EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – May 2020 Edition with data for March

227 thoughts to “EIA’s Electric Power Monthly – May 2020 Edition with data for March”

1. Hi all,

   For any “non-Petroleum” related comments, please use this thread.

   Covid19, climate change, environmental damage, etc.

   Thanks.

2. The solar potential by state was: https://neo.ne.gov/programs/stats/inf/201.htm
   When the references were tracked back, a bad link at NREL was reached along with a busted bad link handler.

   As far as wind is concerned, there was no luck finding a state ranking on potential. The answer from distribution maps is the midwest states by acre are the highest. Nevada (where I am) has a lot of potential on mountain tops but not that much acreage is on mountain tops. A state ranking by production was found: https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/best-worst-ranked-states-wind-power/ but that wasn’t the question.

   1. https://globalwindatlas.info/

   2. And the same site that Gerry posted has a tab for solar mapping –
      https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

   3. Remember that PV can be Distributed generation while 99% wind is centralized. Wind power on a human scale is rare since its neither scalable or modular. (Unless you climb towers or live on a boat or Ridge) Wind power needs scale and the Return on Capital investor model which is stacked against your favor. See Paul Gipe’s book on Wind Power.
      https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Gipe/e/B000APJJIE/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
      Enphase sees the grid free (or grid agnostic) solar Serviceable Addressable Market equaling the Grid dependent (4 Billion in Sales) in just 2 years.
      https://investor.enphase.com/static-files/e91cba28-b20d-446f-8356-a78513a18ffd

      1. “Enphase sees the grid free (or grid agnostic) solar Serviceable Addressable Market equaling the Grid dependent (4 Billion in Sales) in just 2 years.”

         Does this mean they expect their business sales supplying residential market to equal the utility sector business, or does it mean something else?

         Good point on the wind industry.
         Very few people realize that the huge drop in PV prices have enabled the possibility of millions of individual net power [PV] producers to arise.
         Independent power producer also means transportation without paying a dime to the international oil industry, except for lubricants and other noncombustible products.

         Which companies are best positioned to provide equipment and management tools for microgrids?

         1. This is going to be a messy problem (but worth solving). There is a tremendous amount of “bait and switch” in the industry where there is a simple problem like keeping a battery charged for an intermittent DC load (like keeping the battery charged on a portable drill out in an unwired, detached workshop) and it gets turned into solving the problem of a grid connected whole house solar system and carrying the battery to the workshop.

            Another example is when a lot of little problems are gathered together you want to install 10 panels in series to get 120 volts DC. Much of the load is resistance type (like an electric filament heater) and you can use DC directly with the usual sockets and plugins. Much of the rest of the load is electronic gear that needs 12 V DC, 5 V DC, and 3.5 V DC. You need a 120 V DC to multivolt DC output. Now try to find one. It does do a good job of exposing the flaws in search engines since you will be inundated with 12 V DC input, 120 V AC input, etc.

3. Meanwhile, Rome burns as we bicker.

   OLDER TREES LOSS CONTINUE AROUND THE WORLD

   “Older, carbon-rich tropical forests continue to be lost at a frightening rate, according to satellite data. In 2019, an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch was lost every six seconds, the University of Maryland study of trees more than 5 metres says. Brazil accounted for a third of it, its worst loss in 13 years apart from huge spikes in 2016 and 2017 from fires.”

   https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52881721

   1. Moreover,

      Anecdotal reports of increased levels of illegal logging, mining, poaching and other forest crimes are streaming in from all over the world. Bolivia saw unprecedented tree-cover loss in 2019 — 80 percent higher than any year on record — due to fires, both within primary forests and surrounding woodlands. Soy production and cattle ranching were the two main drivers.

      https://phys.org/news/2020-06-football-pitch-rainforest-seconds.html

      1. Trillions die each day, forest turned to CO2 and CH3, all to get meat upon the table.
         Meet the Meat
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAF35dekiAY

         1. Gonefishing,

            CH4 of course, not CH3.

            I don’t know about you but I always blame the computer. It works a treat–I’ve never had the thing answer back.

            1. Damn, your right. They should never have put that 3 next to the 5. There I go again.

   2. In the decades leading up to and during WWI and WWII essentially every tree that could be harvested for lumber, was harvested for lumber. By the 1950’s, forests older than 20 years were rare. Now, fast forward nearly 70 years, and the saplings from back then are mature trees. However, natural climate changes during the same time frame have caused a shift from a hot and dry climate (i.e. dust bowl) to wetter, humid, and more temperate. Consequently, the forest species composition has been shifting from drought tolerant oaks to drought intolerant maples. I’d be willing to bet that most of the older tree losses you are whining about this time are the oaks.

4. Reality is grim but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.

   EXTINCTION CRISIS ‘POSES EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO CIVILIZATION’

   “Human impacts on the places on Earth with the most richness of life have brought hundreds of wild animals to the brink of extinction. The likes of logging and poaching have pushed 500 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians to the point where they’re hanging by a thread. This is yet more evidence that the world’s undergoing a sixth mass extinction. Species are disappearing at more than 100 times the natural rate.”

   Scientists “have a “moral imperative” to draw attention to the loss of biodiversity, which they say is still rather ignored by most people.”

   https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52881831

   1. Talk about bassackwards. That title should read “Civilization causes existential crisis to most life on Earth”.

      1. Yes, that would have been more accurate.

5. Islandboy,

   Have you ever calculated the area of solar panels (and associated battery requirements) that would be needed to supply all of Jamaica’s electrical energy requirements? Wiki tells me you have 3,000,000-ish people living there and roughly 11,000 km2 of land. The web also tells me you had 271 people per sq. km in 2018 and a growing population, which sounds pretty intense.

   1. Let me take a stab.

      I just googled and found that Jamaica consumed 2.8 TWh in 2014. That’s around 8 GWh a day or 340 MW of continuous power. Let’s assume with electrification of transport and increase in GDP, it will require 5 TWh each year by say 2030.

      Now coming to the requirement, 5 TWh per annum can be more than adequately generated with around 1 GW of solar (2 TWh) and 1 GW of offshore wind (4 to 4.5 TWh). I am not going to take onshore wind, hydro, geothermal, tidal, waste to gas and biogas for the sake of simplicity.

      Area required for 1 GW solar at the rate of 5 acres per MW would be around 5000 acres or 2000 hectares or 20 sq.km. Ofcourse a lot if it can be sited on residential, commercial properties and parking lots.

      For offshore wind, the current biggest turbines are around 12 MW and getting bigger and bigger. But let’s just assume 12 MW turbines will be used and that means around 83 turbines.

      Batteries with 4 hour storage will be 1.33 GWh. The requirements can come down significantly if there are good onshore, hydro potential, and if Jamaica invests in tidal, geothermal, waste to gas and biogas.

      Note: this is just a ballpark calculation.

      1. Given the amount of land we typically use for roads, housing, industrial infrastructure of all kinds, etc, even a hundred square kilometers used exclusively for wind and solar farms would be a fantastic bargain, in terms of land use and environmental impact.

         And in a country that’s densely populated, with a lot of people in need of almost any possible job, the land under solar panels and wind turbines can be made to produce a significant amount of food. If the soil is suitable, wind farm land is good for grazing cattle or harvesting hay or even raising typical crops such as corn or wheat, depending on the climate.

         I ‘m guessing, but it seems likely that one kind or another of tropical fruit could be grown on wind farm land in Jamaica, and that various locally adapted vegetable crops could be grown on the land under and between solar panels. The panels would have to be on elevated mounts best made from steel pipe or something similar, and production would be low compared to growing in full sun in an open field.

         In a country short of jobs, farmland, and cash to import necessities including food, intensive hands on farming in such scenarios can be a very practical partial solution to the job problem, the water problem, and the food problem as well.

         Every dollar saved on imported food is a dollar that can be spent on medical care or to help pay for the solar farm itself.

         1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaic

            Depending on local climate and fruit you can even get higher yields than without panels overhead.

         2. Yes correct. Jamaica is a tropical island with plenty of rainfall. Solar and wind can be sited in non exclusive or even agricultural land without losing the primary use case.

   2. Just looking at the solar PV part of it, the latest data I have is for 2018, with 4,355,502 MWh being generated. Using a figure of 1628 kWh/kWp (from https://globalsolaratlas.info ) that would require in the region of 2700 MW. The upper section of the image below shows the area to the south and east of the first solar farm, completed a little less than three years ago. It is nominally 20 MW but when I used a tool for estimating the size of installation based on the area covered ( https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ ) I got results suggesting it is actually larger. The actual area covered by the solar farm is within the small red square in the upper left corner of the image. the larger square represents an area 100 times larger than that covered by the farm, a little less than four fifths of the area required.

      The lower section of the image shows the rectangular area in the upper section outlined in red with a square representing the larger square in the upper section. Note the brown area near the center of the larger square in the upper section of the image. That is the site of a Bauxite/Alumina plant and three quarters of the area is the Bauxite tailings left over from the processing. According to the Wikipedia page linked, “Red mud is composed of a mixture of solid and metallic oxides. The red colour arises from iron oxides, which comprise up to 60% of the mass. The mud is highly basic with a pH ranging from 10 to 13.[3][4][5] In addition to iron, the other dominant components include silica, unleached residual alumina, and titanium oxide.[6]”. There are four such plants in the island with two operating, one on hold and one permanently closed, all of them have an associated, toxic “Red Mud Lake” that smells of caustic soda and is devoid of any life. It has been considered acceptable to live with these “lakes” in order to benefit from the considerable revenues earned from the industry.

      I’ll look at batteries (storage) in another comment.

      

      1. Interesting, thanks. And, I didn’t realize Jamaica had wind turbines.

         1. Yes, there is roughly 100 MW of wind turbine capacity in operation, that produced roughly 302,000 MWh in 2018 (6.9% of the total). There is also 29 MW of hydroelectric capacity that generated 179,154 MWh in 2018 (4.1% of the total). There is potential for more wind and hydro as well as waste to energy and some biomass.

            On the note of biomass, many sugar cane fields are burned in the process of harvesting, wasting unknown amounts of energy that could be used as process heat or to produce electricity. Despite that, the sugar factories still get some energy from burning bagasse, the remains of the sugar cane after the juice has been pressed out of it. This shows up in the government statistics as 667,000 barrels of oil equivalent in 2014, declining to 265,000 BOE in 2018. There is also the issue of bush fires that scorch hundreds of acres every year with some locations experiencing a fire at least once a year.

            When other renewables are taken into account, it should be possible for Jamaica to get 100% of it’s electricity from solar with 2,375 MW of solar PV or considerably less if other renewable options like wind are explored or expanded. I also did not mention the there was an estimated 30 MW of behind the meter (private) PV capacity installed when the 20 MW solar farm was commissioned back in August of 2016. Since then I have observed considerable amounts of new PV installations, mostly on commercial and institutional (schools/colleges) rooftops. When the 37 MW solar facility, alluded to by Hickory further down, is added to the initial 20 MW facility and the additions to the 30 MW of behind the meter capacity since 2016, I would estimate that the total PV capacity operating in the island is easily over 100 MW. There is still a huge amount of rooftop and parking space that could be used.

            The picture below is an aerial shot of one of the wind farms. Many more images can be found by searching Google images for “Wigton Wind Farm”.

            

      2. I wonder if those bauxite tailing ponds could be covered by PV installation?

         I see another sizable PV installation 2 miles east of Savanna La Mar

         1. Where did you “see” this installation? I have been waiting for it to show up on Google Maps satellite images since this time last year, when they were a month short of connecting to the grid. Still only seeing lush vegetation.

            1. On google ‘earth’- they use a different satellite data source than google ‘maps’ for some reason. They are updated on a different schedule, at least. This desktop version has it.

               https://www.google.com/earth/versions/#earth-pro

               If you haven’t yet used it, welcome to the party.

               1. Had a look and while I can get good resolution on the Floating Regasification and Storage Unit anchored at 17°50’40.7″N 77°07’00.3″W , I can get similar resolution with Maps images and can even make out what appears to be a LNG supply ship at 17°50’23.4″N 77°05’45.7″W (see screenshot below). It must have something to do with the fact that I’m not in the US. I hate when web sites do that!

                  

               2. I think the product is offered international- make sure you use the link to the version I posted.

6. Coal CF at 30%. April would be 25%. Expect a wave of retirements in the next 4 to 5 years.

   Across the pond, UK has gone past 54 days coal free.

   1. “Across the pond, UK has gone past 54 days coal free.”

      Has gone without DOMESTIC generation of electricity in coal power plants.
      What is the origion of the imports?

      1. Ulenspiegel,

         Very good point.

      2. I think I already replied it in last EPM. Mostly France, Netherlands and Belgium all of which are relatively coal free and closing the remaining plants within this decade anyway. Infact only Germany and Poland in Europe still has significant coal left.

         Btw, as of tonight, UK would complete 60 days without coal.

7. We’re at a good solid ten percent wind and solar electricity now in the USA.
   How long will it take us under a BAU scenario to get to twenty percent?

   1. 2019- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2019-was-a-record-year-for-u-s-solar-power/
      Solar growth at 23%
      But here they say- EIA’s January 2019 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts that electricity generation from utility-scale solar generating units will grow by 10% in 2019 and 17% in 2020. Further, according to the January STEO, wind generation will grow by 12% and 14% during the next two years.

      Lets be conservative and use 11% growth/yr.
      You get doubling within 7 years- or 20% total electricity by 2027
      Of course, now that the technology for both and solar are honed, and price is cheaper than coal and nuclear, and since we do have the possibility of a proactive/progressive national energy policy-
      the doubling could be a few years quicker.

      Anyone else have other growth estimate info sources?

   2. My guess is 3 years (2023). Wind will be 170 to 180 GW producing 550 TWh and solar would be 150+ GW producing 250 TWh. Natural gas would hold onto the 40% share it has now but coal would have been decimated. I expect it to be in the high single digit or low double digit by then.

      1. Hi T
         You’re really optimistic, but I’m very willing to consider the possibility that wind and solar farms will be competitive enough to be built this fast.

         When costs fall to the point a decision to go for it is a no brainer, an old technology can be displaced as fast as a new replacement can be deployed.

         But I don’t know if we can actually build wind and solar farms plus the necessary new power lines, etc, this fast.

         There may be bottlenecks involving permits,sufficient quantities of equipment, and skilled labor.

         On the other hand, changes in the political landscape might result in doubling down on the effort put into new construction.

         If the Democrats win enough elections ranging from county supervisor to the White House, we could see an infrastructure bill enacted that would result in the wind and solar industries running pedal to the metal for years to come.

         We might even see a bill that pays us to junk old gas hog cars via getting a tax credit on the purchase of a new electric car.

         We might get to forty percent wind and solar power within ten years, lol, even without any major breakthroughs in storage technology.

         Even hard core trump voters who work construction won’t have any problems supporting such legislation once they see it means the possibility of a job for them in their own locality.

         1. I understand your caution. My optimism comes from the fact that renewables have historically outperformed even the most ambitious projections when the projections have been 5 to 10 years out. Greenpeace is known to give out the most optimistic projections followed by industry heavyweights like BNEF and IRENA. And even they missed the actual build out on a 10 year timescale of solar by a factor of 2 to 5 times. Traditional agencies like EIA and BP underestimated the buildout by a factor of 100 if not more.

            And if my projections look optimistic, you should take a look at this comment thread from last year.

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

            Hickory wanted to know which will be the first month when solar and wind alone (not all renewables) would overtake coal. I predicted April of 2021 optimistically and April 2022 realistically. Hickory said April 2024 and guess what? It most probably is going to be April of 2020. It is an incredibly tight race with both sources expected to produce around 43 or 44 TWh this april. We will know for sure in 3 weeks. Sure COVID helped but my point is that the trend is clear and renewables have been outperforming optimistic projections consistently.

            Coming to the argument whether it can be built fast enough? My answer is yes. Renewables is THE mainstream right now.

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/10/02/the-oil-money-fueling-americas-biggest-and-costliest-wind-farm/amp/

            Remember that this is in Wyoming – the absolute ground zero of American coal, the promoter is an oil barron. However we are talking about the largest onshore wind farm in the continent. Why? Because that spot has the best wind resources in the country. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. That farm is expected to have an CF in excess of 50% and people building it will earn big bucks. Wind and solar now means green and that is an unstoppable force in US. It will get built and it will be built fast. Guys like Anschutz are the driving force behind renewables now.

            Regarding your question whether wind and solar alone will be 40% by 2030? I think 40% is the worst case scenario. Offshore wind is just getting started and solar is going to explode in the next 10 years. Humans typically overestimate the changes that will happen in one year and underestimate the changes that will happen over 10 years.

            1. I applaud when you are right, and prove me to be too conservative, on these projections T.
               Keep it up.

               1. Thank you Hickory. I want to make my intention very clear that I brought it up just to exhibit the trend and show that perfectly reasonable and logical projections have turned out to be conservative rather than to brag it as a win on my part.

               2. Oh I had no doubt. I had remembered that prior discussion, and had wondered how it would pan out. Thanks for the reminder.

         2. OFM.

            Growth rate of World solar power output was 30% per year from 2011 to 2018 and for wind it was 15% per year over the same period. Depending upon one’s assumptions (this rate will not continue, but how fast does it diminish?) output could grow pretty quickly as fossil fuel prices increase while the cost of wind and solar continue falling. One scenario with falling rates of increase to 10% per year (each year’s growth rate falls by 1% until 10% is reached and growth falls to under 10% only when 99% of electricity demand is met by wind, solar, and hydro power.

            

8. https://www.powermag.com/the-new-reality-dont-ignore-the-black-swan-events/

   I just discovered this site online. I don’t know how many free articles you can read, but there’s some really good content about various aspects of the power industry.

9. The Tesla 3 outsold every other model of car in California during the first quarter, and was the only American domestic make in the top five.
   This is not to say Honda and Toyota etc, don’t build some cars in the USA.

10. Heard part of an interview last night- sounded intelligent and thought provoking, featuring this new book and author-
    http://soniashah.com/thenextgreatmigration/

    She recently wrote one called Pandemic, and another called Crude.
    I’m going read the one on Migration, after hearing a bit of the interview.

11. I know there are some who very concerned about PV being deployed so widely that it will cover the landscape. And I suppose that could happen if deployed in a haphazard distribution, without appropriate land use and conservation constraints.
    But for the most part, I consider that to be avoidable.
    There are about a dozen states where solar is going to go big, beyond just relying on rooftops, parking lots, landfill caps and mine tailing sites.

    Lets take Calif as an example. Its the biggest economy, a big energy consumer, a big solar resource zone, and a big diverse landscape. And it has very well developed restrictions on land use.
    And solar now provides 19% of the states electricity.
    https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar
    You can play a very similar game with Texas, btw.

    There are some locales that are very poorly suited for utility scale PV, and some others that are prime, in these states.
    Take a close look with google earth at the Mojave desert zones of S. Calif out between Yuma and Barstow (no, no Saguaro cactus grow in the Mojave- that is Sonoran zone veg), or the dry plains of west Texas out past Midland, to get an idea of zone we are talking about.

    Scan around and see how much of the landscape is covered with PV installation.
    Not much.
    You could go hog wild with building more for a decade or two or three, and still be at the same level-
    not very much.
    I can give the guarantee that PV is going to be a growth industry in these areas.

    I do believe that strict landuse conservation plans should drawn up for each state to protect the waters, the good soil, the wildlife. We haven’t applied those values to any other sector of our economy, but there is no reason we should start applying these priorities to PV installation. Not a fan of cutting down forests for any purpose, including PV.

    1. For comparison/perspective-
       The USA grows corn wall to wall across tens of thousands of fields. These monoculture crop systems are grown on prime land- Agric Class I and II- and this displaces incredibly lush forest and mixed forest grasslands that once hosted an incredible presence of plant and animal life- unparalleled in the universe except for a few spots elsewhere on earth.
       The acreage devoted to corn for ethanol that is burned in ICEngines for locomotion is 35 million acres. Bigger than the entire size of PA, or OH, or Iowa.

       There is a similar story in Brazil, with the crop being sugar cane for ethanol. 25 million acres.

       1. For a very interesting exercise- it would be useful to compare the energy output/yr from an acre of prime farm in the USA or Brazil with ethanol production, vs the energy output from a utility scale acre PV installation/yr at a prime location.
          I wonder if someone here can calculate the Joules output from a PV installation on an annual basis (please provide the assumptions)? I can later, but have to get back out to outdoor projects now.

          For USA corn grown on the best lands- we get 165 bushels/acre [462 gallons] or 487,000 Joules/yr
          For Brazil sugar cane ethanol we get 35 Tons/acre [560 gallons] or 590,000 J/yr

          1. Well folks, it took a while to dig up good data on average Photovoltaic output/acre. But I found good data that averaged the output from 43 fixed panel utility scale projects in the USA (https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf table8).
             Average output was 3.2 acres/GWhr/year, which equates to 312,000 kWhr/acre/year, otherwise known as 1,112 GJoules/acre/year!

             So, to compare with energy output from a prime acre of corn ethanol, the solar PV produces about 2200 times more energy per year per acre, and 1900 times more energy than the Brazilian sugar cane ethanol/acre!!!

             Please consider, the ethanol output is gross production and does not take into account the energy input needed to produce the crop and convert it to ethanol. It does not consider the inefficiency of combustion or ICE operation. Also not considered in the comparison is transmission loss of electricity, among other more minor factors.

             I ask anyone who has the inclination to please find any error in my calculations.
             Baring any major error, I am astounded by the magnitude of the results.

             One implication of this is the chance to replace the ethanol with solar energy, and return the land back to nature preserve. The 35 million acres prime farmland devoted to corn ethanol in the USA could be replaced by the energy output from 16,000 acres of Photovoltaic from west Texas or Southern Calif, for example.
             The farmers who earn money on this ethanol project wouldn’t be too happy. The bison, beavers and loons would.

             1. So if I start with your number of 462 US gallons of ethanol per acre per year,
                converting to liters I get 1749 liters per acre per year.
                Per the wiki, at 24 MJ/L, that’s 42 GJ/acre/year.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energy_content

                So I find 1,112 GJ/acre/year for PV vs 42 GJ/acre/year for corn ethanol.
                Not so bad as your calculation, but still not so great.

                As a cross check,
                given photosynthesis is roughly 1% efficient, and stops in winter,
                and the module efficiency in the NREL report is (roughly by eye) 14%,
                if one multiplies the 42 GJ by 14 and then 2, one gets 1,176 GJ/year,
                roughly what was derived for PV.
                So we could replace the energy from corn ethanol with 1/28th the land area (1 / (14*2)). Given that corn ethanol replaces 5% of our liquids use (10% of gasoline, which is half of all liquids), e.g. 1/20. We could replace all the energy from liquids and have some land left over. And that’s before accounting for the higher efficiency of electric vehicles, say 80% vs 25% (call it 1/3rd), so on less than 1/3 of the land used for corn ethanol we can provide our transportation energy needs with PV.

12. From the PV Magazine web site:

    PV plants lasting longer, with lower operational costs

    Solar project developers, long-term owners, and other industry participants surveyed by Berkeley Lab expect utility-scale solar plants to have a useful life of 32.5 years, up from 21.5 years in 2007, when the surveys began.

    “Directionally, this tracks the increase over time of the typical duration of module warranties,” says the Berkeley Lab report on the survey results.

    Solar costs have fallen 82% since 2010

    “Since 2010, the cost of energy has dropped by 82% for photovoltaic solar, by 47% for concentrated solar energy (CSP), by 39% for onshore wind and by 29% for wind offshore.”

    Those remarkable price falls are quoted by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) in its Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019 report.

    The figures were compiled from the costs and tariffs reported for 17,000 renewable energy project tenders last year which should eventually add up to 1.7 GW of clean power generation capacity.

    The cost reductions witnessed in the last decade were due to improved technology, economies of scale, supply chain competitiveness and the growing experience of developers, said Irena.

    “The same amount of money invested in renewable energy is producing far more new capacity today than it was ten years ago,” stated the multilateral organization. In 2010, the 88 GW of renewables capacity installed worldwide required the equivalent of $210 billion. Last year, twice that capacity volume was put into service for $253 billion – around 20% more investment.

13. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time in contact with more conservative voters than any of the other regulars here in this forum.

    I don’t think more than a very small percentage of the dumb ass Republicans who voted for trump will vote D or stay home on election day. I’m talking about people such as my Bible thumping relatives and redneck construction workers, etc.

    But there are and always have been millions of reasonably well educated civic minded people who vote Republican as a matter of preferences and principles. Such people are very reluctant, just as ALL PEOPLE are very reluctant, to admit in public that they have been wrong about any significant matter such as supporting the wrong politician, etc.

    It’s my opinion that quite a lot of these better educated more civic minded Republican voters will either sta home or very quietly vote for Biden in November.

    I’m dead sure one of my cousins, an older woman who is a former teacher and a trump voter will vote D this fall. But there’s a zero chance she will say so publicly……. because her husband is a hard core trump type business man.

    Read this excerpt from Quora.

    Will Republicans ever stand up to Trump?

    Will Republicans ever stand up to Trump?

    Elections are held this November 3, 2020.

    As of November 4, 2020, it will not matter whether they stand up to trump because the republican party will cease to exist.

    Today, George F. Will, one of America’s most conservative columnist, called for a full-blown rout of the republican party at the ballot box in November.

    He had the following words for trump, “this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron”

    He saved his harshest words for the republican enablers of trump.

    “In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite

    collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for … what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.”

    Will has not been a fan of trump, but to call for not only trump’s defeat but also the loss of the republicans’ senate majority is a major strike.

    Will’s view of trump’s version of the GOP is so corrupted, so broken, so beyond repair that the only solution is to raze it — and start from the ground up again.

    Will writes:

    “The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.”

    Anyone who has read my answers knows that I have been calling for the republican party to be ‘voted out of office and into extinction’ because of what the party has become. I’m not clever enough to have come up with the idea on my own, the Washington Post, particularly Jennifer Rubin, has had a major impact on my thinking of the GOP and its’ corruption.

    George Will also wrote an article in the Washington Post yesterday. He had the best description of trump and trump’s inaugural photo I have read. ‘This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd

    the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous.’

    Joe Biden’s campaign is saying that this election in November is for the soul of America. He is absolutely right. Our country is unrecognizable. When trump campaigned he had said that people would get tired of winning. WINNING? WHAT IN THE HELL ARE WE WINNING??? America is tired though. America is tired of being lied to, betrayed and scared. I’ll always remember trump attacking a reporter when he asked trump ‘what would you say to people who are scared?’ Trump attacked him, saying that was a horrible question and why would he even ask such a question.

    Americans were scared then and we’re even more scared now. Our entire country and our lives are in shambles without ANY security and he and the republicans do NOTHING except for themselves and big business. At least the democrats have been working to try to help the average American. They are at least trying.

    It seems God gave America one helluva challenge when he brought trump into the political picture of our country. The challenge has been emulating trump by abandoning our country’s morals and values, our integrity; allowing prejudice and hatred to divide us. Our democracy, upon which our country was founded, is severely threatened by trump and the republicans.

    Americans have always been very tough and we still are. Our country needs to heal; we need to unite again, especially with the hard future that we are facing.

    On November 3, 2020, you only have 2 choices, Biden or trump. A vote for Biden will start the healing and the rebuilding that our country desperately needs. A vote for trump is a vote for the wealthy, the elite and for the loss of your rights that can be easily taken for granted. With trump, your rights will continue to diminish as he and the republicans build an autocratic society instead of a democracy.
    1.4K viewsView Upvoters
    · Answer requested by Jim Loerch

    Will is a man with a lot of followers, and his column runs in a LOT of newspapers, including some such as the Washington Post.

    1. WaPo link to George Will article:

       https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-one-should-want-four-more-years-of-this-taste-of-ashes/2020/06/01/1a80ecf4-a425-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

    2. I often disagree with Mr Will, but he offers intelligent analysis and has always struck me as a “reasonable” Republican, certainly compared to the knuckleheads currently in office.

       In this case, I agree with Mr Will’s Opinion piece completely.

    3. Thanks, Mac, I wholeheartedly agree. I am deeply proud of Mr. Will. The Washington Post story is behind a pay wall. More on this George F. Will story can be found here that is not behind a pay wall.

       One of America’s most prominent conservative columnists wants Republicans to lose in 2020

    4. Thanks for sharing that OFM. I know a handful of people who voted for trump. Its a split on their next vote. Too bad McCain isn’t still around to show how a republican can put the country above the party.
       Its going to be a wild ride.

       1. Hickory,

          I gained a huge measure of respect for McCain when I heard his concession speech after his loss to Obama in 2008. Again I did not always agree with his position, but I have great respect for the man.

          1. Same here. So much good to say about the man, especially his attempts at bi-partisanship,
             Recently, I saw an interview with Klobuchar where she described a trip with McCain to the Hanoi prison where he was held many decades earlier during the war. The hosts showed museum-like exhibits where prisoners were depicted receiving various form of good treatment. She said that he kept elbowing me and whispering “I don’t remember that”….

             1. Hickory,

                Like a fine wine he improved with age, it is funny how one’s perspective changes over time, I now view George H. W. Bush as an excellent president, and his son as far better than the current president. Hopefully I will not look back on the Trump presidency wistfully, if so hopefully I will have arranged for a DNR and be put down. 🙂 Things would have to have deteriorated badly to reach that point.

                1. Dennis, that is one scary thought, yet quite possible if we keep bumbling along in wrong directions, being continually distracted from pressing matters. To think that a time ahead could make people wistfully long for a return of the Trump admin period is disconcerting.

                2. Gone fishing,

                   Yes it would be. Just commenting on the fact that at the time they were in office, I thought Bush 1 and Bush 2 were awful, compared to Trump they were both excellent (I prefer HW over W), I am hopeful that things don’t get worse than Trump or that I will be dead before it occurs.

    5. OFM, meanwhile in the background, the present administration has been dismantling many of the hard fought environmental protections and natural protections. This has been an acceleration in the war on Nature. In other words, a murder suicide pact.

14. Dennis, you might find this interesting?

    THE US IS BECOMING THE KING OF DEBT

    “President Donald Trump is living up to his self-given nickname “King of Debt.” On his watch, the United States has borrowed aggressively — during the good times, and now the bad times. Instead of whittling down the federal deficit when the economy was strong, Trump directed the federal government pile on even more debt to pay for massive tax cuts and spending surges. That meant that the United States entered this crisis in rough financial shape. Debt-to-GDP stood at nearly 80% even before the coronavirus pandemic struck — a rate more than twice as high as the historical average and double the level before the Great Recession.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/business/us-debt-deficit-coronavirus/index.html

    1. Doug,

       Yes I agree during the good times t is wise to raise taxes and reduce spending or a combination of both.
       Trump and the Republicans are not wise. Perhaps a Biden administration might be wiser, if we get through the current economic crisis. Note that this is not the time to worry about debt.

       That was what Hoover did, it is a bonehead move. Right now do everything possible to get the economy going, preferably putting money in the hands of low and middle income people rather than the wealthy, who by definition have plenty. Worry about the debt after the economy has recovered, tax the rich, and reduce government handouts to big business. One simple measure in the US would be to treat all income the same, no special treatment of capital gains and dividends (these tax breaks are tax breaks primarily for wealthy people). Then raise income tax rates for income over 1 million to 60%, over 5 million to 75% and close all loopholes used to evade taxes. it would be a start.

       1. With tremendous loss of income and jobs lately due to bumbling government policy, on top of the steady but accelerating loss of jobs due to automation and AI, now is the best time to employ lots of people in public projects. If people think this job loss is bad, over the next decade job loss will be several times what happened lately.
          What better time than now to reduce carbon emissions and work on drawdown projects at national, state and local levels. Eliminate harmful practices and land use. Make the future instead of just trying to remake the past.

          1. Gone fishing,

             I agree, there are lots of projects that could make a positive impact well built housing (passive solar and built to passivhaus standard) or retrofits of existing housing and commercial buildings is a possibility, planting trees, landscaping to reduce soil erosion, I imagine there is much more that could be added to the list.

             What did you have in mind as draw down projects?

             1. “draw down projects”

                That could be/should be an important topic.
                How do you intentionally drawdown a sector or industry without inciting a society wide riot, or its equivalent?
                For example, we could do without the 35 million acres of prime land that goes to corn ethanol production each year, but there is that little problem of the tens of thousands of farmers who are employed in the that sector, and they happen to own the land.
                We could down size the air industry by 80%, saving a portion for important uses, but we’d create a depression in a big segment of the economy/population if we did so.
                Same applies to the military industrial complex, the pharma industry, the housing industry, for example.

                I’m not trying to talk down the goal, just trying to get an understanding of how this can be initiated or accomplished without chaos, severe impoverishment, civil unrest, depression.
                Is de-growth possible as a deliberate approach, a so-called ‘managed retreat’?
                Or will de-growth only come by humanity hitting hard up against the harsh limitations of the finite world, an angry mob, and a damaged natural environment.

                I think its important to remember that most of the worlds population is less than 35 years old, and they are not in the mood for being on the side of the fence that has no economic activity or prospect, most being very poor. Any down-sizing that older people (over 40 yrs- its new 30) envision may not be acceptable to the young of the world. Although a massive transfer of wealth from the old to the young would likely be well received.

                The best immediately effective draw-down mechanism I can think of legalization and wide acceptance of euthanasia.

                1. Hickory,

                   I understood draw down differently, I thought Gone fishing was talking about ways to “draw down” the level of carbon in the atmosphere, planting trees, better agricultural practices to reduce carbon emissions from soil, more efficient use of energy, reducing consumption of meat, and so forth. In addition there are many things that could be done to reduce pollution and environmental damage and in general to minimize human impact on the ecosystem.

                   As far as reducing the number of humans, any policy that would increase the level of post secondary education for women would tend to reduce total fertility rate which will eventually lead to population decline.

                   An all of the above policy would likely be best.

                   Required education in ecology (at least one year at the high school level) for all students to receive a high school diploma, might also be good policy.

                2. Ah, sorry if my comments about drawing down from the condition of overshoot was off topic.

                3. Well, what the heck, I’ll add a comment on your thought.

                   It seems to me that we should tackle things directly. If we think wildlife and ecosystems are important, we should pursue policies that protect them, like ceasing killing wildlife (duh!) and setting aside much larger and more protected parks. If we think green house gases are deadly, we should reduce their emissions. If we’re concerned about depleting mineral resources, we could recycle them. We could make these things very quickly if we really wanted to.

                   On the other hand, tackling indirect measures, like population and economic output might make no difference at all. GDP could drop 10% and GHGs could still rise 10%. Reducing population by 10% would take a long time, and in the meantime lots of habitat could be cleared out. And, there would be enormous pain in reducing GDP and employment.

                   We should pursue what we want directly, instead of beating around the bush pursuing slow, painful policies that may not achieve what we want at all.

                   Here’s a good article:

                   “When ecologist Corey Bradshaw gives public talks about the state of the globe’s endangered wildlife, he sees a recurrent phenomenon. At the end of the talk, in the question and answer period, “someone will stand up and say, ‘You’ve neglected the elephant in the room — human population size is the principal problem,'” says Bradshaw, who is director of ecological modeling at the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

                   It’s easy to see where this idea comes from: There are a lot of humans on the Earth. There are currently more than 7.2 billion of us, and the UN projects there will be 9.6 billion by 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100. In fact, though estimates vary, something on the order of 6.5 to 14 percent of all the people who have ever lived at any time, ever, are living now. (Stop and think about that for a minute.) And there’s no denying these people take up space and consume resources.

                   So Bradshaw decided to look into this question of whether trying to reduce the size of the global population would help stave off climate change, the loss of species, and other environmental concerns. The resulting research, just out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored by the University of Adelaide’s Barry Brook, seriously challenges the idea that greens ought to be campaigning for population control.

                   On top of the serious ethical problems with trying to restrict the global population, the study also finds a purely practical one: It doesn’t even appear possible. “No matter what levers you pull, we have such a huge demographic momentum, there’s no way we can rein in the human population fast enough to address sustainability issues in the next century,” says Bradshaw. Or as the study itself puts it, the increase in population over the course of the 21st century is “virtually locked-in”; this means, the authors argue, that population reduction “cannot be argued to be the elephant in the room for immediate environmental sustainability and climate policy.”

                   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/27/stop-pretending-we-can-fix-the-environment-by-curbing-population-growth/

                4. Interesting points. I have begrudgingly been coming to this same conclusion-
                   “No matter what levers you pull, we have such a huge demographic momentum, there’s no way we can rein in the human population fast enough to address sustainability issues”

                5. But don’t be depressed by the difficulty of changing population: we have plenty of ways of addressing climate change and protecting ecosystems.

                   The difficulty is social change. Humans aren’t dumb, but they do take longer to learn new things than we’d like, and as a society we’re not well organized. Too many psychopathic leaders (selected by perverse incentives in our social structures), too many under educated citizens, etc.

                   Eliminating GHGs would benefit everyone, but it would have real pain for a minority, and that minority has too much power. Social change is possible – it’s happened many, many times in the past. But it’s still hard to do.

                   So…we gotta educate each other, and get organized to change things. This blog helps with the education – I think you’ve got to get out of the house for the organization part….

                6. Nick,

                   One need not focus on population reduction, just focus on education and rights for women and the population problem takes care of itself.

                   I don’t advocate for any single measure, there are a multitude of problems requiring multiple solutions, with 7.5 billion people to work on those problems we can solve multiple problems simultaneously.

                   A key factor is education in ecology perhaps requiring everyone 15 years old or older to have at least one year of high school level ecology should be required (as most university bound students already get a year of biology, chemistry and physics in four years of high school a year of ecology could be added.

                   Might also be a good idea to require a year of ecology as a general education requirement at universities as well.

                   One way to change attitudes is through education.

                7. One need not focus on population reduction, just focus on education and rights for women and the population problem takes care of itself.

                   I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

                   Dennis, overpopulation is not a problem within itself, it is rather the cause of all the world’s environmental problems. Overpopulation is destroying the earth and has been for well over half a century. Slowing and eventually reversing the population growth will not fix anything. Long before the world gets back to a sustainable population, the world will be a total basket case.

                8. Ron,

                   Peer reviewed research shows there is a high correlation between total fertility rate and the average level of education of women. Reduce average world total fertility rate to under 2 and after a lag (perhaps 20 to 40 years, depends on average world age distribution and the fertility rates of areas with a high percentage of women of child bearing age (15-45).

                   See

                   https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/11/population-paradigm-wolfgang-lutz-education-effect/

                   or

                   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014001095

                   I agree that high human population levels are a problem for the environment.

                   I am proposing one possible solution, that is, access to secondary and post secondary education for women.

                   In South Korea the total fertility rate was about 5.5 in 1965, today they have one of the lowest total fertility rates in the World and a highly educated population.

                9. I am proposing one possible solution, that is, access to secondary and post secondary education for women.

                   Now I am definitely crying. Dennis, that is not a solution. There is no solution. We have been destroying the environment for many decades. You seem to not understand, not just what is happening to the earth, but what has already happened to the earth. Educating women will not bring back the destroyed rainforest of Borneo or the Amazon or anywhere else. It will not stop desertification or falling water tables or drying up of the rivers.

                   Educating women may slow and eventually reverse population growth. But the population will have to get well below 4 billion before we can even think of starting to restore the earth. But by then it will be way, way too late.

                   By then all the rain forest and most of the boreal forest will be gone. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and most of Central Asia will be starving from a lack of irrigation water. Ocean fisheries will be dead. Most rivers will no longer reach the sea except in the monsoon season. All megafauna on earth, except humans and their domestic animals, will have been driven into extinction..And I could go on and on and on.

                   And you think educating women will fix everything? No, it hurts to try to laugh at your “fix” so I am only crying.

                10. Dennis,

                    I agree with everything you said.

                    I just get frustrated when people point to overpopulation as something to focus on to change things in the short term (40 years or less). We can’t really expect to reduce population significantly in that time period, and it’s not necessary to protect the environment: humans destroy and oversimplify our environment because we choose to, not because we’re forced to by overpopulation. We go out of our way to destroy wildlife, because we’re scared of it and we don’t understand it, all in all. And, we could preserve wildlife pretty easily, all in all.

                    For instance, buffalo, wolves and Passenger Pigeons were eliminated in the US when population was far lower than it is today, and both 120 years ago and now there were/are more acres devoted to cattle ranches than for farms. Farms could easily provide all the nutrition needed and leave all those ranch acres for wildlife.

                    It’s a choice, not something forced on us by overpopulation.

                11. No Ron,

                    I did not say educating women would fix everything.

                    I am pretty sure I have said over and over and over that multiple solutions are needed for environmental problems. Education of women and equal rights for women may solve the over population problem, Peak human popuation would be reached in 2050 and fall back to 7.9 billion by 2100 and continue to fall from there.

                    As I have often said neither you nor I can predict the future and I am sure that I am correct on that.

                12. Nick G,

                    I agree reducing population growth rates will help very little in the short term (next 50 years), note however the policy of equal rights and better education for all may have many positive effects which may be unforeseen.

                    The policy is not intended as a panacea, there is no panacea, anyone who sees things through that lens understands little.

                    The problems are multifaceted, solutions will be many, generally one solution (at minimum) for each problem, in most cases multiple solutions will be needed for each problem. Time to get to work.

                13. it’s not necessary to protect the environment: humans destroy and oversimplify our environment because we choose to, not because we’re forced to by overpopulation.

                    Sorry, Nick, I admire and respect your post as well as your point of view. Your heart is definitely in the right place. But here your opinion is off by a country mile.

                    I could write a book about how wrong you are on this point, but I will just point out a few points out of the hundreds that I could.

                    Water tables are dropping by meters per year in overpopulated areas like India and China. Whole towns are now having to truck in drinking water. Indian farmers are committing suicide because they have no water to irrigate their crops. They are not drawing down the water tables by choice, they are doing it in order to stay alive.

                    Ocean fisheries are disappearing due to overfishing. The people of Japan and other fish-eating nations want to stay alive. They buy fish to eat because their farming area is so small and is already overused.

                    The two that are the most responsible for the actual deforestation occurring in the Amazon rainforest are agriculture and cattle. Expanding populations must eat. So they destroy the rainforest to grow crops and graze cattle.

                    The thousands of square miles of the dead zone below the Mississippi and other world rivers are because of washed down fertilizer and pesticides. People must eat so farmers do what they must to increase their food production.

                    And I could go on and on and on. But you get the idea.

                    Farms could easily provide all the nutrition needed and leave all those ranch acres for wildlife.

                    Yes, if we could only change human nature. We could change people so they would have no desire to eat meat or drink milk. But we evolved as omnivores. That is just our nature. It is just damn hard to change human nature.

                    It’s a choice, not something forced on us by overpopulation.

                    Yeas people choose to eat. If everyone would just eat less then we would not be destroying the environment like we are.

                    NO, no, no Nick. People are not destroying the environment because they choose to do so. They are doing what they do simply to survive.

                14. Dennis,

                    I agree.

                    Ron,

                    I suspect we could reduce current ag production by 70% and still have enough food for the current population.

                    It would be an interesting exercise to look at the world’s total agricultural production, and calculate how many people it could feed if we reduced by 90% the production of meat AND all the things that are not needed in a certain sense: decorative plants (lawn grass, flowers, christmas trees, etc), ethanol (drinking and motoring), coffee, coca, cacao, poppies, tobacco, marijuana, etc., etc. Then factor in a reduction from the current average levels of per capita calories, that create obesity, to healthy levels (which are probably 25% lower).

                    Japan has more food than it needs: 25% are overweight. And this is much lower than many other countries, where 66% are overweight.

                    Farms in the US have been going bankrupt for 150 years, as part of the process that has reduced farm population from 95% of the overpopulation to only 1%. So…what is the average size and productivity of the farms in India that are going under? How does that compare to the average size and productivity of farms that are doing ok?

                15. Dennis wrote:

                    As I have often said neither you nor I can predict the future and I am sure that I am correct on that.

                    Well, there are just some things we can predict. We can predict it will rain again, we just don’t know exactly when. We can predict that we will die, just not when. But those are just the obvious things we know about the future. There are other things we can predict. If there is a mudslide covering the tracks and a train barreling down at 70 miles an hour a short distance away, we can predict there will be a crash even though the engineer may be totally unaware of the problem.

                    I am going to save your quote for a much longer article in about a week.

                16. Nick asked: So…what is the average size and productivity of the farms in India that are going under? How does that compare to the average size and productivity of farms that are doing ok?

                    Nick, there is no such thing as a large farm in India or Bangladesh. The farms are inherited and divided equally among all male surviving children. So the average farm size gets a little smaller each year.

                    As much as 67 percent of India’s farmland is held by the marginal farmers with holdings below one hectare, against less than 1 percent in large holdings of 10 hectares and above, the latest Agriculture Census shows. “The average size of the holding has been estimated as 1.15 hectare.

                    One hectare is 2.47 acres. But the reason the farms are going under is lack of water. Climate change is wreaking havoc also but the main problem is falling water tables. Many farms are irrigated and the water is now mostly gone. Water is the problem, not size.

                17. Ron,

                    That’s interesting.

                    Well, a few thoughts.

                    First, a quick look indicates that groundwater irrigation is a minority of Indian farmland: about 25% is irrigated from groundwater: “In 2013-14, only about 36.7% of total agricultural land in India was reliably irrigated…65% of the irrigation in India is from groundwater.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation_in_India

                    2nd, having Indian farms be tiny is a social choice. It’s a choice that’s fairly different from much of the rest of the world. And that will be reflected in farm productivity and financial viability. How does that affect their water supplies? Well, tiny farms will be very badly managed. They’ll use very inefficient forms of irrigation, like open canals and flooding, they won’t have sophisticated drip irrigation, they won’t choose crops that are ideally suited to conditions (like being drought tolerant, as opposed to, say, rice) because they won’t have much education, equipment, or flexibility. Unless the underground water supplies are recharged unusually quickly , they’ll be exhausted pretty fast.

                    Now, I’ll grant you that if population levels were lower then India could probably better afford this kind of deep mismanagement of it’s resources, but…the mismanagement could be fixed, if they wanted to.

                18. Nick wrote: 2nd, having Indian farms be tiny is a social choice.

                    Of course it is a choice. One brother could choose to kill his other brothers and therefore inherit his father’s entire farm.

                    Nick, I am sorry I have wasted both our times on this exchange. I have nothing more to say to you on the subject.

                    Bye now.

                19. Nick-“We can’t really expect to reduce population significantly in that time period, and it’s not necessary to protect the environment:”

                    First point- I agree. Its a locomotive without brakes.
                    Second point-gross overpopulation (as we have) is not compatible with a healthy environment. Not when you are talking about humans. Have you looked around? The natural world is a mere shadow of its former lushness. I couldn’t disagree with you more strongly on this point.

                20. Ron,

                    We have different definitions of “the future”.

                    I agree that we can predict certain events in the future with high probability, if we eliminate time variables, so a statement such as Dennis will die in the future will undoubtedly be true, unless Dennis has already died.

                    And also there other simple events such as the rate that the Earth spins on its axis, or the time it takes for the Earth to travel one time around the Sun or the moon to travel one time around the Earth that can be predicted with very good accuracy. So the future timing of such events can be predicted.

                    Can you predict the future of human history for the next 30 days or even 5 minutes?

                    There is a simple one word answer that is correct, it is no.

                    Added later:

                    When I say “the future” cannot be predicted, I am talking about meaning 1b at link below ie all events in the future cannot be predicted.

                    http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/future

                21. Hickory,

                    I agree that humans have made wildlife and natural ecosystems a shadow of their former selves. I agree that’s a tragedy, and bad for both wildlife and humans.

                    My point is that overpopulation isn’t the primary cause because humans, on the whole, have chosen to eliminate wildlife. Look at England 500 years ago, when population was about 5% of current levels. Large predators had been eliminated, and farms and grazing dominated the countryside.

                    “Wolves were once present in Great Britain. Early writing from Roman and later Saxon chronicles indicate that wolves appear to have been extraordinarily numerous on the island.[1] Unlike other British animals, wolves were unaffected by island dwarfism,[2] with certain skeletal remains indicating that they may have grown as large as Arctic wolves.[3] The species was exterminated from Britain through a combination of deforestation and active hunting through bounty systems…The wolf is generally thought to have become extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII (AD 1485–1509).“. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolves_in_Great_Britain

                    Conversely, if humans prioritized wildlife it would be pretty straightforward to set aside very large areas to be strongly protected, even with current population levels. Think of the population density of Singapore – humans don’t really need that much space to be perfectly happy.

                22. Ron,

                    Primogeniture and family farming is a social choice. Look at the US, in contrast.

                    And, it’s a very tough, poor life. Those kids would be much better off getting off the farm and doing something else.

                    I mean, think about it: what happens to the daughters?

                23. Hickory,

                    My point was simply that I had a different interpretation of “draw down” from you. Your interpretation may have been what Gone fishing intended, no idea.

                    Also note there is a lot of waste in the system, reducing waste and gradually creating a more efficient system that maximizes positive results while minimizing negative impacts and also minimizes the effort required tend to make people better off while potentially minimizing damage to the environment.

15. Earth’s carbon dioxide levels hit record high, despite coronavirus-related emissions drop
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/06/04/carbon-dioxide-record-2020/
    (One would think a drop would be in order?)

    1. NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratories (which include the iconic Mauna Loa Laboratory) have a page addressing the question of a drop: Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19? at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/covid2.html
       The short answer is we shouldn’t expect to.
       The longer answer they give includes this example –
       If emissions are lower by 25%, then we would expect the monthly mean CO2 for March at Mauna Loa to be lowered by about 0.2 ppm, and again in April, etc. Thus, when we compare the average seasonal cycle of many years we would expect a difference to accumulate after a number of months, each missing 0.2 ppm. The International Energy Agency expects global CO2 emissions to drop by 8% this year. Clearly, we cannot see a global effect like that in less than a year.
       And follows up by drawing this conclusion from its example (that will disappoint some contributors to this site):
       CO2 would continue to increase at almost the same rate, which illustrates that to tackle our global heating emergency aggressive investments need to be made in alternative energy sources.

       1. Thanks

       2. “… CO2 would continue to increase at almost the same rate, which illustrates that to tackle our global heating emergency aggressive investments need to be made in alternative energy sources.”

          It’s going to take a lot more than changes in energy sources. For example, not counting the world’s ever increasing population:

          TO SLOW GLOBAL WARMING, U.N. WARNS AGRICULTURE MUST CHANGE

          “Humans must drastically alter food production to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, according to a new report from the UN panel on climate change. Scientists looked at the climate change effects of agriculture, deforestation and other land use, such as harvesting peat and managing grasslands and wetlands. Together, those activities generate about a third of human greenhouse gas emissions, including more than 40% of methane. That’s important because methane is particularly good at trapping heat in the atmosphere. And the problem is getting more severe. Emissions from agricultural production are projected to increase.”

          https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/08/748416223/to-slow-global-warming-u-n-warns-agriculture-must-change

          1. Apparently our switching to a vegan diet, planting huge protected forests, cutting fossil fuel use to the bone, eliminating pesticides and herbicides globally and in general cutting harmful activity over the last four decades has not panned out.
             Scientists are at their wits end, wondering why all those thought experiments and watered down recommendations have only encouraged global warming and planetary ecological destruction.

             Ohhh, wait, …. something about actually implementing plans that work, rather than just arguing about things. Could that be it?

             1. And what plan is it that you think would work? Commienism?

                1. Read the first paragraph.

                2. That’s a two sentence wish list, now what’s your plan to save humans on earth?

                3. Lol, I was wondering which (if any) of those plans he has personally accomplished.

                4. SBBishop,

                   I think all of those have been implemented by Gone fishing on a personal level, the problem is that not many others (or not enough) have followed his example.

                5. Personally, I don’t expect to save the human race. They get to succeed or fail on their own. Maybe I will help some of the neighbors (the ones that want to be helped although I have trouble with that concept from time to time). Oh, I plan to vote.

                6. Gonefishing,

                   The idea is good, what plan of implementation might work in your opinion?

                7. Those aren’t plans, they are objectives.

                   At least according to the graphic below, the carbon footprint for Vegan isn’t that much lower than No Beef. This objective feels ideological.

                8. Bob,

                   There is more to it than just carbon footprint, oceans are being overfished so reducing consumption of fish might reduce the environmental destruction of the ocean.

                9. Yes, of course. CO2 is not the only problem.

                   We all agree, 100%, that overpopulation is the primary problem, right? No?

                   I don’t eat fish, and purposely chose not to father children, so I get a pass to eat chickens and cheese, right? 😉

                   As a species, we can’t even come to agreement on objective, let alone strategy.

                   I’d say the prime objective should be human sustainability with positive ecological impact. Anyone here agree with that?

                10. I’d say the prime objective should be human sustainability with positive ecological impact. Anyone here agree with that?

                    Yeah, and a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage.

                    Seriously, Bob, it makes no difference what you and I decide upon or do. Humanity will do what it has always done. We will continue to live to the very limits of our existence until we can’t. We will do nothing to save the planet’s ecosystem.

                11. Ron, I think you’re right.

                12. Ron,

                    Have you seen any social changes in your lifetime?

                    Personally I have, but it may be the rose colored glasses.

                    I don’t think the argument that nothing ever changes really holds water for anyone who has studied history.

                    This is not an argument that the World will become a perfect place, only that things have changed in the past, often for the better, and this may continue in the future.

                    I would also argue that there are likely to be difficult periods ahead, but will find a way forward. Attitudes towards the environment can change, just as attitudes towards equal right for women, those with a different appearance (Black, Brown, and Asian), and the LGBT community have changed over my lifetime.

                    So an argument that things have never changed and never will, just does not stand up to any decent historical analysis in my opinion.

                13. Forgot to attach the image.

                    

                14. Not my kind of vegan, but you seem hard pressed to prove a point. No, the point is not just CO2 from food producton (if the graph is accurate). The major effect is the knock on effects. The vast amount of land used to raise food for animals, the forests being cut and burned to do that, the large amount of land and biological diversity being destroyed by these animals. Returning that land to nature would not only remove a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere but provide homes for a vast number of species, clean the waters, replenish soil, and clean the air.
                    Next we have the effect of pollution reduction from removing the animal “farming”, disease reduction and bacterial load reduction.
                    Next we have the effects upon the health of the people. Take out the oils and sugars, cut down the breads and cereals from that vegan diet and voila, heart attacks virtually disappear, cancers go way down, dementia is greatly reduced. Did I forget much of diabetes, gone. These plagues of civilization drive the pharmaceutical and medical industry now. Just think of the reductions in energy waste, materials and a huge improvement in lifestyle for people. Plus a large reduction in pollution.

                    These are massive changes for the US and other societies, with many positive benefits.

                    We have discussed this before on this site, with maps. You might want to search further.
                    If you want to research this further, I will post some references and books.

                    see below:
                    http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-may-2020-edition-with-data-for-march/#comment-703987

                15. Yes, you’re right, I am hard pressed to prove a point. Your response is to say, if I understood correctly, that your version of veganism has a lower overall footprint than the veganism quantified in chart X or study Z.

                    Well Joel Salatin could posit the same: ‘not for my beef, and not for my eggs, and not for my milk, and not for my poultry.’

                    And the nomadic herdsman could say, ‘not for my milk, and not for my yogurt’. And the hunter gatherer could say, ‘not for my meat’, and not for my eggs’.

                    So, population comes to the fore, for there is no lives without impact, and the more, the more.

                    William McDonough, the architect proponent of Cradle to Cradle(TM) industrial economics posits that humans should not try to minimize our footprint. That our footprints should be huge, and should leave behind wetlands. His point being that humans could in fact have a positive net ecological footprint if we got our shit together.

                    At which point one can hear Ron slapping his knee saying: ‘humans get their shit together, that’s a good one.’

                    And were down and through the rabbit hole and back to Adam’s question, “what plan is it that you think would work?” because, ‘we should all become vegans’ is not a plan, it’s an objective, and it’s easy enough (for me, as a cheese eater) to wonder if that is even the right objective.

                    This carnivore would rather reduce the population to a size where we can eat meat, and dairy yet not destroy the viability of the ecology.

                    So, my point, as pointless as it is to point out, is that before we can agree on a plan, or a strategy, we must agree on an objective, and one can’t even define one without encountering ‘If wishes were fishes we’d all have a fry.’, to which the vegan cohort immediately objects: ‘No frying of fish!’.

                16. Bob, it was Dennis asking for a plan. I merely gave a very effective way to implement major improvements. I am not going to follow you down your mental rabbit hole. Enjoy the mad hatters, plenty around.

                17. Gone Fishing,

                    You said:

                    Ohhh, wait, …. something about actually implementing plans that work, rather than just arguing about things. Could that be it?

                    I agree with the proposed changes you outlined just before the sentence above.

                    Yes I am interested in what you believe are
                    plans that work.

                    Thanks.

             2. Sorry. No pesticides, no food.

                1. Thus, no humans ever existed.

                2. That’s cute, but 7.7G humans require lots of food to be grown. And that requires pesticides. We ain’t foragers no more.

                3. mikeb,

                   Pretty sure we could reduce pesticides and herbicides significantly and still produce plenty of food.

                   Would be interesting to hear from farmers on this question.

                4. Hell, you don’t need to hear from farmers per se. Just ask those of us who toil at a home garden. It ain’t easy. At best, you will spend a lot of time and money to grow your garden produce. Which, at best, will provide exercise, fresh air, vitamin D and some good produce. All with a cost, which can be many times what you’d pay in the store.

                5. Edgy,

                   Home gardens are nice, but a relatively insignificant portion of calories for many humans, even those with a backyard garden.

                   So real farmers probably would have better information in my opinion.

16. New cases of Covid-19 infections, worldwide, reached a new all-time high of 129,998 yesterday. New deaths, which had been trending down, reached a four week high of 5,511 yesterday.

    COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

    This thing ain’t slowing down folks. People are talking about a “second wave” well before this wave has crested.

    1. Ron,

       At the World level for daily cases, yes there was a plateau and then a continued rise. For Deaths, it looks like a peak, decline and now the start of a second wave. Some people focus on Deaths as cases may simply reflect higher testing rates and might be a statistical artifact.

    2. The thousands of protesters jostling in the streets, as right as their cause is, should make us all just about panic.

       1. Bring on those 10,000 regular troops!

          I’ve been in 10,000-plus political crowds (protesting the start of the Iraq war}. The crowds for sports wins are scarier (Blue Jays in the ’90’s, Leafs in the 2000’s).

          Funny that you’re not complaining about Trump’s campaign rallies.

17. HIGH TEMPERATURES SET OFF MAJOR GREENLAND ICE MELT—AGAIN

    “A significant melt event is unfolding in Greenland this week. With temperatures nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit higher than usual in some areas, the southern part of the ice sheet is melting at its highest rate this season. Forecasts suggest that the melting on Greenland’s South Dome — one of the highest elevations on the ice sheet — may be the strongest for early June since 1950. It worries experts that Greenland could be priming for another big melt season.”

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-temperatures-set-off-major-greenland-ice-melt-again/

    1. Meanwhile,

       NEW STUDY REVEALS CRACKS BENEATH GIANT, METHANE GUSHING CRATERS

       “A paper published in Science in 2017 described hundreds of massive, kilometer-wide craters on the ocean floor in the Barents Sea. Today, more than 600 gas flares have been identified in and around these craters, releasing the greenhouse gas steadily into the water column. Another study, published the same year in PNAS, mapped several methane mounds, some 500 meters wide, in the Barents Sea. The mounds were considered to be signs of impending methane expulsions that created the craters.”

       https://phys.org/news/2020-06-reveals-beneath-giant-methane-gushing.html

18. In India, where coal is king, there has been a dip in coal burning and big jump in the coal stockpiles at the thermal plants. This is attributed to decreased electricity demand during the Covid slowdown.
    https://indiapowerreview.com/indian-power-and-coal-updates-june-2020/

    Makes you wonder if we should wish for ‘recovery’, or rather try to get used to less.
    I’m thinking those who ‘have’ will answer the question differently than those who ‘have not’.

    1. I’m [among] those who ‘have’ will answer the question differently than those who ‘have not’.

       LOL Sometimes it seems as if the “haves” are more reluctant to change their ways than those with (much) less.

       1. I corrected that line- having inadvertently left out that word “thinking”.
          True what you say.

       2. Doug, of course, the “haves” do not want things to change. They will buy and build their techno-systems to keep and enhance their lifestyles, while trying to sell it to the ROW to make a profit and feel herd safety.

          Of course, it won’t work, not in the long run. Long seems to be getting shorter quickly, the opposite of time dilation.

19. Are we losing the race?

    WARMEST MAY ON RECORD, SIBERIA 10C HOTTER

    “Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth’s permafrost, as the world experienced its warmest May on record.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-06-warmest-siberia-10c-hotter.html

    1. “Are we losing the race?”
       Of course not, we will have batteries everywhere. Batteries in cars, ships, planes, homes, power grids, everywhere and in everything. That will remove lots of GHG and keep things cool, right?

       Electric Oil Tankers & Batteries in EVERYTHING | Fully Charged
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0domc-YlOZQ

       BTW, the energy used to make lithium batteries each year is equivalent to about 1/3 the energy produced by wind and solar annually. Next add in the 20 percent loss charging them.
       Imagine when batteries become a mainstay of civilization, though they may not be fully charged. The production of batteries is expected to rise by more than 6X by 2030.

       1. Yeah, don’t despair, if it gets too hot you can just turn up the AC

          THE FUTURE OF COOLING

          “Global energy demand from air conditioners is expected to triple by 2050, requiring new electricity capacity the equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, the EU and Japan today. The global stock of air conditioners in buildings will grow to 5.6 billion by 2050, up from 1.6 billion today – which amounts to 10 new ACs sold every second for the next 30 years, according to the report.”

          https://www.iea.org/futureofcooling/

          1. That’s a lot of killer-watts.

             A new analysis of heat wave patterns appearing in Nature Climate Change focuses on four regions of the United States where human-caused climate change will ultimately overtake natural variability as the main driver of heat waves. Climate change will drive more frequent and extreme summer heat waves in the Western United States by late 2020’s, the Great Lakes region by mid 2030’s, and in the northern and southern Plains by 2050’s and 2070’s, respectively.

             https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/keynotes/keynotes_0318_heatwaves.html

    2. That article is a joke. There were record low temperatures all over the place in May due to the polar vortex making a rare visit outside of winter.

       https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/05/09/polar-vortex-record-may-cold-snow/

       1. You’re probably not interested in facts but:

          Global temperatures were much above average in May 2020. The month was:
          • 0.63°C warmer than the 1981-2020 average for May;
          • the warmest May in this data record;
          • warmer by 0.05°C than May 2016, the previous warmest May;
          • warmer by 0.09°C than May 2017, the third warmest May.

          https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-may-2020

          1. You can continue to believe your facts and I will continue to believe mine. The climate of planet earth is going to do what it wants to do regardless.

             1. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

                ― Issac Asimov

             2. Alex,

                So you are an alternative facts guy. Most people look at the climate of the globe rather than just a single place, there are always highs and lows at different places at different times. So I guess you are saying there are no facts, or you can just make them up. A weird world view, but that’s what one gets when they watch Fox news. 🙂

          2. The graph says it all, globally about 1C higher in 35 years.
             From the January 2020 report:
             Temperatures in January 2020 were above the 1981-2010 average over most of Europe. They were exceptionally high for the time of year in the north and east, in a band spreading eastward and south-eastward from Norway to Russia, with values more than 6ºC above average in many places. Norway experienced its warmest January day on record early in the month, and the month was the second warmest since 1900 for the country as a whole. Skiers and reindeer herders were among those affected by mild conditions in Sweden. Observing stations in central and southern Finland recorded their warmest January in the period since at least 1961.

       2. Alex Spicker,

          The polar vortex affects North America. Doug Leighton is providing data for the whole globe.

          Go to climatereanalyzer.org and click on 2m Temperature Anomaly for a view. You can rotate the globe or examine the world map at the bottom of the screen.

          1. Synapsid –

             Thanks for the clarification. I tend to think in terms of global patterns. For me, the polar vortex expanding and sending cold air southward with the jet stream in summer amounts to a weather anomaly rather than being a climate issue – unless it becomes a regular phenomenon of course. In any case, the world is warming as we speak.

             1. Doug, the extreme waves of the jet stream, drifting and distortions of the polar vortex have become a regular phenomenon. You might want to check out Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University and Woods Hole Research Institute. She has done a lot of work on this subject.
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymznUdTgD5Y

                1. Yes, it seems there are an increasing number of cases where the polar vortex has made excursions south into heavily populated areas in summer, especially India. As we gain a better understanding of why this is happening it may be concluded that it’s related to climate change.

                2. DougL,

                   Gonefishing recommended Jennifer Francis’ work. Her explanation, which is widely though not, I think, universally accepted as being at least part of the story, starts from the observation that the Arctic is warming up faster than the rest of the globe. That leads to the temperature gradient between the Equator and the North Pole relaxing so the northern jet stream slows. A slower jet is less latitudinal than a faster jet–there’s more wiggle, northward and southward, to the flow and the larger southward wiggles bring more cold northern air farther south than was common in the recent past.

                   Any physicists reading this, please be kind.

                   Too late for Port. (sigh)

20. Things are changing.

    The Confederate statues are coming down in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

    I once lived at on the corner of Monument and “the” Boulevard. I could hit Stonewall Jackson’s horse in the ass with a well aimed apple from my second floor balcony.

    Personally I think this is a good thing, but I also think that such statues should be re erected in a public park someplace, a park that tells the whole sorry story of slavery from colonial days to Reconstruction to the modern Civil Rights Era.

    It should be someplace within an easy drive of Richmond.

    1. I hope so Mac, like a museum. Easy EV drive from Richmond

       1. Exactly, an outdoor museum.

          1. Huntingtonbeach and OFM,

             Nice to see you guys have dropped the tendency to trade insults at every opportunity, you set a good example for others.

             1. Fine example, ROFL

                HuntingtonBeach
                says:
                06/05/2020 AT 11:54 PM
                You must wipe with pine needles. The link does explain your personality. Does that have a peer review ?

                1. Gonefishing,

                   Yes I did not understand Huntington beach’s reply to your video.

                   Curious about your interpretation of that video, which I interpreted as a spoof. The pine needles comment from HB seems a non sequitur, sorry about the lack of politeness, it seems to be pretty common everywhere these days.

                   It would be nice if all of us made comments as if we were speaking face to face. Sometimes no comment is the best comment.

                2. Just part of an ongoing campaign. Does not have to make sense, in fact the less sense it makes, the more impact and disruption.

21. Some things never change, except in the degree of harm they can do now.

    DERP Disaster Economic Recovery Plan
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CMUtKWubxg

    1. You must wipe with pine needles. The link does explain your personality. Does that have a peer review ?

    2. GoFish- “So unless techno solutions provide an extreme advantage without bad side effects, they are just harmful temporary creations that turn to junk in short order.”

       http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-16-2020/#comment-703240

       Dennis-“Curious about your interpretation of that video, which I interpreted as a spoof.” No response from GoFish.

       GoFish- “Hey Nick G. I am sure you can provide some peer reviewed articles to back up that nebulous statement.”

       http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-23-2020/#comment-703579

       “One tree produces about 200 rolls (100 pounds (45 kg)) of toilet paper and about 83 million rolls are produced per day.[29] Global toilet paper production consumes 27,000 trees daily.[48]
       More than seven billion rolls of toilet paper are sold yearly in the United States alone. Americans use an average of 141 rolls per capita a year which is equivalent to 12.7 kilograms (28 lb) of tissue paper per year”

       “Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with being the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper in the United States. ”

       “Elsewhere, wealthy people wiped themselves with wool, lace or hemp, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stones, sand, moss, water, snow, ferns, plant husks, fruit skins, seashells, or corncobs,”

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper

       The best I could figure is irritable GoFish doesn’t use toilet paper because it’s a technological advancement and doesn’t approve of it. So no one else should use it either. So in his moment of cleaning up after himself he deposited his waste in a link to his blog. All from a regular poster who asks others for peer reviews.

       GoFish- “If you want a higher level discussion, you need to raise your own awareness”

       http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-16-2020/#comment-703008

       I guess I could have just said, what’s this f’n bullshit. But, GoFish you seem to think your a bright kind of guy and everyone should do as you do. So I gave you a challenge.

       GoFish- “Does not have to make sense” Maybe next time you won’t give up so easy. Moving forward is difficult. Try it sometime because things are going back in time.

       http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-may-2020-edition-with-data-for-march/#comment-704028

       1. Of course, Baxter Black points out that cowboys use shirt tails, sox, and cactus. It is reasonably likely to apply to miners (but not company men) and geologists in Nevada.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_Black – cowboy and philosopher.

       2. Huntington beach,

          You are not making much sense. What link were you referring to, the link in the comment you replied to seemed to bear little indication of anyone’s personality and the pine needles comment still seems from left field as nobody was talking about toilet paper lately.

          Personally I use toilet paper made from recycled paper (50% post consumer), not a perfect solution

          1. Toilet paper is a human technical advance which kills trees. GoFish continually advocates aganist technology of ecological destruction. Trees and forests have been lot of the conversation here. The links confirm his statements. It’s 2 plus 2 plus 2 equals 6. My guess is that if someone took your TP away. You would not be a happy camper and if you had to use pine needles you would have a negative view on life.

             1. I have never seen any comments by Gone fishing concerning toilet paper, perhaps you are just making stuff up?

                1. I haven’t seen GoFish comments on wiping either, but I will give you odds he does.

             2. I have installed a bidet attachment to my toilet. This has cut our TP requirements by estimated 75%.

                So… if everyone who uses a toilet installed a bidet or bidet attachment, we could save thousands of trees 🙂

             3. Decided years ago that I did not need to rely on the industrial /agro pulp paper distribution retail complex to perform a basic bodily function. A couple of damp fingers does a tidy job, and the hands get well washed in plain running water as usual. Done. Next problem?

22. One version of energy democracy – Community Solar
    You don’t need to own a sunny roof.
    https://cleantechnica.com/2020/06/05/new-community-solar-option-in-colorado/

23. CARBON FOOTPRINT FACTSHEET
    “while shifting to a vegetarian meal one day a week could save the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles”

    http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet

    

24. If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef
    With one dietary change, the U.S. could almost meet greenhouse-gas emission goals.

    Recently Harwatt and a team of scientists from Oregon State University, Bard College, and Loma Linda University calculated just what would happen if every American made one dietary change: substituting beans for beef. They found that if everyone were willing and able to do that—hypothetically—the U.S. could still come close to meeting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission goals, pledged by President Barack Obama in 2009.

    That is, even if nothing about our energy infrastructure or transportation system changed—and even if people kept eating chicken and pork and eggs and cheese—this one dietary change could achieve somewhere between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet the target.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/if-everyone-ate-beans-instead-of-beef/535536/

    So why not go the rest of the way, eliminating poultry, eggs, dairy and oils from the diet to not only get the amazing health benefits but to drastically cut the emissions at the same time? Takes just a few weeks to stop wanting those things and stop inflaming your body (arteries and lots more).

    1. Yes, yes and more yes.
       Black Eyed Peas.

       1. No.

          Signed,

          Cow & pig raiser.

          1. No need to worry mikeb. People seem to have an insatiable demand for what you sell.
             Seven-fold increase global meat production in the past 60 years.
             Population increased 2.6 fold over the same time.

    2. I can understand the ecological arguments for adapting a vegan diet, but I disagree that it is inherently more healthy than a diet that includes meat, dairy and eggs. The paradigm for what constitutes a healthy diet has been changing over the last decade and the evidence is growing that meat, fats (oils), fish, and eggs are, in the context of an overall healthy diet and lifestyle, a sensible part of a healthy diet. One of the main problems in the area of nutritional research is that good scientific studies of diet are extremely difficult and expensive to do. The upshot is that most studies rely on correlations from epidemiological studies and one of the cardinal caveats of scientific research is that “correlation does not equal causation”. Add to that a typical dose of confirmation bias, inevitable confounding variables, and the overwhelming majority of nutritional studies are pretty worthless. Restricting ones self to randomized clinical trials is the safest way to go, but, as I pointed out, it is expensive and difficult.

       I have no intention of getting into an online debate on the subject, but there is plenty of evidence that, at the very least, we have little solid evidence for the current nutritional guidelines that most nutrition scientists still adhere to.

       If you read any books on the subject, I highly recommend Gary Taubes ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’. IMO it is a brilliant piece of work and provides an excellent overview of the subject including the historical, scientific, sociological, paleontological and political aspects. There are lots of other sources of good information but I’ll leave it at that for now.

       1. Total bullshit. I only go by scientifically tested and reviewed literature on this subject. There are so many crank diet “experts” out there making money and killing people and the planet. The meat and dairy industry is fighting hard against this, follow the money, follow the deaths and disabilities.

          1. “I only go by scientifically tested and reviewed literature on this subject.”

             So do I. Funny thing that.

       2. The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
          https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

          By Jared Diamond

          1. Jared Diamond seems to wander in and out of his actual expertise in his writings. Nor does he go into depth in the biochemical and social reasons why agriculture and food processing became so strong. It’s controllable, it’s slave oriented, industry oriented and it’s profitable (taxable). A heaven sent gift for the psychopaths and narcissists in society. A horror to life on earth and our internal systems.
             The nutrient ratios of a very varied wild diet are much more healthy, even occasionally spending long times between meals is much healthier than the clockwork regimen of three meals a day plus snacks.

             I eat very little wheat, no rice, very little corn. I eat a very wide variety of fruits and vegetables and some seeds.
             Maybe books like the China Study, How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease and How Not to Die have only had a minor (but growing) impact on the developed world’s eating habits, but once one understands the biochemistry right down to the mitochondria, grocery stores look 90 percent toxic and undesirable.
             However, of all the conscious choices, one can make, expressing ones freedom of choice, to choose whole plant based eating is the most powerful way to make positive changes in oneself and in the greater world. Quickly and cheaply.
             Also, it’s nice to give the shaft to the horror mills of animal farming, the predatory pharmaceutical industry and the over-bloated medical industry, just by choosing forks over knives.
             Become a powerful force in the world, choose well. We don’t have to mimic our upbringing, we can grow up and think for ourselves.

             1. Hint:
                You are an omnivore, and you can’t escape your biology.
                However, I do admire your attempt to deal with a massively overpopulated (7.7 billion) planet, in steep decline ecologically.
                Agree, don’t contribute to industrial ag.
                Obviously 7.7 billion would not exist without it.

             2. Good Calories, Bad Calories is not a fad diet book (if that’s what you are implying). It is well researched with ~70 pages of references.

                As for the China Study, here is a well written critique
                https://deniseminger.com/the-china-study/

                Like Hightrekker says, you are an omnivore by nature.

             3. High Trekker,

                Great piece thanks.

                Gone fishing,

                Do you disagree with Diamond in the linked piece? It seems quite supportive of your point of view, as I understand it (and I may not understand it correctly.)

    3. I’m emphatically unqualified to comment on this but following years of work in Asia and having numerous Chinese, Korean and Japanese business associates I acquired an appetite for Tofu which I eat regularly to this day. The net tells me that, worldwide, the size of land devoted to soy cultivation reaches an area the size of Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands — combined. It also tells me the bulk of the world’s soy is NOT consumed by people and roughly 70 percent of the world’s soy is fed directly to livestock and only six percent of soy is turned into human food — which is mostly consumed in Asia. Our local beef baron, whose business seems to be increasingly “exponentially”, informs me soy (and corn) are the two go-to crops that are used to help livestock reach market weight in record times. So, clearly, food choices have the power to affect our broken food system, perhaps giving our species a fighting chance for survival, and pave the way for a truly sustainable future. Personally I doubt this will happen.

       1. Doug–
          Soy is relative toxic (soy is unique in that it contains a high concentration of isoflavones, a type of plant estrogen (phytoestrogen) that is similar in function to human estrogen, along with 3 other toxins), but I eat it on a regular basis also (Tofu).
          Moderation seems to be the key.

          1. Hightrekker —

             You might as well be speaking (ancient) Greek but thanks for trying to educate me. I should have stayed silent on the matter. Isoflavones? Never heard that word before.

       2. Corn and soy are grown for four important reasons. COWS, HOGS, CHICKENS, MOONSHINE.
          We don’t even drink the moonshine. We feed THAT to automobiles.

          1. Had lots of chickens, but they like insects the most, and have the best eggs if you can let them roam without being eaten by the local predators.
             Hogs? Mountain lion killed the one next door, after getting both my goats.
             Lived in Valley of The Moon– can you say wine?

25. While we speak, an estimated 464 square miles of Amazon tree cover was slashed from January to April, a 55 percent increase from the same period last year and an area roughly 20 times the size of Manhattan, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, a government agency that tracks deforestation with satellite images. And, bulldozer sales more than doubled in Brazil between January and April compared to the same period last year, according to data from an industry group.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/world/americas/amazon-deforestation-brazil.html

    1. Cut the Beef not the Trees! We send them money to cut down the trees through our food choices.

       The Beef Industry and Deforestation
       https://rainforestpartnership.org/the-beef-industry-and-deforestation/

       1. As a 90’s kid, I can recall boomer activists like you and Doug Leighton coming in to our 4th grade class to tell us how the Amazon was going to be gone by the time we grew up unless we stopped eating our McDonald’s cheeseburger happy meals. It was all complete bullshit then, and is all complete bullshit now.

          1. I know!
             It’s only a quarter gone since 1970!
             And I’m sure that if no one had done anything, the destruction would be even less!

             1. Yeah, its estimated that the Amazon rainforest is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. Moreover, this deforestation brings other ugly consequences: air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, release of CO2 , the decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Not to mention less rain and less oxygen for us to breathe (with an increased threat from global warming). Who cares, so long as we can gather at McDonald’s for a fine dining experience at regular intervals.

                https://rain-tree.com/facts.htm#:~:text=That is more than 150,20,000 square miles a year.

26. When the situation suits, ridicule is one of the most effective of all political weapons…. sometimes the MOST effective one of all.

    So here’s a link well worth passing on.
    You can sign up with an email address to get this free every day.

    Pass it on.

    https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trumps-bleach-moment-now-seeming-like-career-high-point?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Borowitz_060420&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5d5d7638f543e634e750219c&cndid=58190660&hasha=900e4f8631f3266f084ed34ae138ebbb&hashb=7bd3d20f3d5dc0fb92b1319e22288e2692eeeede&hashc=4d2a2cb4147a844276b9eb9d2fecb3bdf8c354e704832fc5a92d32c985b56bf7&esrc=no_source_code&utm_term=TNY_Humor

    1. Also see Randy Rainbow’s [real name!] parody of Trump and Clorox. 3 min vid:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPDPzbLFeP4

27. Here’s another link to pass on.
    https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/some-bummertime-streaming?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Humor_060320&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5d5d7638f543e634e750219c&cndid=58190660&hasha=900e4f8631f3266f084ed34ae138ebbb&hashb=7bd3d20f3d5dc0fb92b1319e22288e2692eeeede&hashc=4d2a2cb4147a844276b9eb9d2fecb3bdf8c354e704832fc5a92d32c985b56bf7&esrc=no_source_code&utm_term=TNY_Humor

28. Pass this link on too.
    There’s nothing else we can do, as individuals, to get such a big bang for such a small effort, as to pass this kind of thing along.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_OVlS-LksE

29. Further up Doug asked, “Have you ever calculated the area of solar panels (and associated battery requirements) that would be needed to supply all of Jamaica’s electrical energy requirements? “. My initial response dealt with estimating the area required but did not address storage requirements. To estimate that I had to get a hold of a Typical System Demand Curve, found in a document at the following URL:

    http://myjpsco.gccnow.com/_pdfs/SBA_20Handbook_202007.pdf

    On page 15 there are a couple of charts one of which is shown below.

    

    1. To come up with an estimate of the storage requirements, I created a spreadsheet withe the data from the demand curve and added a column to adjust the power levels up by 7% to reflect the increase in demand since 2007 when the chart was generated. I also got data from a 100 kW solar PV installation in a a town a few miles away from the first solar farm (May Pen) from the following URL:

       https://www.sunnyportal.com/Templates/PublicPageOverview.aspx?plant=d703e7c5-fc27-4937-94c7-ea185baae09d&splang=

       I went looked at the data for June 1, 2020, which is about as good as one can expect for a 100 kW (nameplate) system, with power output peaking at about 70 kW at mid day. I added a column to the spread sheet to extrapolate the 100 KW closer to what would be required to supply the total energy needs of the island. The result is the chart below.

       The total system energy demand is represented by the area under the orange line, while the area under the yellow line is the energy produced by solar PV facilities capable of a peak power output of 1730 MW (2,300 MW nameplate). From this chart, the typical system energy demand is roughly 12,800 MWh and the total solar energy available is roughly 12,900 MWh. The amount of energy that would need to be stored is all the energy surplus solar energy produced between about 8:45 am and 5:45 pm, represented by the area under the yellow line and above the orange line. This works out to about 6,900 MWh. The peak charging rate, the difference between the available solar power and the system demand, would be about 1,200 MW and the peak discharge rate would be close to the peak system power demand, roughly 650 MW.

       This particular scenario represents a best case, a long summer day with virtually no cloud cover and no charging or transmission losses. To account for losses and low solar output days the PV capacity and the storage requirements would have to be adjusted upward. As I pointed out in my original response, PV capacity requirements can be reduced by the presence of other renewable sources like hydro and wind. Storage requirements could be reduced by the presence of capacity that can be called upon regardless of the weather or time of day such as hydro, waste to energy or biomass.

       

       1. People and industries have adapted well to base load power plants being so ubiquitous. How much price differential would it take to massively shift the shape of the adjusted power curve to match the cost of stored power? An educated guess (so not mine) is about 10 to 15 %.

          https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/time-day-pricing-levelized-cost-intermittent-power-generation

    2. 1st, for what it’s worth, that curve isn’t really what you want to answer Doug’s question, which was about total electrical demand. The “System Demand Curve” doesn’t show the electricity consumption being provided by customer-sited solar power (we can see that by the suppression of the primary early afternoon peak in consumption, the “divot” in consumption at about 6:00, and the resulting secondary demand peak at about 8:00).

       If we include distributed solar, we’ll reduce the percentage of overall kWhs stored in some way.

       2nd, supply diversity, and supply from wind in particular, is essential: we should emphasize that no utility manager would ever dream of running a grid with only one power source. You probably would never want your grid to have more than 40% of it’s power from solar, if you could possibly help it. Jay Woods’ comment begins to quantify the difference between solar and wind production curves.

       3rd, Demand Side Management deserves attention: DSM is almost free, old and well tested, and very powerful. One POB contributor, Longtimber(?) argues that residential consumers could relatively easily shift at least 80% of their consumption to fit within the solar supply. Industrial/commercial consumers will sometimes have even more flexibility. In particular, much night time demand comes from iron, steel and aluminum smelting, pushed there by utilities with excess power at night.

       1. Note the date of the system demand curve, 2007. All the policies and measures that led to growing use of PV in the island were adopted in 2009 or later so, at the time that curve was published the total PV capacity was probably less than 100 kW and even if it were more than that, the regulations and standards to allow for the use of grid interconnected inverters were put in place after 2009. The first press reports of a commercial installation were from November 2012.

          The system demand profile is representative of the type of economic activity or lack of it. Jamaica is not an industrial economy, it is more of an agricultural/services (tourism) economy and that shows up in the demand profile with it’s late evening peak being greater than the mid day peak. I have a contact who was able to show me demand profiles he had generated from three separate feeders from the national grid. One was a rural, largely farming area with literally no industry, just schools and some commerce. It had a huge evening peak relative to the rest of the day and not much of a mid day peak. Another profile was from an urban area that included the two larger universities, including one with a substantial hospital compound, some schools and some offices and shopping but, also a large area of residential neighborhoods. That profile was more like the national profile. The third feeder supplied the main business and commercial areas in the center of the capital city and that one had a larger mid day peak with a lower evening peak.

          In these comments, I was trying to answer Doug’s question from the point of view of the situation as it exists now. As you rightly point out there are all sorts of factors that could result in a wide array of scenarios. A substantial fleet of plug in vehicles for example, could present opportunities for DSM and with V2G could also be a part of the grid storage system.

          1. Thanks for that info – I see what you mean.

             What drives the evening peak? Cooking, or lighting?

             US utilities generally have “Demand” charges which impose high costs on industrial/commercial customers for peaks in daytime power consumption, which drives things like aluminum smelting to the night time. Does JPS have Demand charges?

             1. The evening peak is largely driven by lighting. Based on about 105,000 street lights, street lighting should be about 13.9 MW, a little more that half of the estimated 26.25 MW before some 65,000 LED streetlights. The cooking fuel of choice is LPG which is relatively affordable. Electricity is considered too expensive to use for cooking. I would guess that things like air conditioning (especially in the hotter months), computers, gaming devices and televisions also play a part in the evening peak.

                It’s a pity that things like the power being delivered on the national grid is not available to the public. It would be really interesting to see the effects of the COVID-19 restrictions on electricity consumption, with all the hotels closed as well as many bars and restaurants and all night clubs, parties and concerts prohibited. It would also be interesting to see how all the behind the meter PV is changing demand patterns.

30. I think I could switch at least half of my night time consumption to day time hours simply by running some appliances only during the day, adding a timer to my hot water heater, refrigerator, etc.
    I could do away with my night lighting needs by getting just one fairly small battery, because I only need a couple of night lights for the most part.
    The toughest thing would be mid summer air conditioning. I used to just sleep with a fan and an open window, but in my old age, I’m not about to give up AC, day or night.

    And the lack of it would probably stress out my old Daddy to the point it might kill him, considering how frail he is now.

    With the right kind of incentives built into building codes and tax codes, we could easily push half or two thirds of our night time domestic electricity consumption into the daylight hours at relatively modest cost.

    Timers are cheap, thermal mass is cheap, batteries capable of supplying a few kilowatt hours per night are getting to be very affordable, etc.

    Super insulation building techniques are getting to the point it will soon be a no brainer decision to go with them for new construction.

    1. The toughest thing would be mid summer air conditioning.

       A/C power consumption naturally drops at night, with lower outside temperatures.

       One reason for high evening A/C is that many people turn off the A/C during the day when they’re not there. If power was much cheaper during the day and expensive in the evening, people would leave their A/C on during the day, shifting consumption back to the daytime.

       Well designed HVAC would direct cooling to only the bedrooms that needed it. Thermostats (like Ecobee and Honeywell) are starting to provide remote room temperature sensors, but automatic ductwork dampers are still a bit expensive – that could change with mass adoption.

       1. I already have a very effective room by room AC control system, lol.
          Our house is nice, but pretty old, and we don’t have any centralized heat or air. We use two thru the wall kerosene furnaces, which are very efficient to back up a wood stove, which provides over eighty percent of our heat. The furnaces run only late at night or a few minutes when we first come home to a somewhat chilly house if we’re gone a long time, etc. They may run a few minutes here and there if it’s REALLY cold, like close to zero Fahrenheit. I generally get by with under a hundred gallons per year, letting them run sometimes when I just don’t want to bother with a fire on a chilly evening early or late in the heating season.

          And I use three or four window ac units which are programmable but I never bother. I just turn them on when I want whatever part of the house I’m in to be cool. They’re not very efficient, but on the other hand…….. they run only when they’re needed, and where they’re actually needed. Two of them left on will generally cool the entire house on a day when it hits the midnineties in the afternoon if it cools off at night, if I leave them on.
          Our total consumption with all the usual electric appliances averages about nine hundred kWh per month, and about eleven hundred in mid summer.

          Sometime in the next couple of years or so I’ll install a heat pump and duct work…… but for now I still enjoy the wood stove and the work associated with it.

          The longer I delay putting in a heat pump, the more likely it is that the warranty on it will outlast ME, lol.

          1. Duct work should be avoided. go ductless.
             You can buy a Mini split mid 20 seer for $1000 or so.

             1. Longtimber,

                Where would you buy the mini split for $1k?

                1. Nick,

                   Bosch with 22 SER
                   at link below for about 1000, does not include installation, not sure what that would be.

                   https://www.wish.com/product/5d976c5d931623725a458438?from_ad=goog_shopping&_display_country_code=US&_force_currency_code=USD&pid=googleadwords_int&c=%7BcampaignId%7D&ad_cid=5d976c5d931623725a458438&ad_cc=US&ad_lang=EN&ad_curr=USD&ad_price=949.99&hide_login_modal=true&share=web

             2. I’ve looked into them and the prices seem to be out of line by a mile.

                This probably has to do with the minisplit design being fairly new to the market and not yet selling that well.
                So maybe the price of them will come down soon. They OUGHT to be cheaper, lol.

31. 80% electron during daylight is not hard when you start from scratch. Now you are actually “using” stored energy in phase change, hot water, thermal mass, etc. To go off grid you need to be PV Heavy.
    R we saved? https://brilliantlightpower.com/

32. “Borrowed time: Climate change threatens U.S. mortgage market
    Everyone is exposed” as taxpayer-backed loans and insurance face a coming storm.”

    Between 2006 and 2018, nearly 600,000 houses were built in 100-year floodplains, bringing the total to 4.1 million homes. In that same time period, 300,000 mortgages were added to homes in floodplains, bringing the total number of loans to 7 million.

    Hope you guys are all saving up a lot of money for the National Flood Insurance Program bailout, when it comes.
    Its just one small part of the cost of the big Managed Retreat.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/borrowed-time-climate-changemortgage-market-304130

    1. The Role Of Managed Retreat In Adapting To Sea Level Rise-
       https://energyinnovation.org/2018/12/17/the-role-of-managed-retreat-in-adapting-to-sea-level-rise/

       Step- is to stop building in the floodplains and tidal zones. Simple concept.
       Step– is to change policies- such withdrawal of property insurance in these zones, stop issuing any [residential, commercial, industrial] building permits in these zones.
       Step- Relocate all infrastructure uphill (towards the nearest mountain) 10-20 feet. Includes rail, roads, sewage, pipelines. Don’t worry about the airports- we don’t need them.

       The military has a big problem [that means you tax payer]-
       Navy secretary. “It’s going to cost literally billions and billions of dollars, because you’re either going to have to raise it or somehow protect it…
       To address those sorts of questions, the Pentagon in January produced a report on the effects of climate change across the U.S. military — a response to a 2017 congressional request for such a study. The document identifies 79 military bases at risk, and says two-thirds are vulnerable to “climate-related” events, including recurrent flooding, drought, wildfires, desertification and thawing permafrost.”

       https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/climate-military-navy-flooding/
       https://www.rollcall.com/2019/06/12/military-bases-unprepared-for-gathering-climate-change-storm/

       Rising sea level is baked in the cake.

       1. Well, Australia has a vision:
          https://desdemonadespair.net/2020/06/honest-government-ad-economic-recovery-in-australia.html

33. Russia declares state of emergency over Arctic Circle oil spill caused by melting permafrost-
    Melting permafrost caused a fuel tank holding 21,000 tons of diesel oil to collapse in Russia’s Arctic Circle, leading to a 135-square mile oil spill.

    https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/06/05/oil-spill-red-river-permafrost-tied-russian-arctic-circle-emergency-diesel/3143679001/

    Managed Retreat, is always better than UnManaged Retreat.
    Unless perhaps if you specialize in chaos management, and hope to profit from the misfortune of others.

34. Did someone mention changing our ways?

    AMAZON RAINFOREST FIRE SEASON STARTS WITH OUTLOOK FOR RECORD BURN

    “Every year, illegal loggers use bulldozers and chainsaws to rip through huge swaths of jungle, land that’s then set on fire to make way for crops or cattle. This year, they’ve been particularly busy. A report released Monday shows an area 11 times the size of New York City could be incinerated.”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-06-amazon-rainforest-season-outlook.html

35. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/06/08/1-35-cents-kwh-record-abu-dhabi-solar-bid-is-a-sober-reminder-to-upbeat-fossil-fuel-pundits/

    I remain convinced that a hard crash, world wide, is baked in.
    But nevertheless I don’t see any reason to believe that industrial civilization will necessarily come to an end.
    Some people in some places may pull thru more or less whole… with luck.

    1. I remain convinced that a hard crash, world wide, is baked in.

       If you had to say why, specifically, what would be the top single reason?

       1. Well, here is one possibility. According to Martin E. Hellman, “history shows the folly in hoping that each new, more destructive weapon will not be used. And yet we dare to hope that this time it will be different. We and the Soviets have amassed a combined arsenal of 50,000 nuclear weapons, equivalent in destructive force to some 6,000 World War II’s, capable of reaching their targets in a matter of minutes, and able to destroy every major city in the world. All in the belief that they will never be used. But unless we make a radical shift in our thinking about war, this time will be no different. On our current path, nuclear war is inevitable.”

          1. Yeah, that’s a good quote – the full thing is here: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/opinion/inevitability.html

             And yes, I worry more about nuclear war than I do about Peak Oil. And, yes, PO does create stress which could possibly lead to war.

             So…Mac, is that your guessstimate of the future, that there are perfectly good alternatives to oil and Fossil Fuel in the long run, but the stress of the transition to them is likely to lead to a lot of war?

             1. I wouldn’t go so far as to say renewable energy is “perfectly” capable of replacing fossil fuel, but yes, renewables can get the job done, and as well or better, given time, taken all around. There might always be a few niche applications where fossil fuels are the best possible solution.

                A few years back, I was one hundred percent sure the depletion of fossil fuels and other one time gifts of nature would lead to numerous hot wars very likely to lead to a major powers conflict and quite possibly WWIII…… meaning any survivors would be going back to a preindustrial economy.

                Now I’m cautiously hopeful that at least some people in some places can successfully manage the transition to a sustainable economy.

                It blows my feeble old mind to contemplate just how fast the price of renewable energy is falling.

                Maybe…… just MAYBE…. the profit motive will save us, lol. The profits I have in mind are the profits that will be earned by the renewable energy industries, as they drive the fossil fuel industries out of business…… at least in some parts of the world.

                In this context, by the word profits I mean not only actual monetary income but also avoided off the books expenses such as cleaning up polluted water, lowered public health care costs, etc.

                Countries such as the USA and Western European countries aren’t going to have to build a whole lot of new infrastructure going forward, because our populations are going to peak soon enough that most of what we will need is already built.

                Our grandchildren here in the USA will be in a position to spend say the current day equivalent of fifty to a hundred thousand dollars upgrading existing housing rather than spending the equivalent of a quarter of a million building new.

                They won’t need more highways or schools or water treatment plants or paper mills or automobiles. A new car built to today’s best practices will last two or three generations.

       2. Here is my short version crack at that (very good) question Nick-
          Poor management of a very difficult situation, leading to chaos with failed states being the norm across much of the world.
          Very difficult situation= energy/capita in decline while at the same time almost 8 billion people and all their livestock are crowding the habitable lands of earth in a manner that is dependent on massive energy, and other resource, input. Environmental degradation diminishes the productive capacity of the earth.
          Poor management- things can be done starting about 50 years to lessen the overshoot and ease the pain on the downside, such as population control, development of cleaner forms of energy, protection of the environment [soil, water, bios], promotion of an educated and disciplined society. But we haven’t done much of this at all.
          People don’t handle economic downturns well. They fight among themselves. No governing system is proven to be effective at managing things when times are good, let alone when the whole system moves into a mode of contraction. People will jostle each other hard for the scraps, and there are a billion guns out there.

          There is a scenario where the majority of the world behaves itself, learning to live gracefully with much less. I am not optimistic on that outcome being the one that wins out.

          1. …learning to live gracefully with much less.

             So your sense of things is that the single biggest problem we have with energy is that only fossil fuels can provide the scale and sheer volume of energy that human society uses now?

             1. “biggest problem we have with energy is that only fossil fuels can provide the scale and sheer volume”
                In short, yes. I doubt we can a accomplish a timely energy transition at scale, and that we can scale down our consumption to make that transition work. If the population was much smaller, ‘lean and mean’ so to speak, and both smart and disciplined. the attempt would have a much greater chance of success.

                1. Well, just to be clear: do you feel that only fossil fuels can provide the scale and volume in the long run, or that the problem of scale and volume exists just during a transition?

                2. Once humanity had downsized to 2-3 billion, and has learned to live on a fraction of the current/capita use. Then we may have some energy supply viability. It will take along time to get to that.

       3. In one word, overshoot. Too many people, too little in the way of shrinking resources, and too much in the way of environmental degradation.

          Speaking hypothetically, it’s possible that we could avoid a world wide collapse, at least in the near term, if we would work together to solve our population and environmental problems.By near term I mean over the next couple of generations, assuming the climate doesn’t go NUTS on us leading to famines on the grand scale, etc.

          I see resource wars both hot and cold as inevitable, no matter what, but we might be able to avoid HOT war between the major powers, with some luck.

          We could probably hang on, and provide at least food and shelter to just about every body for that long if we were to focus on doing so at the expense of military expenditures and so called conspicuous consumption, diverting resources to education and the provision of free birth control in poor and developing countries.

          The one key thing would be to get the birth rate down well below replacement level on the double time.

          I believe this is entirely possible, with good leadership and enough money.

          1. Well, let’s assume for a moment that we avoid major wars. What’s the single most important “shrinking resource”, in your view? Energy? Something else?

36. The kind of problem that a world with rising sea level will have to contend with-
    “Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First”-
    From ground level, greater Miami looks like any American megacity—a mostly dry expanse of buildings, roads, and lawns, sprinkled with the occasional canal or ornamental lake. But from above, the proportions of water and land are reversed. The glimmering metropolis between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades reveals itself to be a thin lattice of earth and concrete laid across a puddle that never stops forming. Water seeps up through the gravel under construction sites, nibbles at the edges of fresh subdivisions, and shimmers through the cracks and in-between places of the city above it.

    Miami-Dade is built on the Biscayne Aquifer, 4,000 square miles of unusually shallow and porous limestone whose tiny air pockets are filled with rainwater and rivers running from the swamp to the ocean. The aquifer and the infrastructure that draws from it, cleans its water, and keeps it from overrunning the city combine to form a giant but fragile machine. Without this abundant source of fresh water, made cheap by its proximity to the surface, this hot, remote city could become uninhabitable…

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/miami-will-be-underwater-soon-its-drinking-water-could-go-first?utm_source=pocket-newtab

37. The meat we eat is a pandemic risk, too- [its not just the wet markets of china and other countries]
    “If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms.”

    https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/22/21228158/coronavirus-pandemic-risk-factory-farming-meat

    1. I agree the risk is real, but it’s also rather minimal, at least the way we do this in the USA. The number of animals involved are large, and their origins are very well known at least to the people who buy and sell them.

       Poultry is fed out by the tens of thousands of birds, rather than by dozens and hundreds, as happens in undeveloped countries for instance, and so far ( Our luck will eventually run out, no doubt, EVENTUALLY) we have been able to isolate disease outbreaks and cull out potentially infected animals very effectively.

       Slaughter houses know where they get cattle by the truck load, from so called factory farms, which we should really call confined feeding operations or factory MEAT farms. Such places aren’t farms at all, in the usual sense, they’re PROCESSORS. The people that run feed lots aka cafo’s or confined feeding operations seldom ever raise any feed, or raise any cattle.

       But since they do operate on a vast scale, and because there is a more or less effective inspection service operated by states and the USDA, we have so far been able to eliminate the spread of infected animals such as the ones that transmit prion diseases.

       And we don’t generally have more than ONE species of animal around at any given meat farm operation, or even on working farms these days, or maybe two species at the most. We just don’t raise a variety of livestock on working American farms anymore, except backyard and boutique operations catering to at most a small handful of customers.

       I live in farm country, where there are LOTS of small farmers, but I can’t even think of one within driving distance that keeps more than two species of animals for sale. One dominates, such as cows, with maybe a few horses sold as pleasure horses as a side line, or puppies ditto, etc.

       Third world open air and otherwise poorly regulated markets and producers are the primary sources of risk.
       There’s at least one little bit of silver lining to be found in the loss of wildlife in our country……. there just aren’t many wild animals out there in sufficient numbers to come into contact with domestic livestock often enough to put us at high risk of diseases jumping species in this country.

       It’s FAR more likely that the immediate area around a meat farm is more or less a wildlife desert than it is a wild life hot spot.

       1. Have you kept up with the recent African Swine Hemorrhagic Flu, that has been sweeping the globe?
          “the disease proliferated rapidly throughout 2018 and 2019, devastating China’s pig herds (often estimated to be half the global total). In April 2019, researchers with the Dutch firm RaboResearch predicted Chinese 2019 pork production losses of between 150-200 million pigs, ”
          They were all slaughtered in attempt to contain.
          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/african-swine-fever-the-deadly-virus-at-australias-doorstep

          This kind of disease could jump to humans.
          cdc- Like influenza viruses in humans and other animals, swine flu viruses change constantly. Pigs can be infected by avian influenza and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. When influenza viruses from different species infect pigs, the viruses can re-assort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of swine, human and/or avian influenza viruses can emerge. Over the years, different variations of swine flu viruses have emerged. At this time, there are three main influenza A virus subtypes that have been isolated in pigs in the United States: H1N1, H1N2, and H3N2.

          Technically, the term “swine flu” refers to influenza in pigs. Occasionally, pigs transmit influenza viruses to people, mainly to hog farmers and veterinarians. Less often, someone infected with swine flu passes the infection to others.

          In the spring of 2009, scientists recognized a particular strain of flu virus known as H1N1. This virus is actually a combination of viruses from pigs, birds and humans. During the 2009-10 flu season, H1N1 caused the respiratory infection in humans that was commonly referred to as swine flu. Because so many people around the world got sick that year, the World Health Organization declared the flu caused by H1N1 to be a global pandemic.

          The ‘spanish’ flu of 1919 was a swine flu.

38. News Briefs from PV Magazine:

    Historic-low interest rates will power ahead astonishing solar cost reductions

    An Ieefa report has suggested the cost of generating electricity from solar will be near zero in the world’s sunniest regions by 2030-40 – despite what the naysayers at the International Energy Agency might think.

    Chinese PV Industry Brief: a 15 GW factory, new standards and solar glass output

    Risen Solar has unveiled plans for a 15 GW cell and module fab in Yiwu City, Zhejiang province and China South Glass is fundraising for a PV glass factory in Anhui province. Such growth, however, may be slowed by the introduction of new standards by the government.

    US added 3.6 GW of solar in Q1

    Utility-scale solar strength will cover for residential and rooftop PV weakness in 2020, according to SEIA and WoodMac.

    From reneweconomy.com.au:

    EU notches up new record daily renewables share of 55% in May

    High shares of wind, solar, hydro and biomass across the European Union combine to deliver average daily shares of more than 50% renewables.

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    Cheap renewables could deliver 90pct clean grid in US by 2035, and cut costs

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39. New Posts are up.

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/norway-summary/

    and

    http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-june-11-2020/

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