EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – July 2018 Edition with data for May

islandboy Electric Power Monthly, non-fossil fuel

A Guest Post by Islandboy

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The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on July 24th, with data for May 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year to date.

With the US experiencing record warm temperatures during May 2018, net electricity generation increased 5.4% compared to the previous year, taking it outside the five year range for net generation in May by a similar amount. The absolute contribution from Solar continued to climb from it’s low in December rising from 8,833 GWh in April to 9,639 GWh, with the corresponding percentage contribution edging up to a new record closer to 3%, 2.98% as opposed to 2.92% in April. It is unlikely that the monthly contribution from solar will actually hit 3% this year since the peak contribution from solar is usually in May. Nuclear power generated 67,320 GWh, 13.9% more than it did in April and despite the increase in total generation, the percentage contribution to the total actually edged up to 19.86% from 19.55% in April. This year, the contribution from All Renewables outstripped Nuclear for the first time in April as opposed to March in 2017. In May, the contribution from All Renewables at 19.91% barely stayed above that from Nuclear at 19.86%, unlike May 2017 when the contribution from All Renewables exceeded that from Nuclear by 1.69%. The amount of electricity generated by Wind decreased by about 12.5%, (3,352 GWh) and that, coupled with the increased total generation, resulted in the percentage contribution declining from 8.85% to 6.9%. The contribution from Hydro increased 2,676 Gwh (9.69%) in absolute terms with the increase in total generation resulting in the percentage contribution actually decreasing to 8.93% from 9.14% in April. The combined contribution from Wind and Solar decreased to 9.88% from 11.78% in April. The contribution from Non-Hydro Renewables also decreased to 10.98% from 12.89%. The contribution of zero emission and carbon neutral sources, that is, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, landfill gas and other biomass decreased to 39.77% from 41.58% in April.

The graph below helps to illustrate how the changes in absolute production affect the percentage contribution from the various sources.

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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. The scale on the y axes has been adjusted to display TWh instead of GWh as suggested by Dennis to make the comparison a little easier. In May 2018 the output from solar at 10,090 GWh, was 3.77 times what it was four years ago in May 2014. In the past couple of reports, I stated that, if the summer output continues to follow recent trends, close to 12,000 GWh should be generated in a single month from solar energy some time this coming summer but, with solar energy peaking in the month of the summer solstice, June or possibly in July, it is looking like the peak monthly output for 2018 is likely to be closer to 11,000 GWh.

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The graph below shows the monthly capacity additions for 2018. In May Solar added 12.59 percent and and Natural Gas contributed 87.06 percent of new capacity for a joint contribution of 99.65 percent. No new capacity from Wind was registered in May. 5.5 MW of new capacity came from Batteries (0.167%) with another 6 MW (0.18%) coming from Petroleum Liquids. In May 2018 the total added capacity reported was 3300 MW, almost six times more than the 562.1 MW added in May 2017.

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The chart below shows the monthly capacity retirements so far for 2018. In May, unlike in January and April, months in which almost all the retired capacity was coal fired, the vast majority of the retirements were fueled by natural gas. Of the 1207.6 MW of capacity that was retired, 90.3 percent (1090.6 MW) was a result of the retirement of two natural gas steam turbine (NGST) powered facilities, one 640 MW plant in California and one 450 MW NGST facility in New Jersey. These plants were probably uneconomic to operate, under pressure from newer, much more efficient combined cycle gas turbine plants.

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Following the report on the edition of the EPM with data for March, there was some discussion about coal consumption for the production of electricity. At the request of peakoilbarrel.com member Shyam, I am including a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production.

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176 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – July 2018 Edition with data for May”

  1. George – (continued from previous thread)

    I know not about cosmology, or much else for that matter, but have played with neutron star physics (math) for many years. It fascinates me. I, and others, suspect some, if not all, of these stars have a “core” composed of quark-gluon plasma. Given high baryon densities and relatively low temperatures found in neutron stars any quark matter would degenerate into a Fermi liquid of weakly interacting quarks.

    This liquid ‘may’ be characterized by a condensation of colored quark Cooper pairs, thereby breaking the local SU(3) symmetry. Because quark Cooper pairs harbor color charge, such a phase of quark matter would be superconductive, that is, color charge would be able to pass through it with no resistance. This should (might?) be reflected in magnetic fields, and associated jets — especially magnetar jets. The postulated phase boundary between mantle neutrons and a quark core makes for some tricky but fun math. Makes one miss a great partner who was far less challenged by these kinds of problems than I am.

    On another (one more to the point) topic, I hope (and expect) you will continue to enlighten this Blog with your deep insights. Although I spent 35 plus years as an engineer-geologist-geophysicist in the resource extraction business, it no longer holds any interest, none. All my friends who worked on the North Slope and Asia are long ago retired – or dead. I do regret all the marine wildlife I upset (or murdered) while managing seismic surveys but am thankful for having been paid to see most of the world. I am disgusted that the (former) wildlife reserve in Alaska will now be ruined by oil companies — and it will.

    Once again, please continue providing your insightful comments here. I no longer have anything useful to contribute so will take a new path and see where it leads. My Grandson is being home-schooled and is fascinated by everything; cloud chambers, etc. Perhaps that is a good use of my time?

    Cheers,

    2. Doug – I don’t know what that neutron star stuff means on anything but a superficial level but without question the world is a better place because there are people who do. I hope you find the time and inclination to keep posting here, I usually check out the comments and links if I see your name in the list of recent posts and/or if scrolling through when visiting the non-hydrocarbon thread. Good luck with the home schooling.

      1. ps – one of the things that would be elegant for quantum field theory is if all four forces turned out to be different manifestations on the same thing (or maybe gravity would still be separate as it defines space and time and the others don’t). In the neutron star it looks like things might be stripped down to only strong force and gravity, so is it providing any evidence in that direction?

    3. DougL,

      Yes, that is a good use of your time.

      There can be no better use of time than to support and nurture the interest of children in everything around them. Your doing that would even excuse your no longer posting here but I for one hope that is not something you would consider. Stay with us, my friend. What you offer, no one else does.

  2. Is there a reliable source for how much rooftop solar electricity is generated? I realize that here you are discussing utility sources, but my solar panels in a grid tied system probably don’t register for my utility in the same way that the utility’s generation does.

    Thanks for putting this together every month–I always look forward to it.

    1. The information I present on the EPM includes the estimated solar output as found in Table 1.1. Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors) under the column heading “Estimated Total Solar”. That same table has a column headed “Estimated Solar Photovoltaic” which I expect is as good as you’re going to get.

      The graph below is one I used to post before I put together the graph that shows the total output versus the contribution from solar. It uses data from Table 1.1.A. Net Generation from Renewable Sources: Total (All Sectors) that breaks solar output into utility scale PV, thermal and estimated PV output. Since the estimated PV output for May is a little under a third of the utility scale output, I believe leaving out the estimated output would not give a true indication of the impact that solar is having on the electric power markets. I don’t see how ignoring a quarter of the energy delivered by a particular source would be useful.

      Some data on the breakdown between utility scale, commercial/industrial and residential can be obtained from the Solar Energy Industries Association. They put out press releases on the installation activity each quarter the, latest of which (dated June 12, 2018) is titled US Solar Market Adds 2.5 GW of PV in Q1 2018, Growing 13% Year-Over-Year. On their Resources page they have a link to a Solar Industry Research Data page (titled “Solar Industry Data Overview”) that contains lots of information with many charts and a few maps.

      Hope that helps.

      1. Thanks for that….so the estimate of total solar looks 50% higher than the reported PV from utility scale. Thanks for the links too.

  3. Over on the oil side Exxon is claiming about 4.5 trillion barrels of recoverable C+C as of 2016. . Plenty to get through the century and beyond.
    Nice to know they are thinking of us. 🙁

  4. To look at electric power is very important. The whole world assumes that there will be a smooth transition to electric cars. But few have calculated where the primary power will come from. In Australia, for example, the power supply situation on the East Coast is in a mess as a result of a decade-long toxic political debate about global warming and renewable energy

    20/7/2018
    Sydney go on your rooftops and save power for 3 million new immigrants
    http://crudeoilpeak.info/sydney-go-on-your-rooftops-and-save-power-for-3-million-new-immigrants

    16/3/2018
    NSW coal power maxed out in hot summer (part 2)
    http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-coal-power-maxed-out-in-hot-summer-part-2

    14/3/2018
    NSW coal power maxed out in hot summer (part 1)
    http://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-coal-power-maxed-out-in-hot-summer-part-1

    11/3/2018
    Australia’s east coast solar generation is replacing coal by only 2% in late summer
    http://crudeoilpeak.info/australias-east-coast-solar-generation-is-replacing-coal-by-only-2-in-late-summer

    1. The whole world assumes that there will be a smooth transition to electric cars. But few have calculated where the primary power will come from.

      Shirley, you jest?!
      Most of the world doesn’t even know that hell is happening. Assuming civilization doesn’t go to hell in a hand basket first… Most people haven’t a clue or aren’t even aware that electric cars will totally disrupt the concept of private car ownership. Smooth transition?
      Not a snowball’s chance in hell of that.

      As a matter of fact, electric energy will disrupt all forms of transportation. Electric car batteries will be connected to form giant decentralized energy storage grids and all that energy will come from some renewable form. Wind, sun, tidal, wave, geothermal, hydropower etc… Fossil fuels will become stranded assets if not outlawed outright except for extreme circumstances.

      In Australia, for example, the power supply situation on the East Coast is in a mess as a result of a decade-long toxic political debate about global warming and renewable energy

      Yeah, well guess what?!

      BAU doesn’t work any more and will work even less as time goes by. Human population is increasing. Global warming aka climate change is a bitch! It causes all kinds of disruptions and may underlie future population disruptions and mass migrations that will make our current immigration fiascoes look like a walk in the park.

      We should have pushed hard towards renewables decades ago but instead we decided to collectively stick our heads in the sand and pretend fossil fuels were an infinite resource and that burning them had very few, if any, negative consequences.

      As far as toxic politics and politicians go, it might be time to bring Denis Diderot’s famous quote up to date a bit and into the present:

      “Men will never be free until the last authoritarian demagogue is strangled with the entrails of the last religious leader…

      Nope, most people won’t have a smooth transition to anything. Expect a rough ride ahead.

          1. Wow! Beckwith is very interesting. Guess I’d have to hope he is all wrong, but I don’t think that is the case. This train only has an old bicycle brake.

            The fires burning out here in Calif may be the new normal. It is hellish. I’m lucky to be out of the smoke zone, but it has been big and thick over a vast area.

            2. As a native Californian, born in the 1940’s, things are changing rapidly— I was on the North Coast recently, but currently have moved to Oregon — but things are changing rapidly there also.

            3. Look at the world you know
              Do you believe it will go on?
              Where do you want to go?
              The things we take will only last for so long
              (In the end)
              You know it’s up to you
              But love is not only but for the human
              (Oh man we are so many people)
              Living different lives under turbulent times
              (Oh man we don’t know good from evil)
              Looking through our eyes is the burden of our lives
              Say can we tell for sure
              The north and south will keep their snow on
              Say can the earth endure
              Do you really believe we can go on?
              (In the end)
              You know it’s up to you
              Love is not only but for the human

              http://www.metrolyrics.com/so-many-people-lyrics-simply-red.html

    2. Its surprising to those us who don’t live in Australia to see what a problem the country is having with electrical generation/supply, with all the resource available.

      In India, where coal from Australia makes up about 30% their coal consumption and coal contributes about 2/3rds of the total electricity, they may be running into a financial bank mess related to exposure to the coal fired electrical generation sector. At least according to this opinion piece- https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-01/india-s-bank-crisis-is-really-a-power-crisis

    3. Matt, since I don’t live in Australia as obviously you do, I can be very selective about the news and opinions that I get from your country. While there are disadvantages to that, the main advantage is that I am insulated from Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. media machine which I am inclined to believe is part of a global smear campaign against renewable energy and EVs. To back this up I present exhibit (a.1):

      The Relentlessly Negative Tesla Smear Campaign Is Accelerating

      A few years ago Tesla and Elon were the darlings of the media—eco-friendly, tech-savvy, hyper-innovative—the wave of the future. Now, if you were to believe the conventional wisdom as reported by the media, things have changed. Sure, there are still staunch defenders of the company, but the tsunami of news presented with a distinctly negative spin often drowns them out.

      The big question is why, and the answers I’ve seen are a little naïve and often overly-simplistic.

      Defenders of the company—and there are many—blame “the shorts” (investors who bet large sums on shorting TSLA in the hope that stock prices will fall) or “big oil” or “big auto”, recognizing that Tesla’s success represents a significant long-term threat to all of those constituencies.

      But they almost never talk about the mechanism that I believe is responsible for the negative news tsunami we’re seeing—a mechanism that CBS journalist, Sharyl Attkisson calls, “The Smear.” In her book, Attkisson describes a smear this way: “In simple terms, it’s an effort to manipulate opinion by promulgating an overblown, scandalous and damaging narrative … Paid forces devise clever, covert ways to shape the information landscape in ways you can’t imagine.”

      Attkisson is writing about a long-time practice of shady political operatives (on both sides of the aisle) working to manipulate the news. Yet regardless of politics, political beliefs, or controversy surrounding the book, it’s clear her comments are equally germane in the case of Tesla. I suspect that the smear we’re witnessing is a disinformation campaign conducted by professional smear shops who are experts at manipulating friendly members of the media and through them, the general public. And behind the smear shops, hidden from view, are paying clients who desire anonymity.

      But what are the explicit characteristics of a “smear,” and how can you learn to recognize them? As important, how do the shadowy figures who operate professional smear shops do their work?

      What would be the grounds for such a campaign one might ask? Does Tesla present an existential threat to any moneyed interests? I present exhibit (a.2)

      Tesla Model 3 Sales Rocket To New High In July, Sets Records

      In both May and June, Tesla Model 3 sales exceeded 6,000 units, but that’s tiny compared to the explosion of sales in July.

      The moment of true inclusion of electric cars in the mainstream is now here with the Model 3 blasting past all previous marks by leaps and bounds.

      How high was July?

      Well, instead of four-digit figures, we’re now in the fives.

      By our estimations, Tesla sold an astounding 14,250 Model 3s in July. Shocked? How can you not be? Of course, that’s the highest ever for sales of a single plug-in electric car in any month.

      That figure soundly beats the results from May and June combined (12,312) and propels the Model 3 into a lead for the year that won’t be challenged by any other car. The YTD tally now stands at an estimated 38,617, which moves the Model 3 into first place all-time in annual sales, ahead of the old record of 30,200 LEAFs sold in 2014. And remember, there are still 5 months left in the year.

      and from the comments section of the article, exibits (a.1.a and a.1.b):

      Comment from “Dante”

      This is US-only and Q2 numbers were confirmed by Tesla. What’s strange about July’s numbers is that the Model 3 is selling over seven times as quickly as its nearest EV competitor, much more than any luxury vehicle, and is now the 7th or 8th best selling car in the United States for July overall.

      It’s hard to overstate the effect. For example, Ford US car sales are down 12k YoY (-27%) and they don’t have a single car in the same ballpark as the Model 3 in sales. The Model 3 is also selling at a rate 3-4 times as the BMW 3-series in the US.

      Reply to “Dante” by Viking79

      Dante, you should probably add that if the numbers are accurate, they sold roughly the same number of Model 3 cars as BMW Group sold of all cars (not SUVs). That is they sold the same number (within 15 units) of Model 3 cars as BMW sold 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Z4, X1, X2, i3, and i8 combined…

      So, yeah, I’d imagine there are folks out there with a lot at stake who very much want this EV thing to go away.

      I’ve got to go out and do some tech support for a buddy of mine so I will continue with some stuff on how “the smear” relates to electricity generation in Australia. I fully subscribe to the idea of “the smear” since I believe it has been used against mega-dose vitamins (particularly C and D) by big pharma.

    4. Matt, continuing my arguments that you may be a victim of a global smear campaign against renewable energy and EV, I will now turn my attention to Australia specifically. It would appear that in Australia the “foxes” are officially “in charge of the hen house” in terms of the federal government. I base this on my reading of articles at reneweconomy.com.au over the past couple of years (maybe more). It’s pretty obvious that this site could be categorized as a “renewables cheerleader” but, the bias is overt so, I’m more comfortable with that than the covert operations of the FF advocacy, anti-renewables crowd.

      Full absurdity of National Energy Guarantee laid bare

      The full absurdity of the National Energy Guarantee has been laid bare by the final details of the proposed policy platform, its assumed and intended impact on large-scale renewables, and the Coalition response to it.

      The NEG, as we all know, has been conceived and tailored to satisfy one group – the influential band of climate deniers and technology skeptics sitting on the back bench and within the cabinet of the federal Coalition government.

      It promises to do little or nothing on emissions, it promises to stop investment in wind and solar in it tracks, and then promises, like magic, to deliver significant bill savings to consumers. And it is all based on modelling that is either incomplete, not released, or complete nonsense.

      Read our breaking story on the conditions the ACT has laid down for it to agree to the NEG

      It was fascinating to see how mainstream media on Thursday characterised what the NEG is designed to do following the release of the Energy Security Board’s “final detailed design” and the drip-feed of some more modelling.

      Both the ABC and The Australian pointed to the assumed doubling of the renewables share by 2030 (as a great achievement in the case of the ABC, and a very bad thing in the case of News Corp), while the AFR claimed that having no NEG would slow the pace of renewables.

      But all of these reports missed the point. The “doubling” of renewables trumpeted in the media refers almost exclusively to what is built over the next two years to meet the renewable energy target.

      The NEG itself is designed to bring new wind and solar development to a complete stop – the only difference is whether this occurs in 2021 (no-NEG) or in 2022 (with NEG).

      Even this is too much for the Coalition right wing, led by former prime minister Tony Abbott, who doesn’t want any more renewables in the system, doesn’t believe that prices will fall at all, and wants Australia out of the Paris climate agreement.

      “They say that there will be no new stations built, so in 50 years time it will be zero per cent reliance on coal but if we don’t rely on coal, what are we going to rely on?” Abbott said on 2GB radio

      “The problem is you cannot get renewable power 24/7, you just can’t. We call it renewable energy but we really should call it unreliable energy because it only works when the sun shines and the wind blows.”

      As I understand it the current Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull is no better than Abbott when it comes to his hostility to renewables. In this environment, where the federal government and the News Corp media outlets are hostile to renewables and apparently in the pockets of the FF extraction industries and the private owners of FF powered electricity generation assets, how is the Australian public to get a balanced view of the situation? Yet, despite this it seems that public opinion is still squarely in favour of renewables and individual state governments are in opposition to the federal government when it comes to energy policies. Tony Seba refers to this kind of resistance to disruption as “regulatory capture” where industries threatened with disruption basically buy governments and try to use government regulations to stymie the disruptors. It will not work.

      Let’s look at some other stories about renewables in Australia.

      CEFC helps deliver 1,100MW renewables in 2017/18 – says “considerably more work to do”

      A year of record investment by the federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation has helped deliver 10 large-scale solar projects and four wind farms in the past 12 months alone – a total of 1,100MW – a new report has revealed.

      In an update on investment commitments in the 2017-18 financial year, the green bank which the Abbott-led Coalition government tried so hard to dismantle, confirmed it had invested a total of $2.3 billion for the year – $1.1 billion of which was in renewable energy.

      The report, published on Monday, said the CEFC had now financed at total of more than 20 large-scale solar projects and more than 10 wind farms Australia-wide in just five years of existence.

      https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-renewables-boom-rolls-neg-shadow-looms-98259/

      The scale of Australia’s large-scale renewable energy construction boom has been laid bare in a jaw-dropping new chart, unveiled at the Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday.

      The Clean Energy Council chart, pictured below, details the 42 large-scale solar and wind power projects currently in construction – or due to start construction, having reached financial close – around Australia.

      According to the CEC, these projects will deliver more than $A9.7 billion in investment, 6239MW of new renewable energy generating capacity and create 5354 direct jobs.

      Divided along technology lines, solar and wind are neck and neck, with 3302MW of wind farms in the construction pipeline, compared to 3108MW of solar farms.

      Australia’s 2017 solar PV installation tally already eclipsed – in July

      The amount of solar PV installed in Australia so far in 2018 has already surpassed the combined total of all installations for the whole of 2017, and it has done so just over half way through the year.

      According to the latest data from industry analysts, SunWiz, and as you can see in the charts below, installations of large and small-scale solar PV sailed past the 1.4GW mark in the month of July, and well past the total installed for all of 2017, at 1340MW (1.3GW).

      And while rooftop solar continues to boom, large-scale solar is rapidly becoming the star of the show, with SunWiz now tracking a mind-boggling 275 solar farms in various stages of the development pipeline, with total capacity of 36.9GW.

      So despite the Australian federal government’s hostility to renewable energy, development of renewables is continuing at what appears to be a breathtaking pace! I have great hopes for Australia to be the first industrialized nation to get most of it’s electricity from renewable sources but, for some reason the Australian electorate has voted in a federal government that is going against the wishes of many Australians as far as energy policy is concerned. It makes me a little curious about the politics of Australia but not curious enough to do the searching and reading to figure it out!

      1. Matt is no victim of Australian media, rather he is a keen observer of the energy situation the world finds itself in, I my estimation.
        Have you checked out his articles?
        Outstanding work.
        http://crudeoilpeak.info/

        1. Just skimmed his latest post and agree that he does some outstanding work but, IMO Matt has underestimated the rate at which renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, can be implemented. If I remember rightly, Matt also has concerns about the roll out of EVs in that they might put a strain on the grid. I think that this concern is misplaced since it is unlikely that any EV disruption will happen faster than a disruption of the electricity sector by renewables.

          Let’s look at the introduction of the first high volume EV the Tesla Model 3 and it’s potential impact on the market. Tesla plans to build 500,000 cars a year so if they were the only company supplying the market and they sold into the US only, it would take over 380 years to replace the entire US fleet! Obviously, this is not how these things work and it is likely that growth will be exponential so if we start with say 1 million plug-in vehicles (PIVs) in the US at the beginning of 2019 and add half a million for the year and then increase the amount sold each year by 36% a year it would take more than twelve years to get annual sales of PIVs to the level of vehicle sales currently taking place.

          It would also take more than twelve years for the cumulative number of PIVs to approach 50 million, roughly one fifth of the current US fleet. In that case, what are the anti-EV crowd worried about? Are they seriously worried about the replacement of one fifth of the current ICE fleet over a period of more than twelve years? If they are worried that the disruptions will happen faster than I just speculated they will, that is a completely different discussion.

          In conclusion, Matt lives in Australia and it is highly unlikely that he can escape the flood of FUD being spread by News Corp. I suspect that it is this smear campaign that might be fueling some his skepticism of EVs and renewables. Then again there s no shortage of skeptics in this forum so, maybe I’m the one seeing renewables and EVs through rose colored glasses.

          1. I hope that EV’s are implemented fast and furious. We are in complete agreement on that.
            The proof will be in the actual numbers, and our hope has nothing to do with that.
            Matt is big on data, expert in digging it up, sorting it for relevance, and displaying it. Top notch.
            He doesn’t spend a lot of time on hope and such, IMO.

            btw- I’ve been a solar and renewables enthusiast for decades, have a big PV array on my roof and plug in my car at night. But I am not optimistic about the global economy weaning itself from fossil fuel in a timely manner that will avoid climate and/or depletion catastrophes. We are several decades late to game on that. IMO

  5. Trump administration rolls back plans to raise fuel economy standards for autos

    The Trump administration on Thursday revealed its long-anticipated plan to roll back Obama-era standards meant to cut planet-warming emissions from tailpipes and boost fuel efficiency in cars and trucks sold in the United States in the coming years.

    At the same time, the administration confirmed it will seek to strip California of its special authority to set its own fuel economy levels for autos, escalating a legal battle with more than a dozen states.

    The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and Environmental Protection Agency say they intend to reverse ambitious targets for fuel economy and emissions reductions, which the agencies developed under President Barack Obama. Instead of requiring automakers to steadily increase the average fuel efficiency of passenger vehicles through 2025 as previously planned, the Trump administration would freeze those levels after 2020.

    1. Don’t worry Ron, Trump’s Space Force will be rideing shotgun alongside the spaceships bringing all those hydrocarbons from Titan to earth.

    2. I am so glad that Trump and his republican followers are so thoughtful and have our best interests at heart. What could be more democratic than pollution? Well, sadly it is not. The 140 million people complaining about pollution and suing the EPA have way more than their fair share. We need to level out the pollution and not let the big coastal cities and fat states enjoy the by products of our wonderful fossil fuel industries more than our rural cousins.
      I hope the Trump administration finds a way to equally distribute this wonderful resource that enhances the profits of the health industry along with the fossil fuel industry. Just think of the boon to the trucking and rail industry as it hauls pollution out to all those nearly empty heartland states and releases it. Maybe we should build pipelines to move all those products to the middle of the country, providing a boon to the construction trades and more fossil fuel burning to collect and distribute it. I think we need to sue the EPA over the lack of equality of pollution in this great country of ours.
      Everyone should enjoy the many benefits of our great civilization. We could even just drop and burn the stuff in all those mostly empty red states that say they love it so much. They are probably angry because they are left out of so much of the benefits of our fair and great land.
      Come to think of it they are missing out on all the congestion, traffic and crowding too. Maybe we should move them into one or two cities per state and have all of them enjoy the many benefits of close community.
      The map below shows just how unequal the US really is. I mean those tiny states like Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, not to mention poor super-tiny North and South Dakota (do we need two?) all get two senators so they need to enjoy equal benefits.
      Don’t let the fat states hog the stuff that makes America Great. Demand your rights, tiny states.

      1. Criminy, I forgot poor little Alaska. We need to make a trans Canada pipeline fast to ship them as much pollution as possible. Maybe we can even pay people to go live up there, you know all those welfare recipients, just to make things a bit more cozy for them. The building industry would thrive making all those low income free rent apartments and houses. Alaska is just way too empty and needs our help now.

      2. California has the 5th largest GDP on the planet, but shares 2 Senators like Wyoming, something one could tuck away in a small county in CA.
        Note: I really like Wyoming

        1. Yep, it’s that little smudge right below Michigan. Michigan used to have a lot of empty forest land, almost a wilderness.

  6. Come on! Let’s make the whole planet one great dump! Why limit it to just the US?!

    The 28th annual State of the Climate report
    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/reporting-state-climate-2017

    Full report:
    https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/

    The 28th annual issuance of the report, led by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, is based on contributions from more than 500 scientists from over 60 countries around the world and reflects tens of thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets (highlights, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice and in space.

    Of course anyone is free to disregard the contents of this report and just chalk it all up to an international conspiracy to use climate change as a way for a few climate scientists to enrich themselves on the backs of American taxpayers! One can chose to believe that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese or the UN globalists.

    In lieu of putting trust in the scientific method one can choose to believe The US administration of Donald J. Trump, the GOP, the religious right under Jeff Sessions and VP Pence and all the supporters of his administration.

    Unfortunately none of that will change the fact, that we are, for all intents and purposes, cooking the planet…
    Cheers!

    1. Wait, you put Trump, GOP, religious right and the word fact in the same comment?

      1. Yes, but only in a multiverse, String Theory kind of way… 😉

        Seriously though, I’m just beginning to wade through the 300 plus page report. It will take me a while to digest it in full. I think it should be required reading for anyone in government!

  7. Big spike in Greenland melt and heat moving up over Arctic Ocean.

    1. Fish — Just received an e-mail from my niece who reports that it is so hot in Norway right now reindeer are hanging out in road tunnels and wading into the ocean, along with people, to cool down – this north of the arctic circle! Also, a record number of Norwegians have been reporting snake bites (adders). Nicole follows Ron’s (Dennis’) Blog and thought this tidbit might give you guys a smile. Unfortunately, being a petroleum (reserve) engineer, she doesn’t comment herself. I think Niki is still pissed off because the one time she did, Fernando questioned her professional competence.

      1. When someone calls himself “Readme” my inclination is to do the opposite.

      2. I think Niki is still pissed off because the one time she did, Fernando questioned her professional competence.

        Might not be his fault– living in Fascist Spain, after escaping a collapsing a right wing dictatorship in Cuba, his young mind was probably shaped for good—–

      3. Thanks Doug.
        Gives me a frown, I abhor the destruction of nature that is happening and will proceed. I know it’s a personal view but I liked having lots of life around other than humans, cows, pigs and chickens. Life in a green desert is just too much for my poor little psyche to handle. Although lots of that green seems to be going the way of fossil fuel now.

        1. Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m certain Nicole meant grimace rather than smile, having heard her rant-and-rave (in exasperation) about climate change denial — on umpteen occasions.

          1. No worries. The permafrost tipping point is being reached. Current methane concentration is equivalent to the baseline CO2 of 270 ppm. Soon there will be much more, though it won’t take much. The Arctic regions might rise by 10C or more this century. Much better swimming weather.

            It is only a matter of time until the incremental thawing of the permafrost reaches a tipping point of no return, a state of accelerated and irreversible change, the side effects of which might well push other parts of the Arctic beyond their own tipping points. Quite possibly, we are poised to witness such a transformation within our lifetimes – ice sheet loss, increased frequencies of fires in the tundra and boreal forests, and complete habitat loss for marine mammals, to name just a few examples of the changes that could occur.

            https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/02/the-permafrost-bomb-is-ticking/

        2. Today, walking down the street in an industrial park, I came across a patch of weeds in a crack in the sidewalk. Looking down some movement caught my eye. There were some tiny flowers some yellow, some purple. Two tiny butterflies one yellow and one pale blue and a honey bee were flying among the flowers. I stopped and knelt down on the sidewalk so I could watch them. I was completely unaware of my surroundings until a police cruiser pulled up beside me to ask if I needed assistance… I thanked him kindly and told him I was fine!

          1. Nature will use any spot possible, if allowed it steadily takes over. A small vacation cabin near me was abandoned about 40 years ago. It partially collapsed a couple of years ago as rot and vegetation weakened it while a snowfall crushed that part. Last winter the rest collapsed and with the growth it’s hardly visible now.

            When I see industrial sites, I like to picture nature reclaiming them, probably only 200 years and the plants will cover the rubble of even some concrete structures.

            http://www.dnaindia.com/technology/standpoint-if-humans-were-to-disappear-from-earth-how-long-will-nature-take-to-wipe-out-all-evidence-2033529

            And for some great photos of nature taking over our structures
            https://www.boredpanda.com/nature-reclaiming-civilization/

            1. And for some great photos of nature taking over our structures

              Loved those photos!

      4. DougL

        Well, you just made my day–I had no idea adders ranged all over Norway, Sweden, and Finland except for northernmost Norway and Finland. Iceland and the Faeroes are the only Scandinavian refuges from the critters.

        1. I x’d F. out a couple of weeks ago. His good comments I can infer from the replies 🙂

    2. Warmest ocean temp ever recorded in San Diego, although its only been 110 yrs, so it doesn’t mean much. Yosemite Natl Park remains closed due to heavy smoke.
      810,000 bbq’s across the country this weekend.

    3. My thoughts all along is that humans are at their best when pushed against the wall. We can survive this and build an even more prosperous civilization for future generations.

      1. Enjoy the famine. Maybe it’ll build character. I hope you like eating your lawn.

      4. Frankly I’m not going to answer any of these questions because they do nothing to help the situation. They are equivalent to the clueless sorority sister in cheesy horror films who screams and flails and draws the ax murderer to everyone else. There’s no point in imagining our grandchildren or great grandchildren as anything besides beautiful human beings who can give their best just like any one of us in threatening situations.

        I will never, for the life of me, understand the mindset of the small group of people on these threads who bring out doomsday porn and then try to see who can one-up who to write the most depressing response yet. It’s a tiring game that doesn’t help at all. If you are so damn convinced anything and everything, including your own existence, is completely hopeless, maybe you should go watch your favorite movie, play video games, watch pornography, go for a walk. Any of those things are far more productive than another round of bitching about how the whole world is going to hell.

        1. Oh, OK!

          So then, why in god’s name are you here wasting your precious breath posting your pearls of wisdom to our deaf ears?!

          Maybe you should practice what you preach and find something more productive to do with your time, like watching pornography?!

          Those are your own words and your stupid idea, certainly not anyone’s on this site!

          And for the record, no one here is bitching about anything!

          We are mostly realists here, who can do basic math and can grasp scientific concepts so we can figure out that since we live on a finite planet with physical limits we can’t continue to add 80 million humans per year to a biosphere with diminishing capabilities for absorbing the punishment we are giving it.

          All while expectimg that our children and grandchildren will continue to be able to live in peaceful prosperity and harmony within the limits afforded by our beautiful little spaceship earth!

    4. Almost 80% chance of El Nino for next winter according to Columbia ensemble for mid July.

        1. Getting better I think, but there’s a pretty small data set to check against. By the time they get to being able to give 99% probabilities we might be in permanent El Nino anyway.

        2. Kevin asks “Are the El Nino models any good at making predictions?”

          No model for El Nino has ever been able to generate a prediction more than a year in advance. The problem is that there is a set of empirical observations known as the spring predictability barrier that precludes long-term predictions.

          So the underlying reason why they are no good at making predictions is that the models are missing the critical information — besides the annual signal — that would provide the pattern.

          1. Lot of clues as to what should provide a pattern to El Nino. Many people say that it is in the direction of the winds. But since no one has been able to predict the winds either, that doesn’t help much by itself. So, perhaps it may be a good idea to see of there is a way to find a pattern in the winds.

            The first place to look is in the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) of the equatorial stratospheric winds. These are essentially analogous to the El Nino cycles as they are also only along the equator, but located way up in the atmosphere (equivalent to the main ring of Saturn, but invisible to the eye). The pattern here obviously tracks the nodal cycle of the moon, amplified by a sharp seasonal signal whenever the sun also crosses the equator. So the direction of the QBIO winds essentially reverses (east to west, or vice versa) whenever both the moon and sun cross the equator simultaneously.

            No one has ever pointed this pattern out in the climate research literature, but it is definitely there, clear as a bell.

            From that observation, it is easy to determine the pattern of El Nino. The only stumbling block is solving the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid dynamics of the ocean.

            1. Yours is the type of science research I enjoy reading about, independent and not political agenda motivated. Thanks.

  9. 1955 — Samuel Beckett play “Waiting for Godot” opens in London.

    1. Survivalist, loved your link, bold mine:

      The mother of invention is the quest for new markets, and, as Thorstein Veblen once quipped, it’s invention that’s the mother of necessity. If a technology will sell, society is obliged to accept it. In this new century, Silicon Valley and Seattle have weaponized the invention of necessity, and innovation for innovation’s sake has become the driver of the human economy. Material and energetic limits are wished away; money, human brain power, and soon, artificial intelligence will miraculously transcend all limits.

      That’s all hogwash, of course. The ecological economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and those who followed him have shown that no technology can repeal the Entropy Law—that there is not and will never be a free lunch. Today, those realities are being studiously ignored by innovators, disruptors, and other perpetual-motion specialists.

      My sentiments exactly. Technology will not save our ass. That is nothing but wishful thinking. That or just an uneducated opinion of the power of human ingenuity. There are just some things that are beyond human ingenuity.

      1. Technology will not save our ass. That is nothing but wishful thinking. That or just an uneducated opinion of the power of human ingenuity. There are just some things that are beyond human ingenuity.

        Somehow I don’t think a great visionary, like Jared Quinlan, will agree with that…

        Then again, who knows, maybe he and his friends will prove me wrong by finding a quick and humane way to bring global human population down to sustainable levels. Now that, would be nothing short of ingenious!

      2. I’m glad you like it Ron. I found it over at Rice Farmer Blog.
        https://ricefarmer.blogspot.com/
        It is a nice collection of links to headlines that may be of interest to those following developments in future trends. That link I shared above was listed on August 3rd under the subsection:
        ## Systemic breakdown/collapse/unsustainability ##

      3. That a narrow view of society (cherry-picked to some degree). The problem with society is we do not cull what and who is bad for us. There is little method or law (on purpose) to eliminate things, people and actions which do large area harm in the guise of providing a service or product. In other words, society is now mostly comprised of suckers.
        Yes, there is a free lunch. It washes over us every day at 430 quintillion joules per hour every day. These entropy simpletons act as if the system is closed and it is wide open with large energy input.
        Here is some sheer bullshit from the article:
        “A corollary is that if humanity is successfully weaned from fossil fuels, the economy as a whole will necessarily become intimately dependent on more diffuse energy sources and on ecospheric processes. In other words, all economic production will necessarily become tightly bound by the same limitations that farmers, especially pre-fossil-fuel farmers have always faced”
        Sure, at 10 to 15 times the efficiency of plants to absorb energy and convert it to directly useful forms as well as the ability to convert and store energy, we are not at the same limitations as farmers.

        I am tired of the fossil fuel promoters pushing articles that say we screwed. The new technologies work just fine, it’s the old tech that has fucked us over bigtime and put us in a horrible position.
        How to cure it. Stop screwing up the system that keeps us alive and reduce consumption as fast as possible. Just going to electric powered systems more than inverts the current energy system. The current system wastes more than 2/3 of the energy used (as well as drives ecological disaster and population rise). Electrified systems will use 80 percent or more of the power produced from sun and wind, wasting less than 20 percent. Add some efficiency increases and reduce rampant consumerism will get us down to about 10 to 15 % of the power we use now to run “civilization”.
        Farming? Why even question farming when we waste as much or more food than we eat? Get the food waste down first and work on the farming as we can. If population is falling and the food systems become efficient, there is no problem.
        Entropy is not the problem, stupidity, waste and greed are the problems. There are many wonderful and helpful technologies, we just need to learn to cull the harmful, unneeded and wasteful technologies quickly. In other words, think about what we are doing and cut out the shit.

        1. While I can agree with your point about the energy free lunch available to the entire planet, there are still resource limits that no amount of ingenious technology will mitigate if we don’t cut our population and our ecological footprint.

          1. Nonsense, open God’s Word and discover 28 glorious verses that PROVE, yes PROVE, God Will Provide. For example:

            “For the LORD GOD is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does HE withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

            That means us Fred. Open your eyes. Educate yourself. It’s all there in black and white. Your duty, your only duty, is to go forth and reproduce. BTW, snakes don’t walk uprightly.

            1. LOL! Having grown up in Brazil I had a few snakes as pets. I was always fascinated by their means of locomotion.

            2. “For the LORD GOD is a sun and shield”
              So God is the sun and the atmosphere. About time someone explained that to all the Christians.
              All those people hunched over their smartphones and computers better start getting more uprightly.

          2. Fred, one set of technologies will not solve all our problems but they can make a huge change on many levels and in so doing even make societal changes.
            Look where the population bombs are happening. Do you think they will be the first to collapse? Or will the more tech dependent first world nations be the weakest link?

            We were 3.4 billion when the Guidestones were erected. We are now 7 billion headed to 10 billion by 2050. “Be not a cancer on this earth,” the tenth and final inscription on the stones commands. “Leave room for nature. Leave room for nature.” That afternoon, those rough hewn giants could not have been more eloquent.
            http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/09/09/georgias-own-doomsday-stonehenge-monument/#.W2XhVrcUfow

        2. Fish, energy is not the main problem, and it sure as hell is not how much food we waste. It what we have already done to the earth and what we continue to do to the earth. 7.6 billion people are destroying the earth. And we are adding 80 million each year. We are cutting down the rainforest and there is no technology that can restore them. Ditto for expanding deserts, ditto for falling water tables, ditto for rivers lakes and inland seas going dry. Ditto for topsoil removal, no technology will replace it. No technology will restore the extinct species or replace the ocean fisheries.

          Wake up and smell the coffee, we are destroying the earth and have been for decades now. And as the population expands, it will only get worse, a lot worse.

          1. Patt, I know it looks like overwhelming odds but many battles have been won against overwhelming odds by those who held fast and did not give up.

            Get some anti-depressants and get back out in the world. There is still a lot worth fighting for. Just focus. One target at a time.
            Moaning and curling up on the couch only aids the enemy.

            1. Yea, a existentialist view is best to take.
              But, even that eventually wears you down.

            2. If you get worn down, you rest a bit, get back up and start again. I might get worn down a few years after I die.

              I try to warn people but I have no idea of the effect.
              I also do a lot of encouraging of local people to insulate, use high efficiency appliances and cars, and reduce their wasteful lifestyle. That has been partly successful with a number of people insulating their basements and other parts of houses. Even got a diehard conservative to seriously look at buying a hybrid plugin car now. He drives about 30,000 miles a year for work so it would really pay off.
              Times are changing and more people seem to be listening. I notice the mainstream media is starting to up it’s game about climate change.
              If each person that knows the problems gets 100 people to change their ways, that will start to expand through the society. People see people doing things and then they copy that.

            3. I’m still out on the street on a regular basis.
              They even let me fly on airlines, after 30 years.
              Probably reflects my effectiveness.

    2. On This Week in Virology Dickson Despommier is a guest (but not a virologist). While adding to the discussion, he is totally clueless with his vertical farms. A city boy, who is working out a fantasy.

    1. Ron, did you see the segment with Nancy Maclean?

      Nancy MacLean: The GOP’s Long Game | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) (Youtube video)

      Really sinister shit. I don’t think it qualifies as a conspiracy theory since it is built up around the ambitions of one man, Charles Koch. Does this MF think he’s gonna live forever? Since he’s 82, hopefully he fails in his quest before he dies. If not, the US constitution will get some new amendments that rich people will really like!

      Then there’s this:

      “Active Measures”: Documentary Says Russian Mob “Made Its Move” On Donald Trump In 2002

      [The 1991 Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy] “is the first of a series of bankruptcies going from 1991 to 2004, where he starts losing his ability to borrow from banks. The Russian mob is seeing this, and makes their move,” he says.

      Rather than “sex tapes,” he says “financial improprieties” are the major source of crime.

      “Starting in 2002, whereas before you see incidents of money laundering, you’re seeing particularly in buildings like Trump SoHo, Toronto Tower, Panama Tower, there is what appears to be Russian or post-Soviet money going into it, particularly from the Ukraine-Russian gas trade.”

      “The allegation is that Donald Trump borrowed money from Russians when he couldn’t get it in America?” host Willie Geist clarified.

      That makes more sense than even the pee pee tape! Trump is a failed businessman who’s “empire” was saved by Russian oligarchs, who now own him.

      1. No, I had not seen that Maher segment. It must have been broadcast last night. I cannot get live TV from the states down here. It was very good.

        I think you are correct about the Russian Mob. Of course, it could be both, the pee tape and the mob. At any rate, it is really obvious that Putin has Trump by the balls.

        1. Maher returned from vacation last night so both the piece you linked to and the video I linked to were from last night’s new episode. If you’re really keen, you can find full episodes soon after they’re broadcast but. if you wait too long they get taken down. Official clips get posted an hour or two after the episodes air.

          As far as the Russian Mob goes, my opinion is heavily influenced by the filmmakers that put “Active Measures” together so, they would be the ones that are correct. I’m just parroting them.

        2. Pee tapes wouldn’t worry Trump, look at his reaction to sex allegations – throw another lawyer or two onto the fire. Financial, that is another matter and it has been noted in many places. It will be interesting to see what emerges.
          BTW, some Americans down here set up a satellite decoder in the US and then being it down to Mexico then get a dish set up to point to the appropriate satellite. That way they can see US programming.

          NAOM

      3. Watch our future unfold as a the US becomes a puppet state to the corporations and billionaires and the robots take over more and more “jobs”. Here is a view of the recent past, extrapolate it into the future as most human capital becomes worthless in the eyes of the rulers. Your dose of propaganda for today.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-lBvI6u_hw

    1. There needs to be more attention to the sun at places like that because the sun has more to do with global climate than any other single factor. In fact, with the way the sun spots have been at such a low count this decade, we could be in a prelude to going into another maulder minimum. That would mean real cold, maybe for as much as 2 or 3 centuries. We could lose most of our animal species and even maybe half of mankind because there wouldn’t be enough places to grow our crops or raise our livestock.

      1. “another maulder minimum”

        Maulder? Didn’t he run the X-files?

      2. Larry-
        They call people who analyze such things scientists.
        They collect data, and then analyze the data to see if there are appropriate conclusions that can be drawn.
        Of course, these things can be complicated.
        So, it may just be better to stick with illustrated short story books.

        Or perhaps read up at more sources- like
        https://www.scientificamerican.com/

        btw- I think our best chance of getting a big cold spell in the next couple hundred years would come from an outbreak of big volcanic activity rather than variation in the sun output. Small chance , but can have a very big effect if it happened.
        We have many people in the world worried about climate warming, and not enough worried about cooling. Maybe that could be your thing.

      3. There needs to be more attention to the sun at places like that because the sun has more to do with global climate than any other single factor.

        This notice brought to you by Beavis and Butthead!
        .

  14. NREL presentations

    NREL’s Sustainable Energy Research 1977-2017
    Frank Rukavina, sustainability director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, gives an amply illustrated history of NREL’s efforts to fulfill its mission to seek a path to sustainability through energy solutions. while leading by example. More info about NREL’s 40 year anniversary is at https://www.nrel.gov/about/accomplish…

    Filmed and edited pro bono by Martin Voelker with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society. Contact: jcres@cres-energy.org.
    CRES features several local monthly speaker series throughout the state, provides speakers, experts, workshops and weighs in on state energy policy. Website: cres-energy.org.

    Frank Rukavina, sustainability director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, gives an amply illustrated history of NREL’s efforts to fulfill its mission to seek a path to sustainability through energy solutions while leading by example.

    More info about NREL’s 40 year anniversary is at http://www.nrel.gov/about/accomplishments.html

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jw-o2qivWc

    Energy In Transition. NREL’s David Mooney on Renewables
    2016 was a banner year for both wind and solar markets. Increasing performance and decreasing costs of renewable generators, coupled with low-cost natural gas are reshaping the way we generate our electricity and the way we operate our electricity system. The transformation that is underway has many implications for Colorado, including possibilities for economic opportunity.

    Dr. David Mooney, Director of the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL (nrel.gov/analysis/) reviews the latest in wind and solar technologies and markets along with current economic impacts of increased renewables deployments. Includes a brief overview of NREL’s research into power grid operations under scenarios of high penetrations of wind and solar.
    Prior to his current role, Dave was the Laboratory Program Manager for Solar Technologies, where he was responsible for managing and coordinating NREL’s $70M solar R&D portfolio. While at NREL, Dave also led efforts to identify and address technical issues associated with the large-scale deployment and integration of renewable and efficiency technologies into the existing energy infrastructure.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYKrXVgmqW4

  15. America’s coal plants closing despite Trump
    “I will tell you it is not a matter of if we are going to retire our coal fleet in this nation, it’s just a matter of when,” said Ben Fowke, utility Xcel Energy Inc.’s chief executive officer, on stage at the Edison Electric Industry Group’s Annual Convention in San Diego, California on June 6th.

    The company announced later that day in an electric resource plan that it wanted to retire two coal-fired units that produce a combined 660 megawatts (MW) of energy in Colorado and add 1,800 MW of capacity from renewable power, 275 MW of battery storage and another 383 MW of existing gas power.

    https://energytransition.org/2018/06/americas-coal-plants-closing-despite-trump/

    It’s just a matter of when.

    1. Speaking of coal and being clueless:
      1986 — US: Having announced his administration’s election-year effort to seem tough on drugs, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Acting President Ronnie Reagan is asked if this means he is taking over the anti-drug movement from Nancy. Grinning, he responds, “Do I look like an idiot?”

  17. “So how much of an effect do aerosols have? It turns out 23% of the warming caused by greenhouse gases was offset by the cooling from aerosols. Unfortunately, this isn’t good news. It means that if/when humans reduce our aerosol pollution, the warming in the Arctic and the ice loss there will be worse.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/aug/03/pollution-is-slowing-the-melting-of-arctic-sea-ice-for-now

    Land NH, cuz that’s where the food grows.

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/plot/crutem4vnh/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend

    1. Yep, aerosols were a huge factor back before 1980, now they are becoming a factor again. I do not believe they are well monitored and the numbers are probably low. However, looking at earth nullschool, the various particulates and SO2 are concentrated around the mid to equatorial latitudes (ocean and land) where most of the sunlight strikes the earth. The polar regions have much less of these aerosols. Also the maximum concentrations are regional. The effect of particulates must be calculated on a grid basis to get a decent idea of their overall radiative control.
      If the satellite data is good and well calibrated, then fine. Ground based measurements are somewhat scattered and incomplete.
      All of these fires across the globe can have an initial warming effect from the black carbon and a long term warming effect from the GHG production and albedo changes. Particulates could rain out in a few days/weeks.

      1. I have been reading the 2017 climate engineering conference report and watching some of the videos of the plenary talks which are linked therein.
        My take away so far, is that most of the participants are bright well meaning individuals. And that they are totally misguided and focusing on the wrong kinds of solutions for the wrong reasons!

        Unfortunately I do not have any confidence whatsoever that any of these technologies have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually working and furthermore the risks to the planetary systems far outweigh the benefits due to the unknown unknowns! Technologies such as BEECS, Biochar, Sulfate Aerosols, Ocean Fertilization, etc… etc… are IMHO totally bonkers. This is Cornucopian BAU of the absolute worst possible kind.

        So far I have seen only one speaker from the German Green Party, Linda Schneider, who is speaking about the risks and possible consequences and she is not even a scientist. She speaks at 1:04:00 mark in the video linked below. I’m with her and her well founded concerns

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKpLIgVpm3E&feature=youtu.be
        CEC17 – SRM and CDR updates

        Side note: was riding my bike down by the Intracoastal this morning and stopped to chat with the crew of a Sea Sheperd ship docked there for maintenance and learned that we have lost one more Vaquita porpoise in the Mexican Baja California. so the total number is now down to only 11 individuals. Last I had checked there were 30…
        https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/only-12-vaquita-porpoises-remain-watchdog-groups-report/

        Ain’t no geoengineering will stop this kind of assault on the biosphere due to 100% greed and stupidity!

        1. Bummer!
          The Gulf of California was pristine and isolated not that long ago (driving from San Diego to Cabo was a expedition– ).
          Now its a suburb of SoCal.

          1. Yep, in the early 1980’s I spent time in the water there with a large whale shark. It was amazing! I suspect that my son and many of his contemporaries will not have the opportunity to have many such experiences going forward. I guess you can’t miss something you have never known.

            1. I spent quite a bit of time in the 1970’s, and was a regular in the 1980’s.
              (actually quite a bit of time in El Norte in the 1960’s)
              Was one of the magical places on the planet.

              In the rear view mirror.

        2. I don’t think many of the geoengineering crowd really understand the scale of the problem.

          NAOM

          1. I think they do not even understand the problem itself! Let alone the non linearity, complexity and dynamics of it.

        3. Yeah, I don’t have any real confidence in geo-engineering. It’s a dangerous concept, adds one more shock to the system and a double one if it’s abandoned. If we can’t stop polluting the air, there is no sense to even attempting it. Hopefully, if we do manage to stop the carbon pollution we will have gained enough knowledge by then to know better. Of course that has not stopped us yet, knowing better that is.

          Problem is that as panic sets in there is high probability of geo-engineering being instituted. Especially if it makes money.

          1. Just watched this one, these people sound so earnest and sane but I think they are basically nuts! If you get a chance watch it, I’d love to hear some comments and thoughts on it. It seems they have pretty much decided that this is something that will happen.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzEnBaE1AIE&feature=youtu.be

            CEC17 – Climate Engineering in the Wake of Paris

            Of course there had to be a Hungarian on the panel… 😉

            2. I don’t think these people will be very effective at implementing international policy and treaties that are necessary for the deployment of SRM and carbon dioxide removal on scale.
              It’s also quite expensive and unless engineers come up with really cheap ways to do this, we are safe from it for a few more years.
              I do like the idea of correcting the societal situation that are really the cause of GHG production.
              That fellow in the center in the gray suit is especially ineffective.

            3. BTW, it is necessary to start planning for the general abandonment of the Caribbean Islands.

            4. As a resident of the Caribbean and a frequent visitor to Miami, I find that statement odd! I am unaware of any locations in the Caribbean that are experiencing King Tides like they do in South Miami Beach!

              Miami has got to be one of the cities in the world that is most vulnerable to rising sea levels and hurricanes. To top it off, the most expensive and newest real estate in Miami is right downtown in the area around the Miami Herald and the American Airlines Arena.

              I would hazard a guess that if one calculated the value of all of the high rise real estate in downtown Miami and South Beach alone, it would exceed the value of all of the real estate in the entire Caribbean with lots of change to spare.

              I watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and remember the section where he showed an animation of what sea level rise would do to the coast of the US and talked about how many people in the world live close to sea level.

            6. I am not talking about sea level rise. I am talking about increasing numbers and strength of hurricanes and storms through that region as global warming accelerates over the next several decades.
              How often can an island rebuild? How often can an island nation take multiple hits and recover physically and economically. These islands are right in the path of many hurricanes and the warmer waters are feeding the energy to new levels.
              If you know about the giant boulders being tossed up on shore due to megastorms, then one can surmise that the storms we see now are small compared to a chaotic climate changing world.
              There has been evidence of recent storms along the coast of Europe moving giant boulders.
              I don’t think we have seen what the earth can do as the systems change. Huge energies are involved.

              https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/megastorms-that-can-throw-thousand-tonne-boulders-up-cliffs-may-be-on-their-way-back-thanks-to-a6754511.html

              Sea level rise we can see coming, it’s relatively slow compared to a storm that gives at best a few days warning.

          2. I consider deliberate geo-engineering a form of Eco-terroism.
            Proponents will just as likely be left as the right.

            Some may ask- ‘well, could it be any worse than what we’ve got going on now?”
            And the answer is- Yes!
            The only geoengineering we should be considering is the re-planting of vegetation from places that we have removed it. IMO(not so humble)

    2. Don’t worry, the aerosols will be replaced by the smoke from wildfires.

      NAOM

        1. July is typically the steepest loss rate month of the year. Actual ice area is probably close to 4 million square km. Quite amazing drop for a year that has not been particularly warm up there, following just behind 2012 so far.
          This is expected but does not bode well for the ecosystems, especially if we get a warm year next year or two.

    1. Yep, it has been getting steadily worse here in South Florida as well! If nothing else, it can and should be used as a fertilizer for agriculture. The downsides are collection, removal of salt, processing and transport to where it can be applied.

      From the article:

      …James Franks, of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and co-author of a 2016 study on the subject, says the sargassum circulates through this band, consolidates off Brazil and then is periodically released northwards by currents into the Caribbean.

      But he says it is not yet clear what has caused this huge new bloom. “We believe that it initially began as a result of shifts we observed in the climatological and meteorological indices – the waters were extremely warm in 2010; there were some shifts in the currents and winds,” says Mr Franks.

      He points to nutrients both from falling Saharan dust and pushed up from the sea floor as possible factors, but says more research is needed to establish exact triggers.

      One major question is how long the phenomenon will continue.

      That is a really dumb question in my opinion! These are clear signs of ecosystem changes due to anthropogenic effects such as pollution, nutrient runoff and climate change. This will not get better as the globe heats up and we keep adding people to the planet. Unless we make radical changes to way we have been doing things it will only get worse!

  20. Probably not going to be a new Arctic ice minimum this year, maybe about the same as 2016 and 2017 but some of the peripheral seas are really hot – 3 or 4°C anomalies – so refreeze might be slow and interesting, and there’s almost no thick, solid ice left to hold things together now . Further south it’s cooler, doesn’t effect the ice much but we might be in for another stormy Autumn/Winter here in UK.

    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php

    1. That’s a very huge area of white ‘no data’ area on that graphic. How do they know what to do about this area when calculating an anomaly?

      1. That is ice covered, the SST will be the melting temperature of the ice.

  21. Jeff Bezos’s $150 Billion Fortune Is a Policy Failure
    Annie Lowrey

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/08/the-problem-with-bezos-billions/566552/

    Last month, Bloomberg reported that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has accumulated a fortune worth $150 billion. That is the biggest nominal amount in modern history, and extraordinary any way you slice it. Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire. He is worth what the average American family is, nearly two million times over. He has about 50 percent more money than Bill Gates, twice as much as Mark Zuckerberg, 50 times as much as Oprah, and perhaps 100 times as much as President Trump. He has gotten $50 billion richer in less than a year. He needs to spend roughly $28 million a day just to keep from accumulating more wealth.

    This is a credit to Bezos’s ingenuity and his business acumen. Amazon is a marvel that has changed everything from how we read, to how we shop, to how we structure our neighborhoods, to how our postal system works. But his fortune is also a policy failure, an indictment of a tax and transfer system and a business and regulatory environment designed to supercharging the earnings of and encouraging wealth accumulation among the few. Bezos did not just make his $150 billion. In some ways, we gave it to him, perhaps to the detriment of all of us.

    Bezos and Amazon are in many ways ideal exemplars of the triumph of capital over labor, like the Waltons and Walmart and Rockefeller and Standard Oil before them. That the gap between executives at top companies and employees around the country is so large is in and of itself shocking. Bezos has argued that there is not enough philanthropic need on earth for him to spend his billions on. (The Amazon founder, unlike Gates or Zuckerberg, has given away only a tiny fraction of his fortune.) “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” he said this spring. “I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that.”

    1. I read an interesting article several years back that made a similar point. It was talking about Buffet and Gates as examples. Giving away money for philanthropic projects, or building rockets and tubes, is nice but the article made the point that policy makers would do a better job of allocating the money to important uses than the wealthy individuals do. The authors suggested that obscene wealth accumulation should not happen, and excesses should be collected for collective use.
      Its a very relevant discussion in this world where the top 50 people (approx) of the world have as much wealth as the bottom 1/2 (3.7 B).

      I also note that most people who accumulate large amounts of money do a very poor job of allocating the capital to productive use. Much of the wealth is sequestered from the economy. Things like warehouses of art collections, offshore bank accounts, and empty mansions do very little for the velocity of money in the economy from which the wealth was generated.

      And yet people voted for Trump.

  22. Should be compulsory reading for all:

    DEEP ADAPTATION: A MAP FOR NAVIGATING CLIMATE TRAGEDY

    http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

    The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide readers with an opportunity to reassess their work and life in the face of an inevitable near term social collapse due to climate change.

    Nothing is certain. But it is sobering that humanity has arrived at a situation of our own making where we now debate the strength of analyses of our near-term extinction.

    It would not be unusual to feel a bit affronted, disturbed, or saddened by the information and arguments I have just shared. In the past few years, many people have said to me that “it can’t be too late to stop climate change, because if it was, how would we find the energy to keep on striving for change?” With such views, a possible reality is denied because people want to continue their striving. What does that tell us? The “striving” is based in a rationale of maintaining self-identities related to espoused values. It is understandable why that happens. If one has always thought of oneself as having self-worth through promoting the public good, then information that initially appears to take away that self-image is difficult to assimilate.

    Disruptive impacts from climate change are now inevitable. Geoengineering is likely to be ineffective or counter-productive. Therefore, the mainstream climate policy community now recognises the need to work much more on adaptation to the effects of climate change. That must now rapidly permeate the broader field of people engaged in sustainable development as practitioners, researchers and educators. In assessing how our approaches could evolve, we need to appreciate what kind of adaptation is possible. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.

    1. Ah, Thank you, George!

      That was a most delightful read for a Monday morning.

      For the record, I have personally been through the roller coaster of emotions that he describes. Ignorance might be bliss for some, it has never worked for me.

      Cheers!

    2. Well of course there will be societal collapse. The old system will crash because it is not only unsustainable, it is suicidal. It will be replaced by a much more sustainable and thoughtful system if it is replaced at all.
      There are two routes. We keep muddling along on the replacement a swe are, which could take 50 years or more and is way too long. Or we can get serious about the replacement of the current untenable system and do it as fast as possible.
      Either way we are walking (racing in some cases) directly into the most non-linear effects of climate change and over-consumption. Neither effort will avoid the engagement of tipping points. It just depends on how bad we want to crash ourselves and the planet and how much we want to get caught with our pants down unable to do anything.

    3. “With such views, a possible reality is denied because people want to continue their striving. What does that tell us?”
      Sounds like the call of the doomer McPherson.

      Adaptation???? To a 7C world??? Good luck to that.
      But seriously, what will happen if we just mostly ignore global warming and try to adapt as things change? Since this will happen at least one hundred to one thousand times faster than any previous chemistry based extinction event, we can only surmise the near instantaneous crash of the whole land and ocean ecosystem. Imagine going from an injured world to one that is mostly devoid of life in a few decades.
      It will be a whole new planet, like landing on an alien world. Get the space arks ready.
      Adapt to what? Didn’t see that tipping point coming, did they?

  23. No worries! If we are convinced we can terraform Mars, it should be a sinch to ‘re-terraform earth, eh?!

    1. Ummm Fred, I don’t quite know how to break this to you. So I will be direct.
      Terraforming Mars implies having a viable base to operate an industrial civilization. With the base gone, we are not going to do much except rot in space trying to wait for the million years or more for the oceans to go non-sulfurous. Not even Star Trek tech could do that until they finally made that fantastic breakthrough (weaponizing creation).

      Of course these are just boundary situations, looking at how bad things can get and how quickly. Most likely everything will be fine and we will have Trump Towers along the Arctic Ocean (though watch out for the gators). As fall approaches we will just migrate to our city along the Great Lakes (all four of them) while our robo-droids plant the winter crop there. it will be great with only 500,000 people. 🙂

    2. Yair

      Real dumb, pointless, irrelevant hypothetical question for Fred or anyone else who cares to answer. I have had eye surgery and have been doing a lot of aimless thinking . . . at 150% I still struggle to type and read the screen.

      Question . . .

      Does the mass (weight) of the earth remain constant. That is to say do the thousands of tons of elephants that used to exist still remain here and their mass exists in a different form?

      Same thing with humans are the next billion already here and will be formed from components existing in the present atmosphere, soil and water? In other words does the state of matter on our earth change but the mass remain the same?

      Basic stuff I know but I never had much schooling.

      Thanks for any clarification and Cheers.

        1. You are correct Notanoilman, but I don’t think that answer’s his question. He asks about elephants and human flesh adding or subtracting from the mass of the earth. No, they do not. Flesh is gained, mostly from food that came from the earth and will be returned there when we/they die. Flesh does not add or subtract from the mass of the earth.

          As to gasses escaping into space it is explained here:

          Atmospheric Escape

          I would imagine, however, that far more mass enters the atmosphere via meteorites than helium atoms escaping into space. The lions share of gas escaping is helium. The earth generates helium all the time via the radioactive decay of isotopes that emit alpha particles. (The alpha particle quickly attracts two electrons from the environment and becomes a helium atom.)

          It is a favorite argument of young-earth Creationist that there would be many times the amount of helium in the atmosphere if the earth were really ancient. No, the helium floats into the upper atmosphere, is heated by the sun and reaches escape velocity and is gone.

          1. Yair,

            Thanks to all, for the answers, curiosity assuaged. (grins)

            Cheers.

        2. I’ll add a #3
          Mass is lost from the earth during nuclear explosions, and in the routine operation of nuclear power plants. Not much. Correct?

          And no, flatulence does not violate the laws of thermodynamics.

          1. There is continuous radioactive decay deep within the earth. To the tune of 20 TW of heat.

            As a result of this model, scientists believe that about 20 TW is generated by radioactive decay – 8 TW from the uranium-238 decay chain; 8 TW from the thorium-232 decay chain and the final 4 TW from potassium-40. Fortunately, these decay chains also produce anti-electron-neutrinos, which travel easily through the Earth and can be detected, thereby giving physicists a way to measure the decay rates and ultimately the heat produced deep underground.

            https://physicsworld.com/a/radioactive-decay-accounts-for-half-of-earths-heat/

      2. Does the mass (weight) of the earth remain constant. That is to say do the thousands of tons of elephants that used to exist still remain here and their mass exists in a different form?

        For all practical purposes, yes! The earth probably gains a tiny amount of mass from meteorites and dust but loses a bit more from atmospheric gases lost to space. So perhaps a minuscule overall net loss of mass is probably likely.

        The mass of the earth is 5.972 × 10^24 kg.

        Compared to that all the living biomass on the planet is just a rounding error. Ecosystems are quite effective and efficient in recycling biomass so the overall effect is no appreciable net gain or loss. Even with say the mass (pun intended) extinctions, of gigantic creatures such as the dinosaurs the mass of the earth did not change all that much.

        However the total biomass of elephants and even humans with all our domesticated livestock pale in comparison to say the biomass of ants and other arthropods!

        Now, the distribution of existing biomass on the planet and how it has been effected by humans over the ages, is a whole nother ball of wax!

        http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/05/15/1711842115
        The biomass distribution on Earth

        Abstract
        A census of the biomass on Earth is key for understanding the structure and dynamics of the biosphere. However, a global, quantitative view of how the biomass of different taxa compare with one another is still lacking. Here, we assemble the overall biomass composition of the biosphere, establishing a census of the ≈550 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) of biomass distributed among all of the kingdoms of life. We find that the kingdoms of life concentrate at different locations on the planet; plants (≈450 Gt C, the dominant kingdom) are primarily terrestrial, whereas animals (≈2 Gt C) are mainly marine, and bacteria (≈70 Gt C) and archaea (≈7 Gt C) are predominantly located in deep subsurface environments. We show that terrestrial biomass is about two orders of magnitude higher than marine biomass and estimate a total of ≈6 Gt C of marine biota, doubling the previous estimated quantity. Our analysis reveals that the global marine biomass pyramid contains more consumers than producers, thus increasing the scope of previous observations on inverse food pyramids. Finally, we highlight that the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined and report the historical impact of humanity on the global biomass of prominent taxa, including mammals, fish, and plants.

      3. One of the really long term questions about a hotter earth is whether we’d lose all the water. As the atmosphere warms it expands and gravity is less. At the outer edges water molecules can degrade to hydrogen and oxygen, at the moment they hang around and reform, but with lower attraction for the hydrogen it could migrate to space.

        1. George,

          That is an interesting point. But the more immediate issue is the dissipation of the extra heat in forms of super-storms. During the late Jurassic and Cretaceous period, the warm oceans would have produced hypercanes (super-sized hurricanes). Which some posit may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

        2. Since the Earth has been in a warm state most of it’s existence with only occasional forays into ice ages, the question has been answered, the water is still here.
          So until the sun heats up enough in the far future to make a world hotter than the PETM, we are safe. Humans won’t be around then anyway, species don’t last that long.

          An interesting question is why the planets have not disrupted each other’s orbits since they are constantly perturbing each other’s orbits. The early solar system must have been extremely chaotic and the remnant is what remains in “stable” safe zones. A dynamic astronomical balancing act.

          1. The natural increase in solar luminosity — a very slow process unrelated to current climate warming — will cause the Earth’s temperatures to rise over the next few hundred million years. This will result in the complete evaporation of the oceans. The first three-dimensional climate model able to simulate the phenomenon predicts that liquid water will disappear on Earth in approximately one billion years, extending previous estimates by several hundred million years.

            1. Well, FWIW, and according to my teachers, Venus’ runaway greenhouse effect was the result of solar luminosity increase that boiled away all its hydrogen. Apparently, Venus did have water, and when the hydrogen escaped, when the surface temperature went above boiling point, water vapor photochemically dissociated, and the hydrogen atoms escaped. Oxygen atoms then combined with carbon on the surface to form CO2.

              And, the fusion-burning equations suggest that the Sun’s luminosity will accelerate with respect to time – but on geologic time scales.

  24. Synapsid – Was preparing a “lecture” for my Grandson this morning and ran into this. Immediately thought of you. Like I was at his age, he’s fascinated by everything to do with the natural world. I think ‘formation of the solar system’ is a good place to start.

    RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO UNCOVER REMNANTS OF EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM

    “The meteorite we studied is unlike any other known meteorite. It has the highest abundance of silica and the most ancient age (4.565 billion years old) of any known igneous meteorite. Meteorites like this were the precursors to planet formation and represent a critical step in the evolution of rocky bodies in our solar system.”

    https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/uonm-rat080118.php

    1. And,

      ORGANIC MAKEUP OF ANCIENT METEORITES SHEDS LIGHT ON EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM

      Using samples from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the research team spent two years precisely measuring and interpreting the oxygen isotope composition of organics in some of these early-formed meteorites. Having three stable isotopes, oxygen offers an extra level of information compared to elements with two stable isotopes such as hydrogen and nitrogen, providing critical clues to further constrain the origin of chondritic organics.

      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-makeup-ancient-meteorites-early-solar.html#jCp

      1. Doug,

        The take-home here is that carbonaceous chondrites formed early on in the Solar System and weren’t inherited from another setting. It’s nice to see confirmation of what had been expected, a surer footing is always welcome; I’ll admit that I’m a bit surprised to see it in PNAS and not one of the astro journals or maybe Nature. Good thing I’m not a journal editor, huh?

        Thanks again. Calls maybe for more port? Have to think about that.

    2. Thanks Doug.

      This is a treat, as I was going to go to Eurekalert right after POB but you steered me to the gem of the day.

      My first thought was “pegmatite, or maybe some kind of vein filling”. Igneous meteorites are more or less basaltic in composition but the fluids left after most mineral formation has happened during basalt formation are enriched in silica and can host some rare minerals (emeralds!). The silica being in the form of tridymite is a surprise as that’s a high-temperature polymorph of quartz, but I’m guessing such is not all that uncommon–besides, this would be going on in a planetoid and we haven’t had a whole one to examine yet, and there would have been some pretty hot settings that early on I should think. What a field trip that would have been.

      We do actually get quartz forming in basalt settings here on Earth, in Iceland for example, but I’m always surprised to come across an example.

      Thanks for this!

  25. Right on cue to support the assertions of a smear campaign against renewable energy and EVs that I made in response to a comment by Matt (Mushalik) further up:

    The anti-wind and anti-solar garbage fit to print in Murdoch media

    One day I expect to pick up a Murdoch newspaper and see a prominent and strident opinion piece proclaiming that the world is actually flat, not round. Or that gravity is actually just a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government to make sure that people feel grounded.

    In the interim, we pick up the Murdoch media and have to wade through scientific bollocks of another type: that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the United Nations to keep everyone poor and subdued. Or that wind energy and solar energy are not really things at all. They don’t even work.

    The latest came this week – and not for the first time – from Keith De Lacy, a former Queensland Labor state treasurer. His article is entitled :”Solar and wind simply don’t work, not here, not anywhere”. It proves that you don’t have to be a member of the conservative parties to believe and spread such tosh. But it does help if, like the 76-year-old De Lacy, you are in the right wing of your party and want to defend the fossil fuel industry.

    De Lacy’s piece, like so many others published by the Murdoch media on renewables and climate change, works on a single principle. The more lies you tell about the subject, and the more “facts” you turn, the more impressive it might sound. It is a strategy nicknamed FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is certainly designed to take a long time to repudiate.

    But that is what we have done. With the help of Craig Morris from Renewables International, who pitches in on some of the nonsense that De Lacy has written about Europe and elsewhere, we have gone through the article piece by piece, myth by myth, fossil fuel fantasy by fossil fuel fantasy.

    Before we give Morris the floor, there is one particular element of his article that draws interest: “Have you ever seen an industry that so believed its propaganda?” de Lacy asks, in reference to renewables.

    Yes, the fossil fuel industry.

    The article proceeds to pick the FUD piece apart.

    For those who visit reneweconomy.com.au regularly but, haven’t visited since yesterday, they have refreshed the design of their web site and have a new logo.

    1. I’m guessing that Matt doesn’t take his cue from Murdoch any more than you or I do from Fox News.
      Personally, I really appreciate his analysis because it has very little cheer-leading one way or another, if at all as far I detect.

  26. Reason to celebrate?

    Milestone: Over one trillion watts of wind and solar installed

    BloombergNEF reports that wind and solar energy hit a trillion watts of capacity in the first half of 2018. According to its latest research, a significant uptake in installations in Asia, led by China, enabled this milestone.

    Installing this first trillion watts reportedly required an investment amounting to US$2.3 trillion. However, as technology and markets are maturing and adapting, installing the second trillion watts will require an investment of just $1.23 trillion, thus marking a large reduction in costs.

    Similarly, the time it took to install the first trillion watts amounted to 40 years. But, with global ambitions increasing and falling prices enabling ever more renewable energy assets to be installed, the analysts believe the second trillion watts will be commissioned as early as 2023.

  27. Reason for some folks to celebrate and some to worry?

    Tesla Model 3 Outsold All Mercedes-Benz Cars Combined

    And passengers cars from BMW, Audi, Lexus and so on…

    Here is a more detailed look at the Tesla Model 3 and its closest competitors in the segment.

    Tesla already stated that the Model 3 outsold in July all other models from the mid-sized sedan segment in the U.S. But this new graph shows us how big the difference really is compared to a few particular models.

  28. Alex Jones and his hate speech “Infowars” have been booted from the internet. Inciting violence they say. Here are two links. The top one has a short video. The lower one I quote, bold theirs.

    YouTube, Facebook and Apple shut down Alex Jones channels

    YouTube, Facebook, and Apple’s ban on Alex Jones, explained

    In the past few days, Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify booted from their platforms podcasts, pages, and channels that belong to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars website — one of the biggest purges of popular content by internet giants in recent memory.
    Jones and his various sites are leading purveyors of violent and sometimes racist (and anti-Semitic) conspiracy theories. The tech companies say they blocked Infowars not because of the conspiracy theories, but because, in Spotify’s words, Infowars “expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics.”

    1. You can still pick up InfoWars with a backyard satellite dish, 3 foot or larger, anywhere in North America. That’s the feed Alex sends to television stations and cable systems all across the United States.

      1. Oh right, let’s all go out and buy a 3-foot satellite dish just so we can pick up that stupid lying conspiracy theorist. The stuff that comes out of that fool’s mouth can be believed only by a very stupid idiot. “Sandy Hook was a hoax to try to get more gun control. The US government is secretly controlled by a shadowy international cabal called the New World Order. Robert Muller runs a child sex ring.”

        There has never been a lower lying scumbag than Alex Jones. Anyone who believes a word that comes out of his mouth is stupid enough to believe the world is flat.

        Charlie, do you believe the world is flat?

        1. I didn’t mean for you to think I believe in all of the InfoWars stuff. I think Alex is mostly in it anymore to make money off of the medical supplements he sells anyway, he’s playing a persona for others to believe. I was just pointing out that getting censored on YouTube isn’t the end of InfoWars, since you can get it on satellite. It’s still on shortwave radio also, on a station I think can be picked up all the way to Europe.

  29. Hmm— never knew that—–

    “The massive funding for Israel’s military is the result of the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance between the Israeli and U.S. governments, which called for annual funding of $3.8 billion — or $23,000 per year for every Jewish family living in Israel — FOR THE NEXT TEN (10) YEARS!”

    1. It’s Reagonomics gone wild! Reagan cut income taxes but increased all other taxes and fees so that the total tax burden moved downscale to the poorer people. Now we have the poorer people having their medical, food and other benefits being removed or reduced to fund Israel and the continuing Crusades.
      I just had a property tax hike because the state is not getting as much federal money. Move the taxes downward, reward the rich, boost the military here and elsewhere. It’s a really great deal.

      Everybody happy yet?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA

  30. The global temperature for July 2018 was well above average, in line with the upward trend of 0.18°C per decade seen in global temperature data from 1979 onwards. July in 2018 was:
    -more than 0.4°C warmer than the average July from 1981-2010;
    -the third warmest July on record, though by an insignificant margin compared with 2017, the second warmest year;
    -about 0.1°C cooler than July 2016, and 0.01°C cooled than July 2017.

    https://climate.copernicus.eu/resources/data-analysis/average-surface-air-temperature-analysis/monthly-maps/surface-air-11

  32. Paper is behind a paywall, but from here: https://m.phys.org/news/2018-08-earth-hothouse-state.html, it looks like once 2°C is reached then there are ten tipping points that become active and a reasonable combination of those will mean an unstoppable switch to hot house earth conditions with 4 to 5°C warming and maximum possible population of 1 billion. The change could happen in decades. The paper is almost certainly still conservative, just because of the nature of collective scientific research. There is a question as to how close to 2°C the earth can get and remain stable, there is no definitive statement reported that we can stop where we are now and definitely not reach 2°C, although maybe a bit slower than the changes that will happen once it is passed.

    I think from some studies for animals and human civilizations the undershoot from a collapse is often about equal to the previous overshoot, which would make extinction more likely than getting to a stable population.

    Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

    We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.

    1. I was with them until the end of their report. Sorry, but I can’t take people seriously that encourage “behavioral changes”, “new governance arrangements”, and “transformed social values”. That’s a frightening holier than thou attitude that can do real damage to society.

      1. Why sorry, I couldn’t care less whether you take them seriously or not? So if there is a single thing in any report that you disagree with or makes you question something in the authors’ reasoning you automatically disregard everything – is that right?

        It could be read that that is the only thing they think will make a difference, not that they think it is going to happen. I think most climate scientists privately think that nothing will be done and things are much worse than they report in papers but, like the “Deepadaption” paper above maybe shows, writing that can mean no publication and a career set back.

      2. Well, I don’t find it frightening at all. And I fail to see anything “holier than thou” in wanting to save the planet. I think you are the one being “holier than thou”. And I fail to see how trying to save the planet, and society can do any damage to society.

        That being said, I think the author of that paper is just engaged in a lot of wishful thinking. There is really no such thing as: Collective human action that is not directly mandated by an iron-fisted government.

      3. Sorry, but I can’t take people seriously that encourage “behavioral changes”, “new governance arrangements”, and “transformed social values”. That’s a frightening holier than thou attitude that can do real damage to society.

        You ain’t much of a student of history, is ya?!

        IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
        The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
        When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

        I’d say that document was a pretty good example of suggested:

        “behavioral changes”, “new governance arrangements”, and “transformed social values”

        I’m sure we could find thousands of other examples throughout the history of humankind, in all venues, from the political, social, economic to technological disruption. Change has been the only constant! Do you have internet access on your smart phone? Try using it!

    2. Wow, they still have hope and think there is a number that must be crossed! Sounds like the same old made up number as before.
      The brake lines are cut, the accelerator is still down, the driver is blind and deaf. Welcome to Earth Bus 2000.

      1. Um, not sure which bus you are riding but Earth Bus 2000 went over the cliff quite some time ago…

        Here’s the deal!

        http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable

        Current Population is Three Times the Sustainable Level
        Global Footprint Network data shows that humanity uses the equivalent of 1.7 planet Earths to provide the renewable resources we use and absorb our waste.1 If all 7+ billion of us were to enjoy a European standard of living – which is about 60% the consumption of the average American – the Earth could sustainably support only about 2 billion people.

        Now, when you might ask, was the human population on this planet a mere 2 billion people? Well, that was way back in 1927. So that is when the that Earth Bus 2000 went over the cliff! We are now riding Earth Overshoot Bus 2020 and while we are not 100% certain of the exact moment of impact at the bottom of the ravine, we do know it is getting pretty darn close!

        Cheers!

  33. Oh dear! Can it get any worse than this? What an embarrassment for our glorious president! 😉

    West Hollywood Council urges removal of Trump’s Walk of Fame star

    “The West Hollywood City Council did not pass the resolution because Donald Trump is a conservative or a Republican. Earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is an honor. When one belittles and attacks minorities, immigrants, Muslims, people with disabilities or women — the honor no longer exists,” Duran said in an email.

    The council’s staff report on the resolution also cited the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families at the U.S. border and Trump’s “denial of findings from the United States intelligence community regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and continued refusal to hold Russia accountable for its crimes.”

    The council, which does not have any direct authority over the Hollywood Walk of Fame, will now share the resolution with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which does.

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