102 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 19, 2023”

    1. If politicians in congress wore clown suits it would make more sense, because these shenanigans are nothing short of the antics you’d see at a circus.

      Why does the U.S even bother having a debt ceiling ?

      We all know they just going to raise it….eventually. That accumulated public debt will never be repaid. Its akin to a broke person having a credit card whose bank keeps raising his spending limits. A vicious cycle of kicking the can down the road.

      The author is a clown too. He is basically just saying democrats good republicans evil. Raise the debt ceiling because BAU. No real solution, just the same divisive rhetoric you hear from both sides.

      1. Iron MIke,

        I agree the debt ceiling is stupid. I disagree that Krugman is a clown, in this case the Republicans are risking blowing up the economy which would result in a Worldwide financial crisis.

        What do you think happens if the US defaults?

        1. Dennis,

          Since you asked my 2 cents.

          Republicans are virtue signalling to make it look like they are “better economic managers” but in truth they are sell-outs. They give the ultra-rich huge tax cuts and are lobbied by the big end of town.

          The democrats are weak clowns who represent nothing but woke politically correct culture. They spend like drunken sailors claiming they represent working class Americans. Which is a bunch of bullshit. The middle class in America has 0 representation in U.S politics. Just look at the ever widening chasm of wealth inequality.

          I think it is good if the U.S defaults, the sooner it does it the quicker it can overcome it. The longer the can is kicked the harder it will be to come back from the brink.

          Some austerity measures will do Americans some good. The human body has evolved to deal with starvation and austerity since we were scavengers and lived with the harshness of nature for most of our evolution. Looking at the overweight and obesity rates in the U.S some starvation will improve the health and lower this abominable statistic.

          Extrapolating this, the world needs to get off this quick fix dopamine world and go through some hardships, which will be a good form of dopamine and fat detox. As you can see in my view, hardship is not always bad, in fact it teaches people a lot of good things, one of which is to be more appreciative, which is something that is lacking these days.

          Just my worthless opinion.

          1. The Dems and Repubs aren’t going to default. The like their treats far too much, and making Number sad by having the people in markets lose their shit just will not do, good sir. Number must only ever go up.

            Can we just have America go through this and leave the rest of us out of it? I’m already part of a failed Anglo country, I don’t want one of its offspring to basically drag me down further into irrelevance.

            It’s also good for the environment.

          2. Mike:
            I challange your assertion of equality between the parties. Here’s something I wrote for a friend of mine who does door-to-door politics:
            Want a Better Economy? Vote For a Democrat!
            Voters think Republicans are stronger on the economy because Republicans throw money at big business. Democrats have consistently done a better job of managing the economy. Here are some examples:
            -The United States has had 17 recessions over the past 100 years. Thirteen happened under Republican governments, including the absolute biggest downturns: the Great Depression and the recessions of 1981, 2007, and 2020. The last of the four recessions since 1922 recessions under Democratic presidents occurred 42 years ago, in 1981 the final year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
            -Economic growth? Going back to the Great Depression (Herbert Hoover’s legacy), the four presidents who logged the biggest growth in gross domestic product were Democrats: Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton. Three of the four presidents who logged the smallest GDP growth since World War 2 were Republicans, the two Bushes and Trump. The one Democrat was Harry Truman at the end of WW2. Trump’s presidency logged the lowest growth of the four.
            -Job creation? The six presidents with the fastest job-growth rate since the Great Depression were Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton all Democrats. The four presidents who logged the slowest job-growth rate were all Republicans: Eisenhower; the two Bushes; and, again in last place, Trump, the only president in the past nine decades to lose more jobs than he created.
            -The deficit? Democrats are spendthrifts, right? Wrong! Ronald Reagan inherited a deficit of $78.9 billion. When he left office, it was $152.6 billion. When George H.W. Bush, left office, it was $255 billion.
            It fell to President Bill Clinton to clean up this mess; by the time he left office the federal budget has a surplus of $236 billion. President George W. Bush, whose vice president famously said the lesson from Reagan’s presidency was that deficits didn’t matter, eliminated the surplus in record time with income-tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; when he left office, the deficit was $1.41 trillion. President Barack Obama halved that to $584.6 billion. Trump pushed it back up to $3.1 trillion, and Biden, in 2022, nosed it down to $2.8 trillion.
            Let’s see some facts to support your assertion about “spendthrift”

            1. Debating Dems vs. GOP is some special olympics baloney. Which do you want, the far right party of big business and guns and Gawd, or the centre right party of big business, and “progressive” market ideology and lip service to environment and anti-war?

              Let me know when America gets some grown up politics instead of the Church of Number in fetching blue or desire red.

            2. Kleiber:
              I want a party that:
              -Respects the rule of law for all who live here.
              -Deals fairly and from position of strength internationally, recognizing true allies and opponents.
              -Respects our role in the ecosystem.
              -Assures that every American has access to health care
              -Proides for the training and education that every American needs to enable them to find suitable means to support themselves.
              We all know that neither of the existing parties are meeting those goals, that they both carry a lot of dirty baggage and that third parties generally strengthen the worst in elections. So we have to choose the lesser of two evils. In today’s world the Republicans are by far the worst of the worst.
              Choosing one over the other doesn’t necessarily make you into the kind of zombie that choses party over humanity. There is plenty that can be done to make the world a better place outside of politics but having the wrong party in power can undo much of that in the blink of an eye. Today, hands down, Republicans are bad for the country and bad for the rest of the world.

            4. Thanks, JJ, you hit the nail on the head. For one to say that there is no difference between the Democratic party and the party of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lourene Boebert is to admit that one knows absolutely nothing about American politics.

            5. As an outsider that takes a fair amount of interest in US politics (when the US sneezes it feels like Jamaica catches pneumonia), I have noticed that the first priority of every Republican administration seems to be to cut taxes and then use the deficit as an excuse to axe anything that does not benefit the rich. The Republicans appear to be under the influence of corporate interests more so than the democrats especially those interests with an agenda that includes denial of climate change.

              The Republican effort, aided by groups funded by the likes of Charles Koch to change the nature of the courts by packing the courts with judges with (sometimes extreme) right wing ideology is particularly sinister. (See Sheldon Whitehouse’s “The Scheme” series of presentations in the Senate, all 21 available on YouTube)

              Neither party seems to be able to do anything about the MICs (the Military and the Medical Industrial Complexes). Despite that, anyone that thinks the four years of Trump was anything like any recent Democratic administration is not paying attention. I am currently listening to Whitehouse’s Scheme #21. It is chilling.

            6. I’m well aware of the GOP and Dems and, lol if you think the Dems are good for the country.

              They’re less shit, sure, in the same way that shooting myself in the foot is better than in the head.

              Do better, America.

              Sincerely,

              The UK, with a two party system of tossers we can’t get rid of because FPTP.

          3. If the US had been controlled by the republican party over the last 70 years
            -there would not have been institution of civil rights and voting rights legislation, and no legislation to prevent discrimination based on gender, religion, or ethnicity. No hate crime laws.
            -there would have been no clean air, clean water, toxics control legislation,
            -financial aid to poverty level women and children, and college students, would have been at trivial levels compared to what it has been
            -taxation of the wealthiest of the nation would be even more minimized- with estate taxation and capital gains taxation minimized, while taxes on wage earners carrying an even higher percent of the load. The ‘rich getting richer’ is a longstanding republican foundation principle guiding policy.
            -the intrusion of fundamentalist religion into the courts, the schools, the media would be even more extreme than it already is

            I could go on and on. As a citizen of this country, it is obvious that the difference between these parties is extreme on many critical societal issues.

            1. Hickory, I agree completely. People who say both parties are the same haven’t a clue as to what the hell they are talking about. I think that perhaps most of them are former Republicans who finally saw just how corrupt their party is. So they decided to cover their embarrassment at being so wrong, they decided to declare the other side to be just as bad.l Pity them.

            2. Wait, what? The EPA was formed by Nixon’s administration. A Republican, last I checked

              In the year of our Lord 2023, we have Buttigieg, a Democrat Transport secretary, saying it’s totally normal in 21st century America that toxic chemical carrying trains derail all the time.

              Am I taking crazy pills here? Yeah, you can point to the GOP telling 90% of people to get fucked as being their MO. No dispute here. But I notice the Dems don’t seem to be bothered about reversing this.

              Remember how they didn’t make Roe v. Wade into law for, oh, fifty years and then got blindsided by the GOP acting good on their promises of outlawing abortion?

              Tell me again why I, as a staunch leftist, would ever vote for Sleepy Joe and his incompetents, the people telling America that inflation is because they all have it too good with big wages from COVID payouts.

              Fuck Joe and Trump. Third party, please.

            3. Nixon also signed Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act and got OSHA started.

            5. Kleiber wrote:

              In the year of our Lord 2023, we have Buttigieg, a Democrat Transport secretary, saying it’s totally normal in 21st century America that toxic chemical carrying trains derail all the time.

              WOAH! I do not believe he said any such thing. I am going to need a link for that quotation. If he said anything even remotely resembling what you wrote then you are quoting him out of context. He may have said that because Trump canceled the railroad safety bill Republicans assume it’s totally normal in 21st-century America that toxic chemical-carrying trains derail all the time. Or something to that effect.

              But Buttigieg did not say he believes it is okay for toxic chemical carrying trains derail all the time. And that is exactly what your statement implies.

              Klieber, if you let that statement stand without correction then you have lost all crediability and anything you have to say must be questioned in light of this very obviously false statement.

            6. Nixon did get things passed.
              Not as much as Johnson, but few did.

            7. @Ron:

              I don’t care what he actually said. I care about his actions.

              https://jacobin.com/2023/02/department-of-transportation-train-brake-regulation-ohio-derailment

              https://www.levernews.com/buttigieg-pretends-hes-powerless-to-reduce-derailment-risks/

              Here’s another one, on an unrelated matter: https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pete-buttigieg-free-market-hungry-baby-formula-capitalism

              What a swell system the Dems have… totally ignored in fixing. Wonder why.

              So yeah, seems like he’s either incompetent or okay with this. Which do you want as your poison? This guy did, after all, work for a company that fixed bread prices, a real man of the people.

              He’s fine with this, apparently. Jesus, Trump of all people went to East Palestine before the guy in charge of making sure trains don’t derail with hazardous chemicals did.

              The Dems, like the Repuglicans, are deep in the pockets of big business. They are NOT your friends, they just piss down your back and tell you it’s raining while the GOP systematically fucks the poor and unprivileged fully mask off.

              I get told this stuff all the time on my side of the pond. “Oh, but you simply must vote for Labour to keep the Tory scum out!”, says the PMC career landlord who pays lipservice to the needs of the working poor because they’re really just pissed that Brexit became a thing.

              I hope Labour and the Dems lose by a landslide and decide to, you know, listen to the masses that are sick of heads you lose, tails I win politicking in the Anglophone sphere.

              The French are teaching us all a lesson, and over something as trivial as a two year increase in pension retirement age. Meanwhile, the UK and US is happy to get hollowed out to line the pockets of the cabal of geriatrics (no offence, Ron) running everything and their younger sycophants.

            8. Kleiber: I don’t care what he actually said. I care about his actions.

              I do care what he actually said. I care what you said that he said. He did not say that. Only Fox News could get by with such as that.

              Bye now

            9. Agree with Hickory.

              And the Science vs Religion that lies at the heart of the culture wars would be completely tipped in favor of Religion.

              Schools would teach the Bible ( except that part where Jesus wants you to live like a peasant and give away all your money ) and not science or a very watered down version of it. Enough that we could still manufacture things to sell.

              Those teaching evolution by natural selection or the Big Bang might be burned at the stakes.

            10. Here’s an actual quote by Pete on February 21st.
              … he wants to move forward on requiring trains carrying such hazardous materials be equipped with a higher level, electronically controlled braking system. In 2015, the DOT enacted a rule requiring electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on trains with more than 20 HHFT cars, but Congress mandated a cost benefit analysis be conducted before it could take effect, and then in 2017, the Trump administration repealed the rule.

              “We can’t treat these disasters as inevitable or as a cost of doing business,” Buttigieg said. “There’s a window of opportunity with Congress now after what happened in East Palestine that I do not think existed before, and we aim to use that window of opportunity to raise the bar” on safety.I noticed that the Jacobin article was undated.
              I hadn’t seen the “Jacobin” before. Here’s some insight into their value system:

              “The Jacobins felt that it was their duty to preserve the revolution, even if it meant violence and terror. The Committee of Public Safety introduced several new laws. They wanted to make “Terror” an official government policy.

            11. For those touting Nixon, he would be considered a RINO in today’s Republican party, heck Reagan would be thrown out as too liberal from today’s House Republican conference. There used to be what I would call reasonable Republicans, none of them are left in the US House of representatives and perhaps 2 or 3 in the Senate.

            12. It is true that on some issues the D and R parties have been very similar such as the stance against international communism, or pro-growth economic policies, or the wholesale obstruction of any attempts to allow even an inch for a third party.

              Both have participated in the long campaign to obscure the difference between communism as form of economic system vs as an authoritarian government
              [hint- it is an economic system, that just happens to sometimes go authoritarian. Capitalism can go authoritarian as well].
              And both have worked to obscure the public understanding on the differences between socialism and communism, and as a result most Americans are idiots about this. The republicans are considerably more guilty of this misinformation campaign since the 1950’s.

              And on many civil, cultural and environmental issues there have been exceptions to the absolute party stereotypes on government policy action. For example
              -on the environment it is not 100 to zero score in favor of the democrats. Its 94 to 6.
              -on tax policy favoring the poor over the rich the score is 92 to 8, favoring the Demo’s.

              See, its not all 100 to zero. But it is drifting further that way as the Rep party has become more and more dominated by extremism. This has a lot to do with gerrymandering of their districts. And the near universal adoption of the ‘party over country’ ideology.

            13. Kleiber,

              The Clean Air and Cean Water Acts were passed by a Democratically controlled legislature. In the US the President has the power to veto legislation, but not the power to pass such legislation so that it becomes law. Also by today’s Republican standards. Nixon would not have been able to be elected, he would have been far too liberal for today’s Republican party.

            14. New Chris Hedges post sums up everything quite well: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-united-states-of-paralysis

              D Coyne: The GOP today is very much of the Tea Party brand since 2008. Trump simply played into a growing populism that was already extant around the world and getting stronger as austerity and anomie became totally obvious. The GOP basically are stuck playing to a baying mob with ever more extreme takes. When FOX unceremoniously axes Tucker Carlson, something is wrong and they know it. Their base has gone full rabid.

              The Dems are just “we offer BAU” with the tacit “if you don’t vote for us, you’ll get Trump” threat. Sleepy Joe is running again. How gloriously revolutionary of the blue team.

              I would differ from Chris Hedges in this way: any state that is captured by capitalist systems is doomed to this fate. The Democrats, like the GOP, are still part of that system and that system needs to be destroyed before it destroys us. I think he sums up the situation well, just not the solution or why he himself is blinkered to such things like Chomsky also is.

              http://library.lol/main/145F23ADDF212E6F47422F9507168BC0

  2. The Democrats aren’t necessarily the best friends of working people…….. but they’re not their worst enemies.
    The Republicans are our worst enemies, period, in terms of the safety and welfare of the country as a whole……. even the welfare of the rich people, in a lot of cases.
    Rich people get cancer too…… they drink pretty much the same water, breathe pretty much the same air, and eat pretty much the same food as the rest of us.
    And if we don’t turn the corner on overshoot, well……… the working people of this country won’t be using pitchforks and torches, the way peasants used them in past centuries.

    We’re armed. WELL armed.
    And those of us who think the military in this country will always be on the side of the government may have another think coming….. if the government is obviously on the side of the one per centers.
    Soldiers are mostly working class people…… with families.

    1. OFM
      Your comment on the working class make up of the military made me chase this down:
      Males account for 84.4% and Females account for 15.6% of the total. The Racial/Ethnic distribution of the Army is as follows – White, Not Hispanic: 54%, Black, Not Hispanic: 20.2%, Hispanic: 17.2%, Asian or Pacific Islander: 6.9%, American Indian or Alaskan Native: 0.9%, and Unknown/Other: 0.8%.
      When the largest faction in one of the political parties in the country centers around not-very-subtle racism and barely a majority in uniform are white your point about whose side they will end up can have some real consequences.

      1. Klieber,
        You have made it perfectly clear that you know damned little, next to nothing actually, about American politics.
        I know a shit load of people who have worn our uniform. The vast majority of them are solid citizens. Not more than maybe five or conceivably ten percent of them are hard core trump MTG type right wingers.
        They aren’t going to take up arms against their local communities and fellow citizens even in that case, unless maybe they can get together in some sort of underground militia organization..
        And in that case…… among the ones of that sort I’ve encountered……..

        It’s more than likely that their own brother or sister, wife or husband, or good friend would out them in a heart beat, once a few bullets fly.

        I wouldn’t personally have any problem at all going proactive against such people. Nor would any of the couple of dozen retired military people I know personally.

        1. For JJHman,
          Sorry, red face on my part. I corrected a reply using your name that was intended for somebody else.

    1. I was assured by the IPCC that this wouldn’t happen before 2080 and so now don’t know what to think.

      1. That phrase could also be applied to Twitter’s recent “events”:) Musk has a knack at rapidly disassembling things.

    3. As any Kerbal will tell you, this is just more research data, but spicier.

      1. The first and second stages failed to separate after 6 or 7 of the first stage engines shut down early, knocking it off balance. It was intentionally blown up to prevent it causing more damage when it returned to the ground.

    1. I think most people on this blog have been impressed by the advances of Renewables, EVs etc in the past decade. (Or had their optimistic estimates confirmed). But there is a ton of talk on both threads consistently that we are basically a year or two from Peak Demand mainly from EVs. TexasTeaTwo (of whom I don’t have a particularly high opinion) is one of the few that fights back on this (I think Ron has also downplayed this possibility). To think the world will magically, or out of the goodness of its heart, or that enough individual people will make individual choices to avoid using oil if it is readily available is delusional.

      1. Twocats,

        For many the choice will be EV because it is cheaper, for some they will make this choice because it is better for the environment, especially if combined with solar power for charging, this group will be the miniority I assume, most will be motivated by cost. The price of EVs will continue to fall as cheaper ways are found to build them as the industry scales up. Note that the Tesla Model Y was the 4th best selling vehicle in the World for sales from Jan 1 to Feb 28, 2023, this includes all types of vehicles including pickup trucks and SUVs.

        https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/

        2. Buying a new car is not “better for the environment”. It emits less CO2, sure, but that’s your only win.

      2. TWOCATS
        In the short term, the market will skew strongly towards organizations that make heavy use of their vehicles. For example, most new buses in China are EVs.

        You are still stuck in the mindset the people are buying EVs to “save the world”. Forget about the politics. There are other reasons. Just as flat screens replace cathode ray tube in TVs electric motors will replace combustion engines in light transportation. It’s a technology whose time has come.

        The main bottleneck for EVs is not, as you seem to imagine, consumer choice, but production capacity. The industry is working flat out to produce as many as they can, but wait times are still very long all over the world.

  6. It can be hard to separate the hype from the reality, but with two of the biggest battery companies in the world either selling or soon to be selling sodium ion batteries for cars, this does appear to be a real game changer in terms of going electric on the grand scale.

    Sodium is super plentiful and dirt cheap.

    And it appears to be the case that sodium batteries require only a small amount of rare earth metals, or possibly even none at all.

    So for now, I’m simply hopeful that sodium will work out ok in cars and possibly even in commercial trucks and so forth.

    I’m a realist.

    We can and WILL get used to whatever changes in our lifestyles that are FORCED on us by realities such as a global shortage and therefore stratospheric prices of lithium and rare earth metals.

    I grew up out in the boonies on a farm, and I could walk for miles in any direction without a question being asked of me, so long as I wasn’t in somebody’s back yard.

    From there I went to a shared dorm room in school, and after that I lived in the city where I had to hunt hard and long for a parking space sometimes, in an eight hundred square foot apartment, no lawn. No outside storage. Climbed stairs to get there.

    Range anxiety is nothing more than pure and unadulterated bullshit in terms of the BIG PICTURE. Once we can’t afford gasoline, and that time is coming from depletion if for no other reason, we will be perfectly happy driving electric cars that won’t go over a couple of hundred miles on a charge.

    It’s obvious that sodium batteries will be good enough, in terms of range, once the shit is in the fan, and it looks as if the cost of materials needed to build them may be as little as ten to twenty cents on the dollar, compared to lithium.

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

    1. It wasn’t long ago that ev’s were pie in the sky.
      I guess if you looked at the tech increase back then your crystal ball might extrapolate breakthroughs down the road.
      https://www.chasingcars.com.au/news/car-technology/why-sodium-ion-batteries-could-make-new-evs-cheaper/

      High specific energy density
      Stable and safe to use
      Long life cycles similar to lithium-ion
      Better low temperature performance for cold climates
      Plentiful sodium resources when compared to lithium carbonate

      I think the first pt is wrong. Lithium has higher energy density?
      Hmmm It’s Dreamtime as I write this , but not a dream.
      Maybe this will help preserve precious FF for agriculture.

      1. I think that to a fair degree battery technology is a function of use case. If you have a battery to power your home during the night the power density, charge/discharge rate etc are not that important. For mobile applications like cars those variables matter. So I would not be surprised if we are going to see a (significant?) diversification in battery technologies in the near future. The “one size fits all” approach ( lithium) doesn’t make sense.
        Rgds
        WP

        1. Lithium is the lightest element for use and best for energy density to mass, hence reason it is used in power tools, mobile devices and cars etc.

          You can use other elements, but you have to make a trade off somewhere. It could be for cost or volatility or some other factor.

          We’ve had plenty of “breakthroughs” in battery tech that have become total vapourware. Toyota was supposed to have solid state models running last year and nothing has come of it. There were different chemistries and faster charging or lower anode/cathode poisoning properties, though all are either not commercially available or only incremental improvements.

  7. The mass media seems to be chockablock over running with stories about wind turbines crashing all over the place…. with even some sites that are normally mostly in favor of renewable energy promoting this bullshit.

    AND I’m calling it bullshit for a very good reason.

    SO FAR, I’ve not seen a single article that actually provides any NUMBERS about the number of wind turbines that are suffering catastrophic failures.

    Thanks for advance to anybody who has any NUMBERS available.

    1. OFM
      I started to look up data and found a source of technical papers then said (quoting OFM) “this is bulshit”. Today the big headline is about Musk’s big rocket exploding. Is anyone running around shouting “Rockets don”t work!!”?
      Hell no. New technologies learn by failure. New low technololy businesses fail more often than they succeed. One of the best indicators of whether the non-fossil energy industries are going in the right direction is the INSURANCE INDUSTRY. They are beginning to price climate change into their actuarrial models. Another segment of society with a strong interest in climate is the Pentagon. Or so they say:
      “DOD is elevating climate change as a national security priority, integrating climate considerations into policies, strategies and partner engagements.”
      Rockets fail, turbines fail, new cars fail. Whatever failures occur in necessary, or desired, applications will get the engineering they need.

      1. Jjhman,

        It is clear that if people were meant to fly they would have wings. 🙂 Also that burning stuff is the only possible source for energy, just ask a cave dweller.

    2. If windmills are failing, that’s good in a way — lots of pent-up energy available. Just need to find better materials and mechanical advantage to harvest it.

      1. CATL is by far and away the biggest EV battery manufacturer in the world, with over 1/3rd the market.
        LG Chem and BYD are number 2 and 3 at just under 15% each.

        1. Rising quickly, but still under 10%

          “5.6 percent of light-vehicle registrations, compared to 3.1 percent in 2021.”

            2. Hightrekker,

              At the World level about 10.5 million plugin vehicles were sold in 2022 out of about 80 million total light vehicles sold in 2022, that is a 13.5% share of Worldwide light vehicle sales were plugins (EVs plus plugin hybrids). Also the average annual rate of growth in plugin sales has been about 42% per year from 2012 to 2022, so this share is likely to continue to increase in the future.

              https://www.ev-volumes.com/

            3. “in 2022, that is a 13.5% share of Worldwide light vehicle sales were plugins (EVs plus plugin hybrids).”

              And I reassert that my guess is 90% by 2030.

    2. We won’t have to wait too long. From another source:

      CATL launches 500 Wh/kg condensed matter battery

      Chinese battery giant CATL on Wednesday unveiled a new ultra-high energy battery technology initially slated for aviation, and with an automotive cell under development.

      The so-called “condensed matter” battery, a type of semi-solid state product with condensed electrolyte and new anode and separator materials, will have an energy density of up to 500 Wh/kg.

      At the launch ceremony at the Shanghai auto show, Wu Kai, CATL’s chief scientist, said the company was working with unspecified partners to ensure the battery is qualified for aviation use in terms of safety and quality. CATL will also be able to start mass production of the condensed matter battery for electric vehicle uses later this year, Wu added.

  9. Lithium Miners Slump as Chile Unveils State-Led Policy — WSJ
    12:51 pm ET April 21, 2023 (Dow Jones) Print
    By Ryan Dube

    Shares of some of the world’s biggest lithium mining companies traded sharply lower on Friday after Chilean President Gabriel Boric unveiled a new state-led strategy to develop its vast resources of the metal, which is vital for the development of electric vehicles.

    Mr. Boric, a leftist former student protest leader who took office last year, announced late Thursday plans to create a state-owned lithium company to develop Chile’s lithium resources, a key campaign promise. In a televised address, Mr. Boric said the state would take a majority stake in partnerships with private companies to develop lithium.

    “The state will participate in the entire productive process of the mineral,” Mr. Boric said. “This is the best chance that we have to transition to a sustainable and developed economy. We don’t have the luxury to waste it.”

    Shares of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, one of the world’s top lithium producers, and partially owned by China’s Tianqi Lithium Corp., were down Friday over 10% in New York. U.S.-based Albemarle Corp., the only other producer in Chile, was down over 6%. Both companies extract lithium from salty brines located under Chile’s northern Atacama salt flat.

    A spokesman for SQM declined to comment. Albemarle said it expects “no material impact” on its operations as the government will respect existing mine contracts.

    “We will continue to collaborate with the government of Chile regarding the proposed national lithium strategy,” it said. “We have many shared interests to include how best to grow the lithium market and deploy new sustainable technologies.”

    Chile has the world’s biggest lithium reserves but it has struggled to develop new mines due to tight regulatory control over the mineral that has prevented foreign companies from investing in the industry. As a result, Chile, the world’s second biggest lithium producer, has lost out market share to top producer Australia and neighboring Argentina, which has attracted Chinese, American and European miners to its lithium fields.

    Chile’s failure to develop new lithium mines has raised concerns among officials and industry experts that the country could miss out on surging demand for the metal that is used in batteries for electric vehicles and smartphones.

    1. Chile may be a little late to the game, in terms of market share, but there will be plenty of buyers for Chile’s eventual production.

      Going the state owned route is for sure the best thing for the people there. Otherwise the profits will be spent mostly elsewhere on mega yachts or apartments in London and Paris.

      1. OFM, you need to learn to ignore the WSJ speak. market share seems pretty irrelevant when you are talking about a globally traded commodity. the reserves are there and you might as well extract it correctly and get a good price. i just googled lithium price volatility, and oh what do you know:

        https://www.mining.com/and-the-winner-for-most-volatile-commodity-this-decade-goes-to-lithium/

        WSJ just wants unfettered access to resources by mining companies, that’s the play. so they make any other option seem like financial irresponsibility.

        chile is big for the americas but is only the size of texas, and only 2% of that is arable land and most people live in concentrated central valley. not a huge amount of places to “externalize” mining damage.

  11. We don’t hear much in the mainstream media about HVDC power lines, other than that they’re super expensive and that getting them approved for construction is often impossible and always hard.

    The people who produced this link seem to think that maybe fossil fuel interests funded FUD is the problem.

    This sounds very reasonable to me.

    In the meantime………..

    https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/21/hvdc-is-the-new-pipeline/

    I think using otherwise surplus wind and solar power (once the wind and solar industries are big enough to produce a big enough surplus under good weather low demand conditions) to manufacture hydrogen via electrolysis of water will prove to be a highly viable industry.

    Hydrogen might turn out to be an extremely useful back up fuel for electrical generation.

    It might also turn out to be a viable motor vehicle fuel under some circumstances…….. using it in I C engines or to run fuel cells.

    If hydrogen can be made available at low costs along major highways some truckers will switch to fuel cell trucks or buy trucks with diesel engines that will run on straight diesel or a mix of hydrogen and diesel fuel…… as much as ninety five percent hydrogen and five percent diesel.

    And electrolysis plants don’t necessarily have to be all that big. Juice sent hundreds or even a thousand miles over power lines can probably be used to make hydrogen locally, which can then be used locally to run fuel cells, thereby serving as an economical substitute for super sized batteries.

    But it’s obvious that HVDC power lines are a far superior technology compared to pipe lines.

    Then of course there’s the problem that existing pipelines are mostly in the wrong places to be used for manufactured hydrogen.

    Storing hydrogen in fairly large amounts, for fairly short periods of time, at a fixed location, isn’t all that big a job. Having enough on hand to run gas turbines intermittently,say for a day or two every two weeks, isn’t a deal killer.

    But moving hydrogen long distances is a truly formidable job. The necessary infrastructure is VERY expensive. Existing pipelines won’t last transporting hydrogen. It migrates right thru steel, making it brittle as hell, eventually.

    But at least a hydrogen leak, even a big one, wouldn’t be an environmental issue at all. It either burns to water or disperses into the air, no problem.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/21/hvdc-is-the-new-pipeline/

  12. The phrase “relentless propagand” sent me to the Media Bias website. Hese’s what they say about Summit News:
    Detailed Report
    Reasoning: Conspiracies, Misleading/Unproven Information, Lack of Transparency
    Bias Rating: EXTREME RIGHT
    Factual Reporting: LOW
    Country: USA (45/180 Press Freedom)
    Media Type: Website
    Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
    MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
    One of his sources was from the Daily Sceptic. Here’s how Media Bias/Fact Check rated them:
    Bias Rating: RIGHT PSEUDOSCIENCE
    Factual Reporting: VERY LOW
    Country: United Kingdom
    Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
    Media Type: Website
    Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
    MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

    I checked the UofC site and could only find a survey from 2018 and could not find the $2.0 figure in a quick scan of the data. What I did see was neither surprising nor encouraging. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter what 20 or 90 percent of the surveyed individuals believe. What matters is whether humanity can actually respond to what is actually happening.

  13. UN REPORTS ‘OFF THE CHARTS’ MELTING OF GLACIERS

    The world’s glaciers melted at dramatic speed last year and saving them is effectively a lost cause, the United Nations reported Friday, as climate change indicators once again hit record highs. The last eight years have been the warmest ever recorded, while concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide hit new peaks, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said. “Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts,” the WMO said as it launched its annual climate overview. Sea levels are also at a record high, having risen by an average of 4.62 millimetres per year between 2013 and 2022—double the annual rate between 1993 and 2002.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-04-glaciers.html

    1. Imagine what would happen if self-driving cars were trained to obey police hand signals.

      No more need to block off a road in order to set up an ambush.

  15. https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-rare-earths-weapon-rapidly-110100857.html

    I haven’t seen much discussion of this issue recently, but it does seem to be the case that rare earth elements deposits are actually quite common and that we aren’t going to have to depend on China or any other country for an adequate supply.
    But this doesn’t mean China can’t flood the market at money losing prices to prevent the development of mines and processing facilities in other countries……… and then raising the price into the stratosphere afterwards.

    1. There’s no shortage of rare earths outside China. We just don’t want to strip mine the likes of Europe and America where people can no longer see that making EVs and mobile phones actually comes with a huge cost.

      It’s much more preferable to have China become a toxic hellhole that deals with our outsourcing of production.

  17. I posted this to the other thread. Dennis or Ron might want it here, so here it is, if they delete it there. Hi Dennis or Ron,

    Move this to the other thread if you think it should be there…….. but I think it is equally relevant here, considering the discussion is mostly about future oil supply and price right now.

    Wind and solar farms ARE NOT losing money, but I do understand the meaning of “losing money on purpose”.

    The ones with long term sales contracts are locked in with at least a modest profit guaranteed…….. even if that’s because of tax credits at this time.

    And once such contracts are finished up………… five ten fifteen years down the road……… they’ll be PAID FOR.

    And there’s every reason to believe that they will be able to sell every kilowatt hour they can produce at a decent profit. Quite possibly a very nice profit.

    ( By then we will have the smart grid, smart appliances, and various ways to store electrical energy for later use, at affordable costs…. such as running electrically heated water thru a truck load of gravel under a new built house to keep it warm in the winter…… and chilled water to keep it cool in the summer, using wind and solar juice when it’s CHEAP off peak. We will have electric cars by the millions as well…. and most of them will be capable of two way operation, grid to car, car to grid or house.)

    It’s hard to believe anybody who follows this forum thinks natural gas will always be cheap and plentiful, or that we’ll be going back to coal or nuclear power.

    I would like to hear any estimates made by the number crunchers here about how much HIGHER the price of natural gas would be, nationally and world wide, without the ten percent or so of our electricity being generated by wind and sun.

    It’s my firm belief that on a COLLECTIVE basis, the money we have spent on wind and solar subsidies has saved us several times as much as we spent on these subsidies………. by way of LOWER MARKET PRICES for natural gas and coal.

    And within another two to three years, there will be enough electric cars and trucks on the road to start cutting significantly into the amount of oil used for gasoline and diesel fuel. The ones that run all day every day will be the first to go electric once they’re more plentiful and cheaper.

    Demand for oil is obviously inelastic…… meaning a cut in supply, everything else held equal, results in the price rising so that the producers GET MORE MONEY FOR LESS OIL. The flip side is that when we buy less oil, we save not only on the quantity……… we save EVEN MORE due to getting it cheaper.

    Of course everything is NEVER held equal, there are always economic ups and downs, political problems such as wars, pandemics such as Covid, etc.

    I’m no expert by any means, in terms of the energy industry.

    But I’ve spent the last ten years or so putting in one hell of a lot of time studying the BIG PICTURE.

    And anybody with two or more working brain cells who has put in the time making a study of the BIG PICTURE absolutely MUST come to the conclusion that we either go electric or that we go back to living the way my great grand parents lived……

    Meaning in turn that most of us will die hard because we’re NOT going back to a time when most of us live on the land producing food for the others. Without diesel fuel, without manufactured fertilizers, without tractors, trucks and combines…….. most of us starve….. or die fighting and rioting.

    Depletion of oil and gas GUARANTEE a crash and burn overshoot landing unless we go electric.
    Click to Edit
    Delete
    (154 minutes and 1 second)

    1. Meanwhile,

      CHINA APPROVES COAL POWER SURGE

      Local governments in energy-hungry Chinese provinces approved at least 20.45 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power in the first three months of 2023, Greenpeace said. That is more than double the 8.63 GW Greenpeace reported for the same period last year, and greater than the 18.55 GW that got the green light for the whole of 2021.

      https://phys.org/news/2023-04-china-coal-power-surge-emissions.html

      1. Doug,

        Also from that same article that you linked:

        China is also the world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of renewable energy.

        Wind, solar, hydro and nuclear sources are expected to supply a third of its electricity demand by 2025, up from 28.8 percent in 2020, according to estimates by the National Energy Administration.

        But Greenpeace said the rise in approvals for coal power projects shows how the need for short-term economic growth is diverting investment away from renewable energy projects such as grid upgrades that can supply surplus wind and solar power to regions that need it.

        With an average lifespan of about 40 to 50 years, China’s coal plants will be operating at minimum capacity and at a loss if the country delivers on its emissions pledge, according to the report.

  18. The crux of the matter, when it comes to whether renewable energy can shoulder the load, at least in some countries, is whether such countries make the right decisions…. which are POLITICAL decisions.

    If we Yankees choose to get on with it, making the necessary decisions, we can do it.

    So can at least a few other countries.

    Leviathan, the nation state, can forbid the production of twenty mpg cars and mandate the production of hundred plus mpg equivalent cars and small trucks. This would have to be phased in over a few years but it’s entirely doable.

    Leviathan can shut down the air travel industry if diesel fuel is in critically short supply to run farms and keep trucks moving that deliver to farms and to stores.

    Leviathan can mandate German level energy efficiency in appliances.

    Leviathan can outlaw computer mining for bit coin currencies.

    Leviathan can spend some of the hundreds of billions currently spent on military hardware on HVDC power lines and wind and solar farms.

    People other than farmers can and will be moving towards town, and city dwellers use far less energy per capita than country dwellers, for the same living standard.

    Cities can allow existing mac mansions to be cut up into two or three apartments, and garage conversions into apartments.

    Leviathan can put otherwise out of work construction guys to work refurbing our built infrastructure to be far more energy efficient.

    Our Leviathan is Uncle Sam of course.

    We did it starting a couple of days after Pearl Harbor.

    Maybe we’ll get a Pearl Harbor equivalent event.

    That may be our only real hope.

    A falling birth rate means a really big bright spot in the black clouds.

    Japan already has a big surplus of empty houses. Look it up. Japan doesn’t NEED growth now. Japan simply needs stability.

    I personally don’t see that we need cheap imported labor for ANYTHING at all, except maybe picking produce for a few more years.

    What we NEED is to allow the necessary rise in wages for the jobs Americans SUPPOSEDLY WILL NOT DO……. to happen so that they WILL do these jobs.

    Paper pushers make too much, and laborers too little. With little or no new cheap labor from migrants or immigrants, the last big market for such labor will disappear….. the farm labor market.

    I have ZERO fucking sympathy for my dentist who rakes in three thousand bucks a day saying he can’t afford to pay more than ten or twelve bucks to get his yard work done.

    Raising the cost of veggies and fruit WHOLESALE by fifty percent will result on average of maybe a ten percent rise in the retail price of the same. My neighbors are selling apples, peaches, green beans, tomatoes, etc for one fourth to maybe one third, at best, and often even less, the price of these foods at the super market.

    And we’re moving towards mechanizing harvest operations just as we have mechanized the rest of the production system anyway.

    This is not intended as an ANTI immigration rant. It’s intended to ILLUMINATE our economic wage and salary problem in terms of POOR PEOPLE.

    I earned about twenty bucks an hour as a HIGHLY skilled tradesman, working hourly, before I retired some years ago. In other states, I could have earned maybe fifty percent more.

    There’s no GOOD reason why I should have to pay a hundred bucks to get my teeth cleaned in thirty minutes by a semi literate kid with two years of simple instruction in cleaning teeth.

    If we fix the low wage problem by making workers SCARCE, wages will go up.

    So will living costs, of course.

    But the cost of welfare and law enforcement will go WAY down.

    Two thirds of the people peddling meth in my neighborhood are doing it to buy groceries and pay rent.
    When one of them manages to land a decent job making twenty bucks ( good money around here) they generally go straight, so help me Jesus, unless they’re already hooked on their own product.

    Half the ones on Medicare, women with kids in particular, are better off on the dole than they would be working at ten or twelve bucks. They do hustle on the side……. for instance doing some house cleaning, flea marketing, or baby sitting.

    I LIVE with such people, grew up with them, know them as relatives and old school friends. They’re my neighbors up and down the road.

    I KNOW what I’m talking about. People who have not LIVED WITH such people, knowing them WELL, for years, just don’t have a fucking clue.

    Without this experience, forgive me for saying so, but when it comes to poor people, you’re more than likely either a libtard or a trump tard……… meaning that whatever you do believe is generally WRONG.

  19. A RECENT, RAPID HEATING OF THE WORLD’S OCEANS HAS ALARMED SCIENTISTS CONCERNED THAT IT WILL ADD TO GLOBAL WARMING.

    This month, the global sea surface hit a new record high temperature. It has never warmed this much, this quickly. Scientists don’t fully understand why this has happened. But they worry that, combined with other weather events, the world’s temperature could reach a concerning new level by the end of next year. Experts believe that a strong El Niño weather event – a weather system that heats the ocean – will also set in over the next months.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934

    1. This is a huge deal folks. There is no way that the increase heat energy in the oceans won’t lead to much greater variability of extreme weather events on land, not to mention severe disruption of the global marine food chain.

      “the Earth system has continued to accumulate heat…The majority, about 89 %, of this heat is stored in the ocean, followed by about 6 % on land, 1 % in the atmosphere, and about 4 % available for melting the cryosphere.

      The journal publication upon which that article is based is here-
      https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/

      1. HICKORY —

        Thanks for adding the journal publication address. I was just being lazy, I guess.

        1. Several scientists contacted for this story were reluctant to go on the record about the implications.

          One spoke of being “extremely worried and completely stressed.”

          1. Pussies. Come out and tell us how there’s no lube for this fucking we’re getting.

            Story still has hilarious hopium sign off paragraph at the end. Don’t worry, it’s not that bad… yet.

    2. “Over the past 15 years, the Earth has accumulated almost as much heat as it did in the previous 45 years, with most of the extra energy going into the oceans.”

      On the weather depends the harvest, on the harvest depends everything

      1. A good summation of the two predominant weather patterns that are fuelled by these energy gradients.

        https://youtu.be/TC7Pg8tUuqQ

        This year is going to be wild. Always a reassuring thing when you find out scientists massively underestimated a feedback and can’t explain why.

        See also India warming less than neighbours because of aerosols. India, as mentioned previously, is also getting closer to lethal wetbulb temperatures being a norm every summer. They’re kinda ducked either way: stay on the path of toxic smog killing off their populations and keeping temps down, or clean up the air with renewables and experience a sudden jump in localised warning effects.

  20. https://news.yahoo.com/finance/news/inside-race-break-putin-grip-050000250.html

    At one time many years ago I believed that the dumbest thing we could do would be to expand trade with our potential or actual enemies, thereby enabling them to grow their economies to the point they could threaten us.
    Then I came to believe that trade on the grand scale was a wonderful thing, because our potential enemies would never start wars threatening us, or our friends, due to losing their customers.

    I defended China when accused by right wingers of deliberately releasing Covid to weaken us….. asking if even the worst low life drug dealer would shoot his best and biggest long term customer over a minor dispute about price or deliveries, etc.

    But now……… I’m very much inclined to think that China has basically been a peaceful country, in terms of aggressive wars outside her borders not because of Chinese culture……. but rather because you don’t wage aggressive war unless you have the ABILITY to do so.

    China is fast gaining this ability.

    Russian politicians and talking heads are openly and very aggressively talking about invading other countries in Europe…… even to the point of nuclear war.

    OK…….. so maybe I sound like a world class redneck…….
    But just suppose we WEREN’T hooked on cheap Chinese goods?

    China wouldn’t be nearly so prosperous. We wouldn’t be in nearly the same situation involving coal and CO2, we wouldn’t have ten million or more of our own citizens without their former jobs in industries such as furniture….. jobs that paid modest but still living wages.

    And maybe WE would be the world leaders in industries such as solar power, chip fabrication, etc.

    I’m not actually taking sides against lots of trade……. some of my neighbors have built really nice new houses by selling their best oak trees to overseas buyers……. shipping them hundreds of miles to the coast, then halfway around the world sometimes, to be made into furniture. Shades of the days when England forced us to buy English manufactured goods, while exporting raw materials and foodstuffs.

    But THIS time, we brought it on ourselves by way of our own ignorance, greed, and stupidity.
    I post remarks of this sort occasionally to remind people that we should be careful what we wish for…. because we may get it…… in this case a hollowed out manufacturing chunk of our economy.

    Talk all you like about HIGH TECH manufacturing……

    And all you like about how stupid people are who vote Red and go to church.

    I do the same thing myself….. but I MOSTLY remember that even a dog knows when you’re looking down on it………. and such people would rather die than forgive being treated as they are……. by such a large portion of the liberal and environmental establishment.

    SO……… they’ll vote red until the day they can’t.

    ONE absolutely critical fact is that millions of those people LOST their jobs to globalization, and they will NEVER have an opportunity to be more than a janitor in a high tech industry.

    We ( collectively speaking) actually did more to create our own underclass of poor people by going the globalization route than all the drug dealers by a factor of a hundred.

    We shouldn’t be AFRAID to think…. but all too often we dismiss arguments we don’t like because we don’t like the people making them.

    That doesn’t mean they aren’t valid arguments.

  21. 11
    FILE PHOTO: S.Korea’s Yoon to meet Biden as doubts grow over nuclear umbrella
    Hyonhee Shin
    Mon, April 24, 2023 at 1:18 AM EDT

    By Hyonhee Shin

    SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol set off on Monday for the United States and a summit with President Joe Biden at a time of rare questioning in South Korea of an alliance that has guaranteed its security for decades.
    11
    FILE PHOTO: S.Korea’s Yoon to meet Biden as doubts grow over nuclear umbrella
    Hyonhee Shin
    Mon, April 24, 2023 at 1:18 AM EDT

    By Hyonhee Shin

    SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol set off on Monday for the United States and a summit with President Joe Biden at a time of rare questioning in South Korea of an alliance that has guaranteed its security for decades.

    Yoon’s April 24-29 trip is the first state visit to the U.S. by a South Korean leader in 12 years and will mark the 70th anniversary of a partnership that has helped anchor U.S. strategy in Asia and provided a foundation for South Korea’s emergence as an economic powerhouse.

    But as North Korea races ahead with the development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them, there are growing questions in South Korea about the relying on “extended deterrence”, in essence the American nuclear umbrella, and calls, even from some senior members of Yoon’s party, for South Korea to develop its own nuclear weapons.
    –
    A recent poll by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies showed that more than 54% of respondents believed the U.S. would not risk its safety to protect its Asian ally.

    More than 64% supported South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons, with about 33% opposed.
    Yoon’s April 24-29 trip is the first state visit to the U.S. by a South Korean leader in 12 years and will mark the 70th anniversary of a partnership that has helped anchor U.S. strategy in Asia and provided a foundation for South Korea’s emergence as an economic powerhouse.

    But as North Korea races ahead with the development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them, there are growing questions in South Korea about the relying on “extended deterrence”, in essence the American nuclear umbrella, and calls, even from some senior members of Yoon’s party, for South Korea to develop its own nuclear weapons.

    We are fast losing our unquestioned position as the BIG DOG.

    We’re afraid ( for very good reasons of course! ) to directly confront Russia and actually have a very substantial number of voters in this country stupid enough to think we shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine.

    How long will it be before we’re afraid to directly confront China if she invades some of our friends and allies?

    Now it may be sort of strange to read these comments, coming from me……

    But I have found that arguments such as these are EFFECTIVE in getting right wingers to UNDERSTAND that we can’t safely import oil, long term, from countries that are NOT our friends, that oil DEPLETES, and that therefore we NEED to be pedal to the metal building up our renewable energy industries, going electric with cars and trucks, etc.

    1. OFM,
      You have some pretty strong views on renewables and politics. To me this suggests that you are of a younger generation than myself and perhaps a little biased towards woke thinking. Your comments on wind turbines and renewables would have had more appeal had you researched the subject.
      For instance do you have any idea of the stress cycles on wind turbines? Probably not. Do you have any idea of the predicted and actual lifespan? Probably not. Do you have any idea of the power density typically achievable per unit area on on-shore and off-shore applications? Clearly not. What about the EROEI of these systems?
      Have you any idea of the mineral inputs? Probably not.
      Both wind and PV suffer from intermittancy in the supply of wind and sunlight. Both are very maintenance heavy. Wind turbine blades are adversely effacted by environmental factors. Icing, particle erosion, humid atmospheres, stress loads, are to to name but a few of the issues. The pitch control mechanism of a wind turbine is subject to immense and constantly changing loads. The pitch change mechanism controls the RPM to within a quite fine range, which means as the wind strength increases the wind turbine does not produce more power – it actually extracts less energy than it possibly could. This is to reduce the loads and stresses.
      An end of life turnbine is just that. End of life. Though technically possible to install another nacelle on the mast, it would,not be possible to upsize the turbine to a higher output. Limitiations include: the mast height, the power density ( turbines must be optimally spaced), the grid connections and many other factors. The mast itself will also be old and stressed, as will be the sunstantial foundation and the risk of failure of the mast in an extended life, might not be worth the risk.
      Your idea that by simply mandating a 100 mpg vehicle is wishful to say the least. It might be possible for a single occupant but we are a long way from this lofty goal. Likewise were is the cheap wind and solar power. Add in the full cost of grid connections and balancing and one thing for sure it is not cheap. Ideas such as using excess power to produce hydrogen or battery sotorage are whimsical at best, and only demonstrate your lack of detail on the subjects that you rant about.
      Might I suggest that before ranting on this blog you do a little study, especially on the Laws of Thermodynamics.
      Your Leviathon society is nothing less than a dystopian society where the woke elite will dictate to the severely impoverished masses, which would include yourself, unless you find a way of climbing the greasy pole. I want no part of it, and neither do most people. The fact is the US has a problem with its 4- In president – Inept, Incapable, Incoherent and Incontinent propelled into office by a woke elite as the lesser of two evils. We now have idiots like Extinction Rebellion and Just- Stop-Oil agitating about peoples assemblies. Then there is BLM spouting their marxist agenda. All of these fools seem to think that we have the means to move to this wonderful fair and just society. Hmm- I do not think so.

      1. Stephen

        Consider the following paper

        https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098

        Your thinking might not be up to date.
        From conclusion of paper:

        The analysis performed herein represents a much-needed update and harmonization of the EROI literature, and it advances the conversation surrounding the viability of renewable resources in the energy transition process. A common argument is that the EROIs from renewable energy technologies are supposedly lower than those provided by fossil fuels, and that transitioning to RE technologies would therefore result in a large loss in net energy. The results of this analysis rebuke that sentiment, noting that the three most important technologies for the energy transition–wind, PV, and hydropower—all have EROIs at or above 10 (even when the output is weighted in terms of primary energy equivalent assuming a future-proof life-cycle grid efficiency of ηG = 0.7, i.e., 1 unit of electricity per 1.4 units of primary energy). This means that greater than 90% of the energy produced by these technologies is delivered to society as net energy.

        Perhaps more interesting still, the EROIs from liquid fuels, including the EROI from conventional oil production, are less than 10 once the costs of refining and delivery to the point-of-use are included. Oil is widely considered the most important fuel for the
        economy, used mostly in the transportation sector. This means that oil delivers less net energy to society for each unit invested in extraction, refining, and delivery than PV or wind. The transition to electric vehicles, according to these results, will actually increase
        the amount of net energy delivered to society (even more so when considering the higher efficiency of electrical power trains vs. internal combustion engines).

        It is clear from these results that EROI estimates at the point of extraction can be wildly misleading. As a case in point, even if crude oil were measured to have an EROI of 1000 or more at the point of extraction, the corresponding EROI at the point of use, using global average data for the energy “cost” of the process chain, would still only be a maximum of 8.7. Furthermore, as the quality of oil, gas and coal continue to decline in the future, the energy “cost” of the associated process chains will increase, further reducing the EROIs. On the other hand, as the technologies used to harness renewable energy improve, the corresponding EROIs will continue to increase in the future.

        Finally, it is also important to observe that, in the future, a significant increase in the penetration of renewable technologies into the electricity grid mixes will have to be accompanied by a concomitant deployment of electrical storage, to compensate for the intrinsic intermittency or renewable energy availability and ensure the continued real-time matching of the supply and demand curves. However, detailed scenario analyses of the net energy performance of even highly decarbonized grid mixes relying heavily on PVs, based on high temporal resolution grid balancing algorithms rather than blunt assumptions, indicate that the additional energy investment for electrochemical energy storage does not significantly affect the overall EROI(PE-eq) of the resulting electricity mix.

    2. “… we can’t safely import oil, long term, from countries that are NOT our friends, that oil DEPLETES, and that therefore we NEED to be pedal to the metal building up our renewable energy industries, going electric with cars and trucks, etc.”

      Most folks here probably know this but I will take the opportunity to complain anyway because it’s been an excruciating 46 years watching this unfold. Jimmy Carter warned us about the importance of ending our dependence on foreign oil 46 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Equivalent_of_War_speech

  22. And now for something completely different: while the world continue to burn, though at slightly different paces, has anyone tried to put a lambda probe in their chimney?
    Started to wonder about the optimum fuel/air mixture for a firestove and have an old, partially working probe laying around, pre-heater´s out on it but works otherwise.
    Should be pretty easy to control the air inlet from it, needs 12V to work but no problem with a small panel/lead acid battery. (Just wanting to optimize wood use for future needs)

    1. “Can you blame people for not trusting the government”

      Its not just the government…you can’t simply trust any group of humans.
      Sometimes individuals seem trustworthy.
      And some small groups are surprisingly trustworthy for certain periods of time.

      1. “As a general rule, deeply-held mental models are only abandoned when the pain they inflict finally outweighs the psychological comfort they provide.”

      2. I think that might have to do with some kind of herd instinct, I´ve noticed the same thing. Most people, (or at least many) when you talk to them face to face seems quite reasonable and fairly insightful, yet the collective are just sheep…
        Also remember, regarding government, if you elect people from the normal distribution, you will get some not so bright, but often kind, along with some intelligent but possibly quite a bit less altruistic.
        And guess who gets to call the shots?

Comments are closed.