A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on January 27th, with data for November 2019. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year 2019 to date.
The Table immediately above shows the absolute amounts of electricity generated in gigawatt-hours by the main sources for the last two months and the year to date. In November, the absolute amount of electricity generated decreased as is often the case between October and November. Coal and Natural Gas between them, fueled 61.05% of US electricity generation in November. The contribution of zero carbon and carbon neutral sources increased from 36.82% in October to 38.01% in November. The percentage contribution from Natural Gas in November dipped below 40% to 38.01%, having remained above 40% between July and October of 2019.
The graph below shows the absolute monthly production from the various sources since January 2013, 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 2019 the estimated total output from solar at 6,463 GWh, was 2.44 times what it was four years before in November 2015.
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 the capacity additions in 2019 up to November. In November Wind contributed 53.71% of new capacity, and 41.87% of new capacity came from Solar for a combined contribution of 95.58%, with Natural Gas making up another 3.99%/. Batteries contributed 0.32% with Landfill Gas contributing the remaining 0.10%. The combined contribution from Solar and Wind in October, is the third highest it has been for any single month since this report started tracking capacity additions. Natural gas and renewables continue to make up more than 95% of capacity added each month, as they have since at least January 2017.
In November 2019 the total added capacity reported was 1547.8 MW, compared to the 1832.3 MW added in November 2018.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements in 2019 up to November.
The Navajo Generating Station Completes Retirement
In November, the largest share of retirements reported was again the result of the closure of units at the largest coal fired plant west of the Mississippi River, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), operated by The Salt River Project. The retirement of the remaining two 750 MW units was reported in November. This plant has been mentioned in several comments at peakoilbarrel.com. The Navajo Nation derive significant revenue from the plant and the plant workforce included a large portion of tribe members. It was a major contributor to the economy of the nearby city of Page, Arizona and was the only customer for the Kayenta Coal Mine which has also had to cease operations as a result.
Out of the concern for the impact the closure of the plant and the coal mine will have on the Navajo Nation’s revenues and the economy of the neighboring communities, the Navajo Nation government made significant efforts to save the plant. Despite these efforts, competitive pressure from lower cost electricity from Natural Gas has made the plant uneconomic to operate. With the Levellized Cost of Electricty (LCOE) of electricity from wind and solar being the lowest cost source in many regions of the world and most certainly in the region around the plant, it is not likely that utilities will turn to coal if Natural Gas prices were to increase significantly. Since the publication of the previous edition of this report, it has been reported that the Navajo Nation will seek to attempt to replace some of the revenues lost from the closure of the NGS by establishing a pumped storage hydro facility to make use of the existing transmission capacity. See
Proposed 2.2 GW storage project plans to use Navajo coal station power-lines
$3.6 Billion Energy Storage Project Rising From Ashes Of Coal Power Plant
2 GW pumped storage project proposed on Navajo Nation lands
At the time of writing of this report the NGS has ceased operation and decommissioning of the plant is underway.
Other Retirements
Among the other retirements reported in November were the closure of a 34 MW Natural Gas Combustion Turbine at the New-Indy Ontario Mill in California. The retirement of FirstEnergy Generation Corp.’s, FirstEnergy Bruce Mansfield plant 830 MW Unit 3 in Pennsylvsnia, signaled the final retirement at what was once the largest coal fired electricity generator in that state, Units 1 and 2 having been retired in February 2019. November also saw the closure of three out of four planned retirements in Illinois, amounting to 1,844 MW by Texas based Vistra Enery as reported by the following articles:
Downstate coal-plant closures to cost 300 jobs
Vistra plant closures set stage for Ill. energy debate
The total amount of retirements reported was 3,956 MW compared to the 392.3 MW reported in November 2018.
Below is a chart for monthly net additions/retirements showing the data up to November 2019, followed by a chart showing the net additions/retirements year to date.
Below is a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for November 2019 and the year before for comparison followed by a similar table for Natural Gas.
Was looking at global electric consumption. North America is barely nudging up lately (45% gain since 1990), Asia has risen 5X since 1990 and has used more than 1000 TWh more in 2 years (2016 to 2018).
Africa is small but increasing. Same with Middle East. Europe is running flat over last decade, 36% gain since 1990.
The big mover has been Asia, using more than NA, CIS and Europe combined.
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/electricity/electricity-domestic-consumption-data.html
WORLD MISSES SYMBOLIC FEBRUARY DEADLINE TO RATCHET UP CLIMATE ACTION
“Almost all countries are set to miss a symbolic 9 February deadline to strengthen plans to fight climate change under the Paris Agreement even though the UN says action in 2020 is vital to avert runaway global warming. Of almost 200 governments, only the Marshall Islands, Suriname and Norway, which issued a new plan on 7 February, have provided new NDCs to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt their economies to ever more heatwaves, droughts, more powerful storms and rising sea levels. AND, THE US IS POISED TO QUIT THE PARIS AGREEMENT JUST BEFORE COP26 UNDER A PLAN BY PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP AND WILL NOT SUBMIT A NEW NDC. The US presidential election on 3 November may limit any bold decisions by other nations.”
Of course, Norway (like Australia) simply exports its carbon emissions. Since each individual country’s progress is based on how much they reduce emissions within their borders – not by the impact their products have across the world, it’s a questionable measure. In the case of Norway, its energy companies have no plans to curtail production.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/02/07/world-misses-symbolic-february-deadline-ratchet-climate-action-cop26/
The people that used to sell cures came to town in a wagon and sold the people patent medicine.
Each state varies in its electrical supply mix on the grid, and therefore an electric car will vary in its source of energy, unless it is being charged by the persons own power plant (PV on the roof for example).
As a result the vehicles CO2 emissions profile will vary widely.
This US Dept of Energy site allows you to see for yourself how your state produces electricity and how an EV would compare to a petrol vehicle in regards to CO2 emissions. (We have already seen that the per/mile cost of energy for an EV is generally much lower than for a petrol car, even now before peak oil is clearcut).
The US Dept of Energy made a strong effort to consider the full chain of events in determining the CO2 emissions- so-called ‘well to wheel’
Here are a few states for example-
[percentage lower CO2 emissions per vehicle EV compared to petrol]
Wyo- 25% lower (their grid has lots of coal)
Texas- 60% lower
NC- 67% lower
NJ- 78% lower
Calif- 82% lower
If you are bothered by environmental harm of abrupt climate change, then by all means take this information tool to heart.
https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
“Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and all-electric vehicles (EVs) typically produce lower tailpipe emissions than conventional vehicles do. When measuring well-to-wheel emissions, the electricity source is important: for PHEVs and EVs, part or all of the power provided by the battery comes from off-board sources of electricity. There are emissions associated with the majority of electricity production in the United States.”
Thanks for the summary work Island Boy!
“… (EVs) typically produce lower tailpipe emissions than conventional vehicles do.” Do EVs even have tailpipes?
haha! virtually.
but really that is the point of this data source. There is ‘tailpipe’ emission associated with every vehicle mile, if not at the back of the car, then up the electrical supply chain.
Yep. At the power station and beyond. NJ Pa and others are part of the PJM system that is running about 60 percent fossil fuel now and more in summer. Ohio and west even more.
You’re welcome! I’m just happy that others find it interesting.
Some people say that running a grid on nat gas is no better than coal.
I don’t see it that way.
I think its a lot better, for the time being.
For one thing the mining, transport and burning is much cleaner from the stand point of standard pollution measures- particulates, nitrous oxide, oxone, etc., with nat gas than coal.
But also from the standpoint of CO2 emissions- “is indeed true of natural gas: a new, efficient natural gas power plant emits around 50 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2) during combustion when compared with a typical coal-based power plant, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).”
Sure that is far from perfect, or even safe for the atmosphere, but it is certainly a big improvement.
This improvement is reflected in the improved CO2 emissions profile of states that have moved from coal towards nat gas in their power mix. Its been a significant move.
Here are some state equivalents- the petrol mpg you would have to achieve by year 2016 in order to match the CO2 emission driving an EV in your state powered by the grid (with your individual state power mix)-
Colorado 46 mpg
Florida 58 mpg
Pennsylvania 79 mpg
Calif 109 mpg
NY State 191 mpg
Bottomline- pretty much anywhere in this country the EV plugged into the grid for charging, will have lower CO2 emission than almost every single petrol vehicle on the road (well to wheel, mine to wheel, etc). By a wide margin.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-show-electric-vehicles-continue-to-get-cleaner
The issue with natural gas is the release of methane, which you don’t mention.
So California leads.
Again.
actually NY state is very impressive with their grid mix when it comes to CO2.
[nat gas 38%, hydro 22%, nuc 32%, with coal and oil only <2% combined]
https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
This is reflected in the vehicle equivalence of 191 mpg- for CO2 emission EV vs petrol
Two places I have lived—
Being surrounded by nuclear plants and waste facilities and pretending that natural gas does not leak a lot of methane plus put out CO2 seems to be the new “green” environment around here.
NY energy profile below.
Pennsylvania has been the sacrificial lamb of industry, first coal now natural gas (oil and nuclear got thrown in there too). A fantastically beautiful state that has been heavily scarred by mining and drilling and logging. Earlier most of the trees were cut down a few times.
What’s that smell, what’s that color in the creek? It’s the smell and color of money, honey. Where are the trees? They float on the breeze, but they grow again, so that is OK.
Keep in mind the data presented is apples vs oranges type comparison. For the purposes of EV vs ICE CO2 emissions, I presented information on the state electrical grid energy sources.
The data here presented by GF is total state energy consumption sources (includes transport, heating/cooling, industry, etc).
Good info, but for clarification lets not be confused by the differences. They are both likely valid as stated.
Hickory, I tried to be nice but I see you immediately changed your request of me to a soapbox agenda . I have since removed my informational response to you since you are just playing games and want to keep the pretend going.
Have fun in non-reality land. It is a waste of my time to comment here with another budding “Javier” marketing type constantly dogging me. Been there, done that. I have found a lot of major errors spread all over the internet that can be corrected by simple thinking and checking, but most people are copy monkeys, spreading whatever aligns with their hopes of their delusional world views. Cognitive dissonance is much relieved by belief.
I urge all of you reading here to take at least some direct action now to save the life on this planet, not feed the system that is destroying that very life. Be careful what you promote.
Hint:
California will soon have no nuclear plants in operation.
California does have one coal fired plant.
Energy in California per capita consumption is some of the lowest in the United States.
NG is used —
NG is on the increase.
Your comment piqued my interest and I started digging into the list of tables at the Electric Power Monthly web page. I started with data by state, by sector from Table 1.3.B. Utility Scale Facility Net Generation and then imported data from Table 1.10.B. Utility Scale Facility Net Generation from Hydroelectric (Conventional) Power and Table 1.11.B. Utility Scale Facility Net Generation from Renewable Sources Excluding Hydroelectric. I also added a column with the sum of hydroelectric and non hydro renewables, that is, all renewables. I have created versions of the resulting spreadsheet that show the percentage contribution from hydroelectric, non-hydro renewables and all renewables to the total electricity generation in each state. Below is the table of States, listed in order of contribution of all renewables to the total generation.
Very instructive chart. Please add it to the main article from next month.
I’ll play around with the spreadsheet some more and try and come up with something that reflects ongoing changes. I’m thinking a table that shows total generation versus hydro, non-hydro and total renewables for the month plus year to date and limit the table to the top twenty. What do you think?
Hmmm.. let me think about it and reply. Thanks for doing all these.
Yep. Makes immense sense. Coal and nat gas are already there. Nuclear is rock solid and doesnt fluctuate. So what you are suggesting should complete the picture. Infact I would say the top 10 is enough. That should be atleast 50% (should be more I guess) of the US market.
Here’s what I have come up with so far. It includes columns for Wind, Solar (PV), Hydro and Total Renewables and is sorted by order of Total Renewables. If readers find this format confusing, I could present separate tables for Wind, Solar, Hydro and Total Renewables. I plan to present the tables with the data for each month, rather than year to date, since that will show the seasonal patterns of renewable energy more clearly. (click on the table for a slightly larger view). There is an error in the table that I should have caught before I posted it. I will re-post the corrected version.
Here’s the corrected table:
Thanks for the nice chart, IB.
I haven’t seen figures for 2019, but, in ’18, California got 5.9% from geothermal.
https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/renewables_data/geothermal/index_cms.php
=
We’re building a few more…
California to build first geothermal power plants in a decade ..
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-22/california-needs-clean-energy-after-sundown-geothermal-could-be-the-answer
I did notice that there were a few states where the sum of production from wind solar and hydro did not add up to the amount in the total renewables. I suspected that for New England the difference would come from Biomass and sure enough! Does anyone think I should include Biomass and Geothermal? That would mean six columns of renewable data and make the chart really “busy”.
Hi IB, thanks again for doing this.
I think the table is great for a bird’s eye view. My opinion is that we need not go too granular on the data making the update lengthy. All the info is there in EIA website for those who want to.
Most people have no first hand experience with producing their own electricity (solar), or storing it.
Just to share my experience of it a bit-
to produce your own electricity, with no steam engine, is a great sense of independence and empowerment. Hard to beat, especially these days when the price allows you accumulate large savings over engine fuel, over time. You can be completely untethered from the petrol station, the refinery, and the oil change. OK, you may need a little refining for lubricants and such.
None of that is new news. People been moving along this path for 10 years.
But individual electrical storage is pretty new. Certainly to me, just had installation this week.
Now even at night, you can use solar energy from your house. You can use your own electricity production during peak electrical rate time of day, and sell back the excess to the utility. Or charge your car. I didn’t realize how far advanced Tesla is in their battery technology, and software energy management.
If you have underestimated that company through lack of familiarity (like me), it might be time to start getting familiar. They are here to stay, and will have a million new electrical storage customers just in this state before too long. I’m sure other companies will follow. But it will be from behind.
The chance to change has nearly gone
The alternative is only one
The final source of energy
Solar electricity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43XLVqjytQ
Unless one lives 50N+, on the BC wet coast. Solar waste of money. But we do have BC Hydro, fully renewable. Plus, there is this: “Figures released Tuesday by Environment Canada showed that Vancouver, Abbotsford, Victoria, Nanaimo, Penticton, Williams Lake and Quesnel received more than 200 per cent of their normal September rainfall.”
It has only gotten worse as winter progressed, with many many flooded communities, mudslides, and evacuations. The good thing? Snowpack very high and all resevoirs full for summer generation.
Paulo, I’m a bit surprised you’ve never mentioned “our” Wind Farm. For the record: “The Cape Scott wind farm is 35 km to the west of Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. It is the first utility-scale project to be developed on the west coast of BC. Power generated is transmitted to the Port Hardy via a 132 kV line, with BC Hydro purchasing this under a 20-year power purchase agreement that was signed in 2010.
Solar panels and home batteries are very high on my list. I had not realized either how far the technology had come. And the prices are much better than I remember them. Please keep us all informed as to the ins and outs of it all.
Overbuild PV, Stay Battery agnostic. Design for a Target of at least 80% of Consumption PV Direct. If you succeed you will lower you cost of energy overall.
A big question mark has been vehicle to grid, figuring out and implementing ways to allow vehicles to be grid tied not only for charging but also for backup and storage, up until NOW.
The CYBERTRUCK is going to take care of that quite nicely, given that it will come with outlets already built in for power tools.
Anybody with the special switch used for grid lockout can simply throw that switch and plug his Cybertruck directly into his distribution panel, and run anything in his house up to the amp limit of the Cybertruck outlets.
These switches go between the meter and the big breaker in the house hold distribution panel and are used to isolate the home or farm wiring so you can run everything with one generator. Lots of farmers have them, and big generators they power up with their tractors.
When you are grid connected, the switch disconnects the generator input line. When on generator, you are grid disconnected. It’s failsafe, it’s ONE OR the OTHER. Both on at the same time is impossible.
This makes it safe to use a generator to power up your home and farm. You can’t accidentally burn up your house or electric motors or electrocute a utility repairman working on the line to your house.
Last time I installed one myself,some years ago, it cost about four hundred bucks for a new one. Installation takes a couple of hours plus any necessary carpentry work.
Other than the switch and generator, all you need is a heavy duty cord to go between the generator and the panel.
If you have a dedicated generator, you can hard wire it and have auto start and auto disconnect as well, but that runs into money.
Farmers usually like to have their generator mounted on a trailer or skid so they can take it wherever it’s needed, even off the farm. The use of a cord and manual starting is no problem, since the grid is typically very reliable almost everywhere in the USA.
We average only a day or two a year with the grid down, where I live, mostly due to wind storms knocking trees down on the transmission lines, or heavy snow toppling a tree on a line, etc.
Smart meters will allow Cybertruck owners to charge up their trucks with off peak grid juice as well, using that same cord, plus there will be a bigger built in cord for fast charging away from home at public charging stations.
Traction Batteries currently type NMC – Not really scaleable, suitable or cost-effective for Daily cycling for Stationary energy storage. You could get away with in the short-run with really shallow cycles if your only power source is ICE Gensets.
True GF, and its not just the cybertruck. Any EV well-endowed with battery capacity will serve this role very well. The tesla gateway that comes with their powerwall already is set up to handle this function- extremely well, in fact.
It can integrate your utility time-of-use power rates, and sell energy stored in your vehicle back to the grid when the rates are favorable to you.
You can buy electricity at night when its cheap, and sell back at mid-day peak when it is expensive, if you have excess.
This industry is moving fast.
You want to get a glimpse of the capability Tesla is developing in grid to home energy management, just browse this article. Not to be underestimated.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/14/tesla-steps-into-the-utility-space-with-new-grid-controller-patent/
For a taste of what personal energy management will be, consider what tesla provides its customers right now.
If you get one of their cars, or rooftop solar energy installations, or energy storage (powerwall), you get a real-time monitoring app that allows you to both track energy flow, and alter control of the flow.
For example, you can adjust the settings to top off the battery storage to 100% if you know a storm outage is pending, or change it to optimize your grid cost savings, or utilize battery storage from your car, on the fly.
The picture here is a screenshot from my system yesterday. The blue is home consumption, the yellow is solar production, the grey is grid (with most of it going to grid rather than from the grid, throughout the day), and green is the powerwall storage (with both charging and discharging depending on optimizing interaction with the other factors).
For instance, you can see a power consumption spike at 8am for about 15 minutes due to my wife putting on a space heater in her office. All of that energy came from the powerwall battery rather than from the grid. And you can see a consumption spike at 11pm when my plug-in EV battery got topped off. The PHEV has a scheduling mechanism allowing you to charge only during off peak grid rate hours (thus 11pm).
As we move along this decade, these personal monitoring and control mechanisms will be standard for all new or modified systems. The tesla system already is capable of coalescing thousands of point sources of energy production and consumption into a unified ‘microgrid’.
please don’t get the wrong idea and think this is all about tesla.
many other companies are making big footprints in this area, here is one just for example-
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/20/span-partners-with-lg-to-put-power-back-into-the-hands-of-homeowners/
Wow this is so cool. Basically, you are consuming from the grid during off peak and returning it at peak hours. During the evening post sunset, the energy in the powerwall gets consumed. This depiction shows that if it comes to that, you can add another powerwall and go off grid if required.
Btw, do you make money from the utility doing this? What you are doing essentially is load balancing and in an ideal world, you should be paid for this service.
Yes indeed, it is all very cool, to be empowered, and interacting with the grid in a win win scenario.
And yes, we have earned back 500$ this past year, before having the powerwall setup.
But our utility, like most, does not pay you much for the extra energy you produce.
At some point, my wife will get an EV, and we will likely get some more PV panels to handle its charge load.
Over the longrun, it is a big cost saving when you consider the petrol cost avoided, and peak electrical rates avoided.
One clarification to your remark- “Basically, you are consuming from the grid during off peak and returning it at peak hours.”
That is true in winter months, but during about 9 months we are in surplus and we consume from our PV ,and battery when needed,- not from the grid.
The battery software is configured to decide what will be the best cost saving energy flow scenario at the moment.
Very nice. Thanks for the reply ?
The Oyster Creek plant is decommissioning now, been shut down for more than one year.
What is Decommissioning?
Decommissioning is the process by which a nuclear power plant is safely removed from service
and the site property is released for other uses. Decommissioning involves removing the spent
fuel, dismantling the power plant and cleaning up or dismantling contaminated materials from
the facility for safe disposal. Decommissioning of a nuclear power plant must be completed
within 60 years after shutdown. Here is the NRC link for additional information about
decommissioning https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning.html
https://www.state.nj.us/dep/docs/oyster_creek_decommissioning_faqs.pdf
Now the difference is mostly taken up by more natural gas burning, even though NJ has a good renewable energy program. To add insult to injury, liquefied natural gas will be exported from a NJ port. The LNG will be transported by rail (old WWI rail line) to the port facility and sent on to be burned elsewhere.
Of course none of this new infrastructure, new power plants, new port facilities, decommissioning of nuclear plants will add to the carbon plume in the new “green” deal.
NJ has several unique positions. being an extremely biodiverse and geologically diverse state along the major Atlantic bird migration flyway. It is also the most densely populated state so much of it is a mostly civilized mess.
It has no energy sources of it’s own other than wood, solar and wind potential. So almost all that power and energy has to be imported, now mostly in the form of natural gas. Just a decade ago most electric came from external sources.
New Jersey also has vast amount of trash which it could burn but instead dumps. It could also get fuel at negative prices from its neighbors, but prefers to buy expensive stuff.
Furthermore, despite its high population density, the state makes very little use of district heating.
Energy conservation would also work wonders for the local economy.
Beside the large amount of coal used to power the electric grid and some industrial processes, natural gas seems to be taking the lead in energy for the US and some other places. How good or bad is it?
You will see heavily discounted numbers from many climate scientists about the effect of methane, but that is not the real picture. It’s complicated so I won’t get into on this site, but I will say that methane is one of our biggest climate problems.
3 BIG MYTHS ABOUT NATURAL GAS AND OUR CLIMATE
https://climaterealityproject.org/blog/3-big-myths-about-natural-gas-and-our-climate
The Future of Energy is Distributed
When the newly invented “negative solar” (power generated by outgoing heat radiation) panels enter the mix, will they be categorized under solar or something else?
probably under heat pumps or something similar to Stirling engines
Forbin
Coronavirus, Far Worse Than We Thought
Chris Martenson gives an update on the chronavirus. And as he said, it’s far worse than we thought. The Youtube video was made yesterday afternoon. So I decided to check “Wuflu.live” to get an update. The site was shutdown but they are up now. Yesterday they showed only eight new deaths and new infections dropping off sharply. Then this morning the New York Times reported that there were 97 deaths yesterday in China. Yesterday they showed a new infection rate of 2,673 new infections daily. Today they show a daily new infection rate of 3,062.
Coronavirus Updates: Xi Tours Beijing After 97 Die in a Day in China
And from the same link, bold theirs.
Coronavirus cases on a cruise ship in Japan nearly double, surpassing 130.
An additional 65 cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed on a cruise ship quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, raising the total number to 135, the ship’s captain told passengers on Monday.
Coronavirus spread outside of China may be ‘tip of the iceberg,’ says WHO chief
The director-general of the World Health Organization warned Sunday that countries outside of China should be prepared for the spread of the deadly new coronavirus to accelerate, saying that it’s possible only the tip of the iceberg has been seen.
It’s time to panic folks.
Looks like about a 5 percent death rate. Lower with quarantine.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/
The death rate will be higher today. That figure, 5.7%, was based on 813 deaths as of yesterday. Today the deaths have increased by 97 to 910. That’s a 12% increase in one day.
Of course those are just the reported figures out of China. We really have no idea what the true figures are.
The article on http://www.worldometers says:
Mortality Rate (2.1% Nationwide, 4.9% Wuhan, 3.1% Hubei, and 0.16% other provinces) by the NHC of China
Only in Wuhan it is about 5%, possibly because quite a few people there are infected by a high quantity of viruses.
In other provinces apart from Hubei it is 0.16%, probably a bit higher but less than 1% and comparable with the rest of the world.
Please read further into the article.
GF, they can ‘invent’ any formula they want, but outside of China still ‘only’ two deaths (according to wuflu.live). The vast majority (more than 99% imo) will recover.
Actually Dr. Sylvie Briand of the WHO says about 80 percent who contract the disease have minimal symptoms (like a cold) while 15% get pneumonia and 3 to 5% need critical care.
I would say that 20 percent needing hospitalization and 5% of those in dire straits is a serious situation.
If those numbers hold, that is about 60 times worse than influenza.
US has 100,000 critical care beds which is far less than 16 million.
US has less than 1 million hospital beds total, which is far less than 65 million.
Obviously not everyone will get sick at once but there could be millions at once that need hospitalization and a million that need critical care.
So let’s hope the numbers drop down much lower, otherwise the system gets overwhelmed with obvious results.
“Actually Dr. Sylvie Briand of the WHO says about 80 percent who contract the disease have minimal symptoms (like a cold) while 15% get pneumonia and 3 to 5% need critical care.”
Sounds like it’s time to stock up on high dose (1000 mg/tablet) vitamin C supplements!
I only say this because in my experience, high doses of vitamin C vastly improve my encounters with cold and flu viruses. Your mileage may vary.
I agree with Islandboy about the C.
I can’t prove it, but it sure seems to help in my case, milder symptoms, faster recovery.
Coronavirus brings eerie emptiness to Beijing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs8tFL4fMZI
For an updated fatality rate, its 2.3% all comers.
But it varies very widely with age.
For those up to 49 yrs- its is at 0.2-0.4% depending on decade.
For the elderly it is very high-
age 70-79 = 8%
age 80 + = 14%
based on data as of 2/11/20 China CDC
note- as in all infections like this, the true fatality rate is usually much lower, since many people with the infection do not get sick enough to seek medical attention or testing.
…. many people with the infection do not get sick enough to seek medical attention or testing.
Hickory,
Indeed, that makes it a surprise that outside of China the official number of infected people and deaths is so low.
Being ‘not sick enough’ and seemingly having only a common cold will be enough to be able to transmit the new virus. It is even still unclear if infected people without symptoms can transmit the virus
Reply on own reply to Hickory:
“There have been 92 cases of human-to-human spread of the coronavirus in 12 countries outside China but the World Health Organization (WHO) does not have the data to make comparisons with China, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
He added that the WHO had not seen sustained local transmission except in specific cases, such as on the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Japan.“
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/cloneofcloneof200215224437270-200216231809757-200217231044837.html
True. And even as of today, there is no clear idea on how long the virus is viable as an infectious agent outside the body. The range given by one virologist today was between 5 minutes and 12 days, roughly. That uncertainty is a big wildcard in all this.
Yes Hickory, though I think that if the virus ‘survives’ outside the body for more than a few minutes the number of infected people (tested positive) would be much higher in other countries than China.
Or the viral load to test positive or getting sick is mostly too low if the virus is transmitted by surfaces. That’s the most probable explanation imho
The director-general of the World Health Organization warned Sunday that countries outside of China should be prepared for the spread of the deadly new coronavirus to accelerate, saying that it’s possible only the tip of the iceberg has been seen.
That should be expected when this virus is transmitted like the common cold virus, such as shaking hands with an infected person.
Pangolins suspected as vector of coronavirus
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00154-w?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=5ec0d7212c-briefing-dy-20200210&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-5ec0d7212c-42316671
Hmm, so now we know what they were selling at the “seafood market” where the outbreak started.
150 X .04 = 6. Emitted methane from natural gas starts out 6 times greater than CO2 emitted by n gas. After 20 years about 3 times greater. Making natural gas much worse than coal as far as GHG warming. Good way to punch the system. Next El Nino could be a real eye opener.
Average over the planet, methane is 278 ppm CO2e. Since that is the continuous concentration.
Natural gas production is forecast to rise, natural positive feedbacks are forecast to increase
Any bets on ice being part of the global system in the future?
January 2020 sees warmest winter in U.S. history so far
https://desdemonadespair.net/2020/02/january-2020-sees-warmest-winter-in-u-s-history-so-far.html
An Iceberg the Size of Tampa Just Broke Off an Antarctica Glacier
As these so-called calving events become more common, scientists are increasingly worried about the integrity of the glaciers.
Feb 10 2020, 2:29pm
A huge iceberg just broke off of one of the most fragile glaciers in Antarctica.
The chunk of ice, about the size of the Tampa, Florida, cleaved from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Scientists had been keeping an eye on two huge cracks in an ice shelf down there for months. Now, the berg is finally floating freely.
As it cleaved off its ice shelf, the iceberg broke into pieces, creating a bunch of smaller, floating ice hunks.
This iceberg alone won’t raise sea levels: Even before it broke off, it was floating on water. But it was buttressing the Pine Island Glacier, acting as a barrier between the warmer sea water and the ice that makes up the glacier
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgejpp/an-iceberg-the-size-of-the-maldives-just-broke-off-an-antarctica-glacier
Re: Glaciers
It is true that glaciers are having substance melting episodes all over the world including on Antarctica. Never the less, archeology shows us the world isn’t as warm now as about 1000 years ago. For example ancient Roman docks/ports were higher back then with the higher sea level, by as much as 24 inches. This also works out to be an illustration of how humans are very adaptable to changes brought on by things like melting glaciers.
It’s true. Humans are adaptable. Many of us will survive.
Adaptable to what? Air conditioning
The underlying sentiment of Pat Clogger’s post, as I interpret it, is that to be concerned about climate change is alarmist, as this isn’t the ocean levels first rodeo. It’s been high, it’s been low, this is just another go. Nothing to see here. Rome was, Rome is.
In A.D. 1020, there were ~300 million people on Earth. Now, there are 7 billion, with 11-12 billion projected for 2050. 8 of the top 10 largest cities are coastal, and “44 % of the world’s population (more people than inhabited the entire globe in 1950) live within 150 kilometers of the coast.”.
http://www.oceansatlas.org/subtopic/en/c/114/
It is unknown what carbon pathway humans will follow, rapid reduction of our emissions is not looking promising, but regardless of whether sea level rise is constrained to 1 meter, or exceeds 6 meters, humans will adapt (mass migrations?) and many will survive.
Very, very many will not.
Good point about air conditioning and adaptibility, especially of Europeans. The Europeans conquered the world completely, but were only able to settle colder areas like Northern North America, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Southern Australia and New Zealand. They remained a small minority in all the tropical regions they conquered.
I suspect it is because Europeans evolved to live in the cool dark rainy climate of Europe. For example, Scottish slaves simply died in the fields in the Caribbean, so they were replaced by African slaves, who could work in the direct subtropical sunlight if the sugarcane fields.
The big European migration to the New World started when the cities of North America and the Southern tip of South America started to grow in the mid 19th century. Before that it was mostly Africans.
With the rise of air conditioning this started to change. For example in the US the “Sun Belt” cities started to grow. The descendants of those European settlers abandoned their cold, dense cities and moved into air conditioned one-story huts sprawled across regions they previously considered uninhabitable. They were totally exposed to the sun, but air conditioning solved the problem.
There’s a lot of tectonic in the Mediterran Sea. A lot.
The harbour of classic Alexandria in Egypt is now several meters under water. You’ll have to dive to visit the palaces :
https://www.franckgoddio.org/projects/sunken-civilizations/alexandria.html
No climate change, just tectonics. Every 100 years a 6-7 quake, sometimes even an 8.
Yes, Africa is crashing into Europe, which is why you have a chain of mountains in southern Europe stretching from the Atlantic all the way to the Caspian.
This mountain chain isolated Europe from much the rest of the world. Cultural influences from the south came in through France, the Danube or the Ukraine, where there are breaks in the mountains.
Wild flowers are up. This used to be X-country skiing time.
XC time is anytime there is at least an inch of snow on the ground
That’s to be expected with a long-lasting highly positive AO index event such as we’ve been in since the end of December. It’s somewhat similar to what the AO index did in the winters of the late 1980s.
Bob Frisky said:
That’s a loopy response.
An interesting point to consider is the distinction between (1) runaway warming to an extreme greenhouse and (2) runaway cooling to a snowball earth.
With the Lacis et al set-point model of a catalyzed H2O warming w/ CO2 activation, the runaway lasts until it reaches either of the two set-points of snowball earth (a runaway cooling) and current CO2 concentration (a runaway warming). These are the limiting “rails” of the positive feedback process.
This process can be used to understand past glaciation cycles with a Milankovitch orbital forcing pushing the steady-state conditions in one direction or the other.
I think the question now — with the significant man-made CO2 activation added to the loop — is whether additional warming feedbacks will arise, and whether they will create a new set-point that the earth will reach that isn’t predicted by the log(CO2) w/uncertainty that is the consensus thinking. The fat-tails in the uncertainty is where all the concern is.
Anything to do with a natural climate cycle such as AO or ENSO is short-term.
That’s may be what the data says I guess but we’ve had many cold winter nights (too many for me) this year, in Michigan.
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
It’s been record setting warm down my way, and we just set a new record for the warmest January ever, for the USA as a whole.
I wonder what they teach at Cass Tech.
Never mind, I looked it up. It’s a vocational high school. Used to work in such a school myself. They teach such subjects as plumbing, electricity, welding, electronics, basic math, carpentry, computer programming and repair, etc.
The math, chemistry, biology, physics, and other classes in the college prep track are taught separately to students on the academic track.
It’s sort of unusual for a student on the academic track to take a vocational course these days, because they’re typically scheduled in blocks of three or four hours, where as the academic track classes are almost always scheduled for an hour or less, and there aren’t all that many of them. The students headed to elite schools may have only ONE opportunity to take an advanced course in chemistry, math or physics, because only one teacher may be teaching it only ONCE each day in a typical high school.
And these days all the classes,academic, general, and vocational, are generally taught on one campus so all the kids get a diploma that carries the name of the school. You can’t usually tell by looking at the diploma if the kid is qualified for MIT, or for further training in sanitary engineering.
WHO names novel coronavirus COVID-19
https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/11/disease-caused-by-the-novel-coronavirus-has-name-covid-19/?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=bb8588fcdb-briefing-dy-20200211&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-bb8588fcdb-42316671
Wind Turbines and the Red Queen.
The Red Queen effect of shale oil decline has been well publicized, companies have to drill more and more wells to make up for existing decline.
What many renewable advocates have not considered is the same applies to all systems.
Germany will have to replace 10 thousand of it’s wind turbines over the next ten years as the old ones are no longer serviceable.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/mass-dismantling-old-wind-turbines-could-overburden-germanys-recycling-capacities
Solar output falls to zero between dusk and dawn, and since nuclear expansion is politically difficult, this leaves wind power.
The United States has 60,000 wind turbines producing 7.5% of electricity demand.
Taking into account turbine distribution, varying wind speeds etc, 800,000 turbines would produce between 20% and 60% of demand at any given time.
1,600,000 turbines would produce access power at current rates of consumption. Exactly how much power 300 million vehicles will need at any one time is not known at the moment.
The point being 1,600,000 turbines have a life of 25 years. Once a replacement schedule is fully underway 5,000 turbines will have to be dismantled and replaced every single month.
The second law of thermodynamics destroys all systems over time.
Germany will have to replace 10 thousand of it’s wind turbines over the next ten years as the old ones are no longer serviceable.
Wayne,
What is (are) the reason(s) that the old turbines are no longer serviceable ?
Or is it that they replace because the new ones are more efficient ? In this case “will have to” must be “want to”
Han
Just like an old car, the engine and everything else fails after a time
So those turbines in Germany will be about 25 years old.
When everything fails after a time “the road to Olduvai” comes to mind
http://dieoff.com/page234.pdf
Edit: page234, but the article has only 26 pages
About a third of Germany’s wind turbines will come to the end of their useful operation over the next 10 years.
Olduvai theory is already happening in many countries today.
In quite a few countries the opposite is happening: energy consumption per capita is rising.
We will have to wait until world oilproduction goes in terminal decline to see what happens regarding ‘road to Olduvai’ theory. For example, wind turbines can be produced in massive quantities, unless rare earth metals become the restrictive factor. On the other hand, rare earth metals can be recycled.
I agree that it will become very difficult or impossible to continue BAU
Those wind tower replacements will have a lot more power output than the old ones they replace.
With the exception of the actual turbine BLADES, pretty damned close to one hundred percent of an old turbine can be and will be recycled, because it’s cheaper to recycle steel, aluminum , copper, concrete, etc, than it is to manufacture these things from scratch.
And the WIND FARM ITSELF will still be there, the roads, fences, maintenance shop, grid interconnections, tower foundations, and most of the time, the tower itself, will all be in good condition and servicable indefinitely, with routine maintenance.
Refurbing a wind farm to BETTER than new won’t cost more than a rather minor fraction of building a new wind farm from scratch.
And the total volume of used turbine blades that will be landfilled will be VERY VERY SMALL, in comparison to the size of the coal ash pile created by burning enough coal to generate the amount of electricity produced by the wind farm over that twenty to thirty years.
Coal mining is a dirty dangerous business. Burning coal is a dirty and dangerous business. It’s costing us countless billions of dollars ” off the books” in terms of public health issues, lower productivity on farms, loss of wild lands severely degraded by the mining process, clean up costs, etc.
Here’s an example from my own backyard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Dan_River_coal_ash_spill
That myth is about as stupid as the “PV panels need to be replaced after 20 years”-shit I’ve been hearing from some pro nuke idiots.
True, the renewable movement just replaces one industrial system with another and all use energy. There are many methods to temporally shift power demand and supply. Also, the false premise is that all systems need 24/7 supply availability.
However, Denmark has replaced all of it’s turbines so it has about 3 times the power output without increasing the total number of turbines. Better technology happens, it’s a fast curve now.
Electric cars are getting more efficient, so only 1/4 the transport energy will be needed even after electrical losses. Currently wind and solar are producing about 40 percent of the energy to run all land transport in the US if electrified. Don’t know for sure when it will be 100 percent, shouldn’t be more than a few years. Long before transport is actually changed unless Tony Seba is right about autonomous cars as a service happening soon.
Gonefishing
Obviously not all systems need energy 24/7 but every country needs energy 24/7.
We have not even begun to crack the storage dilemma, we have plenty of hope and theories but new practical storage for entire cities does not exist.
Also electric cars are not becoming more efficient, they are able to store more electricity, which will put more demand on the system.
The use of Red Queen as far as renewable energy is grossly inappropriate. Red Queen means decreasing net energy where renewable energy(PV and wind) has done quite the opposite. With fossil fuels the energy source gets more difficult to access, lowers in quality and reduces in total amount. None of that happens with PV or wind so once the longevity settles in the replacement rate is constant.
Yes, EV’s are becoming more efficient for a number of reasons. They still have room to improve though the latest prototype is 0.1 kWh/mile at speed.
System changes are more powerful and can combine with efficiency changes. Avoidance of external energy input is the best. The Earth operating system runs at low temperatures and uses only sunlight.
Once machines get involved the EROEI has to rise from 1.5 to at least 6 or 8. The current civilization was built on 50 or more. Now we have to learn how to run things on 20 or less. Systems thinking helps a lot and reduction in machine/mining/process energy is needed quickly.
Not really.
As wind turbines get older they become more inefficient and break down far more often.
A wind turbine gradually produces less and less power. If you have a million of them, you have to build more and more to get the same power.
The rest of what you said sound like hope to me and not much more.
Any power plant has to be replaced after a while. Do you supposed coal and nuclear simply go on forever without maintenance or refurbishing?
The fewer to moving parts the better, which suggests that renewables are less expensive to to maintain. Also high temperatures and hard radiation produced by traditional plants take their toll. You may recall that the San Onofre nuclear plant literally shook itself to death because the steam generator tubes were so hot.
You need to come up with anti-renewable talking points that sound a bit less ridiculous.
alimbiquated
It is not anti wind power to point out a problem you ridiculous troll.
Your comment most certainly was an anti-wind talking point, because you are pretending that it is a problem unique to wind.
It was also in the middle of an equally nonsensical rant about electrical vehicles, claiming they “are not becoming more efficient”.
The pattern of your comments suggests that a minimum, you have difficulty reasoning from first principles.
This bears repeating.
Put it in the wrong place upthread.
With the exception of the actual turbine BLADES, pretty damned close to one hundred percent of an old turbine can be and will be recycled, because it’s cheaper to recycle steel, aluminum , copper, concrete, etc, than it is to manufacture these things from scratch.
And the WIND FARM ITSELF will still be there, the roads, fences, maintenance shop, grid interconnections, tower foundations, and most of the time, the tower itself, will all be in good condition and servicable indefinitely, with routine maintenance.
Refurbing a wind farm to BETTER than new won’t cost more than a rather minor fraction of building a new wind farm from scratch.
And the total volume of used turbine blades that will be landfilled will be VERY VERY SMALL, in comparison to the size of the coal ash pile created by burning enough coal to generate the amount of electricity produced by the wind farm over that twenty to thirty years.
Coal mining is a dirty dangerous business. Burning coal is a dirty and dangerous business. It’s costing us countless billions of dollars ” off the books” in terms of public health issues, lower productivity on farms, loss of wild lands severely degraded by the mining process, clean up costs, etc.
Here’s an example from my own backyard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Dan_River_coal_ash_spill
alimbiquated
Stop being a hysterical drama queen, it is not becoming.
I said electric cars are not more efficient, hardly a rant. A new Nissan leaf does the same miles per Kw/h as a new one in 2011.
Also wind turbines loss power, 1.5% per year. So 1,000,000 turbines with an average age of 20 year will be producing just 70% of their original power. So you would have to add another 300,000 turbines to get back to where you were.
Just a simple observation, here is your dummy I found it just outside your pram.
Good point about the drop in efficiency with age.
Back in 2014
“This trend is consistent for different generations of turbine design and individual wind farms. This level of degradation reduces a wind farm’s output by 12% over a twenty year lifetime, increasing the levelised cost of electricity by 9%”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148113005727
But that happens to all rotating equipment, including FF generators.
No they don’t have to keep increasing the rate of replacement, it will stabilize at a given rate of rebuild and replacement.
Wind power has it’s drawbacks for the ROL
but is much more secure, reliable and far cheaper and less polluting than FF.
Not to worry though, it will be a long time before it takes over if ever. FF will be used to it’s limits and the methane hydrates are waiting to be tapped.
I just read somewhere that energy corps are seriously looking at methane hydrates and expect 150 years of power from them. I sometimes wonder if we have 20 years left to feed and play with the machines.
Of course I will be really old by then and cackling at them in my solar powered rocking chair.
According to some the machines will start playing with us, so let them figure it all out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3EQqjn-ELs&t=285s
You are talking nonsense.
The “something doesn’t exist yet” is a logical fallacy when it exists as a technology that has not grown. Airline travel did not exist when primitive flight had been conquered. Things start off small scale and then grow.
These mechanical/electrical challenges are the easy things to solve, with time and effort. They do not change the long term outcome by much if at all, so they are grossly insufficient to the tasks at hand.
So lets say that the gist of your point is correct Wayne- “Once a replacement schedule is fully underway 5,000 turbines will have to be dismantled and replaced every single month.”
A few repercussions to it-
Thats a lot of business for the wind, electrical and maritime industries. Buy your stock now.
Secondly, it not unlike the oil industry, or other sources of energy. Got to keep moving, or the energy flow will stop.
Third, it is going to be extremely difficult, likely impossible, to replace the fossil energy at scale and quickly enough to keep the whole thing running (a huge global cheer is heard from the wildlife of the world upon hearing this news).
Fourth, the global human project is not ready to acknowledged this energy shortfall problem.
Fifth- what choice is there, other than to try everything that might help [try to focus on the most effective and least damaging methods]?
Enormous jump in coronavirus yesterday in infection and deaths. Deaths jumped from 1,114 to 1,366, a jump of 252. Infections jumped from 45,206 to 60,405, a jump of 15,199. And that is just the reported cases. Also, those numbers will be updated throughout the day as numbers come in from more locations.
Copy and paste this link into your browser to get the latest data: Wuflu.live
Or this one: Covid19info.live
Or go to Newsgoogle.com coronavirus updates to get the latest news.
https://fortune.com/2020/02/12/coronavirus-cases-hubei-diagnosis-method/
New diagnosis methods caused big jump in numbers.
That explains the jump in infections. That does not explain the jump in deaths, 252 in one day.
Yeah, worse than SARS.
in China adopted a new way of diagnosing the novel coronavirus, leading to a huge jump in the official number of deaths blamed on the disease and the number of confirmed cases in the country.
Regarding wind turbine replacement, if you have a windy location it makes great economic sense to place the very best generator on that spot. Many great windy spots are being retooled to take advantage of newer tower/turbine technology.
Education, over opinion.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27032018/wind-power-blades-capacity-clean-energy-technology-jobs-ge-siemens-leeward-midamerican-repowering
A substantial number of solar farms are likewise being upgraded, with the old panels being sold on the used market, most of the time, but with some being scrapped, and newer more productive panels installed.
This typically leads to as much as twenty percent or more greater productivity, often more.
Electric cars miles per Kw/h
https://www.whatcar.com/news/what-car-real-range-which-electric-car-can-go-farthest-in-the-real-world/n18159
Not surprisingly the worst car for miles per Kw/h is one of the biggest, but surprisingly the best is not the smallest car.
If I had £35,000 I would buy a Hyundai Kona. Instead I will buy for £12,000 a 2 year old very low mileage BMW. As I only do 5,000 miles per year an electric really makes no sense.
The £20,000 difference is vast. It represents 15 years of gas water and electricity bills. My electricity bills are £5 per month higher than cheapest tariff as I get all my electricity from wind.
There will come a time, likely by the end of this decade,
that only the wealthy collector will purchase and fill the tank of a new petrol car.
UCS: Here’s Why Electric Cars Are Truly Better For The Environment
As usual the report ignored methane from natural gas, so the EVs look better. Whole report had wording heavily biased toward EV.
In Idaho, 100% of a petrol car energy comes from fossil fuel
In Idaho, 19% of grid electricity comes from oil and nat gas (almost all of that nat gas), with
81% coming from a mix of renewables- to charge your EV.
We don’t all live in WilksBarrePA
And you don’t have to use any fossil fuel to charge your EV. Its a choice.
I use zero.
Thanks for your perspective. Truely.
You make a great point, but it is not the only reality.
Yep, 780 gallons of liquid fossil fuel burned per capita each year in Idaho. A long way to go, barely better than NJ.
Maybe you can tell us why California’s CO2 emissions have not gone down since 2010 or why Idaho emissions keep rising (according to EIA)?
I thought all that renewable stuff (carbon emissions manufactured elsewhere) was supposed to reduce emissions. Yet they still keep going up in the world.
I don’t know what you are talking about. Chalk it up to poor comprehension on my behalf.
Hickory
I thought all that renewable stuff (carbon emissions manufactured elsewhere) was supposed to reduce emissions. Yet they still keep going up in the world.
Not everyone agrees with this assessment. The IEA sees carbon dioxide output as flat in 2019, thanks to less emissions from the energy sector.
https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019
As articles from previous years show, this is mostly thanks to efficiency and renewables, with the switch from coal to gas also helping.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/emissions#abstract
Since renewables output is growing much faster than the economy, and efficiency likely to chug along at about the same rate, it isn’t unreasonable to expect carbon emissions to stay flat and even start falling in the next few years.
There are also political issues to address.
https://germanwatch.org/sites/germanwatch.org/files/CCPI2019_Results_WEB.pdf
It is lovely to see the good old US of A nestled down at the bottom of the barrel between “Saudi” Arabia, Iran and North Korea.
Anyway, given the corona virus mess, it would not be surprising at all to see carbon emissions actually fall in 2020.
Thank you for the rational response.
Lets not forget the 5 million hectares of forest that burnt out my way late last year to early this year.
I have stopped believing the global accountants (too much carbon offset for things like building hydro, a big methane emitter) and just go by the amount of CO2 , Methane and other GHG in the atmosphere.
We will know we did something effective when those stop rising (if ever).
GF,
I agree. Check out the methane levels:
https://www.methanelevels.org/
And nitrous oxide levels:
https://www.n2olevels.org/
Alim, emissions include more than just CO2.
Believe it or not, I’d like to emphasize a point made by GF.
If your grid source of energy is dirty, than your electrical consumption is dirty.
No two ways a bout it.
And I’d like to add that all sources of electricity have their own inherent source of “dirt’.
The destruction caused by mining of materials used in the energy sector, whether it is uranium for nucs, lime for the concrete in dams, or iron in the steel used for coal furnaces, its all a matter of severity and location.
Pick your poison, so to speak.
Or better yet, use much less. Become little. Very little.
That is big.
How do you decrease the carbon footprint of your regional grid? I’m sure someone must have an idea.
What are you waiting for?
For anyone who doesn’t know the meaning of feedback (or tipping point) it looks like you’re about to receive an object lesson. Fasten your seat belt!
NASA FLIGHTS DETECT MILLIONS OF ARCTIC METHANE HOTSPOTS
“After two years of ground field studies that began in 2018 at an Alaskan lake site with a methane hotspot, we found abrupt thawing of the permafrost right underneath the hotspot. It’s that additional contribution of permafrost carbon — carbon that’s been frozen for thousands of years — that’s essentially contributing food for the microbes to chew up and turn into methane as the permafrost continues to thaw.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-nasa-flights-millions-arctic-methane.html
From the above article.
“We consider hotspots to be areas showing an excess of 3,000 parts per million of methane between the airborne sensor and the ground,” said lead author Clayton Elder of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “And we detected 2 million of these hotspots over the land that we covered.””
Hotspot is defined as a methane concentration more than 1500 times higher than atmospheric. I guess that is a hot spot, since methane is lighter than air and mixes well so won’t hang around, it must be in high flux to reach those levels.
A forest is cut down by people. And it becomes a field of annual crops, or a grazing field. Or a city lot.
In the process, the soil organic matter (animal, vegetation, fungi, insect) dramatically declines. No more tree trunks gradually decaying, no more annual leaf fall, no more root growth extending into deep the pores.
From the standpoint of life, it has become impoverished to some degree, sometimes a little and sometimes dramatically.
Now some people, here and there, have made the effort to replant trees where once they grew in natural abundance. This is an act of restoration, and if practiced on a mass scale, in the tens of billions, can be a great thing. But make no mistake, it is an act of partial restoration. It is a partial fixing of what has been broken.
It is not a ‘de novo’ carbon sink. It is not a method of sequestering carbon that was once floating free in the environment. It is at best a small bandaid on the carbon tsunami.
But apparently the act of replanting forests that were previously cleared, can make people feel good about themselves. They can rationalize their conscious act of burning. They can greenwash themselves in the delusion of living gently. They can pretend that the creamy lotion they apply to their skin is not derived from the marrow of slaughtered mammals.
It is a sham. It would make Trump proud.
Delude yourself. It’s the human way.
https://news.delta.com/delta-offsets-carbon-emissions-170000-customers-thursday
Don’t worry old man, EVs are coming to our rescue, or is it the tooth fairy? Can’t remember.
IS THE LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY DESTROYING THE PLANET?
“The global scope of the livestock issue is huge. A report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says 26 percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface is used for livestock grazing. One-third of the planet’s arable land is occupied by livestock feed crop cultivation. Seventy percent of Brazil’s deforested land is used as pasture, with feed crop cultivation occupying much of the remainder…”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/is-the-livestock-industry-destroying-the-planet-11308007/
Fake meat may well destroy the livestock industry. Most beef consumed in America, for example, is ground beef, and a lot of that is in pre-processed food. This is very bad news for the beef business.
Kids these days don’t really like real meat because it has bones and gristle and fat in it. My kids wouldn’t even eat a chicken drumstick, because it’s “too complicated”.
Marshland is sealed off from it’s water source. Leveled with tractors and bulldozers. Streets and houses built.
I call it home. A significant portion of the LA basin.
I may have posted this earlier, but if so I have forgotten doing so.
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/11/the-christian-right-could-be-irrelevant-by-2024/?fbclid=IwAR3_CuMeuaSRjAX9o-RuQAN0zLo7-C3V13tz8C5Fg4IAsdeVMcMAq6a3MCg
I’ve been saying a long time that demographics virtually guarantee a political transition to the left in this country within the easily foreseeable future as the hard core religious folks, who are mostly older, die and or go to nursing homes.
The D party owns the younger vote and the vast bulk of the minority vote. The churches everywhere I’ve been are mostly sparsely attended, with the exceptions being a few mega churches.
Kids these days, even the ones who are taken to church on a regular basis, don’t take the dogma seriously at all,in most cases, but they do find it expedient to pay lip service to that dogma, and they do generally absorb some of the moral training, such as living within their means, obeying the law, practicing charity, etc.
The computer in their back pocket means a lot more to such kids, on average, than that old KJB. It’s hard to take the tale of the flood, etc, seriously, when you see some real science shows on tv, etc.
In your opinion, OFM, do you think that other tribal affiliations will replace the “Christian right” in a way that is favorable to republicans?
For example, with Trump it was not about being moral (quite the opposite in fact), it was about economic nationalism. The same population cohort just adopted a different tribal label, but they were the same people pretty much. They just put a Maga T-shirt over the Billy Graham one.
Seems to me the right wing tribes have a very strong grip on the electoral college for more time to come.
Not until we see AZ or GA go Democratic, will the demographic swing have become significant, in my eyes.
You?
btw- I agree with most of what James Carville has recently said- https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/7/21123518/trump-2020-election-democratic-party-james-carville
Since Trump took over Arizona has turned purple.
And in the latest poll, in January, Kelly has a 4 point lead over McSally.
Hi Hickory,
There’s a fundamentalist ( evangelical if you prefer this term) voting block that can be considered separately from economic nationalist voters, although there IS a large overlap between these two voting blocks.
The number of voting true fundamentalists is certain to decline quite a bit within eight years, in relation to the overall voting population. Some of them are single issue anti abortion, some single issue anti gun control, etc, some are convinced the orangutan is God’s gift to the country they want back. Virtually every one of this sort is woefully ignorant of anything to do with the sciences, math, etc. They never read anything other than the sports and the KJB, and they watch Faux tv.
Trump certainly coopted this group wholesale,as you put it, swapping for maga hats, and in the process, secured the vote of the working class rural element and small town people especially in the south.
I know quite a few VERY decent but ignorant people who are fundamentalists, people who would give the shirt off their back to a stranger in need, people such as maybe three quarters of my family two generations back. That has fallen off to maybe two thirds in my Dad’s generation, and less than half in my own, and it’s fallen to roughly a quarter to a third among grandchildren and younger nieces, nephews and cousins.
It may sound paradoxical, but SOME of these older fundamentalists, not the pious ones, are pretty rough characters, the sort who drink excessively, beat on women, make moonshine, deal some drugs and engage in various underhanded activities such as fencing stolen goods. Nevertheless, they still stop for old ladies with flat tires, and if they hear about somebody burned out, they will chip in twenty bucks plus their old coat, some old furniture, etc.
But there’s no question in my mind that in capturing the SERIOUS fundamentalists, the orangutan also captured the REMAINDER of the ignorant rural and southern vote, and imo that voting block, rednecks who describe themselves as Christians, at least nominally, outnumbers the REAL fundamentalists by a large margin.
Any rural or small town southerner will very likely identify himself as a Christian, because he perceives the USA to be a Christian country, and he’s an American. This is a sort of cultural camouflage. It’s more or less NECESSARY to maintain good community relationships with extended family, law enforcement, employers, etc. I’m an agnostic, technically, an atheist as a practical matter, and I do this myself so as to stay on good terms with the rest of the community.
The real redneck element won’t be suffering much if any attrition, demographically.
The orangutan will continue to own it, and own the votes of people who don’t know any more than that they can now find a job, whereas three or four years ago, jobs were much harder to find, especially in the case of poorly educated people lacking any skills other than doing rough work such as on construction sites, etc. You nailed it, calling them economic nationalists.
To get down to brass tacks, I think the religious voting block will shrink enough within the next couple of presidential election cycles to make it possible for Democrats to win in more than a few local and state elections anyplace the election is somewhat competitive.
But nominally Christian orangutan voters are going to vote for trump types indefinitely.
There’s a whole new generation, tens of millions of them, leaving school knowing less than I knew by the time I was in the fifth or sixth grade.
Fortunately I think lots of women, even ones who have a hard time passing a driver’s permit test, are going to be voting D over the next few years…. women who have never voted before.
If the younger better educated people turn out, the orangutan will be out. Otherwise…….. he may well win again.
I’m with you and Carville, on the question of the D’s running a hard left candidate. If they do, the orangutan might win. Probably WILL win.
Interesting, and thanks for the perspective.
It all rings true with what I know this part of America.
I hope you right about the changing trend.
Its hard to see these things happening from within, especially given the vocal nature of the Orange bully.
oldfarmer
You have got it totally wrong.
Christianity is about giving money to the poor, about caring for those who cannot care for themselves.
People who reject those doctrines are far more likely to more to the right. The creed of the right is about self reliance, taking care of your own, getting ahead of others.
As Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as community.
No Wayne, you are the one who has it all wrong. That is what Christianity is supposed to be about. And that is what it is about for perhaps 1% of white Christians and a majority of black Christians. But the vast majority of Christians are right-wing bigots. Most evangelicals are Trumpites to the core. They are all about the three Gs, God, Guns, and Gays. Love the first two and hate the latter.
And the reason white Christians are right wing Republicans is because the Civil Rights movement was was brought to fruition under the Democratic Administrations of Kennedy and Johnson. That’s when the South switched from almost totally Democratic to almost totally Republican. I know because I was there and I experienced it all. The vast majority of white Christian Evangelicals are white supremacist. They want to Make America White Again.
You can pretend that Christianity is all about helping the poor but if you really believe that then you are totally delusional.
Jesus himself wasn’t interested in helping the poor. Why bother when the Kingdom of Heaven is coming?
When Judas complained about him wasting expensive oil to wash his feet, instead of giving the money to the poor, Jesus just brushed him off with the remark, “The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.”
In other words, I got mine, the “Rapture” is coming, screw the poor. sound familiar?
Quite funny. However, those words were written some 70 to 100 years after Jesus’s death, if such a man ever existed. So those words were just thought up by someone who decided to write about that legendary holy man whom folks said once existed.
alimbiquated
Judas was a thief who also betrayed a friend for money.
What does it say about you for taking his side?
Judas was a mythological character who never existed.
wayne, if you had any credibility for seeing the truth, you’ve just lost it all. christianity is about ethnic cleansing, and giving crumbs to those who submit to forced conversion. the rest is just talk. actions speak louder than prayers or pronouncements. joshua would call it his biggest adversary.
[you brought it up]
Hickory
The one trait of hate fill bigots like you, is to call other people hate filled bigots.
Show us one Christian country in the last 100 years that has exterminated all other people?
Unlike other religions that really are murderously driven.
http://www.bpnews.net/53967/christian-persecution-spikes-in-hindunationalist-india
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2019-08/india-kandhamal-odisha-christian-persecution-anniversary-barwa-m.html
How many Hindus killed in America?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/christians-egypt-unprecedented-persecution-report
How many Mosques burned down? how many imprisoned for converting to Islam?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2756134/Dozens-Christians-including-women-children-arrested-Saudi-Arabia-tip-state-s-Islamist-police-force.html
You have no idea what real murderous persecution is.
Wayne, you cannot defend Christianity by showing that other religions are worse. Of course, these other religions are horrible, especially Islam. That is what deep religious convictions do to people, it makes them hate all people who are different from themselves.
Hickory is not a hate-filled bigot. Trumpites who call themselves loving Christians are full of hate. I know because I lived among them for most of my life. And you know that but just won’t admit it. They are racist to the core. And they are also homophobes. That is why they are all cheering for Trump, because he is just like them.
Ron
My first statement was, what is Christianity and you agreed with me.
Those who reject the central message of helping each other, caring for each other are far more likely to become selfish right wing, rather than loving and caring left wing.
As you say many people who call themselves Christian are total bastards and I do know a few.
Real Christianity is about not controlling people. Unlike Stalin-ism, Hitler-ism, Maoism.
To call Christianity ethnic cleansing is vile beyond words, as I know Indian Christians, Chinese Christians, Japanese Christians and they do not threaten to kill anyone.
Adios Wayne =Ignore
I’m not in these parts to hear about your ideology, anymore than I would go to Tehran or the Vatican for such.
Enough damage done.
Most Christians don’t hate people who are different from themselves. Probably they are just religious and not ‘deeply religious’.
One of my uncles was a bishop and he worked 25 years in India trying to convert people to Christianity. So even being ‘deeply religious’ and not hating people who think different goes together.
Some people have expressed dismay at the fossil fuel predominance of electricity sources on their grid, and used this as a rather lame excuse for sticking with fossil fuel cars rather than moving towards EV’s.
You can look here to see how your state grid is supplied-
https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
Most utilities allow you to choose a rate plan that specifies increased renewable energy sources as part of the supply. By signing up, you encourage a higher percentage of renewable energy procurement by your utility.
I am sure that all of the concerned and well educated people who come around here have made the decision to support this trend a long time ago, even if you don’t have the wherewithall to own your own wind turbine or solar bond.
Right?
Ask Mr. Green: How Much Energy to Make a New Car?
It takes roughly the equivalent of 260 gallons of gasoline to make the typical car of around 3,000 pounds, according to an exhaustive study by the Argonne National Laboratory. (And I do mean exhaustive. These guys have factored in darn near everything but the calories consumed by the assembly-line workers.) A hybrid car takes about 25% more energy than a regular car, or around the equivalent of 325 gallons because it requires more juice to make the batteries.
Whether to replace depends on how much you drive. If your car gets 32 miles per gallon, then you’re putting on only 3,200 miles a year, as opposed to the ghastly national average of more than 13,000. So if you buy, say, a plug-in Prius, which gets about 50 miles per gallon and drive it the same distance, you’d be using 36 fewer gallons of gas a year than with your old car. So it would take 9 years before your Prius will have “caught up” with your old car and saved enough fuel to offset the energy needed to make it. After that, your 18 miles extra per gallon will be pure savings in energy and emissions.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/2013/10/ask-mr-green-how-much-energy-make-new-car-0
Since an EV takes more energy to make than a hybrid and it produces about the same emissions on average using grid power (which 90 percent of people are stuck using). the whole idea of carbon free transport is pure fantasy. One can promote various forms of destruction such as oil, natural gas, coal, wind turbines and hydropower depending upon choice. If one drives it’s all a matter of degree.
So if you buy and EV and drive 3000 miles a year is it better than that Prius, or that old 32 mpg car? Nope. It’s worse for a while. Can’t take back that extra 9 to 12 years of damage.
Are EV’s better if you drive a lot? Probably, but why do people drive so much.? Do they like being on the road and stuck in traffic breathing who knows what for hours a day? Do they like the expense and danger? Does the human race need to travel more than one light year every year (in circles of course)?
Where has all that travel gotten us?
If we all drove EV’s today, we would have to increase the amount of PV in the US by 13 times to cover the energy demand of light transport. That sounds quite possible but it might mean 15 times by the time it gets done. That would be additional energy above and beyond what is needed to run the country. Of course there would be little need for gasoline, so the oil industry would be stuck with a new waste product to sell overseas cheaply.
It would take strong regulation in the US to keep people from using much of that cheap gasoline. Right now most environmental regulation is being torn down at the federal level and in some states. From previous Democratic presidencies and Congresses, it would take about 100 years to get back what has been lost in the last 20.
Sadly, the most likely scenario is that PV will grow up right alongside fossil fuels for as long as possible and we will be awash in energy rather than give up fossil fuels. We will also be awash in lots of other things except the rest of life on this planet.
Ocean fish to be gone in 30 years or less. Most of the real forests gone too. Bugs way down in number and the wild African elephant would only be pictures plus statues after 2032.
BTW, those wildflowers that came up here lately have been frozen out now, winter is back for two days. No insect pollinators anyway. I think the Earth has a very bad case of humans. I am sure the cows, pigs, chickens and fish would be much happier if it was cured.
One should question where to put the money and effort. Into huge industrial systems to make more stuff or more into trying to keep the life of the planet somewhat intact (which mostly means stop poisoning them and leave them alone) . Unless of course one wants to make more billionaires, more war machines and greater inequality (but not for long).
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was approved at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary, meeting last week (29 April – 4 May) in Paris.
“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”
“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” he said. “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
Hmmm, where to put that $50,000 or $100,000? Which pays back more, in a life sense, not in a machine sense? Remember, no matter what you do now, most of that money spent feeds BAU as soon as it leaves you, so make it count.
5 to 10 million years for life to build back after a major extinction, and it’s never the same.
Thoughts from a concerned independent scientist, or more definitively, a living creature on a living planet that has a big problem.
Jboy, did you find that picture and just had to put it up, even though you make no sense or relevance? Those urges can be quelled with practice.
Whether one agrees with Greta Thunberg or nor, does anyone else find the posting of this image in poor taste? I’m pretty sure Greta would never hold up a message like that.
I agree…Dennis should remove this.
Jacobson’s Renewable Electric Plan (Dream or Nightmare?)
Many of you have different opinions on recycling/reuse. I am switching to solar hot water which will replace the following type of gas boiler that consumes about $3,000 MXN per year just to keep the water hot before the cost of the hot water used.
https://www.homedepot.com.mx/plomeria/calentadores-de-agua/deposito/calentador-de-deposito-gas-lp-76l-20gal-performance-102971
Now, the question is: what is the best fate for my old boiler? Do I sell it so as not to waste the resource or do I launch it from my roof before dragging it to the recycling so that others may not use it to burn gas? Which is the more ecological fate for the gas burner?
NAOM
Put it outside.
Rip off the insulation on one side, paint it black, put it in an insulated box with glass to the sun side and make it into a solar collector, storage device. If temperatures tend to drop low at night, make an insulated cover for the glass to toss on at night.
If you use a lot of hot water, this can act as a pre-heater for the rooftop flat collector.
Warning, not for areas that drop below freezing regularly. Other warning, if you have a fairly hot sunny climate, the water temps can get quite high, so a tempering valve needs to be in the line.
Or build it for a friend or someone in need.
Living in the tropics I don’t think I will use the pre-heat idea, besides, that will make the plumbing into an explosion in a spaghetti factory. But thanks.
NAOM
Line in line out, would supply all your hot water in the tropics.
For all those accountants who think CO2 is the big picture.( Hint: it’s less than half of GHG forcing) Here is a of CO2 emissions with time. Notice that there have been numerous times when annual CO2 emissions were less than the year before or leveled out.
For the open minded.
Ecologist Charles Hall, interview. (Listen to the end, where he speaks of peak oil).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTWROv5Jv98
Talks about Peak oil after 56 minutes. Best way to prepare: ‘reducing growth of populations and growth of economies.’
Ain’t gonna happen, unless forced.
At the request of Islandboy and Lloyd, I took down the Greta Thunberg fake post. I should have done it earlier. I am sure Dennis will agree with my actions. Whenever a post is removed all replies to that post disappear also. I had no control over that.
Ron
Thanks for that Ron. Was going to suggest removing it as well. There’s garbage and there’s garbage but that post was testing a new low.
Thanks for doing the right thing. There’s a whole lot of furious hatred towards Greta out there. For her own safety after what happened, I pray she doesn’t try to visit Alberta again.
I did not ask that the picture be taken down but, I did ask if I was the only one who found it in poor taste. I am 100% comfortable with Ron’s decision to remove it since I found it offensive. Is using a persons image like that even covered under the First Ammendment?
I thought the picture was an example of female empowerment. Women should be able to control their own pussies instead of having them be controlled by predatory grabbers like President Trump.
The picture succeeded in its intent, to distract and deter any rational discussion of the topics brought up by one of the greatest scientific minds of the past century. That is the objective of the haters and agenda trolls that frequent this and many other sites on the internet. To derail thoughtful discussion.
Agree 100%.
If you can’t say it with words and a graph, you’re probably in the wrong place.
This ain’t 4chan….and thanks, Ron, for keeping it that way.
Regardless of the message, the picture was fake. It portrayed Greta doing something she would never have done herself. Therefore it should never have been shown.
Islandboy,
Don’t quote me, but so far as I know, once you are a political celebrity, your image is no longer yours.
This is why people on both sides can caricature anybody in the other political camp with impunity.
There is a fine line between slander and or libel, and political speech. It’s hard to say just where that line is drawn in any particular country, but people do get sued and have to pay up sometimes for posting provable lies…… not very often.
“In the final analysis, all this talk of “energy independence” and ” energy dominance” is all about becoming the masters of our own fate. This is something that we clearly cannot achieve when still relying on fossil fuels for the bulk of our energy”
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/real-energy-independence-illusion
The Progress of Man, or some such thing.
A forest is cleared, over and over and over, and one day it is (last week) is a tree plantation for cardboard.
And now it is harvested to become a Battery Gigafactory, in a place called Germany.
https://electrek.co/2020/02/15/drone-footage-tesla-giga-berlin-forest-clearing-effort/
Not sure what your point is.
“Forests” in that area have been plantations for about 200 years or more. They’re almost exclusively Scots pines, which aren’t even a natural fit for this place. That would be oaks and beeches.
As long as the legally required replacement forest gets a far more natural composition, than I’m all for getting rid of that fire hazard.
Besides, hat place was slated for clearing ever since BMW intended to build a factory there in the early 2000s and as the trees are rather old for a plantation, they’d probably been cut anyway in the next few years.
The great tree-con.
https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg
I suppose my point is about landuse.
Here is the idea- locations with high Primary Productivity from an ecological standpoint [meaning that living organisms can flourish there, with good soil and rainfall] should be treated with great regard. And reserved for living things- and thus uses like agriculture, habitat reserve, forest, watershed, and such.
So, while I am eager for innovation on energy, I do not see it as useful to cover verdant lands in concrete. Just to ‘save’ the earth, or some such thing.
In short, we should treat good soil as if it was not unlimited.
What kind of animal can be so ignorant of such a basic issue?
There are vast areas of the surface that have poor conditions for microbial, plant and animal life. If we need to build, it should be on those areas. Look where the Gigafactory is in Nevada to get the idea-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Nevada
Germany as a whole country don’t has these desert like zones besides a few sqare kilometers of ice desert in the Alps. So not building here at all…
Then I see no problem cutting those trees.
It’s a monoculture plantation with rather low biodiversity on pretty poor soil.
Ignoring the age of the trees, the legally mandated replacement for this forest will be an improvement.
It has already been halted.
Tesla Gigafactory 4: German Court Halted Site Preparation
Apparently the site is not really a forest but, a tree farm with the trees destined to become cardboard when they are harvested. Not sure if it as bad as it looks.
“the site is not really a forest but, a tree farm”
I know this how people think.
But it is like saying – ‘it not a place for wildlife, it is a farm’, ‘it is not a forest, it is an airport’, ‘it is not a wetland, its a landfill’.
These are the ecologist associations that try to prevent everything.
Germany has not only Nimbys, but even these hardcore ecologists.
It doesn’t matter what you plan – a coal mine or a wind turbine or a solar park – you’ll normal need years at the court to continue.
So there are still no new power lines to transport all the green energy, since building them costs lots of time.
It’s the same as with the canadian oil pipelines discussed in the oil forum here.
“These are the ecologist associations that try to prevent everything.”
I take it you mean environmentalists.
Yes, it is much more difficult and time consuming to make better decisions than to just plunge ahead for the sake of profit and industry.
As many readers here should know, I regularly visit Auke Hoekstra’s Twitter Page. I don’t know what a “normal” Twitter page looks like because, I’m not big on Twitter but, I find Hoekstra’s use of Twitter interesting and informative. An example of the stuff that comes up on his page is the following thread from Kees van der Leun late last week:
https://twitter.com/Sustainable2050/status/1227833699716227072
Among his Tweets are the following:
This gets to the core of why I think the projections of the IEA et al are so fundamentally wrong. They overestimate projections for coal, oil and ng on the basis that renewables, in this case solar PV, will not be competitive. This sort of analysis leads to blind spots in planning such as is happening in my neck of the woods with the following:
JPS $14b plan – Hunts Bay to be replaced, Old Harbour to power Kingston
So, my local utility has invested heavily in NG fired generation at a time when a brand new 37MW Solar farm was connected to the grid last June and is supplying the lowest cost electricity to the grid at US$0.08/kWH. The quote from the article above indicates that they are planning to add 40MW of NG fired plant in 2023. What will the cost of electricity from solar PV (locally) be in 2023, US 4c? US 3c? What will the cost of battery storage be by then? Will any FF powered system be able to compete with those prices?
Those are just some of the considerations. When on factors in the misleading projections for future FF use and CO2 emissions it gets really frustrating to think that all sorts of very important decisions are being predicated on false premises.
islandboy —
Have you ever discussed policy decisions with the engineers/managers of your local utility? Perhaps there are criteria besides price that affect their decisions: grid stability/reliability come to mind. It’s one thing to criticize someone’s choices based on your own prejudices and another to do so after having sat down with the people involved in actually making decisions. In my case I became less inclined to criticize our local utility after talking to one of their (power) engineers. There are a lot of armchair experts for every engineer responsible for making sure the local hospital has a reliable power source(s). 😉
EXTREME WEATHER TO OVERLOAD URBAN POWER GRIDS
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-extreme-weather-overload-urban-power.html
I am quite aware of some of the considerations. I know a close advisor to the former minister responsible for the energy portfolio. I remember chatting with him about solar before the plans for the new 190MW NG plant were finalised and his emphasis seemed to be on price. In other words, he thought the cost of electricity from solar would be a burden on consumers
Grid stability/reliability are reasonable arguments for the investment. My point is that there is a disruption in the offing that threatens to turn all these new investments into stranded assets. Jamaica isn’t exactly a wealthy nation so, who is going to end up with the bill for the stranded assets?
This analysis is hard for policy makers to argue with, n fact they may appreciate having it at their fingertips. see page 3 for the picture version
https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-130-vf.pdf
You’ll have to look at the details to see if the analysis specifics are applicable the Jamaican scenario.
Here is the chart summary-
The grid cannot store power.
Maybe, just maybe, when storage gets cheaper and more available PV plus wind power will be heavily integrated into the power system with gas backup. PV is both intermittent on a diurnal basis as well as variable during sunlight hours.
Just remember, running a grid is a balancing act, meaning excess dispatchable capacity must be available and capacity also needs the ability to shut down when too much energy is being created.
You might find this study helpful
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9
The pro renewable crowd never add in the cost of storage, even though it is obvious that wind and solar need storage to provide anything like a stable grid.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelized-cost-of-energy-for-lithium-ion-batteries-bnef
wind and solar and storage is easily 3 to 4 times more expensive than cheapest coal and gas
Here is a hydropower calculator. Have fun figuring out how much power and for how long one could get from a swimming pool sized containment located one or two meters above a turbine.
Or a small pond to power a group of houses/businesses. That would keep batteries to a minimum, needed only for load smoothing and short term.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydropower-d_1359.html
If one follows the arguments of Tony Seba, it is hard to deny that a huge quantity of electricity generating assets that depend on fossil fuels will become stranded assets over the next decade or so.
I dare you to watch the following 12 min excerpt from Seba’s “Clean Disruption” presentation, made at the Swedbank Nordic Energy Summit in Oslo, Norway, March 17th, 2016, and come back and tell me that you really believe that “wind and solar and storage” will easily be “3 to 4 times more expensive than cheapest coal and gas”by the middle of this decade (bold mine).
The Energy Storage Disruption – End Of Peakers by 2020 and Baseload by 2030
We are now in the year 2020, the year Seba predicted would be the end of “peakers” and what is on the horizon? Last year Tesla acquired a company called Maxwell Technologies, ostensibly to get control of their patents, one of which was for a “dry electrode coating” process for manufacturing batteries. Below is a slide I have brought up here on previous occasions, from a Maxwell presentation outlining the key benefits of the dry coating process, with an arrow pointing to what is considered the most important metric from the point of view of a battery manufacturer. The “16x Production Capacity Density Increase” should lead to a huge increase in plant capacity for anyone employing this technology. The following article discusses Tesla’s upcoming Investor Battery Day:
Tesla “Battery Day” event date is looking like April 2020, says Elon Musk
Interesting times ahead! My point is that, investing in new FF powered plant in 2019 is like investing in a brand new 35mm photographic film factory at the dawn of the age of digital photography. These plants are not going to recover their costs over the expected amortization period, if ever, so who is going to stand the costs?
Whoopee. Meanwhile, experts estimate that a chunk of forest the size of a soccer field is lost every second to deforestation and arable land is being taken over by cattle. So, we’ll all be driving around in EVs on a planet not cluttered with “wild” species. Can hardly wait for this new utopia to arrive.
Who said anything about Utopia? I guess we should just forget about renewables and EVs and just go “pedal to the metal” BAU with FF? BAU with FF is mostly what I’m seeing in my neck of the woods.
I wish it were not so but it seems new “stuff” (condos, SUVs etc.) are more important that a planet cluttered with other species! 😉
No, what we need to do is realize Earth faces an assault on multiple fronts and stop pretending renewables and EVs are the only thing worth talking about. Insects (and birds) are disappearing where I live. Almost all arable land has been taken over by cattle. Somehow I doubt a new generation of batteries will “fix” this.
Good luck trying to get the public at large to “realize Earth faces an assault on multiple fronts”. Three years and three months ago the American electorate chose to elevate a man who claims that “climate change is a hoax”, to the presidency. Said president and the party he leads has proceeded to roll back all sorts of regulations aimed at protecting the natural environment.
Who is “pretending renewables and EVs are the only thing worth talking about”? Even the most progressive challengers to Trump are not.
Doug, you will appreciate this one.
Why Singapore Is Heating Up 2x Faster Than The Planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQ9zjvmD6k
Islandboy
Today battery backup account for about 0.01% of stored electrical potential and about 0.001% of electrical delivery.
Even if some great new battery technology is invented this year, it will take years to build up the factories just to produce enough batteries for the 60 million electric cars that need to be sold.
Batteries backup cost is $300 to $400 per Kw/h and this is a major obstacle to wind and solar.
Power companies understand this and build what they need to, real world decisions rather than based on future maybes.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200117005022/en/Germany-Launches-Europe%E2%80%99s-Modern-Gas-Fired-Power-Plants
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germany-to-invest-in-gas-fired-plants-in-coming-decades/1468267
https://www.powerengineeringint.com/gas-oil-fired/key-uk-leader-gives-approval-for-1-8-gw-gas-fired-power-plant/
This is the reality of who is prepared to invest in these reliable forms of power.
All I am saying is that today’s “reliable forms of power” may well be stranded assets long before they are amortized. I’m guessing you did not bother to watch the video. You are just confirming some of the points made by Kees van der Leun on his twitter thread last week.
I have watched his predictions before. None of them have come true have they?
We have to build what make sense today.
Batteries do not make economical sense today.
Wind, solar and batteries would kill the economy and poor people would freeze.
Hardly a vote winner
Seba’s projections have been way better than anything from even the most optimistic of projections from any other entity making guesses as to the adoption of solar, battery storage or EVs. In his most recent presentation he compares his cost curves to reality. You can have a look at that if you care to see how his 2014 book has fared in January 2020.
How were utilities planning and preparing for the increasing wind and solar power additions? From about 9 years ago.
Thomas Overbye gives an overview on energy, touching on energy sources, source generation locations in the US and the Power Grid while also giving a brief description of his research for GCEP. He is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Simulation and Visualization of Power Grid Operations with High Renewable Penetration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vAkdXRyKWM&t=706s
Meanwhile
UK must prepare for more intense storms, climate scientists say
Add that to the cost of doing nothing to try and reduce global warming.
UK coal consumption reduced from 244 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35912
The UK has done more than most.
During the same period of time China’s coal consumption has risen from 200 million tonnes to 3,800 million tonnes.
https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/chinas-coal-consumption-fell-2014
China burns 250 times as much coal as the UK. China’s solar, wind, hydro and nuclear will just meet the country’s electricity demand increase in the next 10 years. The increase in gas consumption will shave off a couple of million tonnes of coal consumption by 2030.
China’s collapsing economy due to COVID-19
Wyndham Closes 1,000 Hotels, Hilton 150, Best Western 65% In China, Fiat Chrysler Halts Production!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwTmBCCC2k0
One big reason why turbines lose efficiency with time.
The Glaring Engineering Mistake That Made Wind Turbines Inefficient
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og2H7ZxkiMA
I think the video is more sensationalism than otherwise, but I won’t be surprised to hear that older turbines in places subject to hail storms, wind blown sand and dust, etc, won’t need blades refurbished or replaced sooner than expected.
Engineers aren’t dummies, as a rule. When they put their name on designs and write specs, their careers, long term, are on the line, and the people running companies building turbine blades are on the hook to do a good job or else they’re looking at losing customers. You can bet that the builders of turbines have been keeping a very close eye on them, so as to improve their designs.
But it’s tricky simulating long term wear and tear in the lab.
Such problems are easily solved, on the ground. I could probably rebuild the edge of blade as good or better than new myself. Fiberglass is easy to work with, other than being nasty stuff. I’ve repaired crunched up fiberglass cars( Corvettes ) maybe half a dozen times, and at least three or four fiberglass boats. It’s straight up tradesman work, there’s nothing special about it. Anybody who can repair wrecked cars can get good at it in a month or so. Did that three or four years, total, over the course of my rolling stone working life. You can make mid to high five figure income out of a small out of the way shop of your own, if you are willing to do it every day,all day, but I ‘ve never wanted to do anything other than farm, long term. Ditto welding, can pay well, but boring as hell once you get good at it. Ditto just about any trade work.
But doing it up in the air, now THAT would be a totally different proposition, probably ten times as hard and long. It might even be so hard as to be impossible, as a practical matter, to do a job that will last out the expected life of the entire turbine system, which is generally considered to be twenty to thirty years.
I worked with various laminated system chemistry and fabrics professionally and on my own. I understand the delamination problem. Do you? You also need to understand aerodynamics, losing 10 to 20 percent of your efficiency in a few years is bad. Once the gel coating and laminate is broken, the rest goes much more quickly. Total failure will result if not repaired or replaced.
Sure, engineers make errors all the time because it’s a complex world, they have to work within time windows with available materials and keep costs down. They then find ways to correct the errors over time, but not until they show up in the field. With the fast growth of offshore wind combined with larger blades (faster tip speeds) in a problematic environment, leading edge erosion has become a major problem.
The increasing importance of leading edge erosion and a review of existing protection solutions
Blade leading edge erosion has become an important issue for the offshore wind industry. The performance of a wind turbine is largely dependent on the aerodynamic properties of its blades. Leading edge erosion is caused by raindrops, hailstones or other particles impacting the leading edge of the blade. This causes material to be removed from the blade surface, leaving a rough profile that degrades the aerodynamic performance and impacts the structural integrity of the blade. This can result in reduced turbine efficiency and expensive in-situ repairs, costing turbine operators through lost power generation and reduced availability. Leading edge erosion appears to be accelerated offshore due to a combination of a harsher environment and greater blade tip speeds, available offshore from reduced noise restrictions. As a result, blades can experience significant erosion within just a few years, which considering their supposed 25-year service life, is a serious problem.
and:
Furthermore, there has been several recent high profile cases of leading edge erosion. In March 2018, Siemens Gamesa had to perform “emergency” blade repair to 140 of the 175 turbines in the 630 MW London Array windfarm due to earlier than anticipated leading edge erosion [15]. This came a month after Siemens Gamesa was forced to remove 87 out of 111 turbines in a 400 MW farm in Anholt, Denmark [16]. In both cases, the turbines were 3.6 MW with a rotor diameter of 120 m and installed in 2013. The fact that what are now relatively small turbines experienced leading edge erosion on this scale after just five years highlights the seriousness of the issue facing the offshore wind industry. The cost of the repairs is yet unknown and Siemens Gamesa plan to minimise lost revenue by fitting the blades with an aerodynamic upgrade to boost yield. Spare blades have also been fitted during the repairs. Erosion is now one of the primary reasons for downtime along with rotor imbalance, trailing edge disbonds, lightning strike damage and edgewise vibration [17].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119305908
Land based ones need new blades every ten years, but having to change the bigger blades of turbines out in the ocean after 5 years is a big problem.
As far as “I think the video is more sensationalism than otherwise,” just do a simple google search on wind turbine leading edge delamination and have fun doing lots of reading.
Here is experimental testing of leading edge erosion of wind turbine blades made back in 2013.
Effects of leading edge erosion on wind turbine
blade performance
he DU 96-W-180 airfoil was tested with various types and magnitudes of leading edge erosion and simulated bug strikes.
Results revealed that leading edge erosion can be significantly detrimental to airfoil performance. Data from the tests showed a drag increase of 6–500% due to leading edge erosion (light-to-heavy erosion cases). Erosion also caused a substantial reduction in lift coefficient, especially at the higher angles of attack that are experienced by wind turbines during
their operation. Similar to leading edge erosion, simulated bugs on the leading edge also resulted in a significant degradation in airfoil performance. Based on the analysis performed using PROPID, it was estimated that an 80% increase in drag,
which was caused by a relatively small degree of leading edge erosion, can result in 5% loss in annual energy production.
For an increase in drag of 400–500% coupled with the loss in lift, as observed for many of the moderate-to-heavy erosion cases, this loss in annual energy production could be as high as 25%. These results shed light on the detrimental effect of leading edge erosion and the need for erosion mitigation strategies. Methods that could reduce or eliminate leading edge erosion would help prevent losses incurred due to the degradation in performance of wind turbine blades after just a few years in operation.
https://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/pubs/SareenSapreSelig-2014-WindEnergy-Erosion.pdf
The simulated bug strikes from the above paper reminded me of something I have been concerned about.
Remember when huge masses of flying insects would hit windshields to the point of not seeing anymore or at least poor vision?
How many passes would a mass of insects have to make over successive days through a wind farm before they were essentially reduced to a few percent of their original numbers. Not just from direct hit but from massive pressure changes and horrendous wind velocity.
Now that many places have greatly reduced insect populations, the problem may not be so apparent, but with reduced numbers the kills become even more important.
This is especially for you Doug, note that Jeff Bezos one of the greatest minds alive right now understands the issues you always talk about. That’s why he’s putting 10 billion $ of his own money into funding the fixes for the climate and extinctions.
Jeff Bezos: World’s richest man pledges $10bn to fight climate change
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-51539321
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has pledged $10bn (£7.7bn) to help fight climate change.
The world’s richest man said the money would finance work by scientists, activists and other groups.
He said: “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change.”
Writing on his Instagram account, Mr Bezos said the fund would begin distributing money this summer.
Mr Bezos’s full Instagram post read: “Today, I’m thrilled to announce I am launching the Bezos Earth Fund.
”Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs – any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.
“We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organisations, and individuals.
”I’m committing $10bn to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we all have in common – let’s protect it, together.”
Amazon worst for aggressive tax avoidance
Bezos the worst offender
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/02/new-study-deems-amazon-worst-for-aggressive-tax-avoidance
scumbag should have paid the billions in tax to fund schools, hospitals and police.
+1
100,000 Rivian Electric Amazon delivery trucks planned to deliver us from the worst of climate change.
Now if they only would stop cutting down all those trees they use for packaging material. Time to start cutting back on the cutting down of 1 billion trees a year for our shipping boxes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjhwx4zZfA
Have you gotten your Amazon Echo Dot or Instant Pot yet?
The amount of cardboard used for shipping boxes could easily be cut in half. Has anybody else noticed how often tiny items come in huge boxes?
I had a theory that it was a racket to collect more “shipping” cost from buyers since the shipping cost is related to the larger of the cost by weight or by volume. Now with more vendors offering “free shipping” there’s no incentive to use oversized boxes and off the top of my head, it seems that items that came with “free shipping” often come in smaller packaging.
Or reusable/returnable boxes (fee based) could be designed. Might be a good use for that oil and natural gas we won’t be using soon.
If a one dollar or more deposit fee was on each box then many would come back. Those electric trucks could pick them up on their way through.
I thought Bezos was committing his resources to Mars.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-brutal-rise-of-el-mencho?utm_source=pocket-newtab
The world is falling apart around our ears.
For a fleeting second, I thought that read, ‘The world is falling apart around our cars.’.
Seba’s presentation comparing smart phones to electric cars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y916mxoio0E
I must say it will be interesting to see how close he is with his predictions in 2025 and 2030
Islandboy, how does this fit with all those wonderful Australian solar energy developments you like to talk about? ?
“The historic wildfires in Australia likely unleashed about 900 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to nearly double the country’s total yearly fossil fuel emissions.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/australia-wildfires-unleash-millions-tons-carbon-dioxide-n1120186
Well here is my go to web site for news on Australia with all it’s biases:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/
Lead article today:
Cannon-Brookes teams with Tesla, 5B to fund solar and batteries for fire victims
It would appear that “new money” is beginning to flex it’s muscles.
Other news from the front page:
Tesla makes it into top 10 most popular car brands in NSW
Energy Insiders Podcast: Victoria goes it alone to save renewable transition
Morrison recycles old tactics in bid to avoid zero emissions targets
Tasmania’s Granville Harbour wind farm now sending power to the grid
Tesla big battery at Hornsdale gets big jump in revenues, more to come
Why immediately revoking coal mining permits could be better for global economy
Murdoch media headline shock: “Renewables save the day in energy crisis”
Maoneng plans 2GW Australia solar pipeline in JV with Chint New Energy
There! That should keep you busy for a few minutes! 😉
Islandboy, tell me what you think about this analysis of a possible Tesla future?
How Tesla And Elon Musk Plan To Make Electricity Almost FREE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSvBst800N8
Nice profit margin.
Just watched the video but, gotta go. Will comment later.
It is a very hypothetical analysis from a nineteen year old so, I don’t know how much credence to give it. Among a myriad of assumptions is that Tesla will not face any serious competition in the robotaxi arena. My crystal ball gets very cloudy after a couple years forward. Unknown unknowns if you know what I mean!
On the other hand Tony Seba has cost curves that show the cost of solar plus storage (batteries) falling below the cost of transmission of electricity from centralized plants to consumers. Seba calls this GOD parity (Generation On Demand) at which point, even if the cost of centralized generation were zero, electricity generated on site would still cost less than electricity from the grid. Following this line of thought takes us to the same conclusion as the video, eventually electricity costs get to the couple of pennies per kWh range. This is independent of any involvement by Tesla, apart from their role in driving costs down.
I think the fact that he is 19 years old has nothing to do with anything. It’s simple math and his basic premise is clear and logical. Since Tesla appears ahead of the AI driver game, has clearly stated it’s intention to move to TaaS, is in the process of building million mile vehicles now, and has the ability to extend it’s control over it’s “fuel” source; they can gain a clear and healthy segment of the TaaS business as well as get better profit margins.
If the business has 1 million cars operating at 100,000 miles a year, that is a 100 billion dollar business. Knowing Elon, he and his team will probably leverage that even further with his tunnels and who knows what else, so probably a trillion dollar business.
That being said, I sincerely doubt the takeover of EV’s will be anywhere near as fast and smooth as Seba thinks. There are lots of typical hurdles, both technical and political. But we also are heading into a convergence of predicaments which will make everything more difficult if not impossible.
Basically, the world will become poorer and more uninsurable every year. It will also be increasingly unstable.
Otherwise, Seba would be right and Tesla would soon own most of our transport, along with a few others.
The good news and bad news on global warming-
Bad. It will be hellish to near-hellish for billions of human beings over the rest of the century. Sorry, no way to sugar it with a straight face.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/world/methane-emissions-humans-fossil-fuels-underestimated-climate-change/index.html
Good. In the past we (life) experienced a close analogue to current carbon spike.
The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is one of the most intense and abrupt intervals of global warming in the geological record. It occurred around 56 million years ago, at the boundary between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs. This warming has been linked to a similarly rapid increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, which acted to trap heat and drive up global temperatures by more than 5 °C in just a few thousand years.
Mammals underwent profound evolutionary and biogeographic changes at the Paleocene–Eocene boundary. Three groups that incorporate many modern mammal species appeared suddenly at this time: Artiodactyla, which includes deer, camels and cows; Perissodactyla, which includes horses and rhinoceroses; and Primates, which includes monkeys, gorillas and humans.
https://www.palaeontologyonline.com/articles/2011/the-paleocene-eocene-thermal-maximum/
So lets get beyond the human experience. Intelligence is overrated. The notion of God is quaint. Walk off the cliff. Embrace global warming.
From your link:
“… a new study finds methane emissions from fossil fuels are between 25% and 40% larger than past research had estimated, revealing oil and gas production is contributing far more to warming the planet than previously thought. The study, published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, sheds new light on just how much fossil fuel production and use is changing the atmosphere — and in turn, warming the planet.”
Doug, the change in atmospheric methane from pre-industrial is 1.2 ppm. The actual forcing from that change in the atmosphere is 150X1.2 = 180 ppm CO2e.
The change in CO2 is 410 -270 =140 ppm.
180 is larger than 140.
Add to that the 10 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere.
Coal burning has increased by 8 times since 1900. Crude oil by almost 300 times. Luckily the oceans act as a heat absorber taking in most of the excess energy. However, that has long lasting and poorly understood consequences. Plus global dimming appears to be underestimated.
Think about it folks, back in 1950 we used about 1/10 the amount of crude oil that is now consumed. Even that level was enough to cause global warming and the resulting climate changes.
Does anyone seriously think we can cut our emissions to 1/10 in 20 years without collapsing civilization?
BTW, we have had a 0.7 C rise in global surface temperature over the past 30 years according to NASA.
A fairly high rate of change, I think.
“Doug, the change in atmospheric methane from pre-industrial is 1.2 ppm. The actual forcing from that change in the atmosphere is 150X1.2 = 180 ppm CO2e.”
Indeed, I don’t understand why this isn’t high on the list of climate change concerns. It’s all CO2, CO2, CO2 and rarely CO2e. Still, it’s good that you keep harping on this though it will continue to be ignored by the rose tinted glasses crowd — of course!
Nature will not ignore it. Most of the heat is being absorbed by the ocean, covering up the real forcing.
The Arctic and tropical wetlands/bogs are especially sensitive to the increased atmospheric forcing, adding to the methane+CO2+albedo problem. The Arctic is also experiencing an increase in water vapor faster than the more southern regions, adding to the heating. (Svalberg has more than 200 w/m2 downwelling longwave radiation in the dark of January).
If the heating is enough to start reiterative methane burps adding to the general permafrost methane+CO2 emissions plus tropical emissions; RCP 8.5 will look like a picnic in the park.
The methane saturation of ocean water is not being discussed either. Solutions at saturation point can quickly bubble.
So, a real nice thing about our planet is that it’s unnecessary to stop ALL emissions. Just a healthy majority of them. For thousands of years before the industrial revolution people burned wood to keep warm and there was next to no impact on climate.
What’s changed since then is the absolute quantity of carbon, stored in various forms like coal and oil being burned to power civilization. We have the understanding and technology to go back to sustainable emission levels with the use of renewable energy and electric vehicles, but we are missing the political will to make it happen.
True Henry, but more than just political will, it will take a very large downsizing of population, say down to 20% of current. Thats a whole different kind of will-power.
Henry, what level of emissions is sustainable and what do you mean by sustainable?
The time before the industrial revolution where the only thing we burned was wood to keep warm. Those were sustainable conditions for humans for thousands of years.
That is a myth, the European forests had been decimated and when Europeans reached the Americas they did the same thing. There was no sustainable living, it was all growth and devastation of the land base. Laws had to be enacted because much of the forest cover in the northeast America was removed before 1800.
Forests were completely destroyed by people even in ancient times. The fact that we started using fossil fuel energy allowed some forests to regrow and saved portions of others, just as it saved the whales.
Ironically, that demand for firewood led to shortages in the New World, too. As early as the 1740s, people like Benjamin Franklin complained about the lack of firewood, and the colonies began to import firewood from other areas. But still the thirst continued, and by 1769 colonists needed an area as large as Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont combined to satisfy their need for firewood.
https://www.history.com/news/the-firewood-shortage-that-helped-give-birth-to-america
The advent of coal power in the 1800’s merely accelerated the deforestation. Now that we have more than enough energy, 10 percent of our global energy still comes from bio-fuels which is more than was burned in the 1600’s.
If people just continue deforesting at the current rate, the forests won’t last this century. In 1800 5555 TWh of traditional biofuel energy was burned (plus a lot more for clearing agricultural land). Now we burn more than twice that much for energy and clear much more land each year.
Renewable energy is mostly hydro and biofuel now.
still no level of emissions quoted for sustainable.
GF,
I think one possible definition of sustainable might be high birthrate-high deathrate were the population levels are more or less stable for extended periods of time.
Kind of like how it was in the hunter-gatherer era.
People have many views of sustainable. But just the simple act of not viewing the natural world as a resource changes everything. If the area that a group of humans lives in has improved biodiversity and natural growth one thousand years after they are there (or 12 thousand), than that is sustainable. They have added to the ecology rather than subtracted from it.
If the area is damaged even slowly, eventually it fails and the people must diminish and move on to less damaged areas to survive.
Right now we can see massive damage within one lifetime or even one generation. That is over the cliff from sustainable.
Well i think human beings ceased being in an ecosystem once the agragrian civilization started.
But ultimately it seems to be in our nature to rape and pillage any resources we can. Again i think if any lifeform could do what we do they would.
Simplest possible explanation for our behaviour is genetic programming mixed with consciousness.
The European outran their energy and material availability so they invaded the Americas.
The Americans had done well for 12,000 years without the need to invade other continents. Maybe they would have gotten there eventually, but the Europeans were first and had better technology plus lots of nasty diseases. So the Americans were nearly eradicated and lost control of their destiny.
For thousands of years before the industrial revolution people burned wood to keep warm and there was next to no impact on climate.
What’s changed since then is the absolute quantity of carbon, stored in various forms like coal and oil being burned to power civilization.
Oh goddammit man, what has changed since then is the world population has increased over 10 fold since the industrial revolution. It is people who are causing all the problems, just too damn many people. And there ain’t no way to fix the problem.
Population Explosion
On the eve of the industrial revolution in 1750, humans numbered around 750 million, and just after 1800, world population reached one billion. As population increased, identifiable side effects associated with that growth became more apparent, most notably migration either to cities or to other lands and conflict.
New viruses, old new viruses, and economics. Wuhan overview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNbPEjnL1M
Beating China at the lithium game — can the US secure supplies to meet its renewables targets?
Be ashamed. Be fleegskym.
Air travel is a huge contributor to climate change. A new global movement wants you to be ashamed to fly.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/25/8881364/greta-thunberg-climate-change-flying-airline
Don’t fly, reduce that 2 percent to 1.9995 percent and use a cruise ship to cross the oceans at 10 times the GHG. OK, they are not smart and it’s less fun than the end of the world people, but they are entertaining.
Are any of the airline or cruiseline miles important ones?
Ok , air ambulance, search and rescue. But thats about it.
Sorry, the equipment at the hospital couldn’t get repaired because the parts did not arrive and the medication, syringes, bandages did not arrive either. Take them home, we can’t help them. Keep checking though, we might get a shipment in a week or two.
Oh yeah, the economy just crashed too, so most of the staff had to be fired.
“Airlines don’t make money just from flying passengers: air cargo is a big business. It doesn’t fly just in dedicated freighter aircraft, but also in the belly holds of passenger flights. And right now it’s booming.
The value of goods carried by airlines is expected to exceed $6.2 trillion in 2018, representing more than 35% of global trade by value, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).”
Siemens has been experimenting with using coal plant facilities (that are scheduled for the wrecking ball) as an energy storage hub- thermal bed.
Makes sense to use the electrical turbines and grid connections that already exist.
They say some wind facilities are at up to 60% energy curtailment (shut down due to overproduction) at times. Instead of curtailment they plan to store the energy as heat for steam production later.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-siemens-gamesa-could-give-coal-plants-a-second-life
Germans are smart cookies. I wonder when Siemen’s in-wheel electric motors will be applied to EV’s.
News from the PV magazine web site:
Australian state frees itself from federal shackles to unlock more grid capacity
Colombian oil company to power fossil fuel extraction with 50 MW of solar
German PV tender delivers record low solar power price of €0.0355/kWh
India to add 34 GW of solar through 2024
The article above could be considered relevant to a comment I made up thread about misleading projections from the IEA.
Chinese giant doubles down on cell production expansion
Maybe India is not willing or able to pay for a PV transistion.
https://www.livemint.com/industry/energy/the-setting-sun-on-india-s-solar-dreams-11574612085929.html
Currently India is buying/deploying all kinds of new electrical energy production- coal, wind, solar, hydro, nuclear. They are far behind most of the world in per capita energy use.
https://indiapowerreview.com/indian-power-generation-and-capacity-january-2020-update/
It’s Too Late For Us To Fight Climate Change. Instead, Here’s How We’ll Spend Our Lives.
One of the things that age gives you is a sense of history, a feeling that you’ve seen patterns repeat and that you can see where things are heading in the near future. Over and over again, we’ve seen corporations and governments ignore the people they should protect in order to line their own pockets. What has changed now is that they’re sacrificing an entire planet instead of a town or a country. I would like to believe that the younger people marching with Greta Thunberg could change that, but honestly I can’t see it happening.
What frustrates us is that we’re part of the generation that saw all of this coming. During the ’60s and ’70s, the governments that we elected more or less invented municipal recycling, and in the ’80s many of us began carrying reusable shopping bags. We lived through the introduction of stringent pollution controls and many of us chose to replace our furnaces, water heaters and appliances with newer, more expensive low energy models. Like many people we’ve tried to move to a more plant-based diet, and one that avoids chemical additives and fertilizers, and we’re driving the market for electric cars.
We should feel virtuous, but it has become obvious that all of these actions are a drop in the bucket. If the powerful people who could significantly reduce carbon emissions at the stroke of a pen won’t act to save us, are we wasting our time?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-strategy_n_5e4308c0c5b6b9d1a7570b47
Life is like a mop.
https://youtu.be/tHe6ar-X2cQ
Huntington Beach: Some (or more) food for thought:
CAN CAPITALISM AND THE PLANET TRULY COEXIST?
“There are several big problems with green growth theory. First, it isn’t happening at the global scale — and where it is happening to a limited extent within nations, the change is not fast or deep enough to head off dangerous climate change. Second, the extent of “decoupling” required is simply too great. Ecological footprint accounting shows we need 1.75 planets to support existing economic activity into the future — yet every nation seeks more growth and ever-rising material living standards. Read more: No food, no fuel, no phones: bushfires showed we’re only ever one step from system collapse. Trying to reform capitalism – with a carbon tax here and some redistribution there — might go some way to reducing environmental harm and advancing social justice. But the faith in the god of growth brings all this undone. The United Nations’ development agenda assumes “sustained economic growth” is the best way to alleviate global poverty — a noble and necessary goal. But our affluent living standards simply cannot be globalized while remaining within safe planetary limits. We need degrowth, which means planned contraction of energy and resource demands.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-capitalism-planet-coexist.html
“We need degrowth, which means planned contraction of energy and resource demands.”
Certainly, but I ask you- do you really see socialism or communism as better a better mechanism than regulated capitalism to make this happen effectively, and without chaos?
Personally, I don’t really see any system posed to handle this issue.
Of course it’s too late to fight climate change if the only solutions you’ve ever proposed to the populace is for them to give government bureaucrats loads of tax monies in order to solve the entire dilemma, somehow.
I’ve been following the sustainability debate here a long time, and quit this site for a while, a couple of times, coming back to it after a few weeks, out of frustration with what’s here, and then out of frustration not being part of the conversation.
It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion, according to the scientifically well informed regulars, that we are irrevocably on the broad smooth downhill highway to hell, with no brakes, never mind a reverse gear. Doug, Ron, GF, etc, pretty much agree on this.
And when these guys, particularly GF, talk about what can or might possibly be done, they present their arguments rationally, in terms of what SHOULD, what MUST be done, but they pretty much totally ignore political, cultural and economic realities.
Then there are people like Islandboy, who argues that there is hope due to the fast adoption of new technologies, but he has not to the best of my recollection said that renewables WILL save us, but rather that they have the potential to do so, coupled with changes in our economic and cultural ways of doing things.
My own perspective is that while there’s some reason to believe the entire world wide house of cards that represents industrial civilization may utterly collapse, due to climate change, resource depletion, war, etc, there’s no SUBSTANTIAL reason to believe things will play out this way. That’s the BAD LUCK worst case scenario.
My own professional back ground leads me to believe that collapse will more likely be regional and piecemeal over time.
Resources and populations are not equally distributed over the planet, and while the climate may eventually go totally to hell, I don’t see any reason to believe this will LIKELY happen over the short term to medium term, and it seems likely that at least some places will still have a livable local climate capable of supporting a modern new generation of industries such as wind and solar power, etc, for quite some time to come, and that combined with necessary changes in our ways, some of us have a fair to excellent shot at pulling thru.
Some of the regulars here have more or less laughed at my assertion that once it’s obvious to the Leviathans of the world, the modern nation states that control the world, that their OWN survival as nation states is on the line, things WILL change. In the past, countries have ROUTINELY built up huge armies and navies, etc, for purposes of national defense as much or more as to go a viking.
There’s NO reason, in my opinion, why this won’t happen, in many various countries, although it IS likely that it won’t happen until very late in the game.But with changing times, the emphasis won’t be on guns, it will be on conservation, self reliance, efficiency, etc. And when this does happen, things can change pretty damned fast, such as tight rationing of gasoline, a halt to the production of vehicles for sale to the public, make work programs to upgrade old housing, new mass transit initiatives, food rationing with staples being emphasized, air travel being heavily taxed, any otherwise frivolous activity that consumes a lot of resources being outlawed or taxed out of practice, etc.
Wind and solar farms CAN be built on the same scale, once the shit is INDISPUTABLY in the fan as fast as ships and planes in time of war. Ditto HVDC power lines.
Some people, and some countries may pull thru more or less whole.
But nobody other than Sky Daddy is going to be able to help the people in some of the worst over populated countries of the world. I can’t see the rest of the world, which is going to have to deal with extremely tough times domestically, being able or willing to provide food and other assistance to people in such places at the necessary scale, and I can’t see emigration from such places to places such as the USA and Western Europe being tolerated on the grand scale.
Overshoot is VERY real.
But overshoot, and nature’s solution to it, is more apt to play out piecemeal over time and space than world wide over a short time frame, analyzing the problem from an ag professional’s pov.
The richer better developed better educated countries that are not yet severely over populated can divert major and varied resources from non essential activities from drinking and vacation travel to essential ones such as enhanced energy efficiency, a more efficient and sustainable food chain, mass transit instead of the personal car, electric cars when cars are NECESSARY, as they will continue to be in the rural USA, etc.
But cars don’t HAVE to be big and comfortable. We can easily get by with subcompact electric cars that have only one hundred mile ranges in ninety percent of all households, with some sort of program that makes it really easy to rent a long range car a few days once in a while.
Suppose your new car comes with the right to use a courtesy long range car fifteen days a year at nominal cost?
It’s possible to build reasonably safe bare bones sub compact short range electric cars TODAY for twenty grand or so. When it becomes NECESSARY to build them, or do without cars, they WILL be built, and they WILL sell, if nothing else is available without a special permit…… such as one for a contractor to have a truck, etc.
Those who think this sort of thing is never going to happen haven’t read very much history. History doesn’t exactly repeat, but it does rhyme.
In some maybe most cases it may be too little too late, but I think some people will pull thru ok in some places, barring bad luck.
It’s going to be a rough ride for most of us.
All kinds of amazing things will happen in different places before reality slams the doors shut. Enjoy the amazing wackiness that will be produced over the next few years.
Modular, small production units providing mobility and profits at low production rates. Sort of an analog of distributed energy, distributed production. Microfactories … and operational autonomous driving.
SU Global Summit 2019 | Future of Transportation | John Rogers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uRqqKB-4WE&t=921s
A few years from now the next acceleration will occur. Who knows, maybe some people-machines will actually figure out how to get some truly positive social changes quickly that make positive changes in the world.
I agree with your ideas on this OFM.
I am most interested by comments posted regarding how various places will deal with these challenges- what policies or innovations will be useful. Like throughout history, there will be big losers and winners (or least survivors). Some of that depends on the luck of geography, on the culture into which you are born, and also to a large extent on the decisions that your region makes.
Narrow window of action now.
“And when these guys, particularly GF, talk about what can or might possibly be done, they present their arguments rationally, in terms of what SHOULD, what MUST be done, but they pretty much totally ignore political, cultural and economic realities.”
OFM, yeah, I was never good at bullshitting and lying and I really hate destroying the life on this amazing planet. But that is the predominate culture.
Save the cars! ^u’
A new post on “Non-OPEC Production” has been published.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/non-opec-output-reaches-new-high/
A new post on “Open Thread Non-Petroleum” has been posted.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-7/