A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on January 25th, with data for November 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year 2018 to date.
In November, the absolute amount of electricity generated declined sightly as mild fall temperatures gave way to colder winter temperatures with demand for air conditioning giving way to demand for heating. Coal and Natural Gas between them, fueled 61.99% of US electricity generation in November, with the contributions from Nuclear and Conventional Hydroelectric edging up. The contribution from Natural Gas was down at 33.18%, from 38.11% in October, with the amount generated falling from 124,027 GWh to 106,804 GWh. Generation fueled by coal increased from 87,452 GWh to 92,738 GWh resulting in the percentage contribution rising from 26.87% to 28.81%. The amount of electricity generated by Nuclear plants increased from 59,397 GWh to 63,948 GWh with the resulting contribution actually rising from 18.25% to 19.87% in November. The amount generated by Conventional Hydroelectric increased from 18,779 GWh in October to 22,174 GWh in November with resulting contribution increasing to 6.89% as opposed to 5.77% in October. The amount generated by Wind decreased from 19,507 GWh to 17,991 GWh with the resulting contribution falling from 5.99% to 5.59% in November. The estimated total solar output fell from 7,625 GWh to 5,859 GWh with the resulting contribution falling from 2.34% to 1.82%. The contribution of zero carbon or carbon neutral sources rose from 34.10% in October to 36.97% in November.
The graph below shows the absolute production from the various sources as well as the total amount generated (right axis).
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In November 2018 the output from solar at 5,859 GWh, was 2.86 times what it was four years ago in November 2014.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the combined contribution from wind and solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for combined wind and solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the combined output of solar and wind as a means of assessing the potential of the combination to make a meaningful contribution to the year round total.
The chart below shows the percentage contributions of the various sources to monthly capacity additions for 2018. In November Natural Gas contributed 50.97 percent of new capacity, with 28.53 percent of new capacity coming from Solar and Wind contributing 13.73 percent. Natural Gas, Solar and Wind made up 93.23 percent of new capacity in November. The only capacity added that was not fueled by Natural Gas, Wind or Solar was a 122 MW Conventional Hydroelectric facility at Wanapum, Washington, a 800 kW battery installation at the Rolling Thunder Wind Farm in South Dakota and a 1 MW battery installation at the Casa Mesa Wind Energy Center in New Mexico. The hydro facility in Wanapum Washington is not new capacity in the strict sense since, it is actually part of a project to upgrade ten 104 MW turbines at the facility with 122 MW units, the cumulative effect of which will be 180 MW of additional capacity. In November 2018 the total added capacity reported was 1830.3 MW, compared to the 1577.1 MW added in November 2017.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements so far for 2018. The scale on the Y axis has been adjusted to start at 10% since there is no month in which any coal capacity was retired where the proportion of coal capacity retired was less than that figure and between January and November, the minor contributors were so small that, they are barely visible even with the scale starting at ten percent. In November the only retirements noted were a 55 MW Wood/Wood Waste Biomass fueled facility at the Benson Power Biomass Plant in Minnesota, a 76 MW Natural Gas Steam Turbine in Tallahassee, Florida, two Natural Gas Steam Turbines amounting to 190 MW at the Murray Gill Energy Center in Wichita, Kansas and a 51 MW Conventional Steam Coal plant at the Kline Township Cogen Facility in Pennsylvania.
Following the posting of the November edition of this report, a request was made for a graph that better represented the scale of the capacity additions and retirements. Below is a chart for monthly net additions/retirements and another for the year to date.
Below is a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for November 2018 and the year before for comparison
Thank Island Boy.
This is from the the last post of the last thread- repeat-
The Third Pole [Hindu Kush-Himalaya] is melting quickly, and is now forecast to lose 1/3rd of its ice by 2100.
The runoff is utilized by over 2 Billion people.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-worlds-third-pole-will-lose-one-third-of-ice-by-2100
For the full report-
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-92288-1.pdf
Ha! So let me get this straight according to the full report, part of the plan is to use the great potential hydro power resources of this region, to transition to alternative energy, precisely when that resource is going to be significantly diminished due to melting of the glaciers? Oh, and if UN projections are to be believed, it also happens to coincide with the addition of another billion or so more people to the region. Gee, dunno, what could possibly go wrong under such a scenario?!
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/daniel-kahneman-beware-the-inside-view
Daniel Kahneman: “Beware the ‘inside view”
Cut’m some slack , Fred!
If ya a fisherman, ya better git out there ‘n ketch all ya can, ‘fore they’re all gone!
Gotta build them dams ‘n put in them gen’raters, while the building and the puttin’s still good!
‘N sides that, the faster that there ice melts , the more juice they kin git outer them dams!
The trouble with you over eddicated fellers is that ya ain’t yit figgered out we ‘re all dead in the long run!
Seriously, if the resources that will be put into such infrastructure were to be spent on some other grand scheme…… it’s as likely as not, maybe a lot more likely, that the results would be even worse.
At least if they build lots of reservoirs and transmission lines, the reservoirs will probably hold enough water that some of the cities nearest them will have enough drinking water to get thru the hot season, and the transmission lines can probably be integrated into any wind and solar farms that are eventually built.
The biggest boon to mankind that one simple researcher might be able to contribute would be to discover a way to make a tolerably safe fool proof one time birth control pill that works for men and women, or two pills, one that works for men, the other for women…..
A pill that can be easily and cheaply manufactured from ingredients readily available just about anywhere……. ingredients that cannot be outlawed, because they are part of the recipe for lots of essential products. One that works… one that cannot be reversed!
And then post his or her results on the internet, where they would go viral !
I can easily envision the birth rate dropping like a stone, even faster than it is already!
On second thought, if the rivers do run dry over the summer, there wouldn’t really be any need for such a pill…..after a few dry summers.
But it would save a lot of kids being born only to die of starvation and thirst.
Furthermore, if these reservoirs and transmission lines do get built, and I suppose they will, barring economic collapse preventing it, then whoever is in control of them will have the defacto battery system needed to balance the irregular output of ( future construction )wind and solar farms, to whatever extent there is “dispatchable” water in the reservoirs.
This advantage would be a great plus in justifying the expense of building them.
Seriously, if the resources that will be put into such infrastructure were to be spent on some other grand scheme…… it’s as likely as not, maybe a lot more likely, that the results would be even worse.
That’s highly likely to be true! Though the gist of my beef isn’t about that at all. but rather something that I see as a deep underlying flaw in almost every such report I read from the UN or the IPCC or some other expert group etc… etc…!
Well meaning though they might be. My main issue with all such reports is summed up by the concluding remark in the very last paragraph of the review I linked to:
The spectacular accuracy of the outside-view forecast in our specific case was surely a fluke and should not count as evidence for the validity of the outside view. However, the argument for the outside view should be made on general grounds: if the reference class is properly chosen, the outside view will give an indication of where the ballpark is. It may suggest, as it did in our case, that the inside-view forecasts are not even close.
In other words, because all of these reports are created through the lens of the insiders view points, their future scenarios are not even in the ballpark!
Cheers!
Fred,
Some insider views are relatively correct, consider James Hansen’s predictions of Global warming (at the time of those predictions his view was indeed an inside view).
Yes inside views are not always correct, but generally it seems better to rely on scientific experts than reading tea leaves. 🙂
How is it possible for an expert to have an “outside view”?
Yes we should always be skeptical and consider a variety of scientific viewpoints, but the future will always be unknown. No future scenario can ever be correct, the odds of a correct prediction are pretty close to zero. Essentially one over infinity.
“How is it possible for an expert to have an “outside view”?”
That is worth pondering.
Something like the UnCola…
Some insider views are relatively correct, consider James Hansen’s predictions of Global warming (at the time of those predictions his view was indeed an inside view).
Dennis, To be clear, when Kahneman talks about insider vs outsider views he is talking about different outcomes in risk assessment based on statistical analysis due to reference framing. In other words, the fact that Hansen is a climate scientist doing research in climate science isn’t what defines his reference framing as being that of an insider. It’s not even an apples and oranges comparison.
I highly recommend reading a few of Kahneman’s books and papers to get a deeper understanding about this topic. I doubt that I’m doing it much if any justice in my posts here. Perhaps if I frame it (pun intended), with refernce (pun intended again) to economic risk it might make a bit more sense to you. 😉
All Frames Created Equal Are Not Identical: On the Structure of Kahneman and Tversky’s Framing Effects
https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/2364
In terms of internal frame, however, KT claimed from the early 1980s onwards that strict framing effects could be predicted and explained in terms of their 1979 prospect theory. As is well known, their 1979 prospect theory paper shook the decision theory community in economics on several grounds, notably due to two features of the paper. The first is that KT focused as seriously on probable losses in addition to the more traditional study of probable gains. This was in order to make the case for the pervasiveness of asymmetrical attitudes towards risk depending on whether losses or gains were being evaluated, from a reference point which need not be zero. The second feature of KT’s paper is that their 1979 prospect theory did not formally imply a preference for first-order stochastic dominance, maybe the most widely shared theoretical convention in the models of economists working in decision theory. Both these features explain specific characteristics of framing phenomena. KT’s 1979 prospect theory is essentially a combination of a value function and a weighting function. The weighing function represents decision makers’ perceptions of probabilities; we shall not discuss it until the next-subsection. The value function represents the decision makers’ asymmetrical attitudes towards risk. In his latest book, Richard Thaler provides a very highly pedagogical depiction of the value function:5
The curvature of the function implies risk-seeking when the consequences are losses, and risk aversion when the consequences are gains. The point at which the curvature reverses, the so-called reference point, determines what counts as losses and what counts as gains. The isolation effect was meant to show that the reference point is not necessarily one’s total wealth or even one’s given endowment in a decision problem’s external frame. But it is not necessarily zero either, so that losses (resp. gains) are not necessarily negative (resp. positive) quantities. Thus it is more appropriate to say that the value function depicts asymmetrical attitudes towards risk depending on perceived losses and gains rather than losses and gains tout court.
Figure 1: Thaler’s (2015, fig.3) Version of KT’s 1979 Value Function
.
I think part of what OFM is saying is that the hydro resource is not reduced by the melting of glaciers: the problem is that water won’t be stored for gradual human use later in the season. Which large man-made water reservoirs would help to do…
Nick, besides being completely wrong about melting glaciers not reducing the long term future potential hydro resource. This is not merely a seasonal issue. It also seems you haven’t quite grasped the implications of only looking at a problem from ‘The Insiders View’!
Fred, could you elaborate on your comments?
For instance, my understanding was that in this case glaciers stored seasonal precipitation, and then released it later in the year. Which is what dams would do. If you disagree, it would be helpful to explain why, rather than simply repeating your statement of disagreement more passionately.
For instance, my understanding was that in this case glaciers stored seasonal precipitation, and then released it later in the year.
Pretty much what Ron said already. Perhaps you are confusing seasonal heavy winter snow fall in certain mountainous regions that provides water to streams and rivers in the spring when the snow melts. That is quite different from the time scales involved when talking about glaciers. Glaciers melting is related to long term climate change.
Uh…Ron? Maybe you mean OFM?
Yes. I agree: storage of seasonal winter snow is different from climate induced glacier melting. My understanding is that these mountains store precipitation and release it later. This would be a sustainable thing, with glaciers that could vary in mass through the year, but overall their masses could be neutral, i.e., not decrease in the long term. This is what I understood to be the historical condition.
Are you suggesting that Indian farmers are, and have been in the past, primarily dependent on climate induced, unsustainable glacier melting?
Uh…Ron? Maybe you mean OFM?
No, I mean Ron. He must have deleted his comment just after I posted mine. I see he has posted a different one now 😉
For instance, my understanding was that in this case glaciers stored seasonal precipitation, and then released it later in the year.
Are you serious?
Again, that comment tells me that you disagree, and not much more.
I know that a lot of people are concerned about the loss of mountain ice, due to it’s impact on the people dependent on waterflows from the mountains. My sense was that this mountain ice was a kind of “watertower”, storing seasonal precipitation.
Is that not your understanding?
Are you suggesting that Indian farmers are, and have been in the past, primarily dependent on climate induced, unsustainable glacier melting?
Nope!
Tell you what, at least take a look at that 638 page report linked by Hickory, Titled:
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment
Mountains, Climate Change,
Sustainability and People
That way, perhaps we can be on the same page!
Actually, I did.
Nick, read this and stop making stupid comments.
CLIMATE CHANGE: WARMING THREATENS HIMALAYAN GLACIERS
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47122641
And if that isn’t enough, the short excerpt
below might help…
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/melting-himalayan-glaciers-will-cause-water-scarcity-various-asian-countries
WATER SCARCITY
Thawing glaciers
12/08/2017 – by Sheila Mysoreka
The long-term challenge is that glacial ice – the only buffer to protect against extreme water shortages on seasonal and longer timescales – is dwindling. Glacial meltwater supply continues in droughts. Pritchard argues that “unlike seasonal snow cover that fluctuates annually, glaciers delay the passage of water through the hydrological system by storing precipitation as ice, which flows slowly to lower altitudes before melting in summer.”
Doug, Fred,
I think we’re saying the same things…
But, Doug: read more carefully before you call anyone names.
All I know, its not good news.
Too many people, with too many hands, too many mouths, and too many fires being stoked.
Also, note that the projection for 1/3 rd loss of ice assumes-
“global average temperatures can be capped at a 1.5oC increase above pre-industrial levels. Most scientists agree that target is unlikely to be met. If current emission trends continue, the world will actually be hotter by between 4.2-6.5oC by 2100 – in which case two-thirds of Himalayan glaciers will be gone.”
“Climate models show that summer flow in the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and their snow-fed tributaries will actually rise till 2050 as the glaciers melt away, but will start decreasing after that because there will be less ice left. “
You can say there are too many people at this point, but look at how some are issuing warnings of the coming population crash resulting in not enough people in the world.
The World Might Actually Run Out of People
Megan Molteni | Science
https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-might-actually-run-out-of-people/
You know the story. Despite technologies, regulations, and policies to make humanity less of a strain on the earth, people just won’t stop reproducing. By 2050 there will be 9 billion carbon-burning, plastic-polluting, calorie-consuming people on the planet. By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario. Such dire population predictions aren’t the stuff of sci-fi; those numbers come from one of the most trusted world authorities, the United Nations.
But what if they’re wrong? Not like, off by a rounding error, but like totally, completely goofed?
That’s the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. “In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.”
But Empty Planet is not a book about statistics so much as it is about what’s driving the choices people are making during the fastest period of change in human history. Ibbitson and Bricker take their readers inside the Indian slums of Delhi and the operating rooms of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to eavesdrop on the conversations young professionals have at dinner parties in Brussels and over drinks at a young professionals’ club in Nairobi. The end result is a compelling challenge to long-entrenched demography dogma, Trojan Horse-d inside an accessible, vivid portrait of modern families from every walk of life. The authors sat for an interview about how they arrived at a radical new outlook on the human race and its implications for future societies.
The population falling off , continuously, long term?
Won’t happen. At some point, the number of people will be low enough that women will feel comfortable having three kids again, if for no other reason than that they ENJOY having kids around. Not many people are s going to want to live in ever shrinking communities, without a positive vision of the future including kids to carry on and remember them and provide them with grandchildren to add contentment to their old age.
I know an old nursing professor who tells the same story every semester.
The CORRECT answer to her examination question, for one point extra credit, as to what causes a woman to have a baby is not DOING IT.
It’s playing with a baby. When a young woman sees one of her friend’s new baby, and gets to hold it and cuddle it and think about seeing one of her own take its first steps and say its first words, and grow up to make her proud……..
She quits taking her bc pills. Playing with that friend’s baby is the critical event, going from thinking about it to having a baby, in ever so many cases.
This is actually a true story, as told to her by numerous students, present and past. Playing with a baby is the last little thing that pushes the last button in deliberately deciding to have a baby. NOW.
Women generally want kids, so long as they aren’t more of a burden than a blessing to them. Most men , or at least enough men, want some kids too, so long as looking after them isn’t too big a burden.
We’re programmed to pair bond, and pair bonding is all about reproduction. We will reproduce reliably so long as we perceive circumstances are favorable. We refrain, to a substantial extent, when circumstances are unfavorable.
When neighbors start getting scarce, circumstances will be perceived as favorable, lol.
OFM,
People may not choose to have three kids, with reliable birth control people will make choices about how many children to bear.
In most developed nations the total fertility ratio is far below replacement level (2.1 live births per woman over their lifetime) and in East Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea the total fertility ratio(TFR) is 1.44 and 1.17 respectively in 2016.
Women will choose to have babies, but not many will choose to have more than 2.
Many women delay having children until they are 30 or older as they start their careers and then have difficulty conceiving or find after having one pregnancy, that they would rather not go through the process again at age 33 or older.
You’re anecdote explains why a woman would have their first child only, they may not choose to bear a second or third child.
My wife and I both come from large families with 11 children total in our parents families. Only 6 grandchildren total from those 11 children for an average TFR of 1.1 so in a single generation TFR fell from 5.5 to 1.1 in this small sample.
For South Korea the TFR fell from 6 in 1960 to 1.5 in 1986 and then continued to fall to 1.2 by 2002. For the World as a whole TFR fell from 5.4 in 1964 to 2.4 in 2016.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
I am originally from India. My paternal grandparents had 6 kids and my maternal grandparents had 7 kids. My parents had only 2 kids. Me and my brother have 1 child each. In 2 generations fertility rate fell from 6.5 to 1. It is possible that my daughter and my nephew may not have a child at all and our family ends with them.
Suyog,
Always a possibility, but great progress can be made if more people choose one child families rather than 2. Interesting, my grand parents had smaller families of 3 and 4 for an average of 3.5 for TFR, so in my case it went up and then down.
The more important number is the World TFR, better education and access to birth control worldwide as well as equal rights for women would go a long way to getting population growth down.
May I ask you to shed some insight why your parents the you and your brother made those decisions?
NAOM
notanoilman, my father went to college in a big city (Mumbai) and got a degree in technical Chemistry. My mother dropped out of high school (like all girls of her generation) but knew how to read and write, arithmetic etc. My grandmothers were likely illiterate. So my parents were better educated and spent their adult life in a big city where space is scarce. My grandparents on the other hand spent all their life in a small town/village environment with plenty of space. Also, unlike my grandparents, my parents had access to birth control. After independence in 1947 the Indian government aggressively pushed small families. Both me and my brother have graduate degrees in Engineering. My wife is a physician. We had only one child because with both parents working it is not easy to raise a child. My sister-in-law too was working outside the home when she had a son and has a graduate degree in Engineering.
Thanks for that, we talk about smaller families and the need to reduce reproduction rates and it is interesting to see a real world example and the reasons behind the change. It exemplifies how education can make a difference along with modern living including birth control.
NAOM
Hi Dennis,
My own family story parallels yours, except the older generations in mine had even more kids. The family birth rate since then has fallen as far as your family’s, or thereabouts. It’s under two per couple, for damned sure, in the young adult generation.
But I was not speculating about current culture and economic conditions, but rather about a time in the distant future, with the population reduced so that people are actually starting to live isolated lives, meaning they have very few neighbors, very few friends, hardly even enough living relatives to get together to have a good time, as a group.
Among the people I have read about who have voluntarily adopted the back to the earth rural lifestyle, getting away from the city, etc, most couples tend to have more than two kids.
The comment I originally referred to indicated that the human race would simply eradicate itself via voluntarily reducing birth rates to well below replacement.
” Once that decline begins, it will never end.”
There will be people around who want lots of other people around, and they will figure out ways to get women to have more than two kids, once the need arises. Call them priests or priestesses, or strong men, or tribal chieftans, whatever.
The number of societies that have ever existed that have voluntarily reduced their numbers to zero, via not having children, numbers only one, so far as I know, but there may have been a few more.
People have always been afraid of strangers, with EXCELLENT cause, pc or no. Strangers have always been ready, about as often as not, to rape, rob, and pillage. When a society sees another one growing, and threatening it, because it doesn’t have numbers enough to defend itself………
Having plenty of kids will become the norm again.
People living in modern societies with very low birth rates don’t feel threatened…… yet.
But consider the example of Japan. Their population will soon be shrinking fast, but they are adamantly opposed to allowing more than a mere handful of new people into their country. At some point, unless peace breaks out permanently, world wide, which is about as likely as cows sprouting wings, they WILL feel threatened…….
Of course I could be wrong, lol.
OFM,
Surely things might change. As it stands, the wealthy and powerful nations currently have low total fertility ratios. I was mostly commenting on your previous suggestion for why women want to have children. People in general in many nations with decent education, relatively equal rights for women, and access to birth control choose small families.
When World population reaches 500 million or less perhaps that will change and population will stabilize with most families choosing 2 children.
Difficult to predict.
I am the twelfth of thirteen children. A huge family for the standards of educated Americans.
We were born roughly two years apart between 1941 and 1964, so we pretty much cover the baby boomer generation. If you chart the number of children per sibling against the order of birth, you get the equation y = -0.17x +3.
In other words, each sibling had about one sixth fewer children than the sibling two years older than him. At that rate, a hypothetical sibling born in 1984 would have no children at all.
Cats- “You can say there are too many people at this point, but look at how some are issuing warnings of the coming population crash resulting in not enough people in the world.”
Well, we can worry about that later. Much later.
Although we certainly do need to start learning how to live with ‘de-growth’ now.
How to manage it without killing each other.
The Germans in the 1930’s certainly did a horrible job at it.
Hickory,
It is not possible for current emission levels to continue for very long due to peak fossil fuels, so the 4.2-6.5 C increase in temperature is a highly unlikely scenario.
That sounds like an RCP8.5 projection, which should be ignored. The RCP4.5 scenario corresponds with my “high fossil fuel scenarios” which many (Ron and Doug come to mind) think are wildly “optimistic” (or pessimistic from and environmental destruction perspective). In other words, they expect something like my “low” fossil fuel scenarios are closer to reality which would fall somewhere between RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 as far as total carbon emissions from fossil fuel.
I do agree however that keeping Global warming below 1.5 C above the 1850-1900 average temperature (often this is used for pre-industrial average even though it is about 0.5 C below the Holocene average temperature from 11,000 BP to 1750 CE, based on Marcott et al 2013 and Mann et al 2008) will be very unlikely, we will possibly be able to limit warming to 1.5 C above the Holocene average temperature before 1750 CE, but 2 C seems more likely. Lots of uncertainty in the estimates and further research is needed, better to err on side of caution meaning we do everything possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to as low a level as is physically possible.
Yes, I see your point on that Dennis.
But between burning off that long, long tail (high plateau) of oil, nat gas, and coal that the projections show as in the pipeline, as well as burning more and more forests subsequently, and possible feedback loops such as permafrost methane,
we may be in for much more warming than just 1.5 C. Hell, we are getting to that point rapidly.
And globally, we are doing a pitiful job at renewable deployment.
Here is a great analysis from someone who is an expert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfIjCG-zB4&t=72s
Hickory,
The forest burning and methane release estimates are often based on a scenario like RCP8.5 which assumes 5000 Gt of carbon emissions. The high fossil fuel scenarios I have created (which I think of as an upper bound of what is likely, probability of about 90% that fossil fuel emissions will be lower) have carbon emissions of about 1600 Gt.
That is very close to the RCP4.5 scenario which has a central estimate of about 2 to 2.5C of warming. My best guess case he “medium fossil fuel” scenarios have roughly 1200 Gt of carbon emissions and it seems reasonable that after the peak is reached (oil=2025, coal=2028, natural gas=2035) that fossil fuel prices will rise and the tail of the fossil fuel supply curves will be thinner as the World economy transitions to alternative energy in response to high fossil fuel prices.
So a total fossil fuel emissions scenario of about 1000 Gt seems pretty achievable and with proper policy might be reduced to 800 or 900 Gt.
Not sure if the permafrost and forest burning estimates take this into account, my guess is they use the RCP8.5 scenario, which only true cornucopians believe is remotely likely.
I use the information from the group of experts at the link below.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
and
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
Not sure if the permafrost and forest burning estimates take this into account, my guess is they use the RCP8.5 scenario, which only true cornucopians believe is remotely likely.
HUH?!
There is nothing even remotely cornucopian about an RCP8.5 scenario. It is a recipe for catastrophic disaster of unimaginable proportions. Did you perhaps intended to say only true doomers?
I equate true cornucopianism with RCP2.6, did I miss something?
.
Dennis was implying that only cornucopians believe there exist enough fossil fuels to make RCP 8.5 feasible.
No need for a huge amount of fossil fuels to trigger feedbacks, although despite advertisement to the contrary, they exist in large amounts.
Gonefishing,
Just because something exists does not mean that it is profitable to extract and use.
There is a lot of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan, but I am confident that it is not likely to be used as an energy source on Earth. 🙂
I agree we do not need 5000 Gt of carbon emissions to have feedback effects.
I know you like to look at upper bounds, but I don’t worry too much about cases with a probability of 0.001%. Roughly that is the case for RCP8.5.
RCP4.5 is a much more realistic scenario and that should be the focus of permafrost, forest fire and other feedback research.
You have often pointed out the inefficiency of a fossil fuel energy system, these will become very obvious to everyone as fossil fuel peaks and becomes more expensive while expanding wind, solar, and electric transport become cheaper as they ramp up and economies of scale and innovation drive costs lower.
Dennis really? I never mentioned interplanetary methane as a source or 5000 Gt of carbon. Have you gone bonkers?
You can deride me all you want, but reality will not change.
Do you really think that anyone takes your peak fossil fuels (depletion/economic) and economic driven renewable growth combination seriously?
Peak fossil fuels have been predicted to have occurred so many times in the last 50 years that few take it seriously. Certainly not the economic part, since much of it is produced at a loss and that has not stopped it. Sure peak fossil fuels will happen eventually, but not to your tune, to the logic of profit and war it will continue. The profit happens elsewhere, not necessarily at the producer.
The rise of renewables and EV’s? Wind power growth has gone linear, solar will do that soon too. Even producing 100 EVs a minute would only eventually cut human caused emissions by 20 percent and probably not until the 2040’s if then. You are not going to stop the natural emissions, they are going exponential too.
You don’t seem to grasp the exponential rise of methane and the fast rise of Arctic temperatures (3.5 C since 1900 according to Berkeley). These are not just numbers, the Earth is responding with dozens of natural feedbacks right now. Huge populations of species are being killed by the fast change and the human thermo engine.
Maybe when you are toddling down the road in your EV in the 2030s sucking synthetic food through a tube in a cemetery world and wondering why there are dead and dying in the street, maybe then you will wake up.
It’s all gone exponential…that has implications.
Gonefishing,
Yes peak oil has been predicted in the past, I agree. The 5000 Gt is the emissions in the standard RCP8.5 scenario, point is that RCP4.5 is more realistic, that’s all really. The RCP4.5 is also consistent with the higher estimates of fossil fuel resources found in Steve Mohr’s research and is higher than his best guess estimates.
I am well aware of the exponential rise in greenhouse gases.
The biggest influence on radiative forcing as far as anthropogenic emissions is CO2 based on information from NOAA
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html
The smiley face is an indication that the previous was intended as a joke. Of course you have never said methane will be imported from Titan.
Can you give us your estimate of how much fossil fuel you expect to be recovered? Does 5640 Gt of carbon emissions from fossil fuel RCP8.5 from 1765-2500) seem reasonable? From 1800-2200 the cumulative emissions from Fossil fuels are 4768 Gt of carbon, for RCP6 carbon emissions from fossil fuels are 2090 Gt from 1800-2200, for my high fossil fuel scenario emissions are 1392 Gt from 1800 to 2200, medium 1141 Gt, and low 962 Gt. I think it is likely that fossil fuel emissions fall to zero by 2100 or earlier which is why I give the emissions to 2100 for the low, medium and high scenarios.
My estimate is based on the research of Jean Laherrere, Steve Mohr, David Rutledge and others.
https://aspofrance.org/2018/08/31/extrapolation-of-oil-past-production-to-forecast-future-production-in-barrels/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267870440_Projection_of_world_fossil_fuels_by_country
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqzqkbueso6papm/Steve%20Mohr%20Thesis.pdf?dl=0
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/DavidRutledgeCoalGeology.pdf
The shock model is covered in detail in the book below
https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Geoenergy-Discovery-Depletion-Geophysical/dp/1119434297
Also posts by me on shock models
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-shock-model-dispersive-discovery-simplified/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-shock-models-with-different-ultimately-recoverable-resources-of-crude-plus-condensate-3100-gb-to-3700-gb/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-natural-gas-shock-model/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/coal-shock-model/
Through 2100 the three shock models have the flowing totals for combined low, medium and high cases for total fossil fuel carbon emissions from 1800-2100:
low=839 Gt C, medium=967 Gt C, high=1148 Gt C.
Scenarios peak in 2015, 2025 and 2035 for fossil fuel emissions and clearly nobody knows the future so anyone who knows statistics would not assume these scenarios would be correct.
As always clicking on chart will give a larger view.
Peak fossil fuels have been predicted to have occurred so many times in the last 50 years that few take it seriously.
Baloney! Peak fossil fuels were not even dreamed of 50 years ago. Coal has been predicted to last for hundreds of years. Peak oil for the USA was predicted by King Hubbert to occour in 1970. And it did except for offshore and shale which Hubbert did not know about. Otherwise the first serious prediction for world peak was for 2005.
But since peak oil did not happen in 2005 that obviously means it will never happen. Right??? That obviously means all those who predict oil production will peak are idiots who don’t realize that oil is an infinite resource. It just floats up from deep in the earth.
Of course I am being sarcastic, but it just burns my ass when people talk about peak oil like it will never happen simply because past predictions were inaccurate.
Hey Ron, you protest too much. Or can’t you read anymore?
I said “Sure peak fossil fuels will happen eventually”
Feel better now?
No, I don’t feel a damn bit better. “Eventually” could be 200 years from now.
What does “eventually” mean in the context which you use it? Make me feel better.
Dennis asked “Can you give us your estimate of how much fossil fuel you expect to be recovered?
More than enough to tip the planetary system into natural feedbacks. It’s already started over two dozen of them.
Thanks Gonefishing.
I agree with your estimate. Essentially it is more than enough to cause problems,
how severe those problems are would depend on a better estimate, more than 2000 Gt of fossil fuel carbon emissions for example is very likely to lead to severe environmental damage. If total carbon emissions (including land use change) remain under 1000 Gt of carbon damage might be less severe.
There is a great deal of uncertainty, so lower emissions of greenhouse gases is certainly the sensible path forward.
Gone fishing points out correctly that my chart above is incorrect, the units should be Mt/year (millions of metric tonnes per year) not Pg. Corrected chart below
Hi Fred,
At second glance I know you get it, but maybe you should have put a sarc alert on your rhetorical question about missing it, lol.
Cornucopian, defined,..
A person who knows in his heart that the good times will last forever, just like the infinite supply of oil, water, topsoil……..
I think Dennis was using the term much more narrowly, to refer to someone who believes that FF in general, and oil in particular, are much more abundant than they actually are.
I think Nick is right, as the term cornucopian, “horn of plenty,” refers to an abundance of supply.
OFM,
I am actually labelled as a fossil fuel cornucopian by many because I think that there might be 1000 Gt of fossil fuel carbon emissions through 2100 (my medium scenario for fossil fuels assuming there is never any limitation on fossil fuel demand and that prices always remain high enough so that all technically recoverable resources can be profitably produced).
Note that my expectation is that the medium scenario overestimates the total fossil fuels that will be produced because high fossil fuel prices after the peak will eventually lead to substitution over a couple of decades (2025-2045) and eventually fossil fuel prices will drop due to lack of demand which will reduce the total economically recoverable resources, hopefully reducing fossil fuel carbon emissions by 200 to 400 Gt. This reduces total fossil fuel carbon emissions to 600 to 800 Gt, it may not be enough and the lower the number the better.
This almost starts to sound cornucopian (in Fred’s sense) in that the environment might not be totally destroyed (or at least might be trashed somewhat less).
Nick G,
Cornucopian as I use it refers to all fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) suggesting that they are either abundant or possibly unlimited.
Fred,
There are resource cornucopians such as Michael Lynch and Julian Simon that believe fossil fuel resources are unlimited, for them RCP8.5 seems reasonable.
My point is very simple, it is likely that the economically recoverable fossil fuel resources would result in at most about 1500 Gt of carbon emissions, more than 3 times lower than the RCP8.5 scenario which includes about 5000 Gt of carbon emissions.
Bottom line, RCP8.5 will not happen, not enough fossil fuel will be extracted, even RCP4.5 (1445 Gt carbon emissions from fossil fuel) is not very likely unless strict laws are passed which do not allow the further installation of wind and solar power in the future. My “high” fossil fuel scenario, deemed unrealistically high by Ron Patterson, Doug Leighton, and George Kaplan has fossil fuel Carbon emissions of 1457 Gt from 1800-2400, a very similar amount to the RCP4.5 scenario.
My more realistic (in my opinion) “medium scenario” for fossil fuels has 1180 Gt of fossil fuel carbon emissions from 1800-2300, compared to 1378 Gt for the RCP4.5 scenario.
It is likely fossil fuel carbon emissions will be close to zero by 2100, under that assumption the medium fossil fuel scenario has 967 Gt of fossil fuel carbon emissions vs 1105 Gt of fossil fuel carbon emissions for RCP4.5. Also RCP 4.5 holds fossil fuel emissions constant from 2080 to 2100.
When this is adjusted by using the 2100-2120 emissions in place of the original scenario then carbon emissions are reduced to 1084 Gt for a modified RCP4.5 scenario. A further modification that assumes the linear trend from 2060 to 2080 for the RCP4.5 scenario is followed (0.26 Gt lower emissions each year after 2080), then total fossil fuel carbon emissions are 1050 Gt.
Note that the RCP4.5 scenario also includes other carbon emissions from land use change of about 172 Gt from 1800 to 2100. So total carbon emissions for the modified RCP4.5 are about 1222 Gt. For the medium fossil fuel scenario the total emissions would be 1139 Gb from 1800 to 2100 assuming the RCP4.5 land use emissions scenario is correct.
It seems likely we can do much better than RCP4.5 as fossil fuels peak and their prices rise leading to more rapid adoption of electric transport, solar, wind, etc. Nuclear power could also be used by nations that make that choice, though it is probably a more expensive option than widely dispersed interconnected wind and solar power.
My point is very simple, it is likely that the economically recoverable fossil fuel resources would result in at most about 1500 Gt of carbon emissions, more than 3 times lower than the RCP8.5 scenario which includes about 5000 Gt of carbon emissions.
Bottom line, RCP8.5 will not happen, not enough fossil fuel will be extracted,
Methinks, that thar bolded line, be the rub!
My point is even simpler. What matters isn’t necessarily the emissions pathway but rather the end result. Which in the case of the RCP8.5 scenario is a Radiative Forcing of 8.5 Watts per square meter by 2100.
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/the-plausibility-of-rcp8-5/
The plausibility of RCP8.5
Posted on December 2, 2018 by …and Then There’s Physics
Something that is often over-looked is that RCP8.5 is really a concentration/forcing pathway, not an emission pathway. There are a range of emission pathways that could lead to such a concentration pathway, including some with cumulative emissions as low as 1500 GtC.
See also:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3
The Beginner’s Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways
Emissions and concentrations, forcings and temperature anomalies
Each Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) defines a specific emissions trajectory and subsequent radiative forcing (a radiative forcing is a measure of the influence a factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system, measured in watts per square metre):
Fred,
It is highly unlikely that 1500 Gt of carbon emissions would result in 8.5 W/m^2 of radiative forcing based on what we know of the physics. The RCP6 scenario corresponds with 1500 Gt of emissions. A more likely scenario based on technically recoverable fossil fuel resources is RCP4.5 and that only occurs if no attempt is made to replace expensive fossil fuel (after the 2030 peak for all fossil fuel output in energy terms) with alternative energy (mostly wind and solar and possibly a bit of nuclear and hydro).
It has been shown that the emissions pathway doesn’t really matter, just total emissions. See
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/allen.2009.trillionth_ton.pdf
Generally radiative forcing will coincide cumulative carbon emissions.
See also
https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/nature/journal/v458/n7242/extref/nature08019-s1.pdf
also link to figure from Allen paper (a larger version of figure below, easier to read)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QVOc5K-QgkeWXFEVpvP3HyGG1TgCJBGp/view?usp=sharing
It is highly unlikely that 1500 Gt of carbon emissions would result in 8.5 W/m^2 of radiative forcing based on what we know of the physics.
And I agree! But the point is not whether or not it is highly likely or unlikely, but that it is plausible!
Which goes to the essence of the other point I fruitlessly keep trying to make about ‘The Insider View Fallacy’ and how it fundamentally effects our perceptions with regards risk assesment.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
Abstract
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
Fred, the heating is not dependent upon the amount of fossil fuels but on the amount of released stored carbon and the albedo changes of the planet that ensue, all feeding each other. The process has begun, all exponential systems appear slow and almost linear at first. Then the non-linearity and feedbacks become obvious. By then it is way too late.
Fred,
That is an excellent paper. Though I must admit I am still unclear on inside vs outside view.
As I thought it was excellent, I am guessing you would call it an “inside view”.
Maybe we could find an extraterrestrial in order to get an “outside view”. 🙂
Dennis,
Maybe we could find an extraterrestrial in order to get an “outside view”
Only if the aliens eschew intuition
and subscribe to rigorous statistical analysis. 😉
http://compoundingmyinterests.com/compounding-the-blog/2015/10/20/daniel-kahneman-on-intuition-and-the-outside-view
Daniel Kahneman on Intuition and the Outside View
…Mauboussin: Talk about the inside vs outside view, and base rates…
Kahneman: Was involved in writing a textbook on decision-making without math for a high school curriculum. Asked the team: “when will we finish the book?” Everyone answered somewhere between 18 and 30 months. Asked another colleague how long it took to write other textbooks in similar situations. This colleague’s answer had been somewhere in the 18 to 30 month range. The answer: 1) not all textbooks ever finished, with somewhere around 40% of them having given up; and, 2) those that were completed all took more than 7 years.
There are two different ways to look at a problem: 1) make an estimate based on a plan and reasonable extrapolation of progress—the inside view. 2) Abstract to the category of the case and ask “what are its characteristics”—the outside view. Intuition prefers the inside view, while the outside view is non-causal and statistical. If you start your analysis from the outside view, with a known base rate, it gives you a fair anchor and ballpark from which to work.
To main point here is that a rational actor with access to all the relevant knowledge who BTW was an expert, with first hand knowledge of numerous cases of groups who were engaged in writing books for curricula and knew that it took an average of 7 plus years with a failure rate of 40%! Still, when asked how long he thought the group he was a member of (insider) would take? Answered intuitively “somewhere between 18 and 30 months”! Disregarding everything he knew about groups actually writing such books!
Fred,
I think you are mistaken in thinking that the many geophysicists who model climate all base their models on “intuition”. These people scrutinize each others work quite vigorously and use quite a bit of statistics and try to think outside the box to come up with innovative approaches to highly complex problems.
I don’t really think the estimate of how long it might take to finish a project applies very well in this case.
And I really did want an anwer to the question because I read the short piece you linked earlier and I still cannot distinguish an inside from an outside view.
I have never studied psychology so somewhere there is a disconnect.
Is the paper you linked an “outside or inside view”, I really don’t know. You referenced the paper in connection with this concept but it’s not clear which it was supposed to represent.
Inside vs outside view still not clear to me. No idea what is meant by non-causal, anchors, base cases. Not a psychologist, just don’t know the lingo.
I think you are mistaken in thinking that the many geophysicists who model climate all base their models on “intuition”. These people scrutinize each others work quite vigorously and use quite a bit of statistics and try to think outside the box to come up with innovative approaches to highly complex problems.
No! That is not what I think! Furthermore I know that geophysicists who model climate do not base their models on “intuition”. I do have some understanding as to how science is actually done, for pete’s sake!
Anyways I will give it a rest for now because it is clear that I am unable to adequately communicate my point. Which is really about how inherent cognitive biases affect risk assessment. If you’re interested read Kahneman’s book: ‘Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow.’
Cheers!
Fred,
In any case, whether an inside or outside view is of little importance in my view (and you either don’t know or choose not to reveal your opinion with regard to that paper) the paper you linked was excellent.
Maybe you could reveal your opinion, was that an example of good science in your view or is it like the IPCC papers (which many here seem to think should be ignored)?
The emissions pathway does matter. Those who think it doesn’t rely on a faulty carbon cycle model.
Let me show an exaggerated example: if emissions are suddenly cut to 20% of today’s rate, then the carbon sinks, which today scrub 40 to 50% of emissions, will still be scrubbing away, and the CO2 concentration will drop.
CO2 levels don’t immediately drop.
Fernando,
I think you are mistaken. The carbon cycle models are correct. One only needs to consider periods when emissions were far lower (consider 1750 to 1850). Did CO2 levels drop then? Nope.
Very basic empirical evidence shows that you are wrong.
Dennis, do the math like this:
Emissions in year X are A.
Roughly 0.5A stays in the atmosphere.
The sinks absorb 0.5 A (this is mostly a function of CO2 concentration, precipitation and temperature)
Cut emissions to 0.2A.
The sinks will continue to remove 0.5 A.
The net is 0.2A minus 0.5 A, or minus 0.3A.
If the net is minus 0.3A, then CO2 concentration decreases.
QED.
Fernando,
The amount removed is not a fixed percentage, it varies over time.
Let’s assume as you do that it is a fixed 50% of emissions that is absorbed by natural sinks.
In 2017 approximately 11 Gt of Carbon was emitted by humans and perhaps 50 % was sequestered by land and ocean sinks. So roughly 5.5 Gt of carbon emissions were sequestered in 2017.
In 1969 there was a total of about 5.3 Gt of carbon emitted as CO2 and according to your theory all of it would have been sequestered in fact we would have been seeing atmospheric CO2 decreasing since 1850 as we should have been removing about 2340 Gt of CO2 (19.5 Gt CO2 times 120 years from 1850 to 1969) over that period (1850 to 1969) anthropogenic cumulative CO2 emissions were 768 Gt so total atmospheric CO2 should have decreased by 2340 minus 768 Gt (cumulative emissions 1850-1969) or a decrease of 1572 Gt. In 1850 there were about 2240 Gt of CO2 in the atmosphere, so based on your model we should have seen about 668 Gt of atmospheric CO2 in 1969 which would correspond to roughly 86 ppm of atmospheric CO2 (the actual value was about 325 ppm).
I believe you need to rethink your model.
Writing QED proves little when reality does not match your “proof”.
Hi Fred,
Yes I agree from an environmental perspective RCP8.5 is a disaster and RCP2.6 would be better from an environmental perspective.
I meant cornucopian with respect to the amount of fossil fuels that are economically recoverable.
I believe total fossil fuel carbon emissions are very likely to be less than 1150 Gb (that’s my high scenario from 1800-2100), that’s pretty close to the RCP4.5 scenario (1105 Gt C from 1800-2100).
The GISS models get about 2.35 C of warming to 2100 with a range of 1.9 to 2.9 C for RCP4.5, I took the average of the 6 models to get 2.35 C.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014MS000403
2.35C? Your precision is amazing and absolute at 2100.
This seems to indicate a different result.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time—and we are at a defining moment,” Guterres said in an address at UN headquarters in New York.
“If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-world-runaway-climate-chief.html
Oh, BTW, 2C for global land surfaces will be crossed in 2025. It was crossed several years ago in the Arctic and total global anomalies crossed 2C for portions of the year (Dec-Jan-Feb) just in the last three years. All from the Berkeley Earth site.
Dead bugs to the models.
Gonefishing,
There are many different models from many different groups and they span a wide range. For RCP4.5 the result for the GISS E2 models the range is 1.9 to 2.9 C for 6 different models, RCP4.5 assumes 4.2 Gt of fossil fuel Carbon emissions from 2080 to 2100 with gradually decreasing emissions after that (184 Gt from 2101 to 2200). I doubt carbon emissions will remain that high after 2080.
Using MAGICC 6 for RCP4.5 and a probabilistic run (600 historically constrained scenarios) the one sigma range is 2.2 to 3 C with a mean of 2.6 C. A multi model ensemble (171 scenarios including 19 AOGCMs and 9 carbon cycle models combined in every possible way or 19*9) has a range of 2.2 to 2.8 C in 2100 for RCP4.5 with a mean of 2.5 C.
http://live.magicc.org/
The estimates are all wrong. As it turns out future global warming is mostly caused by water vapor. This implies an acceleration of the water cycle, with increased precipitation. This means a lot more snow in cold months, but the snow melts faster in the spring and early summer. The water will still be there. This is an example of the pseudoscience we see nowadays.
“The estimates are all wrong.”
Well of course. An estimate is a prediction of the future. The only way to know how far off an estimate will be, is to actually be in the future and look backwards.
An estimate can sometimes be correct. Not all that often, since most things that people try to estimate are complex scenarios.
“As it turns out future global warming is mostly caused by water vapor.”
Well, not quite (and I suspect you know it). Water vapor is indeed a green house atmospheric component. As global methane and CO2 gas concentration in the atmosphere accelerates, and warm the atmosphere, water vapor content increases in response [Elementary school level science- warmer air holds more water than cooler air ]. This certainly amplifies the effect of CO2 and methane.
From NASA- “Everyone agrees that if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then warming will result…”Water vapor feedback can also amplify the warming effect of other greenhouse gases, such that the warming brought about by increased carbon dioxide allows more water vapor to enter the atmosphere….new data set shows that as surface temperature increases, so does atmospheric humidity,” Dessler said. “Dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more humid. And since water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, the increase in humidity amplifies the warming from carbon dioxide.”
The greenhouse effect of CO2 is quite low from now on because the IR absorption band is becoming saturated. At this point global warming requires water vapor to kick in, and in theory it’s the higher humidity which causes the additional warming. The theory has some holes, but that’s pretty much what it says. And the result is much higher precipitation.
FernandoL,
What determines global temperature is the balance between 1) the amount of heat (IR) emitted by Earth’s surface that is absorbed by atmospheric CO2 and 2) the amount of IR emitted from the upper atmosphere to outer space. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the higher up in the atmosphere will be the level where CO2 molecules are far enough apart to allow the IR emitted by one molecule to head for outer space and not be absorbed by another CO2 molecule. The higher up, the lower the air temperature, and colder air emits less IR than warmer air.
The warmer the lower atmosphere (troposphere) gets the greater the thermal expansion of the atmosphere, and the farther up, and colder, the layer from which IR can escape; the result is a decrease in the IR leaving the upper atmosphere for outer space. The balance between IR absorbed by CO2 in the lower atmosphere and IR lost to space from the upper atmosphere shifts and less IR is lost, giving Earth a warmer atmosphere.
Each molecule of atmospheric CO2 is still absorbing at the same wavelengths; there’s no saturation going on.
This is my understanding. Hmm…might be a good time for Port.
E. Synapsid,
Thought you might enjoy this 😉
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/244738494_Analysis_of_grapes_and_wine_by_near_infrared_spectroscopy
Analysis of grapes and wine by near infrared spectroscopy
Visible and near infrared raw spectra of water and red wine samples analysed in transmission mode using 1 mm path length.
.
You have it wrong. The CO2 forcing is a logarithmic function of concentration. Look it up. I’m getting a bit bored discussing basic stuff.
FernandoL,
Yes, CO2 forcing is a logarithmic function of concentration. That has to do with the rate of forcing but I described the balance of the resulting absorption of IR in the troposphere and the radiation to space of IR high in the atmosphere. The balance has shifted (there’s a post farther down from DougL, on the 11th, referring to satellite data) from an equal balance between tropospheric absorption of IR and radiation of IR high in the atmosphere, to an excess of tropospheric absorption over IR loss to space. The result is a warmer troposphere, where we live (and where water vapor plays a role).
Don’t be bored, this stuff is interesting, not to say important.
Plus you live in Spain while I have to languish in a life without fresh Spanish chorizo and a really good Manchego. Manchego flavor has declined for some reason.
I haven’t had time to read any of the links posted since I put my two comments up in this thread, but it is MY understanding, that while the glaciers have persisted, for as far back as known history, plus into deep time, the rivers that the people in that part of the world depend on are primarily fed by snow pack, which accumulates over the winter, and melts over the summer, year after year.
This replenishment and melting probably does involve some MINOR seasonal melting of what a layman such as myself would term glacial ice, in and of itself, but, again, to the best of my understanding, it involves mostly just the snows of one winter season melting over the following summer season…….. HISTORICALLY speaking.
Or maybe climate scientists simply refer to glacial ice ( which to me is ice that’s been around for years and years, even centuries, slowly moving downhill) PLUS each years snowfall, as glaciers. Slicing the terminology pie this way, the glaciers grow every winter and shrink every summer, but ORDINARILY stay the same average size…… with the problem being that with warming, they shrink overall, from year to year.
NOW, with forced climate change coming into play, the glaciers themselves are retreating, and threatening to retreat even faster, to the point of many of them actually disappearing.
Whether the snows will still fall as abundantly as previously, or whether the weather trends toward rain, in the high mountains, or even drought, I haven’t yet seen discussed in any article written by a climate scientist, but otoh, I haven’t yet looked for such articles.
It seems fairly obvious that if the amount of water hitting the ground in the mountains remains about the same, but the climate keeps warming up, spring floods will become ever more frequent, and larger, etc. And summer low river flow will also become the norm under these new conditions, etc.
So maybe I have a fairly good grasp of the known facts, or maybe I’ll learn something tonight, lol.
The interesting thing about those glaciers is how they emit a largely unknown contribution of rising CO2 to the global concentration. For instance, it’s been discovered that under a glacier in Iceland, Mount Katla releases up to 24,000 tons of CO2 every day.
I haven’t noticed Honda promising to put a car into production at a given time, and then only doing so years and years later, looking at you, Tesla.
So you can probably buy one of these this year, if you want one.
https://electrek.co/2019/01/24/honda-new-electric-prototype-mass-production/
OFM,
Not an easy thing to mass produce a vehicle, many car companies went out of business trying to compete with the large automobile manufacturers. You do realize that the Tesla Model 3 outsold all automobiles in the US except the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Honda Civic, and Toyota Corolla.
If we look at all vehicles including pickup trucks, it was the 12th best selling vehicle in the US in Dec 2018. This is for a vehicle that costs at least 46,000 before rebates and $38500 after the Federal rebate of $7500. It was also the best selling luxury vehicle in the US in 2018.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g25741172/best-selling-luxury-cars-suv-2018/
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2019/01/december-2018-the-best-selling-vehicles-in-america-every-vehicle-ranked/
This is an interesting video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5gd2JElzYg&t=4259s
It’s from a youtube channel called “Autoline Network” which claims to be “the voice of the global automotive industry”.
The title is “Will the internal combustion engine survive?”
My point is that I think the car industry is scared shitless right now. I know the Germans are. I think the Americans weren’t until Rivian made its announcement, threatening the pickup truck market.
Tesla is making ~7,000 model 3s a week now, that’s 350,000/year.
Add in 100,000/year of Model S and X (combined), that’s pretty close to 500,000/year.
There’s still a backlog of high-end model 3 orders from Europe, just now starting to get filled.
The 500,000/year goal was for 2020, moved up to 2018 per this Tesla Q1 2016 letter:
http://ir.teslamotors.com/static-files/041a2223-4f7b-4007-b030-b48965cc6ad9
Tesla has 80% of US EV sales:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/31/tesla-owns-80-of-us-ev-sales-1-spot-in-luxury-vehicle-market/
Where is Ford and GM and Chrysler?
Why is the Chevy Bolt, at around $40K, selling fewer than EITHER Tesla Model S or X (around $100K)?
https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/
Because Chevy doesn’t want to make them (still basically a compliance car), and Chevy dealers don’t want to sell them (no big profit on maintenance), and there is/was no comparable easy/widespread fast charging network like Tesla’s supercharger network.
There are encouraging signs that Honda is serious, just announced a contract for about 1 million EVs worth of batteries:
https://electrek.co/2019/02/06/honda-catl-battery-supply-1-million-electric-vehicles/
but:
“… It may sound like a lot, but the way I read the statement, it sounds like 56 GWh through 2027, which means an average of 7 GWh secured per year over the next 8 years.
That’s not really a lot.
Tesla is already consuming at a rate of over 25 GWh of battery cells per year for its vehicles and it is expected to rapidly increase over the next few years.
Therefore, it’s a big investment for Honda relative to what they have been doing in the space before, but it’s not really aggressive compared to other players in the space. …”
While I hope Honda manages to get their EV into mass production, the industry track record isn’t all that great:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/05/volkswagen-missed-its-2018-electric-vehicle-goal-by-217000-units/
One for Fred
https://cheezburger.com/59271425/this-dolphin-needs-help-with-a-troublesome-hook-and-knows-exactly-where-to-find-it
NAOM
Quite awesome!
Tks for that!
Okay, let’s clear the air about glaciers. Glaciers are flowing ice. Many calve into the ocean. But most glaciers simply end on land and are the source of glacial meltwater. And that glacial meltwater feeds small streams that supply glacial meltwater to many people in the valleys below.
How much glacial meltwater? It is the average of snow that falls on the mountains over many years. But this year’s glacial meltwater fell on the mountains over hundreds and thousands of years. It is not this year’s snowfall. But the glaciers are normally static. The glacial meltwater equals an average of one year’s snowfall.
But global warming screws all that up. Far more glacial meltwater will be released during the summer until… until… it dwindles to near nothing.
Ron and I are on the same page, for all intents and purposes. When the climate is stable, the water that runs off the mountains every year is equal to the amount of rain and snow that fall there, on average.
When the climate is warming up, then the amount of melting, from one year to the next, exceeds precipitation, on average, for now,obviously enough, with the glaciers shrinking fast.
Of course it IS possible that warming may in the future result in MORE rain and snow falling in the mountains, if prevailing winds shift in such a fashion as to bring about that result.
Or the average amount of rain and snow might decrease, thereby speeding up the death of the glaciers even more.
I think maybe more precipitation is in the cards, rather than less, because warmer oceans, and warmer air, mean more moisture in the atmosphere. But where this additional moisture hits the ground remains to be seen.
As Fred points out, insiders are often wrong.
Climatologists might be wrong too, not about warming in general, but about shifting winds that could result in either more or less precipitation in the mountains.
A search would probably turn up some who predict more, and some who predict less precipitation in these particular mountains.
Mac, you could very easily have more snow and still have shrinking glaciers. Climate change will cause more rain and snow in some places and less rain and snow in other places. But it is gradual global warming that is causing the glaciers to melt.
End of story.
Glacier National Park’s glaciers will be gone in our lifetime
Montana’s Glacier National Park is quickly losing an important part of its natural beauty: Its glaciers.
U.S. Geological Survey data released Wednesday shows the park’s 37 glaciers, along with two others on federal Forest Service land, have shrunk an average of about 40% since 1966.
In fact, they’ll all be gone within our lifetime, warns Daniel Fagre, a research ecologist with the USGS’s Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center. In order for the glaciers to survive, the area would need to experience “significant cooling,” he said.
But it’s likely too late. “Their fate is sealed,” forecasted Fagre, who has studied the glaciers since 1991. The trend, he argues, could have an impact on the park and animal life.
“The park-wide loss of ice can have ecological effects on aquatic species by changing stream water volume, water temperature and run-off timing in the higher elevations of the park,” Fagre said.
Hi Ron,
I agree.
Totally. I don’t really see any difference between what you’re saying, and what I’m saying.
Enough.
A warmer climate does imply more precipitation. What I find amusing is the argument that hydroelectric dams will run dry while the world gets warmer due to higher amount of water vapor, and that we are supposed to see more floods…because there’s more precipitation. 😐
Read up- Colorado River Basin.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016WR019638
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2018/09/07/rising-temperatures-flow-colorado-river-climate-change-warming/1212535002/
Some places will get more rain, others less.
Enhanced instability.
There is quite a lot of information available on the pros and cons of hydroelectric dams and how they may be affected by climate change in different regions of the world. If you Google hydroelectric power and climate change you get about 5,680,000 results (0.64 seconds). You might try reading some of these papers.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/47/11891
Sustainable hydropower in the 21st century
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/10/5/592/pdf
An Overview of Hydropower Reservoirs in Brazil:
Current Situation, Future Perspectives and Impacts of
Climate Change
http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/352071/original
Hydropower Vulnerability and Climate Change
A Framework for Modeling the Future of Global Hydroelectric Resources
I agree.
Now, people are worried about the effect of glacial climate melt on people downstream, especially farmers. My sense is that this is because the glaciers spread out the water through the year. Without the glaciers you’ll see floods during the rainy season, and drought later on.
Is that your understanding?
Yes, exactly!
Great, thanks.
It’s funny – that was what I saying way up above (or trying to), and we seemed to talking past each other. Boy, communication can be hard!
The switch to renewables is sometimes compared to the following:
1. The switch from wood to fossil fuels.
2. The switch from horses to automobiles.
3. The switch away from whale oil.
And various other similar veins. I’m sure you all have heard these and others, whether or not you’ve made them yourselves. I would like to make the case for a far more apt comparison.
Fossil fuels were superior to wood in every way that people of the time could see.
Automobiles we’re obviously superior to horses in virtually every measure.
Kerosene beats whale oil just about any way you slice it.
Renewables, on the other hand, have benefits and drawbacks compared to fossil fuels. So I believe the following is a more apt comparison:
The switch to renewables will be like switching from a diet based mostly on grains to a diet consisting entirely of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
Grains are easy to grow, energy dense, easy to store and transport, can be grown in vast quantities quickly, and provide high power energy. However, their growth degrades the environment, leads to over consumption and obesity, they are unhealthy to their users, and if we keep growing them the way we do we will eventually deplete the soil and be SOL.
Fruits, nuts, and vegetables, on the other hand, take more resources to grow, tend to grow more slowly, cannot provide as much energy per unit land, are not as easily stored and transported, and cannot grow fast enough to maintain the same level of consumption. However, they do not degrade the environment as much, can be grown more sustainably, and do not injure their users.
The only way to switch to the fruit/nut/vegetable diet is to consume far less in total. More time and effort is devoted to growing food and less to other tasks. The switch is difficult and the benefit is not obvious as was the switch from horses to autos, making convincing the public difficult and costly. Switching to the new diet requires redefining what “good” food production is, and requires a new lifestyle for the eaters. Doing so will be difficult and not automatic. The future benefits may be great in terms of health of soil and longevity of individuals, but the switch has good odds of failing due to difficulty and reticence.
Feeding grain to livestock, in order to eat meat , is hard on the environment, quite true. That’s mostly because of the SCALE, the acreage, needed that way, more than because grain is hard on the land. Grain isn’t necessarily any harder on the land than fruits and veggies.
And there are tens of millions of acres of land well suited to the production of grains that aren’t really worth a damn for use as fruit and vegetable farms. Climate, soil, geography, distance from markets, etc, all come into play. Wheat in the northern plains is one thing, veggies are a joke up that way. Ditto fruit for the most part, etc.
If we cut WAY back on red meat, poultry, and dairy foods, t we can get just fine with a rather minor percentage of the grain we use as feed, by switching to a plant based diet, and we can take good care of the land used to grow it. Can, not necessarily WILL.
Fruits, nuts, and veggies aren’t going to giterdone. It’s possible to get your protein from nuts, but there aren’t all that many places available to grow nuts to begin with, in relation to the population, geography and climate. Nuts are great, but growing them on the necessary scale for protein and calories isn’t going to work, not now, and not for the foreseeable future.
It’s very hard to impossible to live on fruits and vegetables, because they simply don’t provide enough calories or protein, and because they don’t store well. They have to be canned, frozen, dried, etc, and or shipped long distances, and shipping them is costly. A truck load of apples calls for pretty close to two thousand dollars these days, JUST for the cardboard boxes. A similar load of grain is shipped in bulk, loaded and unloaded with machinery, and I don’t mean on pallets with a fork lift, like apples or canned veggies. I mean blown thru a pipe by a powerful fan. Grain needs no refrigeration, and no packaging, until processed into flour or meal or a ready to eat food, etc.
And as the original comment indicates, grain REALLY cranks out both calories and protein.
We aren’t EVER going to live on fruits and veggies……not without either a substantial amount of grain, or else an equivalent amount of meat or fish, etc.
Niko- very good point
“The only way to switch to …. is to consume far less in total”
For example. The world could get by with absolutely zero airplane travel. Even for Trump.
And all road vehicle traffic speed could be limited to 50 mph. Severely enforced.
These measures would barely dent the ‘quality of life’ of the general population, but would be an easy 10-20 percent? saving in liquid fuels.
IATA FORECASTS PASSENGER DEMAND TO DOUBLE OVER 20 YEARS
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects 7.2 billion passengers to travel in 2035, a near doubling of the 3.8 billion air travelers in 2016. The prediction is based on a 3.7% annual Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR) noted in the release of the latest update to the association’s 20-Year Air Passenger Forecast. “People want to fly. Demand for air travel over the next two decades is set to double. Enabling people and nations to trade, explore, and share the benefits of innovation and economic prosperity makes our world a better place,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
https://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-10-18-02.aspx
Yes Doug.
It is startling to see the real time maps of planes in the air currently.
https://www.flightradar24.com/44.09,-94.27/6
But every single flight is unnecessary. Bar none.
Holy Shit! I took a peek at South Florida. Shocking!!!
Since I don’t have many planes in my area it was easy to verify the system. Yes it is real time, cool site.
AHA! And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is an almost perfect case study of the “Insider view fallacy” that plagues almost all of us!
To prove my point, assuming I even live long enough, I’ll take any bet, that there is not a snowball’s chance in hell, that it will happen!
And furthermore the people making that prediction are already in possession of all the information and data necessary to know that it can’t and that it won’t happen! Yet they are still making that prediction in good faith! Ironically, they are not in any way shape or form deliberately trying to mislead anyone!
See my response to Dennis upthread:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-january-2019-edition-with-data-for-november-2018/#comment-665902
Sigh! Is it ok to open a bottle of port at noon on a Wednesday?
E Fred,
Yes Fred, it’s always OK to open a bottle of Port at noon.
And if you don’t finish the bottle you’ll have Port available before noon the next day.
Hello Hickory,
I just took delivery of my new 2033 all electric Cadillac mini crossover SUV van last week. At about 10pm tonight before I go to sleep. I will be setting the navigation for the Bay Area, lay the seat back to my favorite sleeping position and my arrival time is set to be 45 minutes before our morning meeting. Never excessing 50 MPH during transport.
No TSA check point, hour airport wait to board, hour long sardine tube flight and rental car desk.
“The only way to switch to …. is to consume far less in total”
Sounds good, and your electricity for the trip will be PV of course.
You forgot to choose your background music, beverage, and virtual scenery.
Fossil fuels were superior to wood in every way that people of the time could see.
That’s really, really not so.
Coal was the immediate successor to wood, primarily in the UK. It was dirty to handle, dirty to burn, dirty to dispose of. It smelled bad. Everyone hated it. It created enormous, obvious, direct pollution in homes, in cities. They held their noses and used it because it was obvious that wood was depleted, and they needed fuel. But wood was far better (except for the lack of it). It was infinitely cleaner, it smelled good, it was local (until it ran out…), it was familiar.
People hated the transition to coal.
I’m not sure I agree with that assessment. Let’s look at Australia for example. Australia installed over 3 GW of solar PV capacity in 2018 to take their total installed capacity to more than 10 GW. It is just passed the middle of summer in Australia so that 10 GW will be producing close to it’s maximum potential. If you look at the graph below for electricity production for all regions that are part of Australia’s National Electricity Market, the peak output from solar (utility and rooftop combined) is roughly 15% of the total at mid day. So, for solar to be generating 100% of mid day power there would need to be roughly seven times the current capacity or 60 GW additional PV capacity. At the 2018 pace of installation it would take twenty years to achieve that but, all indications are that the pace is set to increase so in less than twenty years, Australia should experience 100% of it’s mid day power demand coming from solar PV.
The scenario I described above is for linear growth of 3 GW new PV capacity per year. If instead, a growth rate of 30% more new capacity each year is considered, the cumulative additional PV capacity in Australia between the end of 2018 and the end of 2025 would be 68.6 GW, with roughly 19 GW of that amount being installed in 2025. A more modest 10% growth in the amount of new annual PV capacity, would see the cumulative additional capacity at the end of 2029 being over 61 GW, with 8.6 GW being installed in 2029. Based on these two projections I would guess that Australia is going to witness 100% of mid day power coming from PV in less than twelve years (before 2030).
The above scenarios only look at satisfying the mid day power needs but, if solar PV were to be expected to cover the bulk of Australia’s electricity needs storage would have to be added and capacity over built in order to fill the storage for overnight supply of electricity. If we chose an arbitrary figure of double the amount needed to satisfy the mid day demand, under the 10% scenario above, that target is reached by 2035. Under the 30% growth scenario the target for covering the bulk of Australia’s total electricity needs with solar PV is reached just after the end of 2027.
Even the modest growth scenario presented above, leads to a fairly rapid transition, relative to the lifetime of existing coal power plants (Australia’s 2 GW Liddell Power Station is more than 45 years old). If one looks at the current state of affairs with electricity generation world wide, it is easy to conclude that no new coal power plants should be built. Any that are built now and any built in the last five years or so, will never recover the money invested in them. There is no hint of scarcity in any of these scenarios. They imply that renewables and solar in particular will shortly be driving FF out of business. One can only hope!
Case in point:
Japan scraps another coal-fired power plant
Three Japanese energy giants have scrapped plans to build a 2GW coal-fired power plant in in the Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, citing the results of their feasibility study which determined the project would not be economically feasible.
The decision by Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu Kosan, energy company Kyushu Electric Power, and natural gas provider Tokyo Gas is further proof of a wide-scale shift away from traditional power generation technologies such as coal and nuclear for the island nation towards renewable energy technologies.
The three companies said a joint feasibility study found that “the project cannot yield initially expected investment returns” leading to a joint decision to “cancel further feasibility studies of a coal-fired thermal power plant.”…..[snip]
The Global Coal Plant Tracker has tracked a total of 11 coal-fired power units at 8 locations cancelled in Japan since 2017 for a total of 7.1 GW – including 2.3 GW cancelled in 2018.
BUCKING GLOBAL TRENDS, JAPAN AGAIN EMBRACES COAL POWER
“Most of the world is turning its back on burning coal to produce electricity, but not Japan. The nation has fired up at least eight new coal power plants in the past 2 years and has plans for an additional 36 over the next decade—the biggest planned coal power expansion in any developed nation (not including China and India). And last month, the government took a key step toward locking in a national energy plan that would have coal provide 26% of Japan’s electricity in 2030 and abandons a previous goal of slashing coal’s share to 10%.
Kåberger says under current rules, Japan’s 10 regional utilities can still give their own generating plants priority access to transmission lines, which they also control. This creates uncertainty for those trying to sell renewable power into the grid. Such issues, together with subsidy cuts and other policy changes, last year led to a 32% decline in investment in solar power, says Hisayo Takada, Japan energy project leader for Greenpeace Japan in Tokyo. As a result, Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono said at a symposium last month in Tokyo, “The situation in our solar energy sector today can only be described as lamentable.”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/bucking-global-trends-japan-again-embraces-coal-power
How much longer will the foxes be allowed to be in charge of the hen house?
I have a feeling that, in the long term, Greta’s (Thunberg) generation is going to end up lynching them!
There are very few countries in the world who are more dependent on imported fossil fuels than Japan. Well over 90% of energy use.
Tough situation.
De-industrialize? De-populate?
These measures take time.
They are the canary.
http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/en/category/brochures/pdf/japan_energy_2016.pdf
Personaly, I am tired off moaning and bitching. The stories I bring up are stories that highlight what mankind ought to be doing, what I wish we would see more of. It is my sincere hope that Renewable energy overwhelms FF in the near future.
Part of the motivation of this EPM series, is to chronicle what I hope will be the mother of all disruptions. Of course I have to credit Tony Seba with putting current events in perspective. Based on his description of the process, I firmly believe that most of the current set of experts are going to be blindsided by the pace of the transition. I see the beginnings of exponential growth.
The current set of experts just don’t “get it”. Exhibit A below:
Feel free to ignore me.
I’m into the reality of the situation, whether good or bad.
If your looking for a cheerleader, I am certainly not your boy.
Hickory,
It would seem that most nations would prefer not to rely on imported energy so it would seem that Japan would install solar and wind to replace nuclear and fossil fuels.
It will not happen over night, but seems a likely scenario.
Note that Japan’s Solar Power consumption has increased at an average rate of 29.56% per year from 1998-2017 (using data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy). If that rate should continue until 2028 Japan would reach 100% of 2017 electricity consumption from solar in that year.
Also note that Japan’s electricity consumption has been decreasing at a rate of 1.65% per year on average from 2007 to 2017.
For the World the growth rate from 2011 to 2017 for Solar Power consumption has been 31.18% per year on average. For the World if we assume electricity consumption grows at 2.7% per year (2006 to 2016 rate), and solar consumption continues its 31% growth rate until 2034, then 100% of World electricity consumption is met by solar power in that year. There might also be growth in Wind Power as well (growing at about 15% per year), when this is included all electricity generation is met by wind and solar in 2033.
The growth in wind and solar is likely to follow an S curve so a more likely scenario is 2040 to 2045 that close to 100% of fossil fuel electricity generation is replaced by wind and solar power. By 2045 most land transport using oil will also replaced by electricity, air and water transport might take longer, though biofuels, batteries, and/or nuclear in some combination might reduce these uses. Air travel could be cut back quite a bit, water transport may be more difficult.
Great. Glad to hear they are so on top of the transition from fossil fuel imports.
2018: The year fossil fuels began their inexorable decline
2018 will likely go down as the year that fossil fuels in Australian electricity generation began an inexorable decline, with renewable energy making significant in-roads. These will continue into 2019 and 2020, and almost certainly beyond that.
Renewable energy broke through the 20 per cent market share threshold for the first time since the 1970’s, achieving a share of 21.3 per cent across the combination of Australia’s main east and west-coast grids. This was significantly up on 2017’s share of 17 per cent.
The EIA is scheduled to update their Electric Power Monthly with the final data for the US for 2018 on the 26th of February. I expect that the share of electricity generated by solar to be well over 2% but, wind and hydro appear not to have fared well so, the contribution from All Renewables is not expected to grow much. What will be very interesting in 2019, is the relative capacity additions and retirements for the various sources. Looking at the planned additions through November 2019 below, It appears to be mostly NG. wind and solar as was the case in 2018. Similarly, the planned retirements appear to be mostly coal and some NG.
I find it somewhat intriguing that no new coal plants are planned for the US or Australia despite the fact that in both nations “coal is made here”. If coal is not viable in either of these two nations, how long before the powers that be in other places realize it will not be viable in places that have to import coal from the US and Australia?
USA has cheap natural gas.
Not only many decades’ worth of cheap gas, Islandboy might be able to learn some of the economic as well as the operational aspects of electricity generation if he so chooses to look a little deeper.
The well-recognized ‘Duck Curve’ showing daily electricity consumption is well served by fast ramping, large scale CCGT plants that essentially only burn the fuel as it is needed.
Typically this is mid morning and late avternoon/early evening.
In contrast, the inertial components of coal fired plants require them to inefficiently burn the fuel – even if it is cheaper – throughout the day and night when demand for electricity drops.
Starting in a few months, new wind generation in the US is poised to fall off a cliff as the Investment Tax Credits and Production Tax Credits cease.
Without these, new projects may plummet to zero.
The so called Duck Curve has been worked out, so no problem.
I see the loss of the Tax Credits system as a potential cause of reduction in wind power development in the US. Obama wanted them to continue but the US is a political mess so we are going to build out more planet killing, unsustainable power sources. Those will be sitting unused and rusting away long before their lifespan is concluded.
The shale gas “wonder” has already delayed wind power installation and now with the subsidies falling it will be even less. Natural gas is the winner, people and nature are the losers.
Luckily in the ROW wind power and solar power is rising quickly. The US is a prime example of delusional thinking at this point.
God wants to save the birds being massacred by wind turbines.
“God wants to save the birds being massacred by wind turbines.”
Really? God says He wants to save the birds and the bees from you.
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/1095014241445195781
Fernando,
Is this intentional irony, or are you working hard to look like a hopeless victim of anti-wind propaganda?
The cheap natural gas is a red herring. Gas plants are getting shut down as well as coal and nuclear plants.
What’s really happening is that the industry is transitioning away from boiling water to make electricity. That is why the new gas plants are successful — they are more efficient combined cycle plants. Not only does this save water, it saves fuel, and it saves a lot of construction effort, especially the effort involved in dealing with waste heat.
Of course, solar and wind don’t need to boil water at all. They are the fastest growing electricity generation sectors. This is all part of the dematerialization that is spreading through the economy.
So the price of gas may stay low or go back up, but combined cycle will continue to put pressure on traditional plants until the grid is ready to go 100% renewable, at which time gas will lose out completely.
It would be helpful if gas retirements were broken down into coal to gas conversions/gas turbine/combined cycle. We could get a better picture of how this is happening.
NAOM
Combined cycle is more efficient, but has higher capital costs.
Traditionally peaker plants have been cheaper single cycle plants.
If the plants get used every day they’ll be easier to cost justify, but I believe that batteries are starting to be cheaper – it would be interesting to see a cost analysis.
If you folks want a glimpse of what’s comin’ down the pike, check out Excelerate’s chest thumping press release from a couple of days ago … the one describing their remarkable achievement with dual FSRUs – located offshore Boston at the Northeast Gateway Deepwater Port – simultaneously regasifying at a rate of 800,000 MMbtus a day to supply the gas-starved New England market on February 1.
These actions not only forestall (eliminate?) the need for any pipeline build out in the foreseeable future for New England, it should usher in a global build out around this hardware and process.
Already, Australia, world leader in LNG production, has tentative plans for 4 FSRU terminals with which to alleviate their power shortage troubles.
Natgas is on the rise, folks.
Yes Java Man,
the whole industry buildout is impressive, as you’ve been calling it
This link stinks of car salesman speak/ clickbait.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/06/tesla-cuts-model-3-price-for-second-time-this-year.html
But you must hand it to Musk and Tesla, it’s more free publicity, and it might even be true that after allowing for savings on fuel and routine maintenance and incentives, you can justify saying a Three is now costing as little as 35 grand….. assuming you’re one of the people who can still get the incentives.
And assuming you can actually get the car itself, sometime soon, not next year or the year after, at the new bottom line delivery price, lol.
Last I checked, TESLA was already producing over 7,000 Model 3’s per week…
1 every 1 min 26 secs -approx
OFM,
For people in the US who ordered a Tesla by Nov 30, Tesla promised to deliver by Dec 31, 2018. Not sure how many misses there were on that promise. Basically there is not a long wait for the Tesla Model 3 for US customers if they are willing to pay $42,900 (which is eligible for $3750 Fed rebate if purchased by June 30, 2019) so net price is $39,150 to receive the car by the end of February. This is for the mid-range version which has 264 miles of range. The 35k version won’t be available until after July 1. 2019 when the Fed Rebate falls to $1875, that version will have 210 miles of range and the rebate goes to zero on Jan 1, 2020, up to then the net price would be $33,125. My guess is they will have trouble hitting the 35k price point and will offer the car at $36,875 when first introduced so the net price after rebate will be 35k, after the rebate goes away they may reduce the price to 35k, this is speculation on my part.
According to the Tesla webpage the midrange model can be ordered today with a deposit of 2500 for delivery in Feb 2019. Note that a loaded Toyota Camry is about 38k MSRP, probably can get it for less though maybe 36k.
Global Chaos
Inside the Experiment: Abrupt Change and Ice Cores
Jørgen Peder Steffensen, of Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute, is one of the most experienced experts in ice core analysis, in both Greenland and Antarctica. Dr. Steffensen explained to videographer Peter Sinclair his concerns about possible abrupt climate changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKR3e0fhiKQ
Great video. That is what i meant a while ago while discussing climate change.
Nobody knows the thresholds and tipping points. You can model all you want and get different results, in the end the unknowns are greater than the knowns. Only certainty in my opinion is BAU will lead to more abrupt, unpredictable and unprecedented shifts in both weather and climate.
The likelihood of instability during the transistion to a warm climate is fairly high, plus the system might continue to oscillate well after the forcings have stabilized.
As an example, the huge waves showing up in places moving large boulders when they hit shore are starting to mimic massive wave action indicated by huge boulder displacement in the past.
Many thresholds have been crossed already, individual tipping points are harder to determine but since they are all interdependent the tipping point of the mass of negative feedbacks has likely already been crossed.
Landslides into the ocean, or underwater landslides are a significant danger to countries like Portugal.
Thanks for the excellent video link GF.
Everytime I see evidence of abrupt climate change presented,
I come back to the problem of gross overpopulation we have.
It leaves no room for migration.
Not too sure if population will remain a problem for much longer. Sea level rise might never get much of a chance to be a major problem.
Overconsumption and frivolous industrial systems are a major problem that will have to be shaved way down.
IMO, technology is what we need to hope for. Clearly we’re not guaranteed any successes, but additional advances in renewables, carbon sequestration, battery storage schemes, direct-air CO2 suction, robotic-assisted automation, desalination, lab-grown meat, asteroid mining, and associated technologies quickly coming down the pike already are the biggest reasons to be hopeful.
Speaking of glaciers,
CRACKS HERALD THE CALVING OF A LARGE ICEBERG FROM PETERMANN GLACIER
“Cracks in the floating ice tongue of Petermann Glacier in the far northwest reaches of Greenland indicate the pending loss of another large iceberg. As glaciologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) report in a new study, the glacier’s flow rate has increased by an average of 10 percent since the calving event in 2012, during which time new cracks have also formed—a quite natural process. However, the experts’ model simulations also show that, if these ice masses truly break off, Petermann Glacier’s flow rate will likely accelerate further and transport more ice out to sea, with corresponding effects on the global sea level.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-herald-calving-large-iceberg-petermann.html#jCp
The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. As noted in Chapter 1, China and India are the world’s leading wheat producers, and they totally dominate the rice harvest. 51
The IPCC reports that Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and that many could melt entirely by 2035. If the giant Gangotri Glacier—whose ice melt supplies 70 percent of the Ganges flow during the dry season—disappears, the Ganges could become a seasonal river, flowing during the rainy season but not during the dry season when irrigation needs are greatest. 52
In China, which is even more dependent than India on river water for irrigation, the situation is particularly challenging. Chinese government data show that the glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau that feed the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers are melting at a torrid pace. The Yellow River, whose basin is home to 147 million people, could experience a large dry-season flow reduction. The Yangtze River, by far the larger of the two, is threatened by the disappearance of glaciers as well. The basin’s 369 million people rely heavily on rice from fields irrigated with its water. 53
Yao Tandong, one of China’s leading glaciologists, predicts that two thirds of China’s glaciers could be gone by 2050. “The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau region,” Yao says, “will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.” 54
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb4/PB4ch3_ss4
Meanwhile, we have:
A RELENTLESS RISE OF CARBON DIOXIDE
“Ancient air bubbles trapped in ice enable us to step back in time and see what Earth’s atmosphere, and climate, were like in the distant past. They tell us that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years.”
The real trick is to guess how much CO2 humans can output per year without causing further abrupt climate disruption. Ten percent is probably too much. The less the better and the easier to manage a drawdown.
There’s no abrupt change like what the world experiences when it goes into an interglacial or descends again into an ice age. As far as I can see CO2 may be saving us from a frozen future.
FernandoL,
William Ruddiman at Virginia agrees with you on that, and his book Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum tracks CO2 and methane concentration since the end of the last glacial, from the beginning of the spread of agriculture (Plows), drops in concentration caused by pandemics (Plagues), and increasing use of fossil fuels (Petroleum.)
It’s an excellent book; I once created an upper-division college course from it.
People (scientists) are making attempts at bioengineering photosynthesis using modern tools such as crispr.
Introducing genes or gene fragments into pre-existing plants.
Some areas of inefficiency in the molecular engine of the chloroplast are well understood, and a competing process called photorespiration is a direct competitor to photosynthetic output. Undercutting or diverting resources from photorespiration by various mechanisms is where this research is targeted.
Here are two examples of the ‘tweaking’ research efforts underway.
Its very big news, for better or for worse.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-01/cp-rpe010919.php
https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/04/bioengineering-photosynthesis-boosts-cro
For example, algae photosynthetic output could be increased. That has big implications, in both natural and artificial settings.
A better idea is to fight erosion, which prevent plant from growing and also releases a lot of carbon that would be stored in the soil.
Seriously?
Fight erosion. Thats certainly good.
Not really on the topic of mankind tinkering with the chemistry of photosynthesis,
but yes, by all means fight erosion.
Plowing on the hill = bad
Clearcutting on the hill = bad
Roadbuilding on the hill = bad
Tinkering with photosynthesis = bad?, or good?
I see some of both.
Renewables Role in the Vortex Crisis
Any worries we had about shortages of natural gas to heat our homes during the cold blast did not have anything to do with power from wind or solar.
We have been adding renewables to energy production in Minnesota over the past several years, up to 25 percent in 2018. These sources generate power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and there are proven strategies for connecting them together to build a reliable electricity system.
Germany, for instance, currently has 40 percent renewable electricity in its grid and plans to go to 80 percent by 2050. Electric outages there amount to 12 minutes per year, which makes that country’s security of supply among the world’s highest.
Additionally, cold snaps like the polar vortex are usually quite sunny and breezy, generating power even though the temperature is low. To wit: A solar array connected to a battery recently installed by Connexus Energy generated 147 percent more power than average on Jan. 30, when it was colder than 20 below at noon. In fact, Connexus’ solar and battery storage system performed so well that during the coldest part of the polar vortex, it provided power to reduce peak demand and helped reduce strain on the electric grid.
https://climatecrocks.com/2019/02/06/renewables-role-in-the-vortex-crisis/
Renewable energy has been stunted by increased natural gas production from fracking and EVs have been slowed down by the fracked oil scheme of late.
Otherwise we could be well on our way toward reducing the carbon burn to zero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfIjCG-zB4&t=72s
That natural gas production increase is largely the reason for the devastation of the country’s coal industry. You don’t get to have it both ways, friend.
Sounds like you did not view or comprehend the video.
A step in the right direction, now we need to cut gas.
NAOM
Although coal has a greater pollutant set overall, natural gas is a stronger global warming system due to about 3 percent leakage of methane that is not burned. So both have to go. Increasing natural gas use was a big mistake as the video shows.
But the trend is to use fossil fuels, whichever is cheaper. In this case we get a lot more than what we pay for.
“So both have to go.”
Agreed 100%. I look on gas as a weaner, advantages vs disadvantages. We have new CNG buses that are a huge improvement on the old weasel juice powered ones but electric would have been a step too far here but maybe not in other countries. Hopefully, the next generation of buses will be electric. As for leakage, there needs to be work done to eliminate that, when I get a fill of LNG it hurts to see that big cloud of gas venting from the connector before it can be unplugged, things like that need a design update.
NAOM
One aspect of solar PV that is not widely known is the temperature coefficient of performance, that is the factor by which performance declines with increasing temperature (typically -0.5%/degC). Solar PV module specifications refer to performance at Standard Test Conditions, among which is a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. This is the actual temperature at the surface of the module and not ambient temperatures. In my location, ambient temperatures of about 32°C result in module surface temperatures of 70°C, which means PV modules will produce up to 22% less than their nameplate STC power.
In sub zero conditions the module surface will be below 25°C so, if for example the module surface temperature was 5°C, the power output would be 10% above the nameplate STC power. For this reason, even though the sun might be hitting the modules at fairly extreme angles the output can be surprisingly good. This is somewhat counter-intuitive.
We have been bathed in wildfire smoke two years running (s0 far) now.
SMOKE FROM WILDFIRE IS LIKE A ‘CHEMICAL SOUP,’ SAYS FIRE RESEARCHER
Inhaling smoke from a wildfire can be equal to smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day depending on its thickness, says a researcher studying wildfires in Western Canada. They are all kinds of particles, mercury, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane … there’s a whole long list.” Depending on the size of the particles, they get trapped in the lungs, accumulate over time and cause “all kinds of problems.
The smoke has made me start to dread summer.
All the way til mid November last year.
Sheltering in place sucks.
We need to do a lot more raking of the forests here in the states according to our commander in chief.
WORLD HEADING FOR WARMEST DECADE
“The Met Office says it has a 90% confidence limit in the forecasts for the years ahead. It says that from 2019 to 2023, we will see temperatures ranging from 1.03C to 1.57C above the 1850-1900 level, with enhanced warming over much of the globe, especially over areas like the Arctic.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47144058
MELTING ICE SHEETS MAY CAUSE ‘CLIMATE CHAOS’ ACCORDING TO NEW MODEL
“Under current global government policies, we are heading towards 3 or 4 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, causing a significant amount of melt water from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to enter Earth’s oceans. According to our models, this melt water will cause significant disruptions to ocean currents and change levels of warming around the world,”
According to the researchers, current global climate policies set in place under the Paris Agreement do not take into account the full effects of ice sheet melt likely to be seen in future. “Sea level rise from ice sheet melt is already happening and has been accelerating in recent years. Our new experiments show that this will continue to some extent even if Earth’s climate is stabilized. But they also show that if we drastically reduce emissions, we can limit future impacts,”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-ice-sheets-climate-chaos.html#jCp
I know what an ultra capacitor is, but next to nothing about the performance parameters thereof.
If you want the energy stored in one, how slowly can you with draw it? I know they can be discharged very quickly, for a fast burst of power, like a second or two.
Tesla is now in the biz.
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/02/06/tesla-maxwell-technologies-ultracapacitors/
This might help shed a bit of light on the subject.
Skeleton Ultra Capacitors | Fully Charged+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2Eo6wl5r0
Thanks, worth watching to the end for the Estonian modern history, makes USA look even more 3rd world.
NAOM
It’s now official:
EARTH’S 5 WARMEST YEARS ON RECORD HAVE OCCURRED SINCE 2014
Global average surface temperatures are edging closer to the 1.5°C aspirational warming target contained in the Paris climate agreement, which many low-lying island nations see as key to their survival, but the world’s energy system is marching in the wrong direction for limiting global warming’s severity.
• Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas ticked up in 2018, to the highest levels in recorded history, according to the Global Carbon Project and the International Energy Agency.
• A separate report showed that U.S. carbon emissions from energy — which is the overwhelming cause of planet-warming emissions — jumped by 3.4% last year, ending years of declines.
• In order to meet the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C goal, global emissions of greenhouse gases would have to fall by 45% by 2030 and reach “net zero” by mid-century.
https://www.axios.com/earths-5-warmest-years-have-occurred-since-2014-cc42f4bb-dbc6-40b7-b478-0ce942fab2d0.html
• Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas ticked up in 2018, to the highest levels in recorded history, according to the Global Carbon Project and the International Energy Agency.
Then I guess we can all say goodbye to the coral reefs, insects and most of our forests! So much for the idiotic idea that CO2 is food for plants and that more of it might be better.
https://physicsworld.com/a/trees-dying-younger-in-canada-too/
CLIMATE RESEARCH UPDATE
Trees dying younger in Canada too
07 Feb 2019
Trees in today’s boreal forests are living fast and dying young. Over the last 60 years the life expectancy for trees has decreased significantly, a new study reveals. The fastest-growing trees have shown the greatest decline in longevity.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide and reduced water availability appear to be a major driver of the trend. There is concern that forests may see large-scale die-off, with potentially serious implications for their ability to mop up carbon and slow climate change.
Back in 2015, researchers were shocked to discover that although tree growth in the Amazon rainforest had increased over the last 30 years, trees were dying younger, resulting in less carbon dioxide sequestration in the region.
Cheers!
THE CLIMATE CRISIS HAS ARRIVED – SO STOP FEELING GUILTY AND START IMAGINING YOUR FUTURE
“The climate disaster future is increasingly becoming the present – and, as the evidence piles up, it is tempting to ask questions about its likely public reception. Numerous psychological perspectives suggest that if we have already invested energy in denying the reality of a situation we experience as profoundly troubling, the closer it gets, the more effort we put into denying it.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-climate-crisis-guilty-future.html#jCp
Numerous psychological perspectives suggest that if we have already invested energy in denying the reality of a situation we experience as profoundly troubling, the closer it gets, the more effort we put into denying it.
Maybe we should all stock up on Moët & Chandon!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial
Climate Change Denial
Facing a reality too big to believe.
Posted Jan 12, 2019
Among the myriad reasons that we shun this problem is its enormity. We aren’t “merely” being told that unless we take action our identities will be stolen, we will lose thousands of dollars, or even that it will take a few years off our lives. What the climate scientists are telling us is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the human race faces extinction.
We can grasp a potential calamity if we know it is made up and will be okay in an hour and a half. But we resist when that calamity is real, will be spread out over decades, and is of catastrophic proportions that can only be averted if we change almost everything about the way we live. Stop driving your car, eating meat, and flying in planes, we are told. Shut down ExxonMobil, Shell, and British Petroleum. Move quickly to build solar fields and energy-producing windmills. Simply writing that list makes us totally exhausted. What we are being asked to do will take gargantuan efforts and face vicious opposition. “Solving climate is going to be harder, and more improbable, than winning World War II, achieving civil rights, defeating bacterial infection and sending a man to the moon all together,” warn Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones. It is very difficult to accept as real a problem that requires this magnitude of solution.
Shall we open another bottle of Moët & Chandon?!
Cheers!
But it’s worse than that because climate change has already arrived. Feedbacks have kicked in. The changes being proposed only serve to draw out the process. Where I live wildfires are now pumping (far) more CO2 into the atmosphere than cars so how are EVs going to help? That’s only one example.
Climate change has arrived. Coping is the new prerogative.
‘WHY AREN’T WE BUILDING FOR WILDFIRE SMOKE?’ AIR QUALITY SPECIALIST CALLS FOR AIR FILTERS INDOORS
Where there’s fire, there’s smoke and, after two summers of record-breaking wildfires, British Columbia is looking for better solutions to protect lung health. Last year in B.C. was the worst year for wildfires in terms of area burned, and numerous air quality advisories were issued across the province because of the health concerns around breathing in high concentrations of fine particulate matter.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/sarah-coefield-air-filters-wildfires-1.5008640?fbclid=IwAR2gkuCerANvXooaIiRbGoWaLs12CzuCp5B6XBY3FE4tA9tMEzzN-5HW3c0
E FG,
The champagne is a good idea starting at breakfast. After noon, Port.
Biosphere sensitivity to collapse is apparently around 1C. Still, the last 30 to 40 years of emissions, the largest gradient, has not come to full effect yet.
As the trees weaken, the increased wind speed in storms will take many down long before death.
Redistribution of forest carbon caused by patch blowdowns
in subalpine forests of the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA
Patch blowdowns varying in size from 0.1 to 33 ha affected several areas in Rocky
Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA, during the winter of 2011–2012. These
blowdowns resulted in substantial redistribution of forest carbon by snapping and uprooting trees, thereby increasing instream wood recruitment, recruitment of dead wood to the forest floor, and exposure of organic soil on uprooted tree plates. Estimates of carbon redistribution at five sites in Rocky Mountain National Park range as high as 308Mg C/ha in high-severity patches to 106Mg C/ha in low-severity patches, of which typically 10–30% is soil C and the remainder is downed wood. Masses of carbon redistributed from living to dead biomass at high-severity sites represent a substantial portion of average total biomass in old-growth subalpine forests in the region. Consequently, the potential for increasing frequency and/or severity of blowdowns under a warming climate represents a significant
potential source of terrestrial carbon to the atmosphere.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2013GB004633
Ten years after blowdown, Boundary Waters still recovering
Ten years after millions of trees blew down in Minnesota’s pristine Boundary Waters Wilderness, the forest is in the midst of a comeback.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/07/01/bwca_blowdown_anniversary
What happens when the regrowth does not occur or the blowdowns occur too frequently? A blowdown near me is actually the result of successive storms over a 8 year period, hollowing out a patch of woods. No evidence of regrowth other than bushes.
Over the years I have stumbled across a number of blowdowns but all those had new growth trees taking over with the logs scattered about under them. If the blowdown rate gets high enough, the tree life will be shortened and only smaller stunted trees will come to maturity. Damage can increase disease.
Biosphere sensitivity to collapse is apparently around 1C.
It also seems highly likely that 1C is also the triggering threshold for multiple feedbacks and tipping points in the earth’s physical, chemical and geological systems !
Which is basically why I think that all of the IPCC scenarios are way off!
Shall we open another bottle of Moët & Chandon?!
Land temperature for 2018 was 1.8C higher than 1880 and 2C higher than the lowest recorded year (1884). Recent rate of rise (land) has been about 0.38 C per decade. Meaning we will cross the 2C rise in within 5 years. If one goes from the original 1750 mark we are already there.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Tge climate in 2018 is better than in 1918, 1818, 1718, 1618, 1518, 1418…
Is peak coal upon us? Will it matter?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-peak-coal-is-getting-closer-latest-figures-show
2018 4th warmest year globally.
The three warmer ones were all in the last 4 years.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Earth-Had-Its-4th-Warmest-Year-Record-2018-Say-NOAA-and-NASA?cm_ven=cat6-widget
Notably- 67 national/territorial heat records were set in 2018, and 1 such cold record.
Their own charts show a downward trend in temperatures since 2016. ?
Hi Joe,
Suppose you post links to the charts you refer to? We’re holding our breath, please hurry!
Yes, you have proven you can read a graph, but sadly have not been capable of comprehending natural variation. Keep trying though, someday you might, through natural randomness, accidently make a relevant comment.
Diamond Joe,
There is a distinction between climate and weather.
Since 2016 is essentially weather, 2008-2018 (or better 1998 to 2018) would be climate.
Chart below has Berkeley Earth Global Land Ocean Temperatures from 1998 to 2018, the trend is an increase in temperature at a rate of 1.8 C per century.
You are correct that since 2016 average global temperatures have decreased, the Global temperature varies above and below the trend line (climate), this variation above and below long term averages has a name, it is called weather.
Diamond Joe- “Their own charts show a downward trend in temperatures since 2016.”
Yes, I saw that too!
Just think what fun we could have making a graph of just the past 4 years.
We could show a dramatic cooling trend, heading towards a mini ice-age!
And then we could sell it to Fox news so they could educate the president.
What fun, preying on the minds of the weak and uninformed.
Maybe this is more for the petroleum board but because the environment concerned way of thinking is in this story, I put it here, it’s about how shale company Slawson is being criticized for the way they do business in North Dakota including putting 16 wells next to the Missouri River, a small town and a boat launch by a campground.
Oil and Gas Division Defends Oil Company
by Jim Fuglie
https://theprairieblog.com/2019/02/06/well-excuuuuse-me-not/
Back in December I shared with you the story of oil giant Slawson Exploration’s big oil operation in the little fishing village of Van Hook, on the north shore of the Van Hook Arm of Lake Sakakawea. In that article I talked about the sixteen oil wells that have been drilled on the edge of Van Hook, twelve of them at the top of the boat ramp, which in the summer is one of the busiest boat ramps on the big lake.
I didn’t say very many nice things about the oil company in that article, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had gotten a phone call or a letter or e-mail from Todd or Steve Slawson (or one of their underlings) asking me why I “had it in for them” when they were such nice guys, helping out North Dakota by drilling for oil and paying oil taxes to help our economy. But they were probably busy counting their money—the Slawson family is on the list of “Americas Richest Families” with a net worth of $1.5 billion in 2018, much of that coming from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field.
But the reason people, especially the cabin owners who’ve put down roots in Van Hook, are concerned about 16 oil wells within just a few hundred yards of Lake Sakakawea (and their homes) is Slawson’s environmental record. They are one of the worst polluting companies ever to do business here. Two years ago they were fined $2.1 million and forced to spend another $4 million cleaning up their mess and upgrading their systems to capture leaking natural gas at more than 170 well sites across the Bakken.
You read that right. They had gas leaks at 170 oil well sites, creating serious air pollution problems all over western North Dakota.
Interestingly, it was not the North Dakota Health Department, or the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, or the North Dakota Attorney General’s office, that busted Slawson for the massive air pollution violations. It was the U.S. Attorney and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that finally stepped in and made Slawson clean up its act. North Dakota regulators were nowhere to be found.
So why am I writing about this again just two months after my last article? Because the Slawsons did have one of their underlings jump in to their defense, with an e-mail letter to my editor taking me to task, and asking the magazine to publish some “corrections” to “provide context” to the article.
Who was that “underling?” Well, it was none other than the new PR lady at the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, the agency that’s supposed to be regulating the oil industry and companies like Slawson, the agency that looked the other way when Slawson was leaking natural gas all over the western part of the state two years earlier.
So here, for your reading enjoyment, is the list of complaints Slawson’s new PR agent in North Dakota State Government filed with Dakota Country magazine. You decide. The PR lady sent quotes from the story and then her “correction” on each quote. I’ll respond to each.
Reality is a harsh mistress. Who owns and runs the governments?
Those pieces of paper so well preserved in the capitols are useless unless the citizens are willing to at least protest. Maybe some might even curtail the use of the products they produce and put up ad campaigns against their use.
Imagine a world where hardly anyone wants or need the stuff and then make it so. It’s possible you know.
Don’t argue with them, pull the rug out from under their feet. Forget government backing, it’s rare and mediocre at best. Stand on your own two feet and do what is needed. Media does not do it, action does it.
Comment in wrong thread response below.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-petroleum-february-5-2019/#comment-665982
My personal experience in Jan was a reduction in efficiency from 245 Wh/mi (Oct 5 to Nov 15, 2018) to about 300 Wh/mi (Jan 1 to Feb 5, 2019). About 22% lower. Also the battery has to heat itself in very cold temperatures if not plugged in, at a ski area where no plug was available overnight the battery lost about 0.25 kWh per hour at an average temperature of about -3 F. One simply needs to account for this in cold weather. Probably not ideal if one lives within the Arctic circle, but with proper planning it works. In these temperatures diesel cars that are not plugged in also often have issues.
OFM,
Answer to your question:
Hi Dennis,
Do you know approximately how long you could leave your car, beginning with a full charge, sitting unattended and not plugged in to a heater, in continuous 0F weather before the battery is down to half charge?
That would be a very useful parameter to help understand just how big an issue cold weather battery performance IS, real world.
At 0 F roughly 1.35 mile of energy is lost per hour (338 Wh), a full charge is about 78,000 Wh (78 kWh) and half is 39,000 Wh, so 39,000/338=115 hours or 4.8 days. Note that in reality it may be a bit better than this as we typically see sunny weather at 0F so if the car is parked in the sun, the car warms up inside and the battery gets some heat from the warm interior. My 250 Wh/mi estimate is based on overnight losses when temperture dropped to a low of -6 F, the average temperature was probably close to 0F (only a 15.5 hour period for the test, longer periods might be different, I have never done a long term test).
Generally at home the car is in a garage plugged in overnight, this only happens on ski trips where there is not overnight access to an electric plug (the car really needs a 240 V outlet, 120V does not help very much).
Does the vehicle permanently lose charge in cold weather or does the charge rebound if the batteries warm back up?
It’s temporary. It’s the same effect suffered by lead-acid starting batteries – the chemical reactions just produce less energy when they’re very cold.
Frugal and Nick G,
It might rebound a bit, but it is not that significant. At 0 C the battery needs to be warmed to perform, the battery drains because it runs a heater to keep itself above some minimum temperature, I do not know the details of what that temperature is. Also when you start using the car to drive at very cold temperatures (especially when it has not been plugged in) the energy use spikes as the car uses quite a bit of energy to warm the battery, this is the main reason the efficiency has dropped in winter the effect occurs even when the car is plugged in if you don’t preheat the car before you start driving.
And, of course, ICEs also use more power/become less efficient in cold weather.
True, but not subject to an EV-like 33% drop in range however. My winter mpg is about 9% less than average. And range is still 437 miles v. 517 best summer range. With a “recharge” time of 5 minutes…
An 80 mile range reduction from a base of 517 miles would suggest a % reduction of 15%.
And an EV only takes 10 seconds to plug in at night.
Nick, yes, 15% reduction from summer maximum, however 9% reduction from the average. Please read carefully.
As for 10 seconds to plug in, that would be wonderful. My landlord vetoed my suggestion of installing an EV charging point (at my expense). And charging points near here? (Aberystwyth, UK). Virtually zero.
Or, put it another way, show me an EV with 437 miles winter range…
PS I am pro-EV, but they are too expensive and range limited for me. Probably fine for the top 10% of wage earners (of Western economies)…
And charging points near here? (Aberystwyth, UK). Virtually zero.
Are you saying the following list is fake?!
https://www.zap-map.com/locations/aberystwyth-charging-points/
The best way to search for charge points in Aberystwyth is to use the desktop map or to download iOS or Android mobile apps.
List of charge points in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire
Electric Beagle Brynrhedyn
Cae Melyn
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 2HA 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin
1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Zap-Home
Rhodfa Padarn Llanbadarn Fawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3UR 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes
1 x 22kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes EV Charge.Online
Aber Instruments Ltd 5 Science Park
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3AH 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin Other
Renault Dealership: Moduron Delfryn Owens The Old Coach House
Southgate
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1RZ 1 x 3kW 16A Type 2 Mennekes Renault dealerships
Simons Tesla Ffynnon Wen
Llanbadarn Fawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3SX 1 x 11kW 16A Tesla Type 2 Zap-Home
Nanteos Mansion Rhydyfelin
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 4LU 2 x 11kW 16A Tesla Type 2 Tesla Destination
Blue Grass Cottages Brynglas Farm
Chancery
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 4DF 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin
1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes
1 x 22kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Gwesty’r Conrah Hotel Ffosrhydgaled
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 4DF 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin
1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Brig y Don High Street
Borth
Ceredigion
SY24 5HY 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Cletwr Car Park Tynywern
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 8PN 1 x 43kW 63A Type 2 Mennekes
1 x 50kW 125A JEVS (CHAdeMO)
1 x 50kW 125A CCS (Combo) POLAR
Bwlch Nant yr Arian Forest Visitor Centre Ponterwyd
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3AB 2 x 3kW 16A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Ynyshir Restaurant and Rooms Ynyshir Restaurant and Rooms
Eglwys Fach
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 8TA 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes
1 x 11kW 16A Tesla Type 2 Tesla Destination
Hendy Farm Holidays A493
Tywyn
Gwynedd
LL36 9RU 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Cynfal Farm Cottages Bryncrug
Tywyn
Gwynedd
LL36 9RB 2 x 11kW 16A Tesla Type 2 Tesla Destination
Llanerchaeron (National Trust) Ciliau Aeron
Lampeter
Ceredigion
SA48 8DG 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes ZeroNet
Richship’s charger 1 Lledfair Place
Heol Pentrerhedyn
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 8DL 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin
1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Zap-Home
Hinchliffe Electrons 4 Pencaemawr
Penegoes
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 8PF 1 x 3kW 13A 3-Square pin
1 x 7kW 32A Type 1 Yazaki Zap-Home
Centre for Alternative Technology Llwyngwern Quarry
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 9AZ 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes ZeroNet
Tyn Y Cornel Hotel Tal-y-llyn
Tywyn
Gwynedd
LL36 9AJ 1 x 11kW 16A Tesla Type 2 Tesla Destination
Corris Caverns Ltd A487
Corris
Machynlleth
Powys
SY20 9RF 1 x 7kW 32A Type 2 Mennekes Other
Hi John,
Takes about 20 minutes to get 150 miles of charge at a supercharger, in most cases I plug in at home. I don’t typically drive 200 miles per day. On long trips I stop and grab a bite to eat while recharging, not really a big deal. The car is very nice (though I have never owned a luxury car before).
John Norris,
Yes without a charge point at home, it probably is not a good choice. One would need to find a different place to rent where the landlord had more sense.
@Dennis
Aberystwyth is a university/market/summer holiday town so renting options may be limited.
NAOM
Thanks Dennis,
So I’m thinking that forty kilowatt hours probably cost you about five or six bucks, depending on your local rates. Say a buck or so a day, not much more than a buck and a half, unless you’re in a REALLY cold place with really high rates.
Considering how much you save on gasoline, that’s not enough to matter.
One more question.
How long could you leave the car out without doing some damage to the battery?
Is it so designed that going completely flat in cold weather ok, except for having to recharge it?
Conventional batteries are often ruined by freezing if they are fully discharged in cold weather.
OFM,
Leaving the car for long periods not plugged in is not recommended. I think letting the battery run to zero is bad for the longevity of the battery, the optimum is to keep the battery between 20% and 80% of full charge. For long term storage they recommend a 50% charge and keep the car plugged in with a daily refresh back to 50% (I believe that can be scheduled for early morning when electricity rates are lowest.)
I haven’t run any experiments as I don’t want to mess up the battery, hoping it will last 20 years.
Thanks Dennis,
I’m a little better educated now than before reading your answer. I know it’s bad to let almost any battery at all go entirely flat…… but I want to know just how bad leaving a car such as a Tesla or Bolt, etc, unattended, and unplugged, for any of a bunch of reasons. Hurricane, vacation, camping in the back country, oversight, etc.
One thing you can say for a typical ICE car, it will generally fire right up after even a YEAR, if you help it along with jumper cables or just take the battery out and recharge it.
And I have yet to see any SOLID evidence that leaving an ordinary car sitting for months at a time, so long as it’s out of the weather, does it any real harm.
This another great link for those of us who need to brush up on orbital mechanics, etc, at the layman level, and to pass along to others entirely new to the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM
Ford F-150 Electric Pickup Truck Spied For First Time
Electric truck sighting confirmed.
Ford is indeed working on an electric F-150 pickup truck and these never-before-seen spy photos prove it. Take a look at this electric truck.
Why did Ford bother to dress this truck up in “camo”? The truck pictured below looks like a garden variety F-150 and even has an exhaust pipe. Ford could easily do all their development using F-150 mules that are indistinguishable from the current model without the need to use any “camo”. I think they are spooked with all the press around the Rivan all electric trucks as well as others pictured in the article below, three of which actually have prototypes that have been seen “in the flesh”.
Are Electric Pickup Trucks Really The Future? Video
The ‘Shocking Details’ Of The Green New Deal
So, what’s in it? The Green New Deal legislation lays out several key principles, calling for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the creation of millions of jobs through public investment, an overhaul of U.S. infrastructure, clean air and water, and justice for frontline communities during this transition.
More specifically, it calls for a 10-year program of “national mobilization,” which will achieve 100 percent of U.S. power demand from clean, renewable and zero-emissions energy sources. It calls for building energy efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids. Existing buildings will see an overhaul while new buildings are intended to achieve “maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability,” and the like. The GND also calls for “massive growth in clean manufacturing.”
“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us, our country, our world,” Ocasio-Cortez said on NPR’s Morning Edition.
https://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/The-Shocking-Details-Of-The-Green-New-Deal.html
“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us, our country, our world,” Ocasio-Cortez said on NPR’s Morning Edition.
The Europeans are not shocked! They are actually way ahead of the US.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/08/proven-100-renewable-energy-across-europe-is-more-cost-effective-than-the-current-energy-system/
“100% renewables is not a stupid idea, in fact it’s getting more and more mainstream around the world,” exclaimed Hans-Josef Fell, president of Energy Watch Group and father of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act. And how refreshing is it to hear during the United Nations Climate Conference, where we heard way too much noise coming from the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies.
“100% renewables is not a stupid idea, in fact it’s getting more and more mainstream around the world,” exclaimed Hans-Josef Fell, president of Energy Watch Group and father of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! Actually Fell’s predecessor and co-author of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act., Herman Scheer, was trumpeting the idea long before he died unexpectedly on October 14, 2010, aged 66 after suffering from chest pains (Congestive heart failure). I used to watch a lot of his speeches or excerpts from them before he died and found them quite inspiring. He was spreading his ideas around the world including the US, Canada and Australia. I just searched and found a lecture he gave at Google(Youtube) and on C-SPAN, another speech to an event hosted by the (American Council on Renewable Energy). In the eyes of powerful FF interests, he must have been seen as enemy number one! He was not shy of confronting their agendas.
He probably died of a broken heart watching Merkel foot dragging on the Energiewende.
“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us, our country, our world,” Ocasio-Cortez
Too true, few actually grasp what is happening and how fast it will overtake us.
For the open minded and awake;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zuxe5noVTk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guG7bpfXxS4
For the open minded and awake;
Yep!
“It’s a mystery, but for whatever reason, once you go down this rabbit hole and once you wake up, you will never see the world the same way again and you can’t take it back, you can’t unsee it!”
Jennifer Hynes
Which is one of the main reasons I no longer find any of the comments and preoccupations on the petroleum side of this blog even remotely relevant. Everyone who is still worried about the production and price of fossil fuels is in essence a sleep walking zombie! They haven’t seen the dead coral reefs with their own eyes or searched for insects in a nature preserve. I have!
The fossil fuel juggernaut is powered by those not directly involved in the fossil fuel system. It will continue to be funded even if it takes a major war to do so. Maybe 20 year from now the story will be different, but the world will be a vastly different place also.
The proclivity for delusionary action is one of the most powerful human abilities.
Sadly, I see the world differently. Someone should call Earth 911.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5GVXmHgy1A
“Everyone who is still worried about the production and price of fossil fuels is in essence a sleep walking zombie!”
I spent 35 years in the resource evaluation (including oil) business and totally agree. It’s insanity.
“If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” – David Attenborough,
“Today, we use one hundred million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change and it has to start today.” – Greta Thunberg,
The insanity and stupidity you speak of is already foretold in scripture.
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” – 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 (KJV).
“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” – Romans 1:28 (KJV).
One has free will, but one shall not use it to be stupid at one’s own expense and survival.
“Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them.” – Nehemiah 5:7 (KJV).
“Scripture” IS insanity and stupidity.
Bingo!
We have a winner—–
“Today, we use one hundred million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change and it has to start today.” – Greta Thunberg,
Doug, I agree 100%… except for the last sentence. Everything needed to change a long time ago. It is too late now. We are, many fold, past the population the earth can support without destroying the enviornment.
Now I do admire you guys who preach change. Your heart is in the right placce. But unfortunately the vast majority of the world’s population is made up of religious nuts like Gene Orleans and other such fools.
Great minds brought us the industrial revolution, the medical revolution and the green revolution. But they all had tunnel vision. They could only see the good they brought. They could not see the massive devestation an overpopulated world would bring.
But what is truly amazing is that most people cannot even see it in hindsight. All they see is a booming population and think that means everything is just fine. That is, because the population is healthy and booming, everything must be good and getting better.
“Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ron,
“Everything needed to change a long time ago. It is too late now. We are, many fold, past the population the earth can support without destroying the environment.”
I agree and have thought this way for years. Few really ever discusses the population crisis mostly, I think, owing to religious sensitivities AND respecting the climate, feedbacks have kicked in so baring kamikaze geoengineering assaults there is no reversal possible. But one doesn’t say this to their Grandchildren nor do most climate scientists say it publicly (maybe for the same reason). Even this Blog contains many in denial, especially the EV wackos who see these things as world saving devices while mostly ignoring all the other gas emitters which I won’t bother listing.
Actually, you were responding to a Greta Thunberg quote. Greta is 15 years old and I’d be the last person to say she’s wrong to try and change the insane path humanity is on.
Doug, of course I knew it wasn’t your quote. That’s why I listed the author of the quote, as you did. But since you posted it without any following comment, I assumed you agreed with it.
That last quote in my post wasn’t mine either. Mark Twain deserves the credit for that. But the quote reflected my sentiments exactly. That’s why I posted it. The quote says all I needed to say on the subject. No further comment needed.
But don’t get me wrong, I do applaud everyone’s attempt to slow down the destruction. However, I am skeptical that this will save anything because the longer the survival of BAU, the greater the destruction will be.
Ron,
If you think everyone is suggesting BAU, you are incorrect, people are suggesting that things should change as rapidly as possible and of course this should have started much sooner, but that horse has left the barn so we deal with the situation we have.
As to Doug’s EV whackos, that is simply one of many changes needed, for densely populated areas better public transport is likely to be the better option. Most of us also mention wind and solar power which will reduce a lot of natural gas and coal emissions, higher taxes on fossil fuels will also help as will peak fossil fuels as this will drive up prices and lead to changes in how fossil fuels are used.
Population is a very big problem and can be addressed with better access to modern birth control, equal rights for women, and better access to education for everyone. Women with higher levels of education have fewer children, those with easy access to modern birth control methods and are educated in their proper use also have fewer children and women who have equal rights and are treated respectfully also have fewer children.
Lots of problems such as overfishing, soil management and clean water are also problems that need to be addressed along with pollution and a multitude of environmental problems.
Goodness Dennis, I am not suggesting that everyone is suggesting BAU, just most everyone. People are suggesting things should change as soon as possible? What people? People on this list? Of course. The rest of the world? A few give lip service to change but the destructive locomotive just keeps on steaming toward the cliff.
CO2 keeps rising, water tables keep dropping, rain forest keep being cut, factory ships keep fishing the few remaining fish, rivers keep drying up, top soil keeps being washed away and blown away, people keep having more babies, the wild animal population keeps dropping and… well, you get the idea.
Dennis, no one is going to prevent system collapse because the collapse has already started, and instead of slowing down, it is speeding up.
Ron,
I agree that the mainstream thinking is a continuation of BAU, just not the position of many in this thread.
Yes there are many problems. My suggestion is that the people of the World work towards solutions. Some policies are being implemented which may lead to positive change and peak fossil fuels and the higher prices that will result will also move things in a better direction.
We may reach a tipping point where coal natural gas and oil are replaced relatively quickly once peak fossil fuels arrives, the decade of 2030 to 2040 may be one of rapid change in this regard, especially if proper policies are adopted in the OECD with BRIC nations following closely behind (or possibly leading in a few cases).
No guarantee this occurs, but the sooner the peak arrives the better.
My suggestion is that the people of the World work towards solutions.
Yeah, I made the same suggestion. Nobody listened. And I just can’t figure out why. 🙂
Seriously, there are no solutions! It’s already too late. There is no way to stop the collapse of civilization as we know it. We are depleting the world’s natural resources. And the process of depletion is not even slowing down. It is speeding up.
So drop your suggestion in the suggestion box. See how many of the world’s 7.6 billion minds are changed by your suggestion.
The management, the leadership, of naked apes is a tricky proposition, under any circumstances, and it’s further complicated by political and cultural considerations, as Doug points out.
So…… The typical environmentalist is also a political liberal, meaning that while he is aware of the dire consequences of over population, resource depletion, climate forcing, etc, he also feels compelled, IS compelled, to walk and talk the liberal line in respect to immigration, human rights, abortion aka reproductive rights aka right to choose, etc etc, or he WILL be excommunicated, driven from the fold, driven from his cultural home.
NOTE, I support the basic liberal agenda, nearly all of it, in fact, although I think some of it is overemphasized, and thereby helping Trump types more than it’s helping D types.
You must toe the overall cultural and political line of your “home team”, your US group, as opposed to the cultural and political lines of your “THEM ” outsiders or enemies, when talking to the PUBLIC, in just about any sort of political dialogue.
Now in the case you are doing leadership training, or talking privately with wide awake, well informed people who are on YOUR SIDE, then you can talk about such issues as the down sides of immigration, etc.
There ARE downsides, but finding a liberal who admits their existence and honestly discusses them in public is as hard as finding hundred dollar bills on sidewalks.
Somebody like my little buddy helper HB will probably flame me for saying that the people who live in any country that’s NOT YET too far gone, in terms of resource depletion, overpopulation, etc, should give serious consideration to thinking of THEIR country as a LIFEBOAT, and just how many people they want to pick up out of the water, considering that the “LIFEBOAT” is going to be at sea INDEFINITELY…. at least until after the population and industrial civilization both crash, taking the pressure off whatever remains of the environment.
Note I am not opposed to immigration, so long as the number of people admitted to my country is modest, and that young men in particular are vetted to determine if they are criminals. I believe in political sanctuary, and in charity, and all that……. but I also understand that admitting large numbers of people is a COLOSSAL political mistake… one that provides Trump type politicians with the gasoline they need to get elected.
FACTS have almost nothing to do with a lot of arguments, you see, unless the FACTS under consideration are the BELIEFS of the voting public.
If typical liberal/ D voters are still going to vote D, and they will, emphasizing liberal immigration policy is IMO a mistake for the D’s , because I believe it fires up the opposition, getting R type voters to the polls to a greater extent than it does D types.
So the PRACTICAL thing to do would be to maintain current D positions, but TALK about them less, as I see it.
Conversely, wide awake conservatives, and there ARE some, understand that millions of kids growing up malnourished, and poorly educated, are growing up, lots of them, not every one, to be tomorrow’s drug dealers, sex trafficers, muggers, crooked cops, burglars…… but such a conservative cannot say anything in public about the need for the government to see that such kids are properly fed, etc.
I could go on all day, this is already TLDR.
Yeah, I used to think the same way. I thought “if conservatives are so passionate about guns, why do democrats keep talking about gun control? Why don’t they pick something less emotional, and stop antagonizing gun advocates?”.
Then I realized that conservative politicians don’t really care about guns, or abortion, or immigration. They care about whatever they can use to scare voters. And, if “liberals” stop talking about guns, or abortion, or immigration, then conservative media will start inflaming their viewers and listeners about drugs, or prayer, or russians, or gays, or gypsies, or jews, or…something. Anything that works.
You see, the big prize for conservatives in the last two years wasn’t appointing conservative judges for social policy reasons. They really don’t care about social policy. The true Republican constituents are the wealthy who will always be safe from guns in their gated communities, who will always be able to travel to get abortions, etc., etc.
The prize was cutting taxes for the wealthy, stopping progress on cutting fossil fuel consumption, cutting wages for the working poor, and appointing conservative judges who will protect business profits.
It’s a power game. The “wedge issues” are tools to create division and scapegoating, and distract their base from the fact that their being ruthlessly exploited.
Don’t be fooled.
Divide and conquer
Ron, it has always been a matter of when, not if. It’s evolution with 7 billion humans putting it on steroids. We still can influence that journey and make the best of it. There’s no reason to step on the accelerator as we head for the stop sign. We can do a lot more with a lot less, but not if we don’t try. It’s why some of us take our meds everyday.
The “Green New Deal” is nothing more than starting a new type of feudal system with lords and masters (running under the guise of Democratic Socialists) being in control of ALL industry, politics, agriculture, education, etc., and us poor working schmucks and small business owners (New Serfs) being looted on every whim. If you think AOC is golden, you better believe every single thing she has said and will say is going to be used to portray all Democrats as far out of touch extremists in the 2020 elections, and it’s going to be effective. The NRCC already has their slogan for 2020—“freedom or socialism?” I think we all know which side the majority of Americans will side with, it’s not the side who wants to manipulate everybody into involuntary servitude to serve a big government beast.
Wow. The old “regulation of fossil fuels is communism” theme.
Protect fossil fuels, and protect your freedom!
Reds under the bed!!
Mossygrape,
You just don’t get it, do you?
“We are running a 21st-century digital economy on a 13th Century printing-press era operating system.”
Douglas Rushkoff, ‘Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus’
I highly recommend you read that book so you have a slightly better understanding of concepts such as feudalism, socialism and freedom, None of which you seem to have the slightest clue about.
As for the NRCC, they are the embodiment of that fossilized 13th Century printing-press era operating system that is holding back the flourishing of the 21st century digital economy and the New Green Deal by trying to build walls and moats around their stupid little feudal castles. I suggest they look up in the sky to see the drones hovering over their heads! Smile! ‘You’re on Candid Camera and being live streamed to world… 😉
Cheers!
“The ‘Shocking Details’ Of The Green New Deal”
It’s shocking because it calls for renewables not vast amounts of new nuklear and clean bright coal.
NAOM
Where’s the sarc emoji when I need it?
Today Google salutes German analytical chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge on his 225th birth anniversary. Runge is known for having been the first chemist to have isolated caffeine.
Ironically this just in:
https://sprudge.com/a-brazilian-heat-wave-is-scorching-robusta-crops-140229.html
A Heat Wave Is Scorching Brazilian Robusta Crops
You might remember last week’s Polar Vortex, the cold front that wreaked havoc across much of the Midwest, sending the news media into a bit of a tizzy as it went. At the same time as temperatures in Fargo, North Dakota, were bottoming out at -31°, a few thousand miles to the south the Brazilian robusta harvest was literally burning on the trees.
In the eastern states of Bahia and Espirito Santo, which together produce more than 80 percent of Brazil’s robusta crop, maximum temperatures have been as much as 14° above average for this time of year. According to Bloomberg, coffee trees are enduring nine hours a day of high-80s temperatures in full sun, essentially roasting the beans inside their cherries while still on the branch.
I think I’ll have another cup of joe to celebrate!
Just finished my afternoon’s dose of local grown Arabica ::)
NAOM
In a comment further up, I did some back of the envelope projections showing how soon Australia could get 100% of it’s electricity from renewables. Here is the take of a new study from the Australian National University school of electrical engineering reported by reneweconomy,com,au earlier today (Friday Feb 8):
Australia could be 100% renewables by 2032 at current rate of wind and solar installs
A new study from the Australian National University school of electrical engineering says Australia could reach the equivalent of 100 per cent renewables by 2032, if the current rates of installation of wind and solar continued.
The research, led by Professor Andrew Blakers and Dr Matthew Stock, says the technology and infrastructure needed to support that amount of wind and solar can also be put in place within that time frame.
The most important thing the government of the day can do is to get out of the way, although it will need some considerable facilitation and co-ordination to get everything built and in place in time.
The ANU study says Australia is installing solar PV and wind 4-5 times faster per capita than China, Japan, the EU and the US, and is on track to reach 50 per cent renewable electricity by 2024 – far ahead of Labor’s federal target date of 2030, which the Coalition government describes as “reckless.”
Something I ‘m interested in, but have been unable to find out, is how businessmen and investors plan their strategies when their product or service is approaching market saturation. The short answer seems to be that they don’t as often as they do, thereby investing in very expensive capacity that often winds up just sitting there, with sales of the product tailing off.
It’s pretty obvious that when Australia gets up to some level of wind and solar electrical capacity, the installation rate will fall off sharply. Auto manufacturers can expect to sell new cars to replace old ones, etc. But wind and solar farms and home solar systems are going to last indefinitely.
Any comments on this aspect of the future growth of the renewable energy industry are welcome, and thanks in advance.
Unexpected future boost of methane possible from Arctic permafrost
“The mechanism of abrupt thaw and thermokarst lake formation matters a lot for the permafrost-carbon feedback this century,” said first author Katey Walter Anthony at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who led the project that was part of NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), a ten-year program to understand climate change effects on the Arctic. “We don’t have to wait 200 or 300 years to get these large releases of permafrost carbon. Within my lifetime, my children’s lifetime, it should be ramping up. It’s already happening but it’s not happening at a really fast rate right now, but within a few decades, it should peak.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-of-methane-possible-from-arctic-permafrost/
Of course in a few years they will report another faster than expected event, as usual.
This is what happens during warm pulses in the Arctic.
2 C Coming On Faster Than We Feared — Atmospheric Methane Spikes to Record 3096 Parts Per Billion
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/26/2-c-coming-on-faster-than-we-feared-atmospheric-methane-spikes-to-record-3000-parts-per-billion/
What does it take to maintain the delusion? It’s easy, read the newspaper and watch TV, not much about this is ever included and certainly not in realistic terms.
“Of course in a few years they will report another faster than expected event, as usual.”
Ah yes, why is it always worse than expected?
Ah yes, why is it always worse than expected?
Scientific reticence, lack of comprehensive understanding and the result of group think.
Worse for who? For the future denizens of the earth, the cataclysm creates them. For the current denizens, the cataclysm destroys most of them.
We are the result of cataclysm and civilization is the result of an unstable climate system temporarily becoming somewhat stable which in turn creates a new and different cataclysmic instability.
Just think of it, all that discovery, all that invention. Little did we know we were inventing a whole new world.
Inside the experiment we are, we are. The lab rats are running the lab, teee heee.
Sigh — Is there any hope?
BP’S 2018 PROFIT DOUBLES AS OUTPUT SOARS
“BP’s profit doubled to $12.7 billion in 2018, driven by strong growth in oil and gas output following the acquisition of a large portfolio of U.S. shale assets.”
Meanwhile,
Daily CO2 Feb. 6, 2019: 411.37 ppm Feb. 6, 2018: 407.95 ppm
Hi Doug,
In the past you have expressed a great deal of doubt that my fossil fuel scenarios were at all realistic, I agree that it is not possible to predict the future path of oil output precisely, but my scenarios are 3430 Gb for the Medium scenario (C+C+NGL) and about 3870 Gb for the High Oil scenario. Have your views changed on available resources? Do these scenarios now seem much lower than is realistic?
The low scenario predicted a 2015 peak, which proved incorrect, it would be about 3270 Gb (1800-2200) and is not shown on chart.
Dennis –
LOL. Actually, I think what I used to complain about was your scenarios with projections out to 2100 — or thereabouts. Not any complaints respecting methodology. I fear your graph above, looking about 15 years into the future, may be spot on. I say fear because the world can’t handle 15 years worth of BAU, IMHO.
And remember, “It’s not so important how you put together your divination tools, it’s really more important how many times you get it right.” — Nostradamus
Doug,
Thanks. I share that fear.
Yes a scenario out to 2100 is pretty ridiculous, nobody expects it will be correct (or even close) beyond 5 years, it is a “what if” in that for a shock model what if discoveries followed my proposed model and development of resources followed the average rates of the past and extraction rates are as I propose, what would output be? The model simply answers that question and any or all of the assumptions are highly likely to be incorrect in 2100.
I also did that to compare my scenarios of those with far more knowledge like Jean Laherrere.
I also fear that the high scenario might be correct, but am hopeful the medium scenario might be close to correct through 2025 (or the low scenario).
Hopefully a transition to electric transport and wind and solar power can bend the curve starting in 2019. The model above assumes no such change occurs.
With guidance from you there is a far greater chance I might get it right.
Dennis,
Upthread you posted a graph showing about 9000 gigatonnes of carbon emission per year around 2015. The total weight of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only around 3000 gigatonnes.
Wouldn’t the planet be much like Venus at this point?
Gonefishing,
Thanks for the correction. The units should be millions of tonnes (Mt) rather than Pg, or vertical scale should be divided by 1000. 1000 Mt = 1 Pg.
Corrected chart for fossil fuel carbon emission scenarios below.
Thank you Gone fishing.
If medium scenario emission turns out to be accurate [peak around 2028 with long big tail], then peak CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would be out at 2090???
If one does not include all the other anthropogenic sources or the natural sources. I think the graph only includes fossil fuel burning which are about 60 percent of the total emissions and land use effects.
Gone fishing,
Typically the models consider anthropogenic emissions as an input, the Earth system models attempt to include the natural sources in response as an output, but do so inadequately (permafrost in particular is often left out and ice sheet modelling as well is not typically included).
For RCP4.5 the total anthropogenic carbon emissions from 1800-2200 are 1462 Gt C, with 1289 Gt from fossil fuel or about 88% of the total anthropogenic emissions of carbon in CO2, another 64 Gt of carbon are emitted in methane over the 1800-2200 period in the RCP4.5 scenario.
Hickory,
A modified Bern Model (fit to data through 2013) for an emissions scenario following my medium scenario with RCP4.5 land use emissions included has total carbon emissions of 1151 Gt (including land use change) from 1800 to 2090. CO2 in the atmosphere would be about 515 ppm in 2090, by 2500 CE atmospheric CO2 falls to 473 ppm. This assumes no human intervention to try to extract extra CO2 from the atmosphere.
A scenario that limits total anthropogenic carbon emissions to 1000 Gt (including land use change) peaks in 2065 at 489 ppm and atmospheric CO2 falls to 450 ppm by 2171. If ECS is 3 C that would imply a warming of about 2C when or if a temperature equilibrium is reached (ocean takes about 400 years to warm to equilibrium).
A fast energy transition (very optimistic scenario) might limit anthropogenic carbon emissions to about 865 Gt of carbon from 1800-2100, in that case the peak atmospheric CO2 is about 458 ppm and falls to 400 ppm by 2500 CE, that implies about 1.55 C of global warming if ECS is 3 C (note the estimates vary from 2 C to 4.5 C for ECS) Earth Stsytem sensitivity is higher but time scales may be longer (higher degree of uncertainty due to potential non-linearity and tipping points) than 400 years perhaps 1000s of years.
In any case, the uncertainty is reason to emit less carbon rather than more and to transition to non fossil fuels as fast as is possible before we reach a point of no return (many suspect we might have reached that point already) this is not the mainstream view in climate science at present.
I have been looking around for answers to this question [without the specific scenario charted by Dennis] .
I have found no solid projections.
How long after peak emission is peak concentration, keeping in mind a very long half life of CO2 in the air/water/soil, and a very long tail of continued emission after peak?
Hickory,
For a Bern type model peak concentration is about 25 years after peak emissions for the fast transition scenario, with a peak in 2018 and peak concentration in 2044.
Thanks Dennis- I hadn’t heard of the Bern model. I’ll have to take some time to read about it. Saw one comment that caught my eye-
“The “e-folding time” of a pulse, on the other hand, which they call “tau” or the time constant, is how long it would take for the atmospheric CO2 levels to drop to 1/e (37%) of the atmospheric CO2 level after the addition of a pulse of CO2. It’s like the “half-life”, the time it takes for something radioactive to decay to half its original value. The e-folding time is what the Bern Model is supposed to calculate. The IPCC, using the Bern Model, says that the e-folding time ranges from 50 to 200 years.”
I’m pretty confident that once I have done more reading, I will have more of a handle on how weak our ability to predict the carbon flows of the next century are.
Hickory,
The Bern Model uses a set of Taus, with times ranging from very long to very short.
I look at individual yearly pulses equal to CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2112, 10.5% of the pulse has an efolding time of 2.2E5, 20.3% has an efolding time of 171 years, 32.9% with time of 18 years, and 36.6% with time of 2.57 years that model is used for pulses between 1850 and 1959, a second model is used for pulses occurring from 1960 to 2009, and a third is used from 2010 to 2112, the constants and proportions were chosen to fit model to data. Not a very elegant model.
Chart below compares model to data from 1900-2017, not perfect, this is an exceedingly simple model.
Thanks Dennis for helping to educate us laggards. I’ve been playing hookey on the CO2 and climate modeling lessons. Time to pay more attention.
That chart of model vs data is very impressive.
Hickory,
The paper linked below was the starting point for my analysis, then I tweaked the model so I call it a modified Bern Model, note that the original Bern Model has been revised several times.
https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/2793/2013/acp-13-2793-2013.html
Darn zeros! 🙂
???
2018 WAS ONE OF THE HOTTEST YEARS ON RECORD AND THIS YEAR COULD BE EVEN HOTTER
“If you smooth out these year-to-year variations and look at the big picture, the overall trend in the past few decades is one of accelerating change,” said Alex Hall, who directs the Center for Climate Science at UCLA and was not involved in either government analysis. “We are seeing more and more warming that is happening at a faster and faster rate.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-hottest-years-year-hotter.html#jCp
Speaking of BAU:
NORD STREAM 2: EU AGREES TIGHTER RULES FOR RUSSIAN PIPELINE
“EU ambassadors have agreed to toughen regulations on a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, but they have decided not to back plans that might threaten its completion. Russia currently supplies around 40% of the EU’s gas supplies, just ahead of Norway, which is not in the EU but takes part in the bloc’s single market. The new pipeline would increase the amount going under the Baltic to 55bn cubic metres a year.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47170420
So long Ukraine, your klopemania rulers will be losing free cash.
Estimable DougL, Esteemed FredM, and others interested:
I commend to your attention the book I told FernandoL about, up the screen:
Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, by William Ruddiman.
Back around 2000 Ruddiman thought about the data showing that after the end of the last glacial CO2 and CH4 rose following warming, as in previous interglacials, and then began to fall, again as in previous interglacials–and then began to climb, unlike in previous interglacials. The book followed papers he published in the peer-reviewed literature and the revised edition includes responses to his early presentation of the picture that the spread of agriculture was responsible for the climbing CO2 first and CH4 second: Spread of agriculture out of the Fertile Crescent region first with rice cultivation in China and India somewhat later. He includes his responses to the feedback; the hypothesis is pretty widely accepted by now.
I built an upper-division college science course on the book along with other material.
E. Synapsid, Will put it on my list of books to read. Tks!
E. Synapsid,
Re: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, by William Ruddiman
You might be interested in this paper.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261?via%3Dihub
Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492
Thank’ee, E FredM.
This is a good review of the kind of research that Ruddiman’s first papers triggered. There are four mentions of his work in the References, including one to his book Earth Transformed, another that I built a college course on (again upper division.)
Keep an eye out for his name; he’s always worth paying attention to.
I wonder how many local high temperature records have been set in the USA so far this year.
The nearest small town paper, the Mt Airy News, reports today that at least two high new records were set in “Mayberry” of Andy Griffith fame, and that one more appears to have been tied, and a fourth one may have been broken by this time today, all within the last thirty days or less.
Official records in Mt Airy go back into the 1920’s.
Just in case….. If anybody here has read one or more realistically written future history novels based on economic and ecological collapse, and how people and countries deal with the aforesaid collapse, I want to read it….. or them.
Thanks for any suggestions, in advance.
I’m not interested in science fiction, or books about a small handful of people living and surviving by going back to the land. I’ve read plenty of that sort already.
What I’m interested in, are books that realistically portray what a powerful country could do to survive such a scenario, and make sure, once survival is reasonably assured, make sure it will not be laid low by a repeat.
Best I can offer is Retrotopia by John Michael Greer
http://www.foundershousepublishing.com/2016/12/retrotopia.html
Morocco commissions part 3 of a 4 part solar power project.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/06/motorsport/morocco-solar-farm-formula-e-spt-intl/index.html
“… Morocco has one of most ambitious energy targets in the world. The goal is for 42% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2020.
The country is well on track to hit its target too with 35% of its energy is already renewable thanks to sites such as Noor Ouarzazate. …”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station#Noor_III
Part 4 will be PV.
Electric cargo anyone-
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/08/the-usps-takes-delivery-of-first-electric-step-van-from-motiv-power-systems/
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/08/breaking-nikola-motors-adds-battery-electric-vehicles-to-its-lineup/
And battery innovation?
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/08/another-way-to-power-electric-cars-refillable-technology/
Does anybody have any idea about how Pakistan, Mexico and Japan plan to reduce CO2 emissions to zero?
Fernando,
In the case of Japan they can continue to develop Solar power at the rate of the last 20 years (about an average annual rate of increase of 29.6% per year). If that rate continues until 2028, then all fossil fuels used for electricity generation will be eliminated. Oil consumption has been decreasing at 2.5% per year from 2006-2016 and that could accelerate as oil prices increase further and EV prices fall.
For Mexico and Pakistan they could skip the buildout of fossil fuel electric power and use cheaper wind and solar and not have as much wasted investment in power plants that will be too expensive to operate in the future. Likewise they can develop a modern HVDC grid and electric transport and skip the polluting and expensive fossil fuel path of the 20th century.
I’m with Dennis on this one.
The infernal combustion engine didn’t replace horses overnight, it took a couple of generations, and it took three or four more generations for it to get to be as common and dominant as it is today. This could not have happened except that there was plenty of cheap oil, so much that as a practical matter, it looked as if it would NEVER run out.
But now the time has arrived when oil really will be running short , and so getting ever more expensive, as time passes, UNLESS electric vehicles become so common that the demand for oil crashes.
If oil stays up, and continues to go up, as it depletes, then the economies of such countries will develop taking this into account. Personal vehicles will be less common, mass transit will be more common, rail will be more common and go to more small towns, people will live closer in, rather than farther out, requiring a long commute to work.
This will be the NEW NORMAL, and the people in such countries will experience it as their normal way of life.
Renewable energy naysayers generally seem to be gung ho when it comes to science and technology THEY like, such as aircraft, modern medicine, computers, etc.
They can’t seem to see, or REFUSE to see, that the people working in the renewable energy and energy conservation fields have really only barely scratched the surface, in terms of what can be done.
I like to point out is that it’s EXTREMELY easy, in principle and technically, to build appliances such as refrigerators so they use only a very minor percentage of the energy used by ordinary current models, so that they will stay cold for a week or longer, if necessary, waiting for the sun to come out again, or the wind to blow again…… simply by incorporating three or four cubic feet of ice chilled to twenty below zero, within the super insulated cabinet.
Most homes have room for seriously oversized and super insulated hot water heaters, meaning that hot water can be had for days at a time even when the weather is very cloudy and there’s no wind.
I don’t have hard numbers,yet, as to HOW MUCH LESS electrical storage capacity, per capita, or per household would be needed if we mandate this sort of appliance design, but it would sure as hell be enough to punch a huge hole in the argument that we can never have enough batteries or pumped storage systems and such.
And then there’s such things as stone and concrete mass that can be incorporated into any new structure, thereby storing cheap wind and solar sourced electricity when it’s available, greatly reducing the need for heat or AC for days at a time……….
We aren’t going to zero carbon, not within our lifetimes, nor within the lifetimes of our children, but we ARE headed in that direction.
Incidentally I have great respect for Fernando as a level headed and pragmatic engineering guy, and he has in my opinion been a damned sight closer to the bullseye concerning Latin American politics than just about anybody else who posts in this forum.
<B<The infernal combustion engine didn’t replace horses overnight, it took a couple of generations, and it took three or four more generations for it to get to be as common and dominant as it is today. This could not have happened except that there was plenty of cheap oil, so much that as a practical matter, it looked as if it would NEVER run out.
I hate to intrude upon that intuitive notion with some actual hard data, but that simply is not the case and you actually know that!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-motor-vehicle-1917-slide-show/
The Motor Vehicle, 1917 [Slide Show]
In one decade, cars replaced horses (and bicycles) as the standard form of transport for people and goods in the United States.
In 1907 there were 140,300 cars registered in the U.S. and a paltry 2,900 trucks. People and goods still travelled long distances on land by railroad, and short distances by foot or horse-drawn carriage. Almost nobody rode horses, but plenty of people rode bicycles for pleasure and for transport.
Ten years later in 1917, there had been a 33-fold increase in the number of cars registered, to almost 5 million, and a 134-fold increase in the number of commercial, agricultural and military vehicles, to almost 400,000. Horses were now an imperilled minority on the roads; bicycles were in decline in the U.S., although still popular in Europe.
Side note to Dennis, I think all of us on this site who are familiar with his posts, know, that OFM knows, that the statement he made: “infernal combustion engine didn’t replace horses overnight, it took a couple of generations…” Is patently false! Yet, despite being in full possession of that knowledge, he still made it! I don’t care what you call it, but this is precisely the kind of cognitive bias that every single one of us, even experts, are subject to when they try to assess risk, make plans for the future, or create IPCC scenarios based on rigorous statistical and scientific analysis of data. They are perfectly good scientists doing good science. The problem is how all humans are wired in very fundamental ways that affects their capacity to correctly assess risk. What I have been trying to say is that we need to do a much better job in making sure that we take those cognitive biases into consideration!
Cheers!
Hi Fred
Sometimes you get carried away.
For now, unless I’m even more senile than accused of being, the larger portion of the human race does not yet have a motor vehicle, or a motorized machine of any sort, such as a small tractor or scooter.
So…… the ICE does dominate in industrialized countries, but even so….. it’s not yet entirely taken over the WORLD. It may yet……. IF BAU lasts another generation or two.
Just nitpicking of course.
I read every one of your comments, religiously, and agree with you nearly all the time. Any differences of opinion on my part usually concern scale or degree, rather than absolutes. So I might favor different solutions or strategies, but I’m on your home page as far as goals and values are concerned.
Hang in there!
Fred, think globally!
https://blog.beforward.jp/regional-topics/africa/cars-capita-africa-country-cars-road.html
E FredM,
My comment is out of place here, but: IR and grapes is a sneaky way to comment on Port, but thanks for the link anyway.
You know, I’ve followed archaeological study of wine remnants for years and it’s got pretty high-tech. Have you seen McGovern’s book Ancient Wine? He pretty much kicked the field off, I believe. Similar approaches are being applied to remnant material from fats and proteins that’s being recovered from pottery but also from ashes from hearths (going on memory for that last.)
Old Farmer Mac,
We might never get to zero net carbon emissions (by humans). But my children may live to the 2080s (if they live until about 90) and my guess is that carbon emissions by humans will be close to 1% of current levels by that time (about 0.11 Pg C per year). For their children (if they choose to have children) we might get closer to zero or possibly 0.01 Pg of net carbon emissions by humans per year, possibly less with forest regrowth and better agricultural practices as World population declines from a 2065 peak of 8.5 billion.
Hi Dennis,
I can see your scenario, assuming renewable energy and conservation technologies continue to improve dramatically…… and they will.
But cheaper renewable energy and conservation alone won’t giterdone.
Somehow, the people of the world, collectively, will have to force the laggard countries which still have access to cheap coal and gas, and probably some cheap oil as well, to give up using them.
Such political cooperation is obviously possible, but it’s a hell of a stretch, in my estimation, to believe it’s a sure thing.
It is also possible that renewable energy will be so cheap, and conservation tech so effective and cheap, that virtually everybody will give up fossil fuels on the basis of their bottom line. Happy thought, but probably too optimistic.
There is zero question in my mind that eventually, if we muster the necessary political will, we can have wind and solar power enough to run any and all essential industries.
Intermittent power isn’t nearly as big an issue as naysayers portray it, in terms of long term viability.
If enough juice isn’t available to run a mine on a given day, or week, then it can sit idle. There are such things as STOCKPILES of ore, lol, not only at mine sites, but also at foundries. Logs can be and are stockpiled at logging sites, and at sawmills, and lumber is stockpiled at furniture factories and building supply stores.
Farmers stockpile feed for cattle, and the companies that manufacture flour stockpile wheat, and flour as well, to a substantial extent, so the processing machinery can be used to produce other products.
Stone is mined and crushed to produce gravel, for months at a time, locally, with the stock pile accumulating to the size needed to last a couple of years, and then the machinery is moved to another quarry,a couple of hundred miles away…….. and in about six months, they crush enough to last a couple of years for THAT local market.
If they were running on wind and solar juice available fifty percent of the time….. they could still do it, but it take twice as long. On the other hand, with the population flat to declining, as expected, the need for gravel will be declining as well. Once a road bed is graveled, and it’s paved, it will never need gravel again, except the minor amount needed to make new asphalt for a new layer of pavement…… and asphalt pavement is recycled already today, because it’s VERY profitable to recycle it.
Desalinated water can be stored in reservoirs, until it’s needed.
Bottom line, the intermittent nature of wind and solar power is manageable, once it becomes NECESSARY to manage it, due to the exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, even without a super grid.
Bottom line, it’s hard to even come up with anything ESSENTIAL that can’t be stockpiled, and produced on an intermittent basis, IF we must go that route. Fruit and veggies can be canned, frozen, or dried. ‘Nuf said.
If I were a young man I would build a net zero house as my first big project, with ample pv capacity to keep a couple of electric vehicles charged. Two older cars are WAY cheaper to own and operate than one new one, lol, and if the sun isn’t cooperating…. I would have a spare, charged up and ready to go, without having to purchase the juice back from my utility.
The biggest single problem associated with going to a renewable energy economy may very well be finding work for all the people who lose their current day jobs as the transition occurs. This will be one HELL of a tough nut, because there are going to be tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who are unable or unwilling to work in the new jobs that will be coming…. and there is no guarantee there will be ENOUGH of these new jobs anyway.
Once the population actually flattens out and starts falling, the need for new construction of every sort will start declining in a very dramatic fashion, because the vast majority of all built infrastructure is in reality going to last indefinitely, so long as it’s maintained, and maintenance, compared to new construction, is dirt cheap.
Sure sewage treatment plants and sewers wear out, but the plant itself will be obsolete by the time it wears out, and the new one can go on the same site, utilizing a substantial portion of the existing buildings, parking lots, security fences, transmission lines, etc. Old sewers can have LINERS installed without digging them up, even today. And with fewer people…. less capacity will be needed. What does get to the plant, in the form of number one and number two, will be separated and processed into fertilizer, as a matter of necessity and profit.
Solar farms and wind farms will never wear out, in the usual sense of needing to be torn down and replaced. As individual turbines and panels give up, they will be replaced piecemeal, and towers are going to last three or four times as long as they are designed to last, because they won’t be fatigued to their limits except in the cases where they have been hit by repeated hard windstorms… and even then, a new lighter turbine can be installed. It doesn’t really matter if a wind turbine collapses once in a while…… cows are cheap. Men have sense enough, most of us anyway, to stay away from them during storms.
Many thousands of bridges are way past their design life, and past due for replacement, but still used constantly, with a heavier flow of trucks and cars…… and how often do we hear about a bridge collapsing, in relation to the number of such bridges in need of replacement ?
Any brick house built on stable ground in compliance with a typical present day building code, if protected from termites, and properly maintained, can be expected to last at least a couple of hundred years, with due maintenance, unless the builder got away with murder.
A thorough remodeling job, bringing such a house up to near state of the art standards, and into compliance with typical modern standards, generally costs no more than one quarter to one third the cost of new construction, in constant money, and from that day on, a sixties vintage house will use only a third of the energy needed by a typical comparable new house, and it will be good to go, with routine maintenance, for a couple more generations….. during which time the only really expensive work it will need would be a new roof, or maybe a new heating and cooling system…. which would likely be half again more efficient than the one being replaced, after fifteen or twenty years . Most of my furniture is already fifty years old, or older, and it will last indefinitely…. centuries at least. It’s true it’s solid oak and chestnut, but it’s also true it has never been boxed and shipped, and warehoused, and retailed. No chemicals were used on it. It’s strictly wood, glass, and brass screws, plus some organic oil rubbed on.
I can’t say I believe it will happen, but there’s no reason at all, other than politics, that the government cannot mandate that cars be built to last indefinitely, by way of having to post bonds to make sure they do.
Aluminum and synthetic fibers such as carbon, and some plastics, won’t rot or rust, and virtually all the manufacturing industries now have standardized guidelines and regulations in place, making it easy and cheap to replace almost any component with one direct from a warehouse. Electric motors built forty or fifty years ago are routinely replaced with ones built last month……. much improved, in all ways except ONE. You get a new one, right off the local electrical store shelf, that fits perfectly into the same spot, using the same belt, pulley, or gear, and the same bolts to fasten it down, with the wires attaching in exactly the same fashion, right down to the color code.
There’s no reason car motors and transmissions ( if needed) and such cannot be manufactured and sold the same way. I can buy three or four makes of brand new engines, and three or four makes of transmissions, that will BOLT RIGHT INTO an existing thirty year old dump truck. It is necessary to change the wires to match, but that’s a piece of cake. These new engines and transmissions are cleaner, more powerful, more durable, more fuel efficient…. better in every way.
Of course building cars this way would eliminate tens of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing industry, and more in garages, and more at dealerships selling new cars……… and used cars too, lol.
Our future problems are arguably at least potentially solvable, so long as the climate doesn’t go totally bonkers and the biosphere doesn’t roll over and die.
Ron may well be right, maybe the climate will go totally nuts, and the biosphere will roll over and die, and take us with it….. but there’s a chance he is wrong. Some substantial portion of us may survive, and industrial civilization may survive as well.
OFM,
There is much that can be done. Keep in mind that even in nations where natural gas and coal are very cheap (US and Australia for example) solar and wind power already are close to par with the cheapest newly built power plants, costs will continue to fall and fossil fuel will no longer be economic, this also will apply to EVs before long, fossil fuels in 20 to 30 years will essentially be obsolete as an energy source, though they will still be used in smaller quantities in some uses where they are a non energy input to a manufacturing process.
Fernando —
“Does anybody have any idea about how Pakistan, Mexico and Japan plan to reduce CO2 emissions to zero?”
Why limit your question to Pakistan, Mexico and Japan? 1500 private jets arrived at the World Economic Forum in Davos and I doubt ANY of the owners are planning to reduce their personal carbon footprint – more likely they are shopping for a bigger/faster jets as we speak.
If not through innovation and policy choices, it will come via the path of fossil fuel depletion.
Of course, burning the trees will be another phase of carbon release.
Still won’t be zero, but closer.
Japan is a highly advanced technological society with an already significantly contracting population. In my mind that bodes well for them, though in the global picture, it is but a mere drop in the bucket.
Pakistan on the other hand has a relatively poor backward society in deep ecological and populational overshoot coming up against hard limits so it is not unlikely that they will be faced with a perfect storm of social, economic, political and ecological collapse leading to die off and population crash.
I view Mexico as a bit of a wild card that could still go either way.
In any case, I think all countries will soon ( in a decade or so) be leaving fossil fuels behind on way or another whether they want or not.
Cheers!
“In any case, I think all countries will soon ( in a decade or so) be leaving fossil fuels behind one way or another whether they want or not.”
But,
WORLD ‘LOSING THE RACE’ ON CLIMATE CHANGE, UN CHIEF WARNS
“I believe we are losing the race. Climate change is running faster than what we are. We have this paradox. The reality is proving to be worse than what science has foreseen, and all the indicators have shown.”
He also lamented that leaders continue to subsidize fossil-fuel burning industries, and limit carbon pricing.
http://cnnphilippines.com/world/2019/01/25/United-Nations-climate-change-Ant%C3%B3nio-Guterres.html
Yeah, I know! We probably lost the race against climate change a half century or so ago.
I still think the age of fossil fuels will likely end within the decade.
A day late and a dollar short!
Cheers!
Channeling Churchill:
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/winston_churchill_163144
We have arguably already seen the end of the beginning of the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels, given that renewable energy and conservation tech are cutting into demand in a very real way.
But ten years is damned optimistic!
I don’t think Fred’s comment was actually in an optimistic vein…civilization collapses, billions die…voila! the end of the age of fossil fuels.
Not sure Fred meant to go as dark as that…
Agree.
I should have put a sarc alert on my line about ten years being damned optimistic.
One way of reading Fred is that in ten years fossil fuels will be on the way out, optimism,use in decline, and the other pessimism, that the use will still be growing.
Not sure Fred meant to go as dark as that…
I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist, I’m a realist 😉
Hey! I am also a realist. Unfortunately, my realism leads me to have an extremely pessimistic outlook for the future of humanity and other animal life. And in no way am I being sarcastic.
What does your “realistic” outlook lead you to believe Fred?
Being realistic, I am in doubt that optimists are seeing things clearly. That makes me pessimistic that they will take appropriate strong measures to change the business as usual stance.
Well, Ron, let me put it this way, realistically speaking, things do not look very promising for the long term future of humanity and other large mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians most terrestrial and marine arthropods, etc… also most higher order plants Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. On the other hand certain members of the Medusozoa family, some forms of microscopic algae and extremophile bacteria should probably do quite well!
To be clear, that is neither pessimism nor intended as sarcasm! 😉
Cheers!
FredM,
Sure, sure–ignore the Archaea as always. You bacteriophiles, honestly…
Archaea?!
You mean that extinct genus of ancient spiders?!
Oh, no… you didn’t! You meant those weird little prokaryotes. Apparently some of which even take part in the fermentation of Port wines! Perhaps those could be called Portkaryotes… 😉
Time to face up to current research on Archaea, E FredM, and be humbled.
Besides, there would be no Eukaryota without Archaea, and to add to their glory they don’t cause infections.
WORLD
‘LOSINGLOST THE RACE’ ON CLIMATE CHANGE, UN CHIEF WARNSI don’t know if this will help with what you want.
https://www.cfe.mx/Casa/InformacionCliente/PublishingImages/Pages/Contrataci%C3%B3n-de-servicios-Fotovoltaicos/Programa%20Especial%20de%20Cambio%20Clim%C3%A1tico%202014-2018.pdf
(Spanish)
NAOM
SOMETHING IS NOT QUITE RIGHT IN THE UNIVERSE, ULTRA PRECISE NEW MEASUREMENT REVEALS
“Something isn’t quite right in the universe. At least based on everything physicists know so far. Stars, galaxies, black holes and all the other celestial objects are hurtling away from each other ever faster over time. Past measurements in our local neighborhood of the universe find that the universe is exploding outward faster than it was in the beginning. That shouldn’t be the case, based on scientists’ best descriptor of the universe.”
https://www.space.com/43277-hubble-constant-measured-precisely-with-quasars.html
That explains it, we have an off-brand universe with a recall notice. No wonder we are so messed up, the whole universe is not quite right.
Either that or my neighbor is right. This is a virtual universe so things like dark energy and dark matter effects are just that, effects. That would explain those missing socks.
Of course this all depends upon an assumption, that the physical laws are the same across space and time. Are the constants constant?
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2018/reviews/rpp2018-rev-phys-constants.pdf
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2018/reviews/rpp2018-rev-astrophysical-constants.pdf
Since the speed of light is self defined, will we ever know if it changes?
So you don’t think socks are important, well they can be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrgq52Uc3YE
“Are the constants constant?”
Well, you’re not the first to ask. Paul Dirac, in the 1930s, questioned whether physical constants such as the gravitational constant or the fine-structure constant might be subject to change in proportion of the age of the universe.
My cosmology lecturer was working on this particular problem. John Webb. Here is one of the papers:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907
From the talks i had with him, he is quite confident the fine-structure constant is not constant spatially, even temporally as i recall. But the variations would be quite small.
DougL,
Thanks; the article is well done. Eurekalert covered the study a week or so ago but that site doesn’t provide enlightened comments (hooboy!) like Space does.
Interesting video popped up on my YouTube feed:
Censored climate scientists…
Calling On ALL Climate Scientists To Disprove The McPherson Paradox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jII6alK6eeU
Speaking of videos 😉
EULER’S IDENTITY – A VIDEO
In High School, apart from a few girls, the most beautiful thing I discovered was Euler’s Identity (Feynman agreed). At Uni it was the Fourier Transform. Of course, as a Geophysist, the Fourier Transform is like a hammer and saw to a carpenter. Now days there are amazing graphics, videos and free Online Courses to help one admire, appreciate and learn math concepts (and associated applications). This is one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKtloBAuP74
Good ole complex numbers. Great video. Loved it.
Now the question is Doug, is mathematics discovered, or is it invented?
Good question. All I know is science wouldn’t exist without math (which often) “follows mathematics”. Besides, things like electrons and quarks only became “real” because of math.
Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxKw4xEEFHQ
Feynman’s Lectures on Physics – The Relation of Mathematics and Physics
Thanks Fred, obviously this is the definitive answer.
Since I’ve always been more of a visual thinker, I find it easier to grasp concepts through geometry and trigonometry. This animated graphical reconstruction of Feynman’s lost lecture is pretty cool!
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdIjYBtnvZU
Feynman’s Lost Lecture (ft. 3Blue1Brown)
“Since I’ve always been more of a visual thinker.”
Einstein was primarily a visual thinker as well. Any relation? Will watch Feynman’s Lost Lecture later. Thanks.
Einstein was primarily a visual thinker as well. Any relation?
Sure, both us descended from Great Apes! In any case I doubt that any one will be clamoring to dissect my brain… 😉
Symbolic Math is an abstract concept which when it intersects with science and engineering models reality.
But of course it was invented to count things and measure such mundane stuff as grain, land, goods, money, architecture and building design etc. So it is originally an invention that took on a more abstract vein and was brought back to reality by scientific ventures.
However, Ethiopian early math was a bit different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOKp9_sSkZg
Dang it Doug, you just made me understand something in mathematics. Oh how I wish I had this sort of teaching way back then.
NAOM
For Fred:
Thanks for your list of Aberystwyth UK charging points. You’re right of course, this is more than “virtually zero”.
However, the list has zero chargers in the Supercharger league (120kW), just one at 50kW (a very recent, but welcome, addition), a couple at 22kW and most at 11/7/3kW.
So assuming a generous 4 miles per kWh, the 22/11/7/3kW points would yield 44/22/14/6 miles of range per 30 minute charge…
PS From Dennis: >> Takes about 20 minutes to get 150 miles of charge at a supercharger <<
According to Tesla’s site you will be getting a supercharger installed in Aberystwyth this year. 😉
Thanks, Fred. I’ll let you know 🙂
Dr. Guy R. McPherson is an American scientist, professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology and taught evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He is one of those rare individuals who actually did research in the field. Unfortunately most ‘Climate Scientists’ that I have followed have a rather limited understanding of ecology and non linear biological systems. To rebut or disprove McPherson’s claims requires a deep holistic understanding of the multiple non linear and chaotic interactions of the physical, chemical, geological and biological earth systems. Off hand, I can’t think of too many people who might be qualified to do the task justice. While I personally believe that his timeline may be off by a few decades I find his arguments to be consistent with what the most recent science is telling us about the risks of a potential sixth mass biological extinction.
Cheers!
The deeper I delve into the earth system (physical and biological) the closer I get to some form of McPherson’s conclusions. This of course is abhorrent to many, but to deny the possibility is to deny complex system interactions.
We live in a complex system, one which is being perturbed at 0.1 C per decade at least, physically traumatized, chemically toxified, and subject to an extreme high rate of novel chemical systems with wide distributions as well as global species transfer.
In other words, a complex system that is being struck by multiple hammers.
It makes sense that the response time of adjustment to new stimuli is much longer than the current rate of stimulus.
The monthly temperature anomalies of this century are outside the average monthly temperature anomalies of last century. Even more disturbing is that the monthly temperature anomalies of the years 2012 to 2018 now fall outside of all temperature anomalies from 1980 to 2000 (not the averages for the period but the full range of those monthly anomalies).
So in just a few years we have transferred to yet a second new temperature regime. If this holds, then the rate of change is accelerating rapidly.
Of course the trend is positive. This is close to delta 0.5C in less than 40 years or about 0.15 C per decade. In fact in the last 24 years it has risen to 0.17 C/decade.
Does anyone think exponential change?
Not too relevant since the ecosystem changes are indicative of a much more rapid disruption timeline.
Below is my shadow on a recent urban insect hunting expedition.
The results of which were quite depressing…
High resolution Original 11″ X 17″
The caption says:
PHOTOGRAPHING URBAN WEEDS:
Planet Earth, Jan. 2019
Late Anthropocene
.
Next time wear a bug headpiece so the shadow looks more like a find instead of a tripod with sunglass antenna. 🙂
Uh,oh I see the squirrels are getting frisky, looks like another generation is about to be conceived.
I don’t believe the 6th extinction is potential – we are in it.
NAOM
Well, let’s wait for the fossil record to show if it is just an extinction or a major one. That is our scientific basis of comparison.
No sense in jumping to conclusions just to be disappointed in the future. 🙂
I’ll be happy to be disappointed.
NAOM
If I’m lucky I will be an old fossil by then. 🙂
Prognosticators benefit more out of predicting disaster. Because, if their predictions are wrong, the many potential victims are exuberant that they were spared, and, if their predictions are correct, they earn the right to tell everybody “I told you so.” A win-win situation.
Make what you will of this. Professors are apparently almost as bad as anybody else when it comes to putting lipstick on the pig they invent themselves, but this particular one is with one of our better universities and in the hard sciences, where making a fool of yourself is a huge mistake, even if you ARE tenured, lol.
There’s no reason not to believe he’s onto something big…….. except reading dozens, hundreds of articles about the next big thing has left me prone to skepticism about any one PARTICULAR announcement. Out of a hundred, one of them generally pans out, maybe even two or three.
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-refillable-technology-energy-electric-car.html?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral
I agree OFM. Thats looks interesting. Bring it on.
Yeah, and Betamax was a superior product compared to VHS but didn’t quite make it commercially…
For what it is worth, flow batteries are sure to have a niche in the batteries marketplace.
I like the idea, but the whole system of continuous liquid chemical movement and being reliant on large external systems just smacks too much of the system we are trying to eliminate. Maybe this would be applicable to large systems such as public transport, large fleet and big freight but it misses out on the simplistic elegance and efficiency of the standard battery driven EV combined with rooftop or nearby PV.
Li-ion batteries are good for thousands of charges and if well managed will last 300,000 miles or more with no need to replace the battery. If cars last longer, then one replacement could be made.
Compare that to the 1000 refills needed and the 100 anode changes ($6500 dollars plus a lot of time), plus the exchanged liquid needs to be transported for recharge and back to the service station.
No info on how long the electrolyte lasts either.
I figure in the future 9five years from now) the battery replacement would only cost about $5000 or less for a 300 mile range, while more expensive cars with 500 to 600 mile ranges would cost about $10,000. That is less than 2 cents a mile for the cheaper versions, if you ever need to replace the battery.
At 30 miles a day, 300,000 miles is 27 years. So many cars would never need a replacement battery. Anyway, used batteries are good for stationary backup, so they can have a second life.
Elegant and simple, powered by direct PV. No need for large complex system in between.
https://insideevs.com/highest-mileage-tesla-now-has-over-420000-miles/
As an electric car owner, having to go to an electrolyte ‘filling’ station every 300 miles, and having to pay for an anode swap every 3,000 miles doesn’t sound like an advantage to me. It sounds a lot like reverting back to having to go to gas stations and get oil changes – two very inconvenient aspects of combustion car ownership that I don’t miss.
As it is, I plug my car into a standard 110V outlet when I get home at night, and when I leave in the morning I have a full battery. I use 6-10 kWh on an average day. I’ve only needed to public charge once, and it was free.
Also, can I install panels on my roof that allow me to generate my own electrolyte and anodes?
True Bob,
But, if such a flow battery happened to be 1/2 the price, or happened to be able to last for the life of the car- it would be worth considering. We may be lucky to have a solution other than current lithium at some point.
There is an *enormous* amount of research going on with battery chemistries. There are lead-acid variations that are 3x as good. There are dozens of variations on lithium-ion, and dozens of others using aluminum, sulfur, vanadium, etc., etc.
The problem: there are enormous barriers to entry to such an industry – leaders have a big advantage in economies of scale. Manufacturers have to make a choice, a commitment, along with an ecosystem of suppliers. That’s a big deal, and industries don’t do it lightly.
As it happens, lithium-ion appears to be the consensus choice, and it’s still progressing quickly, with relatively rapid improvements in capacity, cycle-life, and cost.
Tesla decided to go with the form of battery that had the largest market share, and the lowest cost, rather than developing new form-factors and chemistries. This appears to have been an inspired decision.
Interesting comparison of data
2018 Fourth Warmest Year in Continued Warming Trend, According to NASA, NOAA
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20190206/
Something a little different to remind us that humans are not all bad We have potential!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOr2O0FfpT8
Bach on Piano for Blind Elephant
Porsche and Audi are working overtime to get electric models into mass production and profitable territory….. but they appear according to this article to be at least a couple of years behind Tesla.
https://electrek.co/2019/02/09/tesla-model-3-cost-surprise-porsche-audi-reverse-engineering/
In order to prevent an increase in global temperatures above the critical 1.5C, the world has to reduce CO2 emission by half in 2030.
Allowing for Africans to use their fair share of oil and consume 5 barrels per year, Americans would have to cut consumption from 20 barrels per year down to 5 in that time.
http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
With US oil production at an all time high and cheap petrol, most people are continuing to buy global warming vehicles without a second thought.
Global coal consumption would have to be reduced by 3/4.
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-world-consumption-data.html
Looking at how many coal fired power stations are being BUILT, remove all the status icons on a map other than construction.
https://endcoal.org/tracker/
The chances of China using only one billion tonnes of coal in 2030 is zero
If I might be allowed to engage in a thought experiment, a flight of fancy if you will. I looked at the 2018 electricity & other energy statistics at the China Energy Portal web site. I also looked at the 2017 electricity & other energy statistics (update of June 2018) and extracted some key data to do some projections in a spreadsheet. I looked at new solar capacity additions growing at the same rate as they did between 2017 and 2018 (roughly 12.5%) and total electricity production growing at the same rate as it did over the same period. The results are shown in the top graph of the two below and the results do indeed look dire.
New solar capacity growth in China was over 122% between 2015 and 2016, 53% between 2016 and 2017 and only 12.5% between 2017 and 2018 as a result of deliberate attempts by the Chinese government to slow growth in that sector. I played around with the growth rates for the projection a bit and came up with the second graph below, using a solar capacity per annum growth rate at a modest 23% and an annual growth rate for total electricity production of 5%, close to the growth between 2016 and 2017. That case still does not achieve the desired results by 2030, though it does by about 2035.
One scenario I came up with that does halve electricity production from coal by replacing it with solar, used an annual solar growth rate of 30% coupled with an annual growth in total electricity production of only 2%. The chances of anything close to that happening in real life are not very good. Something extraordinary will have to happen to see anything close. This has nothing to do with it being technically possible but, more to do with a lack of any urgency and the a lack of political will. I aim to expound on that in another post later. WASF
“Something extraordinary will have to happen to see anything close.”
I’d say this is something extraordinary. Though, when your population is 1.3 billion maybe a million here or there isn’t such a big deal?
CHINA’S AIR POLLUTION LINKED TO MILLIONS OF EARLY DEATHS
“More than one million people are dying prematurely every year from air pollution in China, according to a new analysis. This is the highest toll in the world and it really reflects the very high levels of air pollution that exist in China today,” says Robert O’Keefe of the Health Effects Institute in Boston, who presented the findings in Beijing this week [April 2, 2013]. Alarm has been growing in recent years about the air in China. On many days in many cities, it’s thick with smog.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/04/02/176017887/chinas-air-pollution-linked-to-millions-of-early-deaths
Islandboy
Capacity is no indication what so ever of actual output.
Wind accounts for 2.7% of China’s electricity production and solar accounts for 0.5%.
These figures are far below the installed capacity of either technology.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33092
The simple fact is; despite massive increase in installed wind and solar capacity in 2016, 2017 and 2018 China’s CO2 emission increased in 2017 and 2018.
China with a fifth of world population, burns more than half of all the coal used in the world. This does not happen by accident, it was done by choice.
This does not happen by accident, it was done by choice.
And as Doug has highlighted in his comment above yours China is paying a price for the unintended consequences of that choice. China is not immune from any of the other unintended consequences of that choice either, so there is also that consideration.
As far as capacity being an indication of output, I cheated. I looked at how much electricity was produced by solar for a given year in relation to the installed capacity at the end of that year for the last three years. At the end of 2016 the installed capacity was 78 GW which had produced 66.5 TWh of electricity or 0.853 TWh per GW of installed capacity. At the end of 2017 the installed capacity was 131 GW which had produced 117 TWh of electricity or 0.893 TWh per GW of installed capacity. At the end of 2018 the installed capacity was 175 GW which had produced 177.5 TWh of electricity or 1.084 TWh per GW of installed capacity. This is highly simplistic since the actual output in relation to the installed capacity at the end of the given year will depend on timing of the bulk of the new capacity additions. Only the new capacity added in the first few weeks of a given year will actually be producing for most of the year while capacity added very late in the year will contribute very little to the total production for that year. Despite realizing that this is overly simplistic I chose the last figure as a basis for estimating actual solar output on the basis of capacity.
Looking over my work for the purposes of the explanation above made me realise that I had made some errors. Making the corrections did not change the outcome of the upper graph significantly but, to get the same results for the lower graph I had to bump up the growth rate for new solar capacity to 27.5%. With the errors corrected, halving electricity production from coal by replacing it with solar, used an annual growth rate for new solar capacity of 33% coupled with an annual growth in total electricity production of 2%.
The success of the British Empire was achieved in part through the use of coal during the industrial revolution. Before that it was based on exploiting the resources of the colonies that Britain had “conquered” and the labour of mostly African slaves. As far as I am aware, Britain was not in the habit of paying for the resources of the colonies nor the labour of the slaves but, history is not my forte so I could be wrong. It strikes me as a bit disingenuous for anybody from the UK to be criticizing China for seeking to do what China considers necessary to achieve a higher standard of living for it’s citizens. Was it acceptable for Britain to conquer, occupy and exploit large parts of the world and to burn as much coal as they wanted during the transition to a modern developed economy, just because the population of Britain was so much smaller than that of China? Criticism of China coming from the UK seems to hint at a sense of entitlement to me and does not seem fair.
Parts of China and southeast Asia have a problem with monsoons, long periods of time where solar insolation is reduced due to rain and clouds.
Monsoons are not always all day. Here, in the rainy season (summer), we get strong sun all day then storms late afternoon or evening. I experienced that in Brazil as well.
NAOM
Islandboy
It is not disingenuous to criticize China for burning half the coal used in the world. When Britain used it’s coal nobody thought of global warming and their were no other alternatives in the 1700 and 1800 to make steel and keep your house warm.
We have known for 30 years of so about global warming and there have been alternatives to coal for longer. Wind power, nuclear and gas are all far better than coal in terms of not destroying the planet. Which is where we are heading.
As for slavery; black Africans were the first link in the chain, so to speak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#African_participation_in_the_slave_trade
Rather than pointing out what happened 200 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807
you should be concerned about slavery today and Africans are deeply involved.
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1333894/29-million-trapped-modern-day-slavery-china-30-million-worldwide
https://qz.com/africa/1333946/global-slavery-index-africa-has-the-highest-rate-of-modern-day-slavery-in-the-world/
Putting Solar Panels on Water Is a Great Idea—but Will It Float?
By Jim Daley
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/putting-solar-panels-on-water-is-a-great-idea-mdash-but-will-it-float/
Winemaker Greg Allen had a problem. As president of Far Niente Winery in Napa Valley, California, he had done the math on how much land the vineyard could possibly dedicate to solar panels, to offset energy costs. The figure—about two acres—“really hurt,” Allen says. So he compromised: Far Niente completed an array of 2,296 solar panels, 994 of which float on pontoons tethered to the bottom of the winery’s pond. The installation was the world’s first nonexperimental floating solar array.
That was in 2008. Since then floating photovoltaics have proliferated in Asia—yet not so much in the U.S. Japan has more than 60 installations, the most of any country in the world. China, a bourgeoning giant in renewable energy, claims the world’s largest array. That facility, which went online in 2017, floats atop an artificial lake created from a collapsed coal mine near the city of Huainan. The 166,000 panels can produce some 40 megawatts, or enough electricity to power about 15,000 homes. A 2018 World Bank report estimated the global potential for floating solar arrays on artificial water surfaces would exceed 400 gigawatts.
Although U.S. adoption has been slow, some recent deals may turn the tide. A typical installation consists of solar panels on pontoons tethered to the bottom of a reservoir or retention pond—considered easier to utilize than lakes. Floating or underwater cables carry direct current to an inverter on shore where it is converted to alternating current and sent to the local grid. Engineers must consider multiple factors: systems have to withstand high winds and waves, panels must be resistant to corrosion and anchors have to last for 25 years or more.
But floating installations also offer several advantages over land-based arrays: Most obvious is they do not take up valuable parcels that could be used for agriculture or development. The technology can be easier to install than land-based or roof-mounted systems; once assembled, crews float them into place and anchor them. The arrays can improve the environment as well; blocking sunlight from penetrating the water can reduce evaporation and inhibit algae blooms. (It is not yet clear how the arrays might affect fish, birds or other wildlife.)
Good idea, and in arid zones evaporation from reservoirs is a big issue. ” blocking sunlight from penetrating the water can reduce evaporation and inhibit algae blooms.”
Floating PV on fresh water bodies and near the shores of bays on the ocean should work quite well in a lifeless environment. I am sure the machines need the electricity far more than fish, crustaceans, mollusks, insects, and plant life need the sunlight.
We’ve got lots of water storage reservoirs and canals in the west (and other arid/sunny zones of the world) that are artificial places with very little life, and none of it natural habitat. This is the kind of place I was referring to. Not Lake Huron.
Of course to your point- no place for electricity generation is healthy for wildlife. Even a roof-top or a abandoned field should be a natural undisturbed place. Unplug if you are so distraught.
Hello! What makes you think I was responding to you Hickory. Follow the thread up, my response was to the article Cats put up.
Maybe you should find out why those bodies of water are dead instead of making them more dead. I will recommend you to do things since you were pretentious enough to do that to me “Unplug if you are so distraught.”.
I am not distraught, but I bet before all that life died they were distraught. Probably died horrible deaths and continue to do so and future is guaranteed with more bad BAU decisions.
Pardon me GF. The comment came right after mine, and obviously I didn’t comprehend the sequence of the conversation. Its a problem with this format.
Better we were sitting around a virtual campfire.
On my phone they all look sequential, on my computer they are stepped inward as they should.
No problem, but I have sent NASA notice of those nearly lifeless waters you spoke about. They will be sending probes to them and use them to determine detection limits under real conditions for their search for on other planets.
I asked if they had probes to determine if intelligent life existed on other planets but they said they were still looking for a control set to compare against. Their probes around Washington DC kept picking up a lot of noise. 🙂
Why Your Phone (and Other Gadgets) Fail You When It’s Cold
Megan Molteni
https://www.wired.com/story/why-your-phone-and-other-gadgets-fail-you-when-its-cold/
As a native Midwesterner, I’m used to the annual assault of winter weather on the human body, hairless and adapted over millennia to indoor living as we are. Despite our thermoregulatory shortcomings, we’ve managed to survive extreme cold through technology—from insulating clothing to systems that pump hot air and water around our homes.
But much of the tech that facilitates our connected modern lives itself loses functionality as temperatures drop below freezing. Batteries, screens, sensors, lightweight materials—the things that power our modern mobile lifestyles—just don’t work when it gets this cold.
Think about all the gadgets that you regularly plug into a power strip. It’s a lot, right? Besides everyday items like a phone and laptop, you might also have a fitness tracker, smart watch, Bluetooth headphones, digital camera, e-reader, vape pen, drone, or rechargeable bike lights, just to name a few. Most if not all of them are powered by lithium-ion batteries, whose high energy density and ability to handle both low and high currents have made them the industry standard for personal electronics. But those same properties become a problem as soon as temperatures dive below 32 degrees F.
“Lithium-ion batteries suffer so badly in freezing temperatures because they have very little internal resistance,” says Hanumant Singh, an electrical engineer at Northeastern University who builds cold-weather robots for places like Antarctica and Greenland. Less resistance means these batteries generate less waste energy as heat (a good thing in more mild climes). But the absence of waste heat also means they’re more vulnerable when temperatures plummet. The colder it gets, the slower the metabolism of the chemical reaction inside the battery. The battery drains faster as a result. If you’ve ever been texting someone at a healthy-looking 25 percent charge only to have your phone die mid-eggplant emoji two seconds later, you’re familiar with how steep the drop-off can be. “It’s very dramatic,” says Singh. Carrying around a smartphone in any weather colder than –35 degrees F, he says, will kill it completely in 5 minutes—right around the time frostbite would strike the hand holding it.
My own experiences using cameras with lithium batteries below zero F down to -20F exposed for hours was that there is no problem. Never had a failure and that was years ago. I talked to a photographer just a few weeks ago about his high end cameras and he said they did well at low temps down into the -F range.
Never had a cell phone failure either.
As demonstrated by this study they perform well down into cold temperatures but lose some capacity (as do other batteries). Operating temperature down to -30C is given. However if operating at high altitudes or the Arctic in winter, keep the battery near the body and no problems.
If your body temperature drops below the battery operating temperature, there will be no complaints about battery capacity loss. So best to use personal insulation and wind protection at low temperatures. Leaving skin exposed at extreme low temps is just stupid, so why expose the electronics without some protection?
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1876610217301479/1-s2.0-S1876610217301479-main.pdf?_tid=6af6c309-6be3-4e79-84f9-902f6c30ecc5&acdnat=1549812148_434478bf4aab57fed32ae6290e54f395
If you need to operate continuously at below -20C take a hint from NASA which used li-ion batteries on it’s Mars rovers with great success. They are kept in an insulated warmed box between -20C and +25C and have functioned for years. Once one knows the actual operating parameters of a system, further engineering allows operation in extreme environments.
https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/38400/05-3884.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
In Australia:
5/2/2019
NSW coal fired power plants generation in late January 2019
http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-coal-fired-power-plants-generation-in-late-january-2019
29/1/2019
Victoria became power importer in January 2019 heatwave
http://crudeoilpeak.info/victoria-became-power-importer-in-january-2019-heatwave
23/1/2019
Victoria’s 600 MW brown coal plant outage leads to price spike but system survives
http://crudeoilpeak.info/victorias-600-mw-brown-coal-plant-outage-leads-to-price-spike-but-system-survives
21/1/2019
NSW power imports in January 2019 heatwave exceed 2 GW, drive up electricity prices
http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-imports-in-january-2019-heatwave-exceed-2-gw-drive-up-electricity-prices
Matt, I’ve no doubt you’re aware of this?
AUSTRALIA: 2018 SEES COAL AS NUMBER ONE
“Coal has now asserted its pivotal role in the Australian economy – it is our largest export, and it remains the dominant fuel in our energy mix. The export performance is a resounding rebuttal of coal detractors who have repeatedly called the end of this iconic industry due to falling demand. Trade numbers released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirm coal was the nation’s largest single export in 2018. Total coal exports in the past 12 months to the end of December were valued at AUS$66.2 billion up from AUS$57.1 billion in 2017. The next largest export was iron ore which was valued at AUS$63 billion.”
https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/06022019/australia-2018-sees-coal-as-number-one/
Which end of the egg do we crack, how much of the egg do we look at or how little? Back to Lilliput, or part of the reason why so little has been done by the US government as far as the climate emergency. Divergent views cause confusion and delay. It reminds me of discussions on this site.
Also lessons on how to use science to bury signals.
The ending is good though but little good it did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN_oynx1D8w
“It reminds me of discussions on this site.”
LOL. Someone much wiser than I once said: “Anything is possible IF you don’t know what you are talking about.”
Yes, we do often come across as a collection of armchair experts, sort of like heated exchanges in a pub where the latest ball game is being dissected. Mostly meaningless but entertaining. As my doctor once said: “The world is filled with Wikipedia experts, most of my patients arrive having already diagnosed their illness and spend their time demanding some drug or other.” Would it be any different if we were privileged to have an actual climate scientist contributing to discussions here, for example? Probably not.
The professional climate scientists are a mess in the US, mostly because of the insane political situation. They are either pushing false agendas or under attack and denfinetley not much heeded.
As far as the media goes, the great silence is somewhat over for climate, but other major predicaments are only occasionally mentioned if at all. And for most people they never hear much about any of it.
In a way you are right, there are a few real clueless dimwits on this site but not many. Most are quite interesting and some have a sense of humor. There are a couple of curmudgeons but that is just the way it is, always a few.
At least here we discuss highly important and relevant subjects mostly, not like what goes on in the mass media lately. Radio and TV generally are subtract intelligence.
As Groucho Marx said ” I find television quite educational. Whenever it is on I go to another room and read a book.”
As far as the larger situation, we will not cure it but at least we can tourniquet it and apply a patch or two. Maybe we can even have fun doing that, at least it is interesting.
Just think about where you would like to apply a tourniquet.
As far as doctors go, here in the US most do not seem capable of diagnosis, just test and pill pushers now. Still vacuum the wallet clean. The medical/insurance industry needs a makeover badly. Getting very ugly here.
It’s sad, but verbal abuse and death threats are just the routine nature of some professions like climate science that induce anger in many people. I presume that if you are dedicated enough to your cause, and find the work personally satisfying enough, you can learn to block out a lot of the unwanted noise and hate.
Is that a threat, because it can read like one?
NAOM
Yale Climate has a recent mini series of short videos featuring information on arctic methane hydrates etc. here’s number one in the set.
https://youtu.be/Y9IRW80bGrY
This link goes into considerable detail concerning the loss of insects, world wide.
It’s the best single article on the subject I have run across in the free media recently, no paywall.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
Good but depressing article. Where I live, in what used to be insect haven, you must look for bugs. Lots of other stuff gone as well: snakes, song birds, bats, etc. Doesn’t matter, why worry about meadowlarks and swallows when you can stare at your smart phone all day? Does that comment make me a curmudgeon?
I think we’re all curmudgeons here. Some of us just hide it better than others.
Anyone staring at their smartphone all day won’t have time to reproduce. Isn’t population degrowth what you want?
Illic est a fine versus inter ens et parcepromus et an sit culus.
Q.E.D.
😉
You’re probably trolling, but in all seriousness, smartphones and easy access to online porn shouldn’t be discounted in explaining falling birthrates around the world. There’s been research showing some correlation.
http://www.curmudgeon-alley.com/about/
What is a Curmudgeon anyway?
Jon Winokur in The Portable Curmudgeon describes a curmudgeon as:
“A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved. They’re neither warped nor evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absurdities. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. …They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. . . . Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.
Curmudgeons are mockers and debunkers whose bitterness is a symptom rather than a disease. They can’t compromise their standards and can’t manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness. Their awareness is a curse.
😉
Cheers!
ROFL, wrapping a pig in a mink coat. Still a pig.
cur·mudg·eon
Dictionary result for curmudgeon
/kərˈməjən/
noun: curmudgeon; plural noun: curmudgeons
a bad-tempered person, especially an old one.
OFM,
Re mass extinction: Lest anyone should think climate science denial is a problem, the denial of our current mass extinction event is even more reason (pun intended) to think humanity has completely taken leave of its senses! Oh, wait, just go read the on going discussions over on the petroleum side of this very blog…
In That Guardian article they link to this paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089
Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines
Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo
PNAS July 25, 2017 114 (30) E6089-E6096; published ahead of print July 10, 2017
Abstract
The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction (indicative of population shrinkage and/or population extinctions according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature) using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species. We find that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is extremely high—even in “species of low concern.” In our sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851/27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which we have detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species have experienced severe population declines (>80% range shrinkage). Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.
Bold mine.
BTW, There is a game available called Insanity Cubed!
Disclaimer, I have not played it, nor do I feel any need to do so, because our current reality is what I would call Insanity raised to the infinite power.
In any case here’s a description of the game. Compared to our reality it sounds really quite tame and boring to me.
Insanity Cubed is a third person maze physics puzzle game which shows no mercy whatsoever towards the player. The aim of the game is to move the AI cube through a complicated set of mazes and traps, while draining the power from strategically located batteries. Once you have collected all the batteries you transfer the power to the teleport cube which moves you to the next level. The 3D view from inside the maze offers more escapism and immersion than you typically get with most 2D top down or side view games.
Today I heard a Democratic candidate for president, Andrew Yang, give an interview on NPR and he basically point blank said that he expects a violent revolution in the near future started by truckers due to AI driverless trucks putting 3 million or so truck drivers out of business. He is actually a proponent of universal basic income to avoid such a scenario.
Good luck with that!
Hi Fred,
I would be scared enough to seriously be ready to bunker up, with tons of stored food, etc, if I thought I would live long enough for doing so to matter. As matters stand, I have talked over the possibility of doing so with a few old friends who would show up to live on my place and help with the work of going back to subsistence farming and physical security.. meaning standing guard , armed, to keep thieves from robbing us, etc.
My guess is that the odds of us actually NEEDING to do this are probably in the range of one or two percent, annually….. about the same as the risk of nuclear war during the Cold War era, according to Pentagon documents that have been declassified.
Given that I’m an old fart, I’m willing to gamble on the shit getting into the fan in terms of wide spread violence in my corner of the world not being a problem for me, personally. By the time it arrives,if it does, locally, it’s VERY likely I’ll be six feet under beside my parents out on the hill across from the farm. The sentiment on the big family marker says it all, birth dates, marriage dates, dates of death, and “Forever Together”. Well , our bones will be together at least, for quite some time, maybe millenia. We Baptists aren’t into including much in the way of grave goods, since Jesus has promised us we will have the best of everything, free, forever, lol, once we depart this old vale of tears.
There’s no doubt that a lot of tough city neighborhoods, even whole cities, right here in the good ole USA, are already showing early but unmistakable signs of collapse.
For the next few decades, Leviathan ( better known as Uncle Sam here in this country) will probably be able to control rowdy guys like truckers, at least in rich western countries.
Lots of people from my childhood culture, meaning specifically the local redneck portion of it, love to talk about their guns and nobody messing with THEM, even the law, but when the chips are down……. The sheriff is respected and feared by such people, if they have reason to believe he’s looking for them.
Knowing this sort of people, personally, inclines me to believe that at some point, they will take things into their own hands, but things will have to get REALLY bad for that to come about. I doubt a truckers strike will do it, even if they firebomb autonomous trucks.
But add a truckers strike to the hairdressers on the street, because they have no customers, and the car salesmen on the street, with the auto workers, because they too are out of work……. until tens of millions of people are real trouble, and scared and mad enough to DO SOMETHING, the potential for something approaching civil war is obviously real.
Maybe violence on the grand scale, short of actual war, is in the cards here in the USA. but if so, I expect we will be one of the last countries for it to erupt, on a really widespread basis.
Over the years, I have morphed into a denizen of two other cultures, one being the more or less stereotypical well educated liberal culture…… having spent twenty years or so living in it, at various periods, to the extent of marrying into it once, etc.
The problem with this culture is that it’s all to often naive and parochial in the extreme, and displays an utter LACK of TRUE understanding of any other culture, as often as not.
The third culture is that I will describe as the scientifically literate, rationally oriented culture, as exemplified by most of the regulars here. Such people understand physical realities quite well….. which both the redneck conservative and the stereotypical liberal culture BOTH fail to do. This last culture, scientific literacy, does substantially overlap with liberal culture, whereas it’s generally distinct from culturally conservative and politically and economically conservative culture.
The liberal and well educated culture actually mostly just pays lip service to questions such as the environment, compared to taking the sort of actions you and I would take, if we had the power to do so.
You and I wouldn’t stop at providing subsidies to well heeled taxpayers in order to encourage them to buy an electric car. We would put in an escalating tax on large cars, increasing it every year, increase fuel taxes,outlaw using six thousand pound pickups for personal transportation, give the electric vehicle subsidy as a TAX CREDIT to poor people, etc.
We would subsidize solar and wind out the ying yang, etc. We would rewrite farm law to encourage small scale diversified farming, rather than super scale monoculture, etc.
We would rewrite building codes so that net zero is the goal, etc.
ALL because as citizens of the scientifically literate culture, we REALLY understand that even if we do all these things, double time, we’re STILL going to be at extremely high risk of economic and ecological collapse……
As I have said before, I think in this very thread, up towards the top someplace now, the biggest single discrete problem we may face in transitioning away from fossil fuels is the JOB problem. How the hell are we going to support the tens of millions of people who are going to lose their jobs as the result of fossil fuel depletion, economic collapse, ecological destruction, etc ?
Because sure as hell, if we DON’T figure out a way to support them, they WILL be on the streets, rioting, and doing MUCH worse than just rioting.
I’m personally quite a wimp, when it comes to reckless behavior, now that I’m old….. but I wouldn’t hesitate a minute to rob and steal to provide food for any little kid I know, if that were my only and last resort to seeing that that kid has something to eat. I wouldn’t hesitate to steal from a fat cat to feed myself, after a day or two eating only canned beans, lol, if that were my last option.
Hell I’m enough of an old fool that I would steal to provide food for a young woman who might come to me looking for refuge…… even though I’m too old to get laid, or damned close to too old.
You’re hearing this from a person who is by his upbringing a law and order conservative, lol.I’m ready to steal, even to resort to armed robbery, if I MUST, in order to survive or look after helpless children, etc.
So’s everybody else, when the chips REALLY ARE down.
I’m looking for any books and magazine articles that are CREDIBLE, about how a society can support such large numbers of displaced workers during and after a transition to renewable energy and a sustainable society.
This is for the purpose of research for the book I’m working on, which will likely be in the form of a novel, but it will read as an environmental primer and as a philosophical examination of our cultural and economic and moral values, as best I can treat these topics.
If I ever finish it, I’ll probably have to give it away free on the net, but I’ll have a couple of hundred hard copies to autograph and give away to personal and cyber friends. All the regulars here will be welcome to one, totally free, except maybe postage, lol.
Absolutely a must watch!
LOL! This one really put a YUGE!!! smile on my face. Even though I know it won’t save the biosphere by itself, it almost made me forget about the sixth mass biological extinction, at least for the 22 minutes of the video’s duration. It underscores once again why Europe is just so far ahead of the USA! Also why it just may be time for most of us old farts to just get the hell out of the way of the my son’s generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZKdkgB85k
Sono Motors Sion | Fully Charged
I had to use all my self control to not cross post it over on the petroleum side… 😉
Take that car, and reduce the width by half, and make a single seater out of it, and with the same battery, it will go at least fifty percent farther, at the same speed. You could get thirty kilometers per day on the average, without ever plugging in, maybe even forty.
Aero resistance and weight are the energy hogs.
And most of us are going to be riding alone, as a practical matter, for as long as we possibly can.
Drive slower and double the range! EV’s work opposite to ICE’s that way. Except pick up trucks that get best mpg at 25 mph.
Gone fishing,
I have been driving hybrids since 2004. They also get better efficiency at slower speeds. Typically gasoline powered cars (non-hybrid) have their best efficiency at about 50 mph. So slower is better up to a point in that case.
Very nice, now add a flash capacitor for better regen and get even more range.
Sounds like price comparable to a Camry. That should shake up the market.
Now that would fit my needs and I like the vehicle, utilitarian and understated.
Solar panels all over. So only need 2 or 3 panels at home to feed it.
I like it. Could tow kayaks behind it.
I like it. Could tow kayaks behind it.
Heck my kayak is about 3.6 m in length, if I put down all the seats I might almost be able fit it inside at a slight diagonal. Yep I like it too!
You need more friends Fred. They might want to sit in the seats, kayaks outside.
Plus where I go the rivers run from point A to point B and are downhill, need vehicle at other end of run. Very few rivers run in a loop except in Florida at Disney. 🙂
You need more friends Fred.
Maybe more friends that are willing to be dunked in the surf… ya figure this being Florida there’d be more people like that around.
I used to be a member of an ocean kayak diving club but not many of those people are around anymore.
Plenty of crazies up here in the north. Used to go kayaking in winter up in the mountains if the ice broke. I like to think I am smarter now. Mostly gotten older. 🙂
Just remembered coming off a creek in the early spring into the main river and finding myself evading ice flows. Oh, youth!
Yeah, I used to do quarry diving in the middle of winter in Pennsylvania back in the mid nineties. Now just thinking about it gives me hypothermia 😉
Daily CO2
February 9, 2019: 414.27 ppm
February 9, 2018: 408.99 ppm
Some very steep year over year increases lately.
Emissions of about 1 gigatonne per year CO2 is enough to destabilize climate, though more slowly. We are emitting about 37 gigatonne per year and now there are natural sources plus the sinks are slowing.
There are also albedo changes, atmospheric and ocean circulation changes, dampening of the stratosphere, methane releases (natural and anthro).
It appears as if an extra 3 Gt to 5 Gt is showing up in the atmosphere per year lately. Either our emission estimates are way off or natural changes are taking over. The next 5 years should verify these changes. If this holds then natural emission changes are high enough on their own to increase global warming plus albedo changes are on top of that. Expect increases.
No problem, Fernando says [02/08/2019 at 3:15 pm] –
“The greenhouse effect of CO2 is quite low from now on because the IR absorption band is becoming saturated.”
So, guess we can all find something else to worry about. Methane?
Hi Doug,
You seem to be well enough up in physics to address the IR absorption issue.
So tell us, if you will, what the score is, as you read it.
Thanks!
Well, satellite measurements confirm that less longwave radiation is escaping to space; surface measurements detect increased longwave radiation returning back to Earth at wavelengths matching increased CO2 warming. The result of this energy imbalance is the accumulation of heat over the last 40 years.
The only way energy leaves the earth is radiation, mostly LW. What it should do is match incoming energy. If it doesn’t, (and it doesn’t), then planet is accumulating heat. The surface heats because of increased GHG effectively impede the efficiency with which the surface can radiate (LW is radiated back onto the surface).
If anyone doubts the CO2 warming maybe they should contact their friends on Venus. 😉
Actually Synapsid has already addressed this: see above — 02/08/2019 at 5:17 pm
Thanks Doug,
But I’m quite familiar with the fact that the earth IS accumulating heat and warming up and that this is the result of rising CO2 levels, for the most part, with some of it being the result of rising methane levels,and maybe rising water vapor levels, and possibly other greenhouse gas levels increasing, but afaIk, CO2, methane, and water are the only ones that really matter.
I’m sorry,
I didn’t make myself clear.
Does Fernando’s argument about CO2 reaching infra red saturation hold water?
What I’m asking is if CO2 concentration reaching some particular level means that it reaching a HIGHER level won’t matter, in terms of retaining more heat?
“Does Fernando’s argument about CO2 reaching infra red saturation hold water?”
No, it doesn’t. But it’s not Fernando’s argument, its been floating around a segment of climate change denialists for years. And refuted. It relies on extrapolating what happens in a narrow band of a spectrum across areas where it doesn’t apply: i.e., men born on Nov. 17th are idiots therefore all men are idiots.
Does Fernando’s argument about CO2 reaching infra red saturation hold water?
I think there may be a good pun in there somewhere! 😉
No, Fernando is laboring under a misunderstanding as to how the Green House effect actually works. A few of the the more astute regulars have already addressed this.
Perhaps this link might help clarify the issue a bit further.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
The mistaken idea that the Greenhouse Effect is ‘saturated’, that adding more CO2 will have virtually no effect, is based on a simple misunderstanding of how the Greenhouse Effect works.
The myth goes something like this:
CO2 absorbs nearly all the Infrared (heat) radiation leaving the Earth’s surface that it can absorb. True!
Therefore adding more CO2 won’t absorb much more IR radiation at the surface. True!
Therefore adding more CO2 can’t cause more warming. FALSE!!!
Here’s why; it ignores the very simplest arithmetic.
If the air is only absorbing heat from the surface then the air should just keep getting hotter and hotter. By now the Earth should be a cinder from all that absorbed heat. But not too surprisingly, it isn’t! What are we missing?
The air doesn’t just absorb heat, it also loses it as well! The atmosphere isn’t just absorbing IR Radiation (heat) from the surface. It is also radiating IR Radiation (heat) to Space. If these two heat flows are in balance, the atmosphere doesn’t warm or cool – it stays the same.
Cheers!
When Earth reaches same state as Venus we won’t be discussing this anymore. 😉
DougL,
You’re frightening the readers unnecessarily. There’s plenty of room at Venus with the temperatures we are adapted to, you just have to stay 34 km above the surface and be able to breathe H2SO4.
The earthling went to Venus, but The earthling is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4.
😉
I’m told I live in a temperate climate.
When the temperature drops to minus 20 or rises to 107 I tell myself this must be Heaven, I say it to my mate
When the wind blows the trees onto the houses and floods wash them away
I tell myself this must be Paradise
On this fine day in May
They tell me the climate will change
That the south is going north and the north is going south
I think they are all deranged
As they run on at the mouth
Some people just make comments of no value, should be ignored.
The water vapor spectrum is saturated also, but that does not mean it has no effect. What happens is line broadening which means the effect of water and CO2 still occurs (lower Q). It also means that long wave IR emitted by terrestrial features has shorter path length before absorption.
For full details on how science deals with radiative forcing
THE NOAA ANNUAL GREENHOUSE GAS INDEX (AGGI)
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html
Methane is underestimated due to it’s shorter life in the atmosphere. That assumes it will decrease in concentration in the future which I take as hopium. In reality it is 150 times as powerful as CO2 for whatever concentration it exists in the atmosphere. This is very important since the extra heating makes changes in the cryosphere, hydrosphere and ecosystems. Right now it is equivalent to 281 ppm of CO2.
Hi Gone fishing,
According to NOAA CO2 equivalent was 493 ppm in 2017, has there been a big jump in global methane since 2017?
Do you have some peer reviewed papers that support your 281 ppm of CO2 as being the equivalent radiative forcing for current atmospheric methane levels?
That would seem to imply that CO2 equivalent should be 406+281=687 ppm plus the effects of NO2, and other greenhouse gases.
Can you explain your reasoning and are there climate scientists that back up that reasoning?
Or it might be a typo (maybe you meant 28.1 ppm?)
Thanks.
Dennis, have you read,
UNDERSTANDING CARBON DIOXIDE EQUIVALENCE
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2009/01/common-climate-misconceptions-co-equivalence/
Doug,
I have now and it simply summarizes what I already knew. Does 281 ppm CO2 eq for current atmospheric levels of Methane seem a reasonable approximation to you? As I pointed out, the NOAA has 493 ppm CO2-eq in 2017 and they do not include any negative forcing from aerosols in their CO2 eq calculation.
The assumption of 150 times the forcing from methane compared to CO2 ignores the fact that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and is removed very slowly, this is not the case for methane, I guess I will go with the experts in this case. See for example.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2006.00201.x
Sure looks like about 2 orders of magnitude to me. The decay function only works if there is no source input. Ice, snow, water do not care about a prediction they experience the instantaneous level at all times.
Gone fishing,
I guess the geophysicists had not thought of that. 🙂
Consider the Transient Climate Response for the Gone Fishing CO2 eq* calculation.
We could take CH4 in 1850 at 0.774 ppm times 150 =116 ppm CO2eq* from methane plus CO2 of 285 ppm for a total CO2eq* of 401 ppm in 1850 (ignoring other GHG for simplicity). The baseline CO2eq* would be about 379 ppm in 1700.
In 2017 we would have 1.85*150= 277 ppm plus 405 ppm of CO2 for a total of 682.5 CO2eq*. If we take the natural log of the two CO2eq* for 1850 and 2017 and the temperature difference of 1.32 C (land-ocean global avg using Berkeley Earth Temp data) this suggests a transient climate response of 1.72 C for a doubling of CO2eq* (which would be 758 CO2eq*).
Note that a similar calculation using CO2 alone (and ignoring all other greenhouse gases for simplicity) suggests a TCR of 2.6 C for a doubling of CO2 from 278 ppm (baseline pre-industrial level) to 556 ppm.
Note that the IPCC estimates about 1.7 C for transient climate response. If we use 1945 to 2015 (using 7 year averages for temperature centered on 1945 and 2015) and simple annual values for atmospheric methane and CO2 for those years, we get a TCR for CO2eq* of 1.4 C and for CO2 of 2 C.
So if the climate is “seeing” the instantaneous methane RF this implies a lower transient climate response to GHG RF.
In my opinion the climate scientists probably have this right (as presented in WG1AR5).
Well, gee whiz Marshall Dennis, ya aint got no problem with the 20 year factor at 85 does ya?
That there way that methane decomposes just gets them there climate scientists all in a tizzy. They don’t like the 150 number so’s they use lower ones Ya all know about exponential decay right. Sirprized ya don’t know that they interrogate it across time from the radiative efficiency.
Since we’un keep going over and over this here subject time and time again, I contacted a climate scientist guy. Told him I had a dumb friend that kept telling me he didn’t believe him about that methane number. I asked him to kindly point me to something that would put this to rest. We shall see if he gets back to me.
Most people would just back calculate it from the degenerate IPCC numbers.
Let’s see 85 at 20 and 35 at 100. We all know the half life or we wouldn’t be here at all.
You do know da quations, right?
Me, I like ta know what’s goin on now. How dat ice and water is bakin’ in da sun and infernal red. No sense in muddying da waters with them fudged factors of 100 yars from now. They don’t got no rayality . Rayality happens now. Yessiree, it does.
Ya done grilling me for da night? Can I go home now Marshall?
Ya all know about exponential decay right.
Dats anythink like the tissue degassing calcs for figuring decompression times after repetitive deep dives?
BTW, I think you just qualified for your official 5 star curmudgeon rating!
😉
Cheers!
Nahhhh, ya taint seen me get a good grump on yet.
Get your stinkin carcasses off the lawn, NOW, ya dad blamed spawn of one lunged catfish!
Mutter, mutter, gripe, groan
Hi Gone fishing,
So I guess you think the IPPC does not know how to calculate radiative forcing. Fair enough. Using 150 times the atmospheric concentration of methane for CO2 eq for methane would only be correct if the residence time of methane in the atmosphere was also equivalent to CO2.
That is not the case.
Radiative forcing due to atmospheric methane levels has been rising at about 0.5% per year from 2006 to 2017. From 1979 to 1997 the rate of increase was 0.86% per year and from 1998 to 2005, the rate of increase was low at 0.11% per year.
A reduction in fossil fuel extraction as the World transitions to alternatives might slow the increase in atmospheric methane, other natural feedbacks to rising temperatures are likely to counteract this effect.
https://www.methanelevels.org/
Nice chart for atmospheric methane at link above. Rate of increase has slowed quite a bit since 1984 relative to 1850-1984, 0.35% per year vs 0.5%/year. Recently carbon emissions growth has slowed (includes all anthropogenic emissions including land use change) from 2%/year from 1992-2012 to 0.07% per year from 2012 to 2017, it will be interesting to see if this eventually affects atmospheric methane levels. A reduction of fossil fuel use may reduce total methane emissions the sources and sinks of methane emissions and their amounts are highly uncertain based on most recent IPCC report see page 507-510 at link below especially page 507 is a nice table summary but more detail in the pages that follow.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
“So I guess you think the IPPC does not know how to calculate radiative forcing”
I think they can calculate radiative forcing anyway they want. Two different things.
I was not talking about radiative forcing which is a calculated value, I was talking about instantaneous radiative forcing or what is known as radiative efficiency.
See the graph above at
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-january-2019-edition-with-data-for-november-2018/#comment-666504.
Since you seem incapable of comprehending the difference between instantaneous forcing (what is happening) and some future calculated value that might occur (if the source depletes) then I see no further point in continuing. Some people never learn.
Gonefishing,
We can also look at what has happened in the past, I understand very well what instantaneous forcing is, the question is one of relevance. You think it is important, climate scientists less so, they tend to integrate over time.
So, guess we can all find something else to worry about. Methane?
LOL! Yeah, as we all know, Methane transmits on an unregulated IR frequency band and the FCC can’t do too much about it… FCC of course being the ‘Freaking Climate Control’ arm of the IPCC… 😉
Beware the IPCC Thought Police.
In about 10 years the IPCC will admit we crossed the line this year. It won’t matter much then, but we need both CO2 reduction and drawdown fast right now.
When I drove my first car in the late 1970’s [vw bug with 8 track player] petrol was at 29.9 cents/gallon.
Carbon dioxide I emitted is likely still in the atmosphere today, or the ocean, and may have transferred between the two liquids more than once.
And CO2 that gets emitted from burning a piece of wood, coal or nat gas in 2024 will likely be in circulation for more than 50 yrs.
Even if peak fossil happens by 2030, peak atmospheric concentration may be closer to 2100.
Unless perhaps if people decide to play yet another version of a sloppy, careless God and decide to try and sequester it.
And then there are the natural feedbacks. Think about it, it takes a major glaciation to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere in any timespan short of millions of years. Volcanic activity is enough to keep CO2 levels stable. That is about 1 Gt per year. Any additional has to be absorbed by plant growth which is limited and right now very inhibited. Especially since the plankton is dying. Even if natural processes only add another gigaton or two a year, that should be enough to slowly increase CO2 levels and finish off all the ice.
Of course the potential for natural feedbacks is much higher and will be driven by natural feedbacks.
I don’t think CO2 will fall without a major change in the cryosphere (more snow cover and ice cover). That could happen temporarily if the AMOC stops, but not long term.
Drawdown is needed right along side CO2 reduction.
Yep, we need to drawdown the CO2 from the atmosphere in multiple ways. Making limestone for roads is one way. Making polymers from CO2 is another. Plants, soil enrichment, etc.
Synapsid, you will find this interesting, I promise –
INNOVATIVE METHOD ENABLES NEW VIEW INTO EARTH’S INTERIOR
An innovative X-ray method enables new high-pressure investigations of samples under deep mantle conditions.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-method-enables-view-earth-interior.html#jCp
Estimable DougL,
You’re right, and thanks.
I just read a similar paper focusing on iron under core-mantle T and P. I come across such quite often and it always surprises me how much work is going on in this field–not that it isn’t important, it’s pretty fundamental to our learning about how the planet works, but for some reason I seem to think that it would be some kind of niche study.
Wow; that’s two things I’ve been wrong about in the last twelve months. Hmm…likely to be a sign of advancing maturity.
On Friday morning I responded to Fred’s response to a comment by HB on the Green New Deal, by mentioning that Hermann Scheer had been promoting the idea of 100% renewable energy long ago. I went on a search for speeches made by Scheer on US soil and found the MIT Clean Tech/GABA Lecture with Dr. Hermann Scheer on Youtube (1 hr. 26 min.) as well as his address to the November 20, 2009, American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) – National Policy Conference on C-SPAN. Later on Friday I stumbled into this news article: ATL Automotive unveils Mini plug-in hybrid in Jamaica, this coming from a new, on-line only news source with no mention on any of the main traditional news media outlets. As a self confessed EV wacko I wondered how this was not news and decided to wait out the weekend despite the fact that the launch took place on Friday Feb. 1. Up to now I have seen no further mention of this development. I guess it is not really newsworthy to most people.
I had noticed that Sen. Ed Markey was AOC’s partner in introducing their Green New Deal resolution, last Thursday. Markey was at the same 2009 conference where Scheer spoke and actually spoke right after him. Markey has also been a champion of renewable energy for a long time so his partnership with AOC on the Green New Deal is not surprising in that light.
So on Friday I sort of had an epiphany. The challenge of mitigating global warming is not a technical one and never has been. It is an economic and political challenge. Hermann Scheer was very clear on the forces that oppose an emphasis on renewable energy. He clearly identified “the incumbents” and acknowledged that they would fight renewables tooth and nail. I now think he was mistaken in dismissing the power of the status quo to influence public opinion. Ron is absolutely right, the human race is wired to behave exactly as it is behaving. Any other way is an evolutionary dead end, speaking as someone who is yet to confer my genes on a new generation. WASF
Islandboy, you may not be conferring your genes but you are conferring your ideas. Please keep them coming (pun intended).
Speaking of passing on genes, take a look at the headline that greeted me in the newsstand inside a supermarket yesterday. Apparently while a good number of females are having babies as a matter of course, with no real foresight or planning, there are some who are increasingly desperate to have a baby and are unable to conceive. This headline follows a story of a woman who was arrested after she turned up at the registrar of births, trying to register the birth of a baby she had stolen.
In an environment where I see intense competition to out hustle one another, the shared ride, route taxis being one clear example, I am somewhat baffled by the desire of people to bring children into an environment that is increasingly competitive, to the point of being cut throat. I seems many people find babies irresistibly cute. Me, I just see them as a fresh charge on the planet’s resources for the next however many years. I do especially feel sorry for the little ones who are just learning to talk. They did nothing to deserve the future they will likely have to deal with.
“So on Friday I sort of had an epiphany. The challenge of mitigating global warming is not a technical one and never has been. It is an economic and political challenge.”
I would say that prior to a decade or two back, the challenge WAS technical as well as economic and political. Since then, it has been demonstrated to my satisfaction, especially over the last four or five years, that the technical issues are manageable.
So yes, it’s now mostly about economics and politics.
If we get lucky enough that a series of WAKE UP events clobbers us upside our collective head, soon enough, without crippling us so we can’t react and also go proactive, at least some of us have a decent shot at pulling thru the collapse staring us in face, and not only pulling thru, but also maintaining a new, sustainable industrial civilization.
If we ( some of us) succeed, it won’t be overnight. It will likely take a century, or two maybe, to work it ALL out, but…… we still have plenty of everything ESSENTIAL to winding down our fossil fuel civilization, and gearing up our renewables based sustainable civilization…….. IF we get our collective act together.
We don’t have to accomplish the transition overnight, or even over the next couple of generations.. so long as the climate doesn’t go nuts and the overall biosphere doesn’t roll over and die sooner.
I don’t know how big a window of opportunity we have, but it’s obviously shrinking fast.
Better pray for some super storms, and super droughts, and maybe a couple of hot oil and gas wars.
I doubt anything less will be enough to attract our attention to the point we get our asses in gear.
Hermann Scheer was very clear on the forces that oppose an emphasis on renewable energy. He clearly identified “the incumbents” and acknowledged that they would fight renewables tooth and nail.
Yes, but while it may be way too little too late there are some beginning signs of an awakening.
From the Greta Thunbergs to clear headed judges in Australia.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00553-8
Landmark Australian ruling rejects coal mine over global warming
For the first time, a new coal mine has been rejected in Australia because of the potential contribution to global warming. The New South Wales Land and Environment Court turned down an appeal by a company that wanted to establish a new mine in the Hunter Valley. The ruling is notable in a country that faces a plethora of climate-change challenges: it is the world’s leading coal exporter, it faced its hottest month on record in January and it is reeling from several devastating extreme weather events.
Of course in the US we still have to deal with these idiots!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ocasio-cortez-pirro-green-new-deal_us_5c5fabdbe4b0910c63f127f3
Judge Jeanine Pirro used her Saturday night Fox News show to launch a mockery-loaded rant against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y) Green New Deal, fixating primarily on cow farts.
Reviewing the economic and environmental plan in her opening monologue, Pirro noted that it aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
The reason for the use of the term “net” rather than just “zero,” she insisted, was that the plan’s advocated are “not sure they’ll be able to get rid of bovine flatulence, a.k.a. cows farting.”
The talking point was accompanied by a dramatic graphic involving Earth being busted into pieces by a fiery explosion caused by a cow ― an image perhaps best understood by viewing the clip below:
The clip is worth watching just to see exactly what we are up against.
Fuck this Judge Jeanine Pirro bitch! I hope the time comes when we see these people tried for crimes against humanity!
Cheers!
“So on Friday I sort of had an epiphany. The challenge of mitigating global warming is not a technical one and never has been. It is an economic and political challenge.”
Which is where we need the politicians involved. Industry and individuals can do the tech but it needs governments to change policies.
NAOM
Therein lies the rub. In some jurisdictions the oligarchs appear to be firmly in control of the politicians as is the case in the US, the UK, Australia and most recently Brazil. The young people are not too happy about that though as evidenced by Greta Thunberg, those in solidarity with her and the Sunrise Movement in the US. It would appear that the youngsters might be waking up to the fact that voting (or not) has consequences.
https://electrek.co/2019/02/11/renault-zoe-refresh-range-charging/
The Renault Zoe will apparently have two hundred plus miles of real world driving range in the new model.
I wonder how long it will be before an old cheapskate like me will be able to buy a raggedy electric car for say three or four thousand bucks, today’s money.
Somebody upthread mentioned on line sex, sex dolls, games, and so forth as substitutes for actual sex, speculating that maybe these things would help reduce birth rates.
Maybe so.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-love-games
And there I was, thinking the declining birth rate was due to the increase in obesity making the act of creation a mission impossible.
NAOM
Good one!
Not tonight honey, trying to put off that heart attack!
OFM, you might also be interested in this article – Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?
The internet has made it so easy to gratify basic social and sexual needs that there’s far less incentive to go out into the “meatworld” and chase those things. This isn’t to say that the internet can give you more satisfaction than sex or relationships, because it doesn’t … [But it can] supply you with just enough satisfaction to placate those imperatives … I think it’s healthy to ask yourself: “If I didn’t have any of this, would I be going out more? Would I be having sex more?” For a lot of people my age, I think the answer is probably yes.
Emissions from the U.S. electric power sector projected to remain mostly flat through 2050
EIA projects that electric power sector CO2 emissions will remain relatively unchanged throughout the AEO projection period, decreasing just 0.1 billion metric tons from 2018 through 2050. By 2050, U.S. electric power sector emissions will be about 1.6 billion metric tons, or nearly equal to what they were in 1984.
Power sector emissions are expected to remain relatively flat despite EIA’s projected 23% increase in electricity generation from 2018 to 2050. In the Reference case projection, added electricity generation will mostly come from natural gas and renewables, which emit less or no carbon dioxide as part of their electricity generation.
More than one-third (37%) of the coal-fired capacity in place in 2018 will retire by the end of the projection period, largely because of decreased competitiveness with relatively low cost natural gas combined-cycle generators that operate at high efficiencies. Also, renewables that are currently benefiting from production and investment tax credits and state renewable portfolio standards have seen cost reductions in recent years that make them more competitive in the future.
The largest source of new generation capacity in the projection is from renewable energy, principally solar photovoltaic, and in the near term, wind. Combined renewables generation capacity across all sectors will increase by almost 400 gigawatts (GW) by 2050. The next largest source of added generation capacity will be from natural gas—about 360 GW.
These additions of low- and non-carbon generation capacity will allow generation to increase while holding CO2 emissions mostly flat. The carbon intensity of the electric power sector, expressed in tons of CO2 per megawatthour produced, will decline by 26% from 2018 to 2050, or slightly less than 1% per year.
So let me get this straight. After adding more than 30 GW of solar over the last three years (Q4 2018 data not out yet), solar and more than 14.5 GW of wind (final 2018 data not available yet), with many GW in the pipeline over the next couple of years for both solar and wind, because of the expiration of investment tax credits or something, renewable capacity growth is going to have no effect on emissions after 2020? This despite the fact that costs have fallen a great deal and will probably continue to fall. Also increases in efficiency from building insulation retrofits, HVAC and lighting systems apparently will not have much of an effect. These guys must be convinced that the Green New Deal has a snowball’s chance in hell. Methinks something is amiss!
Solving the population problem might not be as easy as waiting for the birth rate to fall a little farther.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/have-four-or-more-babies-in-hungary-and-youll-pay-no-income-tax-for-life.html
If you’re affected by this sad news, I’m currently offering one-way trips to Pluto. You will be expected to provide your own sleeping bag and a small pup tent. Don’t delay, first come, first serve!
MARS ONE, WHICH OFFERED 1-WAY TRIPS TO MARS, DECLARED BANKRUPT
“200,000 people applied from around the world, and 6 Canadians made 100-person shortlist. Mars One began accepting applications in 2013 for a mission to establish a permanent settlement on Mars. It planned to launch a total of 24 people in groups of four every two years starting in 2024. The company claimed it could do so using existing technology.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/mars-one-bankrupt-1.5014522
The cost of lifting all the headstones and shovels was just too much.
Why break the safety record, no one has died on Mars in more than 668 million days (martian days)?
DougL,
So the pup gets a tent and I don’t?
Global Methane Rise Literally Off-the-Charts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLEKWaZnvC8&t=136s
GM might beat Ford to market with an electric pickup truck.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/12/scoop-gm-working-on-electric-pickup-truck-with-tesla-powertrain/
With Tesla running gear and batteries, no less.
ENVIRONMENT IN MULTIPLE CRISES
Scientists warn of a potentially deadly combination of factors. These include climate change, mass loss of species, topsoil erosion, forest felling and acidifying oceans.
What issues are being under-played?
• Topsoil is being lost 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished by natural processes
• Since the mid-20th Century, 30% of the world’s arable land has become unproductive due to erosion
• 95% of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050
“We know lots of good things to do but often the argument is made that we need to have ‘evidence-based policy’. This can, of course, be used as an excuse for delay. So, I guess the question is how much more evidence is needed for action?”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47203344
This was so precious I just had to post it. The Australian version of “No problem mate, watcha so worried about”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35pasCr6KI
Wake up call.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/10/to-all-german-automakers-believe-me-you-are-still-sleeping/
I thought this was interesting. The gist of it: it’s a myth that oil replaced whale oil. Whale oil had declined to a very small part of the lighting market long before kerosene arrived.
“The amount of camphene on the market was far above 90 million and probably close to 200 million gallons per year. That’s about the same level as kerosene in 1870. Whale oil peaked at 18 million gallons in 1845, according to Starbuck’s whaling history of 1878. By all accounts, camphene was by far the leading lamp fuel.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/this-post-is-hopelessly-long-w
Whale oils never had very large volume. Wikipedia says that it was “used as a cheap illuminant, though it gave off a strong odor when burnt and was not very popular”. Peak imports were about 5M gallons per year, which is only about 300 barrels per day. Sperm whale oil was about twice that – still not very large.
“The whale fishery, however, was in a declining state and had been so a decade or more before Drake struck petroleum in his drilled well and before general refining of crude oil commenced in Oil Creek Valley and elsewhere.”
http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/Whale/whale.html