EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – June 2017 Edition with data for April

446 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – June 2017 Edition with data for April”

1. Hi all,

   The first table should say April, rather than March.

2. Thanks IslandMan.
   An interesting policy fight to watch is the potential tariff imposition on China produced PV.
   Ironically, the suit for tariffs has been put forth by two foreign owned companies that have USA manufacturing (Chinese and German- Suniva and Solarworld respectively).
   This will have a big impact on PV prices if it is imposed.

   https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/china-owned-u-s-solar-maker-seeks-u-s-tariffs-on-china-imports
   https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060054176/

   1. I have mixed feelings about this as I outlined in a response to Mike in the previous thread. The tactic being used by the Chines is so old and well known that it has it’s own name, Predatory Pricing. This is the practice of selling goods below cost in a sustained way with the intention of driving competitors out of business. The case of China and PV manufacturing is as good an example as you”re ever going to get of the practice and what makes this even more sinister IMO is that I believe that this is more or less Chinese government policy! See

      Why China Is Dominating the Solar Industry

      China’s solar companies have shareholders who want profits, Chung said. But the government “has other constituencies that are demanding jobs and factories to be put up.” That pressure came from provincial and local governments that found, according to DOE, that the federal government was willing to chip in as much as $47 billion to help build its solar manufacturing into what it calls a “strategic industry.”

      Expanding renewable energy became one of seven categories of business that receive special attention including loans and tax incentives under China’s five-year plans.

      The result was that in building up the world’s largest solar manufacturing industry, one that became the price leader in most aspects of the world’s market—beginning with cheaper solar panels—China had helped create a worldwide glut. There were roughly two panels being made for every one being ordered by an overseas customer.

      Here’s another quote from the article

      U.S. experts are divided on where China’s policies on solar energy appear to be headed. Some think it’s a matter of government policies that ran out of control. After spending 30 years in the U.S. solar industry and in DOE watching solar markets, Ken Zweibel has recently retired, but he worries that there may be more to it than that. He calls it “black box economics.”

      “If there was ever a situation where the Chinese have put their whole governmental system behind manufacturing, it’s got to be solar modules,” Zweibel said. “I think they think they can wipe out all the competition in the world. It makes all kinds of sense if you have the staying power.”

      Wyatt Metzger, a principal scientist at NREL, takes a more benign view. “They have a centralized government and terrible pollution problems. They understand the need to get away from coal and to invest in clean energy,” he said.

      I have personally benefited from this predatory pricing having bought modules made by Suntech Power on two occasions before they filled for bankruptcy in March 2013 so, on one hand I have taken advantage of companies selling goods below cost. On the other hand, I fully recognize that this is an unfair and uncompetitive practice which could lead to one country or company ending up in a monopoly postilionm which they could then abuse.

      1. The concern over a Chinese monopoly on manufacturing PV panels, ‘which they could then abuse’ is legit, however I believe it would be a short-lived and thus failed policy.
         If they did begin to raise the prices beyond reasonable market price, then other country companies would rush in to earn some profit.
         I’m pretty certain that a 1-2 yr ramp up in manufacturing from places like the USA, Korea, Japan, Germany, and other countries with manufacturing infrastructure capability would occur.
         In the meantime- I think it would be very healthy for the world economy to purchase PV from wherever they have the best value product at high capacity. Predatory or not.
         My opinion.

         1. The current price war is certainly good for buyers, and for the environment.

            I am personally convinced that the Chinese do routinely engage in producing certain products and selling them at prices lower than justified by the cost of production, and what the market will pay, and that this is deliberate policy, intended to eventually put the Chinese in dominant positions in such industries.

            The problem with competitors coming in once the Chinese raise prices to take advantage of the return of profitable prices is that potential competitors are often, maybe most of the time, afraid to make the necessary investments, knowing that the Chinese might lower their prices again enough to force them out again.

            I’m not impressed with the quality of such goods from China as I do buy, but such goods sure are cheap, generally cheap enough to justify the price I pay, if I have to scrap the product and replace it before its time.I buy domestically made when I can.

            There isn’t much in the way of power tools or appliances in big box stores nearby that doesn’t come from China, even though the products often bear a familiar domestic brand name.

            1. When you have a economy where you really don’t need to make a profit, it does give you an advantage.
               The poor capitalists!

            2. Hi OFM:

               I’ve recently bought some American made tools from DeWalt, a small router and a 1/4 sheet sander. They are so superior to the Harbor Freight junk (Chinese) I’ve been purchasing they are worth the vast difference in price.

               1. My wife is a jeweler.
                  It is all about German tools.

               2. I have some German made tools, not very many. Every last one of them has proven to be first class in every respect.
                  I would buy more , but there aren’t very many German tools available locally, and when I need a new tool, it’s usually needed that very minute, meaning a trip to town for whatever brand I can find without waiting a day or two for delivery.

               3. I can’t find a thing that says DEWALT on it in the stores near where I live that doesn’t also say CHINA. Did you buy used?

                  The Chinese made Dewalt tools are actually pretty good, but they aren’t nearly as durable as the older American made ones which in my experience can now only be found used, never new.

      2. I’m glad they have dropped the price of PV so low that it is expanding quickly. I would rather have solar panels be so affordable that many people and countries can buy them, than to have higher prices so that they will keep more manufacturers in business.

         1. Hi Boomer.
            The problem is that solar panels are likely to become a strategic product: the kind of thing where if you can’t make your own, you end up tied to the producer in, shall we say, the “Bottom” role. It’s not a question of if they will raise the price: it’s a Watcher-type political question where you can’t say no to them.

            1. I’d rather first see a greatly increased installed base of solar. Then if China raises the price and the US feels we are at a disadvantage, we can redevelop our own manufacturing. Buy from them as long as it is cheap.

               What resources would they hoard that we couldn’t get on our own if necessary? I know they are trying to buy up cobalt, but that is different than how cheaply they are willing to sell their manufactured panels.

               1. Why would people assume that if China dominates the solar industry, other countries wouldn’t be able to get back into manufacturing if China tries to raise the price too high or refuses to sell their products for strategic reasons?

               2. Can’t ramp up production fast enough if you need it quickly; raw materials may be spoken for.

               3. But even if we had factories, there’s no reason to assume they would have stockpiled raw materials for the future.

                  Another option would be to buy from China while the price is cheap while simultaneously stockpiling materials for future use.

               4. China imports most of its polysilicon from the US and Germany.

                  The manufacturing beyond that is fairly low tech and doesn’t add much value.

                  The main reason solar panels are so cheap is that polysilicon is so cheap, and Wacker Chemicals the German company that led the industry in volume for years, is more at fault than anyone else.

               5. “Why would people assume that if China dominates the solar industry, other countries wouldn’t be able to get back into manufacturing if China tries to raise the price too high or refuses to sell their products for strategic reasons?”

                  China is the location of module production, however, they use material (Si) that is produced in other countries, the machinery is produced in other countries, the BOS is produced in other countries, and most of the R&D is still done in other countries.

                  With higher prices it would make sense to open production facilities in USA or EU. At the low prices for modules it does not.

               6. This is a case where it’s even worse than how LTO producers can ramp up production relatively quickly if oil prices go up. It takes time to build factories at the scale needed to come even close to matching the scale of Chinese module production. Even if prospective manufacturers were to pick up the carcases of operations driven out of businesses by predatory pricing, they would quite likely have to be re-tooled to keep up with the state of the art in module manufacturing.

                  In the time it takes to plan, raise financing, build or acquire and retool factories, sort out supply chains and hire staff, the “predators” will have pricing power and can make handsome profits. Then, as soon as new entrants start shipping product, they can engage in predatory pricing again to make sure the new entrants never make a profit.

                  I have seen this type of scenario with soft drink manufacturing in my island where the major player would buy one of the smaller players and run it at a loss by selling the product below cost, driving significant swathes of the competition out of business. The business they bought would itself be insolvent so, they would shut it down, leaving themselves as the king of the hill again. After a couple of years new producers would start entering what is a very lucrative market and as soon as the competition became an issue, rinse and repeat.

                  What stopped it was the entrant of a competitor with deeper pockets that could tie up a franchise deal with a the other major international soft drink brand and can not be bought out or bullied. IMO, unless some other government steps up and provides incentives like sweet land/factory deals, tax breaks etc. the Chinese are going to rule the roost. Something that is happening in some jurisdictions is that, rules requiring local content have been set up making sure that locally produced product will have a price advantage over imported product. If memory serves me right Brazil, India and at least one middle eastern country have set up such arrangements.

                  China is a really interesting case. They are opposed to imposition of tariffs on the goods they export but they impose very steep tariffs on goods they import. Those of us who watch Jack Rickard over at EVTV might remember his horror stories of trying to ship sample stub axles to a Chinese shop to have a custom part fabricated! There is also the issue of Tesla in both India and China. See:

                  Tesla Actively Trying To Enter Indian Market, Seeks Special Exemption

                  From two years ago

                  Tesla Pushes White House To Pressure China Into Easing Restrictions On U.S. Automakers

                  Updated a day ago

                  UPDATE: Tesla Signs Agreement To Build EVs in China

                  It seems to be a case of “Do as I say but, not as I do”.

               7. Islandboy is dead on in everything he is saying about Chinese economic strategies.

                  The only way anybody in a western country can get into the pv panel biz with any assurance that they won’t be the victim of a Chinese dumping scheme is to trust that government will cover their six.

                  Putting your trust in government is ok if you are already big enough to have enough influence in governmental circles. If your company is small, fuggetaboutit.

                  I maintain that even BIG industries can be the victim of governments pursuing unspoken policies that suit the larger ends of government.

                  The reason the financial cops aren’t doing diddly shit about the obvious monkey business involving bad loans and crooked investment pitches in the tight oil industry is that the government is EXTREMELY interested in keeping oil dirt cheap for a lot of reasons, the ultimate one being that cheap oil means easy or easier reelection for incumbent politicians of either party.

                  The price of oil is highly inelastic, meaning a small excess of supply coming to market means a major crash of the price. A couple of million barrels a day more than the buyers world wide REALLY WANT is enough to knock the price down from near a hundred bucks to around fifty bucks.

                  So the message can is filtering down from the top, meaning the very top, the WH, and Congress, that THE BOSS doesn’t WANT anything done about the tight oil financial shenanigans. People who are rising stars in government offices have EXCELLENT noses, and can smell a bad career move from miles away.The opportunity to go to court and win some fame , and with that fame, future promotions and the opportunity to win offices such as governor or congressman, by prosecuting some bankers/money managers is as obvious as the noonday sun.

                  Nobody is doing so.

                  The ONLY LIKELY explanation I can think of is that the people who OUGHT to be doing so know that they will not only get no support from higher management. What would happen is that higher management will subject them to some rough involuntary sex if they even start such a prosecution.

                  Those who aren’t willing to go along to get along with such unspoken simply find themselves locked out of promotions,denied the resources necessary to a successful completion of the case, reassigned to other departments, or on even fired for trumped up reasons.

         2. Samson’s rule in effect. Asia is damn serious about PV production. No one does it better. North America produces tiny % of Global production.
            Each new plant has higher capacity and produces below the cost of existing
            production. Unlike Shale wells. North America production could have been
            in the Cat’s bird seat, but squandered capital on energy production that lasts months – not years. Lights out PV Module production not unlike like candy bars. IIRC, Mars candy enjoyed the highest turnover/employee on the planet for a while. Panel availability and price has an inverse relation to employment – The jobs are about installation in the field. Can you say Job Killing Act ?

            1. Yes, installation is the job creator in the US, so cheap panels likely means more job.

            2. “Asia is damn serious about PV production….North America production could have been in the Cat’s bird seat”

               Raygun gave the seat away.

               Can the U.S. Create Its Own German-Style Energy Revolution?,

               Your President Jimmy Carter was the first politician to promote an industrial revolution with renewables,” Fell said when we met in his Berlin office in April. “I looked to the USA in the 1970s. There was wind power in California and solar power on the White House. I thought, ‘Oh, this is wonderful! Why can’t we have this in Germany?'”

               For a time, the United States led the world in developing renewable energy. At one point the Carter administration’s Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) made the dream of a renewable energy economy so real that it set off alarms in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.

               “The big powers are seriously trying to find alternatives to oil by seeking to draw energy from the sun,” Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani warned his colleagues. “We hope to God they will not succeed quickly because our position in that case will be painful.”

               Four years later, Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan. The new administration considered SERI a prime example of what it derided as “solar socialism.” The budget of the world’s leading solar institute was slashed and before long it was back to (oil) business as usual.

               As Fell tells it: “Reagan said, ‘Go away with this shit of renewables.’ And that was that.”

               A generation of Germans picked up the renewable torch that the Reagan administration tossed aside and bought up SERI-produced patents at fire-sale prices. The renewable energy revolution didn’t end. It moved overseas and was renamed die Energiewende.

               https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121120/germany-energiewende-clean-energy-economy-solar-wind-electric-grid-utilities

3. The panels will presumably produce electricity for 25 years or more. If the Chinese want to underwrite the costs of increased renewable energy production capacity in competing nations along with creating huge numbers of installation jobs which can’t be offshored, why not let them?

   If and when they started to jack up their product costs because they’ve successfully created a manufacturing monopoly, competing production can be scaled elsewhere. No?

   Maybe their real strategy is to undermine U.S. power by accelerating the decline of the petroleum industry by creating cheap energy substitution. 😉

   1. We Yankees are net petroleum importers, on the grand scale, and very likely to remain net importers as far out as the eye can see. We will not benefit as MUCH as the Chinese by switching to renewable energy because they have to import an even greater share of their consumption, but I can’t see that the Chinese derive any benefit at Yankee expense by accelerating the transition to renewable energy.

      Perhaps they do, in one sense though. We are better positioned to play hard ball as necessary with the countries that are oil exporters, and the less oil matters, the better the Chinese position will be in comparison to the USA’s position in terms of international influence.

      Bully boy businesses have always routinely raised prices once they have driven out the competition, and they can lower prices to drive out any NEW competition. Just the fact that they COULD lower prices a second or third time is enough to scare investors out of the solar panel industry- and out of opening mines to produce rare earths, etc.

      1. Whether the predatory tactic of initial low pricing, killing competition followed by high prices under monopoly control can work depends on the cost of getting into the market and the availability of investment capital. In the case of even relatively high cost of entry either public enthusiasm (Tesla) or government intervention (nuclear industry) I think the US is well positioned to resist Chinese efforts in this area if the will is there.

         1. Yes, “IF the will is there”.

            But unless the government is willing to guarantee the Chinese won’t fuck over the owners of a new manufacturing plant, it won’t get built. That requires a lot of faith in government, given the history of our government flip flopping in such affairs. The faith is not there, and the plants are not getting built.

            The farther ahead the Chinese get, the harder it will be to catch up, because they will have all the little ducks involved already in line to serve the big duck plant that actually turns out panels. We won’t have the experienced people needed to make new plants profitable right away.

4. I don’t generally find that proving a person wrong does much by way of getting him to admit his mistakes, or change his politics, or his personal habits, etc.

   But once in a while, it’s a good strategy, depending on who the onlookers are when you put the knife in deep and twist it, while the other person squirms on the blade.

   I twisted the knife in such a person today at the local country store where lots of people gather for the deli lunch. A hard core ignoramus was bragging about how much good Trump is doing by cutting taxes, and I asked him if he knew Trump is cutting out the money for medical research. He says SO WHAT?

   And I say because if it weren’t for the medical advances made possible by research, mostly paid for by the government, you would be DEAD, without the operations you have had, and the drugs you take.

   And I looked around, and said furthermore, there’s NOBODY here who doesn’t have a relative or close friend alive today who would be DEAD OTHERWISE, except that the federal government has spent tax money on medical research.

   And you all know it.

   1. You were wearing a body armor of course. 🙂

      1. Hi Dennis,

         Well, I DO have extremely thick skin, and while I’m old and fat, the guy I told off is even older and fatter than I am, lol, so I knew I would get away with it. I was too far away for him to hit me with one of his crutches.

   2. I doubt most Trump supporters will see much reduction in their own taxes. And will they lose more in government benefits than they save in taxes?

      1. Most Trump supporters will NOT see a reduction in their own taxes, because most of them are wage earners, and the R’s aren’t talking about raising the standard deductions or cutting income taxes on folks who don’t make much as employees.

         On the other hand, most of them will not lose much in the way of government benefits, short term at least, because they tend to be the sort of people who pay for benefits rather than collect them, meaning benefits such as unemployment insurance, rental assistance, free school lunches and public health clinic for their kids, charity hospital care, food stamps, etc.

         In the long term, they will lose of course, because EVERY BODY benefits from having cleaner air to breathe, cleaner water to drink, etc. They will collect less in their old age due to tax cuts, but like most people, they don’t think very far ahead very often.

         But it’s not taxes that motivate working people to vote for R’s in general, and Trump in particular. It’s culture war, it’s the mind set, the way they see the world.

         1. Basically we have voters who are tribal and will stick with their tribe even if it kills them.

         2. trump supporters…tend to be the sort of people who pay for benefits rather than collect them

            That’s really, really, really not the case. Rural areas which supported Trump are much lower income, and they have MUCH higher rates of use of SNAP (food stamps), Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the rest of the benefits you mentioned. Plus they pay higher levels of regressive taxes like FICA (social security), sales taxes, etc.

            States like CA and NY pay for the benefits, states like W. Virginia receives them.

            “Conservative” voters have been told that these benefits are being used by the “others” (with the message that those others are black, hispanic, etc)….but it’s really not true.

            Trump supporters are being hurt in EVERY way by Republican policies.

            1. Hi Nick,

               I LIVE in a rural area that is economically backward by the usual standards, and KNOW who the Trump supporters are, and are not.

               The people who are on welfare, unemployment, rental assistance, etc, generally do not vote at ALL. IF they vote, they are as likely or more likely to vote D than R.

               The ones like most of my neighbors who work their asses off year in and year out, decade in and decade out, do vote, half or more of them any way, and THEY are the rural people who support Trump on economic grounds.

               There are lots of others of course who support Trump in order to deny support to Democrats, such as gun rights advocates, anti abortion religious people, and others, with the CULTURE having more to do with Trump winning in rural areas than the economy.

               Some farmers I know support Trump because they don’t want any more regulation of the way they run their farms for instance, and believe Trump will cut back on such regulations.

               A LOT of independent business people support the R’s because they are FUCKING FURIOUS that the ACA was specifically ( in their opinion and mine) written to target THEM as the people who would be PAYING for it, since they lost the policies they were supposed to be able to keep, and because they are FORCED to buy replacement policies they DON’T want.

               One of the rather liberal young women in my family, a recent graduate of Duke, who is making close to six figures already , voted for Trump because she got hit in the ass by the ACA bus to the tune of about six or seven grand, while other people with similar qualifications on GOVERNMENT payrolls KEPT their old coverage, people in unions kept their old coverage, etc. People working in smaller businesses such as the one she works for LOST, big time.

               But I do agree that blue state money winds up in rural red states, etc.

               The thing is, the people who are actually doing the VOTING voted Trump because they DESPISE people on welfare as being unwilling to work, etc, which is entirely unjustified in some cases, entirely justified in others, depending on the individual.

               I personally know half a dozen people on various welfare programs that are perfectly capable of working many jobs they could land in a hurry.

               To make myself a little clearer, I am talking about the PERCEPTIONS of voters, rather than actual economic facts.

               The typical rural Trump voter, with substantial justification based on what he knows about the past history of the health care industry does NOT expect any government program, other than Medicare to reduce HIS medical costs. What he EXPECTS, based on what he KNOWS, is that HE will be charged MORE, so people who either can’t or won’t work, will pay less, or nothing.

               Whether this is actually TRUE or not doesn’t MATTER, in terms of his politics. What he BELIEVES is what matters.

               And at least half of all the older people I know can tell a true story about some family member being charged ten grand, or a hundred, for a hospital visit of the same sort that was WRITTEN OFF by somebody they know who has never been WILLING to show up for forty hours year after year at one of the local factories or sawmills or mines.

               I was charged two grand recently at a time I had less than fifteen thousand annual income ( spending ALL my time that year looking after parents who would otherwise be in a nursing home and not working for wages at all, not selling any assets ) for an MRI that is routinely written off by the same hospital for any body that walks in who says he is broke. I admitted I could pay it, and they charged ME. The mri probably cost the hospital less than a hundred bucks out of pocket, for the time involved administering it by a technician. The machine is expensive of course, but at two grand an hour when in use, it doesn’t take very long to pay for a million dollar machine. It gets used several times even on a slow day, I know, because I know some of the nurses who work there. They are relatives, and talk openly to me about things that are not much discussed publicly by hospital employees.

               Now I understand that single payer WILL reduce everybody’s costs.

               But it takes a WHILE to get this across to a person who expects to get screwed at tax time in order for the government to pay for health care for people who ( often can’t it’s true ) don’t pay.

               What such a person expects, with some justification due to historical experience, is that the hospital, drug company and doctors will charge the same, so he pays the same, PLUS he pays again for anybody who does not work.

               1. I’ve stopped signing the agreements to pay at hospitals because the pricing is frankly fraudulent. The problem of fraudulent hospital & doctor pricing applied to cash payers existed before the ACA and exists after it. I know of only two ways to stop it:

                  — a law requiring that hospitals and doctors charge cash payers NO MORE than they charge Medicare or insurance companies
                  — nationalization of the hospitals and direct government employment of the doctors, like they have in the UK

               2. Hi Nathaniel,

                  I agree one hundred percent that it ought to be against the law for a doctor or dentist to charge a cash customer paying on the spot more for a procedure than an insurance company pays for the same procedure.

   3. I hope you had a getaway car with the engine running!
      In UK the National Health Service ranks higher in popularity with the people than both the royal family and the military. Even conservative politician David Cameron had to sing it’s praises.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH-yiIkAoSc
      Trump has stated that health care is very very complicated. It seems however that the rest of the western world has figured it quite well. I suspect that the complicated bit is accepting a program that cares for all american people when doing so contradicts conservative America’s stagnant ideals, corporate interests and jingoistic slogans.
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/feb/27/trump-healthcare-complicated-budget-video

      1. I suspect that the complicated bit is accepting a program that cares for all american people when doing so contradicts conservative America’s stagnant ideals, corporate interests and jingoistic slogans.

         Our wing pawn proletariat has voted against its own interests for so long, it is a bragging right.

         “I want to pay twice as much for health care, live years less, have a higher infant mortality rate, and a diminished quality of life! I hate socialism!”

5. Ping Fred

   A while back you posted a link to a solar company that sells to Mexico. I omitted to save the link, would you repost it please.

   NAOM

   1. I assume it was http://sunelec.com/home/
      I think they sell to anyone anywhere that will buy 😉

      1. Obrigado, though the site seems broken at the moment. I have tagged it and sent them a query.

         NAOM

6. From the graphs, it look like we need a lot more PV to assist that summertime hot weather peak in generation. PV produces the largest amount of energy on a reliable basis during that period.

7. Good news on the ramp up in Li battery production, from both China and USA
   “Roughly 55 percent of global lithium-ion battery production is already based in China, compared with 10 percent in the U.S. By 2021, China’s share is forecast to grow to 65 percent, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”
   “But don’t count Tesla out. The company, based in Palo Alto, California, plans to announce locations for up to four new factories by the end of 2017. (It’s exploring at least one site in Shanghai.) And there are few, if any, individual Chinese battery companies that can match the scale of Tesla’s production toe to toe.”

   https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-about-to-bury-elon-musk-in-batteries

   1. Still a technology first commercialized by the Japanese in the early 1990’s.
      It’s been a while campers, don’t you think?

      1. True. So when are you going to due your first annual post on the status of the global ‘Battery Industry and Technology’?

         1. I’m just a curious amateur. But someone with some knowledge, I agree, should examine this.

            1. Hi Hightrekker,

               Generally that is true of many of us. If you are up on the subject and would like to write up what you know with some links to interesting stuff you have read, it would be interesting.

               I still think electrified rail is the smartest way to solve the long haul land freight problem as fossil fuels deplete, it is too bad the US government is so short sighted. A national infrastructure plan like the interstate highway project of the 50s and 60s should be instituted focusing on rail, light rail and an HVDC transmission network.

               This could be done using public private partnerships or tax breaks for those private companies that choose to develop such networks.

               Just leaving it to the free market may leave us short on transport capability and this will be reflected by a spike in transport costs due to shortages. Better to be proactive.

               Batteries are not likely to be the lowest cost solution for long haul land transport in my view.

               1. I agree.

                  However, I suspect that batteries will be the default choice. They’re probably already cheaper than diesel even now, and the difference will get greater.

                  Most importantly, they can be implemented using existing infrastructure by the big truck fleets. The biggest barrier is the investments required by the big truck manufacturers. That’s a fairly big barrier, because both the manufacturers and fleet buyers HATE change. But, that barrier is being broken as we speak: all of the major truck manufacturers have recognized the need for major improvements in fuel efficiency, and incremental improvements, including electrification and a wide variety of other measures such as aerodynamic improvements, is the easiest path forward.

               2. Hi Nick G,

                  Using batteries will be a problem, it will need to be very big to allow a truck to travel the usual distances, if fast charging (supercharger rates) is used, the life of the batteries will be low.

                  I know you believe wind and rolling resistance can be reduced to zero (or as low as we would like, which certainly implies zero). Possibly when the sun is a red giant that will be the case. In the meantime, objects at rest will remain so unless energy is applied and the World is not flat, there are hills. Thermodynamics will not allow all energy to be recovered on the down hill.

                  Batteries and trucks over long distances (600 miles per charge) are not likely to be less expensive than electrified rail. From rail terminal to store or factory will work, long haul I don’t think so.

               3. “Possibly when the sun is a red giant that will be the case.” ~ Dennis Coyne

                  LOL

               4. I agree, it is rail for long distance freight, it just makes sense.
                  Batteries are not going to work for log distance trucking of freight.
                  We can just do the math.

               5. I agree, barring near miracles in the battery biz, long haul trucks aren’t going to be running on batteries, and even if they could, the SCALE of the problems associated with providing enough electrical transmission capacity to super charging stations capable of servicing the truck fleet boggles the mind.

                  I believe local scale electrified rail is a real possibility, given that the management of trains can be and is now well automated. Old branch lines can be revived, and new ones built, and freight cars can be easily and quickly added to or pulled out of trains traveling main lines now.

                  We can cut the current last few miles by truck argument down from a hundred or two hundred miles down to an argument about the last twenty or thirty or fifty miles, which would save diesel fuel by the millions of barrels on a daily basis.

                  And I also believe that battery tech will soon be good enough that commercial trucks that run short local routes can be profitably hybridized or fully electrified, in at least some cases.

                  I just can’t see batteries ever running my farm machinery though. It sits around too much of the time, and the power requirements when it does run are too high for too many hours at a stretch. Paying for something used almost every day almost all day is one thing. Paying the same price for it when you use it intermittently at longish intervals is a different ball game altogether.

               6. Dennis-
                  My thesis concerned anarchism and the Russian Revolution.
                  While I’m reasonably curious and science literate, I would feel uncomfortable writing on battery technology.

               7. Interesting thanks.

               8. Before that, or at least at the same time, a push toward local resilience should be on everyone’s agenda, including your own, Dennis. That way, there may be far less to transport, and so far less energy, etc., expenditure. It just seems to make economic sense– the real kind, I mean.

                  What did your textbooks tell you there?

               9. Hi Caelan,

                  I think buying locally is a great idea as is building products of high quality that last a lifetime or more, both of these would reduce the need for transport.

                  I doubt transport needs can be eliminated, but surely they can be reduced which solves many problems.

                  Higher cost of moving people and goods is likely to lead to this solution.

                  It is up to individuals to make these choices, whether that will be the case is unknown.

               10. Making locally, not just or necessarily buying locally. That qualification aside, agreed.

               11. Hi Caelan,

                   Yes buying locally was supposed to imply the goods were made locally, so Idid not mean shop at local stores rather than on the internet. I mean buy goods that are made or produced as much as possible from local sources. And also buy well made quality goods (of the durable sort), tools, appliances, and furniture etc that are made to last as long as possible, possibly generations.

               12. Understood, Dennis, and sounds like fun.

   2. Tesla/Panasonic focus is on Li Metal Oxide ( type NCA ) cells for traction. Not really suitable for use for Stationary applications unless behind a fence. So far only Li Fe Phosphate have been approved for use in North America per UL 9540. Asia makes most of the LFP Batteries on the Planet. We just build some LFP packs that will do 4000+ cycles to 80% capacity. Possible 40% of the cost per kWh than NCA. Used Tesla paks we carefully limit/derate based on Temperature.

8. This is a response to the incredibly misinformed comment about the US rail network made by “Eulenspiegel” in the previous post.

   In reality, most primary rail lines in the United States are well-engineered and well-maintained with 132 lb or greater continuous welded rail. Speed limits for freight trains on these lines are usually 50-60 mph. In some areas where the terrain is flat and the tracks are straight, certain freight trains are allowed to go 70 mph. In most cases, the speediest freight trains in the country are those carrying time-sensitive trailer traffic from the likes of UPS, FedEx, or other couriers.

   1. Hi Paul,

      Thanks. Are there any good studies giving estimated costs for electrifying the US rail network?

      At some point (probably around 2025-2030) diesel may become very expensive (say $8 to $10 per gallon or higher) and electric trains may make economic sense. It will take quite a bit of time obviously (25 years?) to upgrade to electric trains, so better not to wait for high prices before getting started, clearly we start with the high traffic routes (fastest payback).

      You seem to know a bit about this so I figured you may be up on the latest studies.

      1. Electrification of rail already makes sense. So…why aren’t we doing it?

         Because fuel is a relatively small percentage of rail costs; infrastructure investments would be very large; we don’t have a national rail system, so it has to be coordinated with a large number of players; and…

         Local governments heavily tax rail capital investments! Highways don’t pay property taxes, local roads don’t pay them either, so rail is under a big competitive disadvantage, especially for things that require large fixed capital investments.

         It’s mighty frustrating, and therefore I suspect that most of the action will happen on the trucking side, at least until oil prices (or our recognition of external costs) get really painful.

         1. Same tax rules for highways and roads should apply to rail. Yes fuel costs for rail are not very large now, but this will change, we should be proactive.

            Companies that electrify more than 70% of their miles should pay no income tax, that might be incentive enough if local tax laws cannot be changed.

            1. The craziness basically comes from historical accident. For some reason most of the railroad tracks are privately owned. Ever heard of a privately owned highway? Me neither.

               Nationalize the tracks, solve the problem. Some states are doing this (most notably Massachusetts), but there’s irrational ideological opposition to it in mouch of the country.

               1. Nathanael- if a railroad was built by a private company (most were), it stands to reason that they would own it.
                  Highways were generally built with tax-payer money by the government. In places where public money is not available for highways in congested areas.
                  Check out this history-
                  http://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-1993/private-toll-roads-in-america-the-first-time-around/
                  and this-
                  https://www.thetruckersreport.com/foreign-company-now-owns-six-major-us-tolls-roads/

      2. Nobody in the industry is talking seriously about the possibility of electrification, so there are probably no public studies out there discussing the costs. In any case, by far most of the excess money in rail over nearly the last decade has been dumped into fulfilling the unfunded congressional mandate of implementing Positive Train Control (PTC).

      3. You may be interested in reading about the operational experience plus ultimate outcome of The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension. That was the only U.S. long-distance transcontinental main line to combine significant amounts of electrification with a primarily freight train traffic base.

9. And a little ocean/climate warming science, to stir up the placid waters just a wee bit 😉

   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-017-3751-5
   Consensuses and discrepancies of basin-scale ocean heat content changes in different ocean analyses
   Abstarct:
   Inconsistent global/basin ocean heat content (OHC) changes were found in different ocean subsurface temperature analyses, especially in recent studies related to the slowdown in global surface temperature rise. This finding challenges the reliability of the ocean subsurface temperature analyses and motivates a more comprehensive inter-comparison between the analyses. Here we compare the OHC changes in three ocean analyses (Ishii, EN4 and IAP) to investigate the uncertainty in OHC in four major ocean basins from decadal to multi-decadal scales. First, all products show an increase of OHC since 1970 in each ocean basin revealing a robust warming, although the warming rates are not identical. The geographical patterns, the key modes and the vertical structure of OHC changes are consistent among the three datasets, implying that the main OHC variabilities can be robustly represented. However, large discrepancies are found in the percentage of basinal ocean heating related to the global ocean, with the largest differences in the Pacific and Southern Ocean. Meanwhile, we find a large discrepancy of ocean heat storage in different layers, especially within 300–700 m in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. Furthermore, the near surface analysis of Ishii and IAP are consistent with sea surface temperature (SST) products, but EN4 is found to underestimate the long-term trend. Compared with ocean heat storage derived from the atmospheric budget equation, all products show consistent seasonal cycles of OHC in the upper 1500 m especially during 2008 to 2012. Overall, our analyses further the understanding of the observed OHC variations, and we recommend a careful quantification of errors in the ocean analyses.

10. Now this:
    Alaska fishermen ‘chased out’ of Bering Sea by gangs of killer whales
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/alaska-fishermen-fishing-bering-sea-killer-whale-orca-gangs-a7801336.html
    They are waking up!

    1. That bit of news just made my day! Tks!

11. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/29/toxic-waste-from-solar-panels-300-times-that-of-nuclear-power/
    June 28, 2017 by Mark Nelson

    “Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.

    Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.

    All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?

    Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste.

    We found:

    Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.
    If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).
    In countries like China, India, and Ghana, communities living near e-waste dumps often burn the waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off the plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled.
    The study defines as toxic waste the spent fuel assemblies from nuclear plants and the solar panels themselves, which contain similar heavy metals and toxins as other electronics, such as computers and smartphones.”

    1. The daily waste from oily rain water washed in to streams, rivers, lakes and the oceans makes that pale in comparison. If you add CO2 emissions warming the planet, polar ice melt, ocean acidification, causing coral reef die off and all kinds of ecological mayhem, etc… let’s just call your concerns, duly noted!

       1. Workers on E-Waste sites (mostly in Asia and Africa) are paid an average of $1.50 per day. They are unprotected while working with the toxic substances on the site. They are the first to inhale the toxins that are released in the air when electronic parts are burned. Many (most) of these workers are children!

          1. BTW, an average cellphone user replaces their unit once every 18 months. I’ve a drawer full of them (plus a few laptops) BECAUSE our local recycling center won’t touch the stuff. Time for an honest discussion here. And for the record, this is the first time I’ve agreed with Texas Tea on anything BUT I have been to so-called recycling centres in China and the Philippines with mile long stacks of smoldering electronics a lot of which came from the US.

             1. E-waste is a definitely a huge problem but it is only going to be solved if the entire system of manufacturing and designing for timed obsolescence is addressed as well! Which in no way makes fossil fuel waste any less noxious and environmentally problematic either.

                My Beef with Texas Tea is that he has this holier than thou attitude and absolutely zero interest in addressing the underlying systemic issues with our entire industrial civilization. His modus operandi is to come here and say gee look how dirty alternative energy is but say nothing about how bad fossil fuels really are.

                In the past I have been criticized for being a proponent of Circular Economic Principles such as those put forth by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
                https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy

                I learned about circular manufacturing of modular smartphones at the Disruptive Innovation Festival, a yearly occurrence organized and funded by Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

                Here’s a sample of some of the thinking behind it. And it certainly has problems but not necessarily technical or engineering ones. Mostly they are human social issues related to the old keeping up with Joneses that afflict almost every segment of our human interactions.

                http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7829810/?reload=true

                Abstract:
                Currently a range of modular smartphones is emerging, including the Fairphone 2, Puzzlephone, Google’s Project ARA, RePhone, LG’s G5 and others. In an industry of perceived short product cycles a modular design concept might become crucial for longer product lifetimes. The paper provides an overview on latest product developments and assesses these against environmental criteria, including longevity, durability, upgradeability, repairability and Design for Recycling and Reuse. Modular product design however is not necessarily the most sustainable design option. Modularity first of all means inevitably more material consumption, as additional sub-housing and universal connectors are required, partly also a larger total product volume to allow for incorporation of the maximum potential configuration and anticipated future technologies. This has to pay off through a significantly longer use of individual devices and modules. It depends furthermore on the user, if the intended replacement of broken modules by new ones helps to keep whole devices in use much longer or if the user just replaces individual modules much more frequently to keep pace with latest technology features.

                To be very clear the real problems are systemic and we need to redesign the entire industrial economy and our civilization from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Change is not going to happen overnight! Not one of us who posts here, is environmentally innocent and all of us living in first world economies need to take a good hard look in the mirror because we have met the enemy and it is us.

                The way I see things the first thing that has to go is our dependence on fossil fuels! If that doesn’t happen like yesterday, then we can all forget about how we structure our future civilization and how we deal with all the other waste streams we produce.

                In my view the number one issue I’d like to see resolved is ocean acidification and together with that ocean and global warming. Fossil fuels are public enemy number one in that regard!

                1. “The way I see things the first thing that has to go is dependence on fossil fuels! If that doesn’t happen like yesterday, then we can all forget about how we structure our future civilization and how we deal with all the other waste streams we produce.”

                   Totally agree Fred BUT everywhere I look (including here) what I see is projections of FF production and consumption running decades into the future, or longer. This simply won’t work.

                   RISING SEAS COULD RESULT IN 2 BILLION REFUGEES BY 2100

                   “In the year 2100, 2 billion people — about one-fifth of the world’s population — could become climate change refugees due to rising ocean levels. Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland, according to new research.”

                   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170626105746.htm

                2. It would only would take 25 years to make those 2 billion people at our current rate of population increase.
                   Possible that there may not be 2 billion people on the planet in 2100.
                   Whatever the population is or the disposition of it in the future, it does not change the actions we should be taking right now. Sadly, it’s a clown act and in general FF are going to be used and we are trying to see how many clowns will fit in the clown car.
                   Meanwhile the President of the Dichotomous States is bickering with the press, not allowing cameras or audio recording in on the press conferences and calling them all liars. Carlin would have a heyday with this situation and an I told you so.
                   The big P’s minions are trying to tell the press what news is fit to print and what is not. Sound familiar?

                3. Hey Doug, you would probably enjoy a look at the map below (I previously posted it). If the seas actually rise, all is likely to be OK in the end. That is because vast new frontiers for humanity will open up, ushering in simply explosive economic growth as refugees from flooded areas rush in to claim a stake. Every time this has happened in world history, humankind has prospered.

                   http://i.imgur.com/gg8mUll.jpg

                4. We called out this map as an unreferenced fantasy the first time you posted it. Why would you bother to post it again?

                5. Jeffrey- I like your map. You are right- ‘in the end it would be OK’. Of course, its the in between time (the next 100 yrs) that worries some people.
                   I notice that the map color scheme shows that the grain breadbaskets of the world including the vast majority of the USA, Russia/Ukraine/China, India, Europe,Pampas all become severely desertified. Oh well, nations and the health of the economies are not important (in the end).
                   I see that large areas populated by many hundreds of millions of people become underwater or swamplands. Oh well, hundreds of millions of migrants, many with guns, will be welcomed uphill (in the end).
                   I see that new ares of tundra in Canada and Russia will be now available for barley and grazing. Thats good- enough to feed almost 1/12th of the migrants from mid-latitude deserts. Good (in the end).
                   Adding it all up, looks like the global capacity for food production will settle at about 2.4 Billion. Good. Thats a lot of people, hard to count that high!
                   Some of us will be dead (in the end).
                   OK

                6. What will you do with the migrants? Machine gun them at the borders?

                   NAOM

                7. Hi Doug,

                   The scenario below is from an older energy transition scenario I made a while back. One is a faster transition (probably not attainable, but worth shooting for), and the second is slower and probably closer to what might be accomplished when climate change is taken seriously.

                   The fast scenario results in about 864 Gt of total anthropogenic carbon emissions from all sources from 1750 to 2100. The “slow” transition results in about 986 Gt of Carbon emissions from 1750 to 2100.

                   

                8. “Fossil fuels are public enemy number one in that regard!” ~ Fred Magyar

                   Previous civilizations did not decline and/or collapse because of fossil fuels, so fossil fuels are not ‘public enemy number one’, despite their seriousness.
                   And a circular, beige, hexagonal, blue, trapezoidal or whatever shape or color so-called economy is not going to help in that regard if it is still fetishizing a particular form/model of profit, elitism, or growth (over people and equable/democratic control) for example, despite grandiose words interspersed with false dichotomy fallacies and status-quo plugs, such as in comments on fora like these.

                   Permaculture is very explicit with its ‘Care of Earth’ and ‘Care of People’ first and foremost. Without those too tenets at the very least, any so-called (status-quo-contrived/spokespersoned) economy, will likely be going nowhere (and worse).

                   See also here.

          2. It is ‘duly noted’ that Fred appears to be veering into false dichotomy/dilemma territory, as if so-called renewable technology, which appears to be just getting going, is, or will be, incomparable to the current forms of ecological devastation brought on by fossil fuels, (and that there are no other options available, or at least none worth the inconvenience, perhaps like permaculture, of mentioning at this time).

             I am tempted to look into The Oil Drum archives to see if ‘FMagyar’ has ever mentioned anything about being in the solar panel or similar business, though perhaps he would like to save me the trouble and let us know, and seeing as…

             “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” ~ Upton Sinclair

             Just off the top, I might add islandboy and possibly Nick G to the mix as well.

             This dovetails into my point made under a recent article about buying into the failure-baked-in system and selling yourselves and your planet out… just to make a few bucks before you kick the bucket– to hell with what happens to the planet after you’re gone.

             Ya, Fred, ‘duly noted’… Let’s see where you go with that.

             1. Caelan, go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on. You are a know nothing twit! You know absolutely nothing about who I am or what I do and I don’t feel any need to prove myself or anything I do, to you.

                1. Translated, with some maturity and balls added, means what?
                   “Yes, Caelan, it’s true, I am/was in the solar panel business.”?
                   Wouldn’t that be something, ay?

                   “Oh I got your point. Its the same point over and over. Its a point on a single topic that ignores every other problem!

                   A dieoff of coral does not mean its caused by CO2 emissions. Is very likely that other environmental changes, many which are caused by man, such as the pollution… and… many other factors that have nothing to do fossil fuels. But you want to believe its caused by CO2 emissions, thus it must be CO2!” ~ TechGuy

                   “You aren’t even wrong! You know nothing about me, what I do, or how I live. You are fractally wrong about everything. Your entire world view is profoundly flawed!
                   Your arguments are pure strawman it is you who has no substance.” ~ Fred Magyar

                   ‘Aren’t even wrong’? ‘Fractally wrong’?

                   Anyway, if one’s attitude/modus-operandi is assorted apeshit personal attacks every time someone questions or challenges their covets, one has to wonder how that attitude might translate into the necessary care of people and the Earth in general. I’d suggest there might be something missing in that regard, some ethical challenges upstairs between the ears.

                   But it would appear to reverberate with the status-quo in any case… ‘Fuck you, fuck this and that, fuck the planet… Let’s just steamroll/railroad ourselves and our constructs over and take what we want from them, everyone and everything!’.

                   Quite the contempt…
                   That’s the stuff of wars of course, including war against the ecosystem, such that is being waged right now.

                   BTW, when beneath contempt, most everyone else appears on a high horse.

                2. I don’t see why the horse needs to suffer.

                3. When one is defining others as twits and assholes, etc., that person is ‘riding a giraffe’, ironically.

                   “There you go using personal attacks again. It’s depressing to see we can’t teach you manners.” ~ Fernando Leanme (to Fred Magyar)

                4. School of Hard Knocks

                   “You know absolutely nothing about who I am or what I do and I don’t feel any need to prove myself or anything I do, to you.” ~ Fred Magyar

                   ^^ That’s one key, aside from it being questionable and a bit of a cookie-cut in itself, and why I highlighted and just returned to it…

                   It goes something like this:
                   If even we here on this kind of forum, knowing what we presumably do, still have a hard time being forthright and/or honest/sincere with and about our own vested interests in the status-quo, what kind of ‘transitional’ dynamic can we reasonably expect in general? There are countless shiploads of vested interests in the status-quo floating around out there– oil, electricity, government, solar panels, cars– never mind on this forum, and of those who know far less, or even care, about this kind of stuff.

                   False dilemmas packaged as new forms of waste being not as bad as current forms is an insane selling point from my perch, along with assorted greenwashes, brainwashes and coercions, etc.. Not good enough, if good at all.

                   Go back and try again and be transparent and equable, etc., about it or get the fuck off our planet. You don’t belong here. The cull and/or extinction, if nothing else, will drive that point home.

                5. To all who found my comment offensive, my sincerest apologies! I now realize I should have left that one poor horse out of it… of course there is a whole cavalry behind it to take up the slack!
                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ld2oR_G9Zw
                   Cheers!

    2. So, they’re equating radioactive waste with electronic waste, like computers, laptops, TVs, etc?? Not even noting that TVs have a life of maybe 5-8 years, while solar panels probably last 50?

       Finally, only a very brief mention that recycling and reclamation is possible and being done in Germany, but not taking that to it’s logical conclusion, which is that e-waste appears to be not that hard to deal with?

       Seriously???

       1. “e-waste clearly not that hard to deal with”

          Bullshit, e-waste is extremely hard to deal with. In fact, most gets shipped to Asia for “recycling” which consists of kids cutting out copper wires and the rest burnt in landfills.

          1. Just because it appears that most recycling is done badly doesn’t tell us much. A LOT of things are done badly, or on the cheap – that doesn’t tell us much about how hard it would be to do it right.

             So…who is doing the best job? Germany? I have the impression that they require manufacturers to accept their e-waste at end of life, and deal with it properly. What do you know about what they’re doing?

             1. ONLY ONE THIRD OF EU’S E-WASTE RECYCLED PROPERLY

                http://www.euractiv.com/section/sustainable-dev/news/only-one-third-of-eu-s-e-waste-recycled-properly/

                1. So, the conclusion is that it’s straightfoward to do it properly, but people aren’t doing it properly because of laziness/irresponsbility/profiteering.

                   This is a perfect case for government action. We managed to cut down on littering due to a big government campaign run by Lady Bird Johnson. Of course, since Reagan ended the funding for the campaign, littering is back.

                2. Simply banning landfills would be a great way to reduce the problem.

       2. WRT Pedro Prieto’s work, for example, he seriously questions the lifespan– and EROEI– of the typical solar panel in the real world.
          On the nuclear energy subject, I’m unhappy about it as well, but again, some people appear to be leaning against false dichotomies/dilemmas and/or/while ignoring systemic/holistic aspects in these kinds of arguments.

          Pedro Prieto: many solar panels won’t last 25-30 years, EROI may be negative

          “As I mentioned before, if we added only these two factors that were intentionally excluded, not to open up old wounds and trying to be conservative, plus the fact that we include only a small, well-known portion of the energy inputs required to stabilize the electric networks, if modern renewables had a much higher or even a 100% penetration, it is more than probable that the solar PV EROI would have resulted in <1:1.

          And I do not believe any society can make solar modules even with 25 30 years lifetime. There are certainly working modules that have lasted 30 years+ and still work. Usually in well cared and maintained facilities in research labs or factories of the developed world. But this far away from expected results when generalized to a wide or global solar PV installed plant."

          1. With all things considered (mining rare earth minerals from Africa, extruded aluminum, installation expense, trucking materials, silicone mining, etc) does anyone really know?
             I hear 2-8 years from point of production.
             This doesn’t give me confidence in the process.

             1. We don’t know anything, so to speak, and that’s the problem. Clever but unwise as it has been said. Like a baby with a loaded gun.
                With our heads in the clouds, we really need to get back down to Earth– literally too– then after, once successful, maybe we can worry about this and that technology.

                Put the horse before the cart…

                K.I.S.S.

                Coincidentally, after reading something Dennis wrote regarding government, it made me think (again) about how we could mobilize and plant a lot of trees and native plants– including food forests– and then I found your article mention about the orca, and beside it on the same site, something about China planting a ‘city of 40 000 trees’ or something like that– maybe kind of ‘waking up’ as you write.

                “Oh wow, trees, plants and living things. What a concept!…”

             2. Silicone mining? Silicone is a manmade polymer. I think you mean sand quarries. No rare earth materials in silicon based PV.

          2. This thing you quoted — it is called “making shit up”. There are solar panels on completely random houses, subject to bad weather, which are 40 years old and working just fine — within a mile of my house. (Now, the *inverters* needed replacement — that’s another matter.)

             Silicon-based solar panel lifetimes have been proven to be over 40 years in general. Period.

             This bullshit means that I know Pedro Prieto is just a bullshitter and can be ignored. He seems to like to talk out of his ass.

             1. Studies? Links?
                You might also want to include Charles Hall then, since he was apparently author of the study as well.

                See also…
                Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with Solar PV, Part 1…

                “According to Charles Hall: ‘EROI values in many studies are too high because they used ‘nameplate’ values (1,800 kWh/M2-year) for assessing electricity outputs from PV facilities rather than the actual output. Nameplate is inaccurate since the actual electricity output is reduced by clouds, bird droppings, overheating, dust accumulation, lightning, equipment failures, and degradations over time to less than ‘Nameplate’ value. Also, too much output can fry electrical components at various locations in the grid. We found that the actual output for a facility in Spain with a nominal output of 1,800 kWh/m2-yr was measured at an actual 1,375 kWh/m2-year. Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) also found measured values considerably less than nameplate values.”

                1. “Prieto and Hall added dozens of energy inputs missing from previous solar PV analyses. Charles A. S. Hall is one of the foremost experts in the world on the calculation of EROI.

                   They concluded that the EROI of solar photovoltaic is only 2.45, very low despite Spain’s ideal sunny climate. Germany’s EROI is probably 20 to 33% less (1.6 to 2), due to less sunlight and less efficient rooftop installations.

                   A minimum EROI of at least 10 is required to maintain civilization as we know it (Hall et al. 2008). In 2014 Lambert and Hall increased the EROI required to 14.

                   If you’ve got an EROI of 1.1:1, you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it.
                   If you’ve got 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it.
                   At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it.
                   We looked at the minimum EROI you need to drive a truck, and you need at least 3:1 at the wellhead.
                   Now, if you want to put anything in the truck, like grain, you need to have an EROI of 5:1. And that includes the depreciation for the truck.
                   But if you want to include the depreciation for the truck driver and the oil worker and the farmer, then you’ve got to support the families. And then you need an EROI of 7:1.
                   And if you want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1.
                   And if you want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.”

                   interesting estimates

                2. Right, bullshitters. What they did was to make up a bunch of fake, phony numbers and pretend that they meant something about solar and wind. I’ve seen the technique done repeatedly. Every time someone starts yammering about EROEI I check their methodology. While it’s theoretically possible to do it right, these guys are fakers, and their numbers are bullshit.

                   Speaking bluntly.

                   It’s really not even worth my time to debunk; it’s a perfectly standard piece of fossil fuel propaganda and the debunkings are out there already. As a reminder, a solar panel can be produced entirely using solar energy. That is all you really need to know to know that their calculations are bunk.

                3. The so-called ‘fossil fuel propaganda’, as you put it, seems like a distraction, as a kind of false dilemma. (Yet again… Concept-of-the-week here…)

                   This is because I have already posted hereon, some time ago, something that everyone on this blog should already know; that oil, or ‘majority energy’, is predominantly government-owned and/or controlled, and that many fossil fuel ‘companies’ are ‘investing’ (with your money, without your consent?) in solar– maybe even the Koch guys that islandboy and Nick G like to present in a kind of dumbed-down, distorted and cartoonish manner, perhaps rather like ‘the enemies’ in some old war propaganda.

                   In any case, still no references from you?
                   So I guess we are to take some of your comments like articles of faith then ay?

                   So what else is new?

                4. The EROI in a sunny locale is likely much higher than stated. Even if it is not great, it is extremely valuable as a compliment to Wind and Nat Gas. Think of of it at minimum as a Nat gas extender.
                   California is the biggest state in the USA, and is very early in its deployment of PV. Yesterday utility scale PV provided 16% of total electrical consumption.
                   Thats a lot of fossil fuel avoidance/extension.

                5. Preito & Hall “Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution” is not as fact-based as many claim, AND, it is outdated, AND, it only applies to the mad-house that was Spain’s PV “market” in the 2005-2009 timeframe.

                   http://thingsidlikepeopletoknow.blogspot.com/2014/01/review-spains-photovoltaic-revolution.html

                6. Is your link self-referencing? Seems the blog’s articles stop at 2014 at a grand total of 2 that year with no comments and practically nothing in the profile. (I’ll give it a charity-read, however, when I get the chance.)

                   In the mean time, let’s not forget Ferroni, Hopkirk, Smil, Clack, etc.; new studies, essays/articles; as well as other issues I’ve previously raised, and other places besides Spain.

          3. Hi Caelan,

             You never cease to amaze me with your bullshit, especially when you accuse others who actually KNOW what they are talking about of laying it on thick with a scoop shovel, never mind a trowel, lol.

             EROEI is a useful CONCEPT, in theoretical discussions, but in the real world, it’s basically only useful as indicating where the limits lie in terms of practical applications of technology.

             When energy is available in one form, let us say coal or oil or natural gas that can be burnt, in large quantities, cheaply, to manufacture goods that provide energy in a FAR MORE USEFUL form, such as electricity on the spot where the new tech machinery is physically located, an HONEST accounting of the relative value of the energy in coal, oil, or gas compared to the energy produced by solar panels REQUIRES that the several times higher value of clean electricity generated on the spot be taken into account.

             When we generate electricity by burning coal at a centrally located power plant, roughly fifty percent of the energy is lost right up the smokestack. Another five to ten percent of the fifty percent max that is converted into electricity is lost in the process of transmitting it to the end user.

             Furthermore, large amounts of energy go into building and maintaining the grid, etc.

             Hardly any energy generated by a solar panel is lost, when it is installed at the place the electricity is needed. There is extremely little pollution generated in relation to the amount of electricity produced over the life of the panel.

             And yes , panels DO FUCKING LAST, at least WELL MADE panels last. I know several people personally who have panels that are getting on in years, panels that are now fifteen to twenty years old, that are still going just about as good as new.

             So long as no water gets into the sealed up portion of the panel that contains the actual silicon and the wires coming out, there’s no reason to expect panels to fail prematurely.There are no moving parts, no wear and tear in the usual sense of the word.

             Furthermore, there are some very weighty issues that you are more than smart enough to understand, which you conveniently ignore, when it suits you, lol.

             Solar electricity reduces the consumption of fossil fuels, which deplete. YOU KNOW THAT. Of course you are such an awesome hypocrite that you spend a LOT of time here in this forum using technology you claim shouldn’t even exist, lol, burning up even more coal, oil and gas.

             You rant about local control. Well, maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, but panels once installed generate electricity that is under the control of the panel owner.

             I could go on all day, but you aren’t worth it. It’s different with my old buddy HB, because who runs for office on what sort of platform actually matters.

             You can rant till hell freezes over, and YOU YOURSELF will still be doing all the things you rant against, lol.

             1. OFM says “When we generate electricity by burning coal at a centrally located power plant, roughly fifty percent of the energy is lost right up the smokestack”

                50%? More like 63% is lost.

                “Coal fired power plants operate on the modified Rankine thermodynamic cycle.The efficiency is dictated by the parameters of this thermodynamic cycle. The overall coal plant efficiency ranges from 32 % to 42 %”

                http://bit.ly/1C4PpnB

       3. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-stranded-nuclear-waste-20170702-htmlstory.html

          Is the helo there to intercept incoming 747’s ? Good Luck with that.

    3. Unfortunately, this is true: E-waste comprises 70% of our overall toxic waste with about 12.5% supposedly recycled and the rest (85%) sent to landfills or burned in incinerators — releasing harmful toxins.

    4. Hey Texas Tea,

       I thought you believed the free market solves all problems. All goods at the end of their useful life become “waste” and for the most part most nations have no specific plans to deal with it.

       Are you suggesting that the government should intervene and require that manufacturers take back and recycle any products that they produce (so-called cradle to grave manufacturing)?

       That would be very conservative of you to think so as it would increase recycling rates and conserve natural resources. A great idea indeed, though one you might oppose as it contradicts the idea that the free market must always be best.

       1. A true free market believer should also believe in good accounting, which includes ALL costs, like pollution.

          Capitalism depends on good accounting – we could simply build on that basic truth…

          1. Or, we could just face reality:
             Capitalism is an unjust wealth-concentrating system that is ecologically unsustainable. Either we transcend the pathology of capitalism or dystopian science fiction will become everyday life in the not-so-distant future. There is no credible defense of the obscene inequality or disregard for the larger living world that’s inherent in capitalism.

             After the screaming in a fetal position subsides, could we possibly come up with something better?

             1. For now the best system is a properly regulated capitalist system (which taxes externalities at an appropriate rate to match social costs with social benefits) with progressive taxation of income and estate taxes to reduce income inequality.

                If you come up with a better system let me know.

                1. The Western European State Capitalism seems to produce the highest societal health.

                   Also, secular, non religious seems to increase societal health.

                   Denmark 1 90.57 1 96.79 5 90.86 8 84.06
                   Finland 2 90.53 3 96.16 10 89.52 3 85.90
                   Iceland 3 90.27 10 94.96 12 89.06 2 86.81
                   Norway 3 90.27 7 95.44 2 91.15 7 84.21
                   Switzerland 5 90.10 2 96.18 1 91.75 12 82.37
                   Canada 6 89.84 11 94.88 21 86.64 1 88
                   Netherlands 7 89.82 9 94.97 2 91.15 9 83.33
                   Sweden 8 89.66 8 95.36 6 90.4 10 83.21
                   Australia 9 89.3 13 94.44 13 88.82 6 84.65
                   New Zealand 9 89.3 15 93.86 14 88.72 5 85.31

    5. “Neither does California,”

       10.08.2015
       Share
       California has passed a new law (S.B. 489) stating the legislature’s intent to encourage the solar PV industry to support PV equipment recycling by “developing a plan for recycling end-of-life photovoltaic modules in the state in an economically efficient manner.” The new law also authorizes the Department of Toxic Substances Control to designate as “universal wastes” end-of-life PV modules identified as hazardous waste, and to subject those PV modules to “universal waste” management.

       https://eq-research.com/blog/ca-new-law-paves-way-for-recycling-pv-modules/

    6. The amount of coal ash which is generated by burning coal is many many times the amount of waste generated by manufacturing a single solar panel as measured on the basis of the amount of electricity delivered to the customer of a coal fired power plant, compared to the amount of electricity generated by a solar panel over the life of the panel.

       We don’t have a satisfactory way of getting rid of coal ash , either.

       The waste generated by solar panel manufacture probably weighs a ton per cubic meter, so a land fill adequate to take the entire 800 k tons for a year would need to be only a couple of hundred meters square, and those panels will last at least twenty years and probably still be making juice when they are forty years old.

       According to industry sources,Yankees burnt enough coal in the USA in 2014 to generate over one hundred thirty MILLION TONS of coal ash.

       Now as far as nukes go, the only thing that scares me as much as nukes are the potential consequences of NO NUKES.

       We really ought to be pedal to the metal on building a new generation of SAFE nukes, and for what it’s worth, I believe it is or soon will be possible to build safe nukes.

       There’s simply no way to justify not TRYING.

    7. According to industry sources, we Yankees generated over a hundred and thirty MILLION tons of coal ash in 2014. It’s true we can find uses for a small portion of this ash, for instance mixing it in with concrete or gravel for road beds, but nearly all of it is just piling up someplace, and that’s NOW, not a couple of decades down the road.

       So far as I have been able to find out, the amount of waste associated with the solar power industry is trivial compared to the coal fired electrity industry, on a kilowatt hour basis.

       Now as far as nukes are concerned, I’m scared of them, and I’m scared of the possible consequences of NOT having them.

       My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that we should be pedal to the metal researching and building experimental reactors, and that if we were to do so, we would have an EXCELLENT shot at building reasonably safe nukes that don’t create waste useful for building weapons, and that don’t produce a lot of hot waste at all, and that CANNOT melt down or runaway.

       For what it’s worth, it’s also my opinion that the nuclear waste problem exists at least fifty percent because the environmental lobby has deliberately overblown the issue, and made it damned near politically impossible to actually DO ANYTHING CONSTRUCTIVE in terms of dealing with hot wastes.

       The anti capital punishment faction has done something along the same line, creating a situation wherein it takes decades as often as not to settle a potential capital punishment criminal case.THEN the people involved have the temerity and gall to argue that capital punishment should be done away with BECAUSE it takes forever and costs a fortune to get just one case thru the courts system.

       I have mixed values and feelings when it comes to capital punishment, and believe it is justified in certain cases, when the evidence is absolutely CLEAR and indisputable that the person on trial is guilty. Eyewitnesses can be mistaken, cops are known to lie shamelessly on occasion, etc. But sometimes the evidence is utterly clear, and sometimes, in my opinion, capital punishment is justified.

       I worked off and on in some nukes, and spent a lot of time picking the brains of the engineers I worked with, rather closely, more often than not, and I have spent a LOT of time studying environmental issues.

       My conclusion is that the people who rant and rave about the cost and difficulty of decommissioning nukes are either cynics who are perfectly willing to paint the worst possible picture to get their way, or else that they have not taken the time to really learn and consider the relevant facts.They act holy about VERY REAL potential problems hundreds or thousands of years down the future road, while failing to acknowledge that the BAU status quo means there’s a damned good chance there will BE NO FUTURE, at least not civilized and industrialized future, in large part because while because they have succeeded in blocking the construction of nukes, they have not and most likely will not be able to prevent the burning of coal by the millions of tons on a daily basis for decades to come, etc.

       Now I have high hopes that between the amazing and heartening growth of the renewables industry, improved efficiency, changing lifestyles, falling birth rates, etc, that we can successfully transition to a renewable energy economy.

       But there is no GUARANTEE we can pull off that trick, and the odds of success imo would be greatly enhanced if we were to build a bunch of new generation nukes. There’s no guarantee they CAN be built, of course.

       We should be putting some serious resources into finding out, one way or the other. We aren’t. And so far as I can see, the primary reason we aren’t is that the environmental lobby tends to think and act more like priests than scientists in this case.

12. “Clean Coal” meets it’s demise. With a slashing from ole man money and a final thrust from natural gas, maybe this will be the last we hear about the not so clean “clean coal”.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kemper-clean-coal_us_59554276e4b0da2c73221799?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313

    So what do they do? They convert to natural gas and bemoan how much power they could have generated using natural gas for that money.
    For the cost of this unfinished boondoggle we could have had 15,000 acres of PV. Land of the mentally incompetent.

    1. I have always been of the opinion that clean coal would never work, except maybe in a few places where the CO2 could be separated and sold for injection into old oil fields.

       It’s always been obvious to me that the cost of it would be prohibitive, if it worked, and that we would be far far better off spending the money on energy efficiency rather than on clean coal technology.

       Here’s a link that really tells it like it is , in respect to the effects of adding wind and solar power to the grid- the evidence in it being accumulated in the home state of the Trump home boy energy secretary who used to be governor there -When the state was building out it’s giant wind industry, and proving that it works, and that wind and solar power are NOT a real threat to the reliability of the grid.

       This is one of the best balanced and most intellectually honest pieces I have read about the Texas experiment with renewable energy. It doesn’t sugar coat the downside at all, the downside being mostly the problems that wind and solar create for conventional generation owners bottom lines.

       https://theconversation.com/are-solar-and-wind-really-killing-coal-nuclear-and-grid-reliability-76741

       1. OFM.

          That article omits quite a bit. And in fact, it omits so much so that the bias of the authors becomes abundantly transparent.

          1) West and north Texas are extremely rich in wind and solar resources. What worked in Texas will not work in other places where there is a poverty of wind and solar resources.

          2) ERCOT spent about $7 billion to upgrade its grid in order to bring wind and solar power from sparsely populated (but wind and solar rich) west and north Texas to densely populated (but wind and solar poor) central and east Texas.

          Believe it or not, somebody has to pay for this capital investment.

          The new transmission projects don’t run cheap. Texans will eventually shell out $6.8 billion to finance the entire build-out, according to a project update released this week by the PUC. Electric ratepayers will bear the burden, but few have yet seen their bills creep up. The commission has approved CREZ fees from just three transmission service companies, with other filings winding through the system.

          The new fees, Hadley said, will likely add several dollars to a residential customer’s monthly bill.

          http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2013-10-14/7-billion-crez-project-nears-finish-aiding-wind-power-build-out-stretch-3600#

          Unless the $7 billion is amortized over 700 years ($10 million per year), the authors’ claim that “installing significant amounts of solar power would increase annual grid management costs by $10 million in ERCOT” is just more of the sameo fact-free nonsense we’ve come to expect from the green lobby.

          3) Texas wind and solar power producers have received and continue to receive generous federal subsidies, amounting to well over 50% (more like 70% to 80%) of the average wholesale price of electricity in Texas.

          Believe it or not, somebody has to pay for these subsidies.

          Applying the inflation-adjustment factor for the 2016 calendar year, the production tax credit amounted to $0.023/kWh for wind, closed-loop biomass, geothermal energy resources, and solar systems.

          https://energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-production-tax-credit-ptc

          Monthly average wholesale electricity prices are shown in Figure 5.

          

          1. Hi Glenn,

             And you are completely unbiased. 🙂

             You sound pretty much like an oil and gas lobbyist and always omit things to twist the truth.

             Pot meet kettle.

             1. Dennis,

                No factual or emirical information offered in your rejoinder, just recrimination.

                You can’t attack the message, so you attack the messenger.

                I hate to tell you this, Dennis, but when ad hominem is the only weapon left in your rhetorical arsenal, you’ve already lost the debate.

                1. Hi Glenn,

                   So are you unbiased?

                   Your opinions certainly seems so and your “facts” are very selective.

                   Just like the article you complain about, which was my point.

                   I’ll try to a better job of ignoring you, maybe others will do the same.

                2. Dennis,

                   The difference is that I actually marshalled some facts and empirical data in my rejoinder to the article.

                   In your rejoinder to me, however, you marshalled no facts and no empirical data. The only thing you marshalled was ad hominem.

                   Like I said, ad hominem is the only weapon left in your rhetorical arsenal. Nothing else.

                3. Ok then Glenn, it was a single chart, big deal.

                   I will call it a single fact.

                   Add a fact like Glenn then ad hominem is ok.

          2. Team Koch, hard at work! Expect to see a lot more anti-renewable and especially anti-solar sentiment from now on. See my comment below.

             

          3. Hi Glenn,

             The wind power seems to have reduced electricity rates in Texas, the payment for transmission upgrades are what allow this cheap electricity to flow to the more densely populated areas. At some point, when natural gas starts to deplete Texans will no doubt look back and think those who facilitated such investments were wise.

             You have suggested electricity is cheap in Texas, a few extra dollars per household per month will still be cheaper than most places.

             Yes the transmission investments are passed through to ratepayers, this has always been true, not really a revelation at all.

             1. Dennis Coyne says:

                The wind power seems to have reduced electricity rates in Texas….

                Oh, I think lower natural gas prices did a lot more to reduce electricity rates in Texas than anything the wind and solar industry might have done:

                

                1. So wind power had no effect?

                   That would need to be proven and your charts don’t overlap for a long enough period to see if natural gas is the important factor.

                   Is your argument that wind power has caused electricity prices in Texas to increase?

                   I agree natural gas prices have helped reduce electricity prices, I believe wind has been a factor as well.

                   In fact the wind power may be a factor in lower natural gas prices as it has reduced demand for natural gas.

                2. Dennis Coyne said:

                   So wind power had no effect?

                   That’s an absurd absolute, Dennis.

                   An absurd absolute is a restatement of the other person’s reasonable position as an absurd absolute. I, of course, never said wind power had no effect. That’s something you invented out of whole cloth.

                   Furthermore, it was you who made the claim that “The wind power seems to have reduced electricity rates in Texas.”

                   Ever heard of Occam’s Razor? It is incumbent upon the person who makes a claim to prove it to be true. Why don’t you try marshalling some facts and empirical data that prove that wind reduced electricity rates in Texas? The truth is, of course, that the very opposite may have occurred (even with the $0.023/kWh gift from the federal government).

                   Finding out the answer to this question would make an interesting study: to determine what the all-in cost to provision wind energy in Texas is, including the $7 billion in necessary grid upgrades.

                   Just some simple math tells us, since in 2016 wind accounted for only 12.6% of power generation in Texas, that even if wind power entered the grid at a price of zero (which certainly is not the case), it would explain only about half of the fall in retail electricity prices since 2008.

                3. Hi Glenn,

                   Not really worth bothering.

                   Just because natural gas prices have decreased, and obvious fact, proves very little.

                   No doubt both the increase in wind power output and the decrease in natural gas prices both affected electricity prices.

                   Pretty obvious stuff to me.

                   It is the marginal price that matters so the 12.6% of wind power can have more of an effect than you seem to think.

                   What happened to World oil prices when there was an increase in LTO output of about 4 Mb/d from 2008 to 2015 (about 5% of World C+C output)?

                   One also has to consider demand not just supply when looking at prices.

                   I agree it would make an interesting study.

                   Do it and I will post it.

             2. All this whining about high energy prices shows what a mess the country is in.

                Texans tend to live spread out, and have a lot of sun. A very large number of households could be net sellers of energy. So they have no reason to want energy prices to be low, it’s just nuts.

                Americans are so used to be screwed by big corporations that they can’t imagine any other way of life. If you are born a slave, you can never truly be free, I guess.

                1. And Texans are easy to bury also—
                   You just give them a enema, and bury them in shoe box.

                2. Heh, thanks for the downvotes, Putin.

                   I just remembered there is one case where Americans scream for higher energy prices — when the think the big bad Saudis are cheating the oil companies. Putting the interests of corporations before your own interests is part of the American way of life.

                   So go ahead. Shut down Main Street and build a shopping mall. Allow mall owners to forbid political demonstrations on the theory they own public space. Allow gun control in “private public” space only, so the only safe places are corporate controlled. Encourage spawl to disconnect neighbors so all public opinion comes from corporate “news” shows. Put your children in front of TV ads pumping out corporate lies 24/7. Pass stupid drug laws to fill up for-profit prisons. There are even for-profit debtors’ prisons lol. Crush the labor unions. Repeal (or ignore) usury laws. Watch (and believe) Fox News because it makes money. Destroy public transportation so people will have to buy cars and gas. Defund Congress so laws are written by lobbyists. Make education a for-profit activity. Hire mercenaries to fight dumb wars. Let Apple patent squares with beveled corners, and Disney copyright the Brothers Grimm. Pretend there is nothing you can do about off-shore tax cheats.

                   When Bush I talked about the New World Order, I doubt he thought it meant the US and Russia would descend into oligarchic irrelevance while the rest of the world moved on.

                3. Just remember that the smart dog stays out of the fights between the big dogs until they wear themselves out fighting each other. Then the smart dog, who was taking care of business all along, moves in with his friends. Bye, bye big dogs.

    2. Dude you just linked the huffington post
       Come on now

13. The Evidence Against The Existence of A Positive Carbon Budget Continues to Mount- Roger Boyd

    http://www.humanitystest.com/the-evidence-against-the-existence-of-a-positive-carbon-budget-continues-to-mount/

    1. and furthermore,
       Subsea permafrost on East Siberian Arctic Shelf in accelerated decline- Interview by Nick Breeze with Dr Natalia Shakhova and Dr Igor Semiletov.
       http://envisionation.co.uk/index.php/nick-breeze/203-subsea-permafrost-on-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-now-in-accelerated-decline
       Regarding their recent paper published here-
       https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15872?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-sciences

14. Unleashing American Energy Event was today. Many CEOs and executives present, not just oil & gas but clean coal and mining also. Harold Hamm up in front of audience. President Trump’s remarks below. It looks like a very bright new day for America’s energy producers.

    U.S. Department of Energy
    Washington, D.C.

    We’re here today to usher in a new American energy policy — one that unlocks million and millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth. For over 40 years, America was vulnerable to foreign regimes that used energy as an economic weapon. Americans’ quality of life was diminished by the idea that energy resources were too scarce to support our people. We always thought that, and actually at the time it was right to think. We didn’t think we had this tremendous wealth under our feet. Many of us remember the long gas lines and the constant claims that the world was running out of oil and natural gas.

    Americans were told that our nation could only solve this energy crisis by imposing draconian restrictions on energy production. But we now know that was all a big, beautiful myth. It was fake. Don’t we love that term, “fake”? What we’ve learned about fake over the last little while — fake news, CNN. Fake. (Laughter and Applause.) Whoops, their camera just went off. (Laughter.) Okay, you can come back. I won’t say — I promise I won’t say anything more about you. I see that red light go off, I say, whoa. The truth is that we have near-limitless supplies of energy in our country. Powered by new innovation and technology, we are now on the cusp of a true energy revolution.

    Our country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance, which we didn’t know of, even five years ago and certainly ten years ago. We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal. We are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas. We have so much more than we ever thought possible. We are really in the driving seat. And you know what? We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That’s not going to happen. (Applause.) With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we’ve been looking for so long, but American energy dominance.

    And we’re going to be an exporter — exporter. (Applause.) We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe. These energy exports will create countless jobs for our people, and provide true energy security to our friends, partners, and allies all across the globe.

    But this full potential can only be realized when government promotes energy development — that’s this guy right here, and he’ll do it better than anybody — instead of obstructing it like the Democrats. They obstruct it. But we get through it. We cannot have obstruction. We have to get out and do our job better and faster than anybody in the world, certainly when it comes to one of our great assets — energy. This vast energy wealth does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people of the United States of America. (Applause.) Yet, for the past eight years, the federal government imposed massive job-killing barriers to American energy development.

    Since my very first day in office, I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before. Job-killing regulations are being removed and vital infrastructure projects are being approved at a level that they’ve never seen before. As you all know, I approved the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline in my first week. Thousands of jobs — tremendous things are happening. And, by the way, I thought I’d take a lot of heat. I didn’t take any heat. I approved them and that was it. I figured we’d have all sorts of protests. We didn’t have anything.

    But I have to do — whether it’s protesting or not, I have to do what’s right. But people celebrate those two transactions, as opposed to protesting. But sometimes you have to go out and just do it, and you find out. Whatever happens, happens. But you have to be right for the American people. (Applause.) Thank you.

    I’m dramatically reducing restrictions on the development of natural gas. I cancelled the moratorium on a new coal leasing — and you know what was happening — the new coal leasing on federal lands, it was being so terribly restricted. And now with Ryan and with a group, it’s going to be open, and the land will be left in better shape than it is right now. Is that right? Better shape. (Applause.)

    We have finally ended the war on coal. And I am proud to report that Corsa Coal, here with us today, just opened a brand-new coal mine in the state of Pennsylvania, the first one in many, many, many years. Corsa, stand up. Come on. (Applause.) Congratulations. Congratulations. Employing a lot of people, and we are putting the coal miners back to work just like I promised — just like I promised when I went through Ohio and West Virginia, Wyoming and all of the different places. And I see Bob back there. Congratulations, Bob. He’s in great shape, right? You in good shape, Bob? Right from the beginning. Good. You just take care of yourself, all right?

    We’re ending intrusive EPA regulations that kill jobs, hurt family farmers and ranchers, and raise the price of energy so quickly and so substantially.

    In order to protect American jobs, companies and workers, we’ve withdrawn the United States from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord. (Applause.)

    And I won’t get into it, but believe me, that really put this country at a disadvantage. Number one, we weren’t playing on the same field. It kicked in for us, and it doesn’t kick in for others. The money that we had to pay was enormous. It was not even close. And maybe we’ll be back into it someday, but it will be on better terms. It will be on fair terms — not on terms where we’re the people that don’t know what we’re doing.

    So we’ll see what happens. But I will tell you we’re proud of it. And when I go around, there are so many people that say thank you. You saved the sovereignty of our country. You saved our wealth because we would have a hard time getting to this newfound wealth. And that’s not going to happen with our country. (Applause.)

    Today, I am proudly announcing six brand-new initiatives to propel this new era of American energy dominance. First, we will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector — which I’m so happy about — which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy. A complete review of U.S. nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource. And I know you’re very excited about that, Rick.

    Second, the Department of the Treasury will address barriers to the financing of highly efficient, overseas coal energy plants. Ukraine already tells us they need millions and millions of metric tons right now. There are many other places that need it, too. And we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need it.

    Third, my administration has just approved the construction of a new petroleum pipeline to Mexico, which will further boost American energy exports, and that will go right under the wall, right? It’s going under, right? (Applause.) Have it go down a little deeper in that one section. You know, a little like this. Right under the wall.

    Fourth, just today, a major U.S. company, Sempra Energy, signed an agreement to begin negotiations for the sale of more American natural gas to South Korea. And, as you know, the leaders of South Korea are coming to the White House today, and we’ve got a lot of discussion to do. But we will also be talking about them buying energy from the United States of America, and I’m sure they’ll like to do it. They need it. Thank you. (Applause.)

    Fifth, the United States Department of Energy is announcing today that it will approve two long-term applications to export additional natural gas from the Lake Charles LNG terminal in Louisiana. It’s going to be a big deal. It’s a great announcement.

    Finally, in order to unlock more energy from the 94 percent of offshore land closed to development, under the previous administration, so much of our land was closed to development. We’re opening it up, the right areas, but we’re opening it up — we’re creating a new offshore oil and gas leasing program. America will be allowed to access the vast energy wealth located right off our shores. And this is all just the beginning — believe me.

    The golden era of American energy is now underway. And I’ll go a step further: The golden era of America is now underway. Believe me. (Applause.)

    And you’re all going to be a part of it in creating this exciting new future. We will bring new opportunity to the heartland, new prosperity to our inner cities, and new infrastructure all across our nation. When it comes to the future of America’s energy needs, we will find it, we will dream it, and we will build it.

    American energy will power our ships, our planes and our cities. American hands will bend the steel and pour the concrete that brings this energy into our homes and that exports this incredible, newfound energy all around the world. And American grit will ensure that what we dream, and what we build, will truly be second to none. We will be number one again all the way. We’re going to make America great again.

    Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you. (Applause.)

    END
    3:49 P.M. EDT

    1. Florida members of Congress tell Trump to back off Atlantic drilling | Tampa Bay Times: “A large, bipartisan contingent of the Florida House delegation has a firm message for President Donald Trump: Lay off plans for oil drilling in the Atlantic.

       ‘Opening the Atlantic to seismic testing and drilling jeopardizes our coastal businesses, fishing communities, tourism, and our national security,” reads a letter signed by the Florida lawmakers and dozens of others. “It harms our coastal economies in the near term and opens the door to even greater risks from offshore oil and gas production down the road. Therefore, we implore you not to issue any permits for seismic airgun surveys for subsea oil and gas deposits in the Atlantic Ocean.’”

    2. You do realize that fossil fuels are not synonymous with energy, right?!

       http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/energy

       Energy is the capacity of a physical system to do work. The common symbol for energy is the uppercase letter E. The standard unit is the joule, symbolized by J. One joule (1 J) is the energy resulting from the equivalent of one newton (1 N) of force acting over one meter (1 m) of displacement. There are two main forms of energy, called potential energy and kinetic energy.

       Potential energy, sometimes symbolized U, is energy stored in a system. A stationary object in a gravitational field, or a stationary charged particle in an electric field, has potential energy.

       Kinetic energy is observable as motion of an object, particle, or set of particles. Examples include the falling of an object in a gravitational field, the motion of a charged particle in an electric field, and the rapid motion of atoms or molecules when an object is at a temperature above zero Kelvin.

       Maybe you can explain to us how fuels work…

       1. Fred, now the villages have been overrun with clown acts. Just when we thought things were bad, they get hilariously insane.

    3. Yep.

       

       1. And the Happy Billionaires and their team are even happier

          

       2. Glenn, down in Texas, catches a check in the mail, so he says, and thus all must be fine with the nation. Your talents are wasted Glenn. You should work at CIA as Director of Complicated Operations.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

    4. Hi Bob Frisky,

       Does it ever occur to Trump supporters that when he says “believe me”, that means the previous statement was unbelievable?

       He is such a clown, it is amazing some people lap up his bullshit.

       He is correct that we have a lot of coal and natural gas, we do not have very much liquid fuel unless we quickly switch to “North America” rather than the US and it is unlikely that combined North American C+C+NGL output will be sufficient to meet US needs.

       Also remember that when NGL is included in the mix by volume it inflates the energy actually produced.

       Many people fail to realize that the average barrel of NGL provides about 63% of the energy of an average barrel of C+C (based on World average data from BP for C+C+NGL and the EIA for C+C).

       So when claims of 12 Mb/d of US output are made, about 3 Mb/d of this is NGL which in Barrels of oil equivalent is only 1.9 Mb/d, so it’s really 11 Mboe/d of energy output in liquids form.

       We might be able to export some natural gas and coal, but unless we reduce the use of liquid fuel (currently inputs to refineries are about 16 Mb/d of crude oil) and it is highly unlikely that US output of C+C+NGL in barrels of oil equivalent will rise by 5 Mboe/d.

       1. US Natural Gas Monthly output centered running 13 month average in chart below.

          13 month centered running average output has been on the decline since Sept 2015.

          Data from EIA

          https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_prod_sum_a_EPG0_FGW_mmcf_m.htm

          Looking at data from 2000-2017, this is the first long decline like this since 2005.

          Whether exporting a lot of natural gas will be a good idea remains to be seen.

          

       2. Dennis Coyne says:

          ….it is unlikely that combined North American C+C+NGL output will be sufficient to meet US needs.

          As someone who attends chapel daily at the Chruch of Peak Oil, that’s exactly what one would expect you to say.

          

          1. Hi Glenn,

             North America is unlikely to get to energy independence. Mexican output is likely to continue to decline and Canadian output is expected to increase by 2 Mb/d by 2030. US output will peak about 2 Mb/d higher than today by 2023 and then decline rapidly so unless North America reduces consumption by 2030 we won’t get to energy independence.

             Perhaps you expect EVs to ramp up quickly so consumption starts to decrease?

             If that occurs, perhaps North America will become energy independent, but I doubt this will occur before rapid decline from LTO plays begins in 2025.

             The oil sands resource is large, but it takes some time to develop. The 13 Gb in Mexican LTO plays might be developed quickly, but North America consumes 8.7 Gb per year so it won’t last very long.

             1. Hi Glenn,

                I double checked the BP data and when we deduct biofuels from consumption, then you are correct that North America is close to energy independence. Whether declines in Mexico can be overcome by increases in the US and Canada, if we assume consumption remains flat, is hard to guess, but perhaps when the US reaches its peak in 2020 to 2024 North America might be “independent” for a year or two maybe in 2020 or so, but it is unlikely to last for very long and may never be reached if Mexico’s decline continues.

                

                1. Dennis Coyne says:

                   • “Mexican output is likely to continue to decline….”

                   • “Canadian output is expected to increase by 2 Mb/d by 2030.”

                   • “US output will peak about 2 Mb/d higher than today by 2023 and then decline rapidly….”

                   • “…rapid decline from LTO plays begins in 2025.”

                   • “…when the US reaches its peak in 2020 to 2024…”

                   Pure speculation.

                   And since your past predictions have proved to be so very wrong, why should we believe your present predictions will be any better?

                2. Hi Glenn,

                   No my past predictions have not been that bad, on Eagle Ford, Bakken, and World Oil output.

                   Below are some scenarios I did in 2012. So far output has been between the Medium and high scenarios. URR 2800 Gb for C+C.

                   More recent estimates use a higher URR of 3300 Gb for my medium scenario and 3600 Gb for my high scenario.

                   

                3. An alternative high oil shock model scenario with World C+C URR of 3900 Gb and relatively high extraction rate (production rate from developed reserves).

                   This scenario is very optimistic in my view, output is likely to be lower than this.

                   

          2. Aside from the fact that neither oil nor any other fossil fuels are actually a form of energy, the US is about as far from oil independence as it could possibly be…
             I posted this data the other day.
             .

             

             1. In case you are wondering what an oil independent country’s graph would look like, here’s an example.
                .

                

                1. This is what Americans who keep talking about the US being Oil independent look like.
                   .

                   

    5. One of the ironies, or inconsistencies, of Trump’s energy position is nuclear. If he would acknowledge a need for low or no carbon fuels, he could stress the need for more nuclear. But if nuclear has to compete against gas, coal, and renewables solely on a cost basis, it will find few, if any, utilities wanting to make that investment these days.

    6. Here’s how I see this playing out.

       1. Coal is no longer favored in the US. Trump wants to lend other countries money build plants and import our coal. But who is going to pay for this? The coal companies don’t have the money, there won’t be support for the US government to make those loans, and I can’t see banks or investors wanting to fund this.

       2. Expanded nuclear won’t happen because it is too expensive and the government isn’t going to promote it as carbon-free energy.

       3. Legislation to encourage more gas and oil drilling will keep prices low, thus killing interest in moving beyond current areas. By the time prices have risen enough that the Arctic and national parks look interesting, Trump will likely be out of office. So his actions should help to discourage new projects while he is in office, thus constraining how much the industry will actually expand.

       1. Also, it seems to me that if the goal is to have the economy driven by the export of fossil fuels, we’re emulating one-product countries in the Middle East, South America, and Africa. Seems like their goal has been diversification so they aren’t so dependent on commodity pricing.

       2. The current attack line, as seen in Germany, Australia and the UK, seems to be attempts by the fossil fuel criminals to get governments to *ban wind farms*. This has been moderately successful in Germany and the UK, but the backlash in Australia is large enough that it looks like they will fail.

          1. Since there are property owners in the US making money from wind farm, I don’t think they’d like to see that money go away.

    7. Re: Trump’s Dominance Fantasy
       Spent ~4 years of my life building Trunkline Lake Charles LNG Terminal. knew every system and pipe in that facility. figured it would be the last “inland” LNG Terminal. Have to block the Ship Channel when these floating thermos bottles need an escort. Just another day at the Casino – what’s the spread domestic and Asian negotiated price when these LNG chains are ready to Liquefy?

15. Hi all,

    A comment by Mike on the other thread sent me to the NYTimes and I came across this.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/understanding-republican-cruelty.html

    The basics of Republican health legislation, which haven’t changed much in different iterations of Trumpcare, are easy to describe: Take health insurance away from tens of millions, make it much worse and far more expensive for millions more, and use the money thus saved to cut taxes on the wealthy.
    …

    It sometimes amazes me how backward my country has become. Europeans are amazed at our stupidity on healthcare and so am I.

    1. It’s not healthcare or welfare or social programs. It’s money plain and simple. The powerful billionaires and their politicians are using the poor dumb folk to swing a huge political stick in this country. All because of greed.
       They think that they will get more money and control if they pull any social program and privatize everything. But a sick and debilitated nation will just sink down below the rest and the success will only be temporary. However in their limited minds they think that allowed freedom to plunder will make them more powerful and richer.

       1. Hi Gonefishing,

          The millions that will be hurt to help a few very wealthy people seems a bad plan for the Republican party. Hopefully they will pay a price if they manage to pass a bill.

          I feel bad for those that will be hurt. Hopefully the pain will lead to change.

          1. Change already has his foot in the door and is shoving through.

             1. Let me just get out my gerrymander cross-check voter-ID chain saw and chop those toes right off. There, unchanged it.

                Also, what better way to delay growth in consumption than to impoverish the highest per capita users of energy on the planet. this is actually the most decent and humane solution they could have devised (if it is indeed conscious).

16. In a post further up, GoneFishing wrote, “From the graphs, it look like we need a lot more PV to assist that summertime hot weather peak in generation.”

    Below is a different version of the graph “Total Monthly Generation at Utility Scale Facilities by Year versus contribution from solar” that has both y axes at the same scale as opposed to the exaggerated scale for solar used for the graph in the body of the top post. While the graph up top is intended to show the potential of solar to satisfy the midsummer peak, the graph below illustrates what the current state of affairs actually is. The lowest monthly production was somewhere in the region of 290 TWh in February this year and the highest was almost 415 TWh in July of last year a difference of about 125 TWh. The peak midsummer monthly production for solar up to now was 5.94 TWh in August of last year, a little less than one twentieth (5%) of the difference between summer and spring production (note that March 2017 production has already exceeded that at 6.53 TWh).

    Starting from the first year for which the EIA produced estimates for behind the meter production, 2014, the observed CAGR for solar works out to roughly 44%. If that rate of growth were to be maintained for only three more years, solar production would get to over 25 TWh by August 2017, that is one fifth of the delta between maximum and minimum production! From slightly less than 5% to slightly more than 20% in just four years. If a 44% CAGR could be maintained until 2025 then solar could be meeting the entirety of the mid summer peak by 2025.

    If solar does continue to grow at any close to current rates the added output is likely to have a severe impact on the profitability of fossil fuel powered generators and by extension, their fuel suppliers. Maybe these prospects are what have team Koch in full panic mode. From their perspective, the march of solar must be stopped at all costs, understandably so.

    

17. WHOOPEE!

    TRUMP TO CALL FOR U.S. `DOMINANCE’ IN GLOBAL ENERGY PRODUCTION

    “With “Energy Week,” Trump is returning to familiar territory — and to the coal, oil, and gas industries on which he’s already lavished attention. Trump’s first major policy speech on the campaign trail, delivered in the oil drilling hotbed of North Dakota in 2016, focused on his plans for unleashing domestic energy production. The issue has also been a major focus during Trump’s first five months in office, as he set in motion the reversal of an array of Obama-era policies that discourage both the production and consumption of fossil fuels.”

    https://www.oilandgaspeople.com/news/14527/trump-to-call-for-us-dominance-in-global-energy-production/

    1. We could expect nothing less of the Pres. From our perspective it makes no sense. However, like the New Math that was instituted in schools we now have the New America, a set of ideas that fit the R’s vision of life on this planet.

       1. Dang it GF, This comment of yours has more down votes than my Village Idiot pict, I’m jealous!

          1. Someone is reading my comments to the villagers. It’s not me, I swear it.

18. For those of you who like to spot troll fakery here is a BBC article. I suggest you try the linked Adobe test for some fun.

    http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170629-the-hidden-signs-that-can-reveal-if-a-photo-is-fake

    NAOM

19. Why do we now have voting on comments? I fear it will attract more trolls.

    1. It will keep our wing pawn friends busy.
       They will eventually get hungry, and drive the F250 Dually to Wall Crap for Cheetos and beer.

       1. The increase in trolls and their ilk has been bad enough. But now the addition of comment voting has brought things to a new low.

          1. As proven by the dumb thumbs. Wow, all eight took the bait quickly. Or is it just a couple with several IP’s. Bye Bye.

    2. Lots of trolls seems to disagree.

    3. LOL!

       8 people gave your comment a negative vote. You are probably right in that most of the votes are from trolls

       However I think this is a really good addition to the site because even a quick perusal of the votes show a very clear bias from anonymous cowards who are mostly anti science and pro fantasy and wishful thinking.

       Mostly by people who probably could formulate a cogent argument if their lives depended on it so the best they can do is vote their ideology and belief system with little thumbs up and thumbs down icons. Kinda of like our current Moron in Chief’s twitter posts. This is the world we now live in.

       But nature bats last!
       http://fullofliving.com/read-it-now-the-universe-doesnt-give-a-flying-fuck-about-you/

       “Do yourself a favour, right now, and realise two things: 1. You will keep getting older, and then you will die. 2. Everything that’s ever entered your experience has lasted and will continue to last for only a brief moment in the life of the universe. This is game time, champ. You’re in. You’re in, playing, right now, and the clock is ticking. So stop wondering what it all means and how you’ll possibly ever do X and what people will think, and get on with your life already. Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing.”

       – Johnny Truant, The Universe Doesn’t Give A Flying Fuck About You

       You can be 100% certain that the 8 Morons/Trolls who voted your comment down will never accomplish anything amazing in their lives so don’t worry about them. They are completely irrelevant to the Universe.

       I bet this comment of mine will get even more down votes than yours! 😉

       1. It will be a excellent moron meter!

          1. See, it works!

       2. so then “doing something amazing” is irrelevant to the Universe.

          so get out there and do something amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          and hurry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          the nothingness of eternal death is coming soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          so hurry up with the “amazing”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          1. Yep, the failure to “do something amazing” is what ails our merry little band of inquisitors here on POB.

             “Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change….

             ‘If anything ail a man,’ says Thoreau, ‘so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.’

             It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure.”

             — ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer

          2. “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and the potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.”

             ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer

    4. I think the thumbs are a great idea but they should work like on Reddit. Where the more a comment is upvoted, the higher it goes to the top of the comments so everyone sees it first. Comments that get many downvotes are automatically hidden. That way people don’t have to read comments with the wrong kind of opinions. Also on Reddit you can automatically give yourself one upvote when you post your comment.

       1. The silent majority that follows Peak Oil Barrel speaks, and I am pleasently surprised by what it is saying.

          So here’s thumbs up to the silent majority! ^+1^

          1. Yes, they do appeal to a certain folk with course natures. But we are all one species, not for long the way I see the divergence occurring.

          2. The silent majority speaks… LOL! the only way they can can communicate is with dumbed down emoticons.

             Fortunately there is a growing vocal and still rational contingent of the population at large that is a bit above the fray of lowest common denominator, intellectually speaking. They sound and look more like this.

             https://origins.asu.edu/events/lecture-zachary-adam
             Lecture: Energy, Entropy, and Complexity on the Prebiotic Earth

             Note: This lecture not recommended for village idiots but there might be a few who find such talks interesting and valuable as an antidote to ignorance and the rampant stupidity of the silent majority. Warning includes topics such as energy, complexity, chemistry, geology, biology, cosmology, etc.. Nothing about the Kardashians or Trump tweets.

             1. They could care less about life on this planet. It’s man vs. nature, man the conqueror. They don’t respect fellow humans let alone life, it’s all something to be owned, used, abused and deposed.

                Larson, did a great cartoon with some scientists gathered in front of a glassed in room. Against the glass, looking out, were people.
                “Yes gentlemen, they are all fools. The question is what kind of fools?”

                Not recognizing that we are part of nature and it provides us with critical life giving conditions is not only a gross error but an apparent organic problem in the structure of the mind. As the wild is destroyed and overused, so go these critical life giving conditions.
                Thinking that nature and earth conditions are static or even fairly stable without living controls only simulates the static nature of the brains thinking those thoughts. We are sorry you cannot understand, but you are dangerous to life on the planet.

20. LOL! If anyone needed proof that Trump and the the people who put him in office have made the US the laughingstock of the entire planet this message from Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico should put that notion firmly to rest!

    LATINO VOICES 06/30/2017 03:02 pm ET
    Former Mexican President Shows Trump How To Avoid Nuclear War In Hilarious Video
    Vicente Fox simply wants to prevent him from “ending all life on earth.”

    ¡Muchas gracias, Sr. Presidente!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FrQRHW3XHI

    1. I am not opposed to Fox’s anti-war message.

       Granted, Europe has a vital strategic interest in seeing regime change in Syria (that is, breaking Russia’s stranglehold on Europe’s natural gas supply). But the United States does not.

       The U.S. is near to becoming energy independent, so involvement in the resource wars in that region is becoming increasingly difficult to justify to the American people. This is because of the shale revolution and, to a lesser extent, renewables. So what’s our vital interest for involving ourselves in these resource wars?

       Realpolitik dictates that the US sit this one out.

       There is no evidence that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, as the Trump administration led us to believe. So there is no compelling humanitarian reason for U.S. involvement in Syria.

       Seymour Hersh: Trump Ignored Intel Before Bombing Syria
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWyuDng8rI

       Nevertheless, Vicente Fox is not the person to deliver the anti-war message, and especially not in the swatty, peurile manner that he did.

       The Mexican oligarchy that Fox represents is in full panic mode. It ushered in neoliberalism and NAFTA in Mexico, which resulted in an unprecedented economic depression for the vast majority of Mexicans. The Mexican oligarchy which Fox is a part of has practically no legitimacy and no credibility with the Mexican people.

       The Mexican economy grew at the slowest pace in history under Fox, second only to the de la Madrid administration. GDP growth dropped from an average of 5.1% in the Zedillo administration to an average of 2.2% during Fox’s administration.

       The decimation of the Mexican worker continued unabated under Fox. In Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, real wages decreased 3.8% under Fox.

       The mass migration from Mexico to the United States, spurred on by the economic disaster inflicted upon the majority of Mexicans by the country’s oligarchy that Fox is such an important part of, continued unabated under Fox.

       The perennial corruption and incompetence of the Mexican oligarchy cannot be undone by bashing Trump. Using Trump as a whipping boy for the Mexican oligarchy will not work, no better than it did for the Demcratic Party.

       

    2. Wow. Sure it’s comedy, so the rules for decorum are a LITTLE loser, but this is brutal. From a former President of a major country and one that borders the United States… To think it was appropriate to film that video…

       The one thing about DJT is that he is making everything explicit. Everyone has been playing the euphemism/cognitive dissonance game for so long and now it’s like the masks have completely fallen off and people are just saying what’s on their minds. It’s like Westworld or Purge 24/365. I know this subject well because I was raised in a family with ZERO tact and saying what’s on your mind doesn’t end well. People get angry, feelings get hurt, friends are lost. And when these friends have armies and trade policies. Mix that with the fact that most people in positions of world power are ALL probably on the spectrum of megalomania/hyper-class A.

       I don’t really know how much to ascribe these motions to peak oil, but I definitely feel that shrinking economic opportunities are leading to resentment which has led F-it-all votes for Trump. I think there are other factors, but is it any wonder that these civilizational unwindings are happening in tandem with peak energy dynamics.

       Fred, good find.

       1. At Least Mussolini Executed His Son-In-Law.

       2. I agree with many of your thoughts. Society is economically stratifying and ostracizing large groups of people with resultant clustering of cultural memes.
          I however think that there is also a long term divergence of the human species in process. A destructive form of mentality has emerged over the centuries that has a relatively short term viability. Sadly this destructive form has manipulated most other humans into following that pattern until it is virtually locked in. Breaking that pattern is of utmost urgency to preserve most life on earth.

          1. Authority submission has already expressed itself in the genome.

             Robert Altmeyer’s research shows that for a population of authoritarian submissives, authoritarian dominators are a survival necessity. Since those who learn their school lessons are too submissive to guide their own lives, our society is forced to throw huge wads of money at the rare intelligent authoritarian dominants it can find, from derivative start-up founders to sociopathic Fortune 500 CEOs. However, with their attention placed on esteem, their concrete reasoning underdeveloped and their school curriculum poorly absorbed, such leaders aren’t well positioned to create value. They can create some, by imperfectly imitating established models, but can’t build the abstract models needed to innovate seriously. For such innovations, we depend on the few self-actualizers we still get; people who aren’t starving for esteem. And that does not include the wealthy, the powerful, and the ‘smart’; they learned their lessons well in school.

             The Reactionary Mind is being selected for, and this does bid well for our species intelligence or survival.

             1. I have no sympathy for the authoritarian dominants or submissives. Let them die.

                1. I think you are outnumbered, better keep that to yourself.
                   Oooops, too late.

    3. I find it interesting that much of Trumps campaign talk was to do with his assertion that various countries in the world were laughing at USA. Well the world is laughing at Trump now, and America for electing him. Germany is now leader of the free world. USA is the class dunce. I hope USA gets a full four years of Trump. Pure comedy gold.

21. So will it be Saudi Arabia, or Cowboyistan, that blinks first?

    Only $60 Oil Can Save The Aramco IPO
    http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Only-60-Oil-Can-Save-The-Aramco-IPO.html

    1. Kemp: US Shale Producers Are Drilling Themselves into a Hole
       http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?hpf=1&a_id=150843

       U.S. shale firms are drilling themselves into a deep hole despite warnings from industry leaders about the risk of flooding the market with too much crude.

       Drilling and production are rising. Prices are declining. Companies are barely breaking even or losing money. Costs are starting to rise. And share prices are sliding.

       Current oil prices are not sustainable according to Harold Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Resources, said in an interview on June 28.

       Prices need to be above $50 per barrel to be sustainable and below $40 would force producers to idle rigs, Hamm said (“Harold Hamm warns oil prices below $40 will idle U.S. drilling”, CNBC, June 28).

       “While this period of adjustment is going on, drillers don’t want to drill themselves into oblivion. Back up, and be prudent and use some discipline,” he urged rival chief executives.

       Many of Continental’s leases are in North Dakota’s Bakken and Oklahoma, where wells are typically more expensive to drill and yield less oil than some other shale plays.

       The resurgence in shale drilling over the last year has been concentrated in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where costs are much lower and yields higher.

       There are now almost 370 rigs drilling for oil in the Permian compared with 50 in the Bakken, according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes.

       The number of rigs drilling in the Permian has almost tripled since the end of April 2016, and the Permian now accounts for almost half of the rigs drilling for oil in the United States.

       But even in the Permian, shale firms have struggled to make money with oil prices stuck below $50, raising questions about the sustainability of the drilling boom.

       Many shale drillers claim they can drill wells profitability even with benchmark WTI prices below $50 as a result of significant cost reductions and improvements in efficiency.

       But most shale firms were still losing money or at best breaking even in the first quarter of 2017, even before the renewed slump in prices….

       Many shale producers seem to be relying on OPEC to bail them out by cutting its own output further to drive WTI prices back above $50 per barrel….

       But it not be rational for OPEC to cut output if the only consequence was to encourage continued growth in U.S. shale. Key OPEC producers appear unenthusiastic about further cuts.

       If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The slide in oil prices over the last four months is sending a signal to shale firms about the need to moderate drilling and production programmes.

       Either the drilling boom moderates very soon, or WTI prices are likely to fall below $40 per barrel to make it stop.

       1. Maybe the drillers should become non-profits and ask for donations. Charity drilling to keep America Great.

22. Stratospheric in Consequence – President Trump Policy Speech: “Unleashing American Energy”…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G23KfATgh68

    We’re here today to usher in a new American energy policy — one that unlocks million and millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth. For over 40 years, America was vulnerable to foreign regimes that used energy as an economic weapon. Americans’ quality of life was diminished by the idea that energy resources were too scarce to support our people. We always thought that, and actually at the time it was right to think. We didn’t think we had this tremendous wealth under our feet. Many of us remember the long gas lines and the constant claims that the world was running out of oil and natural gas.

    Americans were told that our nation could only solve this energy crisis by imposing draconian restrictions on energy production. But we now know that was all a big, beautiful myth. It was fake… Powered by new innovation and technology, we are now on the cusp of a true energy revolution.

    Our country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance, which we didn’t know of, even five years ago and certainly ten years ago. We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal. We are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas. We have so much more than we ever thought possible.

    We are really in the driving seat. And you know what? We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That’s not going to happen. (Applause.) With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we’ve been looking for so long, but American energy dominance….

    But this full potential can only be realized when government promotes energy development…instead of obstructing it like the Democrats. They obstruct it. But we get through it. We cannot have obstruction. We have to get out and do our job better and faster than anybody in the world, certainly when it comes to one of our great assets — energy. This vast energy wealth does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people of the United States of America. (Applause.) Yet, for the past eight years, the federal government imposed massive job-killing barriers to American energy development.

    Since my very first day in office, I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before. Job-killing regulations are being removed and vital infrastructure projects are being approved at a level that they’ve never seen before. As you all know, I approved the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline in my first week. Thousands of jobs — tremendous things are happening….

    I’m dramatically reducing restrictions on the development of natural gas. I cancelled the moratorium on a new coal leasing — and you know what was happening — the new coal leasing on federal lands, it was being so terribly restricted….

    We have finally ended the war on coal. And I am proud to report that Corsa Coal, here with us today, just opened a brand-new coal mine in the state of Pennsylvania, the first one in many, many, many years….

    We’re ending intrusive EPA regulations that kill jobs, hurt family farmers and ranchers, and raise the price of energy so quickly and so substantially.

    In order to protect American jobs, companies and workers, we’ve withdrawn the United States from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord. (Applause.)</

    1. In order to protect American jobs, companies and workers, we’ve withdrawn the United States from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord. (Applause.)

       That is not going to protect anyone, quite the contrary it will make the United States at the very least irrelevant, or at worst a global pariah. The US is not an island and can not survive by withdrawing from the rest of the world. Populism and Ultra Nationalistic head in the sand world views no longer make sense in the 21st century.

       Affiliated Event: Managing Earth as a Planet
       https://origins.asu.edu/events/managing-earth

       1. One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

          Aldo Leopold

          1. Depression and burn-out has been a major problem with field biologists.

       2. Fred, the Canadians are having a great time making fun of the stupid US.

          1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGTznIy6i4w

          2. The Canadians, eh?!
             Today is CANADA DAY! Happy July 1st.
             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DShCA7-YdjI

    2. Somehow old GST thinks the audience here is as dumb as the guy Fred posted fixing to hammer the bug on his own nose.

       Hey, GST, how about you tell us how much oil, gas and coal were selling for, in real money terms, at the end of the last REPUBLICAN administration, and how much they were selling for at the end of the OBAMA administration, and explain how these numbers demonstrate that Democrats are pursuing policies to prevent us from having plenty of cheap energy???

       Lots of my family are farmers, I farmed, I majored in ag, and I know quite a bit about the regulation of farming nationwide.

       The feds aren’t doing and haven’t been doing any thing that hurts farmers unless it was necessary to do it to protect the hundred plus times numerically larger general public, not to mention farmers themselves.

       Now you are either to stupid to get it, or will refuse to get it, being a troll who knows how to stay on message, but when a pesticide use regulation, or a clean water discharge regulation, etc, is put into effect, all us farmers have to comply, except the ones who slip thru the cracks and get away with cheating of course.

       Production agriculture is probably the most brutally competitive small scale industry in the country,because we farmers are necessarily price takers, rather than price makers, and sell almost exclusively into commodity markets, and in economic text terms, we operate on average at economic breakeven. If anybody is making good money more producers rush in and very shortly the market price crashes back to that old economic average breakeven, by which I mean you might as well consider putting your resources into some other line of work, because you are earning very little for your time and investment.

       If the price of diesel fuel goes up, I pass it on. If fertilizer goes DOWN, I pass on the savings, on average, over any meaningful time frame. I make the same amount of money, over time, whether diesel is two dollars a gallon, or four. Farmers will make the same amount if diesel goes to ten bucks, on average, because farmers PASS ALONG THEIR COSTS, just like all other business men who manage to stay in business.

       I’m a little bit on the busy side at the moment, but I can rip up every one of your argument for the strawman, or outright fib that it is, when I have time.

       It’s certainly true that sometimes there are some regulations put into effect that are wasteful or even harmful, but nothing’s perfect. On average the government does a good job regulating agriculture in respect to the regulations that ARE in effect. Actually we need more rather than fewer, so as to protect farm workers from injury and illness associated with dangerous working conditions and hazardous chemicals, and to protect the public from dangerously contaminated foods, and to save people who live downstream having to spend mega bucks to clean up the runoff from farms upstream of their community, etc.

       And on average, these regs COST US FARMERS NOTHING.

       Because we pass along our costs.

23. Renewable energy growth.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/07/solar-power-growth-worldwide-us-china-uk-europe

    http://www.gwec.net/global-figures/graphs/

    http://www.awea.org/wind-energy-facts-at-a-glance

    It appears as if solar energy is still going non-linear positive. Wind energy growth in the US is almost linear since 2007 while world wind energy growth is slightly non-linear positive.

24. It’s just a fact of life that PV produces about twice as much electricity as coal per dollar.
    If one starts to include the costs of pollution and damage to the land and waterways from coal burning there is no comparison.
    So coal is a convenience fuel, not a low cost fuel. It’s available, convenient to burn and people don’t mind the air, land and water pollution or the decreases in their health and the health of plants.

25. The LED lighting revolution is well under way. Could eventually cut lighting energy and costs by 40 percent in the US. Saves money, energy and reduces pollution.
    Saves a lot of time to since you don’t have to change bulbs very often.
    If you don’t use the light a lot it could be once is done.
    https://thinkprogress.org/5-charts-that-illustrate-the-remarkable-led-lighting-revolution-83ecb6c1f472

    I have found quality LED bulbs for about 2 dollars per. Using the calculator below I get a savings of over $235 per bulb over the lifetime using a conservative 25,000 hour life compared to an incandescent bulb.
    Payback in less than a month.

    http://www.bulbs.com/learning/energycalc.aspx

    1. My local hardware store now sells them for a dollar a piece. I just bought a bunch.

       1. But you said quality. I don’t know if these are quality, but the price was right.

          1. I’ve been adding them for a while, Switch from LED to CFL depending on need. Failing CFLs will get replaced by LED. I need to do some changes in a room so LEDs will be installed there. Just picked up a couple of 4.5W spots, today, to light up my computer area. Hmm, must move on and get them installed, bye!

             NAOM

             1. I have been using CFLs and have a few more unused ones. I’ll be switching over to LEDs now that the price has dropped so much.

    2. Thanks for that LED Gone Fishing- great summary.
       Here is the bigger report on the “Low Carbon Economy'” from G.Sachs-
       http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/new-energy-landscape-folder/report-the-low-carbon-economy/report.pdf

26. The utility power companies should love distributed generation and distributed storage. According to this benefit analysis: These benefits include line loss reduction, reduced environmental impacts, peak shaving, increased overall energy efficiency, relieved transmission and distribution congestion, voltage support, and deferred investments to upgrade existing generation, transmission, and distribution systems. Benefits are not limited to utility. Customers also benefit from DG in term of better quality of supply at lower cost. Among the many benefits of distributed generation is a reduced line loss.

    http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1546964/authors

27. Sure, I realize it’s just weather, but…….

    SCORCHING 129 DEGREE (F) TEMPS HIT IRAN; SEVERE JUNE EUROPEAN HEATWAVE ATTRIBUTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE; SATELLITE DATA CONFIRMS RAPID GLOBAL WARMING

    “In a slew of climate change related news this week, Iran’s city of Ahvaz saw temperatures hit near the highest readings ever recorded on Earth, a new scientific model study has found that climate change made the recent heat wave that hit Europe this June two to ten times more likely, and climate change deniers lost a major cherry-picked talking point as the most recent satellite data now confirms the rapid global temperature rise that ground stations have been reporting all along.”

    https://robertscribbler.com/

    1. Meanwhile, frozen crops and fields in the prairies and plains of the US and Canada after a rare late June cold snap. Maybe the much predicted next mini Ice Age is coming true. Lots of political agendas trying to tie themselves to the weather these days though.

       https://www.iceagenow.info/frozen-corn-south-dakota-late-june/

       1. It was cool inside the beer cooler at the Monster Truck Rally.
          That proves it, we are heading for another ice age!
          Don’t believe those Liberal Lies!

          1. What makes you think I would ever go to a monster truck rally?

             1. What makes the regulars here, who are scientifically literate and well informed about climate issues, think you are a troll, or else at best a poorly informed new member?

                There will always be some periods of unusually cold weather, even as the average weather gets a little hotter every year.

                For every unusual cold snap I see in the news these days, I see two or three articles about unusually HOT weather.

                Any of us could post dozens of links to articles about unusual heat waves. Sometimes we do.

                The most impressive one I remember for the last year or so was about the dog sled racers up in Alaska having lots of trouble because there wasn’t enough snow. It melted months ahead of the usual thaw date.

                1. Come now, I know a smoker who lived to be 94, and a non smoker who died of lung cancer.
                   That obviously proves smoking does not cause cancer!
                   Don’t you know the truth.

                2. Just another case of secondhand smoke from the old smoker.

                3. OFM said:

                   What makes the regulars here, who are scientifically literate and well informed about climate issues….

                   Right. They are truly legends in their own minds.

                4. Hi Glenn E Stehle,

                   The width and depth of your ignorance of the physical sciences is truly impressive.

                   But like a lot of my religious family and community, you have a firm grasp on the truth, because somebody TOLD you what to believe, lol.

                   I should have said the long term regulars here understand physical sciences, and physical realities, since you are a regular too.

                   We went off to colleges and universities, where we learned what science is all about, and how science works.

                   Your level of understanding of physical realities is comparable to a a witch doctors level of understanding of human anatomy and physiology, at best.

                   If there are any young people in your circle of acquaintances who are majoring in the study of any of the physical or life sciences, I suggest you sit down with them and have a talk about who knows, and who does not know, the real score.

                   Of course it’s entirely possible, even likely, that you yourself do know the real score, but deny this knowledge in order to protect yourself and your friends who are heavily invested in the business as usual status quo.

                   People who don’t know much, if anything, about the sciences will swallow your false arguments, sometimes, but you are wasting your time posting them HERE, because each and every one of them will be ripped up like as my old country woman Mom use to say , like a chicken on a dry cow turd.

                   Anybody who reads your bullshit here will also be getting acquainted with the actual relevant facts as well, and will end up understanding that fossil fuels deplete, that depending on them results in wars, that they make people sick, that they fuck up the environment on the grand scale, etc etc, and that we must eventually give them up due to depletion alone, etc.

                   We are already using close to ten percent LESS coal and gas to generate electricity in the USA. That’s knocked out the sale of a good bit of each of these fossil fuels, thereby depressing the price of them, lol.

                   Maybe you need to think about the implications.

                   Maybe you ARE thinking, and scared that the sale of coal and gas will decline even more. GOOD thinking.

             2. Come now, from your posting history, you are Monster Truck Rally material.
                Not the brightest porch light on the block.
                Of course, I could be wrong– but you appear to not have your mitonuclear compatibility in order.

                (lets hope Cytochrome c does not eliminate you from the gene pool)

             3. “What makes you think I would ever go to a monster truck rally?”

                You seem the type. And by “type” I mean uneducated.

       2. Bob Frisky the POB weatherman, @#SAD!
          .

          

          1. No Staff Members Left In Science Division Of White House Office

             The last employees departed from the science division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last week, leaving the division completely unstaffed, according to a Friday report by CBS News.

             Book burning can’t be far behind.
             Lets torch all of them except the Bible and The Art of the Deal .

             http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cbs-news-reports-no-staff-left-science-division

             1. Why would the white house need a science division when there’s other government agents doing science? We should all think getting rid of waste in government is a good thing?

                1. Ok. What about expenses related to Trump, like the security required when he goes to play golf? I mean really. If you want to talk about eliminating government waste, there are lots of items which could be cut.

                   I don’t mind talk of eliminating government waste as long as the arguments are logically consistent.

                2. Riiight!!
                   Let’s start with massively cutting military spending and putting the corrupt politicians in congress who are on the take from the Koch bros in jail!

                   https://origins.asu.edu/events/salt-and-fire
                   Origins Conversation with Werner Herzog, Jeffrey Sachs and Lawrence Krauss

                3. Johnny92 is quite correct. Science would be wasted on DT. It’s spin the wheel and let’s make a deal time. Sadly science will be left to the private corporations, who have only interest in profit and a timeline of six months forward.

                4. BTW I owe you Fish, for the suggestion of making a cloud chamber for my home schooled Grandson, Nathan. This was done and is currently being upgraded to a “Continuously Sensitive Diffusion Cloud Chamber” using evaporated alcohol to make the “cloud” (which is supposed to be extremely sensitive to passing particles.) Actually, it’s my Daughter (a physicist herself) who is especially thankful for the idea. And Nathan too of course.

                5. Great Doug, glad to hear it. Mine was fun, I had access to uranium ore.

                   Next step is chromatography.
                   Thin layer and paper chromatography are easy to do.
                   http://www.scienceprojectlab.com/thin-layer-chromatography-for-kids.html

                   Try separating plant materials too.

                6. I agree, chromatography is being discussed and it’s even being suggested (by me) that Santa might be able to squeeze a small 3-D printer down the chimney. God, the possibilities are endless and the whole family gets to play.

          2. Fred Magyar,

             So Bob Frisky was the one who got voted down the most in Dennis’ short-lived experiment in democracy?

             Your little graphic is classic Fred Maygar: just make up whatever “facts” you need to win the argument.

             In the real world, however, it was you who won the contest for the most thumbs down, and by no small margin.

             The message was clear: the merry little band of inquisitors who run roughshod over Peak Oil Barrel are even less loved than the heretics and skeptics.

             1. Your little graphic is classic Fred Maygar: just make up whatever “facts” you need to win the argument.

                In the real world, however, it was you who won the contest for the most thumbs down, and by no small margin.

                I wear that as a badge of honor given that the thumbs down are a clear sign that I’m hitting a nerve with the Fossil Fuel Fascists, Koch brother supporters and all the Climate Science deniers!

                As for me making up facts… That’s really rich!

                1. “Fossil Fuel Fascists, Koch brother supporters and all the Climate Science deniers”?

                   So that’s the POB audience! That’s who voted you down so resoundingly here on POB!

                   You certainly could have fooled me, because that hardly fits my idea of who makes up the POB audience.

                2. “I’m hitting a nerve with the Fossil Fuel Fascists, Koch brother supporters and all the Climate Science deniers!” ~ Fred Magyar

                   More asinine dichotomized garbage, apparently to make Fred feel better about himself.

                3. Another asinine comment from Caelan, who rants and raves about doing away with the technological world, and yet spends a good bit of his free time using that very technology to amuse himself.

       3. “Much predicted mini ice age is coming true” lmfao of stop in Javier! You’re too much!! It’s called frost. Over night temps dropped to 32*F. Perhaps you should read up on jet stream weirding.

    2. A lot of people now do believe in global warming. Trump and his administration may be vocally against it, but from a business point of view it makes little sense to have policies that intentionally go against what much of the world is planning.

       1. Regardless of belief in warming, or in the degree of warming that will happen, it makes sense to get some work done on the adaptation side of things.
          A huge money saver is the phased abandonment of the most flood prone coastal sites and river valleys.
          There are great maps of the risk- FEMA has a very detailed set.
          What this means in policy terms is the federal government getting out of the flood bailout business and insurance backstop in these zones, restricting building permits (including new, renovation, rebuilding), incentives for residents and businesses to move uphill, etc. better to get started on this now, rather than when its become obvious to even the skeptics.
          Another very practical things many homeowners, businesses and city planners can do is to work in more useful underground space. Very helpful when it comes to getting through severe heat waves.

28. I have consistently said here that the real explanation for our having the government we have is that we are engaged in a culture war that is playing out politically.

    Here is academic evidence to support my argument.

    https://phys.org/news/2016-10-swaying-voters-candidate-identity-policies.html

    I had another link from phys.org by another researcher who maintains that talking about global warming is a losing argument when trying to win support for renewable energy, which is another argument I have made here. Unfortunately, I lost it and can’t find it again.

    The EMPHASIS should be on the positive economic impacts of renewable energy, such as local taxes, local jobs, local control, lesser military expense and security risk, better public health outcomes, etc etc, because this strategy appeals to every body and offends nobody, in general terms.

    Talking all the time about warming sets social conservatives teeth on edge, because they see THIS particular argument as being tied closely to the ENEMY, the socially liberal establishment, and thus they are prone to dismiss it as propaganda, or question the truth of it at the very least.

    One thing that we should realize, MUST realize, as a day to day practical matter in running political campaigns, is that certain classes and groups of voters are ON THE PLANTATION, and will never voluntarily leave it, unless they are thoroughly abused by the owner of the plantation, and owners can be on either wing of the political spectrum.

    The D’s don’t need to PANDER to gays and lesbians, etc, because they are NOT going to vote R, except under extreme circumstances, if at all. Likewise, R’s don’t need to PANDER to the right to life faction,etc, because these people are NOT going to vote D except under extreme circumstances.

    To win, the focus needs to be on issues that are important to the BROADER classifications of voters, by which I mean for instance voters concerned for their economic situation. The class of voters concerned about their economic future INCLUDES gays, lesbians, and right to lifers.

    SOME voters who are inclined in one direction or another in respect to any particular hot button issue can will vote the opposite ticket if they become convinced the opposition is better for them economically.

    The voters who put Trump in office in the last three big states he won found themselves in extreme circumstances describable in a nutshell as economic worry, and went over to the opposition.

    I know a bunch of people personally who voted FOR Trump because they believed he would better represent their own economic interests. ( Beliefs rule in the voting booth, FACTS have LITTLE to do with how people vote, compared to their cultural values or prejudices, choose your own word. )

    BILL Clinton understood. “It’s the economy, stupid.”

    The typical voter who does either by design or accident learns something about renewable energy can be convinced that renewable energy is a GREAT thing, if the emphasis is put on the positive economic aspects of it, rather than yammering endlessly about global warming.

    The VOTING PUBLIC, except for the scientifically literate elite, is SICK of hearing about global warming, with the situation now comparable to that of the boy who cried wolf too many times. The leftish inclined voter is ok with the argument, because it is consistent with his cultural identity as a liberal and a big D Democrat, but it doesn’t actually MOTIVATE him. It does however grate on the nerves of some middle of the road and rightish inclined voters.

    SO- THE TRICK is to put the emphasis elsewhere, meaning on the positive impacts of renewable energy, rules requiring greater fuel efficiency, etc. THESE arguments appeal to everybody, except of course the owners of the fossil fuel industries.

    1. I have consistently said here that the real explanation for our having the government we have is that we are engaged in a culture war that is playing out politically.

       Looks like some in our society want to go from a culture war to a hot civil war… fascism is alive and well in America!
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g0dnxLGW8M

       1. “the USA doesn’t have friends, it has interests”
          -John Foster Dulles

    2. CNN Producer: American Voters “Are Stupid As Shit”

       http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-30/cnn-producer-american-voters-are-stupid-shit

       Carr: “On the inside, we all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he’s really bad at this and that he does not have America’s best interests. We recognize he’s just f*cking crazy.”
       “Here’s the deal, this is a man who’s not actually a Republican… He just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn’t believe anything that these people believe.”

       1. Hightrekker,

          You and your merry little band of commissars who ride roughshod over Peak Oil Barrel, along your fellow travelers over at CNN, sure know how to win friends and influence people……

          

          1. .

             

             1. He’s right about that. Down in the dirt dumb.

    3. OFM said:

       The EMPHASIS should be on the positive economic impacts of renewable energy….

       You mean like this?

       

       1. Or this?

          100% Renewables by 2050 — Germany Pays the Price for its Ambition
          https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2017/03/31/100-renewables-by-2050-germany-pays-the-price-for-its-ambition/2/#74953d301a49

       2. Or this?

          German carmakers fear losing competitive edge after U.S. Paris exit
          http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-german-carmakers-idUSKBN18T1Q0?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5931c4f004d3010e2771c95a&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

          Germany’s powerful car industry said Europe would need to reassess its environmental standards to remain competitive after the United States said it would withdraw from the Paris climate pact….

          The [German auto industry lobby group] VDA said electricity and energy prices are already higher in Germany than in the United States, putting Germany at a disadvantage.

          1. Glenn, Glenn,

             are you stupid or paid for your nonsense?

             1) To take two German utilities which in the past shone in their ignorance when it came to REs is rich. And the icing of the cake is that it is in a piece of a US Professor in Forbes. I bet you can do better, can’t you?

             Hint: Check who owns the RE generation capacity. Then come back. 🙂

             Overall, German industry has gained, but then you have to know the basics. 🙂

             2) Then you use opinion of the VDA which is the mouthpiece of German legacy carmakers as argument. Please work harder. 🙂

             Hint: Check the price of car fuels at the filling station and the price of electricicty in Germany. You may actually learn something. 🙂

             1. I notice your rejoinder is long on ad hominem, vagueness and paralogic but short on empirical data.

                

                1. “I notice your rejoinder is long on ad hominem, vagueness and paralogic but short on empirical data.”

                   As scientist, I do not like it when a idiot tries to destroy a good discussion, therefore, he gets one pass, then I call him what he is.

                   You are uanble to provide hard data and you are unable to put data in a correct context, your behaviour is insulting for intelligent people.

                   Do your homework or expect to be called an idiot after each of your contributions that do not pass a basic scientific smell text.

                2. Ulenspiegel,

                   Well let’s take a look at your first rejoinder to my original comment.

                   1) You attack me.

                   2) You attack “two German utilities.”

                   3) You attack “a US professor in Forbes.”

                   4) You make some vague proclamation about how “Overall, German industry has gained,” without offering any citations or empirical data to back up your extravagant claim.

                   5) You attack VDA.

                   Yep, that really sounds like an argument a “scientist” would make.

                   It’s so typical of the arguments put forth by the “expert consensus” here on POB.

                3. ‘Idiot’ doesn’t sound scientifically valid.
                   To make some kind of ‘diagnosis’ like that, if there is such a thing, you’d seem to need to bring Glenn into the lab and administer a battery of tests and/or submit him to the relevant ‘professionals’ or something like that, otherwise, one could suggest, maybe a little facetiously, that you run the risk of falling under the very term, idiot, yourself.

                   As for now, it appears merely ‘unprofessional, unscientific, relatively-blind armchair diagnosis by distance’– more POB lamery.

                   Stick with the content of the comments, people, forget the person.

                4. HIGH GST,

                   I notice that upthread you argue that electricity is expensive in Texas because Texas has a super sized wind industry, and down thread you indicate that Californians pay too much because they have wind and solar, lol.

                   Idiot.

             2. are you stupid or paid for your nonsense?

                Probably both- the stupid part is self evident, the paid is still speculation.
                Huxley would be turning in his grave after reading Glenn’s posts.

                1. Thank heavens for you and the rest of the merry little band of commissars who ride roughshod over Peak Oil Barrel.

                   Shoot, if it weren’t for you guys, the Republicans would have to pay people to do what you do.

                   

                2. It is you who is trying to ride roughshod.
                   Fuck off.

                   NAOM

                3. notanoilman,

                   Nah. I am trying to win.

                   Ask yourself this: How did that deplorables slur work out for Hillary Clinton?

                   

       3. “You mean like this?”
          No; like this… rate times consumption = amount paid.

          Our rates are higher, but our bills are lower, which is what really matters. Texas is one of the 43 states which has higher bills than we do.

          New Report: California’s Climate Policies Benefit Manufacturing and Help Reduce Energy Bills
          https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-puzey/new-report-californias-climate-policies-benefit-manufacturing-and-help-reduce

          1. wharf rat,

             If that’s the best rationalization for renewables you can come up with, no wonder renewables are in such trouble.

             I’m sure California industry just loves paying 230% for electricity over Texas industrial rates.

             

             1. “I’m sure California industry just loves paying 230% for electricity over Texas industrial rates”
                I think we can agree on that. The article points out:

                “California is still the top U.S. state for manufacturing.
                California electricity and energy productivity in manufacturing is outpacing the rest of the nation.
                California manufacturers spend a smaller share of total operating costs on electricity; and
                Electricity bills are lower in California”

                “California manufacturers are more productive in terms of output relative to total electricity costs than any other state besides Connecticut. For example, in 2012 for every dollar California manufacturers spent on electricity they generated nearly $59 of output–$21 more than the rest of the United States.”

                1. wharf rat,

                   If everything in California is so peachy, then why does is its economy growing so sluggishly in comparison to the economy of Texas?

                   https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CARGSP
                   https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TXRGSP#0

                   Could it be that energy intensive industries are relocating to states where electrical power is not so expensive? This could explain why “California manufacturers are more productive in terms of output relative to total electricity costs than any other state besides Connecticut.” The energy-intensive industries have left.

                   How anyone could see slow economic growth as a good economic outcome is beyond me.

                   

                2. “If everything in California is so peachy, then why does is its economy growing so sluggishly in comparison to the economy of Texas?”

                   “Everything” is not peachy; we grow many other crops. Rat himself is a non-profit medical marijuana corporation. However, we are growing faster than Texas. It’s something even Texans admit.

                   Julián Castro says California besting Texas in creating jobs, economic growth

                   “Today,” the former San Antonio mayor told reporters June 17, 2016, “California is kicking our butt, creating more jobs and more economic growth than Texas. Maybe what we need to do is trade in Gov. Jerry Brown,” of California, “for Gov. Greg Abbott and get better results.”

                   http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2016/aug/17/julian-castro/julian-castro-says-california-besting-texas-creati/

                3. The Texas Workforce Commission says the Texas unemployment rate slipped to 4.8 percent in May, down from five percent during April.
                   https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/06/16/205081/texas-unemployment-rate-drops-slightly-houstons-rate-higher-than-state/

                   California’s unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in May, down from 4.8 percent a month earlier.

                   http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/06/16/california-unemployment-rate-record-low/

                4. wharf rat,

                   Well I believe I’ll go with the empirical data that the FED publishes, and not what some politician says.

                   https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CARGSP
                   https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TXRGSP#0

                   

                5. $1.5 T? That’s where we were in ’99.

                6. warf rat,

                   And why does California have the highest real poverty rate of any state in the United States?

                   The spin masters can try to put lipstick on that pig all they want, but any neutral observer can see from some basic facts that there’s trouble in paradise.

                   Why Does California Have The Nation’s Highest Poverty Rate?
                   https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2016/09/28/why-does-california-have-the-nations-highest-poverty-rate/#3983cd4412d9

                   California again has nation’s highest rate of real poverty
                   http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/dan-walters/article101657302.html

                   

    4. I agree that global warming isn’t as good a motivating reason to lower carbon emissions than other reasons. I believe the science, but it is still too removed from my life to feel compelling.

       For me there are three concerns:

       Concern about environmental damage from gas, coal, and oil extraction. It happens and we clearly see the results. Landscapes destroyed. Dirty leaks and spills. Explosions.

       Depletion. I think the loss of cheap sources of oil will force us to change energy consumption.

       Air pollution. Some of us are old enough to remember the brown clouds in places like LA, Denver, and Pittsburgh.

       1. The reason I don’t pay much attention to the fossil fuel cheerleaders who come here is that their comments don’t fit with the energy info that I find by reading various sources.

          They want more gas and oil, without acknowledging that more production means lower prices, which kills companies in the industry.

          I see big oil companies curtailing projects because the projects either won’t be very productive or too expensive.

          I see coal falling out of favor with utilities because even if it is cheap to mine, it is expensive to ship. And people want cleaner utilities, so natural gas and renewables work better for that.

          I see the rest of the world looking for ways to move ahead with energy solutions that don’t require so many imports. Just as we don’t want to import fossil fuels, neither do they.

          I see Europe and Asia wanting to take advantage of possible shifts in global power. If the US wants to retreat to a 1950s economic model, these countries can take advantage of that by shifting alliances, economic sources, and new energy technologies. Think of new energy technology as the new war machine. We build military hardware and keep fossil fuels supported, while they create new networks (strategic, online, energy). We’re trying to fight the old war and they are preparing for the new one.

          I look at LTO decline rates and wonder how long those wells will keep supplying oil.

          1. Also, the money just isn’t there any more for fossil fuels. Coal companies have gone bankrupt. Many gas and oil companies will go bankrupt if funding dries up. Pipeline companies are trying find companies that will sign contracts.

             These industries just don’t have the economic clout they once had. There are some financial realities that cheerleading won’t fix.

             1. Boomer- I have to disagree with you -“Also, the money just isn’t there any more for fossil fuels”.
                In fact, that is where almost all the energy $ in the world is directed.
                And will continue to be so for a long time.
                Remember that worldwide only a tiny fraction of energy use is supplied by non-fossils, and much of that big hydro.
                Renewables have a long, long way to go before fossils won’t be garnering most of the consumption monies being spent on energy.
                Maybe in 4 decades you’re statement will start to be approaching reality.
                Wishful thinking doesn’t equate to reality.

                1. I’m looking at where the investment money is going. More for renewable power plants. More for EVs.

                   I think China will lend a lot of money for renewables.

                2. There will continue to be consumption money for fossil fuels while they still exist, but in terms of loans and investments, I think they have fallen out of favor.

                3. Here’s one example, though I think the pull back will be more for economic than environmental reasons.

                   Investment Funds Worth Trillions Are Dropping Fossil Fuel Stocks – The New York Times: “The report, released Monday, said the new total was twice the amount measured 15 months ago — a remarkable rise for a movement that began on American college campuses in 2011. Since then, divestment has expanded to the business world and institutional world, and includes large pension funds, insurers, financial institutions and religious organizations. It has also spread around the world, with 688 institutions and nearly 60,000 individuals in 76 countries divesting themselves of shares in at least some kinds of oil, gas and coal companies, according to the report.”

                4. New Energy Outlook 2017 | Bloomberg New Energy Finance | Bloomberg Finance LP: “Renewable energy sources are set to represent almost three quarters of the $10.2 trillion the world will invest in new power generating technology until 2040, thanks to rapidly falling costs for solar and wind power, and a growing role for batteries, including electric vehicle batteries, in balancing supply and demand.”

                5. We’ve already seen articles saying if more money isn’t invested in oil exploration or production, the oil industry will be in trouble in a few years.

                   But who is going to make that investment?

                   I see signs that the financial community isn’t all that impressed with fossil fuels anymore. Pull the investment money and the loans, and what happens?

                   We already expect LTO production to decline if there is no more funding.

                   So what happens if there is little interest in funding more fossil fuel production or the vehicles and utilities that use it?

                   The more pessimistic folks here assume governments will print money for oil until the financial systems and environmental systems collapse.

                   I don’t think so because I don’t see much to be gained for the very wealthy. Why collapse the world to keep the masses afloat? If you are a rich, selfish person, start pulling out of the system and find your retreat.

                6. I think the big oil companies cutting investments and focusing on buybacks and dividends is one step in that direction. Don’t throw more money in, and get out as soon as possible with whatever money you can.

                   The LTO version is to take loans and investments as long as you can, pay executives high compensation, and then walk away when the loans and stock sales stop.

                7. I would be super-fascinated to see trends in expenditures on FF Exploration; FF R&D (e.g. reservoir scrubbing bubbles); Renew R&D; Biofuels R&D; Nuclear R&D.

                   Just exactly where is the money going at this point. I agree with Boomer II on the investment into capacity / generation. but i wonder if renewables are out-competing on a pure R&D level.

                8. Is the Climate Changing for Fossil Fuel Investments? | Morgan Stanley: “From 2004 to 2014, renewable energy investments increased from $45 billion to over $270 billion. During this same period, renewable energy accounted for 48% of global new-generating capacity, increasing the global share of renewable energy for electricity to over 9% and creating opportunity for investors.”

                9. China Aims to Spend at Least $360 Billion on Renewable Energy by 2020 – The New York Times

                10. I get your point on new investment. I had thought you were referring to actual money spent energy consumption currently.

          2. Another way to view the cheerleading comments is to compare them to the companies that used to claim smaller computers would never replace mainframes.

             You can try to hold back changes, but sometimes your product gets replaced by other products that have advantages that your don’t.

29. Creating Jobs What would happen if the US were to cut employee and employer taxes by say 50% and shift that tax burden on to real estate and similar catagories?

    Seems to me that this would help shift employers from investing in more tech and into hiring more humans. The price on real estate would come down (hopefully not crash to drastically) , this would make it easier for workers to rentand eventually own a house.

    Hopefully this would help to get this stagnant economy going again. Any thoughts.

    I wonder what the taxes are on Chinese workers?

30. This is going to be fun to watch. Let the fight begin.

    Merkel issues warning to Trump ahead of G20 summit
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-germany-merkel-idUSKBN19K2B2

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to fight for free trade and press on with multilateral efforts to combat climate change at the G20 summit next week, challenging the “America First” policies of U.S. President Donald Trump….

    Her remarks raised the prospect of an open clash with Trump at the summit….

    “These will not be easy talks,” Merkel said. “The differences are obvious and it would be wrong to pretend they aren’t there. I simply won’t do this.” ….

    The German hosts face a difficult challenge. Along with Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan will be attending. All have strained relations with Merkel and other European leaders.

    The summit, in a convention center in the heart of Hamburg, could also be disrupted by tens of thousands of protesters expected to descend on the city of 1.7 million.

    1. .

       

       1. President Trump Tweets Video of Him Physically ATTACKING, BEATING UP ‘CNN’ Reporter 7/2/2017
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgSLrj48aXA

          As for Glenn E Stehle,,,
          .

          

          1. On second thought there is another possibility
             Glenn is a Troll!
             .

             

          2. But some may already be sure of Fred, with some of it possibly being unfit to print.

          3. Fred Magyar,

             It comes as no surprise that you would look to CNN for your news and political views. You’re cut from the same cloth.

             Brian Stelter is freaking out on CNN over Trump’s goofy wrestling tweet. Towards the end of the segment, he says this is exactly the kind of thing that Hugo Chavez, Receipt Erdogan and Vladimir Putin does!!!!!

             Watch the idiocy in the link you provided.

             Hugo Chavez and Putin have had journalists assassinated. Trump put out a dumb tweet. Erdogan is literally suspending features of the Turkish government in order to install himself as a dictator. Trump put out a dumb tweet.

             YES, he’s trying to discredit the media so that he can do whatever he wants. But it’s a tweet. Get over yourself.

             It’s these kind of hysterics that will utterly strip you of credibility long before Trump ever actually does something that approximates the dictators you keep screaming about.

             1. YES, he’s trying to discredit the media so that he can do whatever he wants. But it’s a tweet. Get over yourself.

                Well guess what? He can’t do whatever he wants unless he resigns! As for discrediting the media it isn’t just about CNN which I don’t even watch given that I haven’t owned a TV for over a decade. He tweets daily about how the press is the enemy of the American people. I do have a twitter account so I do see the shit stream he puts out and that CNN video was something he tweeted himself! So why don’t you go suck on some lemons or something!

                1. Fred Magyar says:

                   ….that CNN video was something he tweeted himself!

                   That’s classic Fred Magyar (and CNN) again, just making up whatever “facts” he needs to win an argument.

                   Here’s a link to Trump’s twitter feed. Can you show me where Trump tweeted that CNN video of Brian Stelter?

                   https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump

                2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/business/media/trump-wrestling-video-cnn-twitter.html

                   President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.

                   The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Mr. Trump in WrestleMania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends with an onscreen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”

                3. I always referred to it as:
                   Clinton News Network

                   All MSM News is essentially entrainment.
                   I don’t have a Tee Vee, so I’m somewhat sheltered from it, but I’m sometimes confined to hotel rooms while doing business, and the experience is horrifying, and a bit surreal.
                   I think if you are acclimated to it, it is kinda like the frog in the pan phenomena.
                   I did some work for a group of biofeedback researches from UCLA.
                   We could put anyone into high alpha in 90 seconds when watching TEE VEE– the content didn’t matter.

                   Alpha Wave:

                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_wave

                4. Fred Magyar,

                   But here’s the rub: You claimed that you “don’t even watch” CNN, but “I do have a twitter account so I do see the shit stream he puts out and that CNN video was something he tweeted himself!”

                   So can you show me where Trump tweeted that CNN video of Brian Stelter on his Twitter feed, as you claimed?

                   Otherwise, it looks like you do watch CNN, at least some of the programs, regardless of your claim to the contrary.

                   It makes perfect sense that you would watch CNN, being that you have so much in common.

                5. Hi Glenn,

                   Perhaps somewhat like Trump’s Twitter, Peak Oil Barrel is Fred’s ‘literary playpen’.

                   If we accept and understand that, then perhaps it almost doesn’t really matter that his commentary might contain doses of irrationality and incorrect, misleading or contradictory info– some of which have been highlighted at different points.

                   That he likes to lean against the altar of status-quo-derived so-called science and technology is, given this, perhaps for some sense of what he might feel as balance and good measure… in part so as to limit the risk of his commentary being entirely written off. ‘u^

                6. LOL!
                   Whether you believe me or not I don’t watch any News broadcast and I havent’t owned a TV for over a decade.
                   here’s a screenshot of his twitter post.
                   .

                   

                7. Fred Magyar,

                   But that isn’t the Brian Seltzer video.

                   So there you go with your deceptions again.

                   Once again, classic Fred Magyar.

                8. Caelan MacIntyre,

                   The problem is that the wind and solar revolution hasn’t come off as planned. If there are not some earthbreaking technological breakthroughs, which may or may not happen, renewables are rapidly approaching their limit. Problems of various types are cropping up with renewables everywhere.

                   Fred Magyar, however, is unable to accept this reality. So he flees into fantasyland, first by denying the current problems being experienced with renewables, and second by seeking refuge in some glorious future, a future where the renewables Utopia has come true. This glorious future of course does not currently exist, and it may never exist. Nevertheless, anyone who casts doubts upon this future utopian vision, or points out the current problems being experienced with renewables, is viciously attacked.

                   Fossil fuels are of course limited. We can speculate forever whether the Age of Carbon has 2 months left (the Our Finite World view) or 200 years left (the Trump view).

                   Once the Age of Carbon ends, and if solutions to the problems currently being experienced with renewables cannot be found, then civilization as we know it will end.

                   This has happened many times throughout human history, so I fail to see what all the wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments is all about.

                   However, all this highflung futurisitic navel gazing is way over my pay level, so I just concentrate on promoting my own economic self-interest, and hope that the good times for fossil fuels roll on for as long as possible.

                9. “President Trump Tweets Video of Him Physically ATTACKING, BEATING UP ‘CNN’ Reporter 7/2/2017
                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgSLrj48aXA” ~ Fred Magyar

                   The way you frame it here is not how I see it, Fred and I might be inclined to agree with Glenn’s mention of the ‘hysterics’ bit, such that has been been apparent in some of your other comments. If Glenn needs another example, I can see about digging it up for him.

                   “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” ~ Joseph Goebbels

                10. The way you frame it here is not how I see it, Fred and I might be inclined to agree with Glenn’s mention of the ‘hysterics’ bit, such that has been been apparent in some of your other comments. If Glenn needs another example, I can see about digging it up for him.

                    Aww… your love for Glenn is so touching you two make perfect bedfellows. First comes Love then comes Marriage…
                    .

                    

                11. Thanks for yet another example, Fred. Saves Glenn and me the trouble.
                    BTW, have you been out today or are you house-bound or what? How’s the bamboo bike holding up? The kayak?
                    …Oh wait, that’s right, I’m supposed to know absolutely nothing about you– a proven scientific fact.

                    Incidentally, nice to have you back, Glenn.

                    You, Me and Mexico

                12. Wonderful examples of once-great civilizations that no longer exist.

                    One wonders what sort of monuments our modern civilization is creating, and if they can ever compete with those of older civilizations in terms of permanence and sheer and enduring beauty.

                    Why Modern Architecture SUCKS
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GapUEKYLE1o

                    

                13. .

                    

             2. A little bit more background about what is currently going on between Trump and CNN that triggered Trump’s tweet:

                CNN faced $100M lawsuit over botched Russia story
                http://nypost.com/2017/06/27/cnn-staffers-didnt-resign-over-retracted-story-they-got-fired/

                The specter of a $100 million libel suit scared CNN into retracting a poorly reported story that slimed an ally of President Trump’s — and forcing out the staffers responsible for it, The Post has learned.

                The cable network’s coverage of Trump transition team member Anthony Scaramucci came amid federal scrutiny of corporate parent Time Warner’s pending purchase by AT&T — and the widespread belief among media execs that CNN President Jeff Zucker can’t survive a merger….

                “What is interesting is that the AT&T execs who will decide who goes and who stays are [AT&T CEO] Randall Stephenson and [AT&T Entertainment Group CEO] John Stankey — who have a very good relationship with the current administration.” ….

                White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday she wasn’t sure if CNN’s handling of the matter was “good enough” for her boss, who went on a Twitter tirade against the news channel earlier in the day.

                “I think that we have gone to a place where if the media can’t be trusted to report the news, then that’s a dangerous place for America, and I think if that is the place that certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that’s coming directly from the top, I think that’s even more scary,” she said.

                VIDEO: CNN CEO Zucker dodges Project Veritas’ questioning
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZBzcUCmLUo

       2. Yep-

          

       3. Trump is a snowflake.

31. The POB Sect

    Peak Oil Barrel, at least its ‘non-petroleum’ side, seems a bit of a chapel for a sect of the crony-capitalist plutarchy religion– the one that’s going to apparently save us from it, via it, and congregational hallelujahs, as manifested in the chants of robots taking over labor (old hat, really); delivery (etc.) drones; artificial intelligence; self-crashingdriving electric cars and vehicles in general; batteries and assorted storage technology, etc.; and of course, assorted soul-selling in the forms of jobs (AKA wage slave positions), taxation, offertory baskets, and the House-controlled denomination/debt to buy into all this stuff with. This may include the belief, hopium and/or systemic-myopia in the ‘transitional’ ‘prosperity’ and/or ‘stability’ , etc., to keep it all together as it (while it continues the wreckage) all happens…

    “I am reading a novel at this time where an anarchist type is trying to break the hold of the elites on the world. He is extremely intelligent and powerful. Little does he know that his staff has been infiltrated and his plans actually fit into the elite plans. He is being used at cross purposes to give much more control over the world to the elites.

    So one must be very careful that one’s set is not actually a subset of an apparent opposing regime.” ~ GoneFishing

    “I posted something kind of like this here.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre

    The aforementioned gives a bit of a twist to that, yes?
    And, naturally, it could be anyone, including the writer of your literary fiction, as well as the folks hereon, including even you, Gonzo.
    Probably more likely than a real anarchist.
    How, and what, is/was the book, incidentally and would you recommend it? If so, why?

    BTW, I meant to inquire where (or how) you fish with all those polluted and overfished bodies of water; what you catch, if anything; how long are you gone; and/or do you do it in some kind of pseudogated community?

    My allegiance is with nature, not so much anarchy alone. Anarchy is an aspect, but too singular a platform to run on.
    I have very little concern for the shit, if I may insult an excellent ingredient of compost, that the plutocracy might want to ooze out their back-ends, except where it envelops us and the rest of the planet, such as in what we never really, or quite, asked for in the first place.

    Speaking of which, someone recently posted something along the lines of some sort of evolution of a type that is more susceptible to the deference of authority figures…

    I suppose that could include deference to a new sect like the one just mentioned.

    1. My allegiance is with nature, not so much anarchy alone. Anarchy is an aspect, but too singular a platform to run on.

       You understand neither what nature is or how it actually works, let alone the dynamics of human societies and their cultures.

       I pledge no allegiance to Nature and all the anarchy it wreaks and to all the non linear chaotic systems in the universe, which owe us nothing and are completely indifferent to our individual plights. However, as a member of the sect of free thinking great apes, I still think it is a damn good idea to apply the scientific method to learn as much as we can about reality so as to be able to develop technologies that may give us a bit of an edge in our daily struggle for survival. Amen!

       Among other things, Nature gives us the Ebola Virus so we can learn about it’s beautiful biochemical structure and how it causes our immune systems to kill us and at the same time it’s spread gives us insights on how better to structure our communities and fight against primitive counter productive cultural memes that spread much like a viral epidemic does.

       https://prezi.com/swhybe1yspau/biochemistry-understanding-ebola/
       Biochemistry: Understanding Ebola

       Transcript of Biochemistry: Understanding Ebola
       Cytokine Storm
       It is the immune system, rather than the Ebola virus, that eventually kills the host. The presence of eVP24 triggers the overproduction of interferons. This sends the immune system into overdrive, and although it damages the virus, it also allows for the release of nitric oxide and makes blood vessel walls more permeable and causing dangerously low blood pressure that eventually sends the body into a sort of septic shock.
       Zmapp
       Zmapp is an experimental drug being developed to treat the ebola virus. It has saved 18 monkeys injected with the virus. It contains neutralizing antibodies that slow the virus’s activity, ideally allowing the patient to produce a sufficient immune response.

       http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/historical-parallels-ebola-virus-disease-and-cholera-understanding-community-distrust-and-social-violence-with-epidemics/

       Historical Parallels, Ebola Virus Disease and Cholera: Understanding Community Distrust and Social Violence with Epidemics

       ABSTRACT

       In the three West African countries most affected by the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, resistance to public health measures contributed to the startling speed and persistence of this epidemic in the region. But how do we explain this resistance, and how have people in these communities understood their actions? By comparing these recent events to historical precedents during Cholera outbreaks in Europe in the 19th century we show that these events have not been new to history or unique to Africa. Community resistance must be analysed in context and go beyond simple single-variable determinants. Knowledge and respect of the cultures and beliefs of the afflicted is essential for dealing with threatening disease outbreaks and their potential social violence.

       There are a lot of dots that need to be connected before one can even begin to understand how little one knows. Yet we are surrounded by idiots who claim with absolute certainty to have all the answers.

       “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
       ― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

       1. Every Scientist Should Be An Anarchist / Anarchist Science Policy

          “As others have noted, science is a modern religion. Even the critics couch their criticisms in religious discourse…” ~ Brian Martin

          You work with nature, maybe you survive & thrive; you work against it, and maybe you don’t. And, no, science isn’t necessarily going to help you work with it, and may actually help you work against it.

          Oh, and nature doesn’t offer an ignore button option; whereas the ostensible religion and practice of science and engineering can often seem to function as one for the ‘troll’ that is nature.

          “Science, engineering, technology and capital, the four horsemen of our modern age are being implemented to wreck our world.” ~ GoneFishing

          Here’s a piece of advice, and an important one:

          Pay careful attention to paradox. (I try to live by that attention.)

          Viruses revealed to be a major driver of human evolution

          “The constant battle between pathogens and their hosts has long been recognized as a key driver of evolution, but until now scientists have not had the tools to look at these patterns globally across species and genomes. In a new study, researchers apply big-data analysis to reveal the full extent of viruses’ impact on the evolution of humans and other mammals.”

          1. Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of viruses (some minor editing) whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

             -Gore Vidal
             May I recommend:

             This Week in Virology
             (I never miss it)

             http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

             1. This Week in Virology
                (I never miss it)

                Awesome, I’ll add it to my must watch and keep up to date on list… 🙂

          2. In a new study, researchers apply big-data analysis to reveal the full extent of viruses’ impact on the evolution of humans and other mammals.”

             LOL! Did you notice the double irony of the necessity of having the technology of big data to do the scientific analysis?! Try doing that while sitting around the campfire and gnawing bones in the back of your dark little smoke filled cave!

             BTW, Did you know that one of the reasons other than immunologic factors of pig organs being incompatible for pig to human transplants are “PERVS’ porcine endogenous retroviruses and they can be edited out with CRISPR-cas9 ?

             https://www.statnews.com/2017/04/06/crispr-pig-organs-transplant-luhan-yang/

             Daunting hurdles stand between where biology is now and where it needs to be to make transplantable pig organs. The old problems of infection and rejection of another species’ organs seem almost quaint compared to those confronting eGenesis.

             There’s the challenge of CRISPR’ing an unprecedented number of genes without compromising the viability of the designer pigs and without introducing aberrant edits. And of optimizing mammalian cloning, which is how the company creates the pigs. And of persuading investors and doctors that xenotransplantation is safe, effective, ethical — and lucrative.

             Imagine that? SAFE, ETHICAL and LUCRATIVE! Eat your ignorant little piggish luddite heart out!

             Yang, eGenesis’s chief scientific officer, has already made enormous strides, scientific and financial. In 2015, she and colleagues in Church’s lab used CRISPR to eliminate from pig cells 62 genes so potentially dangerous their very existence nixed previous efforts to turn pigs into organ donors…

             …Giving up is not in Yang’s lexicon. Urgency is. In her native China, she told STAT, 2 million people need organ transplants, “and people are dying before they get one.”

             While I’m at it, how do anarchists provide universal healthcare coverage? Oh they don’t, so they are a lot more like greedy anti science Republicans than ethical compassionate humans.

             1. Actually anarchists could (they did in Spain during the Civil War, and the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution).
                It is just a matter of organization (can you say horizontal?).
                Vertical organized systems get taken over by sociopaths (just look around, how are things?), almost without exception– and we don’t want sociopaths telling us what to do, do we?
                Orwell gave a first hand account of Spanish Anarchism, a great read:
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

                “The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing … It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle ….. every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.” “The Anarchists” (referring to the Spanish CNT and FAI) were “in control”, tipping was prohibited by workers themselves, and servile forms of speech, such as “Señor” or “Don”, were abandoned. ”

                I’m a CRISPR fan, so with you there- although a ethical moral compass is needed.
                (Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will be getting The Nobel Prize- I hope the third is not one of the greed heads at MIT)

                1. I’m more of a social democracy a la Scandinavian countries type of guy so I’m not the biggest fan of any of the Spanish forms of government. However I will look into how well the anarchists managed things there. I’m willing to keep an open mind and learn from any group who has something to teach.

                   As for CRISPR, I agree that a very firm ethical compass is needed but while I’m not naive about the fallibility of human endeavors, I do get the impression that most of the scientists working with this technology are quite aware and vocal about the ethical implications and seem to be quite keen on maintaining high ethical standards. I may have a bit of a personal bias but I tend to trust scientists to do the right thing a lot more than I trust, say politicians and bankers…

                2. I agree, just not let corporations or Nationalism get involved, and scientists generally behave themselves.
                   Major anarchist movements are attacked by both the Right, and the traditional Left, so they have a tough time surviving.
                   After helping in the defeat of the White Russians, the Bolsheviks did a all out assault on the Ukrainian Anarchists, and it was a bloodbath.
                   And Orwell be came a ant-Stalinist from his view of the attack of the Communists on Spanish Anarchists, and their not so subtle collaboration with the Franco.

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWXYsi3zoCQ

                3. The Extensions

                   If you accept the case that we grew up as a species in the relative locality, simplicity, small scale and anarchy of the band and tribe, then that would be our ‘natural predisposition’, and the State or large-scale centralized so-called government, complete with its sociostructural manifestations/extensions, and which hasn’t been around nearly as long as anarchy, is in fundamental dissonance with our tribal cognition/wiring.

                   Has anarchy really failed, or is it just on hiatus?

                   Extend technology too far out and what do you think happens? Well, extend a cantilever too far out and what do you think happens? How far do you think the cantilever can be extended?

                   And how connected does your building want to be to the cantilever when it gets extended too far out? How much of the building do you want to be the cantilever, itself, and when it gets extended too far out? How long do you want to be in such a building? How much of a prisoner in it, or dependent on it, are you?

                   AGW isn’t the real issue per se. It is simply a potentially really bad symptom.

                   The real issue is the extensions.

             2. Fred, it is late here, so just a few words for now…

                I would be cautious about habitual ‘framing’, if only for one’s own sake, as it would seem to risk imposing limits on one’s perspectives, thought-processes and imagination, etc., as can be evidenced by one’s commentary.

                While what some might understand as science and technology might impress, they are nevertheless certainly not the limits of what is possible.

    2. Actually, I’d say the non-petroleum side of POB is where you go if you want to see numerous examples of untreated mental illness on display.

       1. Since you’re here I guess you must be a prime example!

       2. 1 in 5 would be my guess.

          https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers

          Although I see no evidence of it here. Just a lot of lively discussion. I guess that’s too much for some.

          Perhaps we need a trigger warning for the snowflakes.

          1. Maybe a “Safe Space” to escape to when reality intrudes?
             Snowflakes can’t be put in a uncomfortable position.

       3. Yes, Glen is a good example of that.

          NAOM

    3. Wow Caely Baby, you actually wrote most of it yourself. Congrats.
       Just a warning not to get blindsided by the dark and sinister forces.

       1. We will go fishing before they arrive and leave a sign, saying,

          “We have gone fishing. Please help yourself to anything in the fridge and make yourselves at home. See you when we get back, you dark and sinister forces, you.
          xx,
          ~ Gonzo & Caely”

32. Making homes more energy efficient could pay big rewards.

    The delicate balance of investing in energy – Pensions & Investments: “In the first two months of this year, residential and commercial real estate owners and occupiers consumed 7,271 quadrillion British thermal units of total U.S. energy compared with 5,913 quadrillion by the electric power sector; 5,083 quadrillion Btu by the industrial sector; and 4,228 quadrillion Btu by the transportation sector, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show.

    The real estate sector has one of the highest carbon footprints, contributing 30% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions and consuming roughly 40% of the world’s energy, according to the UNEP Finance Initiative, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Program and the financial sector.”

    1. Shrink the house. It saves on multiple fronts.

       Attached is a modelspace-view screen-grab of 2 different angles of the first floor (on ‘stilts’) of that previously-mentioned tiny house using predominantly palettes and other recycled materials that I’ve started working on. If you look closely, you might be able to notice the palettes and pieces of palette wood. It is 2 by 4 palettes for 8′ by 13’4″, which roughly approximates the golden rectangle.

       If anyone would like the 3D file and/or recommend mods as I go along, just let me know. Unsure how good the support is, but we’ll see…

       

33. In some previous comments I suggested that there will be less interest in investing in fossil fuel projects and companies.

    There’s this. Mixed energy funds invest in both fossil fuels and renewables. Even if governments print unlimited amounts of money, that in instead doesn’t mean that money would go into fossil fuels.

    The delicate balance of investing in energy – Pensions & Investments: “Mixed funds have had the most growth recently, raising $19 billion year-to-date through April 30 and $24 billion in all of 2016, compared to $1.9 billion raised by fossil-fuel funds in the first four months of 2017 and $22.3 billion in 2016. Renewable funds raised $4.8 billion this year through April 30 and $12.6 billion last year, Preqin’s report shows.”

    1. I meant to say, “that in itself.” Didn’t catch the typo in time to correct it.

34. Here’s the report showing where investment is going.

    https://www.preqin.com/docs/reports/Preqin-Special-Report-Conventional-and-Renewable-Energy-June-2017.pdf

    1. Here’s another report.

       https://www.iea.org/media/publications/wei/WEI2016FactSheet.pdf

       In 2015, the upstream oil and gas sector remained the biggest energy investment category with spending of USD 583 billion.

       Spending on all renewable energy sources, including biofuels for transport and solar thermal heat
       installations, totalled USD 313 billion, as part of a broad reorientation in investment toward low carbon energy sources.

       However, from another report from the IEA we see that spending on renewables doesn’t yield much bang for the buck. Granted, investment in oil and gas was almost double what investment in renewables was. However, if we look at the OECD countries, it delivered about five times the growth in energy supply that investment in renewables did. That’s about 2.5 times for each dollar spent over what renewables supplied for each dollar spent.

       

       1. Looming Energy Shock

          https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/109505/looming-energy-shock

          1. Survivalist,

             It would certainly behoove my own economic self-interest if Martenson’s prediction #1 is correct.

             Nevertheless, Martenson makes one fundamental assumption which colors both his prediction #1 and prediction #2 , and that is that there is little or no tiger in the shale oil tank.

             The oil and gas analysists at Goldman Sachs assume just the opposite, that there is a great deal of tiger in the shale oil tank.

             They find that the marginal barrel — the barrel that sets the price of oil — in the next decade or two will be the shale oil barrel. During this “exploitation phase,” the cost of oil will be set by the cost to produce that marginal barrel of shale oil, which they estimate somewhere in the $50 to $70 range.

             These lower oil prices will of course prove to be a great boost to the world economy and diminish the chances of Martenson’s #2 prediction — collapse of the world economy.

             They call this new era “The New Oil Order,” and in this new era the assumptions that Martenson uses have become obsolete.

             The lead time to bring oil online in the old oil order was 5 to 6 years. The lead time to bring shale oil online is less than one year.

             Much more can be found here:

             “THE NEW OIL ORDER” – MAKING SENSE OF AN INDUSTRY’S TRANSFORMATION
             http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/the-new-oil-order/

             

          2. .

             

             1. I feel it behooves us to consider the global picture, and perhaps too one brought to us by physicists and geologists. Not banks. Color me skeptical when it comes to the banks.

                Fracking (Tight Oil) delays Peak Oil by some years

                https://aleklett.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/fracking-tight-oil-forskjuter-peak-oil-med-nagra-ar/

                David Hughes

                http://shalebubble.org/reports/

                2016 Tight Oil Reality Check

                http://www.postcarbon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Hughes_2016-Tight-Oil-Reality-Check-2016.pdf

                Goldman Sachs link has no references. Perhaps I missed them. While argument by assertion can sometimes not be avoided, it would be nice to see on what study of the facts they have base their analysis.

                While USA has increased oil production via tight oil, it is less certain how profitable it has been. A fair amount of energy, so to speak, goes into obfuscating that information.

                1. Survivalist,

                   Quote from the Alaklett report you linked:

                   The new prognosis now sees that maximal oil production occurs five years later than the 2011 peak, i.e. in 2016.

                   The only way I see that happening is if Martenson’s prediction #2 comes to pass.

                   If peak oil occurred in 2016 it will be because of demand destruction in the successive years, not because of any lack of supply, since the world is currently drowning in an over-supply of oil.

                2. As it stands right now peak oil (crude + condensate) has already occurred. That’s a fact. It’s already happened. Whether oil production ever surpasses the peak and sets a new record is yet to be determined.
                   I gather that you think oil production will surpass the previous peak and set a new record. However, I find that what you post here does a very poor job of backing up that assertion. You’re mostly just waving pom-poms for Texas. There’s a whole big wide world of oil production out there Glenn.

                   Perhaps give more consideration to what WILL happen in the future, and not so much to what YOU WANT to happen in the future.

                3. Survivalist says:

                   Perhaps give more consideration to what WILL happen in the future, and not so much to what YOU WANT to happen in the future.

                   This statement implies that you believe you know what “WILL happen in the future,” at least to a greater extent than I do. The track record of the peakists, however, is not a good one.

                   Given the peakists’poor track record of predicing what “WILL happen in the future,” why should anyone put any credence in the current predictions?

                   And of course I WANT maximal oil production to not have occurred in 2016. What do YOU WANT?

                4. Survivalist,

                   Quote from the Post Carbon Institute study:

                   Since peaking in March 2015, however, total U.S. tight oil production was down 13% as of June 2016, and down 19% as of November 2016—a decline in the production rate of more than one million barrels per day….

                   This analysis shows that the EIA has erred on the side of extreme optimism in its tight oil production forecasts, which are highly unlikely to be realized.

                   Since then, however, something very strange has happened.

                   Events have disproved the Post Carbon Institute prediction.

                   

                5. US shale oil prduction rose like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

                   

                6. “Events have disproved the Post Carbon Institute prediction.”
                   That statement is false. Perhaps you don’t understand the necessary and sufficient criteria required to disprove the prediction made by David Hughes. PCI published the report. They did not make the prediction. David Hughes made the prediction. Try follow along more closely lest you be mistake for a fool.

                   The David Hughes prediction is that the EIA production forecast is highly unlikely be realized. As it stands right now the David Hughes prediction is correct, to wit- the EIA production forecast has not been realized, and remains highly unlikely to be.

                   The only event that has to occur for the David Hughes prediction to be correct is that the EIA production forecast remains unrealized and highly unlikely to be. You see?

                   I assume you believe the EIA production forecast is likely to be realized. Yet you make a very poor argument as to why you believe that is the case. Just waving your pom-poms and quoting GS. Weak tea Glenn. Kinda pathetic actually. You’re becoming a bit of a laughing-stock.

                7. Survivalist,

                   I prefer to go with the facts, and the facts are that the EIA’s AEO 2016 underestimated future US shale oil production.

                   As it turns out, the EIA did not, let me repeat did not, “err on the side of extreme optimism in its tight oil production forecasts,” as David Hughes predicted. In fact, the EIA did just the opposite. It’s tight oil production forecasts erred on the side of pessimism.

                   

                8. “My “very high” optimism bias rating for the overall EIA AEO2016 tight oil forecast is based on the fundamentals, given what is known from an analysis of well quality and production data from subareas within each play……Tight oil and shale gas production are forecast to grow 88% from 2014 levels to all-time highs by 2040, while drilling rates remain below 2014 levels to 2040 (see Figure 20), with only a modest increase in oil price (see Figure 3).”

                   Read it again Sam. Try to stay on topic without wandering over into your own worn out taking points.

                   http://www.postcarbon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Hughes_2016-Tight-Oil-Reality-Check-2016.pdf

                9. Survivalist,

                   Argue against the facts all you want.

                   But arguing against the facts is an uphill battle, and that’s especially true when the facts are staring everyone right in the face.

                10. What part of “while drilling rates remain below 2014 levels to 2040” don’t you get? Do you even understand what is being predicted and what happened in reality? You’re thick in the head dude.

                11. In 2014 David Hughes published “Drilling Deeper” in which he made predictions of future oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford.

                    These predictions also hit wide of the mark.

                    

35. Chokepoints and Vulnerabilities in Global Food Trade

    https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/chokepoints-vulnerabilities-global-food-trade

    An article about the report if you prefer a brief.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-food-supplies-climate-change-international-trade-global-warming-chatham-house-chokepoints-a7808221.html

    1. Thanks for that excellent report link Surviv…
       The pdf version is packed with data and charts regarding grain and fertilizer global trade. Anyone interested in global trade, food supply and geopolitics would find this fascinating.
       One comment I found interesting was that much of the infrastructure in breadbaskets like the USA are particularly susceptible to impacts from global warming- Flooding of ports and rail links that handle grain and fertilizer.
       https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/chokepoints-vulnerabilities-global-food-trade

       1. You’re welcome. Chatham House does great work. I recommend it be on everyone’s favourites list.

36. Speaking of the EROEI of solar panels, I have given this matter about thirty seconds thought, and decided that it seems entirely reasonable to assume that a two hundred watt panel will on average generate one and a half kilowatt hours worth of juice daily, if located in a reasonably sunny environment.

    If this is reasonable, and the panel lasts twenty years, rather than thirty, that’s over ten thousand kilowatt hours. At ten cents each, that’s over thousand dollars worth of electricity.

    Somebody tell us again how much 200 watt panels are selling for these days, and how fast the price of them is falling, and how much the owner saves as the price of electricity goes up due to higher taxes, depletion of coal and gas, etc, etc.

    Also how much the owner saves by getting his juice tax free rather than paying thirty percent or more in taxes on earned income, meaning the REAL value of home generated juice is about fifty percent higher , lol.

    I could go on a while, but I really don’t think there is any NEED, just about everybody here except maybe a couple of guys who are invested heavily into the status quo gets it already, and that last couple will never get it, because their paychecks(or dividend checks) depend on their NOT getting it, courtesy of Upton Sinclair (?). Somebody else may have said it sooner, lol.

    1. Still a glut of Panels. They middle of the road 60 cell panel would be a 285 watt. Dim’s
       1000 x 1600 mm. Say 50 cents / watt by the pallet. If you are North of 35 degrees latitude I would expect 40+ years array life or more assuming you are willing to do some maintenance every few years.
       ie. relocate a low-performing panel in a string after 3 decades. Year 100 you would still have many producing panels if TSHTF.

37. Interview with Steve St Angelo

    https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/109534/steve-st-angelo-prepare-asset-price-declines-50-75

38. Is The Plateauing Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Over?- Roger Boyd

    http://www.humanitystest.com/is-the-plateauing-of-carbon-dioxide-emissions-over/

    1. That would be one more sign added to the quickly growing list of signs pointing to another mini ice age ahead in the near future.

       50 Inverted Hockey Sticks – Scientists Find Earth Cools As CO2 Rises

       http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/20/50-inverted-hockey-sticks-scientists-find-earth-cools-as-co2-rises

       1. This is from a denialist web site

          NOAM

       2. Oh jeez, another fucking climate change denying troll! Recently they have become more numerous than New York City cockroaches!

          Deny this!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eFTkeUYpfQ

          Published on Jul 2, 2017
          In the new documentary “Chasing Coral,” a team of photographers, divers and scientists analyze more than 650 hours of underwater footage to illustrate the real-time effects warming seas. NewsHour Weekend’s Saskia De Melker talks to Jeff Orlowski, the director of the film, about the challenges of showing these rarely-seen effects of climate change.

       3. Oddly enough a plateau in human CO2 emissions has not been met with a plateau in CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, which suggests to me we’ve likely hit some positive feedbacks i.e. increased boreal and tundra wildfires, thawing permafrost etc.

          The link you posted is pure unalloyed bullshit. You’ve obviously never taken a physics course. Maybe consider going back and upgrading high school. A grade 10 physics class can be very interesting, and night school is a great way to meet girls (if they’ll let you).

       4. Tony,

          Make your prediction for temperature at any prospective CO2 concentration. Compare to this chart for future reference.

          

       5. Tony Cowley – I suggest you read the paper cited at the top of that article, because the blogger almost certainly didn’t. The paper says the cooling from 801 to 1800 was due to volcanic activity – i.e. wasn’t part of a longer term, continuing climate trend: actually the opposite of what the blog site is using it to say. He then cherry picks 50 local sites over different time ranges and says there, the whole world is cooling and will do so forever. At least two of his time series show the opposite of what he thinks, and he chooses to ignore the preponderance of recent evidence, to the contrary. Nobody has argued that the world wasn’t cooling in the past, and until recently. The problem is that we have overcome that cooling to the point that it will now have no impact in any time scale relevant to the current civilization.

          If you wish to be willingly fooled and manipulated, and by someone who isn’t even very good at it, then that’s up to you, but have no doubt that is what is happening.

39. DC appeals court orders EPA to move ahead with methane rule
    Originally published July 3, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of a new rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks.

    In a split decision, the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered the EPA to move forward with the Obama-era requirement that aims to reduce planet-warming emissions from oil and gas operations.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/business/dc-appeals-court-orders-epa-to-move-ahead-with-methane-rul

40. Climate Change Conflict & Risk

    https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_8c0b021047fe406dbfa2851ea131a146.pdf

41. PowerGen Europe show presses its renewable credentials, but attendees still out of step

    As a first-time attendee to this event I was told PowerGen Europe has a comparable relevance for the conventional power industry in Europe as Intersolar Europe has for the solar community.

    With 440 exhibitors and visitors from more than 100 countries, PowerGen Europe is significantly smaller than Intersolar Europe, which in comparison drew 40,000 visitors and had more than 1,100 exhibitors.

    Coming from the renewable energy space, two observations struck me the most: the conference programme of this year’s event, which was split up into 50 sessions and featured 260 speakers, allocated more attention to the “new energy world” (i.e. renewables, storage, distributed generation and digitisation) compared to the conventional energy world……..[snip]

    On with the show
    Roaming the floors of the two exhibition halls that PowerGen Europe covered, I had a hard time evidencing the claim made by the organiser that 20% of the exhibitors were representatives of renewable power generators.

    All I saw were manufacturers of turbines, valves and other equipment relevant for conventional power generation. Overall one did not get the impression that a lot of new business was being discussed at the trade fair, which doesn’t really come as a huge surprise.

    After all, who dares to invest in new conventional power based generation assets in 2017 with the very real fear that such an investment will become obsolete within a decade or even less?

    I made the mistake of attending a trade show put on by the same organization. What I wanted to attend was billed as “Renewable Energy World” and the web site let it be known that this was to be co-located with the PowerGen International 2013 Show and Conference. The most interesting thing I learned from the exhibits was that some of the best bearings for hydroelectric plants are made from lignum vitae wood, a tree that is found in Caribbean and the northern coast of South America. It is the hardest and most dense of the traded woods, so dense that it easily sinks in water.

    1. Wooden bearings can last and last and last, if they aren’t too heavily loaded and are made out of the right kind of wood.

       Our local wild dogwood Cornus Florida works very well. There are probably some machines still sitting around in barns that used dogwood bearings supporting smooth iron shafts that were used on a regular basis for fifty years or longer. My grand parents had a couple but they were mostly wood, and when they became obsolete, they were left outside to rot.

       In a pinch, I could go into my scrap pile / treasure chest and salvage some axles for shafts and make dogwood bearings with nothing but a saw and a drill that would support a good sized water wheel for a generation at least. This would have to be a conventional overshot or undershot wheel, given that the construction of a good turbine requires tools and skills I don’t have.
       Make your wooden bearings out of an oily wood such as black walnut, and you may not even need to lube them, lol.

       Wooden bearings were also used in the earliest best quality clocks since they didn’t need added lube oil that would thicken and gum up as the weather cooled and interfere with the accuracy of the clock.

42. 100% Renewables – A Few Remarks about the Jacobson/Clack Controversy

    “There is obviously a natural tendency in Western societies, among policy makers and also in civil society, to wish that the transition to renewables can be done, that it can be done quickly, and that it can be done relatively painlessly, i.e. without affecting too much the essence of the social, political and economic setup we are used to, or the balance(s) of power that are ingrained in it. Hence a favorable disposition towards scientists coming up with seemingly robust models showing that a clear and quick pathway towards 100% renewable energy exists, and proposing a roadmap to get there. This is somehow reassuring, and this is actually what a lot of us want to hear and to believe.

    Yet, scientific studies that focus solely or mostly on the technical feasibility of a full-scale transition to renewables are probably inherently misleading, as they are based on technical and economic assumptions and models that are likely to be made invalid, obsolete or irrelevant by the set of societal, economic, political and technical changes that the transition process itself will set in motion.“

    Batteries Need to Get Big—Like, Enormous—for Solar Power to Shine

    “It would be a lot easier to expand our use of solar and wind energy if we had better ways to store the large quantities of electricity we’d need to cover gaps in the flow of that energy…

    But that energy total of 400 megawatt-hours is still two orders of magnitude lower than what a large Asian city would need if deprived of its intermittent supply. For example, just 2 GW for two days comes to 96 gigawatt-hours.

    We have to scale up storage, but how? Sodium-sulfur batteries have higher energy density than Li-ion ones, but hot liquid metal is a most inconvenient electrolyte. Flow batteries, which store energy directly in the electrolyte, are still in an early stage of deployment. Supercapacitors can’t provide electricity over a long enough time. And compressed air and flywheels, the perennial favorites of popular journalism, have made it into only a dozen or so small and midsize installations. We could use solar electricity to electrolyze water and store the hydrogen, but still, a hydrogen-based economy is not imminent.

    And so when going big we must still rely on a technology introduced in the 1890s: pumped storage. You build one reservoir high up, link it with pipes to another one lower down and use cheaper, nighttime electricity to pump water uphill so that it can turn turbines during times of peak demand. Pumped storage accounts for more than 99 percent of the world’s storage capacity, but inevitably, it entails energy loss on the order of 25 percent. Many installations have short-term capacities in excess of 1 GW—the largest one is about 3 GW—and more than one would be needed for a megacity completely dependent on solar and wind generation.

    But most megacities are nowhere near the steep escarpments or deep-cut mountain valleys you’d need for pumped storage. Many, including Shanghai, Kolkata, and Karachi, are on coastal plains. They could rely on pumped storage only if it were provided through long-distance transmission. The need for more compact, more flexible, larger-scale, less costly electricity storage is self-evident. But the miracle has been slow in coming.”

    Just 16,000 Catenary Trucks Would Use All of California’s Electricity with only 2400 to 8300 Miles of Overhead Wires

    ” Diesel drayage trucks are also far less expensive — a used one can cost as little as $3,000, a new one $104,360 (Calstart 2013). A Battery Electric truck (BEV) truck costs $307,890 (ICCT 2013), a hydrogen fuel cell truck $1.3 million (ARB 2015), and a natural gas catenary truck $282,000 (GNA 2012)…

    And catenary doesn’t solve the main problem, which is keeping tractors and harvesters running so they can plant and harvest food. How would you string overhead wires across millions of acres of cropland?

    Catenary also locks in a very expensive infrastructure on a road that may not be heavily used in the future. Will the ports continue to move as many goods if the unreformed financial system crashes again and trade drops in the consequent depression, or when energy becomes too expensive or too scarce a component of the supply chain? It’s more likely globalization will decline and more goods made locally in the future…

    I was very upset that the father in ‘Angela’s ashes’ spent money on booze rather than food for his children. So is a goal of zero-emissions rather than energy efficiency the best way to spend our remaining energy when no commercially viable way of replacing oil is even in sight, and it takes 50 years to make an energy transition (Smil 2010)?”

    Using Energy to Extract Energy – the Dynamics of Depletion

    “The problem is now somewhat different – the problem is the incredibly naive faith that markets and technology can solve all problems and keep on going. The main criticism of the limits to growth study was the claim that problems would be anticipated in forward markets and would then be made the subject of high tech innovation. In the next chapter, the destructive effects of these innovations is examined in more depth.”

    Image of catenary truck:

    

43. “Yet, scientific studies that focus solely or mostly on the technical feasibility of a full-scale transition to renewables are probably inherently misleading, as they are based on technical and economic assumptions and models that are likely to be made invalid, obsolete or irrelevant by the set of societal, economic, political and technical changes that the transition process itself will set in motion.”

    That is a debatable assumption: We are still able to reach levels of PV and wind turbine installations and rates of EVs, that a decline in oil production can be compensated. And this transition takes around 30-40 years, a period of time in which we can muddle through with our problematic economic models.

    The replacement of oil companies with others is not the issue in the long run. Only if you provide evidence that the decline of oil is much faster than the substitution rate with REs your doomer vision makes sense.

    An intellectually sound contribution would define milestones for technological solutions, and discuss in a few years their impact/failure. You in contrast, only provide selectively cited opinions of others.

    1. An intellectually sound contribution would define milestones for technological solutions, and discuss in a few years their impact/failure. You in contrast, only provide selectively cited opinions of others.

       As a counter example to the constant drumbeat of naysayers, here’s another intellectually sound and interesting German idea. Is it a silver bullet? Probably not but it is a practical exploration of possible ideas.

       https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2017/06/30/german-utility-plans-to-build-worlds-biggest-battery-in-a-salt-cavern/#1232c7bb7feb

       German Utility Plans To Build World’s Biggest Battery In A Salt Cavern

       While the exact size of the project has yet to be disclosed, the German utility has said it will likely be able to store enough energy to “supply a major city such as Berlin with electricity for an hour.”

       While an hour’s worth of stored electricity may sound rather inadequate, keep in mind that Berlin’s population is roughly 3.5 million people

       BTW, this is what intellectually sound scientific debate about these topics should look like:
       https://origins.asu.edu/events/managing-earth
       Affiliated Event: Managing Earth as a Planet

       1. We are on a path that will use electricity as our primary source of power with ever more gadgets using electricity, including transportation. I am ever more moving toward limiting our use of energy. The less we need, the less material and energy sources we need to build, maintain, replace.

          1. I am ever more moving toward limiting our use of energy. The less we need, the less material and energy sources we need to build, maintain, replace.

             Basically I agree with you on that. However my personal experience despite debates about Jevon’s Paradox, is probably best summed up by looking at my own electricity bill over the years. It has been on a steady downward trend and that is mostly because of technological advances causing the efficiency of my appliances to get dramatically better.

             As an example, I installed a new central AC system about two years ago and saw a dramatic drop in power consumption. Even a little over a decade ago I had mostly incandescent light bulbs, then over the past years going through a transition to CFLs to now having almost 100% LEDs, another dramatic drop.

             I could go on. Point is, advances in technology are key to being able to do more with less while still maintaining a high standard of living.

             Furthermore I consider renewables and advanced technology the only ethical path forward by which to provide electricity to billions of humans who currently do not have such access.

             Fossil fuels might have been great in the past but are no longer a viable long term option. Same with a linear consumptive growth based economic model.
             We need to reconfigure the global economy to a circular stable state system.

             1. Yes, technology combined with system analysis and control can reduce our use of energy dramatically. Some ole time discipline and conservatism can cut it even more.

                This brings up an area that is often overlooked. The tremendous ability of individuals and society at large to adapt and invent. That is why I never close the door on the survival of the human species (or their derivatives). Nor do I take seriously the threat of total homogeneous economic and societal collapse. It’s still in the picture which is scary, but we have all the tools needed to avoid it or at least the worst of it.

                This new age of electricity which we are not only continuing but expanding might last 50 years or 5000 years. It all depends upon how we handle ourselves and circumstances. The answers and solutions will not be singular, but multitudinous and varied. Accomplishing survival of us and most of the existing species will be the most arduous, tough and largest effort ever made by mankind. It will stretch our physical and mental resources to the breaking point. Still, failure would be much worse.
                And once primary success is achieved, we will have to work to change further.

       2. As such caverns have been used as storage for oil and NG for many decades, I see no issue to store aqueous solutions of organic compounds in them.

          If you check the pumped hydro capacity in Germany then this new approach delivers a substantial improvement, especially when the excess wind power is in direct neighbourhood.

          1. Pumped storage sites aren’t to be found everywhere we would like, for sure, and some suitable sites will never be developed due to ownership issues, etc.

             Some members of the environmental faction will prevent the use of some sites that will mean five or ten times or maybe a HUNDRED TIMES MORE actual environmental destruction will occur, but this destruction, which will come as the result of continued use of coal, etc, will be diffuse, over a large area, rather than concentrated, as in the loss of the site to development.

             Being naked apes, albeit naked apes with the best of intentions, they can see the concentrated damage but not the diffuse. People who won’t fly die in car wrecks because they see the results of one plane crash that kills a couple of hundred people, but not the diffuse effects of a five thousand auto accidents that kill and cripple thousands. Flying is safer, if the distance traveled is taken into account.

             Sometimes it would be best by far and away if environmentalists were to use their clout to achieve land swaps and other concessions rather than draw a line in the sand and take a religious stand on that line, as in the case of the Keystone Pipeline for instance. There was never a chance in hell it would actually reduce the use of oil, world wide, or do more than slightly slow the development of the Canadian tar sands, etc.

             If the fight had been fought my way, the oil companies and their backers would have been glad to pay for the purchase of some large tracts of environmentally sensitive lands that could have been added to our park systems and nature reserves, plus using the absolute best possible quality control measures in building and instrumenting the pipeline so as to prevent possible leaks.

             Instead the miscalculation resulted in significant part in the election of Trump. The pipeline may not be built now, as it may not actually be needed, because there were ALWAYS alternate routes the oil could flow, and it DID flow, and continues to flow, lol. Stopping the line prevented some local destruction along the route, true, but the actual risks of leaks and blowouts is now MUCH MUCH HIGHER.

             WHY?

             It’s as simple as the difference between doo doo and apple butter. The oil will continue to flow thru OLD lines that are near the end of their life expectancy, rather than thru a NEW line built to far higher MODERN standards.

             NOW back to our regular programming!

             I think it’s likely that pumped storage will continue to be one of our very cheapest energy storage options, and that as the wind and solar industries grow up, it will be possible to build numerous pumped storage facilities in places that are currently way the hell too far away from generating stations and cities, because many of the long distance lines that will have to be built to scale up wind and solar power will pass near suitable pumped storage sites.

             And while it may be less than fully desirable to do so, it will also be possible to build salt water pumped storage sites in some places where there is mountainous or high land near the sea coast, thereby rendering it unnecessary to have a lower reservoir.

             We can at least DOUBLE the amount of useful work we get from a kilowatt hour of electricity over the next few decades. That means in effect that we can pay twice as much for storage of intermittent renewable electricity as we do now, without it costing us anything out of pocket as consumers.

             Dingalings, or trolls, like GST and Texas Tea either fail to understand, or deliberately ignore any and all facts that are contradictory to their arguments.
             Even the relatively puny regulations we have in effect now in respect to automobile fuel economy are saving us millions of barrels of oil A DAY, meaning gasoline is a LOT CHEAPER for consumers, and the goods moved with diesel fuel are a lot cheaper, and the food I produce using diesel fuel is cheaper as well. The added cost of fuel economy regs comes to less than a thousand bucks per car as best I can determine. Saving only ten bucks a week on gasoline pays that back in two years out of the ten to twenty year usual life of a car, lol.

             Of course those millions of barrels of oil we DON’T burn every day as the result of such regulations mean folks like our HB and Texas Tea and GST get smaller dividend checks.

             I find it hard to feel sorry for them, lol.

             And while clean air regulations have added a few hundred bucks more to the price of a new car, these regulations actually have resulted in the cost of owning a car long term coming down SUBSTANTIALLY.

             WHY?

             Because computer controlled engines require maybe ten percent of the routine maintenance on average that older carburetor type engines needed.

             The pistons, rings, bearings, cylinders, all the other parts are made more accurately, and to last longer, in order to pass emissions tests. Nine out of ten cars probably go over a hundred thousand miles without even touching the ignition system now for any reason other than maybe replacing the spark plugs ONE time, rather than ten times, lol. Clean running engines need far fewer oil changes, and they last twice as long, simply because they run clean.

             My ancient 1991 truck has never had a repair made to either the ignition or the fuel system, with right at three hundred thousand MILES on the odometer today, other than about eight changes of spark plugs, new plug wires a couple of times, and a new fuel pump once.

             The engine is getting a little tired now, but she still runs pretty strong.

             If it had been built in the sixties, there would have been one or two engine rebuilds, at least one or two new carburetors, at least twenty probably thirty sets of spark plugs and ignition breaker points, three new fuel pumps, etc.

             And being computer controlled and fuel injected she has NEVER failed to start on even the coldest day, down to ten below zero F, locally, so long as the battery was up to the job.

             Hardly ANYBODY realizes it, but the ordinary everyday electronic ignition system on an old junker Chevy is three times as reliable as the older partially mechanical ignition systems used on on small aircraft still flying all over the place, and still being put on new planes into the early eighties at least, maybe later.

             EVERYTHING in this comment is gold plated cast iron solid, ya can take it to the bank, lol. Old HB, TT, and GST can say anything they like, anybody with a lick of sense who reads their stuff, and mine, over any extended period of time, will know who knows the difference between shit and apple butter.

             Incidentally, HB at least does seem to be in favor of reasonable environmental regulation, although he DOES brag on making a killing in the oil biz.

             Perhaps I should say he USED to brag about his oil income, until I reminded him how dumb that makes him look in such a forum as this one, lol.

    2. TechnoZombification, POB-Style

       ‘FLOSS’ the ‘proprietary technology’ (a bit of an oxymoron, since true technology needs to be by and for people, not a relative few, as typically characterized as ‘we’, like in your weak comment, Ulenspiegel) and maybe ‘assumptions’ can be less ‘debateable’. Do you want, as you write, ‘intellectually sound contributions’, whatever you mean by it? Well then let’s see them.

       Otherwise, maybe the doom is ’embedded’– you can’t see it– willfully, even.

       …Lot’s of passive myopic mumbo-jumbo about so-called technology on this site, incidentally, with practically nothing about what people are going to do if or when it all goes belly-up and how they are going to do it.

       How about more self-empowerment and proactivity in our lives, but for our own lives, like seed-saving, bee-keeping, weaving, knitting, natural home-building, and recognizing what grows wild around the place that can be used for meals, medicine, materials and so on?

       The technology that some like to talk about isn’t actually theirs and what’s more is that they have to buy/sell/insert/imprison themselves into the system in order to have it, but also in order for the system to even be viable. That seems to take one big and serious mindfuck or a daisychained series of them along the ways.

       Anyone feeling seriously mindfucked today? No? Then it’s working.

       1. Why do you use technology if you are so against it?

          1. That’s a complex question. Simplify it and/or try to answer it yourself. Also, I have already previously done so in some ways, hereon. Maybe do a search.

             Why do you use proprietary technology?

             BTW, remember some sort of ‘natural selecting for those with a propensity to defer to authority or power’ comment topic? Was that you? Well, I have something else that’s kind of related to that idea but about technology. It’s early here so I’ll have to leave it at that for now, but feel free to take a guess in the mean time.

             Actually, I have one other thing as well that’s about making copies (note/reminder to self: flat trees where a branch suddenly projects into another dimension). Feel free to remind me about either if I forget.

             Both are my thoughts/ideas, incidentally, seeing as, if recalled, you previously raised the issue. I have not (yet) looked either up to see about what others may have thought about them.

             1. Caelan is apparently just having a good time jerking everybody’s chain and displaying his large vocabulary of large and impressive sounding words, words that mean little but that do tend to impress less than well informed people.

                He can’t possibly be as dumb as his comments indicate, because his comments, when read LOOKING for signs of intelligence , contain many such signs.

                There is no way he is so stupid that he does not realize that virtually ALL the technology we use was at some time the personal property of whoever first invented and perfected it.

                My old Daddy can remember when the only ” air conditioning” he had ever seen consisted of the cold storage facility of a local apple packing company, where incidentally Momma worked as girl for a munificent five cents an hour, a few hours every autumn, and was DAMNED GLAD to get that five cents. They paid the men a DIME, proving the owners were sexist rednecks of course, in case anybody is wondering. I own thirty acres of their former operation now, lol. There’s just one lone apple tree still surviving on it.

                Now just about everybody I know here in this economically depressed backwoods that the snooty nose in the air types so enjoy making fun of has air conditioning. I actually can’t think of anybody I know who does NOT have air conditioning, although a few are short enough of money that they use it sparingly, in only one room when they are actually in that room. Anybody who I encounter personally who actually can’t afford a small window unit can have one free, I will give them one. I have half a dozen I bought at sales for that very purpose for as little as twenty dollars apiece, and as temporary backup units in case one of mine fails, so I can wait for a holiday sale to buy a new one at a substantial discount.

                I’m more than willing to two to one bet that old Caelan has air conditioning himself, lol. I will bet twenty to one he has a refrigerator, and a hundred thousand to one that he has access to a computer, etc, LOL.Rolling in the floor!!!!!

                Now personally I hope he sticks around, because I am planning on including some of his commentary in my book, which hopefully will be available free on the net within the next year or two.

                I can’t do NEARLY as good a job as he does, myself, of making the anti technology camp look like idiots.

                And I won’t even need to ask permission, every thing here is already in the public domain, lol.

                1. When you’re born into a prison and wake up to it, what do you do? Does the prison you’re in just magically disappear the moment you realize it’s a prison? Not quite.
                   And before you can do much, like escape, you still have to use the facilities of the prison, including in the process of informing others about the place.
                   And even if you escape, you still have to go back in if you’re half interested in freeing others, such as your friends and families.

                   But some people are not going to want to hear that they are in a prison, much less want to leave it, and in the process of your efforts, they might question you for using its facilities in the process.
                   “If you’re so against this prison, why have you returned and why are you using its doors?”
                   There’s a lot of info about this kind of thing, but it seems to be outside of what appears increasingly as POB’s bible™…

                   “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system…
                   You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.” ~ The Matrix

             2. Can’t or won’t answer the question. Telling.

                Why do I use technology? Very funny. I spent much of my professional life helping to invent/improve/ produce new and old technologies. At this point you cannot get through the day without using some of the tech I worked on.
                Was I part of the “machine”? Sure. But full analysis at this point demands the continuation of technology to move through this harmful period we have created. You don’t cure an ill patient by killing them.

                1. Technology™ and Technology

                   Believe it or not, there is no obligation on my part to put a bib on you or anyone else and spoon-feed you, Gonzo, and with the hope that you actually want to be fed.

                   If we’re really interested in questioning and transcending our own religions, ways of life, beliefs and values, etc., then maybe we eventually take our thumbs out of our mouths, wriggle out of our diapers, get up and summon one foot forward to commence the process.

                   “But full analysis at this point demands the continuation of technology to move through this harmful period we have created.” ~ GoneFishing

                   Maybe… But do a devil’s advocate critique/analysis of your statement there in any case. Let’s make the deadline for a resulting comment due by this Friday. Feel up to it?

                2. You overweaning immature prat! You know you are a hypocrite and love technology or you wouldn’t be sitting in front of it all the time playing “let’s copy a quote” and “I’m on my high horse”.

                3. “Why do I use technology?” ~ GoneFishing

                   That’s not what I asked.

                   Edit: Here’s something interesting that I just found after doing a search for the term, ‘proprietary government’ (independently thought of, incidentally, seeing as you’ve been curious about that):

                   “A proprietary governor is an individual authorized to govern a proprietary colony. Under the proprietary system, individuals or companies were granted commercial charters by the monarchs of the Kingdom of England to establish colonies. These proprietors then selected the governors and other officials in the colony…

                   These colonies were distinct from royal colonies in that they were commercial enterprises established under authority of the crown. Proprietary governors had legal responsibilities over the colony as well as responsibilities to shareholders to ensure the security of their investments.

                   The proprietary system was a mostly inefficient system, in that the proprietors were, for the most part, like absentee landlords. Many never even visited the colonies they owned. By the early 18th century, nearly all of the proprietary colonies had either surrendered their charters to the crown to become royal colonies, or else had significant limitations placed on them by the crown.” ~ Wikipedia

                4. You seem very confused lately about who is saying what and tend to confuse the topics as well as the people. Sounds more like an organic problem then a purposeful one. Take care of yourself.

44. PIOMAS Arctic ice volume for June is out. It continues to be lowest on record but 2012 is now pretty close. The 12 month trailing average, which probably better represents the trend, is also clearly lowest an continues to fall, though more slowly than the previous six months (the two extrapolated trends on the chart were fitted to all data from 1979 (quadratic) and just December (linear). The trend looks slow but in geological time the ice is disappearing almost in an instant.

    It doesn’t get the same attention but the Antarctic sea ice extent continues to be lowest on recent record, and has been for eight months. I’d guess the impact on increased warming from albedo reduction in (their) summer must be similar in magnitude to what has been calculated for the Arctic (i.e. high), but haven’t seen any figures yet.

    

45. IMPROVED REPRESENTATION OF SOLAR VARIABILITY IN CLIMATE MODELS

    What do scientists expect from the new data set? “In our future scenario for CMIP6, we provide a more sophisticated estimate of the future development of solar activity after 2015,” explains Dr. Bernd Funke, from CSIC, co-author of the study. “By 2070 a decrease of the Sun’s mean activity to a smaller solar minimum is expected. This counteracts the anthropogenic global warming signal, but will not have a significant influence on the development of global average surface temperatures,” Dr. Funke continues. However, regional effects should not be negligible. In addition, for the first time a quantification of solar irradiance and particle effects will be possible.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170703121011.htm

    1. The average solar irradiance variation (mislabeled in the graph) appears to be less than 0.5 w/m2. Some of the variation will be reflected so the actual long term variation is even less.
       The statement “This counteracts the anthropogenic global warming signal..” is very dubious.
       Possibly the “cooling” of the sun will counteract a small portion of the heat gain from increased atmospheric transparency as we reduce our pollution levels.
       As far as the 11 year cycle goes, that should have little effect on any long term climate change since it cancels itself out on a regular basis.

       What would be more useful is a predictive model of the degree of volcanism.

    2. To expand on GF’s point…

       There seems to be a long term cycle in the reconstruction with a half-cycle period of about 80 years, with an amplitude of about 0.4 W/m^2.

       Accounting for the spherical Earth, divide that by 4
       Albedo, multiply by 0.72

       So the amount of AGW that is offset is about 0.072 W/m^2 at the next Grand Minimum around 2050.

       Doubling CO2 increases forcing by about 3.7 W/m^2… so the long-term solar variation offsets about 2% of the warming from doubling CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm.

       About 1 or 2 years worth of CO2 emissions.

       1. GoneFishing, wehappyfew,

          Thanks for adding your (constructive) comments.

46. China Targets 7 Million EV Sales Annually By 2025, More Global Offerings

    China is expecting that overall car sales will increase from 28 million in 2016 to some 35 million by 2025, and of those, every fifth car sold is to be a plug-in vehicle (or “New Energy Vehicle” as it is known locally).

    Those 7 million EVs is roughly equal to about 40% of the total vehicles sold each year in the US today. So it’s a lot.

    However, before plug-in vehicles sales reach China’s 7 million annually in 2025, the 2020 target has still to be met, set at ~2 million.

    China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is also now looking at helping position Chinese brands to compete more thoroughly globally, something that has not yet been the case.

    Bold mine. Watch out Detroit!

    Incidentally, Judging from Tony Seba’s latest Youtube video presentation, those figures might be conservative. On the other hand, according to Seba the concept of individual ownership of vehicles is going to go the way of film cameras so, that number as a pool of shared vehicles, may be enough to displace a significantly larger pool of individually owned ICE powered vehicles. The naysayers will say that this will not work for rural communities but, it doesn’t have to. In large metropolitan areas such a shift could displace a significant chunk of liquid fuel consumption. That’s something our resident trolls from team Koch can go and chew on!

    1. The naysayers will say that this will not work for rural communities but, it doesn’t have to. In large metropolitan areas such a shift could displace a significant chunk of liquid fuel consumption. That’s something our resident trolls from team Koch can go and chew on!

       Their increased stridency is just a sign they actually know they are fighting a losing battle.

       “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
       Generally attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

       1. Yes, winning is inevitable because the true basis of change is outside human hands. The question is how long will it take and what will be left when the insanity ends?

          1. Global Warming denial could be a natural feedback loop to stabilize a collapsing ecosystem.
             You have a large part of homo sapiens going into a apoptosis like response to promote death to save the overall organism.

             1. Global Warming denial could be a natural feedback loop to stabilize a collapsing ecosystem.

                About 40% of all adults world wide have never even heard of, let alone understand what climate change is.

                http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/analysis-of-a-119-country-survey-predicts-global-climate-change-awareness/

                Would you care to speculate what percentage of the humans who have heard of climate change have at least a European high school level of understanding of basic math, physics and chemistry?

                Note: I discount the majority of US high school graduates since they are mostly scientifically illiterate.

                1. Just out in the streets of Bend Oregon.
                   The populace is carp fishing on valium.
                   Seems we have some mitonuclear discordance with the species.
                   Obviously sacrificed fitness for reproductive success.
                   More like rats, than hummingbirds.

                2. Those with a basic high school education in USA are just barely qualified to fill out a time sheet.

                3. DAG NABBIT FRED,

                   How many times do I have to repeat myself until you LISTEN to me, a genyerwine bonefied ( between the ears ) gaduate of a real cow college, one with a football team that is genrreally ranked, some times in the top ten even, which proves it’s real, and the holder of a bachelers pig hide ( sheep hide maybe ?) inna fancy frame that made my old Momma uncommon proud, bein’ it uz the fust one in the immediate branch o the clan?

                   And besides that, I got one of them what they call a PERFESERRS PROFESSIONAL LICENSE, meaning I kin be put ‘n charge of making sure the kids learn their lessons about being good ‘ n not thinking fer themselves? AND git PAID for doing it!

                   You can take this to the bank. DON’T ferget agin, or I’m gonna make you sit in the corner wearing a dunce hat and write in on the chalkboard a hunert times. 😉

                   Two thirds or more of the people in the USA are functionally illiterate in respect to the physical and life sciences. This includes the graduates of the IVIES, if you exclude the students who majored in the sciences or engineering or other closely related fields.

                4. How many scientists and engineers do we need?
                   If everyone was a scientist and/or engineer nothing much would get done. Period.
                   It’s all those people you put down that keep society and industry running, often at much danger to themselves so people can sit on their fat rears and complain about all the dumb people. Yet when the car/plumbing/electric needs repair or upgrading who do they call? And who mined all that material, processed it, transported it, made the parts, transported them again and gave you advice when you bought them? All those dumb people who don’t have degrees in science or engineering.
                   Get over it already.

                5. GF, I think you miss my point.

                   I hold US high school graduates to a much higher standard than I do say some semi literate small time sugar cane farmer in Southern Brazil.

                   I can spend all day enjoying the farmer’s company even having a few beers with him and talking about Brazil’s prospects at the next world soccer cup.

                   I won’t have any expectation of talking about physics, chemistry or climate change. Though we may discuss the weather and the long term drought affecting his crops. Heck I’ll even go to church with him and his family on Sunday morning and pray with him and sign hymns. I won’t mention that I’m an atheist.

                   What I will not do, is excuse the privileged and deliberately ignorant who have access to all the resources in the US.

                6. The high schools around here are putting out students with advanced placement courses in math and science. College enrollment is very high.
                   Too bad the ones with degrees already have a hard time finding a job.
                   There is a glut of degreed people in the US. It has gotten to the point where store clerks and department store salesmen jobs advertise that a bachelor degree is preferred. Sad.
                   We have a degree glut and an oil glut and a lack of opportunity.

                7. Anther problem is that half the STEM graduate seats are already filled by international students in the US.

          2. The question is how long will it take and what will be left when the insanity ends?

             Maybe look at a dried out Martian lake bed to see what it might look like…

             The real question in my mind is, is that inevitable or can we do something to avoid that scenario?

             Unfortunately we currently have an administration that is bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. Fortunately they are pretty old and can’t live forever.

             1. Sounds good Fred, like certain parts of Utah, Nevada and the Badlands of South Dakota. Much better views than around here, can’t see anything for all the shrubs and trees. 🙂

47. BYD Scores Another Major EV Bus Order in London

    BYD and ADL (Alexander Dennis) scored a major electric bus order in UK, as RATP Dev London has ordered 36 vehicles.

    Previously, the Chinese-British alliance was able to secure an order for 51 buses for London.

    The new order is for the 10.8 m buses that will be delivered in Spring 2018.

    By that point, London will boast the largest fleet in Europe with more than 100 electric buses supplied by BYD-ADL.

    While in London last month, I took an opportunity to ride in the 12m variant of this bus that plies route 521 between London Bridge and Waterloo Station. Acceleration was smooth but the braking was not. Maybe it was just that particular driver but, it also might be that the drivers need to be trained to anticipate stops better and use more regenerative braking and less friction brakes, basically more efficient driving.

    

48. BMW In The Midst Of An Electric Assault By Tesla

    SORRY BMW, TESLA IS THE ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE

    “BMW is using a picture of me to scare their executives into taking electric vehicles seriously. I’m not kidding,” Tesla’s Elon Musk said in a recent interview. “It’s sort of a backhanded compliment.” Indeed.

    And no — Musk isn’t exaggerating. Automotive News reported, “at an abandoned airfield near Munich, rows of [BMW’s] men and women gaze at images flashing by on a giant screen… [including] the face of Elon Musk. ‘We’re in the midst of an electric assault,’ the presenter intones as the Tesla chief’s photo pops up.”

    Over the past couple of years, Tesla has sold more than 100,000 vehicles worldwide (>50,000 per year), all of which cost north of 60 grand, some of which cost over 100 grand. That is 100,000 premium sedans that were NOT sold by traditional premium marques like Mercedes, BMW, Porsche etc. in a market segment where prices and profits are high. With completion of Job #1 of the more affordable Model 3 scheduled for this Friday (July 7) and first customer deliveries scheduled for July 28th, one would think that manufacturers of traditional (ICE) cars might be anticipating the arrival of the more affordable Tesla with some amount of trepidation. That is exactly what this article is suggesting and I have seen several other articles on the same web site that suggest Mercedes now considers Tesla a serious competitive threat.

49. Latest PIOMASS

    http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/07/piomas-july-2017.html

50. Southern Wing Pawns will suffer most:
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/29/climate/southern-states-worse-climate-effects.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

51. A recent tweet to Michael C Lynch: Vaclav Smil (Bill Gates favorite) on VW in his superb new book Energy and Civilization: A History. Hitler asked 100km/h-7L/km-under1000RM

52. Shifts in Atmospheric Circulation Alter Global Clouds and Affect Climate Sensitivity

    https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/tselioudis_02/

53. Hope Independence Day is finding you and yours doing exceptionally well. May God continue to bless His Chosen People in the most free and prosperous country in the world!

    1. I have to wonder how many Americans have actually read the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution in their entirety?

       In the first ever state of the union address, George Washington, who was a math wiz and expert surveyor, told Congress, “there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature.”

       Many of the nation’s founding fathers were citizen scientists. Like Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and George Washington were all avid students of the natural and physical world. Thomas Jefferson called “the tranquil pursuit of science” his “supreme delight.”

       The first amendment to the US Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” The two parts, known as the “establishment clause” and the “free exercise clause” respectively, form the textual basis for the Supreme Court’s interpretations …

       Therefore in the United States we as citizens are free to believe or not believe in a deity and practice or not practice a religion. My personal view is that there is no evidence for a deity and I find the idea that any particular group of people would be chosen by a non existent deity, to be offensive to my family members, friends and colleagues who were born and live in many countries around the world.

       Furthermore I think nationalism and religion are tools used to manipulate the public at large into an us vs. them mindset, which at this juncture in human history I find to be deeply troubling and counterproductive.

       Our humanistic and scientifically minded founding fathers must be turning over in their graves over the current state of affairs in these United States! Hopefully their wisdom in building a system of checks and balances into our government will help us navigate through these stormy times!

       1. Two words- Freedom Fries

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajomW0XwMEI

       2. Slavery and The Founding Fathers

          “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slave-owners.”

          List of Slave Owners

          Also, while you talk about nationalism as ‘a tool used to manipulate’, isn’t that what you’re doing by talking it up?

          1. Ice-T on US Constitution
             https://youtu.be/fud3wM0mflk

          2. “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slave-owners.”

             As usual you have neither a grasp of historical context or reality!

             Yes! Those men were slave owners and they even believed in a Christian God. However what you miss is the context of the times in which they lived.

             As an example of historical context:
             Qhapaq hucha was the Inca practice of human sacrifice, mainly using children.

             Imagine that what depraved humans those Incas were, eh? My point being that to criticize the Incas and their civilization for sacrificing children, out of context of their culture and belief systems is just plain idiotic.

             But most of what you post is either cherry picked, distorted nonsense and generally devoid of context so no big surprise there!

             1. “Our humanistic [and slave-owning]… founding fathers” ~ Fred Magyar

                You want to talk about context? Then kindly do so.

                I added it in this time for you.

                Oh, and they are not ‘our’ founding fathers. They are part of the historical mindfuck.

          3. Also, while you talk about nationalism as ‘a tool used to manipulate’, isn’t that what you’re doing by talking it up?

             Sure, just like you being anti science, technology and renewables and constantly praising the likes of Glenn Stehle’s agenda, puts you in the same league as the climate change denialist trolls and lackeys of the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel obfuscators! What’s worse is that you’re not even smart enough to get paid for your efforts. You are being manipulated to great effect!

             1. Fred’s Glossolalia

                “My opponent for office just received an endorsement from the Puppy Haters Association. Is that the sort of person you would want to vote for?” ~ Wikipedia

          4. About Franklin and slavery:
             http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/site/sections/about_franklin/Issue%205%20Spring-Summer%20200%20Benjamin%20Franklin%20and%20Slavery.pdf

             Caelan doesn’t really give a flying fuck about the truth, or historical perspective or nuance.

             In his later years, Franklin was one of the greatest of the early abolitionists.

             His last literary work was a satirical letter ridiculing slavery, composed on his deathbed.

             Caelan, you either don’t know shit from apple butter, or else you don’t care.

             Which is it?

             1. Good for cherrypicked Franklin, and on his deathbed no less…
                (But do you, Glen, and/or Fred really need a dead daddy? Is it some sort of… morbid paternalistic Oedipus Complex?)
                But all this is moot anyway, as it is framed within the crony-capitalist plutarchy and slavery still exists, etc..
                From your link:

                “There is no doubt that Benjamin Franklin owned slaves; his newspaper in the 1730s often featured slaves for sale…”

                Try harder next time, Ben…

                1. So say Caelan who spends so much time ranting about the sins of the technological world, while enjoying all the fruits of technology.

                   Maybe someday some other idiot as dumb as you will say there’s no doubt Caelan used a computer.

                2. Enjoy your pseudotechnology while it lasts.

    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

       Losing a lot of wars lately for a chosen people. Try Grenada again. It was a successful feel good invasion after the Beirut bombing in ’83 when Reagan turned tail and ran. Might be worth another go now. Or maybe Panama again. I think that was the last one America actually won.

       Here’s another geopolitical ass kicking brewing
       http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/china-russia-combine-to-challenge-trump-on-north-korea/article/2627743

       https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/04/china-russia-diplomatic-double-act-exposes-trumps-crudeness

       1. Or maybe Panama again. I think that was the last one America actually won.
          It was the last.
          Against an ex CIA employee of the month.

          WWII was the last war we won.
          Tied in Korea.
          Butt kicked in Vietnam
          Afghanistan ? No one wins there.

          Iraq? Foreign policy disaster.
          We have had some CIA success, if you don’t count the Blow Back.

          1. “…[Chris] Hedges draws on classical literature and his experiences as a war correspondent to argue that war seduces entire societies, creating fictions that the public believes and relies on to continue to support conflicts… The Hurt Locker, an Academy Award-winning film, opens with a quotation from the book: ‘The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.’ ” ~ Wikipedia

             “The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other – instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.” ~ Edward Abbey

       2. Heroin is really what they want – that gets you closer to god in more ways than one:

          As heroin use has increased, so have heroin-related overdose deaths:
          – Heroin-related overdose deaths have more than quadrupled since 2010.
          – From 2014 to 2015, heroin overdose death rates increased by 20.6%, with nearly 13,000 people dying in 2015.
          – In 2015, males aged 25-44 had the highest heroin death rate at 13.2 per 100,000, which was an increase of 22.2% from 2014.

          And I think things have got significantly worse in the last two years. There was an interesting CNN story of a librarian who keeps a Narcan rescue kit in her desk and saves several people per year, but obviously it’s highly stressful for her. It sounds like libraries are becoming more like social centres for the poor in towns that don’t have dedicated centres (bad that they are needed, but good that they can fill such a role):

          http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/23/health/opioid-overdose-library-narcan/index.html

          Residents drop into the McPherson branch with questions about doctor visits and legal matters. Children eat meals provided by library staff and play with water rockets in a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics program.

          but…

          Heroin users camped out in McPherson Square Park and shot up in the library’s bathroom, where nearly a half-dozen people overdosed over the past 18 months, said branch manager and children’s librarian Judith Moore.
          The problem got so bad that the library was forced to close for three days last summer because needles clogged its sewer system, said Marion Parkinson, who oversees McPherson and other libraries in North Philadelphia.

          I haven’t been to Philadelphia for over thirty years and I thought it was supposed to have improved a lot, maybe not, but I did get lost in the outskirts of Camden a few years ago, not something I’d recommend unless you are a modern anthropologist (with bodyguards).

    3. Old Man Trump Gets Lost on His way to Car

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIgRDMq_IJ0

       lol oh man this guy is right the f*ck out of ‘er

       1. How could someone possibly miss that HUUUGE limousine?! His dementia is getting worse by the day…

          Article 25 Us Constitution:

          Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

          1. Before you wish for it, look who you get in exchange. There may be times when the devil you know may be better.

             NAOM

             1. I’m not wishing for it and I know well what comes next… 🙁

54. Further considerations to: Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation
    ~ Ferruccio Ferroni, Alexandros Guekosb, Robert J. Hopkirk

    “Highlights
    • Additional explanations and clarifications of the authors’ original article have been produced.
    • The criticisms offered by Raugei et al. (2017) are shown as not pertinent.
    • Further investigations and data analyses is performed.
    • The results strengthen the authors’ conclusions regarding the extended ERoEI for PV systems.
    • The use of photovoltaic technology results in development of an Energy Sink.

    Abstract

    A paper by Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) provided evidence that presently available PV systems in regions of moderate insolation like Switzerland and countries north of the Swiss Alps act as net energy sink. These findings were disputed in a paper (Raugei et al., 2017). Additional clarifications in support of our conclusions are explained, including mention of weak points in the argumentation by Raugei et al.

    Our study is based on the concept of the extended ERoEI (ERoEIEXT) for PV systems, knowing that this is not the mainstream concept in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), applying the Process-Based Life Cycle Assessment. The concept of the ERoEIEXT considers many possible energy contributions needed for assessing the envisioned transition from fossil fuel to other types of energy sources and here in particular to photovoltaics in regions of moderate insolation.

    The conclusions of our original study remain unchanged. Any attempt to adopt an Energy Transition strategy by substitution of intermittent for base load power generation in countries like Switzerland or further north will result in unavoidable net energy loss. This applies both to the technologies considered, to the available data from the original study and to newer data from recent studies.”

    Credo: Economic Beliefs In A World of Crisis

    “For hundreds of years economists have misrepresented the complexity of human psychology and worked with an asocial understanding of well-being. They have celebrated wealthy and powerful patrons and turned a blind eye to pervasive elite crime. They have recommended brutal policies and sanctified the “invisible hand” of supposedly beneficial markets – while downplaying destruction to communities and environments.

    Originally part of moral philosophy, economics is a ‘gospel’ that human problems can be traced back to ‘scarcity’, with salvation in efficiency, competitive markets, specialisation, technology and growth. In the contemporary world this guiding faith in the pursuit of growth is crashing against ecological boundaries.”

    1. Any attempt to adopt an Energy Transition strategy by substitution of intermittent for base load power generation in countries like Switzerland or further north will result in unavoidable net energy loss.

       Oh jeez, I guess the sun never shines at night so no purpose in using any solar anywhere on this planet…

       Another nonsense post! Have you ever been to Copenhagen? 55.6761° N, 12.5683° E that;s just a tad further south than Juneau Alaska and amazingly they generate electricity with solar PV, who’d a thunk it!

       https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-facade-denmark-school-2263274993.html

       World’s Largest Solar Panel Facade Powers Danish School

       Copenhagen International School’s new building in the Nordhavn district features the largest solar facade in the world. The 12,000 solar glass panels can generate 300 megawatt hours of electricity per year, more than half of the school’s annual energy needs.

       1. Peak Oil Barrel’s Missionaries

          The Church of The State can throw shiploads of tax-pimped money around– hey, it’s not their money– at large-scale space schemes, institution schemes, fossil-energy schemes, alternative energy and transportation schemes, etc., while (highlighting) propagandizing some of the supposed successes and downplaying or burying the failures, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good ideas or the best ways of going about things.
          It might also be in large part why previous civilizations declined and/or collapsed, as some have suggested.

          But, hey, we still have slavery… Onward and downward…

55. Warnings of new Arctic explosions at some 700-plus sites in Yamal due to thawing permafrost

    http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/warnings-of-new-arctic-explosions-at-some-700-plus-sites-in-yamal-due-to-thawing-permafrost/

    Check out comments by Dr Tim Ball at the bottom of the article. Google him too if you like. The good Dr doesn’t believe in the greenhouse effect lol. What a loon!

    1. Ah yes, the infamous Dr. Ball! Paid for and supported by the Fossil Fuel Lobby! So not a really a loon just another paid obfuscator.

       In 2007, Ball, along with Willie Soon, David Legates, and Sallie Baliunas, co-authored a commentary arguing that “spring air temperatures around the Hudson Bay basin for the past 70 years (1932–2002) show no significant warming trend,” and that, as a result, “the extrapolation of polar bear disappearance is highly premature.”[16] The paper, funded by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, was a “Viewpoint” article and was not peer-reviewed.[17][18] While the paper was cited by Sarah Palin to justify opposition to listing polar bears on the endangered-species list,[6] its findings were contradicted by reports from the U.S. Geological Survey[19] and other independent researchers, who concluded that man-made climate change was likely to devastate polar-bear populations by 2050. The paper was also criticized by an expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wrote that it “doesn’t measure up scientifically.”[6]

       Source Wikipedia

56. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coal-nuclear-on-the-losing-end-of-power-shift-1499247002

    In today’s WSJ.

    “According to nationwide statistics, gas, wind and solar now meet 40% of U.S. power needs, up from 22% a decade ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.”

57. Hi all,

    A new Open Thread is up

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-5-2017/

    Also a Texas Update

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/texas-update-june-2017/

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