A Guest Post by Islandboy
The EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on October 24th, with data for August 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months.
This report is usually prepared by adding the data for the latest month to spreadsheets that have been populated carrying out this process each month. This month however, this produced effects in the graphs that appeared somewhat unusual. On further investigation, a comparison of the data in Table 1.1 Energy Source: Total – All Sectors with the result of adding the data for each month to the existing spreadsheet as it becomes available, showed that for most sources the data for every month was different. In total some 88% of the cells in the range under consideration were different, including data that had not been added by appending monthly data to the existing spreadsheet. I have reached out by email to the folks at the EIA for an explanation but, have not yet received a response as at the time of this post.
According to the adjusted data, the total amount of electricity generated for the month of July 2018,was the highest amount generated for any single month since January 2013 at 412,383 GWh. Again according to the new data the Month of August 2018, at 410485 GWh, ranks third, behind July 2016 but ahead of August 2016. In the previous edition of this report, based on the old data, it was stated that July 2018 had the second largest amount of total generation behind July 2016 but, the adjusted data has July 2018 up and July 2016 down.
Coal and Natural Gas fueled just over 68.25% of US electricity generation in August, with the contributions from most major sources in both absolute and percentage terms being very similar (within 0.1%) to the previous month. The percentage contribution from Wind was up almost 1% and Hydro was down a little more than 0.5%.
The graph below helps to illustrate how the changes in absolute production affect the percentage contribution from the various sources.
The chart below shows the total monthly generation at utility scale facilities by year versus the contribution from solar. The left hand scale is for the total generation, while the right hand scale is for solar output and has been deliberately set to exaggerate the solar output as a means of assessing it’s potential to make a meaningful contribution to the midsummer peak. In August 2018 the output from solar at 10,000 GWh, was 3.51 times what it was four years ago in August 2014. It is now safe to say, this year solar energy peaked in June, the month of the summer solstice and the peak monthly output for 2018 was 10,869 GWh, according to the adjusted data.
The chart below shows the monthly capacity additions for 2018. In August Natural Gas contributed 86.87 percent of new capacity. With 7.22 percent of new capacity coming from Wind and Solar contributing 5.69 percent, Natural Gas, Solar and Wind made up almost 99.78 percent of new capacity in August. The only capacity added that was not fueled by Natural Gas, Wind or Solar was a 2.5 MW battery installation by Advanced Microgrid Solutions in Irvine, California. In August 2018 the total added capacity reported was 1,135.8 MW, compared to the 505.5 MW added in August 2017.
The adjustments to the data this month were not restricted to the tables used to create the charts at the top of this post. There were significant amendments to the capacity retirements for the month of March. Up until last month there were only 14.4 MW of capacity retirements listed for March but, this month the retirement of 741 MW of coal capacity at a plant named Allen in Tennessee, owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority was listed. In addition the retirement of a 107 MW Natural gas fired steam turbine at a plant called Jack Watson in Mississippi was also added for March. The chart below shows the resulting monthly capacity retirements so far for 2018. The scale on the Y axis has been adjusted to start at 60% since there is no month when the largest single fuel source retired was less than that figure and between January and June, the minor contributors were so small that, they would barely be visible if the scale started at zero. In August the only retirements noted were four 300 kW Natural Gas fired units at the California State University, Northridge.
Following the report on the edition of the EPM with data for March, there was some discussion about coal consumption for the production of electricity. At the request of peakoilbarrel.com member Shyam, I am including a table of the top ten states in order of coal consumption for electricity production for August.
Part of the motivation for tracking this data and producing the graphs has been to try and determine if and when renewable energy makes a significant difference in the US electricity generation landscape. The following web page ndicates that in the area of carbon emissions the effect is already evident:
Carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. power sector have declined 28% since 2005
“U.S. electricity demand has decreased in 6 of the past 10 years, as industrial demand has declined and residential and commercial demand has remained relatively flat. If electricity demand had continued to increase at the average rate from 1996 to 2005 (1.9% per year) instead of its actual average rate of -0.1% per year, U.S. power sector CO2 emissions in 2017 would have been about 654 MMmt more than actual 2017 levels. If the mix of fuels used to generate electricity had also stayed the same since 2005, U.S. power sector CO2 emissions would have been another 645 MMt higher in 2017.
The power sector has become less carbon intensive as natural gas-fired generation displaced coal-fired and petroleum-fired generation and as the non-carbon sources of electricity generation—especially renewables such as wind and solar—have grown. The substitution of natural gas for other fossil fuels has largely been market driven, as ample supplies of lower-priced natural gas and the relative ease of adding natural gas-fired capacity have allowed it to pick up share in electric power generation in many markets. In 2016, natural gas generation surpassed coal as the largest source of electricity generation. “
Hi Islandboy,
Thanks for the charts and update. Can you please look into the emissions data to find out when was the last year when the emissions were at or below 1744MMmt? TIA!
Regards,
Shyam
After spending some time searching for the answer without success, I found the answer. It’s in the link above! The piece starts with:
“U.S. electric power sector carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) have declined 28% since 2005 because of slower electricity demand growth and changes in the mix of fuels used to generate electricity. EIA has calculated that CO2 emissions from the electric power sector totaled 1,744 million metric tons (MMmt) in 2017, the lowest level since 1987. ”
Sometimes it pays to follow links! 😉
On the other hand, one of the reasons I spent so much time searching was that, I seem to remember seeing an article, probably from the EIA’s Today in Energy series, that spoke to US carbon emissions being the lowest since some time in the eighties. I seem to remember adding it as part of commentary at the end of one my EPM posts. You might want to go to “electric Power Monthly” in the Category section of the sidebar at the right of this page and look through each one, starting with a couple months ago.
edit: Here it is (and I should be mad at you since, this was the very thread in which you asked “Can you please add it as a graph along with the top 10 coal consuming states henceforth if it is not too much trouble?”):
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eias-electric-power-monthly-may-2018-edition-with-data-for-march/
Oops! sorry.. should have clicked on the link 😉
“The power sector has become less carbon intensive as natural gas-fired generation displaced coal-fired and petroleum-fired generation”
Less carbon intensive is correct, however, NG produces a lot of secondary emissions, therefore, the GHG gain from switching to NG is not impressive, in case of unconventional NG may be even negative.
Russian pipeline NG had only a 17% GHG advantage in comparison to lignite in 2006 in Germany, according to a Max-Plnck paper. The difference has very likely decreased in the next decade as the average efficiency of coal power plants became better and numbers for secondary NG emissions became higher. IMHO NG is a distraction.
Fully agree with Ulenspiegel, natural gas is a bridge to nowhere.
Its a bridge across a dry swamp to a warmer world.
In order to reverse the melting of the glaciers, permafrost and Ice masses of Greenland and Antarctica we need to reverse what has been done. Simply cutting down greenhouse gases will just delay the catastrophe which is already in the making.
The task of installing enough wind and solar in order to dispense with fossil fuels is immense.
https://understandsolar.com/how-many-solar-panels-to-charge-an-electric-car/
One would need 8 solar panels on average to charge an electric car.
On top of that a family would need another 16 panels to power their domestic needs.
https://www.insulationsuperstore.co.uk/product/4kw-plug-in-solar-metal-roof-mounted-diy-solar-panel-kit.html
All the solar panels fitted globally last year could power about half the cars sold. The batteries currently available to power a lorry are not practical.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bmw-40-tonne-electric-truck
I would drive 300 to 400 miles per day when I worked as a lorry driver.
Globally lorries use about 10 million barrels per day.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/25/article-1306058-0AE81AE1000005DC-171_634x423_popup.jpg
Shipping is another difficult area to convert and it is a major polluter.
https://eu.oceana.org/en/shipping-pollution-1
The growing aviation industry uses 6 million barrels per day and carried in excess of 4 billion passangers.
https://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/Documents/fact-sheet-industry-facts.pdf
Global spending on wind and solar is only a fraction of what it needs to be.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/global-renewable-power-spending-has-been-virtually-flat-for-seven-years.html
Perhaps if we reversed the spending on killing people with spending on clean energy we would have a chance.
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/global-military-spending-230-per-person
“One would need 8 solar panels on average to charge an electric car.”
Well, just keep in mind that the example they used for the calculations was a very small car (Bolt-which I’m very impressed with but want something bigger), and using Las Vegas solar input. And 11,000 miles total.
A more realistic number of panels would probably be double for much of the country.
Still an awesome capability however.
Strange, at 0.25 kWh per mile that would be 2750 kWh. Use 80 percent to cover all losses(heating, air conditioning, charging) gets 3437 kWh of demand.
8 panels of 300 watt each times 4.5 sun-hours average (my area is half cloudy, humid and further north) per day times 365 is 3942 kWh of production. Five percent loss gives 3745 kWh useful production.
I would go for 10 panels to get across the winter low.
Las Vegas gets 6.5 sun hours per day making production far in excess of demand when using 8 panels.
Some EV’s are using only 0.2 kWh per mile at highway speeds. I expect that to hit 0.15 kWh per mile or better in the next 5 years as carbon fiber components, in wheel motors and super-capacitors become integrated in the car design. Range could easily hit 500 miles per charge with those advances plus solar panels to gather energy as you travel and park.
How many solar panels is, as you both say dependent on the car and where you live.
Either way solar panels and wind are a drop in the ocean.
https://www.iea.org/statistics/?country=WORLD&year=2016&category=Key%20indicators&indicator=ElecGenByFuel&mode=chart&categoryBrowse=true&dataTable=ELECTRICITYANDHEAT&showDataTable=false
By now the blue that is coal needed to be solar and the purple needed to be wind. Then perhaps the worst could have been avoided.
Looking at total energy used renewable energy is an even smaller amount.
https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
Solar being a 1,000 TWh out of 131,000 TWh of coal, oil and gas.
Indeed.
So just how many solar panels in Las Vegas area would it take to produce 130,000 TWhrs?
OK, so here in mid Calif I have 20 high efficiency panels (330 W 19% efficiency) panels, and get about 500 kwhr each/yr.
130,000 TWhrs= 1.3 x 10 14th kwhrs
divide by 500= 260 billion
I get 260 Billion of these panels to equate to the current fossil fuel energy equivalent.
Sarcaism- I’m glad all the worlds economies and families are debt free so we can afford to buy and install these 260 Billion panels over the next 10-20 yrs.
It is not buying panels on top of the budget. It is replacing budget spent on fossil fuels with budget sped on solar panels. Moving expenditure from A to B.
NAOM
notanoilman- for most people/utilities the investment in a solar system equates to somewhere between 7 and 30 yrs worth of fossil energy expenditure, depending on factors such as how sunny it is in your area, and cost of installation (on the ground is cheap compared to on a roof).
For the vast majority this requires either savings, or a loan. Loan means more debt, on top of more more debt.
And yet, the total monthly expenses will be lower. IOW, the additional loan payment (including payments toward principal) will be less than the reduction in utility payments.
That 131,000 TWh’s includes the >60% that is ‘rejected’ due to the inefficiency of thermal plants and combustion engines.
Yes Bob you are absolutely correct but I get tired of correcting the outlandish energy and number of solar panel claims. Previous corrections lately have had no effect, so it is just a waste of time. The real difference is closer to 80 percent because of the very large amount of energy involved in obtaining, processing and transporting fossil fuels themselves.
As for the “between 7 and 30 yrs worth of fossil energy expenditure” investment figures, I did an exercise circa 2012 in which I calculated that a PV system to replace grid supplied electricity in my neck of the woods, would cost between 6 to 7 yrs of the current electricity bill for a given premises.
Costs have fallen significantly since then and to support that, one of the biggest installers of systems around here, a Spain based outfit stated as much in a presentation the managing director made at a green energy seminar earlier this year. He pointed out that their first project had a payback period of 6-7 yrs while they were looking at 3-4 yrs for their most recent projects.
One of the big problems with coming up with a figure for the cost of replacing current FF electricity with PV, is that it is a moving target! For example, this just in:
Dubai: tariff for large-scale PV hits new low at $0.024/kWh
The Dubai Water and Electricity Authority (DEWA) has announced that Phase IV of its 5 GW Mohammed bin Rashid Maktoum Solar Park, originally planned to deploy 700 MW of CSP capacity, will now also include a PV section of 250 MW.
The power utility also said that the PPA it awarded to Saudi energy giant, ACWA Power for the construction of the 950 MW plant has now been amended and that the price for the sale of electricity from the new PV section has been set at $0.024/kWh. This price equals the lowest price ever recorded for a large-scale solar project in the Emirates – $0.0242/kWh – which was offered in March 2017 by the joint venture of JinkoSolar and Marubeni for a 1.17 GW solar project in Abu Dhabi. The previous lowest price in Dubai was that of Phase III of the Mohammed bin Rashid Maktoum Solar Park, which is planned to have a capacity of 800 MW and is currently being developed by a consortium formed by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi-based developer of renewable energy, Spain-based GranSolar and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV), which is a unit of the Saudi Arabian firm, Abdul Latif Jameel. In May 2016, the consortium offered a tariff of $0.029/kWh, at the time the world’s lowest solar bid ever recorded.
Great, so when get 50 billion panels installed we can can reconvene and recalculate how many tens of billions more panel we’ll need.
In the meantime we can save the required money in a ‘lock box’ account.
On the cost issue, I have a very well-priced system ($2.30/ installed watt residential) and a expensive electrical market (about 25 cents/kwhr calif), and a sunny roof. This is a great scenario for payback. Still about 10 yrs breakeven.
If your roof is very sunny, you might get 2,000 watt hours per year per installed watt. That should save you 50 cents per year, and give you a 4.6 year payback.
If you get less sun, and 1,500 watt hours per watt, then you should have 37.5 cents savings per year and a 6.1 year payback.
Yeh, lets forget using real data.
Since we are going with wishful thinking,
I’ll go for a 12 month payback,
with the upfront costs paid for by the utility.
And free pizza too.
Don’t be rude. Just give us the real data!
What’s the size of the system, and how much power does it produce per year?
Here you go-
6.6 kW system comprised of [20] 330W panels (19% eff) facing SSW.
Expected annual output 9,966 kwhrs,
although we get quite a bit of fog up on this ridge, so I’m guessing we’ll be closer to 9000 kwhrs.
Before I go further with this I’ll point out that pay back period is hard to calculate because of many variables. For example, we have a very complicated time of use rate plan with the utility, which expires in 3 yrs. For our system, in a sunny / high electric rate area, the payback calculators are coming out between 7 and 10 yrs, depending on what assumptions we use. And we got a great installed price- $2.30/W Obviously payback would be worse if your electric rates are less than 25 cents/kwhr and/or you live in a less sunny zone.
Bottomline- you either save up 7-20 yrs worth of electric bill money to buy the system, or you borrow money to do it. Whether you are a homeowner, a coop or a utility, the same concept applies. That was my original point.
Sorry if I was rude, but I’m still hoping for the free pizza from the utility.
Shifting from fuel consumption to investment in fuel saving, whether it be downsizing your vehicle, buying LEDs, planting a deciduous tree on the south side of your house, or investing in renewables, is a way out of debt.
One of America’s worst economic problems is the inability to think long term. Your remark is typical of that. Stop wasting money on stupid stuff and start spending it on things that save you money in the long run. It works wonders.
‘alimbiquated’
I completely agree about the spending priorities- that is why I spent savings on my PV system. And on a plug-in hybrid vehicle.
It is also why I am very disappointed by the poor financial choices of the larger culture- debt for wars, for endless suburbs and big motors on boats and trucks, fashion, and frills. Much of it so stupid.
Who else in this discussion has put up lots of money for renewables in their personal life? I hope everyone.
Hickory,
Yes, you did the smart thing. If your payback period is 8.5 years (midpoint of 7-10 years), then your Return On Investment is about 12%!
It’s very, very hard to find such a high ROI, combined with safety and a non-depreciating asset.
Agree Nick.
I would like to vote for people whose intention was to push hard for a massive buildout of PV, particularly in the SW.
The whole country could be getting this kind of economic benefit.
Hickory
“Who else in this discussion has put up lots of money for renewables in their personal life? I hope everyone.”
Rat went solar in ’06. After doing so, he tried to convince the school board to put in a system. They did get a 1.4Kw demo system from PG&E, but that was about it, until a few years ago, when we passed a bond measure for class improvement, which included solar. Rat gave the school some money for the system. The 35 Kw system went operation last summer.
Then my son asked if I would do the same for his daughters’ school, so both of us chipped in, and they now have a system. I’m not sure how big.
strong work wharf rat.
where Willits?
The heat buffers are breaking down.
https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/big-thaw
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/30/siberian-craters-big-releases-of-methane-could-pose-broad-problems.html
http://fortune.com/2018/10/31/climate-change-ocean-warming-ipcc-report-global-warming/
The processes have now been set in motion, even cutting CO2 emission by half is still half too much. Only negative emissions can prevent the finely balanced systems being torn apart.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20180208STO97442/cutting-eu-greenhouse-gas-emissions-national-targets-for-2030
“The council need to approve the legislation”
I think not only the time for talking is over, we have missed the time for action also.
I moved this from a previous thread as it’s quite important. The Nature article indicating 60% higher heat in the oceans than previously thought means the palaeoclimate record, modelling results and current data are much more self consistent and that the earth sensitivity is in the highest of estimated ranges.
The estimate for permafrost melting at 20% by 2040 would put an extra 80 ppm CO2e in the atmosphere – probably much more as other sinks are failing, some of the release would be methane and N2O, and I think the estimate assumes that we follow a path to limit warming to 2°C, which is looking at best like a P5 chance.
Overall we are on the ropes and taking repeated blows to the body and head. To me hot house runaway is now certain, it’s just a question of how fast it happens. Removing CO2 at any scale is really a pipe dream.
So that’s how it happens. The planetary petri-dish. A sociopoliticultural momentum that we cannot stop.
The solution to pollution is delusion.
I’m considering writing a public apology to the remaining species for my species’ planetary transgressions and printing copies of it out and posting it around town here. Of course the target audience is my species.
If you and/or anyone else would like to help co-write it– add your two cents– feel free and I can try to incorporate it…
Maybe I(/we) can sort of start working on it here, even compose the whole thing hereon.
Gotta go. Sorry for the mess. x
p.s. you’re out of milk … and almost everything else.
Thanks, George. Maybe we can put that at the end as a kind of humourous anecdote. The ‘x’ is a cute touch. Who are we kissing? I guess every one of the remaining species.
Hi George,
What is the evidence for “the other sinks are failing”? Interesting paper, thanks.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0651-8/tables/2
One of the main results at link above and table below.
ARE WE LOSING ONE OF OUR BIGGEST CARBON DIOXIDE SINKS?
Despite the importance of these ecosystems, to date, none of them are included in the global carbon trading programmes. Alarmingly, in the past 50 years, at least one-third of the distribution area of coastal vegetated ecosystems has been lost.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-biggest-carbon-dioxide.html#jCp
Thanks Doug.
These constant strawmen get a bit tedious, but:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/316/5832/1735
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/alarm-as-study-reveals-worlds-tropical-forests-are-huge-carbon-emission-source
https://www.carbonbrief.org/worlds-soils-have-lost-133bn-tonnes-of-carbon-since-the-dawn-of-agricultuhttps://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-solve-ocean-carbon-sink-puzzle
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5448179/
https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-ocean-carbon-sink-or-carbon-source-1881835600.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160922085737.htm
I spent a minute on google to find hose, there are probably more, and there are probably plenty of strawman opportunities in each paper but they’d be better directed at the authors.
Are you presenting that table as evidence that the sinks aren’t failing, if so please explain, if not why have you posted it?
Please note I didn’t say all other sinks, and used the qualifier ‘probably’.
From University of East Anglia Carbon budget project.
And:
Thanks George.
Using the Global Carbon budget from 1961 to 2016, you are correct, the percentage of carbon emissions sequestered by land and ocean has been decreasing and likely at a greater rate since about 1990. If fossil fuel output peaks and the level of carbon emissions decreases this trend may reverse, that is what the Bern model suggests will occur.
Taking chart from comment above and ividing the series in two, with 1961-1989 and 1990 to 2016, the rate of decrease in percentage of carbon uptake roughly doubled in 1990 to 2016 compared to 1961 to 1989.
There is a lot of information on earth temperature changes contained in this site, especially if one follows the links.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
Of the last 225 million years the earth has been in a warm state except for the last two of million years. That is less than 1 percent of the time being cold (ice age). So where we are heading is not unusual nor is it devoid of life. In fact it produced a tremendous diversity of life.
The Ice Age has been tough on life since the glaciations/deglaciations happen quickly.
This heat pulse we have initiated is being prolonged and expanded upon by the many natural feedback systems, which are much stronger than the initial human induced carbon pulse and land changes provide by human techno-civilization. The next few hundred and then many thousands of years will most likely bring a long warm period, the more natural state of the earth system (high probability). In the past it has taken many millions of years to leave that warm state as geography and topography as well as crustal/volcanic changes occur. We seem to have the first part of the ride with an express ticket.
What will be the carrying capacity of this warmer world, with its shallow dead zones and quiet forest remnants, in 2100?
Since mammals ran amok and highly diversified during the PETM, probably large, but I think you need a temporal adjustment. Still thinking in human terms during a geologic event is not compatible.
Forests up to the Arctic Ocean, on Antarctica and Greenland, a world covered with life not ice. The ocean life does not do so well at first , but seems to come around in the long run.
Kingdom of the Rats
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/rats-as-big-as-sheep-rodents-could-evolve-to-fill-niches-as-larger-mammals-go-extinct-9105626.html
Dang, the only response to that is
There were rats, rats bigger than the cats
NAOM 🙂
We are, in a way, all the descendants of rodent types. From whale to shrew.
https://www.livescience.com/60888-rat-creatures-were-earliest-eutherian-mammal-ancestors.html
Ain’t it wonderful?
Oh, rats!
Sounds like a plan.
https://youtu.be/tABJthJtSww
GoneFishing,
Rodent types? Shrews everywhere would wrinkle there little snouts (they do that a lot anyway) at the very thought. “How human-centric” they’d say, with sorecine disdain.
Just because rats and mice, with rodentine vigah, have adopted us as home-mates (showing great forbearance on their part) we are prone to overlook the ancient little predators that haunt the dreams of earthworms and would happily make a meal of any rat or mouse they got the drop on. They are worthy of respect and it is to them these late-Jurassic early eutherians may be with justice compared.
You know, the late Jurassic would have been a great time to be a mammal lover. Along with basal placentals there were likely to have been basal marsupials, I should think, and monotremes were already there, and multituberculates–they lasted till the Eocene!–triconodonts, symmetrodonts, and maybe other-donts too. Little furries all over the place, and dinosaurs sporting feathers, who’d have added color to the scene. We live in a sadly depauperate world.
Time for more port–there are sorrows to be drowned!
“multituberculates”, well I’m glad there are some medicines for that now!
Yes, there are only 6400
mammal species left. The fantastic menagerie of the previous 60 million years got winnowed down during the Ice Age. Average mammal species lasts 1 million years so there has been a lot of change along he way.
https://mammaldiversity.org/
New Study Doubles the Estimate of Bird Species in the World
New research led by the American Museum of Natural History suggests that there are about 18,000 bird species in the world—nearly twice as many as previously thought. The work focuses on “hidden” avian diversity—birds that look similar to one another, or were thought to interbreed, but are actually different species. Recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study has serious implications for conservation practices
https://www.amnh.org/about-the-museum/press-center/new-study-doubles-the-estimate-of-bird-species-in-the-world
I wonder if dinosaurs are going to outlast us after all.
NAOM
The exact carrying capacity is less important than whether a species could get there. There have been studies that show during a collapse the undershoot is of the same order as the overshoot. If the human carrying capacity dropped to a billion, and in a hothouse world with most easily accessible resources severely degraded it’s probably much less, then the undershoot would be negative 6 or 7 billion or more. So there’s lots of room for humans to go extinct, possibly all mammals. I read somewhere recently that average species life is 100,000 years so we’ve done OK, or it could be seen as living on borrowed time now. Maybe we’d evolve to something else but given how fast things are happening it seems unlikely. If the oceans were to go substantially anoxic then the H2S would eventually wipe out most multicellular life.
Oh ya, the oceans going anoxic in a relatively-short period of time is probably a death sentence to most life.
Good reading and links GF.
One dramatic take home message for me when I look at the paleoclimatology information, is just how quickly severe changes can happen.
The recent transition out of full-tilt ice age to current warmish spell happened in just about 6000 yrs (from about 16K to 10K yrs before now). From a mile thick year-round glacier on NY, to body surfing warmth in the summer, in just 6-7000K yrs is astounding.
Sea level rise is pegged at over 300 ft since that glacial peak!
In geologic time frames, this is the blink of an eye, yet the changes are fast and massive in the timeframe of living creatures.
We could get our socks blow off, literally (this time by a hot wind).
The northern hemisphere had lots of extra solar insolation with up to 125 watts/m2 extra at 60N to push the final deglaciation. Other factors like ponding of melt water, other albedo changes, lowering of the glacier’s altitude and some rise in CO2/methane helped to quickly remove the huge ice sheets.
Going from an albedo of 0.8+/-0.1 down to 0.3 or less is a huge energy factor in putting heat into the ice and earth system. That in itself controls a significant part of the surface insolation. CO2 played a minor role in the thermodynamics.
Yep!
Don’t rule out severe global climate change yet
November 1, 2018 by Anne M Stark, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-dont-severe-global-climate.html#jCp
Cheers!
…
….
I was thinking Kelp forests might help counter rising CO2 emissions but alas:
As Oceans Warm, the World’s Kelp Forests Begin to Disappear
A steady increase in ocean temperatures — nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit in recent decades — was all it took to doom the once-luxuriant giant kelp forests of eastern Australia and Tasmania: Thick canopies that once covered much of the region’s coastal sea surface have wilted in intolerably warm and nutrient-poor water. Then, a warm-water sea urchin species moved in. Voracious grazers, the invaders have mowed down much of the remaining vegetation and, over vast areas, have formed what scientists call urchin barrens, bleak marine environments largely devoid of life.
Today, more than 95 percent of eastern Tasmania’s kelp forests — luxuriant marine environments that provide food and shelter for species at all levels of the food web — are gone. With the water still warming rapidly and the long-spine urchin spreading southward in the favorable conditions, researchers see little hope of saving the vanishing ecosystem.
Ah well! Out of sight, out of mind!
P.S. Ecology has always been a pet interest of mine. Over fish lobsters > urchin populations explode > at risk marine vegetation put under further pressure! Unintended consequences?
The amount of NG additions in the mix is staggering. What’s that big sucking sound?
https://www.powermag.com/duke-energy-brings-first-820-mw-of-new-florida-gas-plant-online/
https://www.powermag.com/oldest-u-s-nuclear-plant-shuts-down/
Need to keep those air cons running. 😉
As expressed by Dr. Tony Ingraffea of Cornell, shale gas and oil are a huge mistake. The tapping of these mostly unprofitable fossil fuels has dramatically slowed progress toward renewable energy and alternative zero emission transport, while mostly being used to extend the mining and drilling of fossil fuels. Just at the particular time when a few decades really counted, they are mostly being squandered in the ever huge thrust for growth and prosperity.
I must admit the Republicans are very smart in their methods, they got the BBC to blatantly campaign for them on public radio this very morning. Right before the mid-term election.
I couldn’t fall off my seat, which was lucky. I also noticed that the level of “terror” within the US has escalated lately.
How BAU of the BBC.
In ‘The Sunshine State’, how ironic.
NAOM
Long timber
The spread of CCGT plants – like the one in Citrus county in your referenced article – will continue for many years.
The full 1,640 megawatts due online shortly will require less than 75 full time employees.
This plant, like many others planned throughout the southeast and upper midwest, are being supplied by new build pipelines, which is one explanation for the ferocious pushback by hydrocarbon foes.
The Tenaska plant east of Pittsburgh, near 1,000 megawatts, is in the commissioning phase and will be online in a few weeks.
Staffed by 30 and supplied with nearby Marcellus gas, these plants will offer incomparable economic advantages to competing power generators.
…which is one explanation for the ferocious pushback by hydrocarbon foes.
Anyone who is not a ferocious foe of continued hydrocarbon use, is an enemy of all life on this planet! There are no longer any excuses for promoting hydrocarbon use!
Fred- “Anyone who is not a ferocious foe of continued hydrocarbon use, is an enemy of all life on this planet!”
We are all the enemy, as we sit in our airplane or ICE vehicle seat, as we cluster in air conditioned spaces, plug anything into the wall, or turn up the heat. Our actions speak loudly.
Don’t take this as a person attack, for I also live behind glass.
First, I don’t take your comment as a personal attack!
We are all the enemy, as we sit in our airplane or ICE vehicle seat, as we cluster in air conditioned spaces, plug anything into the wall, or turn up the heat. Our actions speak loudly.
I agree! However the difference and the line that I draw personally is between those of us who want to stop using fossil fuels because we know that continuing with BAU is suicide. And we are taking steps in our personal lives to limit our fossil fuel footprint as much as possible vs those people who see no problem whatsoever with a continuation of BAU and are actively planning to keep using them!
There is no way that we as individuals can change the entire system and we are going to need profound systemic paradigm change. The problem is those people who do not recognize this need and are still actively promoting keeping things as they are! There is no excuse for that, period!
Fred, two small countries I follow closely (Norway, family reasons, Uganda because we support a school girl there). Ironically, both have their (mid-term) economic futures tied to oil. At least they’re not burning coal. Sigh.
NEW [Norwegian] OIL DISCOVERY ‘IMPORTANT’
“The discovery is bad news for environmentalists trying to protect the Arctic from more oil industry activity. News bureau NTB reported that the new oil discovery will increase Norway’s annual carbon emissions by more than 310,000 tons, equal to those from 100,000 cars. While motorists in Norway are being hit with increasingly high fees and measures at aimed at restricting driving, the country’s oil industry controversially continues to expand, not least after oil prices have risen to around USD 80 a barrel in recent weeks.”
https://www.newsinenglish.no/2018/11/02/new-oil-discovery-important/
UGANDA PUSHES OIL-REFINERY START TO 2022
“A group led by General Electric Co. is contracted to build the 60,000 barrel-a-day plant in the Hoima district of western Uganda. It will take oil from fields being developed by Total SA, Cnooc Ltd. and Tullow Oil Plc — due to start flowing in 2020. Plans have also been submitted for a 900-mile crude-export pipeline via Tanzania, which will be completed before the refinery.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/uganda-pushes-oil-refinery-start-to-2022-as-project-plan-delayed
“Anyone who is not a ferocious foe of continued hydrocarbon use, is an enemy of all life on this planet!”
Perhaps then you’ll show moral leadership and not accept that ambulance ride when you need it the most.
“The practice of opulent tertiary medicine in the present context of increasingly desperate public health problems worldwide and an approaching catastrophe of human misery is not only immoral, it is obscene, horrible, terrible, and repellant.” ~ Andrew Jameton, Casuist or Cassandra? Two Conceptions of the Bioethicist’s Role (1994)
Anybody who wants to prove they have the minerals to save the planet can just say no to healthcare.
https://noharm-global.org/issues/global/health-care’s-climate-footprint
Perhaps then you’ll show moral leadership and not accept that ambulance ride when you need it the most.
I won’t be using the ambulance! I have my alternative plan in place. Do you have yours?! I’m sure not many would be willing to follow my moral leadership because most people probably can’t handle the truth. Some rare exceptions notwithstanding.
Cheers!
The atmosphere is about 80% N2.
They sell it in tanks at about 99%.
Exactly!
Still In The Matrix?
What no retort with something about The System’s PV’s, doughnut/circular economics, CRISPR, biomimicry or a TED Talk video with Ellen McArthur, ‘Dr.'(?) Pauline Benyus, or Tony Seba, ‘thought-leader’ to set us straight? Maybe George Soros, ‘philanthropist’, can save us.
Your comments have far too often made me think of that NPC meme, not unlike many, if not most, of the characters in The Matrix.
Graphic of NPC meme attached.
An anarchist might use the police to their advantage because they know that they don’t have ‘real’ community (somewhat thanks to the state) that can provide the kinds of services that the police are garbage-propagandized to provide– ‘to serve and protect’. ‘To serve the poor with violence and protect the interests of the elite.’
So, that said, maybe you can use the ambulance in a real emergency and the absence of any other alternative.
It is amazing how many people say they don’t want to over do it on health care at the end, but most do anyway. They have not taken the legal and family steps to make sure things are crystal clear, they often lose their ability to be involved in the decision making process with delirium. When they are in great pain, they typically say- ‘just do whatever to stop it’, and that begins a slippery slope. And often they are just not ready.
We each can receive fatal news any day. Who among is prepared to gracefully step down on that day, later today or in 17 yrs. You just don’t know.
I don’t have any bucket list. Not a single item.
If things go well, we are defrosting some chicken-apple sausage for dinner.
What is the concept and/or potential of ‘health care’ in your mind… such as if our places have been stripped of true community and medical knowledge and injected with industrial poisons? We can have it both ways; more needless diseases and health care (until maybe the health care part slowly disappears, along with, for example, Big Pharma).
I seem to recall reading one of your comments about something of a background in agro. Is it any good? Was its mention merely some sort of status-signalling? Well, what about ‘magic’ mushrooms, marijuana, poppies and/or local/home-made anaesthetics? Anything to share there in terms of personal/local knowledge/empowerment such as as/if the system sufficiently declines/degrades? Sharing is caring.
Mostly a monotheist, or even just Christian, culture attribute and only possible in a world with plenty of excess energy. The Vikings, Romans, samurai, hunter-gathrers had a rather less fearful and more practical approach. Even the Victorians had foundling mills where excess children were put to be forgotten about and frequently suffer a quick death, which is euthanasia and far worse, but doesn’t get mentioned much by those who think they were our glory years.
In UK we have regular calls to allow assisted suicide but the law is fairly clear and even the highest courts can’t overrule even if they wanted to. No enough in parliament so far have the courage to change the law although there is a gradual swing I think. One frequent argument is that it could lead to relatives abusing the privilege, which is a bit like saying people shouldn’t own cars because it might encourage car theft, plus there are plenty of older, vulnerable people getting continually abused by relatives and ‘carers’ through their final years anyway who might prefer to have it over and done with either way. Personally I don’t see why it’s anybody’s business but mine and shouldn’t even be mentioned in an act of law.
“Personally I don’t see why it’s anybody’s business but mine and shouldn’t even be mentioned in an act of law.”
Yes indeed, but the pope and all his soldiers, and the islamic equivalents, might not be too happy with what you are saying.
The End of Kings
Why worry about them or give them a voice?
Many like them, like the state, itself, will likely be going away as they create the conditions by their modus operandi for their own foundations/support-structures to erode.
Nature and freedom are the essential support structures. Western health care as we know it and as one facet cannot last without them, despite illusions and/by fat tails.
“In the old days, kings wore gold on their heads, and when you saw one you were expected to remove your hat and bow or you’d be tortured to death in the town square. Then along came the printing press and people got better at sharing ideas with each other, and pretty soon everyone started to connect the dots and realized that kings were just regular people with gold on their heads. Once everyone started agreeing that they didn’t much like being tortured to death in the town square for not groveling before some schmuck with a shiny hat, kings went out of style.
But they didn’t go away.”
~ video, The End of Kings, linked above
The plant will enable Duke Energy to retire two coal-fired units at the Crystal River Energy Complex site that have operated since 1966 and 1969, respectively. Those retirements will leave the utility with just two remaining coal-fired units in Florida, the Units 4 and 5 at Crystal River, with total generation capacity of 1,422 MW. Those units began operation in 1982.
http://greenphysicist2.blogspot.com/2010/02/our-earth-in-2050.html
Among other things, they project CO2 atmosphere to be over 500 ppm (now at 406, per-industrial 280) by 2050.
Hickory,
The projection assumes there is plenty of fossil fuel, not correct. Fossil fuel output will peak and the price of fossil fuels will rise, that will be the undoing of a BAU projection. We only have enough fossil fuel for an RCP4.5 type of scenario and that only occurs if there are no changes in fossil fuel use as they become more expensive, an unlikely proposition.
This is not to say climate change is not a problem. It will be very difficult to make the needed changes as quickly as they are needed and even if everything is done that can be done, there will still be more warming than is optimal, but a “rapid” demographic transition (50 years) to an average TFR of 1.5 births per woman along will a rapid energy transition to zero fossil fuels and better agricultural practices might help a bit.
“…there will still be more warming than is optimal…”
Are you serious Dennis? Sounds like a script for a new Mary Poppins movie and not even close to what climate scientists are warning (saying). You do realize Earth is currently in the midst of a rapidly expanding ecological disaster? Oh well, must be nice living in a bubble.
Doug,
Yes I am aware. The point was that even if we do everything possible to reduce climate impact there will still be too much warming.
What the IPCC SR15 says is that we might still achieve a scenario with 1.5 C of warming and they also say there will be problems even if that goal is achieved.
I have read much of the report, you may interpret it differently.
What the IPCC SR15 says is that we might still achieve a scenario with 1.5 C of warming and they also say there will be problems even if that goal is achieved.
I have read much of the report, you may interpret it differently.
Really?! Sorry, but I think your interpretation is borderline delusional!
Thanks to Survivakist’s link to the Jean-Marc Jancovici (Radio Ecoshock interview) I also read the following article below it.
I happen to concur with the views of Biologist Peter Watts!
https://un-denial.com/2018/10/30/by-peter-watts-the-adorable-optimism-of-the-ipcc/
The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC
It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.
We have twelve years to show results.
Anyone who believes that humanity will pull some magical rabbit out of the hat in the next 12 years is just plain loco!
Good fucking luck with that!
The magical CO2 control knob is one directional.
Not to mention that it is directly linked to a couple of hundred other magical control knobs that are also one directional…
But we can forgive Dennis and others, including ourselves for being delusionally optimistic!
As Peter Watts says in the linked essay:
It’s not that I’ve given up hope entirely. But perhaps my narrative emphasis has shifted away from Avoid the Cliff and closer to Make the Fuckers Pay. Hope— dims, as time runs out. Anger builds.
And now, nearly a hundred world-class scientists throw a report at our feet that proves something I’ve recognized intellectually for years, although not so consistently in my gut: I’ve been just as childishly, delusionally optimistic as the rest of you.
And so as we all continue to steadfastly march lemming like, toward the edge of the cliff, it is little consolation to know, that ‘The Fuckers’ will pay, regardless! Along with the rest of us.
Cheers!
But I fear that if the message is that we can do nothing to affect climate change, many people will do nothing.
If you have been told you will die in a few years and living a healthy lifestyle won’t change anything, why put yourself through anything you don’t want to do?
Why should we modify energy consumption if it makes no difference? The only reason to change, then, would be if the cost of fossil fuels is prohibitive. And even then, if you find a way to avoid those costs (like stealing fossil fuel, or finding ways to borrow the money to buy it and then not pay it back) you may have no reason to look for cheaper energy if the transition is inconvenient.
Not at all! The message is more along the lines of: NO PAIN NO GAIN! But all people want to do is sit comfortably on their couches wallowing in their ignorance! Nobody seems willing to engage in the extremely hard work of necessary paradigm change. That is what those who understand our current dilemmas get depressed about. Right now we need all hands on deck! Survival is really hard work and made all the harder by all the folks not pulling their weight by being ignorant and not wanting to change!
This sounds hopeless.
“Anyone who believes that humanity will pull some magical rabbit out of the hat in the next 12 years is just plain loco!”
Personally I think we are headed for very hard times. I don’t think Homo Sapiens will immediately die off, but I do expect life to be different for those who survive.
My “hope” is that enough is done that the species survives and that my children and grandkids can have a life that isn’t hopeless.
I still need to believe those goals can be accomplished even if most of humanity is still heading off a cliff.
I am also curious how life will be for the Florida Trump supporters as life in that state becomes harder as a result of hurricanes, flooding, sinking land, drought, and loss of clean water. Seems like ecological karma for them.
Fred,
There are many scientists with a variety of opinions as to how bad it will get.
A thought that occurs to me is that if one takes the position that no matter what we do, that there will be a disaster in any case, is essentially a call to do nothing.
That seems the wrong policy from where I sit. The way I read the SR15, is that we need to act quickly if there is to be any chance at all to keep warming in 2100 close to 1.5 C above the 1850-1900 average Global temperature. Note also that if we use the 1961-1990 Global average temperature, the Global average temperature was about 0.3 C to 0.5 C from -8000 to -3000 CE above the 1961-1990 average temperature (one sigma over this period was about 0.13 C). The 1850 to 1900 average temperature was about 0.4 C below the 1961-1990 Global average temperature. So 1.5C above the 1850-1900 average is roughly 0.7 C above the -8000 CE to -3000 CE average (0.38C relative to 1961-1990 anomaly).
In any case, I am not a biologist or ecologist, but the experts believe doing nothing is a bad idea and doing as much as we can as quickly as we can is a better idea.
I agree with that assessment, if you think that is delusional, so be it.
Well said. I think I’ll take the part below, and save it for future use.
“The position that no matter what we do there will be a disaster in any case, that is essentially a call to do nothing. The experts believe doing nothing is a bad idea and doing as much as we can as quickly as we can is a better idea.”
What if the biggest bang for the buck turned out to be an immediate and significant reduction in the world population? Only two choices. Reduce the population… or don’t. Reduce = things get bad. Don’t reduce = things get awful, really awful…and the population declines…big time.
That’s the big conundrum I have with techno fixes that are seeking to maintain today’s happy motoring delusion. They basically ignore the environmental issues from groundwater depletion, soil erosion and biodiversity destruction (the erosion of our basic human individuality by the internet, social media and the advertising industry might be another). Plus I think there are probably many negative externalities that would grow exponentially as renewables are scaled up (to some extent stating to be seen) and are being ignored just as those for fossil fuels have been.
In relative terms the green revolution reduced hardship significantly, but in absolute terms it may well have increased because of the huge jump in population: does the increase in the number of people ‘just about getting along OK’ compensate, it’s taken axiomatically by most people brought up in a capitalist, growth based culture that it does. However if and when the collapse comes it means the most efficiently rapacious species known is going to be in huge overshoot and will burn everything that can be burnt and eat everything with meat on it’s bones (or exoskeleton) and maybe leave nothing to salvage.
“What if the biggest bang for the buck turned out to be an immediate and significant reduction in the world population? ”
What’s your plan for doing that?
The fast reduction in population WILL come but not of our choosing.
NAOM
George Kaplan,
The tentative plan is to reduce environmental impact as much as is possible while the World gradually makes it to the point where a demographic transition takes place.
In many East Asian nations TFR is close to 1.5 births per woman. The World Average TFR fell from 5 births per woman to 2.5 births per woman from 1965 to 2005, perhaps we will get to 1.75 by 2045 and to 1.5 by 2085 and World population falls pretty rapidly once the 1.5 level is attained (roughly halving every 100 years).
Sure there will be externalities for wind and solar power, but there will be fewer than with the status quo which cannot be maintained in any case due to peak fossil fuels. There are many problems, we will address them one by one.
Since I.m pretty sure I’m one of the folks seen as supporting “techno fixes that are seeking to maintain today’s happy motoring delusion”, I want to again point out that there are other things I am concerned about but that my background in electrical engineering makes it better for me to focus on issues surrounding electricity, rather than areas that would best be served by people with other backgrounds.
As an example of other areas of concern to me, there is a fairly active debate on abortion going on in my neck of the woods about decriminalizing abortion. There is a group that is solidly against the proposition that abortion should be legal under any circumstances, mostly on religious grounds, despite the fact that there are significant amounts of abortion being carried out in contravention of the current laws. The “letter of the day” in one the local newspapers recently, in which the writer takes a member of parliament and the Minster of Health to task for discussing the issue, was:
Letter of the Day | Who will be heroes for the unborn?
Meanwhile, in Gordon House, the very opposite is happening. Some women and men elected by the ordinary citizens to represent the citizens are acting unnaturally. Leading the charge is a Jamaican Olympian. Joining her in the deception is the minister of health.
With responsibility for the health of the entire nation, he seems inclined to turn a blind eye to the lives of the unborn. Abortion is violence and bloodshed. Like rape and incest, it forms part of the culture of death. Instead of pursuing life for both mother and child, these parliamentarians court death for the voiceless and innocent, unborn baby, and regret and deepened turmoil for the mother who survives.
One thing is sure: These two groups of Jamaicans will go down in history.
I composed a response, using a pseudonym, to try and raise awareness among the on-line readership that the sanctity of human life needs to be balance with the sanctity of life in general, including wildlife. Here’s what I wrote:
In response I would ask “Who will be heroes for the wildlife”. Just a week ago the World Wildlife Fund released a report stating that wildlife populations had fallen by 60% since 1970. When that is juxtaposed with a study released earlier this year that revealed that humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals, domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent and wild mammals for only 4 percent, one should begin to sense the problem.
The unbridled growth of the human population to over 7.6 billion and growing by about 83 million every year, is impacting natural ecosystems all over the world. Add to that, the damage being done by pollution and CO2 emissions and there is the danger that humans will wipe out all wildlife, leaving only us and our favorite animals. That is a danger because, we could end up wiping out organisms that are at the base of the food chain or otherwise critical to the functioning of healthy ecosystems. Worldwide fish stocks are already reaching critically low levels due to overfishing and ecosystem deterioration.
The hubris of humankind in valuing the sanctity of human life above all other life may well be our undoing. If we do not do anything to rein in the growth of the human population, the precious unborn that the writer is so worried about, may well be born into a world that will be unable to sustain them through to old age, that is, they may have short, unpleasant lives.
I keep wondering how this would be handled. If bad is on the horizon either way, what’s likely to happen? Surely a not so small number of people have been playing the war game thing on this. Boggles the mind the amount of control that would require. Seriously, what are the near term implications of the latest IPCC report? Most people don’t know much about the world energy supply situation, so that could be “managed” as it is now for a while longer. But prices will rise. Recently Austin Texas experienced a water, um, emergency? Due to flooding that created such polluted water, residents were advised to boil water. For several days. So there’s the energy tipping point and the climate tipping point. What might be a likely climate one that would rattle the world view?
Islandboy,
Here’s a key question: if they really care about protecting the unborn and preventing abortion, do they support easily accessible contraception???
If they don’t, then they don’t really care about protecting the unborn, they just want to force women to have children they don’t want.
Nick G, the question was answered four days later in today’s letter to the editor:
Letter of the Day | Anti-abortion rhetoric is archaic drivel
Rather than caring about the preservation of lives, they are interested in dictating to women what they can or cannot do with their bodies. Recall that it was not too long ago that these same radicals fought tooth and nail to prevent any real sex education in schools, the very information that would help young girls make safer and better choices, reducing their likelihood of getting pregnant.
Yeah, that’s a good letter.
I noticed a very encouraging article:
“After years of steady decline, Jamaica’s total fertility rate is now at two children per woman, and the adolescent fertility rate is currently at 46 per 1,000 girls between the ages of 15-19.
This was revealed during the launch of the State of the World Population 2018 report at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel, yesterday. According to Alison Drayton, director and representative for the United Nations Population Fund Subregional Office for the Caribbean, declining fertility levels is an emerging trend in many regions of the world.
“Many countries with middle and low income have seen a steady decline in fertility rates while other countries have had a low fertility rate for a long time, and they struggle with maintaining a large enough labour force to fuel their economies,” she said.
Jamaica’s fertility rate moved from an average of three children per woman in 1994 to 2.4 per woman in 2008, while the adolescent fertility rate has moved from 115 per 1,000 in 1994 and 72 per 1,000 girls in 2008.
Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica Dr Wayne Henry believes that the general reduction in the country’s fertility rate is as a result of improvements in the country’s education system and an increase in female empowerment levels, among other things.
“Jamaica’s population is currently at the final stage of the demographic transition, meaning that both the birth and death rates are low and are contributing to the low population growth,” he said.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20181109/two-enough-ja-continues-see-steady-decline-fertility-rate
Issues about abortion appear as perpetual symptomatic distractions of and from the relative root cause or causes– namely, in part, so-called governments and/or groups/gangs/cliques/mobs/people who would want to effect power and control over others.
With each new generation, ‘God’ presses the reset button and memories get wiped in the form of these things called babies, wherein the programming process begins again.
We gained 82 million humans this year on Earth.
So, how goes it?
We gained 82 million humans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
Birth rates are already falling pretty quickly
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46118103
With more investment in reducing infant mortality and women’s health care including contraceptives, birth rates would fall drastically.
The other big problem the world has in poor agriculture practices. Farmers are wrecking the planet, and everyone is looking the other way. There needs to be a carrot and a stick to fix this.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/11/08/healthy-soil-movement-draws-farmers-not-everyone-digs-it
Ultimately I think meat production needs to be mostly replaced by artificial meat. In the mean time, ranching can be made a lot less destructive, as this guy suggests.
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
There are lots of ways to reduce environmental impact without any real costs. It happens all the time, as this shows.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453
It just needs to happen a lot faster.
Dennis,
When do think CO2 emissions will peak?
I’ll also throw in the comment that I believe many people are overly optimist that coal will die a quick death. I see a very long tail for its use, considering that a huge section of the worlds population will not have the financial wherewithal to make a timely transition to a cleaner system, and many live in cold/dark winter places.
It would be interesting to quantify that. China, India, Japan and the rest of the OECD can afford to make the switch. I don’t think Africa really has that much in the way of generation, coal or otherwise – they kind’ve have a clean slate to start with, like phone infrastructure which skipped over land lines.
Nick, the idea that all of these countries can afford a fast transition is very questionable in my mind. Even sunny Calif has only just started to get the job done. Germany as of 2015 according to Ron “Germany’s oil consumption started to drop in 1999 but has leveled out since 2007. Germany’s oil consumption is down 18 percent since 1998.”, which is still a lot, and its still burning plenty of coal and nat gas.
India’s per capita GDP remains small.
Many countries, perhaps even US and Germany, may face severe fiscal emergencies in this coming decade (take your pick- demographics/debt, trade wars, peak fuel, real war). If so, money for energy transition could be scarce.
I do acknowledge that there exists a rosy scenario were fast transition occurs, but wouldn’t hold my breathe on that.
Even sunny Calif has only just started to get the job done.
California only gets .2% of it’s instate generation from coal, and only 4% via imports (which they plan to eliminate by 2026).
Mission completed, at least for coal…
Nick, we are not talking about coal use here, we were talking about CO2 emissions. Calif is still massive in this regard.
Barely put a dent in it. Perhaps 10% off the peak, but still higher than in the late 90’s.
Ah, I was responding to this: “I’ll also throw in the comment that I believe many people are overly optimist that coal will die a quick death.”
Much like ultra denialist Bob Frisky who hyper fixates on a cold spell in Kansas, the techno cornucopians with a tech-boner might do well to remember there’s this place called ‘the rest of the world’.
‘CoalSwarm published a report on September 26 warning that 259 gigawatts of coal power capacity – equivalent to the entire coal power fleet of the United States – is being built in China despite government policies restricting new builds.’
https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/10761-China-is-building-coal-power-again/en
But hey, if a couple % in Cali gives you hope for the future, drink it up.
The story of coal in the 21st century, in one amazing map
‘Using data from CoalSwarm’s Global Coal Plant Tracker, it shows the location of every coal plant in the world — planned, under construction, operating, and retiring — from 2000 up through the present.’
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/6/17427030/coal-plants-map-china-india-us-eu
Sad and scary, but still under contention from the central government, here is he EndCoal report on China’s new surge in coal fired permits.
NEW REPORT: Tsunami Warning — Can China’s Central Authorities Stop a Massive Surge in New Coal Plants Caused by Provincial Overpermitting?
https://endcoal.org/2018/09/tsunami-warning/
Nope, the whole world is not singing kumbaya together yet, but there are many success stories. Tomorrow we will find out if the USA can start going back to regular BAU or continue into deep FBAU. Not a pretty picture either way.
The Chinese are also having a little problem predicting how much solar will be installed. They planned 105 GW by 2020 and are already at 165 GW. So they are thinking about increasing the goal to somewhere between 210 GW and 270 GW.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/05/china-may-raise-2020-solar-target-to-over-200-gw/
Just because they’re building it doesn’t mean it will be used. They’re building in large part because they want the construction jobs. Meanwhile, coal plant utilization is dropping, and the plants are losing money. From your source:
“It’s worth noting that the policy of reducing capacity only temporarily reined in a trend towards overcapacity in the sector. Utilisation rates for coal-fired plants recovered slightly from a 50-year low in 2016, but are still nowhere near a healthy level of about 5,500 hours a year, and have not even returned to 2015 levels. In other words, there is still too much coal-fired power.
Li Fulong said that due to a hike in coal prices, half of the country’s coal power plants were running at a loss in the first six months of the year. The sector is in poor shape generally and is still trying to recover from a bad 2017.
…Yuan Jiahai said that adding coal-fired power capacity just to meet some tens of hours of peak load would increase costs in the long run.”
Hickory,
I expect if something close to my medium fossil fuel scenarios are correct, that fossil fuel emissions will peak around 2025, if there is very little effort to reduce fossil fuel use the we could possibly follow the dashed line in the chart below (595 Pg of carbon emissions from fossil fuel from 2015 to 2100).
My expectation is that fossil fuels will become quite expensive after the peak is reached and tis will make alternatives to fossil fuel such as wind and solar cheaper options. As these industries scale up the costs will continue to decrease rapidly making fossil fuel less and less competitive.
The solid line shows this optimistic scenario where coal use is replaced first, then oil, and finally natural gas with wind and solar and other non-fossil fuel energy sources ramping up as fast as is feasible. Note that 2/3 of fossil fuel energy produces waste heat, so with wind and solar only about 1/3 of primary energy is needed, more heat pumps (3/1 air and 6/1 ground) can also reduce energy use, as well as better sealed and insulated builldings, more passive solar, more awnings (to reduce AC use). All of these are envisioned in the lower solid “energy transition” scenario where total carbon emissions from fossil fuels from 2015 to 2043 (end of fossil fuel use) is 207 Pg.
Reality is likely to fall somewhere between these two scenarios that might be called “pessimistic” and “optimistic”.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Dennis.
I’m thinking that this coming decade will be very eventful,
not just for the Syrians.
As I look at the chart you provide, and extrapolate back, I suspect the world C emissions crossed above the 8 Pg level (per yr?) around yr 2000.
With the medium scenario (dashed line) it looks like CO2 emissions will stay above this level until about 2045.
I think that is a reasonable assumption. It would take a big [huge] catastrophe to derail that carbon emission trend, IMHO.
What does the atmospheric CO2 level look like at 2045 in this “medium fossil fuel scenario”?
Hickory,
Using a Bern type model, (slightly modified to fit data through 2015), atmospheric CO2 in 2045 would be 471 ppm for the “medium scenario”. Note that the medium scenario assumes there is no change in behavior (level of consumption of fossil fuels) as fossil fuel prices rise, aside from reductions due to limited supply. Such an assumption seems decidedly unrealistic as cheaper forms of energy will be substituted for expensive fossil fuel. This pushes us closer to the “energy transition” scenario with lower CO2 emissions. As natural gas production falls, we may see a reduction of methane emissions as well, though much of the methane emissions is from food production and some from natural sources and these may increase in a warming World, those factors are not accounted for in my simple Bern model.
Note also that the “medium” fossil fuel scenario has about 1100 Pg C emissions from 1850 to 2100 from all anthropogenic sources, my “high” fossil fuel scenario has about 1600 Pg C emissions from 1800 to 2200, very similar to the AR4 RCP4.5 Scenario. Again this assumes high fossil fuel prices which are likely after peak fossil fuels is reached (possibly 2035 in the “high” fossil fuel resource case) causes no switching to alternative energy aside from that necessary from declining fossil fuel availability. This is a highly unlikely path.
More likely is falling wind, solar, and battery prices leading to substitution for expensive fossil fuel.
The RCP4.5 scenario leads to about 2.5 C of warming with a range from 2 to 3.5 C, 1000 Pg of emissions is likely to lead to 1.5 to 2.5 C of warming, based on climate models from CMIP5. Cumulative carbon emissions after 2017 need to remain below 200+/-70 Pg C to have a 50% chance of remaining below 1.5 C above 1850-1900 Global average temperature according to the IPCC SR15 report.
Seems a low likelihood this will be the case (maybe a 5% probability for optimists, and a more pessimistic estimate might be about 0.1% or less). The rapid energy transition scenario in my chart might be close, but that scenario assumes very rapid rates of deployment of wind, solar, nuclear, EVs, better buildings, more heat pumps, more energy efficiency, lower population growth rates, better agricultural practices, lower methane emissions, and generally more sustainable practices throughout the World economy. All are technically possible, but a seismic shift in national and international governmental policies would need to occur to make it happen.
Thanks Dennis.
Interesting to digest, so much at stake.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Things seem extreme where I now stand-
it hasn’t rained in most of Calif since April.
The air is campfire smokey from fires over a hundred miles away for 3 days now.
And racist nationalism rules the land- what an extreme lack of respect for all those who fought against it in WWII.
Dennis
Has it occurred to you that if solar and wind take a large share of the global market, this would reduce the demand for coal, oil and gas. As demand falls, there would be a glut forcing producers to sell as cheaply as possible, thus guaranteeing their continued use.
Certainly the most expensive sources of oil, as and coal will go bust. However oil extraction costs vary considerably and The likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Russia who depend almost entirely on the revenue of fossil fuels actually have quite cheap extraction costs.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/19/you-wont-believe-what-saudi-arabias-oil-production.aspx
The cost of solar and wind will probably fall by 200-400% over the next 15 years but that would still leave half the world’s coal, gas and oil production much cheaper.
https://www.bcg.com/en-gb/publications/2018/why-coal-will-keep-burning.aspx
Coal plants may struggle with coal at $150 per tonne, but if wind and solar cause a glut in coal then they will do very nicely at $40 per tonne.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/what-worries-world-january-2018
When the majority of people see unemployment, health care, crime and corruption as the biggest problems governments will not put the time and effort into climate change.
Hugo,
That is the reason that the “energy transition” scenario is unlikely to be followed, reality will fall somewhere in between depending upon how quickly costs for EVs, wind and solar falls and the relative prices of fossil fuel vs alternatives, as the oil, gas, and coal industries scale back the costs may rise for the “lowest cost” resources. In fact lower prices may result in political instability in many of the lowest cost producers as currently the high oil price supports these governments, an eventual fall in the oil price may wreak havoc on those governments.
Hard to guess how it plays out, there may well be a long tail at lower levels of fossil fuel use until the climate change consensus is fully accepted by most rational people.
Dennis
I agree, it will be a complex energy world, full of unintended consequences.
Don’t forget that falling FF consumption will cause countervailing upwards price pressure, as they lose economies of scale.
Just as wind and solar get cheaper as they expand, FFs will get more expensive as they contract. Below certain tipping points they will collapse (e.g., below a critical mass of gas stations, ICEs will no longer be viable).
Nick
Oil production cost does not work like manufacture of TV or solar panels. A factory that produces 1 million panels divides overheads and pay between those 1 million units. The same company that sells 10 million units has the obvious economy of scale.
Oil drilling happens in thousands of different places. Some places are very expensive and some very cheap. The only economy of scale there is how many barrels a particular site produces.
When a glut of oil occurs prices fall, this will knock out the most expensive oil.
Somewhat true as long as one ignores pipelines, refineries and distribution.
Hugo and Nick,
I believe both of these forces will operate. There will be some expensive output that shuts down and as the entire oil industry contracts the inputs (rigs, expert knowledge, etc) to the production, refining and distribution of oil will become more expensive. Which effect predominates (better fields reducing price or falling production reducing economies of scale for the industry) is difficult to predict.
My WAG is that they may offset and real oil prices may remain on a plateau and then eventually decrease as demand falls.
Whether the oil price level falls enough so that oil is competitive with cheap EVs (which will be used for short haul and possibly some long haul trucking), it depends how fast costs for batteries, wind and solar fall in the future (another factor which is difficult to predict).
There are a lot of forms of overhead. One that is neglected is the US military.
When the US only partially withdrew it’s support for the Shah of Iran, that regime collapsed very quickly. Recently Trump said the same thing would happen overnight with the House of Saud, and he’s an expert in the area of unpopular, corrupt regimes.
If and when it becomes clear to everyone that oil (and FF in general) is not needed (and is expensive, risky and highly polluting to boot), it could shrink very quickly.
Good one Nick.
The interesting political situation in Australia continues:
Billionaire blows up again over Coalition’s “fair dinkum” power slogan
Software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has had enough. The man whose Twitter exchange with Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk led to the hugely successful Tesla big battery installation in South Australia is going head to head with prime minister Scott Morrison again, calling him out over his new energy slogan “fair dinkum” power.
Cannon-Brookes late Wednesday launched a series of tweets challenging the Morrison government over its labelling of “baseload” and coal power as “fair dinkum” generation, and calling for a “movement” to embrace wind and solar. He wants to call that “fair dinkum power”.
“Argh! Bullshit mate. @ScottMorrisonMP you’ve made me mad and inspired me,” Cannon-Brookes tweeted.
“We need a movement. We need a brand for Australia’s future. We need a rallying cry for Australians who believe in (sun, wind and hydro). You said it perfectly: “Fair Dinkum Power.”
This makes at least two billionaires in Australia who are not on board with the coalition government’s energy policies, the other being UK based Sanjeev Gupta. Mike Cannon-Brookes however is an Australian citizen by birth and if he is getting increasingly irritated as this article suggest, he may not be averse to using some of his money to help elect a government who’s views are more consistent with his own. Cannon-Brookes at 38 years old has an estimated net worth of $5.1 billion, which is a little more than a quarter of the estimated $18.1 billion net worth of 87 year old fellow Australian, Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp. This is shaping up to be an epic battle of new money/media versus old money/media and Australia is the battleground.
In the US the same thing could eventually happen with Musk. Bezos, Gates and others, facing off against the FF lobby and Murdoch.
There’s nothing quite as democratic as billionaires squabbling about who should run the country.
Hyundai to launch solar body kits for vehicles
“In the future, various types of electricity generating technologies, including the solar charging system, will be connected to vehicles. This will enable them to develop from a passive device that consumes energy to a solution that actively generates energy,” said Jeong-Gil Park, Executive Vice President of Engineering Design Division of Hyundai Motor Group., who has developed this technology. “The paradigm of the vehicle owner will shift from that of a consumer to an energy prosumer.”
The first generation solar roofing, will be available in selected Hyundai vehicles after 2019 the manufacturer states. In February 2017, Toyota was the first to offer solar panel roof options for hybrid Prius models, while Fraunhofer ISE announced in April of that year to integrate solar panels to commercial vehicles to provide charge for refrigeration for example.
When PV technology gets cheap enough I expect PV surfaces will be added to all kinds of stuff, including trucks, buses, trains, ships and planes in order to squeeze a little more range out of them.
Isn’t PV standard on Australian RVs?
Ha, ha. Stupid car manufacturers. They were beaten long ago.
The Dutch college students have produced a family car that mostly never needs charging, range 400 to 1000 km, seating for five. Can recharge the grid. Is cleared for road use in the Netherlands.
Should be coming out in production soon but will need scale to become comparable to other electrics in base price (hand made is expensive).
As one of the designers said they produce an excess of power in the Netherlands so it can even be used further north.
https://innovationorigins.com/the-perfect-pair-noah-and-stella-vie-visiting-munich/
I hear that the Sinclair C5 may make a comeback!
NAOM
Islandboy,
If I read the capacity charts correctly, NG has added about 3.8GW of capacity, while about 2GW of capacity has been eliminated, for a net addition of roughly 1.8GW. Is that correct?
That doesn’t seem like much, in historical terms: it’s less than .2% of overall generation capacity of roughly 1,100GW. Furthermore, when you take into account coal plant retirements, the overall net addition is less than .1%.
Would it make sense to add a chart showing NET changes in generating capacity?
I guess the capacity addition/retirement charts aren’t as clear as I would like them to be. If you remember, initially I just used to present the percentage contribution by the various sources for each month. Then I realised that there was no indication of the actual amount added/retired so for example in July 100% of the retirements were Landfill Gas but, the total retired was 3.7 MW while in January 99.88% of the retirements were coal fired but, the total retired was 4324.3 MW. I added the dashed yellow line to indicate what the total capacity retired for the month was (right axis). Similarly for the additions, the black dashed line indicates what the total capacity added for the month was.
Total coal capacity retirements year to date are 10.65 GW, while natural gas retirements are 2.76 GW, with NG capacity additions of 12.22 GW for a net of a little less than 9.5 GW for NG. Solar capacity additions YTD are 2.35 GW and wind 1.43 GW. Total retirements YTD stand at 13.83 GW, while total additions are 16.21 GW. I hope that helps. I could post the tables that the graphs are based on if people are interested. There are two tables each for capacity additions and retirements, one for absolute amounts and one for percentage contributions.
Another story from reneweconomy.com.au:
Australia solar output overtakes wind power in September for first time
Australia’s rapidly growing fleet of rooftop and utility-scale solar power plants reached a major milestone in September, overtaking wind for the amount of electricity generated in the month.
According to data provided by Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College in Melbourne, which puts together the OpenNem live data feed, solar produced a total of 935.9GWh in September versus 913.9GWh from wind (see table below).
The solar numbers were made up of 174.9GWh for utility-scale solar, and 761.0GWh for rooftop solar, and together accounted for a little less than 6 per cent of total generation across the National Energy Market in that month.
One noteworthy takeaway from the above is that, solar contributed 6% of Australian electricity in September.
It will only take four more doubling of the contribution from solar for the contribution to get to 96%. The question is, how long will it take capacity in Australia to double, taking into consideration that it can be argued that electricity from solar plus batteries costs less than grid electricity in Australia?
The solar numbers were made up of 174.9GWh for utility-scale solar, and 761.0GWh for rooftop solar
80% of solar is rooftop! That’s unlike any other country, I’m pretty sure.
Pretty much! That is changing, as a lot more utility scale has been installed this year and there are huge amounts in the pipeline.
Another (from a related web site):
Rooftop solar surges to new record in October, Victoria becomes hot market
Small-scale rooftop solar installations soared to yet another record in October, as Victoria joined NSW to become the hottest market in the country and Western Australia surged beyond the 1GW mark.
Data compiled by industry statistician Sunwiz reveal 158MW of rooftop solar (sub 100kW) were installed in October, which was 15 per cent above the previous record set in August.
“It was a record month, a massive surge across the board,” said Sunwiz director Warwick Johnston.
It takes the total for the year to 1.25GW (1,250MW), already well ahead of the 2017 total, and suggests that the 2018 total could meet 1.5GW. This does not include bigger rooftop solar installation (above 100kW) and utility scale installations.
Australia is now a member of the “more than 10 GW” PV club.
A place to put that waste plastic —- in the roads.
While relatively simple to build as compared to other structures – like skyscrapers or dams – the sheer scale of the global network makes road construction one of the largest sources of material consumption on our planet.
Replacing some of the finite resources used in road construction with one of humanity’s most notorious waste products – all whilst extending the lifespan of the roadway itself – makes a lot of sense.
https://www.theb1m.com/video/road-to-the-future
Check out the DIF launch. Happened last night at 18:00 GMT. One of the main focuses of this year’s DIF is materials science and plastics are a major topic.
Should anyone be interested, here’s a link to the main page:
https://www.thinkdif.co/
New Badass in Town: Jean-Marc Jancovici (Radio Ecoshock interview)
https://un-denial.com/2018/10/31/new-badass-in-town-jean-marc-jancovici-radio-ecoshock-interview/
“Think of peak oil and climate change as opposing scissor blades squeezing your finger. Asking which is worse does not make any sense.”
Jean-Marc says: “We can live only with renewables with five hundred million people, and the standard of living two centuries ago.”
(a bit optimistic, in my view)
I took a quick look at the summary. He appears to think that renewables can’t provide enough energy for the current population.
Sigh. If anybody can find how he calculates that, or any specific detailed support for that idea, I’d be curious how he comes up with that.
I suspect there is no concrete, quantitative support to be found, which illustrates two things: 1) don’t rely on “authorities” regardless of how good they sound – do the calculations yourself, and 2) don’t rely on podcasts or interviews – they waste your time.
Yep—
It is rather obvious if you do the math.
We are using 10grams of hydrocarbons for 1 gram of food currently.
7.6+ billion homo sapiens in a collapsing ecosystem.
First, that description is usually in terms of units of energy, not hydrocarbon – hydrocarbon inputs are not prescribed by that analysis.
Second, that energy definitely doesn’t have to be fossil fuel. For instance, the single largest component of that 10 units of energy is home refrigeration! That obviously can be powered by renewables. The second largest? Driving it home from the store, which can be electric, and in turn renewably powered.
The hardest component to replace, liquid fuel on the farm for seasonal work, is also the smallest (at about 2% of the total inputs). And, ultimately, it can be replaced by synthetic fuel. Or batteries would work – they’re far less convenient, but they’d work.
10 Calories in, 1 Calorie Out – The Energy We Spend on Food
(let Scientific American give a perspective)
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-in-1-calorie-out-the-energy-we-spend-on-food/
Environmental Optimism: Cargo Cults in Modern Society
Abstract
After learning to regard the world as limitless, man finds himself now in a world that has limits. Various modes of adaptation to ecologically inexorable change have arisen. One of these, faith that technological progress will avert major institutional change, rests upon the same kind of foundation as the Cargo Cults of the south Pacific. It is a millenarian belief based on a little knowledge and much ignorance. It impedes recognition that in a runaway world technology reduces rather than enhances the habitat’s carrying capacity. It results in pathogenic prescriptions for the world’s ills.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20830939?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
“Renewables”, and I use that term lightly, have turned into a bit of cargo cult.
https://jancovici.com/en/
I’m currently reading Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich, and she would agree.
Is this quote correct?
“She accuses “elites” in the upper middle class of depriving working-class people of their justified enjoyment of one of the few activities that reduce their stress level: smoking. Yes, she defends the tobacco industry and criticizes rising cigarette taxes that “hurt the poor and the working class hardest.””
Read the book.
Well, you’re the on who chose to mention it. At the moment, it doesn’t look worth my time, and it sounds like you’re not willing to put any time into it either.
There have always been and always will be limits. This temporary shortcut of daily natural energy by using fossil fuels to drive society has people very confused and polarized. Things will quiet down once the FF are out of the way. Expecting perfection on the first go round of using solar energy is just dumb. As errors and drawbacks show up, the system will be modified. The inherent limitations of our technology will actually bring human life back toward a diurnal and seasonal way of life and a somewhat less comfortable one, which is good.
The term renewable means using daily surface energy from the sun (which drives the wind, rain, etc.). That is how nature works, uses the daily energy from the sun to power the system.
The inherent limitations of our technology will actually bring human life back toward a diurnal and seasonal way of life
Yeah. Longtimber has commented that we should move 80% of our power consumption to the day, and that makes sense. We’ll charge our cars during the day. Appliances can run then. Refrigerators and air conditioners can add a little thermal storage (mass, and phase change materials) and use most of their power then as well.
and a somewhat less comfortable one, which is good.
I dunno. Charging one’s car during the day seems comfortable to me. If you only shift 20% of your power to the night, batteries would be cheap and easy.
Yeah, that’s a reference to a reference to that analysis: 10 calories of energy in vs 1 calorie of energy out.
Ammonia is common in agriculture. Use that as your liquid fuel.
NAOM
Yeah, ammonia (NH3) makes a lot of sense.
Where do you think ammonia comes from Nick, unicorn farts?
Thanks for the link below but here is a list of others which also heal with unused capacity in renewables – make fuel while the sun shines (or wind blows, for that matter).
https://www.google.com/search?num=30&gl=us&hl=en&pws=0&q=Ammonia+from+surplus+solar&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBloiL2LjeAhUHGTQIHeydCigQBQgtKAA&biw=1920&bih=965
NAOM
Thanks for the link NAOM. I appreciate it.
The Ammonia Industry (Nitrogen Fertilizer) and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
http://www.unequalcarbonfootprints.org/ucf/ammonia.htm
From your source:
” The brine electrolysis process for production of ammonia does not lead to process-based CO2 emissions.”
The whole point is to use renewable power to make synthetic fuels like H2, NH3 (ammonia), etc. NH3 is especially useful because it uses nitrogen, which is cheap and convenient (being the primary component of our atmosphere).
Our current grid is over-built: the US uses an average of about 450 gigawatts of power, but has capacity to generate about 1,100. The same configuration with wind, solar and nuclear would produce massive amounts of very cheap surplus power, which could be used to produce NH3, or H2 (maybe stored underground, like CH4 (methane)).
The solutions already exist, and they’re cheap. They just need to be scaled up…
“They just need to be scaled up…”
Yes I know. What we have here is a rigid dichotomy between depressing trends and hopeful possibilities. I’m sure most folks can figure out where you and I each stand on those things.
Well, we’re smart. We can hold several apparently conflicting ideas in our heads at the same time.
Like: things are bad, and…we could choose to make them better.
“Well, we’re smart”
I beg to differ
Here is a reference that doesn’t quite match the 10 to 1 statement. See Table 6.
http://web.mit.edu/dusp/dusp_extension_unsec/reports/polenske_ag_energy.pdf
I wasn’t able to find anything about the 10:1 idea. Could you point us to the relevant section in the analysis?
Nick,
My calculations for a typical family of 4.2 people with one refrigerator shows that the annual refrigerator energy is about 10 percent of the actual food energy. Now if we supply the fridge with power the old way (100 percent line fed from a coal fired plant) that is still only 35 percent of the actual food energy. Since we have a more efficient energy production mix and some people have PV on their roof, it’s better than that.
Nowhere near a large portion of the 1000 percent energy figure being talked about.
So where do you get this number that home refrigeration is a large component of the 10 times figure?
Here are some notes I made some time ago:
In the US refrigeration uses .94 kWh per person per day, or 3.75 for a four person family : https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=96&t=3
Which (after a 3:1 conversion to thermal inputs*) is equal to about 2,300 kilocalories, or about the same as the energy in the food.
—-
more notes:
What’s the composition of the ratio of 10 calories per end-calorie?? Here’s a chart that says it’s 7.3:1, and 32% is home refrigeration and processing – When you consider that most of that power came from thermal energy, and the ratio of heat energy to electrical power is 3 to one, that rises to 59%. So, the fridge and the stove take a lot more power than anything else. And, I suspect it doesn’t include the fossil fuel required to drive to the grocery store and bring food home: two trips per week, maybe 10 miles per week at 22 MPG would be 795 kWh per year.
So, the FF consumption isn’t on the farm, it’s after you pick it up, whether it’s from the grocer or farmer’s market.
http://sustainability.emory.edu/uploads/press/2015/04/2015041215581794/InfoSheet-Energy26FoodProduction.pdf
Your refrigerator must be per 1990.
” A 1986-era 18 c.f. fridge uses 1400 kWh a year, while a modern energy-efficient model uses only 350 kWh — a whopping 75% reduction”
Time to update your fridge and your numbers.
Your imaginary car fuel numbers seem to be set to corroborate some high end use. Real people, like my wife and I, would pick up our groceries on the way home from work. So no real additional fuel use there.
Also people are not as stupid as you think, people combine trips doing several tasks at once. Very few people have time or money to make each task a separate trip. So there is generally only a small portion of energy to get the food. And now we can go hybrid or electric.
Preparation energy? Good one there. Feeding three or four people from a propane stove took about 30 gallons a year. But it offset the heating energy. So no extra energy there.
Shoot, it’s November with occasional frost and I have not turned on my furnace yet. I just keep putting things off.
I have another trick that I am sure other people use. When I bake or broil something, I put in several days worth of food. Oven heats once, food for several days.
Where did you get those fridge numbers? Mine is running around 600kw, though that is for a larger model. It is about 20-25% more efficient than the American models I was comparing it with.
NAOM
NAOM, there are several sources on the internet. At first I just checked what was for sale in big box stores.
Try Energy Star Most Efficient Refrigerators 2018, then use volume filter to select fridge.
Very difficult to find a fridge that hits 600 kWh. 18.1 cubic feet are about 350, 19.5 380 kWh and 21 cf are about 450 kWh.
600 -350 =250 kWh/yr
250* 0.12 * 15 yr = $450 of the price of electric stays the same. Can almost buy a new fridge for that difference.
I guess some of the poorly made side by side large fridges with ice maker and surface heating would use 600 or more. If they would just use more insulation and cut the frills, fridges would use half as much.
Took a look there, interesting but many of the approx 20cuft are bobbing just under 600kwh. One thing to note is that I am measuring at our hottest time of the year but now it is cooling off the power use is dropping. My old fridge, which was 14cuft, was consuming around 365kwh but that was at the coldest part of the year so I expect the total consumption to be higher overall. As for 259kwh saving that would be worth only $12.5 US so not much help.
Defiantly agree on the insulation and frills, I wanted one without ice maker but could not find one that fitted the bill in other regards. A little more insulation or a move to aerogel would be a big help here. One thing I noted was that one USA make had wire baskets for the freezer section, slide it out and ALL the cold air drops out immediately, a moulded tray would cut that.
NAOM
I once used this site, https://www.sust-it.net/ to select the most efficient small (under counter) I could find for the tiny kitchen in my apartment. It is a UK based web site so, it lists appliances that are available in the UK, many of which are EU market models of global brands.
The site used to rank fridges in order of kWh per year but it appears they have now switched to a less technical, cost per unit capacity per year. Possibly less technical visitors to the web site were flummoxed by the kWh per year ratings and prefer the rating scheme they use now. The current scheme requires some working back to figure out the kWh per year.
What struck me back in 2013 when I was looking for my fridge was how much more efficient EU fridges were compared to US fridges. Obviously, the low cost of electricity in the US has not provided much incentive for appliance manufacturers to improve efficiency. Higher efficiency in the EU means EU citizens might actually be paying less despite higher electricity prices.
When looking, I found Korean fridges about 20-25% more efficient than equivalent USA ones. Also the Korean ones seemed to make improvements with new models whereas the USA ones just seemed to change the decoration.
NAOM
NAOM
“Took a look there, interesting but many of the approx 20cuft are bobbing just under 600kwh.”
Not sure what you looked at, but as I said before anyone can make poor choices. The lists are so people can make better choices.
BTW 295 kWh is $35 average US. Some places are much higher, some lower.
Over 15 it’s $525, the 18 cf ones are starting around $600 and you can usually get them lower on sale. Meaning one efficient fridge buys them all, in a way.
GF,
I agree: efficiency is great. But the numbers are actual consumption, per the EIA.
The point remains: 90% of farm related energy inputs are outside the farm, and all of those are straightforward to replace, either with efficiency or with renewable electricity.
Nick, the EIA info is not actual consumption. That is data from a paper survey then modeled mathematically across the population. It’s a calculation not actual consumption.
Energy Star uses actual verifiable product measurements, not modeling from a survey.
GF,
Surveys are certainly not perfect, but they’re a normal and respected form of data collection. It’s not just paper, and the consumption estimates are reconciled against supply information, which would help prevent major errors.
“EIA administers the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) to a nationally representative sample of housing units. Traditionally, specially trained interviewers collect energy characteristics on the housing unit, usage patterns, and household demographics. For the 2015 survey cycle, EIA used Web and mail forms, in addition to in-person interviews, to collect detailed information on household energy characteristics. This information is combined with data from energy suppliers to these homes to estimate energy costs and usage for heating, cooling, appliances and other end uses — information critical to meeting future energy demand and improving efficiency and building design.”
Comparing actual consumption to best practices makes no sense, in this context. It’s like assuming that all US passenger vehicles get Prius 55MPG, when they only actually get about 23MPG.
“Comparing actual consumption to best practices makes no sense, in this context. It’s like assuming that all US passenger vehicles get Prius 55MPG, when they only actually get about 23MPG.”
Yes, Nick it’s about exactly that. About actually assessing our choices and choosing the better or best options, not taking averages or surveys. The continuous actions of billions of people making poor choices at every turn has led to our present predicament and death of much of nature. It’s not something to emulate or to continue.
Sorry Nick, I thought we were talking about making better energy choices. I got over bowing down to the respected procedures of a society and civilization that is killing off much of the life on the planet and putting itself at tremendous risk, despite having much better choices available.
The vultures are circling.
We either start making the absolute best choices we can now, all of us, or we are guaranteed the absolute worst outcome.
I thought we were talking about making better energy choices.
Of course. We were also debunking the silly idea that 10 calories of energy (or FF) are NECESSARY to produce one calorie of food.
Debunking what we already know is such a waste of time.
Well, the whole argument started with someone who suggested that renewables can’t provide enough energy for the current population. Then a secondary argument that fossil fuels were necessary for food production & consumption.
Seemed like a good thing to rebut.
Hey Nick G: For one, your so-called renewables don’t even appear renewable, so let’s start by ‘debunking’ that, if we’re so keen.
Then we can move on from there and consider whether so-called renewables are even necessary (and how, where, why and when) for, say, food production and consumption.
NEW FINDINGS ON OCEAN WARMING
A new study by scientists in the United States, China, France and Germany estimates that the world’s oceans have absorbed much more excess heat from human-induced climate change than researchers had estimated up to now. This finding suggests that global warming may be even more advanced than previously thought. Atmospheric scientist Scott Denning explains how the new report arrived at this result and what it implies about the pace of climate change.
The implication of faster ocean warming is that the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming is greater than we’d thought. We already knew that adding CO2 to the air was warming the world very rapidly. And the IPCC just warned in a special report that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels – a target that would avert many extreme impacts on humans and ecosystems – would require quickly reducing and eventually eliminating coal, oil and gas from the world energy supply. This study doesn’t change any of that, but it means we will need to eliminate fossil fuels even faster.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-ocean.html#jCp
THE OCEANS, THE TRUE KEEPERS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, MAY MEET OUR GRIMMEST ESTIMATES
Already, the planet is the warmest it’s been in some 120,000 years, and now has the highest carbon dioxide levels — a potent greenhouse gas — in millions of years. And as NASA’s Willis has repeatedly emphasized, Global warming is really ocean warming. If there’s more heat coming into the system, it’s going into the ocean.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/oceans-true-keepers-climate-change-174743362.html
Doug
The ice sheets are melting.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/08/east-antarctic-ice-sheet-melting/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/02/underwater-melting-of-antarctic-ice-far-greater-than-thought-study-finds
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/09/news-greenland-ice-sheet-melting-arctic-algae/
If we magically stopped burning all gas, oil and coal. We would still have the warming we have now.
Humans are cutting down 39 million acres of tropical forest and places like Russia are as bad.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/06/2017-was-second-worst-year-record-tropical-tree-cover-loss
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2013/11/15/russia-lost-more-forest-cover-in-2012-than-any-other-country/
There are 30 to 50 trees per acre, depending on the area.
One tree converts millions of watts of sun energy (heat) into leaves, wood, fruit, nuts during a season. Once they a cut down most of that energy heats up soil and bare rock.
https://rainforests.mongabay.com/0903.htm
All in all, we have violated the earth beyond what can be repaired.
Is coal creating jobs in USA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States
By this source, there are about 50000 coal miners in US and about the same number of administrative employees in the business. That’s a tiny number, less than #jobs added each month in US. The productivity is tremendous: more than 14000 tons/miner/year ( divide 700 Mt yearly coal production by 50000 miners). Is it “clean” as advertised by White House? Well, I would not comment. The energy content of each ton of coal is trending down, more than 5% down in less than 20 years. That would suggest the best coal was burned long time ago.
What about coal and solar energy elsewhere in the world?
India is an interesting test case, with huge coal consumption and very good solar potential.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/01/30/india-coal-power-is-about-to-crash-65-of-existing-coal-costs-more-than-new-wind-and-solar/#
and a link for solar energy in India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India
As a percentage of PV from total total electricity generation, India is still behind USA, with 1.7% vs. 2.45%,
but PV generation is growing there 70%/year. The cost of PV and batteries storage is still trending down.
These data make a sharp contrast with the projection of prof. Minqi Li for India until 2050.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-coal-2018-2050-world-energy-annual-report-part-4/
I guess he produced that estimation for worst case analysis, of coal use only restrained by resource depletion, not by renewables competition.
In May 2015 there were 15,900 extraction workers or helpers, mining machine operators or earth drillers of the total 69,490 coal mining industry jobs in the US. So actual miners/operators are 0.019 percent of the American workforce.
It’s a dying industry as far as employment, (peak was over 800,000 workers back in the 1920’s). Most of the loss has been because of mechanization, not reduction in mining production. This against a rising population and rising consumption overall. There is also heavy competition from natural gas and rising competition from renewable energy. Which means it might be a dying industry in total over the next few decades. Even used electric car batteries are starting to show up as home battery backup systems for renewable energy. A double whammy.
When will people smarten up and realize that many industries lost jobs to machines, plain and simple. Getting more production will hardly increase jobs at all.
Humans are good at inventing things that put them out of jobs. So more jobs of different types have to be created. Time to move on and not keep trying to make buggy whips.
In my opinion, climate change is a too dangerous game to play. When I am optimistic, I just hope that RCP 2.6 is still in the realm of possibilities. If I understand it well, in this scenario FF use should be now close to peak and trending down in a few years, to approach 0% in 2050. This path would (hopefully) ensure not exceeding 1.5deg.C global warming over the nineteenth century, sure enough not to trigger catastrophic tipping points of climate change. I remember in James Hansen’s book “Storms of My Grandchildren” about a meeting with India’s minister of energy, posing him a question:
“Would you restrict the use of coal for climate’s sake?” and his answer was “Absolutely no. We need economic progress… you Americans use coal for 200 years… why should’nt we?”. The quotations are not exact, but those were the ideas.
As individuals, we make car insurance even for a perceived risk of 0.1% or less. But when we democratically elect our political leaders, we are not wise enough to ensure avoidance of global climatic cataclysm with probability of 1% or more that would affect our grandchildren. Sadly, collectively, we prefer our cars over our grandchildren.
Politicians profess to care about immediate jobs and care less about children’s future.
But, fortunately, there is a hope that we may be luckier than politically wise.
If PV electricity is cheaper than coal produced electricity, maybe coal would be phased out much quicker than we think now.
If EV car comes to economic parity with ICE car ( or is it already?) , maybe in a few years all terrestrial transport would need less and less oil. In the race between peak oil supply (driven) and peak oil demand (driven), what comes first? I used to think that EV car would be better than ICE car only when oil prices would be extremely high. But this is no longer true. There is now a mass-produced EV car in US, in high demand, even as gasoline price in US is only half the price in Europe.
IPCC is decades behind the time when they should have declared a fast drawdown of fossil fuels. Meanwhile the output keeps rising and the effects of changes might be seen 40 years from now, but mostly will be buried in increasing natural forcings.
I am watching the collapse of America around me. It’s horrifying to watch my neighbors one by one struggle until failure or near failure occurs and then their houses get taken or they just wear down. Anything major goes wrong or just a series of minor things and down they go. Too much money moving up and out. All during a time of supposed prosperity. Prosperity for who?
The grand dream (nightmare?) of controlling the global temperature through “solar management” is still on the tables of the engineering and scientific community as well as the business communities.
However, what would it take to stop global warming using solar management, modeled by an actual injection of 17 megatons of SO2 into the stratosphere.
The 1991 eruption of Pinatubo produced about 5 cubic kilometers of dacitic magma and may be the second largest volcanic eruption of the century. Eruption columns reached 40 kilometers in altitude and emplaced a giant umbrella cloud in the middle to lower stratosphere that injected about 17 megatons of SO2, slightly more than twice the amount yielded by the 1982 eruption of El Chichón, Mexico. The SO2 formed sulfate aerosols that produced the largest perturbation to the stratospheric aerosol layer since the eruption of Krakatau in 1883. The aerosol cloud spread rapidly around the Earth in about 3 weeks and attained global coverage by about 1 year after the eruption. Peak local midvisible optical depths of up to 0.4 were measured in late 1992, and globally averaged values were about 0.1 to 0.15 for 2 years. The large aerosol cloud caused dramatic decreases in the amount of net radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, producing a climate forcing that was two times stronger than the aerosols of El Chichón. Effects on climate were an observed surface cooling in the Northern Hemisphere of up to 0.5 to 0.6°C, equivalent to a hemispheric-wide reduction in net radiation of 4 watts per square meter and a cooling of perhaps as large as -0.4°C over large parts of the Earth in 1992-93. Climate models appear to have predicted the cooling with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The Pinatubo climate forcing was stronger than the opposite, warming effects of either the El Niño event or anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the period 1991-93. As a result of the presence of the aerosol particles, midlatitude ozone concentrations reached their lowest levels on record during 1992-93, the Southern Hemisphere “ozone hole” increased in 1992 to an unprecedented size, and ozone depletion rates were observed to be faster than ever before recorded. The atmospheric impact of the Pinatubo eruption has been profound, and it has sparked a lively interest in the role that volcanic aerosols play in climate change. This event has shown that a powerful eruption providing a 15 to 20 megaton release of SO2 into the stratosphere can produce sufficient aerosols to offset the present global warming trends and severely impact the ozone budget.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/self/
Now, besides totally screwing up the ozone layer, the temperature drop was about 0.5C for a relatively short period of time (see the graph below). Now that the rate of global warming has increased with more CO2, methane and albedo changes does this mean to control our current rise we would need about 20 megaton of SO2 injected into the stratosphere every two years or more? What about the ozone? What about acid rain? What about the monsoons? Earth on acid.
How much carbon would have to be burned to produce 20 million tons of SO2 as well as elevate it up into the stratosphere?
When I look at the annual average GISS temperature data that period of time does not stand out from the typical range of natural variation.
SO2 and CO2 emissions from within earth herself dwarf anything of man. Let’s harness the natural power of these forces.
Nahh, you have it backwards. Volcanos put out far less than humans.
Typical human produced SO2 is about 110 million tons per year.
Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year. Large, violent eruptions may match the rate of human emissions for the few hours that they last, but they are too rare and fleeting to rival humanity’s annual emissions. In fact, several individual U.S. states emit more carbon dioxide in a year than all the volcanoes on the planet combined do.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds,” wrote Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac . “Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
Is there an evolutionary advantage to empathize with nature and try to preserve it, versus just using nature or destroying it when it is in the way?
Drive-by from a one hit wonder. I’m curious what country it posts from?
These huge new wind turbines are a marvel. They’re also the future
The declining price of solar power gets more press, but there are big things happening in wind technology too. And I mean big.
The math on wind turbines is pretty simple: Bigger is better. Specifically, there are two ways to produce more power from the wind in a given area.
The first is with bigger rotors and blades to cover a wider area. That increases the capacity of the turbine, i.e., its total potential production.
So modern US wind is up to 42.5 percent and natural gas is at 56 percent. The Haliade-X, according to GE, will have a capacity factor of 63 percent. That is wackadoodle, though it wouldn’t be the highest in the world — the floating offshore turbines in the Hywind Scotland project hit 65 percent recently.
New US wind turbines reach an average hub height of 460 feet by 2025, roughly in line with current projections. According to NREL data, such turbines could hit capacity factors of 60+ percent across more than 750,000 square miles of US territory, and 50+ percent across 1.16 million square miles.
That much wind, at that capacity factor, with foreseeable advancements in wind tech, will produce power cheap enough to absolutely crush all competitors. And 2025 isn’t that far away.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/these-huge-new-wind-turbines-are-a-marvel-they’re-also-the-future/ar-BBON7Un?ocid=spartanntp
Neat, if we build 7462 (20 a day) of these each year for twenty years we can supply half the current electric power consumption in the world. Of course we might not need as much electricity in 20 years so cut that back to 12 a day. PV will have to take care of the rest.
A dozen wind towers a day makes the fossil fuel go away. 🙂
Yes to wind. Offshore wind, deep water, is a wild card. If it becomes competitive at large scale, there are areas with massive resource, like the big band off N. Calif/S. Oregon. World class, and a big area.
https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/100m_wind/awstwspd100onoff3-1.jpg
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/california-chooses-floating-offshore-wind-technology#gs.U646ODE
http://www.principlepowerinc.com/en/windfloat
US government approves 500MW solar PV project in California
The Bureau of Land Management, part of the US Department of the Interior, has authorised a 500MW solar project owned by EDF Renewable Energy, near Desert Center, in Riverside County, California.
The Palen Solar Project will cover up 1,270 hectares of BLM-administered lands and is expected to provide enough energy to power about 130,000 homes and employ more than 1,000 individuals during the project’s peak, including an on-site construction workforce of more than 550 employees. It will include a seven-mile single circuit 230-kV generation interconnection transmission line delivering power through the Southern California Edison Red Bluff Substation, under a power purchase agreement (PPA).
https://www.pv-tech.org/news/us-government-approves-500mw-solar-pv-project-in-california
Good old parabolic trough technology. Glad to see high tech modern times finally catching up.
The first documented use of concentrated solar power technology was in 1866 where Auguste Mouchout used parabolic troughs to heat water and produce steam to run the first solar steam engine. A series of inventors applied the technology in the following years. In 1912 in Meadi, Egypt, parabolic solar collectors were established in a small farming community by Frank Schuman, a Philadelphia inventor, solar visionary and business entrepreneur. The parabolic troughs were used for producing steam, which drove large water pumps, pumping 6000 gallons of water per minute to vast areas of arid desert land.
https://www.aalborgcsp.com/business-areas/solar-district-heating/csp-parabolic-troughs/history-of-csp/
Why You Should Keep An Eye On The Effort To Repeal California’s Gas Tax
High-ranking Republicans, including Paul Ryan, have made hefty donations to Proposition 6, but will the payoff be what they hope?
This year on Calfornia’s packed ballot, voters will decide on a contentious initiative that would overturn recent state legislation that raised taxes on gasoline to fund needed road and transit projects.
Republicans are against raising taxes and argue that the money for the road projects could be paid with other money in the state’s coffers if it reworked its budget.
But what may be more likely is that Republicans are convinced this issue will drive GOP voters to the polls and help keep GOP lawmakers in office.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-gas-tax-wider-implications_us_5ba2939ce4b0375f8f9997c4
Sneaky devils.
Reworking the budget probably means moving money meant for renewables and EVs/efficiency toward a good ole boy set of construction companies.
Republicans want dystopia everywhere, that is what looks great to them.
“Then there’s the Senate. Because of its bias toward smaller, rural states, a resident of Wyoming has 66 times the voting power in Senate elections as one in California.”
The Super Greenhouse Effect
As part of the study, the team used data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to look at the effect of temperature on water vapor. “AIRS gives us the temperature and water vapor profiles that show us how much warming and moistening we get as surface temperature goes up,” Kahn said. “The AIRS data very clearly show a lot of moistening as the temperature of the ocean increases. It’s so dramatic that we can actually see less infrared radiation going into space in the AIRS data.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2534/scientists-assess-potential-for-super-greenhouse-effect-in-earths-tropics/
As far as I can tell, there are 13 statewide ballot measures environmentalists will want to keep an eye on following the elections on Tuesday. Here they are, along with how much money each side has raised (which can be a sign of what the outcome will be) as well as any publicly-released poll results.
Alaska Ballot Measure 1, Salmon Habitat Protections and Permits Initiative
A “yes” vote supports this measure to establish new requirements and a new permitting process for any projects affecting bodies of water related to the activity and habitat of salmon, steelhead or other anadromous fish, and to prohibit any projects or activity determined to cause significant and unrestorable damage to such fish habitats.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $2,080,637.73
Opposition: $12,055,925.12
Arizona Proposition 127, Renewable Energy Standards Initiative
A “yes” vote supports this constitutional amendment to require electric utilities in Arizona to acquire a certain percentage of electricity from renewable resources each year, with the percentage increasing annually from 12 percent in 2020 to 50 percent in 2030.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $23,648,953.56
Opposition: $31,167,037.00
Poll:
34% Support
47% Oppose
20% Undecided
Margin of error +/- 4.4
California Proposition 6, Voter Approval for Future Gas and Vehicle Taxes and 2017 Tax Repeal Initiative
A yes vote supports this initiative to:
1. Repeal fuel tax increases and vehicle fees that were enacted in 2017, including the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (RRAA) and
2. Require voter approval (via ballot propositions) for the California State Legislature to impose, increase, or extend fuel taxes or vehicle fees in the future.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $4,838,702.15
Opposition: $45,006,674.96
Polling Averages:
44% Support
42% Oppose
14% Undecided
Margin of error +/-4.5
Colorado Proposition 112, Minimum Distance Requirements for New Oil, Gas, and Fracking Projects Initiative
A yes vote supports the initiative to mandate that new oil and gas development projects, including fracking, be a minimum distance of 2,500 feet from occupied buildings and other areas designated as vulnerable.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $1,595,203.01
Opposition: $31,701,695.40
Poll:
52% Support
48% Oppose
Margin of error +/-3.5
Colorado Amendment 74, Compensation to Owners for Decreased Property Value Due to State Regulation Initiative
A yes vote supports the initiative to require that property owners be compensated for any reduction in property value caused by state laws or regulations; namely, if Colorado Proposition 112 passes and property values decrease due to oil and gas resources becoming inaccessible.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $11,234,317.72
Opposition: $8,025,521.11
Poll:
63% Support
37% Oppose
Margin of error +/-3.5
Florida Amendment 9, Ban Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling and Ban Vaping in Enclosed Indoor Workplaces Amendment
A “yes” vote supports this amendment to:
1. Ban offshore drilling for oil and natural gas on lands beneath all state waters and
2. Ban the use of vapor-generating electronic devices, such as electronic cigarettes, in enclosed indoor workplaces.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $0.00
Opposition: $0.00
Missouri Proposition D, Gas Tax Increase, Olympic Prize Tax Exemption, and Traffic Reduction Fund Measure
A “yes” vote supports this measure to:
1. Incrementally increase the gas tax from 17 cents to 27 cents per gallon by June 2022, with revenue from the motor fuel tax increase dedicated to the state highway patrol;
2. Exempt prizes for Special Olympics, Paralympics, and Olympics from state taxes; and
3. Create a dedicated fund for certain road projects that reduce traffic bottlenecks that affect freight.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $4,469,547.91
Opposition: $0.00
Montana I-186, Requirements for Permits and Reclamation Plans of New Hard Rock Mines Initiative
A yes vote supports the ballot initiative to establish new requirements for a hard rock mine permits based on standards for water quality in land restoration plans.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $1,738,303.98
Opposition: $5,488,029.46
Poll:
29% Support
51% Oppose
21% Undecided
Margin of error +/-2.0
Nevada Question 3, Changes to Energy Market and Prohibit State-Sanctioned Electric-Generation Monopolies Amendment
A “yes” vote supports this constitutional amendment to:
1. Require the state legislature to pass laws to establish “an open, competitive retail electric energy market,” prohibit the state from granting electrical-generation monopolies, and protect “against service disconnections and unfair practices” and
2. Declare that persons, businesses, and political subdivisions have a “right to choose the provider of its electric utility service” and cannot be forced to purchase electricity from one provider.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $33,407,598.21
Opposition: $63,592,721.43
Polling Averages:
43% Support
31% Oppose
26% Undecided
Margin of error +/-4.2
Nevada Question 6, Renewable Energy Standards Initiative
A “yes” vote supports this initiative to require electric utilities to acquire 50 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2030.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $10,409,215.59
Opposition: $0.00
Oklahoma State Question 800, Oil and Gas Development Tax Revenue Investment Fund Amendment
A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to establish a fund for the investment of 5 percent of the state’s oil and gas development tax revenue and for the annual transfer of 4 percent of the fund’s capital to the general fund.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $175,000.00
Opposition: $0.00
Utah Nonbinding Opinion Question 1, 10 Cents per Gallon Gas Tax Increase for Education and Local Roads
A “yes” vote supports advising the state legislature to pass a gas tax increase of 10 cents per gallon to fund local road construction and maintenance, thereby freeing up additional funding for education.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $1,299,964.54
Opposition: $0.00
Polling Averages:
48% Support
49% Oppose
7% Undecided
Margin of error +/-3.8
Washington Initiative 1631, Carbon Emissions Fee Measure
A yes vote supports the initiative to do the following:
1. Enact a carbon emissions fee of $15 per metric ton of carbon beginning on January 1, 2020;
2. Increase the fee by $2 annually until the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals are met; and
3. Use the revenue from the fee to fund various programs and projects related to the environment.
Total campaign contributions:
Support: $15,546,843.56
Opposition: $31,316,104.51
Poll:
50% Support
36% Oppose
14% Undecided
Margin of error +/-5.0
Will you be reporting back on the results of these?
NAOM
Sure, I can do that on Wednesday.
Thank you, I will look forward to that.
NAOM
The Mauna Loa daily CO2 is still continuing above the predicted curve, though the big blip in late October looks definitely to be due to the typhoon. Overall I think there has been an acceleration in trend for rate of rise over the past four or five years. It’s more marked at the South Pole and actually this year’s increase there looks likely to be particularly high (select Co2, in-situ, daily average, submit):
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=SPO&program=ccgg&type=ts
Verified data is available for download only to the end of 2017 but a break in the slope does seem to happen around 2013. It takes some time for Co2 from the Northern Hemisphere to migrate south so that may be having some impact, but also the data may be clearer there as the seasonal oscillations are much less marked.
South Pole data:
The trouble with exponentials and polynomials is that the early part can look like a straight line. Most generalised forecast see the straight line and use that for extrapolation. When you can really start to see the curve it is too late.
NAOM
Cheerful Monday morning thought:
CHINA AND INDIA LIKE TO BE COOL TOO
“Based on projected increases in population, income, and temperatures around the world, Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency predict that in a warming world, the increase in emissions from air conditioning will be faster than the decline in emissions from heating; as a result, the combined greenhouse impact of heating and cooling will begin rising soon after 2020 and then shoot up fast through the end of the century.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/cooling_a_warming_planet_a_global_air_conditioning_surge
Meanwhile,
EIA EXPECTS TOTAL U.S. FOSSIL FUEL PRODUCTION TO REACH RECORD LEVELS IN 2018 AND 2019
“EIA forecasts that total fossil fuels production in the United States will average almost 73 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2018, the highest level of production on record. EIA expects total fossil fuel production to then set another record in 2019, with production forecast to rise to 75 quadrillion Btu.”
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34572
Much of the demand for air conditioning is directly related to poor building practices, especially in commercial and high rise apartment sectors. Stronger building code requirements for insulation, better windows, shading of windows and colors that reflect sunlight rather than absorb it would dramatically reduce the need for air conditioning.
Some of the shops around here have air conditioning running while having the whole shop front open (sometimes on 2 sides) – totally crazy not to mention money down the drain!
NAOM
Here’s something actually cheerful as the US goes to the polls for the mid-term elections:
German renewables share jumps to 38% for 2018, nearly catches coal
Germany is edging ever closer to its national target of 65 per cent renewable energy by 2030, with new data showing wind and solar produced 38 per cent of the electricity consumed in the country between January and September 2018.
The figures mark an increase of three percentage points over a year earlier, according to utility association BDEW, and were boosted by the renewables’ share reaching 43 per cent in the months of January, April and May.
“If we have an average amount of wind in the fourth quarter, renewables could also cover 38 percent over the entire year,” BDEW said in a statement.
But for the first three quarters of the year, this means that renewables produced almost 170 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), while lignite and hard coal added up to about 172 billion kWh.
“Clearly, renewables are in the fast lane, while the contribution of conventional energy sources to cover gross power consumption is falling continuously,” said BDEW head Stefan Kapferer.
“But we still have a lot of work ahead of us to reach the target of a 65 per cent renewables share by 2030.”
Renewables overtake fossil fuels in UK installed capacity
According to a report published today by Drax, the combined capacity of renewables (wind, solar, biomass, hydro and ‘other’) in the UK reached 42 GW in the third quarter of 2018. Available capacity from fossil fuels, meanwhile, fell to 40.6 GW, with around one third being retired over the last five years.
The report, Electric Insights Quarterly – Q3 2018, notes this is the first time that renewables have taken the largest share of Britain’s electricity infrastructure. The largest share of renewable capacity, around 20 GW, comes from wind, with solar in second place with 13 GW.
It also calculates that so far in this decade, the UK has added approximately 3.8 GW of new renewable capacity per year on average, breaking down as follows: 1.0 GW of onshore wind, 0.8 GW of offshore wind, 1.4 GW of solar and 0.4 GW of biomass. Solar’s share in this growth has fallen in the past two years thanks to the withdrawal of incentives for further installation, though a few projects have managed to find business models that work ‘subsidy free’.
Synapsid —
SCIENTIST FINDS ELUSIVE STAR WITH ORIGINS CLOSE TO BIG BANG
Astronomers have found what could be one of the universe’s oldest stars, a body almost entirely made of materials spewed from the Big Bang. The discovery of this approximately 13.5 billion-year-old tiny star means more stars with very low mass and very low metal content are likely out there—perhaps even some of the universe’s very first stars.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-scientist-elusive-star-big.html#jCp
Estimable DougL,
Thanks!
In the thin disk and with a circular orbit suggests (heh heh) that it’s been part of our galaxy since its beginning, but that would have spiral galaxies at 13.5 billion years. Hmm.
Have you seen the article at, of course, Eurekalert about the galaxy merger with the Milky Way galaxy some 10 billion years ago? Things were so much simpler back in my day.
Maybe time for just a little more port?
If the larger companion star is not as old then it would have been captured. Maybe it was captured by the galaxy as well. With galaxy mergers and whatnot then the origin of that star could be anywhere.
NAOM
Hi NAOM,
The larger star itself has “extremely low metallicity” and such stars are generally not found in the thin disk in circular orbits. That’s part of the fun–this system is a low-metallicity binary and binaries form as binaries far as I know, and it’s in a surprising neighborhood too.
The article doesn’t give the mass of the primary star but it can’t be very high or it would have died long ago.
Fred —
LARGE HYDROPOWER DAMS ‘NOT SUSTAINABLE’ IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
“Hydropower is the source of 71% of renewable energy throughout the world and has played a major role in the development of many countries. But researchers say the building of dams in Europe and the US reached a peak in the 1960s and has been in decline since then, with more now being dismantled than installed. Hydropower only supplies approximately 6% of US electricity. Dams are now being removed at a rate of more than one a week on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem, say the authors, is that governments were blindsided by the prospect of cheap electricity without taking into account the full environmental and social costs of these installations.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46098118
It’s a very complex situation involving ecosystems, politics, engineers and big business. The words after ecosystems should put up huge red flags as to the environmental safety of hydropower. The other three are not really very concerned about ecosystems.
In the US and Europe a lot of the dams are old and need to be removed. Luckily people don’t want to foot the bill to rebuild them so the environmentalists and conservationists are finally winning.
We have other alternatives now, so careful planning can be done in many cases.
Takeaway: Don’t trust politicians, engineers, and corporations with an interest in power. They all work together and nature rarely even gets a consideration. Strong environmental law is the only way to protect against rampant and poorly thought out development.
Here is an interesting way to provide hydropower, add it to an already existing water supply dam.
https://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2014/09/new-york-construction-to-start-by-2016-on-14-08-mw-cannonsville-hydro-project.html
People have fought putting pumped hydro in old deep abandoned mines in the region, which makes no sense since the environmental impact to the area is about nil. I guess they would rather have coal burning or some surface hydro project that is not in their neighborhood. Or maybe when the power goes out they will just not worry about it. People are strange.
BTW, just read that the Chinese Paddlefish of the Yangtze is now thought officially extinct, a victim of dams, pollution and overfishing in the Yangtze… I’m not posting a link, that sad bit of news is easy enough to find on Google should one wish to do so…
Yes a bad deal all around. I’ve been against Hydropower in Brazil for a long time…
I’m working on a couple of hydropower projects here near Mina, Nevada.
Not every hydropower project is bad! The ones in Brazil that flood vast areas of vegetation are particularly bad…
For your meteorologic pleasure- article on weather extremes of the US
2 part article
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Most-Anomalous-Weather-Events-US-History-Part-2
Bad Weather Will Greet Voters From Florida to the Midwest
By Maggie Astor
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/us/politics/election-day-weather-rain.html
Storms are expected to hit much of the Eastern United States on Tuesday, which could depress Election Day turnout in some places.
“Just about the entire eastern half of the country” will be affected, said Ari Sarsalari, a meteorologist for the Weather Channel. Much of the I-95 corridor will be rainy, and the wind will be particularly bad in the Midwest, including the Great Lakes region and the Ohio Valley.
Multiple studies have shown that bad weather on Election Day can decrease turnout, which in turn tends to help Republicans, because the groups most likely to be deterred from voting are those that tend to vote Democratic. But a more recent study, published last November in the journal American Politics Research, found that the political effects of Election Day storms may go beyond turnout. Among voters who do turn out, one of the study’s co-author said, slightly more tend to vote Republican when the weather is bad.
“Not just whether to vote but how to vote can be influenced by the weather,” said the co-author, Yusaku Horiuchi, a professor of government at Dartmouth. “When the weather is bad, people’s mood is affected. People tend to be more risk-averse. When people become more risk-averse, people are more likely to be more conservative, and therefore they’re likely to vote for the Republicans instead of the Democrats.”
This effect is small, Professor Horiuchi emphasized. He and his co-author, Woo Chang Kang of Australian National University in Canberra, estimated that about 1 percent of voters were liable to change their mind because of bad weather, which can translate into an increase of approximately three percentage points in a Republican candidate’s vote share — enough, in theory, to tip the balance of a close race.
Though it is broadly accepted as true that bad weather can depress turnout, and that lower turnout tends to benefit Republicans, this is not something Republicans tend to publicly acknowledge.
At a rally in Toms River, N.J., on Monday, though, Bob Hugin, a Republican challenging the Democratic incumbent, Senator Robert Menendez, openly called the predicted rain “Republican weather.”
Bit of trivia,
ANTARCTIC ICE LOSS HAS TRIPLED IN A DECADE
“For the total period from 1992 through the present, the ice sheet has lost nearly 3 trillion tons of ice, equating to just less than 8 millimeters of sea-level rise. Forty percent of that loss has occurred in the past five years.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/13/antarctic-ice-loss-has-tripled-in-a-decade-if-that-continues-we-are-in-serious-trouble/?utm_term=.f7706d965f56
More trivia. Not much (any) talk about electric planes in there.
IATA FORECASTS PASSENGER DEMAND TO DOUBLE OVER 20 YEARS
“The forecast for passenger growth confirms that the biggest driver of demand will be the Asia-Pacific region. It is expected to be the source of more than half the new passengers over the next 20 years. China will displace the US as the world’s largest aviation market (defined by traffic to, from and within the country) around 2024. India will displace the UK for third place in 2025, while Indonesia enters the top ten at the expense of Italy. Growth will also increasingly be driven within developing markets. Over the past decade the developing world’s share of total passenger traffic has risen from 24% to nearly 40%, and this trend is set to continue.”
BTW If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the US. Better get rid of the Amazon forests as quick as possible if we want to keep eating those “beefburgers”.
https://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-10-18-02.aspx
Finally, some words of wisdom from our Oil Thread.
Watcher — 11/06/2018 at 3:23 am
Oilprice.com is running an article devoted to peak oil demand. It claims that only the developing world is increasing oil consumption. There is all sorts of talk about alternative energy this and that, and quotes of reports and studies that seem to have been issued by organizations of significant partiality aka renewables wackos.
The US oil consumption has not yet returned to pre-crisis levels, but it’s almost there and probably will get there this year, according to the bible. I don’t know why this article appeared. It seems to be compilation of wishful thinking.
This delay in getting back to the 2007 level would seem much more clearly a consequence of pretended economic recovery derived from that instrument of capitalism purity known as QE, rather than substitution for oil, primarily as evidenced by what appears to be consumption reaching the 2007 level this year. If there were relentless decline, it would be relentless, yes?
CHINA
China auto sales post biggest drop in 7 years as growth engine stalls
Vehicle sales slumped by 11.6 percent to 2.39 million units last month, the third straight decline, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said on Friday. It cited a sluggish economy, deleveraging and a tough pollution crackdown as reasons for the steep fall.
Sales of new-energy vehicles – a category comprising electric battery cars and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles – remained strong, up 54.8 percent in September, slightly faster than a month earlier.
That took new-energy vehicle sales in the first nine months of this year to 721,000 vehicles, up 81.1 percent from the same period a year earlier.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-sales/china-auto-sales-post-biggest-drop-in-7-years-as-growth-engine-stalls-idUSKCN1MM0KV
INDIA
India car sales are growing but the big sales area is two wheelers.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/318015/motor-vehicle-sales-by-type-in-india/
India’s EV ride will be driven by govt for next 10 years: Study
Indian passenger electric vehicles will be primarily driven by government and corporate procurements only over the next four years, a study report has said.
“India’s car market is driven by very affordable (below $10,000) small vehicles, and the Indian government has not shown any appetite to provide subsidies that would be required to make electric passenger vehicles affordable for private citizens in the short term,” it said.
Based on the procurement trends, annual passenger electric vehicle (EV) sales may reach 30,000 units by 2022, compared to only 2,000 units in 2017, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in its ‘Long-term electric vehicle outlook 2018’ report on Friday.
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/indias-ev-ride-will-be-driven-by-govt-for-next-10-years-study/article24354177.ece
Song Do, the new designed city of the future is having teething problems. How long will it last as the sea level rises and reclaims the marshland the city took over? But it also has a very dark side.
LOOKING wistfully around at the surroundings, a strange mix of marshland and random high-rise buildings, Shim Jong-rae shakes his head, echoing the sentiment of many residents: “It’s a ghost town.”
For more than a decade, urban planners have been studying the construction of Songdo, South Korea, the world’s first Smart City. Built within 25 miles of Seoul, it was to be the antithesis of the suffocating, overpopulated capital. A new way of thinking for more than 300,000 residents, spread out over 600 hectares of reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea.
The brainchild of developers and the government, the vision was to construct a car-free world, with 40 per cent green space and dozens of kilometres of cycling routes.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2137838/south-koreas-smart-city-songdo-not-quite-smart-enough
But even worse, Songdo represents ecohabitat destruction.
Reclamation of internationally important tidal-flats at Song Do, as elsewhere, however, has already resulted in substantial declines in some species of waterbird at the local, national and even population level. Some of the species in decline are globally-threatened. These declines will continue further with further reclamation
Simply, a genuine eco-city would not be built on tidal-flats. A genuine eco-city would cherish remaining tidal-flats, and aim to restore and enhance intertidal wetland – and not permit or promote its destruction. Unlike the ROK and China, most nations already gave up large-scale tidal-flat reclamation several decades ago. Now, the United States of America, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy among a host of other nations, are instead actively investing in restoring coastal wetlands and tidal-flats. Restoration, while expensive and less efficient than conservation of natural intertidal wetland, still helps these nations to move closer to meeting their formal obligations to the conservation conventions, and to help conserve migratory bird and fish species that depend on tidal-flats. It also allows them (and future generations of their citizens), to reap the multiple environmental, social and economic benefits of conservation through restoring ecosystem health and services.
Is this really the most economical, efficient and environmentally-sound use of land that until a few years ago was some of the most naturally productive and wildlife-rich wetland in the world?
http://www.birdskorea.org/Habitats/Wetlands/Songdo/BK-HA-Songdo-Is-Song-Do-an-Example-of-Sustainable-Development.shtml
Anyone see a triple whammy here?
KILLING THE MEKONG, DAM BY DAM
The mighty Mekong, flowing for 4,630 km through the heart of Southeast Asia, is in deep crisis. The delta in Vietnam is both shrinking and sinking. The loss of nutrient-rich sediment is wrecking havoc on the delta region. All large dams trap sediment and deprive the downstream areas of vital nutrients. Vietnam is suffering from huge sediment loss, running at 50 percent less than the regular flow. Rampant sand-mining in Cambodia and Vietnam has also aggravated the delta’s acute sediment shortage. The miraculous but fragile ecosystem that connects the Four Thousand Islands in Laos, Tonle Sap in Cambodia, and the delta in Vietnam is directly threatened by these two dams – the Don Sahong and the Xayaburi (in addition to all the damage done by six Chinese dams upstream from Laos). Now a third dam at Pak Beng has been announced by the Lao government.
https://thediplomat.com/2016/11/killing-the-mekong-dam-by-dam/
Simply, a genuine eco-city would not be built on tidal-flats. A genuine eco-city would cherish remaining tidal-flats, and aim to restore and enhance intertidal wetland – and not permit or promote its destruction.
That is one of the consequences of a technocracy where engineering and putting engineers in charge, is considered more important than biosystem services and ecologists or biologists…
A competent engineer would have taken that into account. Now what am I saying ? 😉
NAOM
Geothermal coming to Kernow?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/06/drilling-starts-to-tap-geothermal-power-from-cornwalls-hot-rocks
NAOM
Smoke gets in your skies. India that is.
Smokier and Smokier Skies in India
Despite efforts to curb the practice, crop burning is growing more common with each passing year. NASA’s Aqua satellite found a roughly 300 percent increase in the number of fires in the Indo-Gangetic Plain between 2003 and 2017, according to an analysis authored by Sudipta Sarkar, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144181/smokier-and-smokier-skies-in-india
https://www.thinkdif.co/sessions/blockchain-in-organic-food
How is the Indian government applying blockchain to cater for farmers? In this DIF session, Neeraj Monga is going to give an overview of the landscape, how it evolved, what type of services are being offered in the ecosystem and which companies are involved in the process.
Join this session to hear how India can boost its agricultural economy through the power of blockchain and how the intervention of the technology can solve current farming issues.
While I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say this can solve all agricultural problems in India, it is another example of the kinds of impacts technological disruption can have on centuries old systems and make the supply chain transactions more transparent, practical and less susceptible to corruption, while giving much better access to critical data such as crop health and soil moisture content or when the next drought or monsoon will hit… 1.3 billion people currently depend on these systems for sustenance. Transactional transparency throughought the chain is now essential!
The BBC usually show little blocks of ice calving off Greenland, which does not have much of an impact on most people.
This video which I have never seen is a little more dramatic.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/4/11/17219020/greenland-ice-melt-climate-change
DIF FILM
System Reset
Speakers: Areti Markopoulu, Alysia Garmulewicz, Harmen van Sprang, Pieter van de Glind
https://www.thinkdif.co/sessions/system-reset
AVAILABLE TO WATCH FROM 15 NOV
Imagine if we built an economic system built on abundance rather than scarcity. Taking advantage of the latest digital tools, computational power, material science, biomimicry and a somewhat older idea – the commons – this new system could have the power to transform how we live and work. System Reset is a feature-length documentary which explores this story of change in our economy.
Shot in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona, this film is a DIF 2018 exclusive. It features some of the leading thinkers in materials, economics, the commons movement, FabLabs, digital citizenship, urban planning and architecture. Don’t miss your opportunity to see them collectively weave a picture of how our economy could operate.
It may be a starting point for a discussion with a somewhat more hopeful bent towards potential paradigm change. Just a reminder, our 12 year time window for meaningful change is awfully short…
“Just a reminder, our 12 year time window for meaningful change is awfully short…” Yeah, I remember, meanwhile (with not an EV in sight):
AFRICA ENJOYS OIL BOOM AS DRILLING SPREADS ACROSS CONTINENT
““When you go for business development, trying to acquire licenses or make partnerships in West Africa, you can sense the competition,” Gilbert Yevi, senior vice president of exploration and production for Sasol Ltd., said in an interview in Cape Town. “It’s like a new California gold rush. And the prize — for both companies and countries — could be huge. There could be at least 41 billion barrels of oil and 319 trillion cubic feet of gas yet to be discovered in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2016 U.S. Geological Survey report.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-06/africa-enjoys-oil-boom-as-drilling-spreads-across-the-continent
And, I could add a few dozen announcements like the following. Which sound like BAU — but supercharged — to me.
INVICTUS ENERGY REVEALS ‘GIANT’ MAIDEN RESOURCE FOR ZIMBABWE GAS AND CONDENSATE PROJECT
“The high side estimate of over 2.2 billion boe gross is enormous and confirms Mzarabani as potentially the largest undrilled seismically defined structure onshore Africa.”
Where does all the financing for all this African drilling come from? USA, Russia, china ? Perhaps some of our industry people know.
NAOM
Well, Tullow Oil plc, for one. Tullow is a multinational oil and gas exploration company founded in Tullow, Ireland with its headquarters in London, UK. It has a big presence in Africa. General Electric is building Uganda’s fancy new oil refinery and Cnooc Ltd. (China) is everywhere. Invictus is headquartered in Houston, Texas, of course. These guy are all intertwined with JVs. France is a big player as well.
Africa is being drilled for oil and gas by almost every oil company
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2016/10/race-oil-gas-africa-161020104953200.html
From your link (I had no idea):
“American oil company ExxonMobil is one of the largest foreign investors in Africa. Over the last years, it has committed more than $24bn to energy exploration and development.”
Maybe we should be using our latest laser tech to send SOS signals into space. Input from an intelligent species would be handy right now.
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-laser-technology-fashioned-earth-porch.html
ExxonMobil investment is in Nigeria and some Angola, mostly deepwater FPSOs, which are now in later life rundown.
With all the fuss about plastic waste, here is a question. Most plastic waste is in the forms of polyethylene, polypropylene, PET etc, what about cellophane? Is this as big a problem, is it as environmentally unfriendly?
NAOM
Cellophane is cellulose, 100 percent biodegradable. The process uses some nasty chemicals but the product is fine.
Expanding Hugo’s link (a dose of reality),
THE RACE FOR OIL AND GAS IN AFRICA
“The interest of major US energy companies in Africa has not decreased, and the needs of Asia and Europe will not stop growing. “We all know oil resources are becoming increasingly rare. The last major reserves of oil in Africa will become increasingly important. Pre-positioning oneself with a view to exploiting these resources is vital,” says Jean Batou, professor of history at Lausanne University, in the documentary titled, Shadow War in the Sahara.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2016/10/race-oil-gas-africa-161020104953200.html
Here is a junior high map of Africa’s resources from Aljazeera. What, no tin mines?
BTW,
Since the Kyoto Protocol — the international treaty that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — went into effect in 2005, global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 19%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2018/10/31/the-market-for-turbochargers-is-growing-heres-why/#6db4ba436d4b
Since 2005 we have added another billion people to the planet and another two billion people raised their standard of living. CO2 rocks but I think it is lagging behind. Africa will take care of that!
Here’s an update with results of the state ballot measures discussed above.
Alaska – Creation of new requirements and processes for permit applications, permit application reviews, and the granting of permits for any projects or activities affecting bodies of water used by anadromous fish (in Alaska, principally salmon). Increases permitting requirements for infrastructure related to oil and gas, mining, roads, dams, ports, and wastewater treatment. Defeated 64%-36%
Arizona – Increases the state’s renewable energy mandate from 15% by 2025 to 50% in 2030. Defeated 70%-30%
California – Repeals 2017’s fuel tax and vehicle fee increases and requires voter approval to impose, increase, or extend such taxes and fees in the future. Defeated 55%-45%
Colorado – Requires new oil and gas development projects be a minimum distance of 2,500 feet from occupied buildings and other areas designated as vulnerable; a de facto restriction or ban on fracking in the state. Defeated 57%-43%
Colorado – Requires that property owners be compensated for any reduction in property value caused by state laws or regulations, in particular the Colorado measure described above. Defeated 54%-43%
Florida – Bans offshore oil and gas drilling beneath all state waters. Approved 69%-31%
Missouri – Increases gas tax by 10 cents/gallon by June 2022 and creates a fund for certain road projects. Defeated 54%-46%
Montana – Requires state regulators to deny permits for any new hard rock mines if perpetual treatment is needed to rehabilitate and restore land used for said mine. Defeated 57%-43%
Nevada – Deregulates state electric market and declares that persons, businesses, and political subdivisions cannot be forced to purchase electricity from one provider. Defeated 67%-33%
Nevada – Increases the state’s renewable energy mandate from 25% by 2020 to 50% by 2030. Approved 59%-41%
Oklahoma – Places 5% of annual revenue from the state’s oil and gas production tax into a fund. 4% of the average of the money in the fund over the previous 5 years would be transferred to the state’s general revenue fund. Defeated 57%-43%
Utah – Advises the state legislature to increase the state’s gas tax by 10 cents/gallon and increase education funding using freed up revenue. Defeated 66%-34%
Washington – Enacts a carbon emissions fee of $15/metric ton beginning in 2020 and increases the fee by $2/metric ton annually until the state’s existing greenhouse gas reduction goal for 2035 is met and the state is on pace and likely to meet its 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goal. Result not yet certain – “No” leads 56%-44% with 64% of precincts reporting
Thanks, pretty much predictable though Nevada surprised me renewable energy mandate.
NAOM
Nevada’s mandate had little in the way of organized and funded opposition, whereas Arizona’s deliberately similar measure had over $30 million pour in from Americans for Prosperity and other special interests dedicated to defeating renewable energy mandates. Their main arguments were to not let a Californian/San Franciscan (Tom Steyer) get his way, raise energy costs, destroy jobs, reduce economic competitiveness, and turn Arizona into another California through mandating 50% renewable energy by 2030. With that messaging and funding, their campaign was quite effective.
Meanwhile, in Washington, more of the vote has since come in and the proposed carbon fee there has officially been defeated.
Gambling in Nevada (the largest source of state revenue) has stumbled since 2006. Mining (the second largest source of state revenue) has not.
Mining the sunshine is an attractive notion around here, especially when sticking it to California.
“especially when sticking it to California”
Primitive barbaric hate over civil logic. Nevada is full of ex Californians who financially couldn’t make it in California. They settle for low cost housing and summer time $500 electric bills.
Whatever they are or are not in Nevada I do not know; but they did just elect a dead pimp. I hope you’re not holding your breath for thoughtful and civil logic from your fellow countrymen. It’s not the American way. Perhaps you think to highly of your fellow Americans. A Grey Hound bus trip from LA to NYC should clear that up.
Point well made. Twenty-five years ago I needed to get from LA to Seattle on a sold out 4th of July weekend. It ended up being a 24 hour Grey Hound trip. I had a great time, don’t think I have ever laughed continually so much, everyone should have the experience and I have never done it again. Eye opening. Not everyone gets the same opportunity in life.
By always choosing the worst example and extending it to the general population it propagandizes the population.
No one speaks of all great, good or even mediocre choices which are the bulk. Much like the yellow media the worst and most dramatic are touted as the norm. The result of long term lies of exaggeration and purposeful misrepresentation is we now have the orange leader and his crew. Thanks to all who pursue and magnify the worst, we get the worst.
Who needs Russians, we have our own fleet of divisive Americans.
CA has the 5th largest GNP on Earth.
The rest of the US would be even more third world without it.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/7/18069940/election-results-2018-energy-carbon-fracking-ballot-initiatives
FOSSIL FUEL MONEY CRUSHED CLEAN ENERGY BALLOT INITIATIVES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
But there were several climate change- and energy-related ballot initiatives up for a vote across the country as well. For the most part, they did not go well for fans of clean energy. The ones that utilities and oil and gas companies mobilized and spent big against lost.
This debate in the US being continually framed as a left vs. right issue is really getting tiring! Most Americans are just plain wrong, too stupid to understand reality and seem to have their heads so far up their asses that they have long ago lost the capacity to think rationally! I reiterate a previous comment of mine in this thread: Anyone who is not currently a ferocious foe of fossil fuels is any enemy of all life as we know it on this planet!
12 years to go… Fuck MAGA.
We have a planetary emergency and Americans are fiddling while the planet burns. Not that too many of the other residents of the planet are a whole lot better!
C’est la vie! Or more like C’est la mort!
Your state’s election results were the only big surprise of the night for me. Governor DeSantis and Senator Scott now. However offshore oil drilling was banned and felons got the right to vote.
Big oil didn’t oppose the Florida ban because they know there’s not much oil there.
America Voted. The Climate Lost.
By Emily Atkin
https://newrepublic.com/article/152062/america-voted-climate-lost
The midterms gave voters two opportunities to change America’s course on climate change. They could have elected a Congress that would no longer support Trump’s anti-climate agenda. And they could have approved strong statewide climate policies to counter the federal government’s inaction.
Voters took the first opportunity, but only slightly. Democrats won the House of Representatives, making it near-impossible for Trump to pass any anti-climate legislation.
Voters rejected almost every opportunity to enact strong state-level climate policies. The biggest failure by far was in Washington. Initiative 1631 would have made the state the first in the country to charge polluters for their emissions. The proceeds from the carbon fee could have provided Washington with “as much as $1 billion annually by 2023 to fund government programs related to climate change,” Fortune reported, and “potentially kickstart a national movement to staunch greenhouse gases.” The measure lost by 12 percentage points.
The renewable energy ballot initiative in Arizona also presented a big opportunity to reduce emissions. Proposition 127 would have required electric companies in Arizona to get half of their power from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2030. (In a rare win for the environment on Tuesday, Nevada voters passed their own version of that initiative.) Proposition 112, Colorado’s ballot initiative to keep oil and gas drilling operations away from where people live, was far more about protecting public health than it was about limiting climate change. But the effect would have been to limit further fossil fuel extraction in the state.
The oil and gas industry spent quite a lot of money opposing all of these pro-climate ballot initiatives. The campaign against Washington’s carbon fee “raised $20 million, 99 percent of which has come from oil and gas,” according to Vox. The carbon fee was thus one of the most expensive ballot initiative fights in Washington state history. The renewable energy fight in Arizona was also the most expensive in state history because of oil industry spending. The same was true for Colorado’s anti-fracking measure, as the oil and gas industry clearly spent nearly $40 million opposing it.
Washington state’s carbon tax was significantly flawed because those in charge got to pick and choose certain companies and industries to exempt. It began looking like a unfair tax going into government’s already massive bank account while sticking it to small businesses and ordinary folks without benefiting the environment in a meaningful way. Several “green” groups opposed it because of these flaws, probably dooming it to fail all along.
PIOMAS arctic ice volume 12 month average had a small increase after the lows in 2016 but peaked in mid October and is heading down again. The peak was about equal to the local minimum following the record low ice extents in 2012.
Using the time period on the graph, it appears as if sea ice volume loss is slowing down. I have been wondering if the accuracy of measuring thin ice is adequate. 1 meter thick ice has about 7 cm to 26 cm of freeboard. The denser ice may be too low in the water to measure accurately. The wide variation in density may be a problem also. The less dense ice will show as larger volume but not have any larger mass.
I wonder if submarine measurements are still being taken on a regular basis.
The loss of young, thin ice would have been rapid compared to the old, multi-season, thick ice (volume to surface area). The slow down isn’t surprising as the heat has to, now, churn up the big stuff. When that gets worn down things will speed up again.
NAOM
PIOMAS is a calculation based on a freezing model. Cryosat is a measurement but only works in winter when there are no melt ponds and doesn’t have a long history, SMOS is another satellite based measurement that works on thin ice (PIOMAS has been compared with, and I think tuned against, the recent measurements).
https://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/SMOS/Satellite_cousins_have_ice_covered
Without ground-based (water-based?) feedbacks to correct satellite errors and inconsistencies the system can wander. The low resolution of satellite scans combined with the wide variation in density of ice makes for a very difficult situation to make even somewhat accurate volume estimations relate to actual mass. As was found out by icebreaker expeditions into the Arctic Ocean, often what appears to be very thick ice is rotten and easily broken.
As the Arctic sea ice approaches low mass and more yearly ice, surface and submarine field observations will be of high value in correcting satellite imaging.
Submarine observations seem to peter out after 2005.
A Pan-Arctic Airborne Sea Ice Observation System
The main challenges for sea ice thickness observations from space are the inter-annual variability and the significant seasonal cycle of ice surface conditions. One example is the lack of snow-depth data that may create significant errors of ice thickness retrievals from satellite freeboard measurements. The assessment of uncertainties in the sea ice mass budget through independent validation data sets therefore requires the presence of an observation system throughout the year.
The scale necessary to capture gradients of sea ice thickness and to provide meaningful sections of data for comparisons require either the use of long-range observation platforms, such as submarines or aircraft, or autonomous stations that can record sea ice parameters at a location for months and years. In addition, the need for consistency among data sets is an important factor for time series of high-resolution validation data sets that may bridge between several remote sensing mission concepts. One method that provides such datasets throughout different stages of developments of sea ice is airborne electromagnetic induction sounding (AEM).
http://epic.awi.de/41245/1/aos2016_white_paper_hendricks_etal.pdf
China coal mining it’s environmental effects.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2015/jun/05/carbon-bomb-the-coal-boom-choking-china
Future modernization program that even the stupidest person will realise that China’s claims of greening their economy are communist lies for the gullible.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal/china-aims-to-supersize-coal-sector-through-mergers-idUSKBN1EU0Q8
Future modernization program that even the stupidest person will realise that China’s claims of greening their economy are communist lies for the gullible.
No one anywhere is ‘Greening’ their economy, that is a meaningless term! And as for ‘Communism’ The Chinese haven’t been practicing that for a long time. It is an obsolete economic system just as bad as ‘Capitalism’ . Time to come into the 21st century bubba! You are living in the distant past! The times they are a changing!
Fred
You are correct, it is not exactly communism. It still is a one party state, as it was in the communist times. There are no elections just as in communist times. Anyone who openly criticizes the government is put in prison and often tortured just like in communist times.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-41661862
A country run by vicious totalitarians.
People can start their own businesses. I guess we call that a fascist dictatorship. Two sides of the same coin.
People have been so brainwashed to think of communism as totalitarian, and capitalism as democratic.
That is mixing up economic systems with governing systems.
Communism can certainly be democratic, and capitalism is often totalitarian.
This is 5th grade concepts. I bet over 90% americans would fail to make this kind of distinction correctly. They don’t even know when the war of 1812 happened.
Hickory
Communism failed because the likes of Stalin wanted to control everything, factories, businesses, where people lived, how big apartments could be. size of a loaf of bread. Far, far too much like hard work.
Much better to just control governmental power, finance, police and army. Much easier and usually works better.
“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”
― Edward Abbey
“Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.”
–EDWARD ABBEY
In a period of time when a true democracy is possible due to the high level of fast communications available, the US seems to be moving quickly in the opposite direction.
not exactly communism
Yes, in fact it’s not communism at all. Communism’s essential feature is that the working class run the country. That hasn’t been the case in any “communist” country. They may have claimed to be a “dictatorship for the proletariat, but never of the proletariat.
It’s a dictatorship. It may be a relatively technocratic, benign dictatorship. The dictators may have once been working class people. But, now they’re not, and it’s just a dictatorship.
is that the working class run the country.
As Marx pointed out:
“Dictatorship of the proletariat”
Never has happened, as communism has never arisen.
But, Marx was much too much of a optimist.
Great analysis of capitalism, but after that?
Why does it seem like we’re in a desperate race to wipe out human civilization? Oh well, apparently we’ve got a whole twelve years to fritter away. BTW 83 X 12 ~ one billion more people. Sigh.
U.S. OIL PRODUCTION IS SET TO SOAR PAST 12 MILLION BPD
“Rising shale production is putting the United States on track to hit the 12 million bpd oil production mark sooner than previously forecast, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its November Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/US-Oil-Production-Is-Set-To-Soar-Past-12-Million-Bpd.html
Psst!
This just in… Scientists are questioning the rate at which climate change is happening.
Guess what, it doesn’t seem to be the case that it is happening slower than was expected, ain’t that a surprise?!
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-climate.amp
Cheers!
Fuck, why does it always turn out to be: “even faster than feared, or, even greater than feared, or, even worse than feared”?
It’s a learning curve. By the time what is learned is enough to understand the earth system of the 1980’s the system will have changed dramatically.
In other words, they can’t predict their way out of a black box.
You can also add the leakage from both undersea rifts and surface rifts such as the rift valley in Africa.
The findings suggest that CO2 is transferred from upper mantle or lower crustal magma bodies along these deep faults. Extrapolation of the measurements to the entire Eastern branch of the rift system implies a huge CO2 flux 71 megatonnes per year, comparable to emissions from the entire global mid-ocean ridge system of 53 to 97 megatonnes per year.
Lee says the scientists plan to measure diffuse CO2 flux and collect gas samples from other areas in the EAR to better constrain how much it releases deep carbon to try to better constrain how much deeply derived CO2 comes from natural systems.
“Because some geological settings, for example fault zones, have never been paid attention to, global CO2 flux from natural systems are obviously underestimated,” he said. “Although there are still many ongoing studies to find better ways to quantify CO2 flux from active volcanoes, we expect this study to trigger more research on CO2 output from non-volcanic areas.”
https://phys.org/news/2016-01-scientists-deep-carbon-emissions-continental.html
People seem so concerned about the fossil fuel CO2 emissions, overly concerned. It is probably more important to look at how the natural systems will respond to a plume of increased carbon. I look at the natural system that kept the CO2 in the mid-200’s for thousands of years after the world warmed from the last major glaciation. The level of CO2 maintenance could very well be temperature sensitive, meaning once a global temperature is reached the CO2 level that helped get it there will be maintained for a very long time at that higher level. That of course implies a much longer time for natural methane emissions.
People seem so concerned about the fossil fuel CO2 emissions, overly concerned. It is probably more important to look at how the natural systems will respond to a plume of increased carbon.
On the other hand, there are those among us, who still insist that things might just work out for us because there are not enough fossil fuels left and peak oil/ peak oil demand, will not allow the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to put us past the 2 °C mark. It’s hard to guess what exactly they are smoking!
From where I’m looking at things, it looks like we are going to easily blow past the 4 °C mark before the end of the century, without so much as a pause! And that will happen whether or not stop all emissions of CO2 as of yesterday!
Cheers!
“It’s hard to guess what exactly they are smoking!”
Well Fred, in British Columbia we spent the last two summers inhaling away too much wildfire smoke which, according to my doctor, damaged the lungs of both two and four legged critters alike. If you’re right, 4 degrees C (if not 2 degrees C), will leave us a charred soil horizon to remind anyone who happens to be left, of Canada’s once great forests.
“Well Fred, in British Columbia we spent the last two summers inhaling away too much wildfire smoke which”
I’ve got a bit of that right now. Not too bad here, but they are closing schools in Santa Rosa because of it. It’s been very dry.
California Camp Fire forces evacuation of schools, hospital –
A Northern California fire is growing at a rate of about 80 football fields per minute
By Emanuella Grinberg, Eliott C. McLaughlin and Christina Zdanowicz, CNN
A state of emergency has been declared for Butte County due to the effects of the Camp Fire, which began around 6:30 a.m. Thursday and quickly spread, said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. By 2:00 p.m. local time, it had grown to 18,000 acres, according to Cal Fire.
Updated 1:27 AM ET, Fri November 9, 2018
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/08/us/california-camp-fire-hospital-evacuation/index.html
BREAKING NEWS: Some Schools, Colleges Closed Today Due to smoke
59 mins ago – Due to the heavy smoke continuing today from the 20,000 acre ‘Camp Fire’ in Butte County, certain schools across Sonoma County will be closed today. This from Steve Herrington, superintendent of schools for Sonoma County, and Diane Kitamura of the Santa Rosa City School …
http://www.ksro.com/2018/11/09/breaking-news-some-schools-colleges-closed-today-due-to-smoke-from-butte-countys-camp-fire/
Those fires are really dangerous and life threatening. Sad they seem to be a regular part of life in those regions. The loss of life other than human is rarely talked about, but that is where the most fatalities occur.
Fuck, why does it always turn out to be: “even faster than feared, or, even greater than feared, or, even worse than feared”?
Isn’t it the more they amp up the warnings the better the job security for environmental consultants and the bureaucratic class? Endless meetings and committees and commissions and agencies these days are huge within the public sector.
Nope!
And you are deeply and profoundly ignorant… then again perhaps you’re just a troll!
Adam
I was not convinced that increased CO2 would have much of an impact.
Back in the 1990s it was just a theory.
However the actual proof, on the ground observations is now undeniable.
Coal, oil and gas companies can easily send their own scientist to make their own observations.
The permafrost of Canada and Siberia is melting at a rate few predicted even 10 years ago.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/permafrost-thawing-methane-1.4806284
Until 10 years ago scientist were not concerned that the Antarctic east ice sheet would remain stable. Actual measurements show it is also starting to melt.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/08/east-antarctic-ice-sheet-melting/
If you think of the heat given off by one oven, the heat from a car engine or a coal fire. That heat has to go somewhere. Every day we burn 30,000,000, 000 gallons of oil in cars, ships and aeroplanes. Every day we burn 15,000,000 tones of coal. Globally we also burn over one billion cubic feet of gas per day. The extra CO2 traps more of that heat.
I guess it really is not that surprising that the ice which has remained stable for several thousands years is melting.
The time left to make major changes has caught many people by surprise.
” was not convinced that increased CO2 would have much of an impact.
Back in the 1990s it was just a theory.”
Ahem!. Just a theory?
“Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge,[4] ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
Take if from a professional spectroscopist, it was a well known physical fact long before the 1990’s.
Gonefishing obviously you are exceptionally good at claiming what you knew 25 years ago.
At the time there was little actual, actual on the ground data.
CO2 could have been absorbed by increased plant growth.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29601644
The plant kingdom could have absorbed much much more, but of course we are destroying that also.
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/various-deforestation-facts.php
I suppose you were so concerned that 25 years ago you stopped flying anywhere, stopped buying any food that was produced less than 10 miles from your home and only ever traveled by bicycle or on foot.
Obviously Hugo you like sounding big by making up a lot of shit and trashing people that have some knowledge of the subject. Your premise that science did not understand the physics or the consequences of increased CO2 in the atmosphere back in the 80’s is wrong.
.
“I suppose you were so concerned that 25 years ago you stopped flying anywhere, stopped buying any food that was produced less than 10 miles from your home and only ever traveled by bicycle or on foot.” chorus of the obvious troll denier so you might want to back off from that drivel unless you want to sound like them. BTW, I flew sailplanes, no motor. I was also involved with thermal solar collectors but there was no interest back in the early 80’s. It would be 30 years before the general public showed a modicum of interest in renewable energy and now they want highly expensive and complex heat pumps. Europe was and is much more advanced in those areas but I don’t live there.
1824
Fourier calculates that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere. =>Simple models
1859
Tyndall demonstrates that some gases block infrared radiation, and notes that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change. =>Other gases
1879
International Meteorological Organization begins to compile and standardize global weather data, including temperature. =>International
1896
Arrhenius publishes first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2. =>Simple models
1897
Chamberlin produces a model for global carbon exchange including feedbacks. =>Simple models
——-
1963
Calculations suggest that feedback with water vapor could make the climate acutely sensitive to changes in CO2 level. =>Radiation math
1965
Boulder, Colorado meeting on causes of climate change: Lorenz and others point out the chaotic nature of climate system and the possibility of sudden shifts. =>Chaos theory
1966
Emiliani’s analysis of deep-sea cores and Broecker’s analysis of ancient corals show that the timing of ice ages was set by small orbital shifts, suggesting that the climate system is sensitive to small changes. =>Climate cycles
1967
International Global Atmospheric Research Program established, mainly to gather data for better short-range weather prediction, but including climate. =>International
Manabe and Wetherald make a convincing calculation that doubling CO2 would raise world temperatures a couple of degrees. =>Radiation math
1968
Studies suggest a possibility of collapse of Antarctic ice sheets, which would raise sea levels catastrophically. =>Sea rise & ice
1969
Astronauts walk on the Moon, and people perceive the Earth as a fragile whole. =>Public opinion
Budyko and Sellers present models of catastrophic ice-albedo feedbacks. =>Simple models
Nimbus III satellite begins to provide comprehensive global atmospheric temperature measurements. =>Government
1970
First Earth Day. Environmental movement attains strong influence, spreads concern about global degradation. =>Public opinion
Creation of US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the world’s leading funder of climate research. =>Government
Aerosols from human activity are shown to be increasing swiftly. Bryson claims they counteract global warming and may bring serious cooling. =>Aerosols
1971
SMIC conference of leading scientists reports a danger of rapid and serious global change caused by humans, calls for an organized research effort. =>International
Mariner 9 spacecraft finds a great dust storm warming the atmosphere of Mars, plus indications of a radically different climate in the past.=>Venus & Mars
1972
Ice cores and other evidence show big climate shifts in the past between relatively stable modes in the space of a thousand years or so, especially around 11,000 years ago. =>Rapid change
Droughts in Africa, Ukraine, India cause world food crisis, spreading fears about climate change. =>Public opinion
1973
Oil embargo and price rise bring first “energy crisis”. =>Government
1974
Serious droughts since 1972 increase concern about climate, with cooling from aerosols suspected to be as likely as warming; scientists doubt all theories as journalists talk of a new ice age.=>Public opinion
1975
Warnings about environmental effects of airplanes lead to investigations of trace gases in the stratosphere and discovery of danger to ozone layer. =>Other gases
Manabe and collaborators produce complex but plausible computer models which show a temperature rise of a few degrees for doubled CO2. =>Models (GCMs)
1976
Studies show that CFCs (1975) and also methane and ozone (1976) can make a serious contribution to the greenhouse effect. =>Other gases
Deep-sea cores show a dominating influence from 100,000-year Milankovitch orbital changes, emphasizing the role of feedbacks. =>Climate cycles
Deforestation and other ecosystem changes are recognized as major factors in the future of the climate. =>Biosphere
Eddy shows that there were prolonged periods without sunspots in past centuries, corresponding to cold periods. =>Solar variation
1977
Scientific opinion tends to converge on global warming, not cooling, as the chief climate risk in the next century. =>Public opinion
1978
Attempts to coordinate climate research in US end with an inadequate National Climate Program Act, accompanied by rapid but temporary growth in funding. =>Government
1979
Second oil “energy crisis.” Strengthened environmental movement encourages renewable energy sources, inhibits nuclear energy growth. =>Public opinion
US National Academy of Sciences report finds it highly credible that doubling CO2 will bring 1.5-4.5°C global warming. =>Models (GCMs)
World Climate Research Programme launched to coordinate international research. =>International
https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
Yes Hugo, the principles and heating effects physics was well known and major warnings came out from top climate scientists in the 1980’s. Actually the first warnings came out in the 1950’s but were of course ignored.
Here is Arrhenius’s paper of 1886, pay close attention to Table VII.
http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
I propose this should be expanded and turned into an article. Any seconders?
NAOM
Gonefishing
I see you did not answer regarding where your food comes from or if you only cycle and if you have flown anywhere in the last 25 years.
I see you have learned nothing as I suspected.
Fred, is this your cup of tea?
WHAT COULD CAUSE THE MISSISSIPPI BIGHT TO BECOME HYPOXIC?
“The northern Gulf of Mexico is home to the second largest hypoxic zone in the world, also known as the “Dead Zone”, however, there is no part of the country or the world that is immune. Researchers have directly linked the northern Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone” to discharge from the Mississippi River. The river water delivers excess nutrients to the region and creates a fresher layer of water at the surface that prevents oxygen from reaching the bottom layer. This leads to a depletion of oxygen over the summer season.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-mississippi-bight-hypoxic.html#jCp
“The northern Gulf of Mexico is home to the second largest hypoxic zone in the world, also known as the “Dead Zone”, however, there is no part of the country or the world that is immune.
Yes, I do know something about so called “Dead Zones”. First of all,. they are teaming with life! 😉
Just not the kind of life that is conducive to helping us survive. Tough noughies, eh?!
Anyways I just listened to this presentation at the DIF 2018. Ironically. a lot of the research in closed loop ecosystems that they discussed is closely related to nutrient cycles.
https://www.thinkdif.co/sessions/54-million-kilometers-from-home
54 Million Kilometres from Home
…Join this show to hear from Lucie Poulet who has worked alongside the European Space Agency on MELiSSA: their closed-loop life support system designed for space travel. She’ll tell us how we could reapply the thinking behind MELiSSA to our planet, since Earth cannot resupply itself within any human timeframe. This DIF session represents a terrific opportunity to hear about how cutting-edge closed loop technology is being developed and applied in the harshest environment possible, and what that means for us terrestrials.
The website displays “The recording of this event will be available soon”.
Yep!
All sessions can either be watched live at the posted GMT time or when they post the recorded video after the fact
Islandboy —
SEVERE CARIBBEAN DROUGHTS MAY MAGNIFY FOOD INSECURITY
Although the Caribbean has recently been affected by catastrophic hurricanes—such as Maria and Irma—that caused significant and rapid damage, persistent droughts can slowly bring havoc to vulnerable Caribbean countries, said Herrera: “This is especially true for the agriculture and tourism sectors of this region, which are the most important contributors to gross domestic product in most Caribbean nations.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-severe-caribbean-droughts-magnify-food.html#jCp
The Problem Behind a Viral Video of a Persistent Baby Bear
Ed Yong
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/problematic-viral-video-persistent-baby-bear/574990/
For many people, a two-and-a-half-minute video of a baby brown bear trying to scale a snow-covered mountain was a life-affirming testament to the power of persistence. As it begins, the cub is standing with its mother on the side of a perilously steep ridge. The mother begins walking across, and despite slipping a few times on the loose snow, she soon reaches the top. Her cub, following tentatively after her, isn’t so fortunate. It loses its footing and slides several feet. It pulls itself together and reattempts the ascent, before slipping again.
Finally, the cub nears the top. But as the footage zooms in to focus on the moment of reunion, the mother inexplicably swipes at the youngster with her paw, sending it hurtling downward again. It slides a long way, scrabbling for purchase and finding some just before it hits a patch of bare rock. Once again, it starts to climb, and after what seems like a nail-biting eternity for anyone watching, it reaches its mother. The two walk away.
The video was uploaded to the ViralHog YouTube channel on Friday, and after being shared on Twitter, it rapidly went viral. At the time of this writing, it has been watched 17 million times. The cub’s exploits were equal parts GIF, nature documentary, and motivational poster. It had all the elements of an incredible story: the most adorable of protagonists, rising and falling action (literally), and a happy ending. It was a tale of tenacity in the face of adversity, triumph against the odds.
But when biologists started watching the video, they saw a very different story.
The video, they say, was clearly captured by a drone. And in it, they saw the work of an irresponsible drone operator who, in trying to film the bears, drove them into a dangerous situation that almost cost the cub its life. “I found it really hard to watch,” says Sophie Gilbert, an ecologist at the University of Idaho who studies, among other things, how drones affect wildlife. “It showed a pretty stark lack of understanding from the drone operator of the effects that his actions were having on the bears.”
By harassing animals, drones can chase them into dangerous positions, as was the case with the bear cub. They can interrupt hunts, cause high levels of stress, chase animals over long distances, and drive them away from sources of food or parts of the landscape they depend upon. There are enough such instances on YouTube that Gilbert has created a lengthy playlist. “It’s staggering—all the misuses that people are proudly posting because they don’t know any better,” she says. “There’s no education right now. Nobody’s even trying to talk to folks about it.”
LNG VS CLIMATE
British Columbians would have to make every passenger vehicle electric and shut off the gas lines to every home — just to offset the increase in climate pollution from the new LNG industry. So far, B.C. has cut emissions just three per cent. To meet the 2030 target B.C. will need to start cutting emissions more than ten times faster — A 37 PER CENT CUT IN THE NEXT DECADE. That will be extremely challenging even without adding a lot of new LNG emissions to the pile.
Meanwhile, at least two more major LNG projects are up for approval: Kitimat LNG and Woodfibre LNG. Both have all the major federal and provincial environmental permits they need. They also have federal export permits. In addition, Kitimat LNG has full approval for its Pacific Trails feeder pipeline. The only major permit each project still needs is a facility permit from the BC Oil & Gas Commission. The larger of these two is Kitimat LNG, which would be located near the recently-approved LNG Canada facility. It has an export permit for 10 MtLNG per year. Emissions are projected to be roughly 4 MtCO2 per year. B.C.’S FOSSIL NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY ALREADY EMITS AROUND 11 MTCO2 PER YEAR WITHOUT LNG.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/08/analysis/lng-vs-climate-5-charts-show-burden-british-columbians?fbclid=IwAR2tloZBa3ub5A_HVrpKl-3FtXN3XTqyQlJkgVjteQ-Xfg6K2bmimeOqRQE
Tip of the iceberg, the BC carbon and carbon from other fossil fuel sources are mere accelerants. increased forest fires, melting permafrost, ponds and lakes increased carbon emissions worldwide. Nature amplifies everything we do. We act correctly and nature produces more growth and life on the planet, more soil, cleaner water. We act incorrectly and nature produces more destruction, wrecks ecosystems, does not clean the waters and destroys populations. We are part of a great amplifier system that has the power of the sun, chemistry, physics, huge amounts of materials and a billion years of advanced biology to work with. We merely play with the chemistry, biology and physics of the system, like a child with a chemistry set. Nature has the big tools, knowledge, methods and vast amounts of time.
“‘It’s alarming’: Wildfire emissions grow to triple B.C.’s annual carbon footprint”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/it-s-alarming-wildfire-emissions-grow-to-triple-b-c-s-annual-carbon-footprint-1.4259306
And yes all this stirs more feedbacks, more amplification. There is no need to push the system to it’s boundaries and no good reason.
The cleanup crew is returning.
I was just watching some vultures come in to roost for the night. It’s a cloudy day without wind, just started raining so they are calling it quits early.
Those vultures fly around much of the day and don’t use much energy. They just gather the energy that lies about on the ground and ride the air currents most of the time. They have no protection from the wind, rain, snow or cold yet seem to survive without much problem, unlike humans who need vast amounts of protection (or so they say). They certainly don’t need fossil energy, however the increased roadkill from fossil energy driven vehicles has helped increase their population. The populations in the eastern US have risen since the DDT debacle and the Black Vulture has increased it’s range northward since then (global warming?). BTW, they are great family creatures, making humans look a bit backward in that area these days.
So what is going on in India?
Nine species of vulture can be found living in India, but most are now in danger of extinction[1] after a rapid and major population collapse in recent decades.[2] As recently as the 1980s there were up to 80 million white-rumped vultures (Gyps bengalensis) in India; but today the population numbers only several thousand.
After work on possible viral causes of the decline, the culprit was discovered by Dr. Lindsay Oaks and his team at The Peregrine Fund in 2003 to be diclofenac.[10] Diclofenac is a common anti-inflammatory drug administered to livestock and is used to treat the symptoms of inflammation, fevers and/or pain associated with disease or wounds. It was widely used in India beginning in the 1990s. The drug is fatal to vultures, however, and a vulture is exposed to a mortal dose of diclofenac if it eats from the carcass of an animal that has been treated with diclofenac recently.[11] A simulation model demonstrated that if only 1% of carcasses were contaminated by diclofenac, Indian vulture populations would fall by between 60% and 90% annually, and a study of carcasses showed that about 10% were contaminated.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis#Causes
Declining vulture population can cause a health crisis
There were so many that no one thought to count them; indeed they were too numerous to enumerate. A survey across 18 protected areas in India was extrapolated to estimate that in 1991-92 there were over 40 million vultures in India.
In just over a decade, they were gone, their numbers plummeting to near extinction. Three of India’s vulture species of the genus ‘Gyps’—the long-billed (Gyps indicus) and the slender-billed (G. tenuirostris) had crashed by an astounding 97 percent, while in the white-rumped (G. bengalensis) the decline was even more catastrophic, at 99.9 between 1992 and 2007.
The dramatic decline of vultures created a vacuum, and millions of carcasses were left rotting, increasing the possibility of the spread of diseases such as TB, anthrax, brucellosis, foot-and-mouth etc. Other scavengers such as rats and feral dogs moved in but they lack the efficiency of vultures whose metabolism is a true ‘dead-end’ for pathogens. Dogs and rats, instead, become carriers of the pathogens spreading disease.
https://india.mongabay.com/2018/02/05/declining-vulture-population-can-cause-a-health-crisis/
In Africa too, but for other reasons.
https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/africa%E2%80%99s-vultures-are-sliding-towards-extinction-warns-birdlife
Does anyone smell higher chance of pandemic?
It is all about the other side of the wall we are about to crash into.
The survivors, if any, will need to sort it out– or not.
Naah!
https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D5H2NTEVsIsw&ved=2ahUKEwjdqpTvn8jeAhUCWCwKHZzdBG4QjjgwAnoECAgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3gUyRW0oRh3q2tUZnq69fR
Cheers!
Are those bodies NSAID free????
Being short on good soil up there, I thought they might have instead gone for composting.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/urban-death-project-a-case-for-composting-your-dead-body-1.3060314
Religious beliefs both feeds them and kills them.
The Great Indian Vulture Crisis
” Sadly, scientists do not expect any Indian vulture born today to be able to survive until maturity because of the sporadic presence of diclofenac in its food source.”
https://antranik.org/the-great-indian-vulture-crisis/
Daily CO2
November 8, 2018: 407.06 ppm
November 8, 2017: 404.20 ppm
https://www.co2.earth/
Recent Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2
October 2018: 406.00 ppm
October 2017: 403.63 ppm
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
We’re getting some interesting annual growth lately. The gap seems to be widening as the autumn and winter approach.
Disclaimer: Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen by volume. No other gas constitutes more than 1%. CO2 is, in fact, a trace gas representing approximately 0.04% of the volume of dry air in the atmosphere. Indeed, in the Wikipedia entry entitled Atmosphere of Earth, one learns that the globe’s greenhouse gases are referred to by most scientists as trace gases. Constituents of this category are principally methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and, yes, carbon dioxide.
The word “trace” doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. In this case, size doesn’t matter.
Several atmospheric trace gases such as carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4 are important greenhouse gases. The Earth’s climate is sensitive to changes in trace gas concentrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_gas
Without CO2 and methane the average temperature on earth would be well below freezing, a dead snowball glistening in the sunlight. But then LT does not comprehend the physics involved.
Louis, the following article explains the greenhouse effect in a simple manner suitable for children. If you find it too complex, please refrain from commenting.
A SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT FOR KIDS
https://helpsavenature.com/greenhouse-effect-for-kids
Our regular atmospheric reporter returns with the same information. It should be noted that Chlorine is lethal at the same concentration as Carbon Dioxide. Would you really want to dismiss Chlorine in ‘trace’ quantities.
NAOM
Somewhere, a village is searching for its idiot… Please go back to your village they really need you!
Hey Louis.
Theorectically, Arsenic can be a trace constituent of Trumps favorite beverage, that the immigrant lady Melania may put in there each day.
Or maybe just a trace bit of Botulinum toxin.
Just trace.
So probably not important, atleast according to Rush Limbaugh.
Some people think you can learn a lot by staying in school, past junior high.
It doesn’t work for everyone though. They say Trump can’t read more than comic books.
Goes to show that comic books can’t teach even a billionaire to have dignity.
Enjoy the famine LT. I recommend stocking up on cans of gravy. It makes almost anything taste good, even your lawn.
Louis Tennessee,
21% oxygen! Wow, that’s a lot.
And it’s put there and kept topped up by photosynthesis, which depends on CO2, a trace gas.
disclaimer
/dɪsˈkleɪmə/Submit
noun
a statement that denies something, especially responsibility.
Louis Tennessee is denying his responsibility for change by posting idiotic ramblings about basic facts regarding the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, that have no relevance whatsoever to the realities of climate change and its consequences.
EFredM,
I know.
He offers me the chance to point out something that works against deniers. It’s a favorite point of mine so I’m happy to repeat it where others can be reminded of it.
ESynapsid,
I know, YOU, know! ?
By all means, do carry on and continue whacking ignorance where and whenever it should rear its dumbassery…
Cheers!
Scum vs. Scum
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/scum-vs-scum/
America is a political sewer pipe. Or; garbage in-garbage out, as George Carlin so eloquently put it.
Survivalist,
I don’t normally read political stuff but made an exception with your Chris Hedges link. Extremely depressing stuff. Maybe it’s time to re-define Third World Country. Time for TALL single malt.
Hedges embraces reality (unusual for a former NYT’s author).
Not a pleasant experience. Maybe its all that real time experience in the field.
Reality is not for most humans.
Yeah, Hedges is a great man but constantly putting one’s head into the sewage can cause a very dark and depressed view of life. If one always looks for evil and corruption that is all one sees. Bad politicians are nothing new, but the American haters will jump on it.
America is in trouble for other reasons, maybe the French will come to our aid again.
The CBC just reported that Canada is losing 100 million dollars a day because of holdups to the KXL pipeline. But they say, they will not give up. I assume the pipeline will go through eventually.
Yea, it might be best to obscure reality.
Makes life easier, but reality eventually kicks you ass.
Nature is the only reality. It will kick your ass.
I feel it can be depressing for some. Not all though. Some like to know, and are satisfied by it. For my own self, I’m highly resistant to demoralization, something that was no doubt cultivated during my military service as a younger man. A characteristic of many good soldiers was not being prone to feeling sorry for ones self, while still maintaining an ability to empathize with others. Not always easy to achieve.
Really? Your posts do not corroborate your premise of being insulated from negativity and narrow focus on the negative. But few people are introspective enough to actually capture their own personalities and mentalities. so don’t feel bad about it.
Reality encompasses both the good and the bad, the helpful and the harmful, the negative and the positive.
“Your posts do not corroborate your premise of being insulated from negativity and narrow focus on the negative.”
My posts are not a window to my soul. Perhaps yours are and you think everyone is like you.
As far as a narrow focus on the negative… I feel the best thing for all life on earth is for humans to be greatly reduced in population ASAP. In that context I’m very optimistic, and what you consider to be bad news I might consider to be good. Normative statements expresses a value judgment about whether a situation is desirable or undesirable- and those judgements are a matter of opinion.
I did not claim to be “insulated from negativity”. Not sure where you got that from. It would do you no harm to learn the distinction between “insulated from negativity” and “resistance to demoralization”. (Hint- to assess a subjects degree of resistance to demoralization it is necessary to expose them to negativity/adversity and assess their responses to it. Resistance to demoralization is often correlated with high degrees of tolerance to and perseverance in the face of adversity/negativity. But I’m guessing you didn’t do national service, so I wouldn’t expect you to know that).
“Reality encompasses both the good and the bad, the helpful and the harmful, the negative and the positive.”
Your talents are wasted. You should teach Philosophy at Harvard.
Strange that I should find your post just as the news breaks concerning a massive global escalation of military power and capability. The military /industrial complex is alive and well on the planet and trying to grow to extremes. Let’s see how that 19th century mentality works out. I think badly and such an extreme waste of time, energy, materials and mentality.
Conventional war has never reduced population by a significant amount, at least not for very long. Nuclear war would reduce the planet to very simple lifeforms again.
Just about all scenarios of reducing human population to a low level involve high levels of destruction to the natural world. Also being who we are, leaving viable pockets of humans means the potential for recovery in 10 to 20 generations, putting humans back in the high population seat again with possibly even more destructive technology.
As far as food goes, we are one step away from being able to make food from just about any organic raw materials. Once that is achieved the whole paradigm changes.
I see viable ways to change both the population and align the human paradigm with the planetary ecosystem, but will not discuss them here. Most people here have a problem grasping simple advances let alone complex multistep ones.
The reduce population scheme through war or depletions is simplistic and naïve. But the continued delusional state and desire to grasp simplistic solutions will only interfere with an ordered and much less harmful path forward to re-integration in the natural scheme.
Maybe part of the key lies here, but not in the way most think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0S4OeRQToY
Increase in Military Power is just another manifestation of retrograde nationalistic thinking. It is facing both inwards and backwards and provides no useful means of solving global issues. There is bit of a cliche that not all conservatives are stupid but all stupid people are conservative. I think it is safe to say that the same applies to nationalists.
Cheers!
Over $3B Spent On Midterm Local TV Ads
by Mark K. Miller
https://tvnewscheck.com/article/225083/3b-spent-midterm-local-tv-ads/
The Television Bureau of Advertising reports that total spending on political advertisements on local broadcast television in 2018 has set an all-time record for a midterm cycle, and any previous election cycle, based upon Kantar Media/CMAG’s latest figures.
“Campaigns, PACs and other entities spent over $3 billion dollars on local broadcast television advertising in the 2018 midterm cycle,” said TVB President-CEO Steve Lanzano. “There is no doubt that local broadcast TV delivers for political campaigns. Candidates continue to derive tangible, winning results from local broadcast television. Tuesday’s dominant reliance on TV, over all other media platforms, demonstrates that voters rely on local broadcast TV to inform their voting decisions.”
“2018 was uncertain in every way; the volatility this cycle was unprecedented,” said Kyle Roberts, president-CEO of Advertising Analytics. “It’s why we saw candidates and campaigns go back to what is tried and true: if you use TV, it reaches voters and they listen. TV works.”
Advertising Analytics reports local broadcast TV increased more than 100 percent from the 2014 cycle. Advertising Analytics also reports that three out of four dollars spent on traditional media went to local broadcast television.
“It’s true that local broadcast TV carried the day for all candidates,” added Roberts.
“Kantar and Advertising Analytics’ numbers prove what we already know and what our members have shared with us: voters trust local television and turn to their local, vetted news programming to make important voting decisions,” continued Lanzano.
THE CONGO’S ANCIENT FOREST COULD BE GONE IN OUR LIFETIME
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-congos-oldest-trees-could-be-gone-in-our-lifetime-1830338877
…countless communities living across the six countries that the forest spans. To survive, many of those families have little option but to turn the forest into farmland. And that could spell the demise of the Congo’s primary forest, according to a new study. At projected rates of deforestation and population growth, old-growth trees in the world’s second-largest rainforest may be gone by 2100.
…
After all, the Congo holds a newly discovered peatland that sequesters a staggering 30.6 billion tons of carbon. Destruction of that peatland threatens to release all that carbon into our atmosphere, further exacerbating global warming.
THE AMAZON RAINFOREST IS ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH
https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-amazon-is-adapting-to-climate-change-but-not-fast-1830310890
But the data also shows that drought-stress across the Amazon is increasing faster than the forest is changing in response.
“Our results provide empirical evidence of the inertia within this system and clearly raise concerns about whether forests here will be able to track further climate change anticipated over coming decades,” the authors write.
Trees are losing the battle. In California the droughts and subsequent wildfires are rapidly moving ecosystems from forest to savannah or desert. In UK the ash die back, dutch elm disease, horse chestnut canker etc. are rampant.
BIT OF TRIVIA ON PEATLANDS & CLIMATE CHANGE
Current CO2 emissions (2005) caused by peat decomposition in drained peatlands are estimated to be over 600 million t yr-1, which will increase in coming decades, and will continue well beyond the 21st century, unless land management practices and peatland development plans are changed. In addition, between 1997 and 2006 an estimated average of 1400 Mt yr-1 of CO2 emissions was caused by fires associated with peatland drainage and degradation. The total current CO2 emissions from tropical peatland of approximately 2000 Mt yr-1 equal almost 8% of global emissions from fossil fuel burning. Emissions are likely to increase every year for the first decades after 2000.
http://www.peatsociety.org/peatlands-and-peat/peatlands-and-climate-change
US winter forecast
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/2018-2019-us-winter-forecast-storms-to-target-mid-atlantic-snow-and-ice-to-strike-the-southern-plains/70006208
JAPAN WEATHER BUREAU SAYS EL NINO APPEARS TO HAVE FORMED
Japan’s weather bureau said on Friday the El Niño weather pattern appears to have formed and there was a 70 percent chance it would continue into the Northern Hemisphere spring. A US government weather forecaster on Thursday projected an 80 percent chance of the El Niño weather pattern forming and continuing through the Northern Hemisphere in winter 2018/19. The last El Niño, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, occurred around 2015/2016 and caused weather-related crop damage, fires and flash floods.
https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2018-11-09-japan-weather-bureau-says-el-nino-appears-to-have-formed/
Goodbye corals! Was nice to have seen them in their full glory!
Yea, Micronesia in the 1970’s was still magical– even Hawaii.
Last time there– not so much.
Global Warming Hypocrites
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/global-warming-hypocrites-their-carbon-footprint-is-ok-but-yours-must-be-eliminated/
https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/08/15/al-gores-carbon-footprint-hypocrisy/
The greatest impediment to change, in my view, is the obvious hypocrisy of the people like Gore, who shouted the loudest and consumed the most.
Anyone who says they knew how bad global warming was going to be in 1990 should by now be living a carbon negative lifestyle.
The greatest impediment to change, in my view, is the obvious hypocrisy of the people like Gore, who shouted the loudest and consumed the most.
Are all global warming deniers stupid idiots? So far they seem to be. If you think CO2 is real, but drive your car, or travel by air, you are a hypocrite. Bullshit! We must function in the world we were born into or else die of starvation. Just because we point out the obvious, does not mean we must return to the stone age with our daily lives or else we are hypocrits.
You deniers just burn my ass with your fucking stupidity.
Ron
Are you a complete idiot? I have posted articles of the increase in Antarctic melting and the melting of the permafrost. I live a carbon neutral life, Your failure to do the same will leave a burden your children will not be able to carry.
No, you are the fucking idiot for thinking people who believe in global warming should live as the stone age population lived.
If you are not a denier then stop quoting them and stop posting their links and their stupid ideas. Only an idiot would pull that stunt.
Ron
Only an idiot see a brick wall in front of him and continues to drive at it at full speed.
Only an idiot thinks that a world powered by renewable energy is living in the stone age.
Only an idiot thinks it is not possible to live a carbon negative life, when millions of people already do.
Please keep in mind that carbon neutral is not the same thing as living in the stone age.
It is true that I can buy delivered 12 x 12 inch pavers of granite cheaper than 12 x 12 inch pavers of concrete. I prefer the granite. But does paying less for the equivalent in stone mean that I am trying to live in the stone age?
A few thoughts.
1st, Gore does lead a carbon negative life-style, as best he can. He’s installed solar power on his house, he’s bought carbon offsets against his personal carbon use.
2nd, the only people who complain about Gore’s “hypocrisy” are people who disagree with his overall message, but have no good rebuttal, so they attack him personally.
Also, of course, they’d like to make him ineffective – forcing him to no longer fly or travel in general would be a great start at doing that.
3rd, personal change is a good idea, but it’s systemic change that’s needed. As Ron says, the rules of the economy need to change, and until they do the players have to play by the rules as they exist. People who fight for change in the rules (policies and laws) of the society are doing the very best they can.
Nick G
Rubbish.
If people do not fly, then there will be no aircraft to pollute. If people do not buy cars but go the work by bicycle then CO2 emissions and the air in towns would be as clean as the countryside.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=LtpN7Vjr&id=43AFEABF35AD1BC9C6BC1E6E21574E1BD28CF572&thid=OIP.LtpN7Vjre51A2GDPCMtTEAHaEO&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fbicycledutch.files.wordpress.com%2f2013%2f03%2famsterdam.jpg&exph=456&expw=800&q=cycling+in+amsterdam&simid=607992940277796590&selectedIndex=5&ajaxhist=0
If people buy organic free range food as I do, chemicals would not pollute the rivers and oceans. The world is made up of people and it is people who make individual choices. I am carbon negative, stop making excuses.
If people do not buy cars but go the work by bicycle then CO2 emissions and the air in towns would be as clean as the countryside.
If people were honest and behaved with brotherly love then we would not need the police force. If no nation was aggressive then we would not need armies. If human nature was just different it would be a different world.
The problem is in the nature of the animal, the human animal, and that is not going to change. You can “if” until the cows come home and that will show nothing except the fact that you have no idea of why the world is like it is. Calling people hypocrites for not returning to a stone age lifestyle only exposes your ignorance.
Welcome to my stone age.
https://futurism.com/new-net-zero-farm-can-produce-13000-eggs-a-day
https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/eu/
https://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/stories/germanys-new-triple-zero-homes
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/lineside-neighbours/our-work-near-you/electrifying-the-railway/
https://spectra.mhi.com/this-is-the-worlds-most-powerful-wind-turbine?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3ZWMycDM3gIVmfdRCh2t_w66EAAYASAAEgJKu_D_BwE
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/21/electric-trams-cities-groceries-europe-edinburgh-dresden
The Non-stone age alternative
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46161280
Hugo,
I agree that your intentions are good, and that leading by example is good.
But, I disagree on several items. This can be a long conversation, so let’s start with one thing at a time.
Do you agree that the articles you provided about hypocrisy were written by climate deniers, who want to discredit the messenger?
Nick G
You may well be right. The only thing that matters is what people do.
When you have someone saying one thing and doing the absolute opposite people usually follow the example.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/al-gore-wealth_us_599709f2e4b0e8cc855d5c09?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_cs=2SSqr_AkJHCNs6Zvv4gucg
We have got our own Al Gore, Prince wasteofspace, who constantly talks about protecting the environment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6276819.stm
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/821626/Prince-Charles-most-expensive-royal-travel-bill-private-jet
What rich scum think is ordinary people should live in hovels while they use up all the resources.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-andrew-3000-helicopter-ride-london-norfolk-duke-of-york-a7468016.html
If someone says to you, buy a tiny house to save energy, then you see them buy a 6,500 square foot mansion. Would you follow their advice?
No, of course not, you would think what a prat.
Everyone wants to live a luxery lifestyle just like Prince wasteofspace and Al gore.
https://www.ecowatch.com/humans-consumption-of-earths-natural-resources-tripled-in-40-years-1943126747.html
Words are nothing example is everything
Ed Begley Jr., who is both an actor and an environmental activist, wrestled with the question of whether he should fly in support of his political enterprises. David Suzuki, a noted Canadian environmentalist, told him that he should fly- that the benefits of influencing people to embrace the cause outweighed the impact of his emissions.
The political process requires people to fly in support of their causes. Al Gore’s (and Ed Begley’s) emissions are not his personally: they should be seen, essentially, as divided amongst the emissions of millions of supporters. Going to spend days in political backrooms is not the same as going to Mira Lago for a day to play golf.
I view this the same way I view Animal Rights activism: you can try to tell me that you value animals, but you can’t change the fact that the infrastructure you depend on to live- the roads, the buildings, the farms that we grow food on- have removed the ecological niche for huge numbers of animals.
You drive on asphalt roads and use a public infrastructure that has been built by fossil fuels for the last 100 years.
None of our hands are clean.
I think the biggest flaw,
of the entire climate change movement,
is the lack of anybody willing to live by example,
a life free of fossil fuels,
and no carbon footprint at all.
Until we have brave citizens willing to show leadership,
by proving it is actually possible to live a happy life with no carbon impact,
I’m afraid most people in the world will think,
“why should I alter my lifestyle around climate change if you won’t?”
Good day.
I think the biggest flaw, of the entire climate change movement,nis the lack of anybody willing to live by example, a life free of fossil fuels, and no carbon footprint at all.
Nonsense, there are dozens of them right here in Pensacola. They are on almost every street corner. I often hand one of them a dollar.
“They are on almost every street corner. I often hand one of them a dollar.”
I never thought of those people as pioneers and role models.
I’ll have to introduce my wife to that concept, see if she’ll forsake a pillow for the common good.
Hickory has been talking about his solar installation.
ditto Islandboy
Dennis Coyne has talked about his Tesla.
Hugo has talked about things he is doing.
etc.
I try and use few resources. Bicycle for transport (about to use it in about 1/2 hr). Started with CFL now moving to LED lighting. Electricity use about 4kW daily. Prefer local to foreign when shopping etc
NAOM
I had an experience yesterday Sunday that I thought would fit in as a response to Hugo’s comment so, here goes:
The University of the West Indies Mona Campus (UWI) is the first (oldest), largest and most reputable university in Jamaica. The university is a Caribbean regional institution with four campuses, including one in Trinidad and one in Barbados and is primarily funded by subventions from the various island governments that have students from their territories studying at the university. The university has been facing financial difficulties due to declining contributions from governments, delays in the remittance of said contributions and rising costs, not the least of which is energy.
As a cost saving measure the UWI Mona Campus decided to build and operate a 7 MW NG fueled cogeneration plant. Fuel for the plant is to be supplied by LNG supplier New Fortress Energy, the same company that is supplying the local electricity utility with NG for their new NG fueled initiatives as well as supplies for cogen plants at a major local beverage (beer) producer, a major beverage distributor and an alumina processing plant. The negotiations for the implementation of this project were completed under the previous (2012-2017) principal of UWI Mona who’s background was in medicine and it is highly likely that the discussions started under the 2007 to 2012 administration, under a principal who had been chairman of the board of the electricity utility and has since become the CEO of the Port Authority of Jamaica. This particular gentleman got his first degree in mechanical engineering from the UWI St. Augustine (Trinidad) campus and also has a Phd. in business administration from Harvard. Let me just say I detect a certain amount of enthusiasm for LNG from this gentleman since it seems that LNG has come up for discussion in all of his appointments, the latest being:
LNG to open new opportunities
Head of the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) Professor Gordon Shirley says he is excited about the availability of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the island.
According to Shirley, LNG will not only result in the price of electricity being reduced, but it will offer an alternative energy source to several industries across western Jamaica.
“It also introduces an important new energy alternative which can be expected to be important for a number of industries in the country, and particularly those in western Jamaica,” the PAJ boss emphasised.
Note also that shortly after the end of the tenure of this LNG advocate at the UWI, a lecturer in the department of economics at the university published a paper (available here), that was covered twice by the older of the two local newspapers under the headline Don’t waste time with solar – lecturer and again, two and a half weeks later University of the West Indies lecturer wary of solar power. Note also that this particular newspaper has published at least one editorial, in which it was pushing for the use of coal to reduce electricity costs, EDITORIAL – Don’t give coal short shrift.
Which brings me to my experience yesterday. The new principal of the UWI Mona Campus is Prof. Dale Webber, who has a background in Coastal Ecology and Environmental Management and who’s wife is a professor in Marine Ecology. I had the opportunity to have a brief exchange with him in which I stated my vision for a solar powered Jamaica. He immediately sounded very interested and disclosed that he has solar PV at his his house and that the university has done a survey indicating that 2 MW could be generated by PV using currently available rooftop space. When I broached the topic of combining EVs with solar PV, he disclosed that he had just ordered a new hybrid car, having been unable to find a pure EV to replace his existing vehicle. His reason for wanting to acquire and drive an EV, to make a statement!
The point being that, it is absolutely important what those who are considered “thought leaders” say. On the one hand we had a UWI principal pushing BAU and on the other hand, one with environmentalist leanings proposing renewable solutions and energy efficiency. These are the people who will be quoted in news stories when they speak and if they can also lead by example that helps but, I don’t give a rats ass how many times Prof. Webber or Al Gore decide to fly and how far they decide to fly, once their message is consistently “green”. If Prof. Webber or someone of like mind had been at the helm at the UWI ten years ago, they might have taken a decidedly different approach to reducing their energy costs, one that might have involved far less CO2 emissions than their current approach. If Gore had won the election in 2000, the energy landscape in the US and indeed the world might have been remarkably different by now! Maybe that is part of the reason Gore lost. FF interests must have spent a fortune supporting his opponents and trying to sway public opinion against him.
Is there something wrong with the Doomsday Clock or are we really headed for doom?
A sign of things to come?
Storage will replace 3 California gas plants as PG&E nabs approval for world’s largest batteries
Dive Insight:
Approval of PG&E’s landmark energy storage solicitation is the most significant example to date of batteries taking the place of fossil fuel generation on the power grid.
Energy storage has helped decrease the California’s reliance on gas for years, particularly since 2016, when regulators ordered accelerated battery procurements to counteract the closure of a natural gas storage facility outside Los Angeles.
The PG&E projects, however, are the first time a utility and its regulators have sought to directly replace multiple major power plants with battery storage.
The projects would take the place of three plants owned by generator Calpine — the 580 MW Metcalf plant and the Feather River and Yuba City generators, both 48 MW.
Tad Patzek has had a couple posts out recently; in September and October, his first posts since summer 2017.
http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/?m=1
From your link:
“To compare the WWII industrial effort with the global dislocation necessary to ameliorate some of the effects of climate change is surprisingly naive and proves that the three professors got Ds in their history electives, if they had any. This comparison also neglects to account for the human population that has almost quadrupled between the 1940s and now, and resource consumption that has increased almost 10-fold. The world today cannot grow its industrial production the way we did during WWII. There is simply not enough of the planet Earth left to be devoured…
Then let’s go to Puerto Rico, Barbados and Haiti, and talk about the wonderful new opportunities their respective island devastations have brought. While at it, let’s ask people in New Orleans, Houston and the Carolinas how wonderful it is to rebuild their communities without fleeing to higher ground and abandoning entire cities that will be inundated by the rising seawater. Then let’s move to Manhattan and Orlando and talk about the great business opportunities in preventing their infrastructures from collapse during the incredible future storm tides…
Our children have far less access to the luxuries of the global amoeba and to that extent they are more in tune with reality. But they are mostly passive, alienated from the natural environment, and brainwashed by living with smart phones and Facebook. So, by and enlarge, our children don’t vote and don’t try to change what they see coming.”
Hello. Anybody home? Anyone thinking out there? That is what brains are for and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. Don’t just suck up the Kool-Aid.
The false premise of global increase in energy or consumption of materials to do an energy transistion is a common ploy which suckers the unthinking and unknowledgeable.
The global energy transistion not only uses different materials, but is a replacement not an extension. It is also a replacement that is far more efficient in materials and energy, several times more efficient in energy and many times more efficient in materials. So the consumption of energy and materials falls every time a renewable project comes on line. Got it? Don’t want to incessantly repeat it. Replacement that is more efficient by several times. Low waste, less energy to get energy, less materials, different materials. I have put the numbers up many times in this blog, all the other side does is show some rhetoric which is just made up BS.
In other words, the negative bullshit is just bullshit pushed by people with an agenda to keep fossil fuels in place as long as possible and by those with a doomer mentality who want a collapse.
Hello. Hello. Anybody home? Think …..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SunQ5T_pbCU
Oh yeah. Remember too, because nature is going to test you in the near future because you didn’t listen for the third time now.
Meanwhile, US shale producers have drilled at record rates over the past 18 months, increasing from 491 wells in May 2016 to 1246 wells in January 2018, thus driving an increased demand for specialized drilling & completion fluids in the region. Factors, such as an increased investment to harness the unconventional reserves, coupled with rising deep water and ultra-deepwater exploration and production activities in the Gulf of Mexico region amid oil prices rebound to a sustainable level since mid-2014, is expected to supplement the demand during forecast period [2018-2023]. Global energy transition. Yeah, right.
.
Of course, you will all argue otherwise but according to the IEA, wind and solar power generate 0.45 and 0.12 percent of the world’s energy and by 2040, that will only rise to 1.88 and 1.03 percent respectively. They further claim that, burning wood produces almost three times as much energy than solar or wind power worldwide. So, burning wood provides nine percent of the world’s energy, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. More than two billion people depend on wood energy for cooking and heating, especially in developing countries. Naturally the renewables-wackos will scream but everywhere I look, fossil fuel production/consumption (except perhaps coal) continues to increase.
Yeah, the IEA projections are really something. They seem to assume an infinite supply of FF and that costs don’t matter much.
Oh well, each to his own.
BTW, wind and solar will grow by more than 5 times in the next five years.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is the inability to understand the exponential function” Al Bartlett
The only things growing exponentially now are solar PV, wind energy, and EVs.
Here is another view using different assumptions
According to fossil fuel companies, the world will continue to rely on their products for decades. They even have sophisticated scenarios, outlooks and modelling to prove it.
What if they are wrong? New analysis published today by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and Imperial College’s Grantham Institute suggests global demand for fossil fuels could peak by 2020. The power sector would see the most dramatic change, becoming virtually fossil-free by 2040.
This fossil fuel “demand destruction” would be hugely disruptive for incumbent industry business models, the report’s authors say. Carbon Brief has two graphs to summarise their findings.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/two-charts-show-how-fossil-fuels-could-peak-2020
But we know it’s all just fun and games, reality will be different.
Those bugaboos like climate change, war, pandemics, famines, droughts, floods and unknown disruptions seem to just get in the way of even reasonable projections.
Happy Armistice Day. Remember the War to End All Wars.
Man, you are in some funky patronizing mood arn’t you-
Gone Fishing
“Hello. Anybody home? Anyone thinking out there?
That is what brains are for and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.
Got it? Don’t want to incessantly repeat it
Hello. Hello. Anybody home? Think …..
Oh yeah. Remember
because you didn’t listen for the third time now”
And all in one post. Maybe spread it out a little (like I do).
If I thought you were talking to me I’d say go fuck off.
If you are hoping to influence someone, that is a failing act.
Ahhhhh, so enthralled with the wrapping that you missed the gift.
Just straws in the wind, straws in the wind, sensible thought buried in the bandwith of junk knowledge. Sedimentary it is and was, deposition rates increasing. Overburden extraordinaire.
Maybe you would be interested in a time when this blog was a bit more sensible and the deposition rate was less. Start here and read downward or upward or both. Deposition rate was lower then than now.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/the-energy-transition/#comment-577620
To all those over-educated Lilliputians trying to figure out which end of the global warming/energy/population/ …. to crack. Keep arguing among yourselves, you already gave the game away. Third level error and beyond.
Straws in the wind, buried in the overburden.
Everybody have a great day, it’s getting to be hard times here with the ground freezing solid. Don’t pay attention to me, back to your scripts and enjoy the day.
BTW, my rant was more global than anything, not really aimed at one person.
Its a frustrating era. I think the smoke (california burning) and sheltering-in-place is getting to me.
Be well.
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization
Caldeira and a colleague recently published a paper in Nature finding that the world is warming more quickly than most climate models predict. The toughest emissions reductions now being proposed, even by the most committed nations, will probably fail to achieve “any given global temperature stabilization target.”
More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since the final day of the Noordwijk conference, Nov. 7, 1989, than in the entire history of civilization preceding it. In 1990, humankind emitted more than 20 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. By 2017, the figure had risen to 32.5 billion metric tons, a record. Despite every action taken since the Charney report — the billions of dollars invested in research, the nonbinding treaties, the investments in renewable energy — the only number that counts, the total quantity of global greenhouse gas emitted per year, has continued its inexorable rise.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html#prologue
And least we forget:
A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987).
History is nice to study, sometimes we can even learn things from it. But one thing for sure is we cannot change it. It’s gone, over, done, immutable. We only have now to work with.
Yes, science, engineering and technology driven by corporate greed has placed the human species and many others in a very bad position. But we know the position, have known it for a long time now and are into a third level error (major errors, thousands of minor ones). It usually only takes two to three compounding errors to cause a fatal incident.
There is a solution and it is only one mental change away. Accept the fact that things will change, that the planet is going to be different forever and get on with facing the problems as we can. By stopping the fretting and gnashing of teeth we can spend that energy actually, for once, getting ahead of the problem if we face it. What will it take to live on a planet that is 4C warmer, what will it be like and how can we not harm the potential survivors? Sure we want to change how we live, our energy, our material needs, our social structure. However, we need to plan ahead, would be nice for once.
To summarize: What is the plan Sam?
I know my plan.
un-Denial
Comfort on a Razor’s Edge
https://un-denial.com/2018/11/09/comfort-on-a-razors-edge/
From your link:
Q: Why has debt become a problem?
A: Debt is growing much faster than our income. We must now borrow about $5 for every $1 of GDP growth.
Unstainable debt is growing all over the world, especially in the USA and China. Sooner or later it must cause either dramatic inflation or economic collapse or both.
Unstainable debt is just one of the many things that will eventually cause the collapse of civilization as we know it. Massive population overshoot is the root of all of them however.
Interesting to ponder how much less into overshoot we would be if there had been some form of strict limitation on debt spending , globally.
Try to build a house or a refinery without debt.
The human world be a much smaller place (good).
Now that we have nearly used up that spending mechanism, it will be hard to come up with enough capital to build a couple hundred billion PV panels.
Without Haber–Bosch we would have, at the most, half the population we now have.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/chemical-reaction-revolutionized-farming-100-years-ago-now-needs-go/
No, private debt is not a problem and never has been. Capitalism could not function without private debt. Countries without bank lending, or some type of debt for buying large purchases, like a house, car or business, are almost all third world countries.
The problem is public debt or government debt. And that is okay up to a point. It is when some imbecile like Trump tries to run a government entirely with debt, that is when things will collapse. If you cut almost all taxes and increase spending, that is unsustainable. It simply cannot be done without disastrous consequences. Every country that has tried it has collapsed. Post WW1 Germany, Argentina, Venezuela are great examples.
Of course, Germany did recover, and so did Argentina, somewhat. Venezuela is still in the process of collapse. But it is always very painful. But if it happens globally, and there are many other problems in multiple countries, there may be no recovery at all. Well, not for many, many years anyway, and with a much-reduced population.
Your explanation of the benefits of debt financing is all true, and it is also true that we would never have grown so big and fast into massive overshoot territory without revving the global growth engine with massive debt mechanisms.
Borrow, borrow, borrow from the future. Derivatives of the future.
Well, now the future is upon us.
How do we de-grow?
With what we know today, the human world could run on 15% of the current energy and less than half the materials. It certainly could use less water than it does.
So who needs growth? We need smart degrowth.
84.3% of all statistics are just made up.
I got that stat from the same place you got yours, I just made it up.
Wrong again.
Really? Then, by all means, post the link that shows the study from which you acquired those statistics.
I really don’t understand why people often post stats without no foundation whatsoever. It only takes a couple of more minutes to copy and paste the link that supports their statistical claim. And if you don’t have a link to such a study, then you are just make something up.
I have posted and discussed this in the past without being immediately attacked.
You have already called me a bullshitter and a liar. Any discussion ends there.
Oh fuck, don’t get so uptight. All I asked for was a link. You said:
With what we know today, the human world could run on 15% of the current energy and less than half the materials.
You cannot make such statements without being challenged for the source of your data. Either you have it or you just made it up.
Which was it? That is all I am asking. And goddammit, that is not an unreasonable request.
If you expect to be credible, then you should make only credible claims, claims that can be supported by credible studies.
“the human world could run on 15% of the current energy and less than half the materials”
I’m pretty sure he pulled that one out of his ass. GF is mainlining pure hopium straight into the jugular again, as usual.
I’d also add that private debt is indeed a big problem, in that it enables a huge global consumer boom that is just shredding the environment.
Those cargo ships filled with consumer goods. Debt financed.
Those large homes, those cars and trucks in the driveway. Debt financed.
It not just the wars.
Private debt was the cause of the 1929 crash. This is undisputed.
You *really* need to learn some economic history, Mr. Patterson. Private debt backed by unsound collateral is very, very dangerous.
Well, the causes of the crash/Depression are complicated. For just one example, before Hoover used his euphemism “Depression”, the end of a business cycle was called a “panic”. Psychology is a part.
I’d say a neglected element is fundamental technical change. In this case, the transition away from human and animal labor to tractors. That reduced the cost of farm production, crashed the price of farm commodities, which bankrupted many farms, which bankrupted farm banks, which tanked rural economies, which set off…a panic.
Interesting read!
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/11/why-automakers-try-to-slow-stifle-the-ev-revolution/
Why Automakers Try To Slow & Stifle The EV Revolution
Just as an interesting side note, history of the Fisher Bros. and Body by Fisher. An example of transistion from horse drawn to horseless carriages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_Body
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees/?utm_source=web&utm_campaign=Redirect
This is a pretty good interactive way to see the impacts of different levels of warming from 1.5°C through 2°C and higher.
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org
The 2017 carbon balance report from the Global Carbon Budget group is currently out for discussion, but there’s a lot of good presentation stuff at their site. The N2O budget summary is also due in early 2019.
Planetary boundaries for antibiotic and pesticide resistance identified
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181112191905.htm
“Without new approaches, going to hospital in the future will increasingly become a gamble. More patients will get unlucky, and become infected with untreatable or hard to treat bacteria. This is an urgent risk to human society,” says Søgaard Jørgensen.
Well, at least in the USA, the GOP is working tirelessly to make sure that the average American doesn’t have access to health care thereby cutting down such risks by making sure they can’t afford to go to a hospital in the first place. Which means only the rich will be at risk of being infected by antibiotic resistant pathogens… karma can be quite a bitch, eh?
Cheers!
P.S.
8 billion humans is already way beyond most planetary boundaries…
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-reveals-dynamics-climate-urbanization-heat-mitigating.amp
Modelling reveals dynamics of climate change, urbanization and heat-mitigating technologies
Oh well, we’re fucked regardless ?
With the changes in the Jetstream, shifting of the polar vortex and slowing of the AMOC, I am not too worried about it getting too hot up in the northeastern US. However, the temperature gradients and chaotic weather will make for some trying times. From what I have seen around here over the last decade I expect more than 50% of the existing trees to go down in the next 10 to 15 years since they are not adapted to the higher and more frequently higher wind speeds in storms. That and the occasional ice storm or snowfall with leaves still on the trees will bring many down.
The new growth will be thicker and sturdier. Farming will have to adapt.
I am staying in the region because the rainfall situation looks adequate into the future, though who knows what migration will do the demand. It’s been constantly wet here for weeks now, still raining, should be a heavy snow period for the first half of the winter.
Cities are hot boxes in the summer but since many are near the ocean the temperature is mitigated but the humidity is not. Nor is ocean level.
New York @ 2C
https://vimeo.com/219649214
Islandboy has claimed several times how China is the example to follow when it comes to renewable energy.
China has installed a considerable amount of solar and wind in the last 7 years. However when you look at the increase in demand it is obvious that the amount of renewables installed is a fraction of what is needed for China’s CO2 emissions to decrease.
In order for China to supply it’s citizens with the amount of electricity Americans use they would have to install all the generating capacity of the United States twice over.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/mapped-the-countries-that-use-the-most-electricity/
Can you imagine the United States producing twice the electricity it uses from wind and solar?
This greenpeace article is hardly surprising.
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/05/30/china-co2-carbon-climate-emissions-rise-in-2018/
I would love to be reminded of exactly where and when I “claimed several times how China is the example to follow when it comes to renewable energy.”
What I have done is report on developments in the area of renewables that highlight the impressive growth that has been happening over the past decade or so. I also tend to point to developments that are likely to result in continued impressive growth in the renewable (wind and solar) sector. Reporting on the fact that China has met their targets for solar PV capacity years early is a far cry from claiming China is the example to follow.
I will admit that I believe that the world can run on 100% or at least more than 95% renewable energy. If we could burn every single bit of FF, we would eventually be forced to anyway. Do I believe it can happen in five years time? A decade maybe? Of course not! I’m not that delusional! I do however, believe it could happen in my lifetime, if I live to anywhere near the age of my father when he died (95) . I believe that if Australia can get rid of their FF industry controlled federal government, they just might be the first developed country that is currently heavily dependent on FF, to get close to 100% renewable. I have also reported on other countries that are there or almost there.
Let me be clear. I am of the view that if the approach was taken of looking at how 100% might be made to work, what would need to happen in terms of storage or adjustments to consumption patterns (eg. making hay when the sun shines), progress can be made. I don’t believe that saying renewables cannot scale for example, is helpful since, it is yet to be proven that they cannot scale. I can think of at least two people who are way ahead of me on this, Tony Seba and Elon Musk. If you think I’m delusional, you need to check them out!
Islandboy, if you have not read this already…
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf
I expect these numbers to be greatly lowered as changes in buildings, transport, materials and efficiencies occur. The best energy is the energy not needed.
Islandboy
When you use descriptions, such as Impressive growth, then you are surely wishing other countries to follow that example. I agree, with you.
My point is simply to highlight the scale of the task. If by 2050 the Chinese consume as much electricity as Americans do, then they will have to build an American power system just in wind and solar twice over. If they are going to cut CO2 emissions by what is necessary then they will have to triple that.
Solar and wind can be scaled up, but global expenditure needs to be $2.5 trillion per year til 2050. At the moment we will fail to stop global warming because by 2050 we will be burning large amounts of gas, oil and coal.
This study expaines what needs to be done and the time we have left.
https://www.cicero.oslo.no/en/posts/klima/stylised-pathways-to-well-below-2c
How would you describe the growth of PV in the US, at one hundredfold in ten years? Impressive or not?
Anyone who thinks that growth can proceed into the future is in for a rude awakening. Done poorly electrification will cut energy use by about 60 percent. If well done with added efficiencies, better materials and design, energy can be cut much further than that. So even if by some miracle (or nightmare) there were more people on earth than now in 2050 with a higher lifestyle, we could be using far less energy than we do now.
We don’t have to stay stupid, though many people think we are.
Further to my comment above:
IEA World Energy Outlook: Solar PV capacity to overtake all but gas by 2040
The International Energy Agency has today released its much anticipated World Energy Outlook to 2040. While it takes pains to assert the fact that it does not forecast the future, but rather provides a way of exploring different possible futures, there is no escaping the fact that policy makers around the world will be looking to this report to help shape their energy agendas.
Which is rather terrifying, considering the IEA not only envisages a future where coal, oil and gas continue to play leading roles in all of its scenarios, but because it also, at the same time, finds that carbon dioxide emissions are on the rise (by 1.6% in 2017), “after three flat years”, and that they are likely to continue rising “on a slow upward trend to 2040” – a trajectory “far out of step with what scientific knowledge says will be required to tackle climate change.”
So, let’s look at their most optimistic projections for solar PV, their “Sustainable Development Scenario”. In this scenario they have solar PV going from generating an estimated 435 TWh (2% share) in 2017 to 6409 TWh (17% share) in 2040. Very roughly this means going from ~400, to 800, to 1600, to 3200, to 6400, that’s four doublings in 23 years. Solar PV capacity has been doubling every three years so, if current exponential growth in PV installed capacity were to continue, bearing in mind that the starting point is 435 and not 400, the 6400 figure would be reached in less than twelve years, that is, before 2029. Am I the only one that thinks something is out of kilter here?
The IEA seems to be stuck on BAU. Playing the same old record at a slightly different speed.
Here’s another supposedly optimistic forecast:
Solar sector to add 552 GW by 2027 led by China
Over the coming decade, the global solar market is in line for 138% growth, from 395 GW at the end of 2017 to 942 GW at the end of 2027, shows a new outlook produced by Fitch Solutions Macro Research – a unit of Fitch Group.
Despite Beijing’s reductions to its PV feed-in tariffs and capacity allowances, China will continue to dominate the global solar market, adding 227 GW over the coming decade.
However, Fitch notes that the Chinese policy change has led it to revise down its original forecast for solar capacity growth in China from a total of 270 GW between 2017 and 2027, to 227 GW – the figure that will take total solar power capacity in China to 357 GW by 2027.
This means that while solar subsidy cuts in the market will result in a YoY slowdown relative to the record year of 2017, when a total of 53 GW of solar capacity was added, China will add an average 23 GW per year between 2018 and 2027.
So, at the end of 2017 Global PV capacity was estimated at 395 GW and let’s assume 95GW were to be added in 2018, the same as was added in 2017, the capacity at the end of 2018 should be in the region of 490 GW. The expert analysts at the Fitch Group would have us believe that, after doubling every three years, the solar PV market is only going to add 552 GW by 2027! Continuation of recent growth trends would suggest 980 GW by 2021, 1960 GW by 2024 and 3920 by 2027, that is 3430 GW in additional PV capacity by 2027 as opposed to Fitch’s 552 GW! While there are many things that could prevent 3430 GW of new PV capacity from materializing by 2027, it seems highly unlikely that only 552 GW will be installed by 2027!
ISLANDBOY – Our planet is on life support. We have a ballooning population (8.5 billion by 2030 almost guaranteed and perhaps 10 billion by 2050), collapsing ice sheets on both hemispheres leading to accelerating sea level rise, increasingly long wildfire seasons pumping more-and-more CO2 into the atmosphere, rapidly warming (and acidifying) oceans, huge losses of biodiversity, an estimate that by 2050 there will be no fish left in the sea, species extinctions galore, soil degradation in farmland, plastic pollution beyond belief, water issues around the world, new climate feedbacks coming out the yin yang, an entire generation addicted to cel phones, possibly (probable) unstoppable global warming, Donald Trump leading the “free world”, melting permafrost, rapidly shrinking rain-forests — not to mention year-after-year increasing fossil fuel burning — and you (with others) prattle on inferring renewables will somehow save the planet while conveniently ignoring ALL THE ABOVE. No, don’t respond; this is my last rant preferring instead to follow science-based sources of information for my education/entertainment. Thanks for the push.
Hey Doug, I know that everything in your post above is true, just curious though, what do you tell your grand kids?!
Do you tell them what you know and suggest they just throw in the towel and give up?
And for pete’s sake, Islandboy has never suggested EVs solar and wind are going to solve population overshoot climate change or species extinction.
Yeah, science tells us things are quite dire but even if you find out you have stage 4 lung cancer with six months left to live chances are most of us will try to live out those six months the best way we can…
Cheers!
Last I checked there was life on planet Earth. Not dead yet, let the whiners give up before the crash. We don’t need or want the dead weight.
I bet those bald eagles I saw flying over yesterday are not worried.
I feel I must respond, if not for Doug’s sake, for the sake of anyone who may stumble upon this blog and read the comments. If one were to read my reply to a comment by Hugo further up, one might discern that I am encouraged that the new principal of the University of the West Indies Mona Campus “has a background in Coastal Ecology and Environmental Management and” is married to a professor in Marine Ecology. If anybody should know about the list of problems facing the planet that Doug has enumerated above, he should. As a matter of fact, I attended a talk titled “Coastal Ecosystem Restoration and the Plastic Pollution Problem” by Prof. Mona Webber, the wife of the current principal, at a the university’s Research Days 2018 back in February of this year. I listened to the entire talk and actually asked a question of the professor in the question and answer section so, I can say both Profs. Webber are acutely aware of the problems facing marine ecosystems especially locally (Fred should find the talk quite interesting). Anyone who thinks I am “conveniently ignoring” Doug’s list should watch the talk linked to above.
The principal of the local campus of the regional university can have a certain amount of influence on the political and private sector leadership so it is my hope that the debate will be shifted to more environmental issues by the new leadership at the university. I have also developed an extremely keen interest in US politics precisely because, I appreciate the importance of US leadership or lack thereof, in dealing with Doug’s list. To be honest I actually believe that the (largely successful) efforts by the FF industry to co-opt the Republican party are part of the reason the entire planet is charging headlong towards collapse. Leadership in good stewardship of the planet and all it’s resources from the US Federal Government would have gone a far way towards addressing some of the issues in Doug’s list. Unfortunately the situation is what it is. Things are bad and appear to be getting worse. That is quite depressing. I choose to highlight the things that are happening that I consider as cause for hope. I have no apology for that.
edit: I am also on record expressing concern about population growth, especially among those who can least afford it in my neck of the woods, the poor and very poor. I am doing my part. I have no children.
“To be honest I actually believe that the (largely successful) efforts by the FF industry to co-opt the Republican party are part of the reason the entire planet is charging headlong towards collapse”
Agree
“Leadership in good stewardship of the planet and all it’s resources from the US Federal Government would have gone a far way towards addressing some of the issues”
Agree
“I choose to highlight the things that are happening that I consider as cause for hope”
Agree
I tend to go with William Orphuls (and others) that industrial civilization is in a terrible state and probably can’t survive no matter what, and that putting all the effort into technofixes (and EVs seem to be the main, or at least most obvious, way this manifests) will just end up making things worse because it exacerbates all those issues that Doug highlighted. An early, controlled collapse with the softest landing possible from where we are followed by recovery to some sort of new technology aware agrarian civilization might be the best that can be hoped for in terms of the least bad for the most people (i.e. for ‘humanity’). Limits to Growth results showed that high technology pushed out a peak but made the collapse steeper, personally I think we are following the high tech path even though some of the indicators are closer to the standard run so far – we’ll know better if and when things really start going south.
However, there is no way that an early collapse can be decided as a policy, and individuals just aren’t going to do what is best for others: simplistically, on average, we are evolutionary impelled to put our short term chances of reproductive success above anything else. Just doing nothing (equals watching the cricket for me) and waiting for collapse to happen might be second best, maybe the faster Trump and his like fuck up everything the better, but it won’t feel that way as it’s happening.
https://ophuls.org/essays
I wonder what your island nation would be like when the fuel and food ceases to arrive.
Ophuls seems to believe that the end of fossil fuels means the end of modern civilization. Here’s a quote: ” We may command more power than ever before, but the basis that power is dwindling, presaging a steep decline in available energy and with it an end to the industrial age as we know it.” He seems to believe that other energy sources (solar, wind, nuclear, etc) simply can’t replace fossil fuels.
Would you agree with that description of Ophul’s ideas?
Cassandra meets Pandora.