so.

             1. Ron,

                Not sure, T Shyams comment seem to indicate he believes it does. Which would seem misleading if that was the case, why would they include waste heat? I found this:

                https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

                Which would add up to a 100% which would indicated they only count useful energy which has converted to electricity not the waste heat. But I’ll keep looking to make sure. Plus the link is only for the U.S.

                I also found this for the world electricity production from IEA:

                https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics?country=WORLD&fuel=Electricity%20and%20heat&indicator=Electricity%20generation%20by%20source

                So far it doesn’t seem like they include waste heat. The percentages add up to a 100%.

             2. Ron,

                I checked the stats on the video. They seem to have included waste heat. 42923TWh * 0.3 = ~12000TWh which seems to closely match with the IEA stats.

             3. This is not electrical production, though some of the energy is used to produce electricity.
                It’s global primary energy production, which includes all energy produced included unused heat. No one excludes the lost heat for primary energy.

                The net useful amount of energy varies tremendously with production and end use. That must be compared on a case by case basis.

                The point being that if you are going to use electricity to replace combustion, you need to increase the amount of wind and solar by a huge amount, even if it is twice as efficient overall in end use. Say wind by 20 times and solar by 70 times (very rough guess since it’s a moving target both in consumption and efficiency).
                Since demand might double this century, then double both of those numbers. If things go bad (likely) then one quarter of those numbers. If things go really bad, no power needed.

                Also, lately the growth of demand has been well above the growth of solar and wind power. That has to change or wind and solar are just ornamental.

                1. “The point being that if you are going to use electricity to replace combustion, you need to increase the amount of wind and solar by a huge amount, even if it is twice as efficient overall in end use. Say wind by 20 times and solar by 70 times”

                   Electricity generation: Wind or PV are 3 times more efficient

                   Space heating with heat pump, driven by “green energy” 3-5 times as efficient as burning NG or other stuff.

                   EV instead of ICE vehicles, 4 times as efficient.

                   Yes, we have to add at least one order of magnitude more PV and wind turbines in most countries, but this is doable over a period of 30 years. What is your point?

                2. Ulen
                   If you actually read my comment you would see I already assumed an overall net end use energy of one half of what we do now.

                   So you think that global industrial civilization can run on 16 percent of current energy use? Good luck with that. It’s possible but would be nothing like what we have now. Which is fine and what we should aim for. Getting rid of most industry and power generation would help quite a bit.

                3. Gonefishing,

                   I think he is suggesting a factor of 3 or 4 more efficient (maybe 3.5 as a very rough guess) for wind and solar rather than your estimate of a factor of 2.

                   For the past 7 years average growth rate of solar power output is about 30% and for wind about 15%, we can reduce energy use for buildings with passive solar and better building design, if these growth rates should continue as prices of wind and solar continue to fall all use of fossil fuels for electricity production could be eliminated in 12 years and another 3 years beyond that would allow enough power output to replace all fuel use for land transport (assuming production of batteries and EVs for transport can be ramped up in 15 years time, a challenge for sure). Also it is possible we may need less transport over time with improved technology and changing social habits.

                4. You need to look at your 30% number again, way off from reality.
                   Not exponential, down to about 14% now.

                   Efficiency? Even Jacobson with his 100 percent renewable papers only gives a 40 percent reduction so my 50% reduction is optimistic. Remember there are many energetic processes that have specific energy requirement.

                5. Gone fishing,

                   Here is the data from 2012 to 2018 for World Solar power output in TWh from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 29.1% average annual increase (for 2011 to 2018 it is 30.5%).

                   https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html

                   On the Jacobsen study he refers to end use load (which is essentially exergy), it is that numbert hat is reduced in his plan from 20.6 TW in 2050 to 11.8 TW. The 20.6 TW that he forecasts in 2050 is not primary energy use. For 2012 he has average end use load at 12.1 TW or 105996 TWh. Primary energy use (excluding traditional biofuels) in 2012 was 146247 TWh in 2012 based on BP data. When both effects are included we have about a 60% reduction in energy use. So your initial guess of 50% was too high and my 30% guess was too low, perhaps 40% is about right for the reduction in primary energy use. Or maybe 45%+/-5% for conservative estimate.

                   So

                   

                6. Ulenspiegel,

                   15 years. It will happen in 15 years.

13. The EIA’s Today in Energy” has a piece on declining carbon emissions:

    U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide fell by 2.8% in 2019, slightly below 2017 levels

    U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions declined by 2.8% in 2019 to 5,130 million metric tons (MMmt), according to data in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Energy Review. CO2 emissions had increased by 2.9% in 2018, the only annual increase in the past five years. Because of continuing trends in how much energy the U.S economy uses and how much CO2 that energy use generates, energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 fell more than energy consumption, which declined by 0.9% in 2019, and gross domestic product, which increased by 2.3% in 2019

    Lots more interesting charts and data at the link.

    

14. Something interesting from Reuters that we started showing in this report:

    Amid pandemic, U.S. renewable power sources have topped coal for 40 days

    (Reuters) – Electricity generated by renewable sources like solar, wind and hydro has exceeded coal-fired power in the United States for a record 40 straight days, according to a report based on U.S. government data released on Monday.

    The boost for renewables is due to a seasonal increase in low-cost solar and hydro power generation, alongside an overall slump in electricity demand caused by coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Coal tends to be the first power source to be cut by utilities when demand falls because subsidized renewable sources are cheaper to operate and often backed by state clean-energy mandates.

    1. This was unsurprising but few points are worth repeating

       Renewables out produced coal for 40 days continuously and the run is still intact. The number of days can go higher.

       Last year, it happened for 9 days at a stretch and totalled 38 days for the whole year – less than this current stretch.

       When the EPM post for H1 2019 came out, both April and May saw renewables including hydro beating coal and hence Hickory was curious when will the non hydro renewable line edge out coal. He wagered that it will be in April 2024. Ever the optimist, I wagered it will probably be in 2021 April. He said it’s only 18 months away and he would offer me a year’s worth of rounds if it happens.

       http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-august-2019-edition-with-data-for-june-and-h1-2019/#comment-688426

       We have to wait for confirmation and have the actual numbers but it is now near certain that it has happened in 2020 April itself even beating my optimistic expectations. Sure the pandemic helped, but the trend is strong and change is happening faster than what most realize.

15. Since I believe that I am considered part of the “bunch of technophiliacs” around here I’d like to comment on a few things. First, the site of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) is the little black mark immediately to the right of the word Page, just above the road, on the image further up. That plant used to consume 20,000 to 28,000 acre feet of water per year when it was operating. The coal was hauled 75 miles from the Kayenta coal mine using electric locomotives to haul 240 rail cars a day to satisfy the plant’s need for 15 tons of coal each minute.

    The closure of the plant had more to do with competition from NG than competition from solar and wind but, the competition would have eventually been felt. I believe that one of the reasons that utilities are piling into NG, apart from the low cost, is the increased ability to ramp up and down in response to anticipated input from wind and solar. Should renewables ever replace the output from the NGS that would mean that plants designed to last a minimum of 25 years would produce the same amount of electricity without all the resource consumption of the NGS. No water, no pumping, no mining, no trains and no CO2 apart from the relatively small amounts used to manufacture and install the renewables.

    The only alternative to transitioning to renewable energy that our current civilisation could deal with without tremendous upheaval is continued plundering of FF resources. If anyone thinks that tremendous upheaval would be a plus, start subtracting most of your modern amenities and then think again. Start with industrially produced food, then look at clothes, furniture, appliances and even something as simple as toilet paper. Then take away liquid fuels, piped water and sewage systems, electricity, communications (phones, internet, tv and radio). Looking good?

    From my vantage point, where I don’t have to go too far to see what life is like without access to these things, as well as seeing the amount of desperately poor people that our modern civilisation sustains, “tremendous upheaval” is not something to look forward to! That is what informs my posititions on renewables and EVs as a route to lessening the chances of a sudden upending of the current way of life. I see them as a means of showing an alternative way of living before pulling the rug from under people’s feet. While they are allowing rampant consumption to continue for now, it is my hope that when people realize the real challenges involved in overzealous consumption, something that anyone who has thought of installing a off grid PV system will have to face for example, they will moderate their appetites somewhat. Delusional hope? Maybe.

    1. “The only alternative to transitioning to renewable energy … is continued plundering of FF resources. ”
       Be careful in thinking that there is only one way, that causes a mental feedback loop which permanently excludes all other alternatives. It implies that life is impossible without a global industrial extraction based civilization run using high temperature reactions. We would die without electricity, cars, planes, roads, computers, tractors, pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers, etc. is the implication of such statements.
       Really? What have we done to ourselves to make such a situation even imaginable?
       The amount of unexplored paths is large, mostly due to those not questioning the current destructive (yet profitable) paradigm of ever increasing power and wealth through machines and fire. If we are too stupid to find a way out of this self-induced trap, then “tremendous upheaval” will occur anyway and be a blessing.

    2. islandboy —
       I would say the counterinsult (since we have descended to the level of schoolyard taunting) to “technopiliacs” is “serendipidists”, names after the Three Princes of Serendip who declared 18th century Europe “the best of all possible worlds” in the old satire.

       The idea that fossil fuels will dominate the 21st century is as naive as the idea that steam powered hot air balloons are the future of air travel. Technology is changing faster than most retired engineers can imagine.

       I have also heard arguments here to the effect that technical innovation has slowed or stopped. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are still at the beginning of the battery revolution and the solar revolution, not to mention the information processing revolution. The technologies we currently have in these areas will seem primitive in ten years.

       The arguments about “thermodynamics” as based on the idea of using expanding fluid (burning fuel or steam) to generate mechanical energy. This idea is quickly dying. It lives on in combined cycle gas plants, which do it much more efficiently than was previously imagined possible, but even they will disappear in the near future.

16. How Low Can Lithium-Ion Battery Costs Go?
    http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/how-low-can-lithium-ion-battery-costs-go

17. The part in the film where they mention the Kochs apparently also being into so-called renewable energy made me think of some of islandboy’s previous discourse here on the subject.

    “Since I believe that I am considered part of the ‘bunch of technophiliacs’…” ~ islandboy

    Not by me. Real technology is from and for people (and in the interest of an intact planet, which is still, in essence, saying the same thing), not from corporate elites for profit.

    The man behind the world’s Covid-19 lockdown has screwed his mistress, screwed us all, & now – thankfully – screwed his career

    Blue Embers
    by Cell, from the album, Hanging Masses

18. Open Up Society Now, Say Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi

    “I’d like to go over some basic things about how the immune system functions so people have a good understanding. The immune system is built by exposure to antigens: viruses, bacteria. When you’re a little child crawling on the ground, putting stuff in your mouth, viruses and bacteria come in. You form an antigen antibody complex. You form IgG IgM. This is how your immune system is built. You don’t take a small child put them in bubble wrap in a room and say, ‘go have a healthy immune system’.

    This is immunology, microbiology 101. This is the basis of what we’ve known for years. When you take human beings and you say, ‘go into your house, clean all your counters—Lysol them down you’re gonna kill 99% of viruses and bacteria; wear a mask; don’t go outside’, what does it do to our immune system? Our immune system is used to touching. We share bacteria. Staphylococcus, streptococcal, bacteria, viruses.

    Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses, bacteria—what do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike. And then you’ve got diseases spike—amongst a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society. It doesn’t make any sense.

    …Did we respond appropriately? Initially the response, fine shut it down, but as the data comes across—and we say now, wait a second, we’ve never, ever responded like this in the history of the country why are we doing this now? Any time you have something new in the community medical community it sparks fear—and I would have done what Dr. Fauci did—so we both would have initially. Because the first thing you do is, you want to make sure you limit liability—and deaths—and I think what they did was brilliant, initially. But you know, looking at theories and models—which is what these folks use—is very different than the way the actual virus presents itself throughout communities….”

    1. We can’t go on being shut down for much longer.

       – NO sports
       – NO comicons
       – NO furcons
       – NO scificons
       – NO bars
       – NO music festivals

       It sucks ass.

       1. From what I understand the fanbois are really missing the comicons.

       2. I don’t know what those ‘cons’ are exactly, but did this Pompeo guy once recently say that something was an ‘exercise’? Exercise in what? Cons?

          1. Comicon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book_convention
             Fur con: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_convention
             Sci-fi con: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_convention

             All part of fandom conventions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_convention

             I do actually know a few furries who are beyond pissed off that some of their conventions and meets this year were cancelled or will likely be cancelled. As for me, I just hope and pray some of the smaller comicons aren’t wiped out by all this virus crap. Ditto for the cities that host these cons since any cancellation means local economies miss out on huge amounts of money and business.

             1. Interesting and thanks for the clarification. Hopefully, we can blow this economy wide open again and then re-shrink it properly without all the lies, distortions, threats and draconian measures, etc.. Hopefully.

19. Power-to-gas could be key to California’s long-duration storage needs, stakeholders say

    Dive Insight:

    California is aiming to supply all its electricity from carbon-free resources by 2045, and the big challenge is going to be meeting those goals while maintaining a very high level of reliability in a cost-effective manner, Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, said during the webinar.

    The state’s current plan is to basically add a lot of solar and wind power, and back it up with battery storage. That strategy will likely lead to excess solar and storage which will then need to be managed, he said. Given this context, Wärtsilä’s proposal, to leverage excess renewables to produce hydrogen and methane, “is an interesting plan and worthy of further consideration as we think about our plan for meeting our 2045 goals,” he said.

    Wärtsilä’s roadmap — initially presented during a webinar in March and then updated with a scenario based on hydrogen production — could help California reach its clean electricity goal five years ahead of the 2045 deadline, according to the company. It requires a quicker build out of renewables and battery storage than is currently laid out by the state’s integrated resource planning process, and then deploying power-to-gas technology to siphon off the excess renewables closer to 2045.

    Any power system moving closer to 100% renewables will have huge amounts of over-generation, which will then need to be dumped somewhere, Ferrari said. But with power-to-gas technology, excess renewables can be sucked up either to electrolyze water, creating hydrogen, or power a methanizer, which produces methane. This methane is a “renewable, carbon-neutral fuel” since its production is powered by renewables, its ingredients are air and water, and any carbon released in the process was originally taken from the air, he said.

    “This fuel can be put right into existing natural gas storage and distribution [networks], or be converted to [liquified natural gas],” he said.

    Power-to-gas also presents a new approach to storing energy, Ferrari said. Batteries and other short-term storage technologies can continue soaking up excess renewable energy during the day to release back on to the grid at night — but after the batteries are topped off, the remaining energy can be put into renewable fuel production week after week, building up a big store that can be converted back to electricity using the fleet of thermal assets when it’s needed.

    This solution enables seasonal time shifting, and would also handle multiple days of rain, which could limit solar generation and deplete storage systems with 12-hour durations or less, he added.

    1. Windmills by Kemopetrol

    2. “California is aiming to supply all its electricity from carbon-free resources by 2045” But the trees are not happy.

       Killing trees because they use water.
       Prescribed forest thinning has increased in recent decades in an effort to stave off disastrous wildfires fueled by dense forest. But this study shows that restoring forests through mechanical thinning or wildfire can also save the state billions of gallons of water each year.

       The article refers to trees as steam stacks and the forest service thinks cutting down trees (mechanical thinning) is restoration. Beware the words used by government agencies and corporations, they are used deceptively.

       Landowners are earning millions for carbon cuts that may not occur
       Under a California program aimed at curbing climate pollution, landowners across the US have received hundreds of millions of dollars for promised carbon dioxide reductions that may not occur.

       The state has issued carbon offset credits to projects that may overstate their emissions reductions by 80 million tons of carbon dioxide, a third of the total cuts that the state’s cap-and-trade program was expected to achieve in the next decade, according to a policy brief that will be released in the next few days by the University of California, Berkeley.

       The findings raise troubling questions about the effectiveness of California’s cap-and-trade program, one of the world’s most high-profile tests of such a market-based mechanism for combating climate risks. Implemented in 2013, the system is a centerpiece of the state’s ambitious efforts to rollback greenhouse-gas emissions, expected to achieve nearly 40% of California’s total cuts.
       “If [the] findings are correct, then it would appear that a substantial component of the cap-and-trade program is not producing real emission reductions,” said Danny Cullenward, a research associate at the Carnegie Institution and member of a California Environmental Protection Agency committee that analyzes the impacts
       https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/18/65883/californias-cap-and-trade-program-may-vastly-overestimate-emissions-cuts/

       Chainsaws in redwood parks
       https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/17/environmentalists-plan-logging-to-restore-redwood-forests/

       California Forest Plan is heavily flawed and will increase CO2 instead of sequestering (makes the lumber industry happy )
       “The Plan’s assertion that increased thinning/logging will increase carbon
       storage in forests is unsupported by the best available science. ”
       https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/debunking_the_biomass_myth/pdfs/Forest_Carbon_Plan_Comments.pdf

       Trees could reduce carbon in the atmosphere to levels not seen in nearly 100 years

       After examining more than 70,000 high-quality satellite photos of trees from all over the planet, ecologists concluded that the Earth could support 900 million additional hectares of tree cover. Those trees would eliminate about two-thirds of the carbon that’s in the atmosphere today as a result of human activities, according to a study in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

       “Restoration is a very strong weapon to fight climate change,” he said. “But it needs to go along with other actions, like changing the way we are living on the planet.”
       https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-07-04/trees-could-eliminate-one-quarter-of-carbon-in-the-atmosphere

       1. Alien Idea

          There seems to be a habitual unconscious presumption in much energy/technology/development/etc. discourse, that Earth is for humans to do with as they please– a strip-mine here; a solar panel farm there; a windfarm here; a corporate squat there; a parking-lot/freeway here; a forest clear-cut there…– with the idea of ‘asking permission’ for any of that from the rest of Earth’s life, to be about as alien as something imaginary from some faraway planet.

20. Business is booming in the fake meat sector.

    https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/5/21247286/plant-based-meat-coronavirus-pandemic-impossible-burger-beyond

21. Meanwhile, wasting time, here is an MIT Technology Review article on what we should be doing with renewable energy and what is really happening.

    At this rate, it’s going to take nearly 400 years to transform the energy system
    
    
    Fifteen years ago, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.

    Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 ˚C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts. That’s only enough to power roughly 125,000 homes.
    ++++++++++++

    For starters, global energy consumption is likely to soar by around 30 percent in the next few decades as developing economies expand. (China alone needs to add the equivalent of the entire US power sector by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.) To cut emissions fast enough and keep up with growth, the world will need to develop 10 to 30 terawatts of clean-energy capacity by 2050. On the high end that would mean constructing the equivalent of around 30,000 nuclear power plants—or producing and installing 120 billion 250-watt solar panels.

    Energy overhaul
    What we should be doing*
    1,100 Megawatts per day
    401,500 Megawatts per year
    20,075,000 Megawatts in 50 years
    50 years to add 20 terawatts
    *If we had started at this rate in 2000

    What we’re actually doing†
    151 Megawatts per day
    55,115 Megawatts per year
    2,755,750 Megawatts in 50 years
    363 years to add 20 terawatts
    †Actual average rate of carbon-free added per day from 2006-2015
    Sources: Carnegie Institution, Science, BP

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/14/67154/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/

    An order of magnitude too slow? But who is counting?

    1. We’ve discussed this article before. Carlos Diaz linked to it in a comment on the Open Thread Non-Petroleum, July 12, 2019. My responses start with a comment further down. The author takes the 20,000 GW and divides it by 5 GW less than the amount of PV added globally in 2015 (55 GW) to come up with the 400 years. In the comments following the first one I look at several scenarios, extrapolated from the time of the post. Even a very modest extrapolation using a S-curve still had the world reaching 20,000 GW in less than 50 years! I think the MIT Technology Review should be embarrassed to have published an article with such simplistic projections.

       1. The longer it takes, maybe the less we (continue to) fuck up the planet.
          I don’t place any bets on anyone quite understanding or appreciating how certain levels (scale, numbers) of buildout and usage (etc.) of certain energy systems on a planet of ~8 billion humans can affect the planet.

          Maybe it’s a bit, or much, like that Albert Bartlett greatest human shortcoming thing.

       2. “at this rate”
          Projections are mental constructs. Projecting into the future now, with multiple negative limits approaching and false economics driving civilization is a fool’s game.
          But let’s have some fun and be foolish.

          PV and wind depend upon increased mining, increased production facilities, continuous global trade and transport, continuous financial support. All are unpredictable over a timespan of 10 years let alone 30 or more.

          From your comment “I don’t think many people understand the exponential function. ”
          I think the folks at MIT fully understand the exponential function. I certainly do. I have shown here multiple times that neither wind nor solar PV are growing exponentially. Your insistence on that condition brings your understanding into question. The doubling rate should be constant for an exponential, instead the growth rate has been falling for PV since 2009 when it was near 90 percent, it is now down to 18 percent (unless the economic collapse slows things down further). That is not exponential, linear growth has a descending growth rate.
          Wind growth has adding a steady 50 to 70 GW per year since 2012. Global numbers. That is flat growth, meaning descending growth rate. Not exponential.

          So project away, but unless many more production facilities are put up soon, 2050 will see another 6 TW of capacity added from now, which will produce about 1.5 additional TW.
          But let’s fantasize some more and assume we reach production levels of 800 GW per year, meaning replacement levels for a total of 20TW of solar and renewable per year.
          Then over a 30 year period at average of 400 GW/year we get an additional 12 TW, producing about 3 TW or half of what we use now. With increasing efficiency, that would about replace current global energy demand but would fall short of all increases in demand (60 to 100 percent increase by then).
          That is if production levels increase by 4 times.
          Which is not happening.

          In reality land we would have to build at least an equivalent amount of storage, rebuild the power structure, half collapse the fossil fuel industry, collapse the nuclear power industry (mostly), rebuild many of the hydro dams and build more for pumped storage, convert almost all industry to be electric process powered and heated or synthetic fuel plants too.
          That’s a lot of building in a very stressed world during an extinction event.

          I prefer cheaper and more sane ways to do things. I would probably have a more optimistic outlook if we had stopped purposely poisoning the world and started to take care of it rather than just try to maintain a new form of BAU to preserve our toxic processed food supply, toasters, microwaves, TVs and air cons. This is a planet with life all over it, not a machine world.

          We are headed toward a discontinuity, one that is flying under the radar(not discussed in media), but will change the way we do everything and at the same time accelerate the level of destruction. I hope the engineers and programmers fail but when they succeed everything we discuss here will be swept aside and there will be no going back or even sideways.

          1. Well writ as usual, Gonefishing.

          2. I think the folks at MIT fully understand the exponential function.

             GF –
             Some might. This oldish article in the MIT technology review is one of a series trying to push the dead nuclear industry by badmouthing renewables. The underlying claim is that we need much more energy, which is extremely doubtful.

             Getting funding for useless infrastructure by exaggerating future “demand” without considering what economic value it brings is a popular American sport. That is how the cities all got wrecked with useless “interstate” highways.

             The arguments about the shape of the curve aren’t very useful as the data is noisy. You claims about straight line growth are cherry picked and frankly dishonest. It’s also worth remembering that the actual shape of an exponential curve depends on the exponent.

             Your statement that projections are mental constructs certainly applies to you as much as to anyone else.

             1. Nature Already Completely Knows Its Own Reality

                When I referred to Albert Bartlett’s contention above, I was really using it as a springboard for the idea of humans’ exceedingly limited understanding of anything sufficiently complex, such as how their own scaled energy systems across large numbers can impact nature.

                Put simply; if humans have a hard time with a relatively simple concept as the exponential function, what else do they have a hard time with?

                Nature’s direct approach to anything is of ‘infinite-resolution‘. Humbly compare that with humans’ outrageous comparative ‘clunk’ and we might get a fleeting glimpse our infinitely-woeful inadequacy. Humility doesn’t appear our strong suit though.

                Arrogance and relative cluelessness are a potentially dangerous combination, especially when coupled with sufficiently high levels of energy, material activity and complexity.

                ‘Toddlers with loaded guns’

                Microphoby

22. Not many changes on last week’s shopping but some this week. Fabric stores are closed, they were last week as well though, and this is a ‘shot to foot’ situation. They supplied all those sewing masks who now cannot get their raw material (not a pun) and I have noticed a marked drop in the number of masks on sale.

    Both Wallymart and La Comer have now closed off large areas of ‘non-essential’ goods, by order. I can’t really say that this does a lot as I have seen very few or no people in those areas during previous trips. I don’t see why the stationary section is closed as stationary stores are classed as exempt and Office Depot is open for stationary but the furniture section etc is closed. In Wallymart I can buy ground coffee but the filters are closed off!

    One thing I am seeing is poor use of masks. People cover their mouths but not their nose and I suspect that this is because they are called ‘cubrebocas’ ie ‘mouth covers’. Gringos still take the award for poor use of masks. There have been only 37 deaths in the whole of Jalisco with a total of over 20,000 cases.

    NAOM

    1. How is the testing rate in Jalisco? Is it mostly of people showing up at doctors and hospitals?

       Recommendations for everyone.
       Eat a whole plant diet as recommended by Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Greger.

       Get lots of sun, high levels of vitamin D seem to increase resistance to Covid 19 and similar types. Stay well hydrated.

       1. We get lots of sun 🙂

          A mixture of testing methods though all tests have to go through the national health authorities. People are being treated at government/university/military hospitals, we have a modern Naval hospital here. They are working to trace contacts to contain the spread which reduces the need for mass testing. There are sanitary checks on the main highways between the cities, I’m not sure if they do a sample but they check temperature and symptoms. Local Wallymart has a health department table outside where anyone can ask to be checked for symptoms.

          I will keep an eye on the local paper to see if I can glean more information.

          NAOM

          1. Yeah, not bad at all. I like the idea of contact tracing. .

23. It would be interesting to include two new tables: top ten states in solar vs solar potential and top ten states in wind vs wind potential. It would point out the states that are working their resources and be analogous to your coal tables.

24. Gonefishing,

    Growth of primary energy consumption per capita from 1979 to 2018 (BP data) was at an average rate of 0.6% per year, over several periods it was close to zero and can become negative as fossil fuels are replaced with other sources of energy. From 1985 to 2000 the rate of growth was 0.05% per year and from 2011 to 2018 the rate of growth was 0.3% per year for per capita primary energy. A peak in fossil fuel output will force a reduction in its use.

    Lots of efficiency improvements can be made including better building design and use of passive solar and thermal storage. I agree a vegatarian diet (I started in 1981) and planting trees as well as cutting down fewer trees are good strategies, also utilizing biofuels does not seem like good policy in many cases. Green cement (absorbing CO2 in the cement process) also seems a possible avenue for reducing atmospheric carbon, though there may be unintended consequences (often the case).

    To me an all of the above strategy makes sense, one size does not fit all. Education for women is an important avenue for reducing population, educated women have fewer children. Access to modern birth control and equal rights for women also would help.

    1. Not sure what this comment follows from, independent in the list, but since it is directed to me I will respond.
       Dennis wrote:
       “Growth of primary energy consumption per capita from 1979 to 2018 (BP data) was at an average rate of 0.6% per year, over several periods it was close to zero and can become negative as fossil fuels are replaced with other sources of energy.”
       Let’s unpack that into real energy terms. From 1990 to 2018 global primary energy grew by 57,000 TWh. That is 2035 TWh growth per year on average.
       We are adding about 200 GW of wind and solar capacity per year, which will produce about 50 GW. That translates into 438 TWh per year. So 1597 TWh of energy is being added from other sources. Given the doubling rate of solar is about every 5 years and wind much longer, let’s assume an optimistic case of doubling every five years and global primary growth rate does not increase.

       Therefor, in 10 years PV and wind will be at 1752 meaning only 283 TWh is being added by other sources. So in 2031 or 2032, solar and wind might reduce the growth of other sources (mostly fossil fuel and biofuels).

       However, back to reality, neither PV or wind are currently rising exponentially and their doubling time is lengthening each year. So the point where PV and wind are stabilizing fossil fuel is much further in the future. A future which at this point appears to have an extreme degree of volatility socially, politically, economically and mostly physically/biophysically.
       No help from the acronyms, nothing significant. Mostly time and material wasters.

       Uncharted waters my friend, with silicon and magnetic lifeboats. Wouldn’t bet on them. Fun to play with though.

       1. Looking at the possibility of growth in the PV sector, the most important factor is the growth of manufacturing capacity. If no new factories are built the amount of PV limited by the current manufacturing capacity. My interest in these matters leads me to follow the news at the PV magazine web site (https://www.pv-magazine.com/) and reneweconomy.com.au. Sometimes I report on stuff I see here sometimes not. Here’s one story I’ve already brought up:

          World’s largest solar PV module factory planned for China

          Chinese sustainable energy company GCL System Integration is planning to build what would be the world’s largest solar PV module factory, capable of producing 60GW of solar panels each year. [snip]

          In comparison, the world’s currently biggest solar panel manufacturer, JinkoSolar, has 16GW of manufacturing capacity.

          Speaking of Jinko:

          Jinko announces 5 GW wafer factory and 10.7 GW of module supply deals

          and others

          Longi to spend $349m on new 5 GW module fab in Taizhou

          Chinese manufacturers join forces to build 5 GW module factory

          This is older, from January 2018

          Risen Energy to start production at new 5 GW solar factory in China

          Basically there is a fairly steady stream of news about developments that will surely lead to increased manufacturing capacity worldwide. In a comment below my post about the “World’s largest solar PV module factory ” Gerry wrote:

          “A couple guys in the german pv forum collected announcements on short term production expansion.

          tl;dr:
          400 GW of yearly pv panel production capacity worldwide is not unrealistic.”

          I also linked to the following in a comment further up:

          Global PV capacity additions hit 115 GW in 2019, says IEA.

          Finally further up I link to a discussion thread from the in which I posted a comment (with a graph) looking at an S-curve growth scenario, That scenario had global PV capacity getting to 20,000 GW by 2065 with fairly modest growth in manufacturing capacity eventually topping out at 721.7 GW per year. Does anyone think the scenario presented in that comment is entirely unrealistic? It looks at getting to 721.7 GW per year within the next 20 years.

          1. I’m not all that good at statistics, but I’m a systems thinker and a student of history, and I’m with Islandboy, when the issue is the future growth of wind and solar energy.
             I’m thinking the same thing is happening with wind and solar now that happened with the Model T, and the early farm tractors, from 1910-15 or so until 1930 or so. The Depression then slowed the growth of modern farming until after WWII.
             Even though car and tractor sales were growing fast, horses and mules were still dominant for the most part, and especially so in the case of people with little or no money to make the switch. They already had horses and mules, they already knew how to work with them and maintain them, and they did NOT have to come up with any money to buy into what was to THEM still a question mark new way of working and living.

             But trucks and tractors just KEPT getting cheaper, and kept gaining in capacity. By 1950 the handwriting was on the wall, such that even people who never went to schoola day, even in the backwoods around here, could read it.The younger members of my family had a tractor, if they were FARMING at all, as opposed to GARDENING. Every body young enough to be forward looking had a car or truck, almost always a car USED as a truck if not a pickup, by around 1925 or so, if they could figure out a way to buy one, used. They could better afford HAVING one than they could afford NOT having one.

             My maternal grandfather drove a team to town as a boy, leaving at the crack of dawn and getting home after dark, in the summer time, when he was a kid. He converted a so called touring car into a make do pickup truck in the late twenties. Town and back became a Saturday morning family excursion the day he got that old car running.

             By the late fifties, when I was old enough to harness a mule, and plow a furrow,my grandparents on Momma’s side were among the last ten percent of local farmers who still owned one, and it was used only a few days a year, mostly as a way to get the family together as in earlier times, to put in a field of corn. We kept right on raising a field of corn, a field of potatoes, etc, the old way, every year, the old way, because it made the old folks happy to do so, until they passed away.
             But by the mid fifties, it was a RARE thing to see any serious work done even in these backwoods with a horse or mule.On Daddy’s side, the boys got rid of the mules after the war was over in forty five, as soon as they could FIND a tractor for sale. You could plow five or six times as much in a day, for a lot less money, with a fifties vintage redbelly Ford than you could with a mule, or even with a team.

             It’s going to take a generation to go from where we are now to where we need to be with wind and solar power, but it’s GOING TO HAPPEN because it’s going to be CHEAPER every year by comparison to buying coal and gas.

             Sometime within the next ten years or so, it’s going to be a no brainer, and then the only real reason anybody will still be putting their money into new fossil fuel capacity, except to have sufficient capacity at night, in bad weather, etc, will be that the FIX IS IN, politically. As the wind and solar industry grow, and long distance transmission grows, there will probably be enough EXISTING legacy coal and gas plants that hardly any new ones will be needed for that absolutely essential back up capacity, most places, so hardly any new ones will be NEEDED, most places, excepting the poor countries.

             The FIX IS IN already in lots of places in the USA, such as Florida, which lags badly behind in adopting solar power.

             Business men have ways of moving when the time is right. Texas is bloody red,all right, but Texas business men can still count their money, and they’re building wind and solar farms, lol. Houston has pledged to go green on electricity within the next few years.

             North Carolina is red but trending purple now and NC is a leader in solar power.
             NC is a place where the people are EAGER for new industry and new technologies. They may believe in their KJB, but my tarheel neighbors are READY to work on wind and solar farms, because they UNDERSTAND that sending their money to West Virginia or Wyoming for coal, or to someplace up north for gas, or down south to Texas,where it will be spent by “damnyankees” or rich cowboys is not in THEIR best interests.

             Between falling costs for wind and solar power, and increasing costs, for fossil fuel power, the handwriting IS on the wall.

             But GF and Doug are right about one thing, for sure. It may already be too late, and I fear they are right. The climate may already have passed tipping points such that an ecological and economic collapse, more or less world wide, is already baked in.

             1. As with many who only see what message they want to, you are missing the point. Again and again I repeat that solar is not advancing fast enough during the decades it was needed most. Plus the rate is dropping with time.
                So if you want to continue this insane paradigm of civilization, better buy PV and get all your friends and neighbors too. Contact your politickians too. Without demand there will be a lot less building of production.

                As far as cost goes, if the panel costs nothing the cost per installed watt is still over $2 here. Then there are the inverters that don’t last and the batteries if you want to actually use the electricity from the panels instead of mostly sending it to the grid. So the myth of cheaper panels promoting growth is gone and done. Doesn’t make much difference anymore.

                Here is what a watt of PV does. For your $2.80 it producesabout 39 kW over 30 years which gives you back about $5. Then subtract out the costs of inverters and maintenance/cleaning. Probably make a buck and change over 30 years on every $2.80 invested. Maybe less, since I didn’t use the discounted amount that the power company pays back so they can make a nickel a kilowatt on your power when they sell it to the neighbors.

                So how much CO2 are you displacing per dollar of PV on your roof or land? About 39/3.80 is 10 pounds per dollar (ignoring the CO2 made in the whole industrial chain of producing , shippiong, installing, removing and disposal/recycle).

                Or you can plant a tree and remove (yes actually remove) up to 10 tons of CO2, plus the tree does a lot of other wonderful things too. They replace themselves. Some even provide food for humans.

                There are lots of ways to do better, now and in the long run.

                What legacy? A green living planet full of forests and clean water or a mostly dead planet covered in junk and broken down toxic farms and other industrial sites?

                Your choice. Life is dying to see your next action.

                1. Gone fishing,

                   Or a person can do both, plant trees and buy solar. The cheapest solar cost is at utility scale, and costs of panels, batteries, and installation are all likely to continue to fall for residential installations.

                   Based on data from

                   https://www.icos-cp.eu/global-carbon-budget-2019

                   In 2018 global carbon emissions from fossil fuel and cement production was about 9.98 Gt C/year and from land use change about 1.51 Gt C/year, roughly 6 Gt C/year were taken up by land and ocean combined. Of the carbon taken up by the Earth system about 3.47 Gt C was from the terrestrial sink.

                   There seems to be some debate about the magnitude of the effect of tree planting as a strategy, like most things the answer may be more complex than at first glance.

                   See for example (from Jan 2019) the following summary

                   https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z

                2. You don’t just plant trees, you nurture nature. You help push it where it wants to go.

                   We have some land over here with an area of bare mixed soil and gravel that could have a large enough hole dug into it to create a good-sized pond. The pond could have water plants in it and others skirting its edges, and attract invertebrates, amphibians and water fowl and in the process even other animals that are attracted to those. Get the ball rolling.
                   Maybe it could even have some fish and some sort of inlet and outlet such as to avoid stagnation. The pond could even be big/deep enough to paddle around a bit on in a small boat or even to take a dip in on a hot day.
                   It could also function as an emergency water reservoir and reflector of sunlight such as toward one end for a microclimate and/or a house for additional light in the evenings or heat in the colder seasons. It could even be an ice-skating rink in the winter, and so on.

          2. Island boy,

             Did you account for installed capacity being retired over time, maybe assume on average (to be conservative) that panels are replaced every 25 years, so you would need to retire any existing capacity that is more than 25 years old in your model.

             Sorry, you did that but retired after 30 years, that might be a bit optimistic, the only change I would make is change that to 25 years. Also note that fossil fuel use grew at 7% per year on average from 1930 to 1973 (43 years), so I would have growth continue at 7% per year until some maximum rate is reached for Solar capacity, I would assume about a 20% capacity factor or even less for good measure.

25. Good piece at link below on IMF and World Bank forecasts.

    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/04/14/the-world-economy-in-2020-the-imf-gets-it-mostly-right/

    A snippet:

    Based on a quick review of the forecasts by the OECD, IMF, and the World Bank during previous crises, expect Mr. Gurria and other doomsayers to be wrong. In both booms and busts, people seem to forget John Templeton’s axiom that the most dangerous words in investing might be “this time it’s different.” It almost never is. The voice of reason now seems only to be that of David Malpass, the World Bank Group’s president…

26. Finally, a mainstream media outlet (German, Deutsche Welle) challenging the absurd notion being put forward by the WHO and the medical establishment that, if one contracts COVID-19 there’s nothing you can do except wait and see how the dice rolls for you!

    COVID-19: How to boost the immune system with vitamins

    Nothing works without vitamins

    “The measures being taken are all important. But it is also important that we pay attention to our nutrient status so that our immune system can function at all,” said Gombart. This is especially important in stressful times like these, when we tend to comfort ourselves with junk food, he says. After all, getting enough nutrients is not really a focus of our interest at the moment.

    Yet vitamins C and D and other micronutrients such as zinc, iron and selenium are much more than just “nice to have.” In the worst case, a nutrient deficiency can open the door to the viruses because the body is unable to defend itself against the invaders. For people who belong to a risk group, the danger of a severe course of disease is then particularly high.

    This comes down to simple biochemistry: “Every cell in our body uses different micronutrients to function,” says Gombart. Micronutrients include vitamins, minerals and omega fatty acids.

    Unlike macronutrients such as fat, carbohydrates and protein, the micronutrients do not provide the body with energy, but they are nevertheless essential for the basic functions of an organism — not only for cell metabolism, but also for the defense system.?

    Lets see if any of the big US or UK media outlets has what it takes to break the stranglehold on this “news”!

    Bill Maher put it very nicely in his closing monologue last week

    New Rule: Immunity Booster | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

    1. Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Rhetoric Is Laid Bare In ‘Morning Joe’ Death Count Montage

       The MSNBC show looked back at the president’s bombastic, shifting and often bonkers pandemic comments in the damning six-minute supercut.

       https://www.huffpost.com/entry/morning-joe-supercut-donald-trump-coronavirus-rhetoric_n_5eb53ae3c5b6a673354118da

       Trump keeps lying and Americans keep dying. Now over 75,000 and counting with no end in sight. It will be over 250,000 by election day

       Stay Home, Stay Safe and keep your social distance. This isn’t over.

       You won’t need those solar panels in the desert if Trump gets reelected.

27. Doctors are fed up with conspiracies ravaging ERs
    By Ben Collins

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446

    At the end of another long shift treating coronavirus patients, Dr. Hadi Halazun opened his Facebook page to find a man insisting to him that “no one’s dying” and that the coronavirus is “fake news” drummed up by the news media.

    Halazun, like many other health care professionals, is dealing with a bombardment of misinformation and harassment from conspiracy theorists, some of whom have moved beyond posting online to pressing doctors for proof of the severity of the pandemic.

    Several other doctors shared similar experiences, saying that they regularly had to treat patients who had sought care too late because of conspiracy theories spread on social media and that social media companies have to do more to counteract the forces that spread lies for profit.

    Beyond emergency rooms and internet platforms, there are hints of how far some coronavirus misinformation has spread. Dr. Rajeev Fernando said that when he takes questions about the coronavirus on radio shows, one out of every two callers refers to 5G towers or conspiracy theories about labs in Wuhan, China.

    Well-organized, professional disinformation peddlers in the QAnon and anti-vaccination movements have gained new audiences during the coronavirus pandemic by coalescing around two primary boogeymen: Bill Gates and 5G towers.

    In January, a well-known promoter of QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump is secretly dismantling a pedophile-cannibal cabal that runs the U.S. government, pushed a conspiracy theory that Gates “patented” the coronavirus based on a mischaracterized public patent search.

    The patent was created by a Gates-aligned research institute to research a vaccine, a common practice among researchers, and it covered a previous coronavirus, not the one that causes COVID-19.

    Still, the tweet helped spark a focus on Gates that has permeated the various conspiracy theory networks that have developed on the internet in recent years.

    The same QAnon promoter later promoted a diluted form of bleach called “Miracle Mineral Solution” as a possible way to kill the coronavirus.

    Similarly, the anti-vaccination movement has pushed a false conspiracy theory that 5G towers are weakening immune systems throughout the world and that COVID-19 is a cover story for the colossal death tolls around the world.

    After a prominent anti-vaccination figure posted a video on Instagram of a man alongside a destroyed 5G tower, several arson fires were set on towers across Europe and Canada.

    Brian Keeley, a professor of philosophy at Pitzer College in California who studies why people believe in conspiracy theories, said some people in times of crisis look to far-fetched ideas with simple answers for complex problems.

    Providing a straightforward, extinguishable enemy — whether it’s a well-known celebrity like Gates or a mysterious concept like the illuminati — gives conspiracy theorists hope, agency and power in a time of chaos. In reality, those recognizable, often mortal figures are simply scapegoats for an act of God.

    After researching why people believe in the conspiracy theories, Halazun has come to the same conclusion: Right now, it’s not worth it for a doctor to spend any time on Facebook.

    1. Conspiracy theories tend to be attractive because they tell a story. They anthropomorphize, provide a “reason” for things happening, including a more or less plausible narrative.

       The virus is real, and it’s out there, and it may kill any one of us, but it’s awfully abstract. Calling it the Chinese virus or blaming Bill Gates anthropomorphizes it, making it easier for the human mind to grasp. Finding a reason why these human agents would want to do it makes the story easier to remember.

       Humans and other social animals (probably) developed their ability to understand complex logic because they needed to be able to detect cheating. This built in brain function was later applied to a variety of more abstract topics. Psychologists have done experiments where the present the subject with a math puzzle and a logically identical puzzle about human cheating. The subjects are often able to understand the cheating story even when the math completely stumps them.

       1. What It’s Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcUAG6t5aN8

28. George Kaplan,

    Check your email please.

29. Bring on the aircons and the solar panels to fuel them. Technology will save humans, to hell with the plants and animals.

    CLIMATE CHANGE HAS ALREADY MADE PARTS OF THE WORLD TOO HOT FOR HUMANS

    Global warming has already made parts of the world hotter than the human body can withstand, decades earlier than climate models expected this to happen. Jacobabad in Pakistan and Ras al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates have both repeatedly crossed a deadly threshold for one or two hours at a time, an analysis of weather station data found.

    Wet bulb temperature (TW) is a measure of heat and humidity, taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth. Beyond a threshold of 35°C TW the body is unable to cool itself by sweating, but lower levels can still be deadly, as was seen in the 2003 European heatwave that killed thousands without passing 28°C TW. A US-UK team analysed weather station data across the world, and found that the frequency of wet bulb temperatures exceeding temperatures between 27°C TW and 35°C TW had all doubled since 1979. Though 35°C TW is thought of as a key threshold, harm and even death is possible at lower temperatures, so the team included these in their analysis. Most of the frequency increases were in the Persian gulf, India, Pakistan and south-west North America. But at Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, 35°C TW appears to have been passed, the first time the breach has been reported in scientific literature. “The crossings of all of these thresholds imply greater risk to human health – we can say we are universally creeping close to this magic threshold of 35°C. The tantalising conclusion is it looks like, in some cases for a brief period of the day, we have exceeded this value.”

    Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242855-climate-change-has-already-made-parts-of-the-world-too-hot-for-humans/#ixzz6LxMVHQ7F

    1. Meanwhile,

       WITH ATTENTION ON VIRUS, AMAZON DEFORESTATION SURGES

       “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon hit a new high in the first four months of the year, according to data released Friday by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), which uses satellite images to track the destruction. A total of 1,202 square kilometers of forest (464 square miles)—an area more than 20 times the size of Manhattan—was wiped out in the Brazilian Amazon from January to April, it found. That was a 55 percent increase from the same period last year, and the highest figure for the first four months of the year since monthly records began in August 2015.”

       https://phys.org/news/2020-05-attention-virus-amazon-deforestation-surges.html

    2. Hi Doug, your global warming news is right on point as always, just as a powerful cold snap engulfs the East Coast with record cold temperatures and nearly unprecedented late season snowfalls.

       1. Look here for the bigger picture:
          https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=nhem&pkg=T2m&runtime=2017051700&fh=0&xpos=0&ypos=208

          Alaska gets an early summer, there is bathing time already – it’s all about the northern jet stream oszillation. And this oszillation gets more instable with climate change at the moment. There is more energy in the atmosphere – it can manifest in pushing arctic air out, and sucking warm into the arctic at other places.

30. Fuck the forests, screw the oceans, better to spend our time promoting quack corona virus “cures” and boasting about how “new technology” will “exponentially” save the planet (for humans, that is, not the wild creatures that have been sharing Earth with us – until now!). Being honest, apart from some entertainment value, what use are dolphins, elephants and all those exotic plants; just make copies of them with plastic. There are so few bugs where I live now even the swallows can’t feed their kids but that’s life, Round-up kills the weeds so I should be grateful, right?

    FOREST DESTRUCTION

    “As much as 80% of the world’s forests have been destroyed or irreparably degraded. Our ancient forests are looted every day to supply cheap timber and wood products to the world. The price for this destruction is escalating climate change, biodiversity loss and community displacement…

    Indonesia has lost 72% of its ancient forest, Papua New Guinea 60% and the Solomon Islands is [was] predicted to lose all of them by 2014. A handful of international logging companies are cutting down the rainforests at record rates. Every year around the world, seven million hectares of ancient forest are logged, cleared or severely degraded. The last remaining rainforests in our region [Australia] – which span across Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands – are disappearing at an alarming rate. In fact, Indonesia has been awarded a Guinness World Record for being the country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet.”

    https://www.greenpeace.org.au/what-we-do/protecting-forests/forest-destruction/

31. Islandboy,

    This morning I asked my good neighbour, an operating room nurse with a masters degree in nursing (and 30 years experience), about vitamin C to treat corona virus and she replied: “I’m not qualified to comment on that but will say there’s no doubt a good diet will help your immune system do its work.”

    So, my question is: what qualifies you to assess, or comment on, the thousands upon thousands of scientific studies respecting human immune systems in medical journals involving vitamins? I’m a geoscientist with over forty years experience. Do you see yourself as being qualified to appraise my method(s) of breaking down (seismic) signals employing Fourier series analysis? I doubt you do. Is there much difference? A dilettante is someone with an interest in, but only superficial knowledge of, a subject. The world is full of them!

    1. I’m reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies, The Matrix:

       Blue Pill or Red Pill – The Matrix (2/9) Movie CLIP (1999) HD

       In the scene Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) a choice of two pills. A blue pill which would return Neo to his life as he knew it or the red pill, which would allow him to experience what Morpheus called the truth.

       I originally started writing a long post, describing how I “discovered” vitamin C but soon realized I was wasting my time. In the clip from The Matrix, Morpheus told Neo “You take the blue pill…The story ends…You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember…All I am offering is the truth, nothing more.” I have essentially taken the red pill and experienced a journey of discovery into almost an alternative universe. I am in relatively good health and certainly not worried about many health issues that plague some of my friends and acquaintances. I for one, do not subscribe to the notion that if I am infected with a virus, all I can do is wait and see how my luck turns, whether my immune system will vanquish the pathogen or it will get the better of me.

       I am guided by a cohort of doctors that I am sure you will categorize as quacks. The web site I go to to find out more is http://orthomolecular.org . Among the resources there are the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service where one of the more recent articles is:

       Vitamin C Evidence for Treating Complications of COVID-19 and other Viral Infections

       Another web site I like is:

       http://www.doctoryourself.com/

       The URL speaks for itself. At the web site https://omarchives.org/ , there is web page featuring video clips, complete with transcripts, of the doctor that got me started on this vitamin C trip at the following URL :

       https://omarchives.org/video-cathcart/

       So, “what qualifies” me “to assess, or comment on, the thousands upon thousands of scientific studies respecting human immune systems in medical journals involving vitamins?” The answering is nothing. I am not qualified but, the doctors that I listen to and read are and I choose to believe them rather than people who stand to profit enormously from ill health. I find it absurd that during this pandemic no health authorities that I am aware of, certainly not the WHO, are giving the public any guidelines as to steps they can take to improve the chances that the immune system will cope with the disease. The common refrain is that no foods or supplements can improve the functioning of the immune system. Believe what you want. There is an multi-billion dollar industry that would stand to become almost irrelevant if it turns out that vitamin C is highly effective in treating critically ill COVID-19 patients. What if it turns out that vitamin C is more effective than Remdesivir? Have you ever considered what is at stake here”

       I end with this video from Dr. Robert Cathcart, vitamin C pioneer. Anybody who wants to “take the red pill” can watch it!

32. New posts up.

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/us-gom-2019-summary-part-ii-reserves/

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-10-2020/

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