Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
98 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, April 9, 2024”
I’m reposting Hideaway’s last comment:
“So you agree that we need lots more Aluminium, like the smelters being built by Adaro in Indonesia, using coal fired power to do it, because it’s so much cheaper than solar and backup (around 1/10 of the cost). But even solar in their location near the equator will require the destruction of hundreds of square kilometers of pristine rainforest to build and pristine rainforest river systems.
If you are against the Adaro development, coal or solar, then where does the Aluminium come from?? Which other natural system do you want destroyed for the new Aluminium smelters? Which landscape is acceptable to you, too destroy, for this extra placement of solar and wind??
It’s the constant notion that we need MORE, of anything that’s the problem. We are in deep overshoot and the only possible solution is less, not more, so every time you utter the concept of more (anything) you should know it’s the wrong answer, straight away.
It doesn’t matter what the form of energy is as the concept of MORE is what has put our planetary home at risk, climate, ecosystems, ocean life, etc, so EVERY answer that comes up with a solution of MORE is just a continuation of the problem.
How on Earth doesn’t it occur to you that we’ve been on the path of ‘mitigation’ of the climate symptom of our overshoot for several decades, by building mountains more ‘stuff’ (wind turbines, solar panels, EVs batteries, changing coal to gas fired power plants, etc), yet the entire time we have only made the situation worse by every metric?
How can the solution possibly be doing more of the same??”
Keep at it Hideaway. There are many of us who UNDERSTAND the PREDICAMENT humanity finds itself within. And about which you so tirelessly and clearly put into words. Thank you.
Thank you EDGY.
I mostly lurk at POB; there are so many very intelligent posters with insightful views of our future. Like you I’m drawn to Hideaway’s posts and I would have missed this one had you not reposted it.
From my small island perspective, I wouldn’t worry too much about the resources being used to build out solar PV and wind. Each unit of solar and wind energy that is built will generate much more energy than was used to build it.
I am much more concerned about the orgies of consumption I see going on around me. Construction of luxury condos is all the rage in the capital city of my island (where I live) and as I pointed out in the previous open thread, one big headline this past January was about four 28 story luxury condo towers to be built in Montego Bay. There is an official Porsche dealership in Kingston as well as Mercedes, Jaguar/Land Rover and BMW dealerships. They all appear to be doing good business especially as it relates to SUVs There are a bunch of no goods that have made tidy sums out of scamming mostly older Americans out of the life savings. Two of the most popular cars for that group are the two biggest sedans Toyota makes, the Mark X and the Crown.
All of these cars and buildings are a commitment to consume more energy for the life of the car or building. When you figure out a way to get the message to the conspicuous consumers let me know!
PV isn’t the problem. My 2,800 W array has been generating in excess of 12 kWh most days so I have been offsetting roughly 12 kg of CO2 per day. If I was using that energy to power an EV I would be reducing my carbon footprint even more but, I’m doing what I can for now. Arrays in the megawatt scale offset tons of CO2 every day.
Solar doesn’t mean more. 80% The land wasted growing corn for ethanol could be put returned to nature and the rest replaced by solar. That would pretty much cover all the fuel needs of the country.
Anyway, the myth that fossil fuels magically have no footprint needs to die.
Solar generation has increased significantly over a year for Texas. In winter 2022-23, peak generation was 2.1 GWh, and in 2023-24, it reached 3.8 GWh, said the EIA. Wind production remained relatively flat, though it remains a larger source of electricity than solar on the ERCOT grid. In the summer of 2022, the maximum hourly average solar generation was 3.9 GWh and increased to 5.3 GWh in the summer of 2023.
Solar generation increased 35% year over year in the state, and 16 GW of solar was added in 2023 alone. Developers are expected to add another 24 GW in 2024 and 2025, while wind power is expected to increase by 3 GW of capacity.
There is one reason and one reason only why so much solar PV is being deployed in Texas. As Tony Seba has said in his “Clean Disruption” presentations, “It’s all about the green”. Just not the green discussed on this site most of the time 😉
NO Sir! Have you seen the price of PV systems lately? The green is the money that these utilities are going to be making from all the “free” solar energy. At this point the subsidies don’t even matter. Incidentally the oil and gas business gets their fair share of subsidies too: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion
Fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion last year as governments supported consumers and businesses during the global spike in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic recovery from the pandemic.
As the world struggles to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and parts of Asia, Europe and the United States swelter in extreme heat, subsidies for oil, coal and natural gas are costing the equivalent of 7.1 percent of global gross domestic product. That’s more than governments spend annually on education (4.3 percent of global income) and about two thirds of what they spend on healthcare (10.9 percent).
Yes, but…
The Senate right now has a Democratic majority so here in California we aren’t feeling too oppressed. Remember that the “founding fathers” wanted a representative government but were every bit as afraid of mob rule as they were of top down tyranny. Giving an equal say to all of the states was an effort to avoid tyranny by a group of states with large populations. I think a case can be made that, perhaps, states aren’t the most logical way to devide up the power pie today but it isn’t the worst solution.
Hideaway. Thanks for all your comments, including this-
“We are in deep overshoot and the only possible solution is less, not more, so every time you utter the concept of more (anything) you should know it’s the wrong answer, straight away.”
This points out the basic truth that the collective human project is absolutely contrary to the basic health and survival of the biosphere and all of its other inhabitants.
If you are trying to ask the question- “what is good for the biosphere?”, the only answer is to rapidly erase the vast bulk of humanity from the global scene. Not just stop growing, but to massively contract.
But keep in mind that many discussions include other questions such a- what is good for stability of civilization?, or what is good for economic growth?, or what is more sustainable than the path we are on now?, or what are techniques that are less damaging?, or what adaptations can enable survival as certain finite resources deplete?
For those who plan on living more than a few more years, those questions are all very reasonable and important ones to ask.
And if you look at humans actions, including yours and mine, it is clear that we prioritize our own success over that of the rest of the living world. This order of priorities is universal and lasts until your last moment.
There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
and it is false ideation to expect otherwise.
There is no path for humanity that leads back to the garden of eden….even the small bit of it that is left somewhere a thousand miles from the nearest road, or even an inch away from the human mind and hand.
Human population can contract pretty quickly as the demographic transition occurs Worldwide, fewer humans would certainly help reduce environmental damage.
True, and
some people prefer the peak and decline of population to be accelerated via the mechanism of energy poverty.
They advocate allocating no labor or capital or innovation capability to the endeavor of replacing some of the fossil fuel combustion source energy that will be peaking soon with non-fossil energy sources.
Many who have vested interest in the fossil fuel industry share their view, purely for the chance to reap shortage pricing windfall during the century time of crises.
Many who have vested interest in the fossil fuel industry share their view, purely for the chance to reap shortage pricing windfall during the century time of crises.
I get the feeling that many of those people who are fighting against investment in FF replacements aren’t thinking quite that far ahead. They’re just fighting a rearguard action against anything that hurts their industry, including loss of tax preferences and other perks of being a favored industry.
I would agree that a tendency to short term thinking has some basis in genetics, but like many similar things this vulnerability can be reversed through education. Sadly, it can be exacerbated by toxic “education” from things like Fox News and social media misinformation.
There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
Good, god, Hickory, seriously? Humans are not part of nature?? Humans aren’t at least equally valuable as other forms of life???
I agree that humans should take care their world, including being stewards of other forms of life (both because they’re valuable in themselves, and because a diverse ecosystem benefits humans). I agree that most humans don’t put nearly enough priority on the health of other species, and the environment in general. But eliminating the vast bulk of humanity would be an improvement?? This feels like some kind of very toxic and destructive guilt.
I think perhaps you’re confused about the source of our environmental problems. Humans don’t necessarily have to cause massive environmental harm: the problem is that they are currently *choosing* to do so. We can see this cultural idee fixe in our religions: traditional religion says that human life is sacred, and that animals are livestock, unworthy of real care and to be eliminated if they’re inconvenient. Oddly, this idea that humans need to be eliminated seems to precisely reverse the traditional approach. Both, clearly, make no sense. We can have both humans and other species.
Does this come from oil & gas propaganda that says that FF (and therefore Climate Change) is essential to human life? Tain’t so.
Nick, it seems like you come from a perspective that is unrooted to the real living world. As if you’ve never been outside an apartment or office building, or studied earth and biologic sciences.
By and large, we are the enemy of nature. Thats us. Sorry to disabuse you of the more pleasant view of humans as the god empowered good stewards of the earth.
That comment doesn’t seem to be an answer to what I actually said. Please re-read it carefully for what I’m actually saying. Perhaps you’re reacting to what you expect it to say, rather than what it actually says.
Or, perhaps it makes sense to simplify. Let’s start with one question: humans aren’t part of nature?
I think that humans stopped being a part of nature a long time ago. The die was cast when we had routine use of fire. That capability allowed us to control nature. The symbolism of ‘being cast out of the garden of eden’ refers to us no longer being a part of nature.
We are an animal with napalm droppings from the air, steel that slices through the very heart or brain of others, toluene that we put in the water and on the soil and into our marrow, and a myriad of other unnatural and horrid acts and creations.
We left the natural world a long long time ago. We treat it as if we hate it….perhaps a reflection of how little we regard we have for even ourselves.
A question back at you- Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation, beyond which further growth is impossible, in fact population decline becomes inevitable?
Many of us learned of this concept in middle school science class. I remember that my older sister got in trouble in 6th grade because she adamantly refused to believe in molecules.
We are an animal with napalm droppings…and a myriad of other unnatural and horrid acts
Yes, it sounds like guilt. That’s unfortunate. And unrealistic: humans really aren’t any more violent than other animals on average, and a lot less violent than some. Nature really is “red in tooth and claw”. Hunter-gather humans fought a lot more than present-day humans (they didn’t have contraception, after all).
Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation, beyond which further growth is impossible, in fact population decline becomes inevitable?
Of course, but.,..that’s an unrealistic premise. Humans are not growing exponentially. Population growth is barely linear right now, and world fertility is at 2.3, just above replacement, and falling in a straightforwardly predictable fashion. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertility-rate-with-projections
Humans have demonstrated that they have very little interest in exponential growth. They want to have a few kids, but as Brazilian women like to say: “The factory is closed!”. The highest population growth is in Africa, which poorer and less educated, but catching up faster than you’d think.
Nick,
you may pick the emotional response of guilt,
for me its more along the lines of a lamentation for all the damage done.
The exponential growth that got us so deep into overshoot occurred over about 2 centuries…its not an issue of current population accumulation rate. You seem to go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging some of the basics of these topics.
But hey, that’s ok. If denial-ism is the mechanism to get through your day i’ll cease attempts point out the reality of it to you.
I think our conversation is once again at point of abrupt divergence.
Good wishes to you, and life in the Truman Show fabrication.
Hickory,
Well, the point of describing it as guilt is to clarify that you’re being unnecessarily negative about humanity. When you say “If you are trying to ask the question- “what is good for the biosphere?”, the only answer is to rapidly erase the vast bulk of humanity from the global scene.” that suggests that humanity isn’t part of the biosphere, and has no value. It’s extraordinarily negative, and seems quite toxic to me.
The exponential growth that got us so deep into overshoot occurred over about 2 centuries…its not an issue of current population accumulation rate.
That’s not what you asked: you asked “Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation…”? Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Human population growth is stopping due to human choices, technology in the form of contraception, prosperity in the form of lower death rates, better education, better old age income security, etc. It’s absolutely not due to the rising death rates that you’d expect from hitting a wall. Instead death rates (for all ages) are at an historic low.
Now, are we in a place where death rates are likely to arise eventually? That’s a whole different debate. It’s a complex and difficult debate, and it’s not what you asked about.
“Denial-sm”? “Truman Show”?
That’s downright insulting. I don’t ordinarily bring up this kind of discussion of psychological mechanisms, but this deserves a reply:
Forty percent of Americans believe that we are in the End Times, and that there will be a religious apocalypse in their lifetime. Current civilization will collapse, and there will be renewal and purification, and redemption of the righteous. It sure looks like this expectation of collapse and renewal has a lot to do with this idea that evil humans need to be wiped out, and “pure” nature will be renewed. I was not raised in this belief, and yet I know that it and related things, like Heaven and Hell, have had an effect on me, an effect I’ve had to pay attention to processing to reduce it’s effect on me. Have you examined the extent to which this highly pervasive belief has seeped into your intuition of how things will work out?
Finally, it’s worth repeating: You have to realize that TOD & POB are definitely not in the mainstream of science & engineering. Climate Change as a big risk for humanity? Definitely mainstream. Climate Change (or other environmental problems) as a *guaranteed* cause of collapse?
Not so much.
Now, sure occasionally Galileo is right, and the mainstream is wrong. But more often than not that isn’t the case. If you’re looking at propositions that are far outside the mainstream you have to be far more cautious about accepting them without good, strong evidence. Remember the scientific rule of thumb: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
It is possible to simultaneously appreciate the unique qualities of the human species while also recognizing the damage we are doing, and acknowledging that the sheer number of us exacerbates that damage.
Nick, I do find it interesting that you wrote: “I agree that humans should take care [of] their world.” Why “their” and not “our”?
Can you identify for us the regions in Earth’s biosphere where human impact is a net ecological benefit? Were humans to vanish tomorrow, the vast majority of other species would immediately benefit. There are some exceptions of course, the domesticated ones would greatly decrease in prevalence, and many would follow us to extinction, but the majority of life would immediately begin to recover, and eventually once again thrive.
I don’t wish for the end of humans, but I do wish we would live up to the name we’ve given ourselves and demonstrate some wisdom to guide our cleverness.
We have an externalization of costs problem and our inability to address it is impoverishing us.
Bob,
I agree with you: we humans should do better. Personally, I like E. O, Wilson’s proposal to set aside half the earth for wildlife.
On the other hand, focusing on overpopulation and wildlife extinction is to allow FF advocates to steer us away from the primary problem: fossil fuels.
Our primary environmental problem is climate change, and the primary cause of climate change is burning of fossil fuels. That’s something we can solve relatively quickly, should we choose to do so.
Anyone who claims to be concerned about wildlife should advocate for net-zero.
Anyone who claims to be concerned about climate change should advocate for net-zero.
Someone who raises concerns about wildlife or climate change, and who advocates *against* net-zero (while changing the subject to overpopulation, or wildlife extinction), is either recklessly negligent about informing themselves, or simply pretending concern. They may be trying to distract us all from the important questions, or simply trying to leave us too discouraged to do anything at all, but one way or the other they’re just defending fossil fuels.
————
A few thoughts about humanity’s place:
Humans are intrinsically valuable, and they’re as much a part of the ecosystem as termites, pandas, or any other charismatic megafauna.
Suggesting that humans are essentially destructive seems to me to be part and parcel of the FF industry meme that FF is essential to humans, and therefore that the harm that FF does is essential to humans.
It’s not.
We don’t have to choose between humanity and “nature”. As I noted above, we could if we chose set aside half the world for wildlife. Or something in between. It’s a choice, and we should work collectively to raise humanity’s consciousness of the importance of this choice.
But not allow it to distract us from the essential task of eliminating FF.
Nick G, Humans use of fossil fuels responsible to 2/3rds of overshoot??
I’d say closer to 100% they are responsible for overshoot. What was the world’s population before fossil fuel use… around 1 Billion, now there are well over 8 Billion of us damaging the natural world, by shaping it to suit ourselves, with the use of fossil fuels that power our machines.
It’s the usual hand wave from you Nick, about how those not in favor of building lots of renewables to meet the net zero goal, must be in favor of fossil fuels.
Yet you continually fail to answer practical questions on this great changeover to renewables. It comes at a huge cost to the environment, like the new Aluminium smelters planned and being built in Indonesia.
We, as in the world’s population, needs lots more Aluminium for the net zero future, so are you in favor of what’s happening in Indonesia of new Aluminium smelters based on coal fired plants to power these smelters?? That’s where the cheap Aluminium is going to come from!!
More climate changing gasses being spewed into the atmosphere to power the goal of net-zero.
In Indonesia’s case, they could destroy hundreds of km2 of pristine rainforest to put up solar instead, however this path would cost over $US16 Billion just for the solar to equal the output from the 2.2Gw of coal power which is only costing $US2B to set up.
Also that excludes any back-up for solar, like batteries or pumped hydro, or whatever, which is definitely needed, so greater cost.
How about you address this specific example??
The world has been producing solar, wind and nuclear for decades, yet none of it is replacing fossil fuel use, it’s all being added to increasing fossil fuel use, not replacing any, on a world wide basis.
Why do you expect doing more of the same to have a different result?
The Indonesian Aluminium smelters are a good example or metaphor for what’s happening in the world, it’s all just continued industrialization to the detriment of the natural world.
Nick, how about we stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, no exceptions, now explain how we build and deploy any of the new renewables? We obviously can’t, so it’s your belief in some rosy future, provided it’s built with cheap fossil fuels that’s the problem.
People the world over grasp at a nice simple solution, despite ZERO evidence of it being possible; that we will build renewables, power a modern civilization, be inclusive of 8-10B people, and save the environment at the same time, all while being in favor of more industrial processes powered by fossil fuels to build it.
Nick are you in favor of damming a lot more river systems to produce the hydro electricity, destroying more of those river systems, clearing lots of remaining forests for roads to transport wind turbines, then the sites for these turbines, then clearing more forests all the transmission lines all over the place, or vast areas of solar panels to power the hundreds of millions of people that live in Indonesia?
Give us specific answers for a change. Which areas are you going to rewild while all this building is going on and how are we going to feed these billions of people with less land, because of the rewilding and all the wind turbines, hydro dams and solar panels polluting the landscape, and of course no fertilizers nor pest and weed control as we are banning fossil fuels for your perfect world……
Fossil fuels, despite building the modern world, are leaving us due to depletion anyway, so they are CLEARLY not the answer for the future, but neither is using lots of fossil fuels building lots of renewables, destroying more of the environment in the process, as they are not being built without fossil fuels, nor provide any of the products we use from fossil fuels.
None of it goes close to adding up. It’s a predicament we have brought upon ourselves.
Hideaway – great comment, I haven’t read more than a couple of paragraphs from Nick G for several years but he does prompt some excellent comebacks.
“Hideaway – great comment, I haven’t read more than a couple of paragraphs from Nick G for several years but he does prompt some excellent comebacks.”
LOL!
More pearls of wisdom from Nick G. Someone who who is never short of opinions but always sort of evidence to back up his ramblings. How about his claims that all combustion engines can be replaced by electric motors. True in some cases and improbable in many other.s
Then there is the “shipping can be converted to methanol” (partly true), and that future fuels will be hydrogen, ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels but there is no evidence to support these ramblings. Much hand waving and “I believe’s” do not translate into tangible solutions to a very serious problem. A problem that is governed by thermodynamic issues, but in Nick G’s case there are ignored as is EROEI. As is often said “you can take a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink”.
I will keep on beating my drum. Resource depletion and population growth is the biggest threat to mankind. all the projections for reduced population growth( or even decline) only apply to about 20% of the global population. Each year the population growth is still 80 million per year. do you really think Africa, the Indian sub continent, the ME and South America are really going to achieve voluntary reduced fertility. I suspect not. It will only occur by drastic means; war, famine natural disaster and maybe climate change. A big threat that is barely mentioned is water resources.A lot of Nick G’s solutions depend on water.
Every day I se some new energy solution on the likes of OilPrice.com written by some cut and paste artist. it is like a merry-go-round. The breakthrough appears every year of even more frequently. Perovskites, hydrogen electrolyzers, ammonia. synthetic fuels, DAC, algae. You name and it will be the next big thing, and OIlPrice.com will flag it as the next breakthrough. But all these concepts might work in a lab but no at scale.
But do not worry we can solve everything with wind and solar. The sang is making wind and solar reliable vastly inflates the coast of power. It might be possible to build a wind turbine for $1 million MWh but providing for the 24/7 power output and tying the WT into the grid probably costs twice that. Then there is OPEX. the wind might be “free” but the maintenance is not. The Cornies believe that we can recycle everything, including the composite turbine blades which do not last very long(much like Tesla cars). Yest the steel can be recycled but the prescence of tramp metals limit what can be done with recycled steel. Same with polymers. You never can get to 100% recycle. that is entropy rearing its head again which some believe cannot be accounted for in an open system. Wrong again.
Some on this blog challenge the Cornucopian types with realism. Hideaway and JT are two who have provided essential counter arguments to the fairy-tales promulgated by the Cornucopians.
Carry on with the build out of unreliaibles, but it will only make the trip to the cliff edge ever sooner, and more and more of the environment will be wrecked. I do not have a viable solution because right now the overshoot is so great it is hard to envisage a successful outcome. The expansionary phase of humanity is all but over. The next phase will be decline, slow at first but then accelerating as materiel depletion and and lost skill sets bite.
It is not a form of toxic guilt. It is the simple, unvarnished truth of overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet. A decline in human population is baked in the cake right now. Trying to consume more now will actually make the decline in the future steeper. This is a predicament. Clever solutions don’t apply!!! We need to tap the brakes NOW. This of course will not happen, it is politically and socially unacceptable. Even very intelligent folks can’t wrap their head around the true narrative of the human condition. Denial. The growth narrative, techno worship, short term vision, short term feedbacks of a full belly, a full wine refrigerator, a full portfolio rule!!! But this does not change the facts on the ground that we are in severe overshoot.
Thank you. You live in the real world. Welcome to the realist club.There is no steady state; it is either expansion or decline. We are now at the peak and all that is left is a decline.The steepness of the decline will be influenced by how much we waste in trying to prevent the decline.
Carnot
Also known as the Seneca curve.
From high school history I remember the teacher telling us the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ epitomized the attitude that caused the failure of the Roman Empire. In recent years I have come to the belief that it reflects the response of reasonable people to the decay and deterioration of their Empire which they have no personal power to influence. Enjoy today as best you can, because tomorrow will be worse, and the days after that progressively worse.
Your welcome, your honesty is refreshing in a world of confusion and narrow mindedness.
It is very difficult for folks to take an open minded, holistic view of the human predicament for quite a number of important reasons. To accept the basic premise that we are in ecological overshoot made possible by a one time endowment of fossilized energy is a leap across a cognitive gap that runs counter to the accepted social narratives of our society. This narrative of growth and technological worship is deeply engrained in our education, politics, economics and culture. Short term feedbacks are generally still positive, growth is still present, techno miracles still look shiny and promising. As a species that has evolved to discount the future we have a strong bias against the realization that many negative feedbacks in complex systems have lengthy delays. It is difficult for us to integrate that into our thinking on a day to day basis.
I have found that a holistic view of the human predicament is generally absent in many of the cornucopian arguments. The great strength of the LtG model is looking at how the interaction and feedbacks affect the whole. This is the single most important viewpoint that is largely absent from cornucopian arguments. When one examines the LtG runs that took humanity on a more sustainable path and examine the stated policy changes that would be required to achieve those projections it is abundantly clear why subsequent reviews of LtG concluded we are still on a BAU pathway, heading towards a collapse. This conclusion simply runs counter to the accepted narrative of our society. The accepted narrative that an energy transition to ” renewables” will allow modernity to continue. Often current statistics are used to bolster that argument. Well how should things look at the peak of abundance? Rosey as hell. Of course death rates are low, per capita consumption high, industrial output growing, etc, etc. To state those statistics in an argument about the probable path of humanities future are in reality all but meaningless.
Afterall, that is precisely where the LtG runs place us at the present moment. Population growth is slowing, industrial output still growing, pollution growing, resources becoming more depleted, etc
What is absent in many folks thinking is the whiplash effect of the delayed negative feedbacks that are right around the corner, perhaps within the coming decade. There are many trends and indicators that people are somewhat aware of, but have simply not felt or are only starting to be felt. A short list would include the collapse of 17 of the 18 major ocean fisheries, global temperature trends, build up of forever chemicals, soil depletion, aquifer depletion, loss of biodiversity, loss of forests, mineral depletion, fossil fuel depletion, desertification. These trends are decadal in nature, persistent, largely irreversible in the short or intermediate term. While some people are aware of these trends at some level, it is very confusing to try and make sense of it all. I mean, in the developed world, short term feedbacks are OK and since as a species we tend to discount the long future (economically, socially, and biologically) we are easily swayed by the good life we have. So the Cassandras trying to shine a light on our predicament are discounted and marginalized as doomers.
I taught Environmental Science and Biology for 20 years, I had colleagues in my department coming to me telling me to “tone it down”, that my lectures were too negative. I always tried to teach from a position of hope, offering my students a way forward for humanity, until I couldn’t. When that occurred I left teaching. We are well and truly in a trap of our own making.
Many years ago I did some class work in getting my Masters in Systems Thinking. It was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. It changed the way I view the world. I wish that more folks could have that opportunity. If you are open to the idea you might want to build a small library of some of Donella Meadows work.
I am not entirely sure that a decline from modernity means we cannot find contentment, joy and a higher degree of harmony with the natural world, but I believe that the path will be bumpy and very painful. I also recognize that the acceptance of this view is not popular, is being referred as “radical acceptance”. I am OK with that. It may not make a difference anyway!
Best regards
Tom
These might be some basic indicators to watch for over the next decade or so: persistent supply side induced inflation of all basic commodities, beginning of more frequent spot shortages, increased geo political tension, increased resource wars, changes in death rate and longevity, interruption and degradation of social services, continuing degradation of infrastructure, reduced demand for non essentials and luxury items, reductions in harvests in fisheries; forest products; minerals; and last to turn agriculture, turning point in unemployment rate, reduction in air travel and cruising. I would expect most of these to start rolling over the next 10-15 years (perhaps less) if the LtG projections continue to be as accurate as they have been for the last 50 years.
Thanks Tom, great post.
Most believers in the bright green lies are not system thinkers, which is where the misunderstanding of the future comes from. I’ve narrowed down where we can expect to see the major problems emanating from, being an acceleration of the reduction in production of oil, which is still ahead of us. This Seneca cliff of oil production will bring about an acceleration of all the indicators you say we should watch out for IMHO.
Hickory, ….”There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
and it is false ideation to expect otherwise.”
What I expect to happen, is we go straight to the point of collapse, by continuing on the current path, more talk of renewables, more actual use of fossil fuels until we reach not just peak use, but serious decline as well, due to depletion of the easy to get FFs.
The only possible change from the future collapse was if humans as a whole had understood the problem, as a wise species would do, and changed paths. We as a species chose to ignore all the warnings from LTG or Malthus, believing in human exceptionalism and technology instead. What we are doing to the planet is clear evidence that we are collectively, not that wise.
These other questions you raise … ” what is good for stability of civilization?, or what is good for economic growth?, or what is more sustainable than the path we are on now?, or what are techniques that are less damaging?, or what adaptations can enable survival as certain finite resources deplete?” …..
… are exactly what people tend to think about, which is exactly why we go to collapse, instead of looking at the bigger picture of if it’s possible to have a habitable planet with over 8 billion, living like those of us in modern western civilization.
People in the western world, like Nick G, want more renewables so they can go on having a nice modern living style, and use the excuse of sustainability all while ignoring where all the materials come from, the energy used to get them plus the damage to the biosphere of obtaining them and deploying them.
Which is why The Adaro power plant and Aluminium smelters (and others being planned and built in Indonesia), are a perfect metaphor for the entirety of the green transition. It all comes at further environmental destruction and further use of fossil fuels to build it.
Basically the opinion is that the stock is worth at most 50 cents a share and more likely much less, maybe 10 cents a share as it is no Google or Meta, it is a shrinking business.
Is this the best that you two twats can come up with. Harping on about Trump. Who cares. Biden or Trump, both are a total waste of space and you two clowns seem to think that this is important. Both of you should get a life. But I forgot you are both cornucopian numpties in denial, living in fairy land of denial..
Every day for over a year the global average sea surface temperature has beaten the previous hottest recorded by about 0.2 degrees. There is so far no sign of the post El Nino cool down. I don’t see how Mann and the like can say this is in the range of what was expected by the models. It looks more like a system phase change.
SCIENTISTS AT SPAIN MEETING SOUND ALARM OVER OCEAN WARMING
Scientists at a united nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences. “The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact,” the executive secretary of UNESCO’s intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day “ocean decade” conference in Barcelona.
“So you agree that we need lots more Aluminium, like the smelters being built by Adaro in Indonesia, using coal fired power to do it, because it’s so much cheaper than solar and backup (around 1/10 of the cost). But even solar in their location near the equator will require the destruction of hundreds of square kilometers of pristine rainforest to build and pristine rainforest river systems.”
This phrase has come up a dozen of times now, so I have to respond because the argument is so loopsided.
First of all, aluminium is one of the most recyclable metals out there. Aluminium have a melting point of about 1,218 °F / 659 °C, but alloying with other elements can raise this. I am not going to include copper and steel in the discussion, but the facts are there. https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/melting-points
Primary aluminium is very energy intensive to produce, so much that recycling it can be done with 5-10% energy theoretically, but more likely more due to alloys. And much of the heat can be done with electricity, but fossil fuels would top it off to seperate aluminium from alloys and get the heat needed for pure recycled aluminium. And this pure aluminium has all the properties of virgin aluminium. Including the 99.7% purity for electrical purposes. To make primary aluminium you have to go through very energy intensive processes, and that is why most of is made around aboundant coal resources and hydro resources. And increasingly so.
So the answer is: It makes no sense to make primary aluminum in Indonesia with solar panels alone, when aboundant coal resources are nearby. And, aluminum is one of the most recycle friendly metals around; so it plays a big role in the role of being aboundant. And bauxite is aboundant, so the energy intensive making of primary metals can go on a long time at fewer locations (reliant on aboundant coal and hydro power).
Aluminium has a recycling rate of 76%, meaning that after 10 cycles we have less than 10% of the original remaining.
All the new new Aluminium smelter being built in Indonesia, based on burning coal, are likely to lower the world price of Aluminium over the next few years, putting out of business a lot of other Aluminium producers in places like Australia where the grid electricity price is rising rapidly due to decrease in coal powered electricity and increase in higher cost renewables.
The Aluminium for EV body parts and solar panel frames and supports gets cheaper because we burn more cheap coal, using cheap labor, without care for the climate/environment to make it.
My whole point for the cornucopians is that solar only gets cheaper by using more fossil fuels to build it. Once we deplete fossil fuels enough that they become much more expensive, then so do all the renewables. Not just dollar expensive, but energy expensive, too expensive to allow the complexity needed to continue modernity.
CATL has unveiled Tener, a new large scale energy storage system to compete with Tesla Megapack.
The system has almost twice the energy capacity of the Megapack, and CATL claims zero degradation after 5 years.
Tesla Megapack is the poster boy of large-scale energy storage.
The energy storage device has been used in most of the world’s largest energy storage projects, and it is expanding fast.
Now, it is about to get some serious competition and from a partner: CATL.
CATL is the world’s largest battery cell manufacturer and Tesla’s biggest supplier.
The massive Chinese company unveiled today Tener, a massive new energy storage device:
Featuring all-round safety, five-year zero degradation and a robust 6.25 MWh capacity, TENER will accelerate large-scale adoption of new energy storage technologies as well as the high-quality advancement of the sector.
6.25 MWh in the seemingly small form-factor is truly impressive. In comparison, Tesla Megapack has a 3.9 MWh energy capacity.
Do you believe the zero degradation after 5 years? Because if you do, there should also be zero degradation after 10 years, 100 years and 1 billion years..
Or is the degradation very slight and they built in over capacity so the numbers look like there is no degradation after 5 years?
More bad news for the ubiquitous anti-EV trolls: the million-mile EV battery is in sight. Chinese battery supplier CATL and bus maker Yutong have partnered to launch an EV battery that’s warranted to last 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) or 15 years.
The new battery pack is designed to power commercial EVs such as buses and trucks. Yutong says the new pack, which it plans to use in upcoming EVs, exhibits zero degradation through the first 1,000 cycles.
Yutong’s buses are sold in over 40 countries, including Italy, France, the UK, Spain and Qatar. CATL’s batteries are used by Tesla, Ford, BMW, Toyota, Mercedes, Kia, Toyota and other automakers. According to SNE Research, the company almost doubled its sales in the US and Europe last year.
There’s more: in January, CATL said it would reduce the cost of LFP battery cells by 50% by the middle of this year.
Does it really matter whether or not I believe the claims being made by CATL? Whatecer the details are, the fact is that lithium ion battery technology is improving by leaps and bounds. The Chinese lithium ion battery industry has focused on improving lithium ion phosphate batteries which have several advantages over the lithium ion batteries (nickel cobalt manganese) used by western automakers. They are less expensive to make, last longer, charge faster, can be discharged further without affecting their lifespan and are far less prone to fire. The big disadvantage is that they are less energy dense but, the Chinese are whittling away at that problem to the point where that is no longer an issue.
The other big news is that the cost of these batteries is expected to fall by 50% between the beginning of this year and the next couple of months. If anyone that is interested in buying an EV is aware of this news it would be foolish not to delay their purchase until the price reductions work their way into the price of EVs. So anybody crowing about how EV sales are declining should take this Osbourne Effect into consideration before they go patting themselves on the back!
Their are a considerable amount of Yutong buses in Jamaica, mostly shuttling tourists from the airport to resorts and back but, the are all powered by diesel. Maybe these new developments will see the tour bus operators being able to afford the electric versions of the Yutong buses.
Scarcity of fresh water is a planetary boundary that has already been breached and will eventually take down civilisations, at least locally, even in the absence of climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, etc.,through disruption to the hydrological cycle leading to drying up of lakes, rivers, aquifers, soils etc.
This is a by Andrew Nikiforuk about two recent studies:
“One study shows that human activity has massively altered the world’s flow of surface water and imperilled water cycles critical for life as varied as fish and forests. The other confirms that in many places on Earth aquifers and groundwater wells are being pumped and mined faster than they can be replenished.”
“The concept of the technosphere helps to explain the forces in play. U.S. geologist Peter Haff has described the technosphere as a parasitic offshoot of the living Earth, or biosphere. This largely autonomous force, committed to endless consumption, wields a “matrix of technology” that directs the flows of energy, materials, water and waste across the globe.”
“Because of lax rules, national inventories reported to the United Nations grossly underestimate many countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The result, analysts say, is that the world can not verify compliance with agreed emissions targets, jeopardizing global climate agreements.”
So the nations’ promised reductions aren’t going to keep the temperature rise below 2.5 degrees, most are putting economies above those promises now anyway, warming and the consequences of warming are worse than previously thought and, now, the emission data is wrong so nobody really knows who’s doing what anyway. What can possibly go wrong? But at least we’ve got all those shiny EVs.
PHEVs also fall flat on delivering savings for drivers. Because they require a battery and an electric motor in addition to an internal combustion engine, PHEVs are more complex to build than a vehicle that only uses one powertrain.
With battery prices rapidly falling, BEVs are on pace to become the cheapest vehicles to purchase sometime between 2025 and 2030, depending on their range and vehicle segment; PHEVs, meanwhile, are projected to remain more expensive to purchase than gasoline cars.
For the same complexity reasons, PHEVs are also expected to be more costly to maintain than BEVs, and because PHEVs need gasoline, their average cost per mile is projected to be higher than a BEV.
For an American buying a new car in 2030, we estimated that all of this adds up to a BEV saving that driver about $10,000 over a 6-year period compared with buying a new gasoline car. If they bought a PHEV, we found little to no savings compared with a conventional gas car.
Given these drawbacks for the climate and consumers’ pocketbooks, it would be a shame if PHEVs became the dominant new technology in the U.S. car market. But despite what you may have seen in the headlines, there’s little sign of this being a likely future.
Sales numbers tell the story here. As Figure 2 shows, in every year since 2014, BEVs have outsold PHEVs in the United States. In 2022 and 2023, there were more than four BEVs sold for every one PHEV! The percentages in each column show the BEV sales share of all electric vehicles.
There’s little indication that this trend will change soon, as there are almost four times as many BEV models available as PHEV models for the 2024 model year. Indeed, compared with 2023, the number of available BEVs increased, while the number of PHEVs dropped.
SCIENTISTS FIND VAST NUMBERS OF ILLEGAL ‘GHOST ROADS’ USED TO CRACK OPEN PRISTINE RAINFOREST
“Unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere. In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together. When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars—usually immediately after the roads are built. We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables. No matter how one assesses them, roads are forest killers. What makes this situation uniquely dangerous for conservation is that the roads are growing fast while remaining hidden and outside government control.”
CHINA’S SEABORNE COAL IMPORTS RISE DESPITE PROJECTIONS OF FLAT VOLUMES
China’s seaborne coal imports jumped by 17% in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2023, despite earlier expectations that overall coal imports this year would be largely flat versus last year. IMPORTS OF ALL VARIETIES OF COAL BY SEA INTO CHINA STOOD AT 97.43 MILLION METRIC TONS BETWEEN JANUARY AND MARCH 2024, AN INCREASE OF 16.9% FROM THE 83.36 MILLION TONS IMPORTED IN THE SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR, [my caps] data compiled by commodity analysts Kpler and cited by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell showed on Tuesday. The estimated jump in seaborne coal imports contrasts with an earlier expectation that all of China’s coal imports this year would remain basically flat compared to 2023.
With that in mind, I have decided to unilaterally change the name of our species-
Homo pyromancer
What are we without combustion, and all of its byproducts? Consider that without fire as a tool we would never have had the capability to domesticate wolves, and without that ‘best friend’ we would have never had the capacity to domesticate any other mammal, save perhaps the guinea pig.
My AI digital assistant had this response to the name change-
“Homo pyromancer” is an intriguing alternate name for Homo sapiens, reflecting humanity’s long history and unique relationship with fire. The term “pyromancer” suggests mastery or control over fire, which has been a defining feature of human civilization since its earliest days. By harnessing fire, humans have been able to cook food, stay warm, fend off predators, and even shape their environments. So, while not a scientific classification, “Homo pyromancer” could serve as a poetic or metaphorical descriptor for our species.”
I think it got this part wrong- “[fire] has been a defining feature of human civilization”
Rather it would more correct to replace the word civilization with the word species.
“Last year, global operating coal capacity increased by 2% as the world added a total of 69.5 gigawatts of coal fired power.
“Worldwide, coal-fired power plant retirements were only 21.1 GW in 2023—the lowest capacity retired since 2011.
“Global Energy Monitor: Retirements are set to speed up going forward, reversing last year’s accelerated growth in global coal fleet capacity.”
“reversing … accelerated growth” isn’t really saying much, though it sounds good.
Using coal to charge newly built EVs seems to be the worst of all possible choices for the environment so it has to be an economic decision and must run counter ro any argument that renewables are the cheapest energy source (or is something to do with the time cost of money?).
INDIA’S COAL SECTOR SEES HUGE LEAPS IN OUTPUT AND DEMAND
“India’s coal sector is united about one thing. It doesn’t matter if you are a miner, trader, utility or steelmaker, you are bullish, extremely bullish. The overarching theme at this week annual Coaltrans India conference in the western state of Goa is that coal production, imports and demand are all going to rise in coming years, and by substantial volumes. India may have committed to eventually starting to phase down consumption of the polluting fuel on its road to net-zero emissions by a targeted 2070, but for the coming decade the coal industry sees a ramp up. Even the most cautious of forecasts at the conference saw demand for all grades of coal reaching 1.5 billion metric tons by 2030, with some reaching as high as 1.9 billion. To put that in context, India’s coal demand was 1.23 billion tons, composed of domestic production of 964 million tons and imports of around 266 million. Put another way, even the more pessimistic of forecasts expects an increase of nearly 300 million tons of coal demand in India in the next six years, an increase of 25%.”
In the western hemisphere all countries electricity consumption is less than 25% supplied by coal, along with almost all of Africa.
More than 1/2 of Europe is supplied by less than 25% coal, with Poland and the Balkan states being the outliers.
By population and coal percentage level the big three are China, India and Indonesia.
China has reduced the percentage of electric power from coal from 81% in 2007 to 61% in 2022 by ramping up solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power consumption. From 2011 to 2022 the average rate of decrease has been about 1.5% per year, if that rate continues it will be many years before China reaches the 2022 World average of about 35% electricity consumption from coal power (about 17 years). Without China the World average electricity consumption from coal is about 24%, it would take 25 years for China to reach 24% of electricity consumption from coal if it continues the 2011 to 2022 trend of 1.5% less coal power use per year.
Yes, at 18 percent, hydroelectricity is currently China’s largest renewable energy source and the second overall after coal. Solar accounts for roughly 5 percent of the total power generated in the country. Wind power is China’s third-largest source of electricity accounts for about 7% of total power generation.
China is rapidly approaching peak coal production, so they have no choice but to reduce electricity production from coal and will be happening much faster than in the past, though differently from the past in that total electricity production is what will fall, with the coal sector being fastest. China is an interesting experiment by itself.
Of course the overall decline in electricity production will mean massive changes in what they can manufacture for the rest of the world, there will be falls in availability of all sorts of goods in a chaotic way.
I’m pretty sure they don’t have any more Three Gorges dams to come online increasing hydro electricity like they did in the early part of the 2006-12 period..
This letter to the editor in the older of the two local newspapers in my neck of the woods got pride of place as Letter of the Day on Saturday (April 13). The writer explains what the urban heat island effect is, the risk it poses to vulnerable populations and some of the measures that can be taken to mitigate it. The first comment in response to the letter illustrates why we are doomed:
With these rising temperatures we should be more in support of increase oil and gas production the cheapest, most abundant and dependable means of producing energy for the poorest among us. If poor people cannot afford electricity to keep them cool them they will die. The climate has been changing, is changing and will always change. Therefore it is time we also make the change to increase oil and gas exploration and production while augmenting with renewables where possible.
Various people get credit for originating such gems of wisdom, but all they’ve actually done, as a rule, is to come up with a way to say their piece using just a few easily understood and easily remembered words.
Priests and politicians have understood this concept from at least as far back as we have any surviving philosophical literature.
Assuming you’re technically literate, you’ll get my point if you bother to listen to a few hours of current day propaganda of the sort produced by Faux News.
Ditto if you spend a few Sunday mornings in any of the more popular American churches…… where in the prevailing doctrine is pretty much dictated by the KJB.
I shouldn’t have to point out that the vast majority of people who attend such churches are literate in terms of reading the sports pages ……… but they know next to nothing about the physical sciences…. meaning in turn they don’t have a clue about overshoot, etc.
So, besides China and India, some aren’t listening to our dirty emissions scenarios.
GROWING COAL DEPENDENCY PUTS CENTRAL ASIAN ECONOMIES AT RISK
• Central Asian states have doubled their coal-based power generation capacity over the past decade, with plans for further expansion.
• The continued reliance on coal exacerbates environmental challenges and strains state budgets in the long term.
• Despite some efforts towards renewable energy, Central Asian nations are prioritizing coal, undermining their climate commitments and increasing the risk of stranded assets.
Plans to add generating capacity of coal-fired plants in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan reached 8.1 gigawatts (GW) last year, up from 3.9 GW in 2013, according to GEM data. Coal currently accounts for 45 percent of electricity production in the region.
LA NIÑA WILL MAKE A COMEBACK THIS SUMMER AS EL NIÑO FINALLY FADES
The transition between El Niño and La Niña will occur quickly. La Niña will dominate this summer after a short period of neutral phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
I like how Art Berman’s thinking evolves as he gets more and different data. That means at the moment he gets more and more doomerish. This is an excellent summary of our current predicament.
In particular the comment about climate volatility making agriculture impossible and the graphic showing the exponential rise in the number of high cost disaster events in the US (hurricane season this year or next could easily put the costs close to a trillion).
An additional point, as we were taught in Geology 101, humans have had about 10,000 years of the most stable climate in Earth’s history. This makes us think climate stability is the norm when, in fact, it’s the exception. Of course, this stable interval has corresponded with the rise of human civilization.
He says- “I’d like to tell people that renewable energy is part of a solution but I fear that substituting renewable for fossil energy will make that problem even worse. It will enable continued growth of the human enterprise which is unfortunately the primary source of our predicament.”
The problem is not the renewable energy deployment, rather it is the behavior of not using the energy produced to replace higher carbon emitting fuel combustion such as coal, and the behavior of adding more and more overall consumption regardless of source.. The one simple mechanism to alter human consumption/growth behavior is price.
A big and progressive carbon tax can do the job. The revenues would be used to institute mechanisms that use less energy, such as building retrofit. It would need to be international in scope.
I don’t hold any breathe for wise decisions on these topics, but it is false to blame lower carbon energy sources as being an innate problem.
I don’t see many adults around the world calling for a halt all new fossil energy project development, not Art Berman, not any of the naysayers or deniers who post here. Who has advocated for proactive shutting of refineries, or imposing strict limits on annual miles traveled by air, land and sea?
Thats what it would take to show a seriousness of concern about these issues.
The one simple mechanism to alter human consumption/growth behavior is price. A big and progressive carbon tax can do the job.
Which is why the FF industry attacks such taxes like rabid wolverines.
The revenues would be used to institute mechanisms that use less energy, such as building retrofit.
That’s not a bad idea. I suspect the best approach would be to rebate such taxes on a per capita basis. This would help build political support for such taxes by making them more progressive. Fuel taxes aren’t especially regressive, because higher income folks use more fuel, but the enemies of such taxes paint them as hurting low income folks, so a rebated approach would be tactically wise.
All taxes are carbon taxes already. It is only possible to tax excess production of people, farms, companies of all types. There has to be excess energy in the economy to allow for taxes, which is why taxes only happened once humanity started to produce an excess by using agriculture to grow crops, and had no taxes in the world of hunter gatherers.
Stop fossil fuels tomorrow and no-one will have excess production to pay taxes.
Assuming we up the taxes on fossil fuels with specific extra carbon taxes, world wide. Doesn’t this make all renewables much more expensive as the cost base for building and deploying them goes up? Doesn’t the ‘retrofit’ cost rise as whatever materials and services are needed to do it also rise?
Isn’t the natural world worse off as more materials are needed for this retrofit, with the materials coming from mines and some new processing not happening at present?
None of it works, it all damages the environment more, powering down massively is the only possible partial answer, as we’ve collectively ignored the overshoot problem for decades, with magical thinking of building more …… (whatever)…
You,etc are struggling to identify a pathway that cures overshoot and is its deleterious affect on the global biosphere, while at the same time allowing economic viability/sustainability.
Good luck with finding such a path that doesn’t first embark upon a long trail of massive contraction.
I do not see such a path.
Nonetheless management decisions do need to be made, either deliberately or by default of inaction.
Different decisions do lead to different outcomes.
Hickory, the only possibility now, is attempting to make the downslope less messy.
Every population in massive overshoot does enormous damage to surrounding environment at the top of it’s numbers and on the way down. Think of a locust plague, that eats everything leaving devastation behind it.
The human environment is the whole planet, and when we fall we will eat and burn everything we can find, to try and survive. The fall and simplification of everything we do is inevitable, however we could make the decision to lesson the impact on our surrounding environment by voluntarily degrowing.
Instead, the most likely path, is to continue to deny limits until we crash with 8.5B or 9B or whatever the population is at the time, believing renewables or nuclear or some other magic source will save complex modernity that was provided by fossil fuels.
Doesn’t the name we have given ourselves, Homo sapiens, meant to mean we are ‘wise’.
Being wise would mean not destroying our surrounding natural home so we could survive in it. It’s the denial of the damage we are doing to the entirety of the natural world by our way of modern life, that’s the problem.
The solution offered to the masses is that we can ‘fix’ one symptom of our overshoot by changing from one energy source to another, by digging up the planet more, destroying the environment more, sending more species into extinction during the process, all done with fossil fuels.
Then after a couple of decades of doing the above, we seem surprised that nothing is changing (on the CO2 front), so think going harder down the same path is some type of answer, instead of stepping back and looking at the reality of our situation.
‘Hickory, the only possibility now, is attempting to make the downslope less messy.’
I agree with the prospect and the goal.
We differ on management choices, such as where energy capital expenditure gets deployed, and just how high a carbon tax should be, and which carbon emission sources should be taxed much higher rates than others, for example.
As I see it, deploying non-fossil energy sources is an attempt to make the downslope less messy.
Good job! Ms Bradstock is nothing but a cut and paste artist. The usual nonsense is spun again about fossil fuel subsidies. What subsidies.The subsidies are in the minds of liberal economists with scant regard as to the challenge at hand. The JSO/ER loonies dreamed up this subsidy based on no evidence whatsoever.
The fact is that fossil fuel taxes in many countries are major sources of revenue for the government. In lightly taxed countries the benefit is usually in favour of the poor, who have little ability to pay carbon taxes, however they are levied.
If renewables are so great then whay are they being subsidized, usually by the consumer because low cost they are not, and never will be.
Anyone read The Economist article on EV’s? An interesting read. St Elon is not having a good time.
I think you missed about 97% of the gist of the article, and the topic that preceded it.
“Should We Keep Investing in Oil and Gas?” is the name of the article.
If CO2 and overshoot are your primary concern, then clearly not a dime.
For me, on a reality basis that just is not going to happen. Its about degree and emphasis. 8, soon to be 9, billion people are going to keep pushing hard for energy supply.
Actually car oriented infrastructure are a disaster for the poor, and probably one of the leading causes of poverty in America. Fortunately most countries don’t make the same mistake.
The idea that cheap gas is good for the poor is extremely short sighted. It’s a piss poor form of welfare that mostly benefits the rich.
Unfortunately I think other countries are doing the same, I live in Spain, it is the third country in the world in ranking on kilometers of freeways built. Here they see it as a good thing, not as a burden, or as what you say, a disaster for the poor. I live in a city surrounded by 3 circular concentric freeways. Not easy even to get out of it on foot or bicycle. While I ride my bike out of the city, there are still some normal roads to do that, they are getting replaced by freeways, they not just leave the old ones, they replace them. I think it is a complete disaster.
There are some cities trying to create a car free environment (C40 cities). There are long term gains if the right infrastructure is set up, but I admit that it takes a lot of capital and resources to transform cities to allow for a reduction of transportation and energy usage per capita in general. Coastal cities and cities connected to river systems are naturally better locations for less energy usage, because imported good via low cost shipping synergies very well with a logistical well planned city with much electrical public transportation (subway, trams, electrical vehicles, el-bikes etc). The aim is to allow for less energy consumption without the standard of living being compromised too much.
INDIA’S COAL-FIRED ELECTRICITY OUTPUT & EMISSIONS HIT RECORD HIGHS
“India’s coal-fired electricity generation scaled a new high in January 2024 as the world’s second largest coal user after China cranked coal’s share of the country’s electricity generation mix to a record 80%. Coal-powered electricity output was 115 terawatt hours (TWh) in January 2024, a new high and up 10% from the same month in 2023, data from energy think tank Ember shows. Emissions from coal generation in January hit 104.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), while emissions from all power sources hit 107.5 million tons, which marked a record in both categories and a 10% rise from January 2023. The increase in coal generation came as output from solar, wind and hydro facilities dropped by 3%, 19% and 21.4% respectively from the same month a year ago. Cumulative clean-powered electricity generation was 26.6 TWh in January, which was 11.2% down from January 2023 and resulted in clean power’s share of India’s total electricity generation mix dropping to a 5-year low of 18.4% last month.”
INDONESIAN THERMAL COAL EXPORTS SCALE NEW HIGHS IN EARLY 2024
“The world’s top exporter of thermal coal is on track to smash last year’s record sales after projected shipments for the first two months of 2024 jumped nearly 25% from the same period in 2023. Indonesian exports of thermal and thermal bituminous coal – used in power generation – are on track to top 90 million metric tons for January and February, up 24% from the same two months in 2023, ship tracking data from Kpler shows.”
“Worldwide, more than 107 countries and 2,000 entities are using coal across roughly 13,800 coal units. Some 204 new coal power plants are currently under construction, another 93 such projects have been announced and 260 new ones are in the pre-construction stage. Worldwide coal use still generates 36 percent of global electricity production, reaching a new record of 10,440 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2022. It is the primary energy source in China, India, Indonesia and many other countries. China, India and Indonesia combined account for about 70 percent of worldwide coal demand. Together with ASEAN, the figure rises to 76 percent of global consumption – contrasting the U.S. and EU, whose share of global consumption is projected at 8 percent in 2024 (down from 40 percent 30 years ago).”
I am posting a video showing that produced coal left in the open air for a year or so, when exposed to water under high pressure could generate lots of gas, it is the same principle as shale fracing.
Without the fracing, the gas in the produced coal will just slowing release the methane to the air — imaging how much impact this is, but so far no clue about this magnitude.
It has huge implications — we need to water frac the coal before production to get all the clean methane out as cleaner fuel, and also help reduce the methane emissions and green house warming budget, and reduce the accident and difficulties in coal mining.
Without watching your video, I would say every option to capture methane in an economical way should be pursued. There is a need for ample water resources as I understand it, so it works better some places than others.
China’s coal consumption, currently at 5.2billion will continue to increase 0.15~0.2 billion ton each year until peaking around 2030 at around 6.5billion tons per year.
India coal consumption is just 1.2billion tons per year level for now, will increase 0.15billion each year for 40 years and peaking at 7billion tons per year in 2070.
yes, it will be still quite close to 8.5 B ton in 2030 for China and India combined, with China around 6 B, and India at least 1.5B.
Last year in 2023, China coal consumption increased 8%, from 4.82 to close to 5.20B
I’m reposting Hideaway’s last comment:
“So you agree that we need lots more Aluminium, like the smelters being built by Adaro in Indonesia, using coal fired power to do it, because it’s so much cheaper than solar and backup (around 1/10 of the cost). But even solar in their location near the equator will require the destruction of hundreds of square kilometers of pristine rainforest to build and pristine rainforest river systems.
If you are against the Adaro development, coal or solar, then where does the Aluminium come from?? Which other natural system do you want destroyed for the new Aluminium smelters? Which landscape is acceptable to you, too destroy, for this extra placement of solar and wind??
It’s the constant notion that we need MORE, of anything that’s the problem. We are in deep overshoot and the only possible solution is less, not more, so every time you utter the concept of more (anything) you should know it’s the wrong answer, straight away.
It doesn’t matter what the form of energy is as the concept of MORE is what has put our planetary home at risk, climate, ecosystems, ocean life, etc, so EVERY answer that comes up with a solution of MORE is just a continuation of the problem.
How on Earth doesn’t it occur to you that we’ve been on the path of ‘mitigation’ of the climate symptom of our overshoot for several decades, by building mountains more ‘stuff’ (wind turbines, solar panels, EVs batteries, changing coal to gas fired power plants, etc), yet the entire time we have only made the situation worse by every metric?
How can the solution possibly be doing more of the same??”
Keep at it Hideaway. There are many of us who UNDERSTAND the PREDICAMENT humanity finds itself within. And about which you so tirelessly and clearly put into words. Thank you.
If you are against the Adaro development, coal or solar, then where does the Aluminium come from??
It comes from renewable powered smelters, as in Quebec, Iceland and the UK…
Thank you EDGY.
I mostly lurk at POB; there are so many very intelligent posters with insightful views of our future. Like you I’m drawn to Hideaway’s posts and I would have missed this one had you not reposted it.
“EVERY answer that comes up with a solution of MORE is just a continuation of the problem.”
This used to be called “The Hair of the Dog That Bit You.” We should start using it again.
From my small island perspective, I wouldn’t worry too much about the resources being used to build out solar PV and wind. Each unit of solar and wind energy that is built will generate much more energy than was used to build it.
I am much more concerned about the orgies of consumption I see going on around me. Construction of luxury condos is all the rage in the capital city of my island (where I live) and as I pointed out in the previous open thread, one big headline this past January was about four 28 story luxury condo towers to be built in Montego Bay. There is an official Porsche dealership in Kingston as well as Mercedes, Jaguar/Land Rover and BMW dealerships. They all appear to be doing good business especially as it relates to SUVs There are a bunch of no goods that have made tidy sums out of scamming mostly older Americans out of the life savings. Two of the most popular cars for that group are the two biggest sedans Toyota makes, the Mark X and the Crown.
All of these cars and buildings are a commitment to consume more energy for the life of the car or building. When you figure out a way to get the message to the conspicuous consumers let me know!
PV isn’t the problem. My 2,800 W array has been generating in excess of 12 kWh most days so I have been offsetting roughly 12 kg of CO2 per day. If I was using that energy to power an EV I would be reducing my carbon footprint even more but, I’m doing what I can for now. Arrays in the megawatt scale offset tons of CO2 every day.
Solar doesn’t mean more. 80% The land wasted growing corn for ethanol could be put returned to nature and the rest replaced by solar. That would pretty much cover all the fuel needs of the country.
Anyway, the myth that fossil fuels magically have no footprint needs to die.
Solar is starting to sunset use of natural gas in Texas
There is one reason and one reason only why so much solar PV is being deployed in Texas. As Tony Seba has said in his “Clean Disruption” presentations, “It’s all about the green”. Just not the green discussed on this site most of the time 😉
The green, of course that you’re referring to is tax subsidies and government handouts.
NO Sir! Have you seen the price of PV systems lately? The green is the money that these utilities are going to be making from all the “free” solar energy. At this point the subsidies don’t even matter. Incidentally the oil and gas business gets their fair share of subsidies too:
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion
Interesting, but not surprising:
https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/minority-rule_charts_cx-493.png?resize=2048,1468
Yes, but…
The Senate right now has a Democratic majority so here in California we aren’t feeling too oppressed. Remember that the “founding fathers” wanted a representative government but were every bit as afraid of mob rule as they were of top down tyranny. Giving an equal say to all of the states was an effort to avoid tyranny by a group of states with large populations. I think a case can be made that, perhaps, states aren’t the most logical way to devide up the power pie today but it isn’t the worst solution.
Hideaway. Thanks for all your comments, including this-
“We are in deep overshoot and the only possible solution is less, not more, so every time you utter the concept of more (anything) you should know it’s the wrong answer, straight away.”
This points out the basic truth that the collective human project is absolutely contrary to the basic health and survival of the biosphere and all of its other inhabitants.
If you are trying to ask the question- “what is good for the biosphere?”, the only answer is to rapidly erase the vast bulk of humanity from the global scene. Not just stop growing, but to massively contract.
But keep in mind that many discussions include other questions such a- what is good for stability of civilization?, or what is good for economic growth?, or what is more sustainable than the path we are on now?, or what are techniques that are less damaging?, or what adaptations can enable survival as certain finite resources deplete?
For those who plan on living more than a few more years, those questions are all very reasonable and important ones to ask.
And if you look at humans actions, including yours and mine, it is clear that we prioritize our own success over that of the rest of the living world. This order of priorities is universal and lasts until your last moment.
There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
and it is false ideation to expect otherwise.
There is no path for humanity that leads back to the garden of eden….even the small bit of it that is left somewhere a thousand miles from the nearest road, or even an inch away from the human mind and hand.
Hickory,
Human population can contract pretty quickly as the demographic transition occurs Worldwide, fewer humans would certainly help reduce environmental damage.
True, and
some people prefer the peak and decline of population to be accelerated via the mechanism of energy poverty.
They advocate allocating no labor or capital or innovation capability to the endeavor of replacing some of the fossil fuel combustion source energy that will be peaking soon with non-fossil energy sources.
Many who have vested interest in the fossil fuel industry share their view, purely for the chance to reap shortage pricing windfall during the century time of crises.
Many who have vested interest in the fossil fuel industry share their view, purely for the chance to reap shortage pricing windfall during the century time of crises.
I get the feeling that many of those people who are fighting against investment in FF replacements aren’t thinking quite that far ahead. They’re just fighting a rearguard action against anything that hurts their industry, including loss of tax preferences and other perks of being a favored industry.
I would agree that a tendency to short term thinking has some basis in genetics, but like many similar things this vulnerability can be reversed through education. Sadly, it can be exacerbated by toxic “education” from things like Fox News and social media misinformation.
There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
Good, god, Hickory, seriously? Humans are not part of nature?? Humans aren’t at least equally valuable as other forms of life???
I agree that humans should take care their world, including being stewards of other forms of life (both because they’re valuable in themselves, and because a diverse ecosystem benefits humans). I agree that most humans don’t put nearly enough priority on the health of other species, and the environment in general. But eliminating the vast bulk of humanity would be an improvement?? This feels like some kind of very toxic and destructive guilt.
I think perhaps you’re confused about the source of our environmental problems. Humans don’t necessarily have to cause massive environmental harm: the problem is that they are currently *choosing* to do so. We can see this cultural idee fixe in our religions: traditional religion says that human life is sacred, and that animals are livestock, unworthy of real care and to be eliminated if they’re inconvenient. Oddly, this idea that humans need to be eliminated seems to precisely reverse the traditional approach. Both, clearly, make no sense. We can have both humans and other species.
Does this come from oil & gas propaganda that says that FF (and therefore Climate Change) is essential to human life? Tain’t so.
Nick, it seems like you come from a perspective that is unrooted to the real living world. As if you’ve never been outside an apartment or office building, or studied earth and biologic sciences.
By and large, we are the enemy of nature. Thats us. Sorry to disabuse you of the more pleasant view of humans as the god empowered good stewards of the earth.
That comment doesn’t seem to be an answer to what I actually said. Please re-read it carefully for what I’m actually saying. Perhaps you’re reacting to what you expect it to say, rather than what it actually says.
Or, perhaps it makes sense to simplify. Let’s start with one question: humans aren’t part of nature?
I think that humans stopped being a part of nature a long time ago. The die was cast when we had routine use of fire. That capability allowed us to control nature. The symbolism of ‘being cast out of the garden of eden’ refers to us no longer being a part of nature.
We are an animal with napalm droppings from the air, steel that slices through the very heart or brain of others, toluene that we put in the water and on the soil and into our marrow, and a myriad of other unnatural and horrid acts and creations.
We left the natural world a long long time ago. We treat it as if we hate it….perhaps a reflection of how little we regard we have for even ourselves.
A question back at you- Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation, beyond which further growth is impossible, in fact population decline becomes inevitable?
Many of us learned of this concept in middle school science class. I remember that my older sister got in trouble in 6th grade because she adamantly refused to believe in molecules.
We are an animal with napalm droppings…and a myriad of other unnatural and horrid acts
Yes, it sounds like guilt. That’s unfortunate. And unrealistic: humans really aren’t any more violent than other animals on average, and a lot less violent than some. Nature really is “red in tooth and claw”. Hunter-gather humans fought a lot more than present-day humans (they didn’t have contraception, after all).
Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation, beyond which further growth is impossible, in fact population decline becomes inevitable?
Of course, but.,..that’s an unrealistic premise. Humans are not growing exponentially. Population growth is barely linear right now, and world fertility is at 2.3, just above replacement, and falling in a straightforwardly predictable fashion. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertility-rate-with-projections
Humans have demonstrated that they have very little interest in exponential growth. They want to have a few kids, but as Brazilian women like to say: “The factory is closed!”. The highest population growth is in Africa, which poorer and less educated, but catching up faster than you’d think.
China and India are enormous examples. First, they have the largest populations in the world, and 2nd they used to be the poster children for population growth. Now China’s population is falling, and India’s fertility has fallen below replacement, while absolute growth is temporarily still there due to the lag effect of a young population.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/india-fertilitaty-rate-declines-replacement-level-meaning-nfhs-survey-1880894-2021-11-25
Nick,
you may pick the emotional response of guilt,
for me its more along the lines of a lamentation for all the damage done.
The exponential growth that got us so deep into overshoot occurred over about 2 centuries…its not an issue of current population accumulation rate. You seem to go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging some of the basics of these topics.
But hey, that’s ok. If denial-ism is the mechanism to get through your day i’ll cease attempts point out the reality of it to you.
I think our conversation is once again at point of abrupt divergence.
Good wishes to you, and life in the Truman Show fabrication.
Hickory,
Well, the point of describing it as guilt is to clarify that you’re being unnecessarily negative about humanity. When you say “If you are trying to ask the question- “what is good for the biosphere?”, the only answer is to rapidly erase the vast bulk of humanity from the global scene.” that suggests that humanity isn’t part of the biosphere, and has no value. It’s extraordinarily negative, and seems quite toxic to me.
The exponential growth that got us so deep into overshoot occurred over about 2 centuries…its not an issue of current population accumulation rate.
That’s not what you asked: you asked “Do you acknowledge that an population of organisms growing exponentially in a finite system will reach a hard limitation…”? Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Human population growth is stopping due to human choices, technology in the form of contraception, prosperity in the form of lower death rates, better education, better old age income security, etc. It’s absolutely not due to the rising death rates that you’d expect from hitting a wall. Instead death rates (for all ages) are at an historic low.
Now, are we in a place where death rates are likely to arise eventually? That’s a whole different debate. It’s a complex and difficult debate, and it’s not what you asked about.
“Denial-sm”? “Truman Show”?
That’s downright insulting. I don’t ordinarily bring up this kind of discussion of psychological mechanisms, but this deserves a reply:
Forty percent of Americans believe that we are in the End Times, and that there will be a religious apocalypse in their lifetime. Current civilization will collapse, and there will be renewal and purification, and redemption of the righteous. It sure looks like this expectation of collapse and renewal has a lot to do with this idea that evil humans need to be wiped out, and “pure” nature will be renewed. I was not raised in this belief, and yet I know that it and related things, like Heaven and Hell, have had an effect on me, an effect I’ve had to pay attention to processing to reduce it’s effect on me. Have you examined the extent to which this highly pervasive belief has seeped into your intuition of how things will work out?
Finally, it’s worth repeating: You have to realize that TOD & POB are definitely not in the mainstream of science & engineering. Climate Change as a big risk for humanity? Definitely mainstream. Climate Change (or other environmental problems) as a *guaranteed* cause of collapse?
Not so much.
Now, sure occasionally Galileo is right, and the mainstream is wrong. But more often than not that isn’t the case. If you’re looking at propositions that are far outside the mainstream you have to be far more cautious about accepting them without good, strong evidence. Remember the scientific rule of thumb: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
It is possible to simultaneously appreciate the unique qualities of the human species while also recognizing the damage we are doing, and acknowledging that the sheer number of us exacerbates that damage.
Nick, I do find it interesting that you wrote: “I agree that humans should take care [of] their world.” Why “their” and not “our”?
Can you identify for us the regions in Earth’s biosphere where human impact is a net ecological benefit? Were humans to vanish tomorrow, the vast majority of other species would immediately benefit. There are some exceptions of course, the domesticated ones would greatly decrease in prevalence, and many would follow us to extinction, but the majority of life would immediately begin to recover, and eventually once again thrive.
I don’t wish for the end of humans, but I do wish we would live up to the name we’ve given ourselves and demonstrate some wisdom to guide our cleverness.
We have an externalization of costs problem and our inability to address it is impoverishing us.
Bob,
I agree with you: we humans should do better. Personally, I like E. O, Wilson’s proposal to set aside half the earth for wildlife.
On the other hand, focusing on overpopulation and wildlife extinction is to allow FF advocates to steer us away from the primary problem: fossil fuels.
Our primary environmental problem is climate change, and the primary cause of climate change is burning of fossil fuels. That’s something we can solve relatively quickly, should we choose to do so.
As I’ve said before,
Roughly 2/3 of overshoot is due to fossil fuels.
https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/analyzeTrends?type=earth&cn=5001
Roughly 75% of climate change is due to fossil fuels.
Anyone who claims to be concerned about wildlife should advocate for net-zero.
Anyone who claims to be concerned about climate change should advocate for net-zero.
Someone who raises concerns about wildlife or climate change, and who advocates *against* net-zero (while changing the subject to overpopulation, or wildlife extinction), is either recklessly negligent about informing themselves, or simply pretending concern. They may be trying to distract us all from the important questions, or simply trying to leave us too discouraged to do anything at all, but one way or the other they’re just defending fossil fuels.
————
A few thoughts about humanity’s place:
Humans are intrinsically valuable, and they’re as much a part of the ecosystem as termites, pandas, or any other charismatic megafauna.
Suggesting that humans are essentially destructive seems to me to be part and parcel of the FF industry meme that FF is essential to humans, and therefore that the harm that FF does is essential to humans.
It’s not.
We don’t have to choose between humanity and “nature”. As I noted above, we could if we chose set aside half the world for wildlife. Or something in between. It’s a choice, and we should work collectively to raise humanity’s consciousness of the importance of this choice.
But not allow it to distract us from the essential task of eliminating FF.
Nick G, Humans use of fossil fuels responsible to 2/3rds of overshoot??
I’d say closer to 100% they are responsible for overshoot. What was the world’s population before fossil fuel use… around 1 Billion, now there are well over 8 Billion of us damaging the natural world, by shaping it to suit ourselves, with the use of fossil fuels that power our machines.
It’s the usual hand wave from you Nick, about how those not in favor of building lots of renewables to meet the net zero goal, must be in favor of fossil fuels.
Yet you continually fail to answer practical questions on this great changeover to renewables. It comes at a huge cost to the environment, like the new Aluminium smelters planned and being built in Indonesia.
We, as in the world’s population, needs lots more Aluminium for the net zero future, so are you in favor of what’s happening in Indonesia of new Aluminium smelters based on coal fired plants to power these smelters?? That’s where the cheap Aluminium is going to come from!!
More climate changing gasses being spewed into the atmosphere to power the goal of net-zero.
In Indonesia’s case, they could destroy hundreds of km2 of pristine rainforest to put up solar instead, however this path would cost over $US16 Billion just for the solar to equal the output from the 2.2Gw of coal power which is only costing $US2B to set up.
Also that excludes any back-up for solar, like batteries or pumped hydro, or whatever, which is definitely needed, so greater cost.
How about you address this specific example??
The world has been producing solar, wind and nuclear for decades, yet none of it is replacing fossil fuel use, it’s all being added to increasing fossil fuel use, not replacing any, on a world wide basis.
Why do you expect doing more of the same to have a different result?
The Indonesian Aluminium smelters are a good example or metaphor for what’s happening in the world, it’s all just continued industrialization to the detriment of the natural world.
Nick, how about we stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow, no exceptions, now explain how we build and deploy any of the new renewables? We obviously can’t, so it’s your belief in some rosy future, provided it’s built with cheap fossil fuels that’s the problem.
People the world over grasp at a nice simple solution, despite ZERO evidence of it being possible; that we will build renewables, power a modern civilization, be inclusive of 8-10B people, and save the environment at the same time, all while being in favor of more industrial processes powered by fossil fuels to build it.
Nick are you in favor of damming a lot more river systems to produce the hydro electricity, destroying more of those river systems, clearing lots of remaining forests for roads to transport wind turbines, then the sites for these turbines, then clearing more forests all the transmission lines all over the place, or vast areas of solar panels to power the hundreds of millions of people that live in Indonesia?
Give us specific answers for a change. Which areas are you going to rewild while all this building is going on and how are we going to feed these billions of people with less land, because of the rewilding and all the wind turbines, hydro dams and solar panels polluting the landscape, and of course no fertilizers nor pest and weed control as we are banning fossil fuels for your perfect world……
Fossil fuels, despite building the modern world, are leaving us due to depletion anyway, so they are CLEARLY not the answer for the future, but neither is using lots of fossil fuels building lots of renewables, destroying more of the environment in the process, as they are not being built without fossil fuels, nor provide any of the products we use from fossil fuels.
None of it goes close to adding up. It’s a predicament we have brought upon ourselves.
Hideaway – great comment, I haven’t read more than a couple of paragraphs from Nick G for several years but he does prompt some excellent comebacks.
“Hideaway – great comment, I haven’t read more than a couple of paragraphs from Nick G for several years but he does prompt some excellent comebacks.”
LOL!
More pearls of wisdom from Nick G. Someone who who is never short of opinions but always sort of evidence to back up his ramblings. How about his claims that all combustion engines can be replaced by electric motors. True in some cases and improbable in many other.s
Then there is the “shipping can be converted to methanol” (partly true), and that future fuels will be hydrogen, ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels but there is no evidence to support these ramblings. Much hand waving and “I believe’s” do not translate into tangible solutions to a very serious problem. A problem that is governed by thermodynamic issues, but in Nick G’s case there are ignored as is EROEI. As is often said “you can take a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink”.
I will keep on beating my drum. Resource depletion and population growth is the biggest threat to mankind. all the projections for reduced population growth( or even decline) only apply to about 20% of the global population. Each year the population growth is still 80 million per year. do you really think Africa, the Indian sub continent, the ME and South America are really going to achieve voluntary reduced fertility. I suspect not. It will only occur by drastic means; war, famine natural disaster and maybe climate change. A big threat that is barely mentioned is water resources.A lot of Nick G’s solutions depend on water.
Every day I se some new energy solution on the likes of OilPrice.com written by some cut and paste artist. it is like a merry-go-round. The breakthrough appears every year of even more frequently. Perovskites, hydrogen electrolyzers, ammonia. synthetic fuels, DAC, algae. You name and it will be the next big thing, and OIlPrice.com will flag it as the next breakthrough. But all these concepts might work in a lab but no at scale.
But do not worry we can solve everything with wind and solar. The sang is making wind and solar reliable vastly inflates the coast of power. It might be possible to build a wind turbine for $1 million MWh but providing for the 24/7 power output and tying the WT into the grid probably costs twice that. Then there is OPEX. the wind might be “free” but the maintenance is not. The Cornies believe that we can recycle everything, including the composite turbine blades which do not last very long(much like Tesla cars). Yest the steel can be recycled but the prescence of tramp metals limit what can be done with recycled steel. Same with polymers. You never can get to 100% recycle. that is entropy rearing its head again which some believe cannot be accounted for in an open system. Wrong again.
Some on this blog challenge the Cornucopian types with realism. Hideaway and JT are two who have provided essential counter arguments to the fairy-tales promulgated by the Cornucopians.
Carry on with the build out of unreliaibles, but it will only make the trip to the cliff edge ever sooner, and more and more of the environment will be wrecked. I do not have a viable solution because right now the overshoot is so great it is hard to envisage a successful outcome. The expansionary phase of humanity is all but over. The next phase will be decline, slow at first but then accelerating as materiel depletion and and lost skill sets bite.
It is not a form of toxic guilt. It is the simple, unvarnished truth of overshooting the carrying capacity of the planet. A decline in human population is baked in the cake right now. Trying to consume more now will actually make the decline in the future steeper. This is a predicament. Clever solutions don’t apply!!! We need to tap the brakes NOW. This of course will not happen, it is politically and socially unacceptable. Even very intelligent folks can’t wrap their head around the true narrative of the human condition. Denial. The growth narrative, techno worship, short term vision, short term feedbacks of a full belly, a full wine refrigerator, a full portfolio rule!!! But this does not change the facts on the ground that we are in severe overshoot.
Tom,
Thank you. You live in the real world. Welcome to the realist club.There is no steady state; it is either expansion or decline. We are now at the peak and all that is left is a decline.The steepness of the decline will be influenced by how much we waste in trying to prevent the decline.
Carnot
Also known as the Seneca curve.
From high school history I remember the teacher telling us the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ epitomized the attitude that caused the failure of the Roman Empire. In recent years I have come to the belief that it reflects the response of reasonable people to the decay and deterioration of their Empire which they have no personal power to influence. Enjoy today as best you can, because tomorrow will be worse, and the days after that progressively worse.
Your welcome, your honesty is refreshing in a world of confusion and narrow mindedness.
It is very difficult for folks to take an open minded, holistic view of the human predicament for quite a number of important reasons. To accept the basic premise that we are in ecological overshoot made possible by a one time endowment of fossilized energy is a leap across a cognitive gap that runs counter to the accepted social narratives of our society. This narrative of growth and technological worship is deeply engrained in our education, politics, economics and culture. Short term feedbacks are generally still positive, growth is still present, techno miracles still look shiny and promising. As a species that has evolved to discount the future we have a strong bias against the realization that many negative feedbacks in complex systems have lengthy delays. It is difficult for us to integrate that into our thinking on a day to day basis.
I have found that a holistic view of the human predicament is generally absent in many of the cornucopian arguments. The great strength of the LtG model is looking at how the interaction and feedbacks affect the whole. This is the single most important viewpoint that is largely absent from cornucopian arguments. When one examines the LtG runs that took humanity on a more sustainable path and examine the stated policy changes that would be required to achieve those projections it is abundantly clear why subsequent reviews of LtG concluded we are still on a BAU pathway, heading towards a collapse. This conclusion simply runs counter to the accepted narrative of our society. The accepted narrative that an energy transition to ” renewables” will allow modernity to continue. Often current statistics are used to bolster that argument. Well how should things look at the peak of abundance? Rosey as hell. Of course death rates are low, per capita consumption high, industrial output growing, etc, etc. To state those statistics in an argument about the probable path of humanities future are in reality all but meaningless.
Afterall, that is precisely where the LtG runs place us at the present moment. Population growth is slowing, industrial output still growing, pollution growing, resources becoming more depleted, etc
What is absent in many folks thinking is the whiplash effect of the delayed negative feedbacks that are right around the corner, perhaps within the coming decade. There are many trends and indicators that people are somewhat aware of, but have simply not felt or are only starting to be felt. A short list would include the collapse of 17 of the 18 major ocean fisheries, global temperature trends, build up of forever chemicals, soil depletion, aquifer depletion, loss of biodiversity, loss of forests, mineral depletion, fossil fuel depletion, desertification. These trends are decadal in nature, persistent, largely irreversible in the short or intermediate term. While some people are aware of these trends at some level, it is very confusing to try and make sense of it all. I mean, in the developed world, short term feedbacks are OK and since as a species we tend to discount the long future (economically, socially, and biologically) we are easily swayed by the good life we have. So the Cassandras trying to shine a light on our predicament are discounted and marginalized as doomers.
I taught Environmental Science and Biology for 20 years, I had colleagues in my department coming to me telling me to “tone it down”, that my lectures were too negative. I always tried to teach from a position of hope, offering my students a way forward for humanity, until I couldn’t. When that occurred I left teaching. We are well and truly in a trap of our own making.
Many years ago I did some class work in getting my Masters in Systems Thinking. It was one of the best things I have ever done for myself. It changed the way I view the world. I wish that more folks could have that opportunity. If you are open to the idea you might want to build a small library of some of Donella Meadows work.
I am not entirely sure that a decline from modernity means we cannot find contentment, joy and a higher degree of harmony with the natural world, but I believe that the path will be bumpy and very painful. I also recognize that the acceptance of this view is not popular, is being referred as “radical acceptance”. I am OK with that. It may not make a difference anyway!
Best regards
Tom
These might be some basic indicators to watch for over the next decade or so: persistent supply side induced inflation of all basic commodities, beginning of more frequent spot shortages, increased geo political tension, increased resource wars, changes in death rate and longevity, interruption and degradation of social services, continuing degradation of infrastructure, reduced demand for non essentials and luxury items, reductions in harvests in fisheries; forest products; minerals; and last to turn agriculture, turning point in unemployment rate, reduction in air travel and cruising. I would expect most of these to start rolling over the next 10-15 years (perhaps less) if the LtG projections continue to be as accurate as they have been for the last 50 years.
Thanks Tom, great post.
Most believers in the bright green lies are not system thinkers, which is where the misunderstanding of the future comes from. I’ve narrowed down where we can expect to see the major problems emanating from, being an acceleration of the reduction in production of oil, which is still ahead of us. This Seneca cliff of oil production will bring about an acceleration of all the indicators you say we should watch out for IMHO.
Hickory, ….”There is no coherence between what is good for nature and what is good for the human bulldozer,
and it is false ideation to expect otherwise.”
What I expect to happen, is we go straight to the point of collapse, by continuing on the current path, more talk of renewables, more actual use of fossil fuels until we reach not just peak use, but serious decline as well, due to depletion of the easy to get FFs.
The only possible change from the future collapse was if humans as a whole had understood the problem, as a wise species would do, and changed paths. We as a species chose to ignore all the warnings from LTG or Malthus, believing in human exceptionalism and technology instead. What we are doing to the planet is clear evidence that we are collectively, not that wise.
These other questions you raise … ” what is good for stability of civilization?, or what is good for economic growth?, or what is more sustainable than the path we are on now?, or what are techniques that are less damaging?, or what adaptations can enable survival as certain finite resources deplete?” …..
… are exactly what people tend to think about, which is exactly why we go to collapse, instead of looking at the bigger picture of if it’s possible to have a habitable planet with over 8 billion, living like those of us in modern western civilization.
People in the western world, like Nick G, want more renewables so they can go on having a nice modern living style, and use the excuse of sustainability all while ignoring where all the materials come from, the energy used to get them plus the damage to the biosphere of obtaining them and deploying them.
Which is why The Adaro power plant and Aluminium smelters (and others being planned and built in Indonesia), are a perfect metaphor for the entirety of the green transition. It all comes at further environmental destruction and further use of fossil fuels to build it.
An Opinion from a Morningstar vice president of research on Trump Media
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-media-djt-stock-rcna147059
Basically the opinion is that the stock is worth at most 50 cents a share and more likely much less, maybe 10 cents a share as it is no Google or Meta, it is a shrinking business.
Down another 8.5% today.
It seems to be impossible to short, because everyone knows it will decline.
Trump has 78m shares, worth $7.8m if the price falls to 10 cents. On paper at least. There is some “counterparty risk” as they say.
Down another 5.4% today…
Yee Gods,
Is this the best that you two twats can come up with. Harping on about Trump. Who cares. Biden or Trump, both are a total waste of space and you two clowns seem to think that this is important. Both of you should get a life. But I forgot you are both cornucopian numpties in denial, living in fairy land of denial..
Every day for over a year the global average sea surface temperature has beaten the previous hottest recorded by about 0.2 degrees. There is so far no sign of the post El Nino cool down. I don’t see how Mann and the like can say this is in the range of what was expected by the models. It looks more like a system phase change.
SCIENTISTS AT SPAIN MEETING SOUND ALARM OVER OCEAN WARMING
Scientists at a united nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences. “The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact,” the executive secretary of UNESCO’s intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day “ocean decade” conference in Barcelona.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-scientists-spain-alarm-ocean.html
Interesting article about soil carbon
https://theconversation.com/trillions-of-tonnes-of-carbon-locked-in-soil-has-been-left-out-of-environmental-models-and-its-on-the-move-227597
Old news, centuries old.
“So you agree that we need lots more Aluminium, like the smelters being built by Adaro in Indonesia, using coal fired power to do it, because it’s so much cheaper than solar and backup (around 1/10 of the cost). But even solar in their location near the equator will require the destruction of hundreds of square kilometers of pristine rainforest to build and pristine rainforest river systems.”
This phrase has come up a dozen of times now, so I have to respond because the argument is so loopsided.
First of all, aluminium is one of the most recyclable metals out there. Aluminium have a melting point of about 1,218 °F / 659 °C, but alloying with other elements can raise this. I am not going to include copper and steel in the discussion, but the facts are there.
https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/melting-points
Primary aluminium is very energy intensive to produce, so much that recycling it can be done with 5-10% energy theoretically, but more likely more due to alloys. And much of the heat can be done with electricity, but fossil fuels would top it off to seperate aluminium from alloys and get the heat needed for pure recycled aluminium. And this pure aluminium has all the properties of virgin aluminium. Including the 99.7% purity for electrical purposes. To make primary aluminium you have to go through very energy intensive processes, and that is why most of is made around aboundant coal resources and hydro resources. And increasingly so.
So the answer is: It makes no sense to make primary aluminum in Indonesia with solar panels alone, when aboundant coal resources are nearby. And, aluminum is one of the most recycle friendly metals around; so it plays a big role in the role of being aboundant. And bauxite is aboundant, so the energy intensive making of primary metals can go on a long time at fewer locations (reliant on aboundant coal and hydro power).
Aluminium has a recycling rate of 76%, meaning that after 10 cycles we have less than 10% of the original remaining.
All the new new Aluminium smelter being built in Indonesia, based on burning coal, are likely to lower the world price of Aluminium over the next few years, putting out of business a lot of other Aluminium producers in places like Australia where the grid electricity price is rising rapidly due to decrease in coal powered electricity and increase in higher cost renewables.
The Aluminium for EV body parts and solar panel frames and supports gets cheaper because we burn more cheap coal, using cheap labor, without care for the climate/environment to make it.
My whole point for the cornucopians is that solar only gets cheaper by using more fossil fuels to build it. Once we deplete fossil fuels enough that they become much more expensive, then so do all the renewables. Not just dollar expensive, but energy expensive, too expensive to allow the complexity needed to continue modernity.
CATL unveils Tesla Megapack competitor, claims zero degradation and more capacity
Do you believe the zero degradation after 5 years? Because if you do, there should also be zero degradation after 10 years, 100 years and 1 billion years..
Or is the degradation very slight and they built in over capacity so the numbers look like there is no degradation after 5 years?
CATL warrants its new EV battery to last for a million miles or 15 years
Does it really matter whether or not I believe the claims being made by CATL? Whatecer the details are, the fact is that lithium ion battery technology is improving by leaps and bounds. The Chinese lithium ion battery industry has focused on improving lithium ion phosphate batteries which have several advantages over the lithium ion batteries (nickel cobalt manganese) used by western automakers. They are less expensive to make, last longer, charge faster, can be discharged further without affecting their lifespan and are far less prone to fire. The big disadvantage is that they are less energy dense but, the Chinese are whittling away at that problem to the point where that is no longer an issue.
The other big news is that the cost of these batteries is expected to fall by 50% between the beginning of this year and the next couple of months. If anyone that is interested in buying an EV is aware of this news it would be foolish not to delay their purchase until the price reductions work their way into the price of EVs. So anybody crowing about how EV sales are declining should take this Osbourne Effect into consideration before they go patting themselves on the back!
Their are a considerable amount of Yutong buses in Jamaica, mostly shuttling tourists from the airport to resorts and back but, the are all powered by diesel. Maybe these new developments will see the tour bus operators being able to afford the electric versions of the Yutong buses.
Global EV battery market share in Jan 2024: CATL 39.7%, BYD 14.4%
CATL and BYD between them command more than half of the global market share for EV batteries. Why is that? Who’s fault is it?
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/08/tech/tsmc-arizona-chip-factory-investment/index.html
Taiwan chip making (some of it) moving to Arizona.
HUGE!!!
Scarcity of fresh water is a planetary boundary that has already been breached and will eventually take down civilisations, at least locally, even in the absence of climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, etc.,through disruption to the hydrological cycle leading to drying up of lakes, rivers, aquifers, soils etc.
This is a by Andrew Nikiforuk about two recent studies:
“One study shows that human activity has massively altered the world’s flow of surface water and imperilled water cycles critical for life as varied as fish and forests. The other confirms that in many places on Earth aquifers and groundwater wells are being pumped and mined faster than they can be replenished.”
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/04/11/Draining-World-Fresh-Water/
These are three papers he references:
“The concept of the technosphere helps to explain the forces in play. U.S. geologist Peter Haff has described the technosphere as a parasitic offshoot of the living Earth, or biosphere. This largely autonomous force, committed to endless consumption, wields a “matrix of technology” that directs the flows of energy, materials, water and waste across the globe.”
https://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/Haff%202013%20Technology%20as%20a%20Geological%20Phenomenon.pdf
Humans have driven the Earth’s freshwater cycle out of its stable state
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240304135840.htm
Global groundwater depletion is accelerating, but is not inevitable
https://news.ucsb.edu/2024/021303/global-groundwater-depletion-accelerating-not-inevitable
Nations Are Undercounting Emissions, Putting UN Goals at Risk
https://e360.yale.edu/features/undercounted-emissions-un-climate-change
“Because of lax rules, national inventories reported to the United Nations grossly underestimate many countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The result, analysts say, is that the world can not verify compliance with agreed emissions targets, jeopardizing global climate agreements.”
So the nations’ promised reductions aren’t going to keep the temperature rise below 2.5 degrees, most are putting economies above those promises now anyway, warming and the consequences of warming are worse than previously thought and, now, the emission data is wrong so nobody really knows who’s doing what anyway. What can possibly go wrong? But at least we’ve got all those shiny EVs.
The anti-EV brigade are pushing plug-in hybrids. But electric is still the future
This is new, to me anyway!
SCIENTISTS FIND VAST NUMBERS OF ILLEGAL ‘GHOST ROADS’ USED TO CRACK OPEN PRISTINE RAINFOREST
“Unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere. In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together. When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars—usually immediately after the roads are built. We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables. No matter how one assesses them, roads are forest killers. What makes this situation uniquely dangerous for conservation is that the roads are growing fast while remaining hidden and outside government control.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-scientists-vast-illegal-ghost-roads.html
Peak coal? Well, maybe next year.
CHINA’S SEABORNE COAL IMPORTS RISE DESPITE PROJECTIONS OF FLAT VOLUMES
China’s seaborne coal imports jumped by 17% in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2023, despite earlier expectations that overall coal imports this year would be largely flat versus last year. IMPORTS OF ALL VARIETIES OF COAL BY SEA INTO CHINA STOOD AT 97.43 MILLION METRIC TONS BETWEEN JANUARY AND MARCH 2024, AN INCREASE OF 16.9% FROM THE 83.36 MILLION TONS IMPORTED IN THE SAME QUARTER LAST YEAR, [my caps] data compiled by commodity analysts Kpler and cited by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell showed on Tuesday. The estimated jump in seaborne coal imports contrasts with an earlier expectation that all of China’s coal imports this year would remain basically flat compared to 2023.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Seaborne-Coal-Imports-Rise-Despite-Projections-of-Flat-Volumes.html
With that in mind, I have decided to unilaterally change the name of our species-
Homo pyromancer
What are we without combustion, and all of its byproducts? Consider that without fire as a tool we would never have had the capability to domesticate wolves, and without that ‘best friend’ we would have never had the capacity to domesticate any other mammal, save perhaps the guinea pig.
My AI digital assistant had this response to the name change-
“Homo pyromancer” is an intriguing alternate name for Homo sapiens, reflecting humanity’s long history and unique relationship with fire. The term “pyromancer” suggests mastery or control over fire, which has been a defining feature of human civilization since its earliest days. By harnessing fire, humans have been able to cook food, stay warm, fend off predators, and even shape their environments. So, while not a scientific classification, “Homo pyromancer” could serve as a poetic or metaphorical descriptor for our species.”
I think it got this part wrong- “[fire] has been a defining feature of human civilization”
Rather it would more correct to replace the word civilization with the word species.
More from Oilprice yesterday:
Record Surge in Global Coal Capacity Led by China
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Record-Surge-in-Global-Coal-Capacity-Led-by-China.html
“Last year, global operating coal capacity increased by 2% as the world added a total of 69.5 gigawatts of coal fired power.
“Worldwide, coal-fired power plant retirements were only 21.1 GW in 2023—the lowest capacity retired since 2011.
“Global Energy Monitor: Retirements are set to speed up going forward, reversing last year’s accelerated growth in global coal fleet capacity.”
“reversing … accelerated growth” isn’t really saying much, though it sounds good.
Using coal to charge newly built EVs seems to be the worst of all possible choices for the environment so it has to be an economic decision and must run counter ro any argument that renewables are the cheapest energy source (or is something to do with the time cost of money?).
And, it’s not just China.
INDIA’S COAL SECTOR SEES HUGE LEAPS IN OUTPUT AND DEMAND
“India’s coal sector is united about one thing. It doesn’t matter if you are a miner, trader, utility or steelmaker, you are bullish, extremely bullish. The overarching theme at this week annual Coaltrans India conference in the western state of Goa is that coal production, imports and demand are all going to rise in coming years, and by substantial volumes. India may have committed to eventually starting to phase down consumption of the polluting fuel on its road to net-zero emissions by a targeted 2070, but for the coming decade the coal industry sees a ramp up. Even the most cautious of forecasts at the conference saw demand for all grades of coal reaching 1.5 billion metric tons by 2030, with some reaching as high as 1.9 billion. To put that in context, India’s coal demand was 1.23 billion tons, composed of domestic production of 964 million tons and imports of around 266 million. Put another way, even the more pessimistic of forecasts expects an increase of nearly 300 million tons of coal demand in India in the next six years, an increase of 25%.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-coal-sector-sees-huge-leaps-output-demand-2024-02-28/
In the western hemisphere all countries electricity consumption is less than 25% supplied by coal, along with almost all of Africa.
More than 1/2 of Europe is supplied by less than 25% coal, with Poland and the Balkan states being the outliers.
By population and coal percentage level the big three are China, India and Indonesia.
Good data map- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-coal
The big outliers on exportation are Australia and Indonesia, both producing large amounts that are also far in excess of domestic consumption. They export of over 70% of production.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-exports-by-country
China has reduced the percentage of electric power from coal from 81% in 2007 to 61% in 2022 by ramping up solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power consumption. From 2011 to 2022 the average rate of decrease has been about 1.5% per year, if that rate continues it will be many years before China reaches the 2022 World average of about 35% electricity consumption from coal power (about 17 years). Without China the World average electricity consumption from coal is about 24%, it would take 25 years for China to reach 24% of electricity consumption from coal if it continues the 2011 to 2022 trend of 1.5% less coal power use per year.
Yes, at 18 percent, hydroelectricity is currently China’s largest renewable energy source and the second overall after coal. Solar accounts for roughly 5 percent of the total power generated in the country. Wind power is China’s third-largest source of electricity accounts for about 7% of total power generation.
Dennis, Have you seen David Archibald’s post on coal in China, relinked here
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/12/net-zero-fossil-fuels-are-leaving-us-before-we-leave-them/
China is rapidly approaching peak coal production, so they have no choice but to reduce electricity production from coal and will be happening much faster than in the past, though differently from the past in that total electricity production is what will fall, with the coal sector being fastest. China is an interesting experiment by itself.
Of course the overall decline in electricity production will mean massive changes in what they can manufacture for the rest of the world, there will be falls in availability of all sorts of goods in a chaotic way.
I’m pretty sure they don’t have any more Three Gorges dams to come online increasing hydro electricity like they did in the early part of the 2006-12 period..
Hideway,
I imagine China will import coal and they will continue to ramp up solar power output, wind power, and nuclear power output.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/04/18/the-worlds-economic-myths-are-hitting-limits/
Gail has a pretty well summed up here for references are worth reading
Term Private Sector
Jobs Added (000s)
Biden 13,7351
Clinton 1 10,876
Clinton 2 10,094
Obama 2 9,926
Reagan 2 9,351
Carter 9,039
Reagan 1 5,363
Obama 1 1,907
GHW Bush 1,507
GW Bush 2 443
GW Bush 1 -820
Trump -2,192
1After 38 months.
Letter of the Day | Heat island effect is a troubling phenomenon
This letter to the editor in the older of the two local newspapers in my neck of the woods got pride of place as Letter of the Day on Saturday (April 13). The writer explains what the urban heat island effect is, the risk it poses to vulnerable populations and some of the measures that can be taken to mitigate it. The first comment in response to the letter illustrates why we are doomed:
“Most people don’t want the truth.
They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.”
Hightrekker, you put quotation marks around that bit of wisdom. Do you know who the original author was?
Never mind I found it, Ranveer Allahbadia,
Various people get credit for originating such gems of wisdom, but all they’ve actually done, as a rule, is to come up with a way to say their piece using just a few easily understood and easily remembered words.
Priests and politicians have understood this concept from at least as far back as we have any surviving philosophical literature.
Assuming you’re technically literate, you’ll get my point if you bother to listen to a few hours of current day propaganda of the sort produced by Faux News.
Ditto if you spend a few Sunday mornings in any of the more popular American churches…… where in the prevailing doctrine is pretty much dictated by the KJB.
I shouldn’t have to point out that the vast majority of people who attend such churches are literate in terms of reading the sports pages ……… but they know next to nothing about the physical sciences…. meaning in turn they don’t have a clue about overshoot, etc.
So, besides China and India, some aren’t listening to our dirty emissions scenarios.
GROWING COAL DEPENDENCY PUTS CENTRAL ASIAN ECONOMIES AT RISK
• Central Asian states have doubled their coal-based power generation capacity over the past decade, with plans for further expansion.
• The continued reliance on coal exacerbates environmental challenges and strains state budgets in the long term.
• Despite some efforts towards renewable energy, Central Asian nations are prioritizing coal, undermining their climate commitments and increasing the risk of stranded assets.
Plans to add generating capacity of coal-fired plants in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan reached 8.1 gigawatts (GW) last year, up from 3.9 GW in 2013, according to GEM data. Coal currently accounts for 45 percent of electricity production in the region.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Growing-Coal-Dependency-Puts-Central-Asian-Economies-at-Risk.html
LA NIÑA WILL MAKE A COMEBACK THIS SUMMER AS EL NIÑO FINALLY FADES
The transition between El Niño and La Niña will occur quickly. La Niña will dominate this summer after a short period of neutral phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/la-ni-comeback-summer-el-003609228.html
Two Candidates in the California Primary Got Exactly 30,249 Votes Each
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a60412993/california-representative-primary-tie/
This has Trump like implications
I like how Art Berman’s thinking evolves as he gets more and different data. That means at the moment he gets more and more doomerish. This is an excellent summary of our current predicament.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/radical-acceptance-of-the-human-predicament/
In particular the comment about climate volatility making agriculture impossible and the graphic showing the exponential rise in the number of high cost disaster events in the US (hurricane season this year or next could easily put the costs close to a trillion).
George —
An additional point, as we were taught in Geology 101, humans have had about 10,000 years of the most stable climate in Earth’s history. This makes us think climate stability is the norm when, in fact, it’s the exception. Of course, this stable interval has corresponded with the rise of human civilization.
He says- “I’d like to tell people that renewable energy is part of a solution but I fear that substituting renewable for fossil energy will make that problem even worse. It will enable continued growth of the human enterprise which is unfortunately the primary source of our predicament.”
The problem is not the renewable energy deployment, rather it is the behavior of not using the energy produced to replace higher carbon emitting fuel combustion such as coal, and the behavior of adding more and more overall consumption regardless of source.. The one simple mechanism to alter human consumption/growth behavior is price.
A big and progressive carbon tax can do the job. The revenues would be used to institute mechanisms that use less energy, such as building retrofit. It would need to be international in scope.
I don’t hold any breathe for wise decisions on these topics, but it is false to blame lower carbon energy sources as being an innate problem.
I don’t see many adults around the world calling for a halt all new fossil energy project development, not Art Berman, not any of the naysayers or deniers who post here. Who has advocated for proactive shutting of refineries, or imposing strict limits on annual miles traveled by air, land and sea?
Thats what it would take to show a seriousness of concern about these issues.
The one simple mechanism to alter human consumption/growth behavior is price. A big and progressive carbon tax can do the job.
Which is why the FF industry attacks such taxes like rabid wolverines.
The revenues would be used to institute mechanisms that use less energy, such as building retrofit.
That’s not a bad idea. I suspect the best approach would be to rebate such taxes on a per capita basis. This would help build political support for such taxes by making them more progressive. Fuel taxes aren’t especially regressive, because higher income folks use more fuel, but the enemies of such taxes paint them as hurting low income folks, so a rebated approach would be tactically wise.
All taxes are carbon taxes already. It is only possible to tax excess production of people, farms, companies of all types. There has to be excess energy in the economy to allow for taxes, which is why taxes only happened once humanity started to produce an excess by using agriculture to grow crops, and had no taxes in the world of hunter gatherers.
Stop fossil fuels tomorrow and no-one will have excess production to pay taxes.
Assuming we up the taxes on fossil fuels with specific extra carbon taxes, world wide. Doesn’t this make all renewables much more expensive as the cost base for building and deploying them goes up? Doesn’t the ‘retrofit’ cost rise as whatever materials and services are needed to do it also rise?
Isn’t the natural world worse off as more materials are needed for this retrofit, with the materials coming from mines and some new processing not happening at present?
None of it works, it all damages the environment more, powering down massively is the only possible partial answer, as we’ve collectively ignored the overshoot problem for decades, with magical thinking of building more …… (whatever)…
You,etc are struggling to identify a pathway that cures overshoot and is its deleterious affect on the global biosphere, while at the same time allowing economic viability/sustainability.
Good luck with finding such a path that doesn’t first embark upon a long trail of massive contraction.
I do not see such a path.
Nonetheless management decisions do need to be made, either deliberately or by default of inaction.
Different decisions do lead to different outcomes.
Hickory, the only possibility now, is attempting to make the downslope less messy.
Every population in massive overshoot does enormous damage to surrounding environment at the top of it’s numbers and on the way down. Think of a locust plague, that eats everything leaving devastation behind it.
The human environment is the whole planet, and when we fall we will eat and burn everything we can find, to try and survive. The fall and simplification of everything we do is inevitable, however we could make the decision to lesson the impact on our surrounding environment by voluntarily degrowing.
Instead, the most likely path, is to continue to deny limits until we crash with 8.5B or 9B or whatever the population is at the time, believing renewables or nuclear or some other magic source will save complex modernity that was provided by fossil fuels.
Doesn’t the name we have given ourselves, Homo sapiens, meant to mean we are ‘wise’.
Being wise would mean not destroying our surrounding natural home so we could survive in it. It’s the denial of the damage we are doing to the entirety of the natural world by our way of modern life, that’s the problem.
The solution offered to the masses is that we can ‘fix’ one symptom of our overshoot by changing from one energy source to another, by digging up the planet more, destroying the environment more, sending more species into extinction during the process, all done with fossil fuels.
Then after a couple of decades of doing the above, we seem surprised that nothing is changing (on the CO2 front), so think going harder down the same path is some type of answer, instead of stepping back and looking at the reality of our situation.
‘Hickory, the only possibility now, is attempting to make the downslope less messy.’
I agree with the prospect and the goal.
We differ on management choices, such as where energy capital expenditure gets deployed, and just how high a carbon tax should be, and which carbon emission sources should be taxed much higher rates than others, for example.
As I see it, deploying non-fossil energy sources is an attempt to make the downslope less messy.
This article does a pretty good job on the topic-
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Should-We-Keep-Investing-in-Oil-and-Gas-Experts-Weigh-In.html
Good job! Ms Bradstock is nothing but a cut and paste artist. The usual nonsense is spun again about fossil fuel subsidies. What subsidies.The subsidies are in the minds of liberal economists with scant regard as to the challenge at hand. The JSO/ER loonies dreamed up this subsidy based on no evidence whatsoever.
The fact is that fossil fuel taxes in many countries are major sources of revenue for the government. In lightly taxed countries the benefit is usually in favour of the poor, who have little ability to pay carbon taxes, however they are levied.
If renewables are so great then whay are they being subsidized, usually by the consumer because low cost they are not, and never will be.
Anyone read The Economist article on EV’s? An interesting read. St Elon is not having a good time.
I think you missed about 97% of the gist of the article, and the topic that preceded it.
“Should We Keep Investing in Oil and Gas?” is the name of the article.
If CO2 and overshoot are your primary concern, then clearly not a dime.
For me, on a reality basis that just is not going to happen. Its about degree and emphasis. 8, soon to be 9, billion people are going to keep pushing hard for energy supply.
Actually car oriented infrastructure are a disaster for the poor, and probably one of the leading causes of poverty in America. Fortunately most countries don’t make the same mistake.
The idea that cheap gas is good for the poor is extremely short sighted. It’s a piss poor form of welfare that mostly benefits the rich.
Unfortunately I think other countries are doing the same, I live in Spain, it is the third country in the world in ranking on kilometers of freeways built. Here they see it as a good thing, not as a burden, or as what you say, a disaster for the poor. I live in a city surrounded by 3 circular concentric freeways. Not easy even to get out of it on foot or bicycle. While I ride my bike out of the city, there are still some normal roads to do that, they are getting replaced by freeways, they not just leave the old ones, they replace them. I think it is a complete disaster.
There are some cities trying to create a car free environment (C40 cities). There are long term gains if the right infrastructure is set up, but I admit that it takes a lot of capital and resources to transform cities to allow for a reduction of transportation and energy usage per capita in general. Coastal cities and cities connected to river systems are naturally better locations for less energy usage, because imported good via low cost shipping synergies very well with a logistical well planned city with much electrical public transportation (subway, trams, electrical vehicles, el-bikes etc). The aim is to allow for less energy consumption without the standard of living being compromised too much.
How (not) to fight global warming!
INDIA’S COAL-FIRED ELECTRICITY OUTPUT & EMISSIONS HIT RECORD HIGHS
“India’s coal-fired electricity generation scaled a new high in January 2024 as the world’s second largest coal user after China cranked coal’s share of the country’s electricity generation mix to a record 80%. Coal-powered electricity output was 115 terawatt hours (TWh) in January 2024, a new high and up 10% from the same month in 2023, data from energy think tank Ember shows. Emissions from coal generation in January hit 104.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), while emissions from all power sources hit 107.5 million tons, which marked a record in both categories and a 10% rise from January 2023. The increase in coal generation came as output from solar, wind and hydro facilities dropped by 3%, 19% and 21.4% respectively from the same month a year ago. Cumulative clean-powered electricity generation was 26.6 TWh in January, which was 11.2% down from January 2023 and resulted in clean power’s share of India’s total electricity generation mix dropping to a 5-year low of 18.4% last month.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-coal-fired-electricity-output-emissions-hit-record-highs-2024-03-12/#:~:text=LITTLETON%2C%20Colorado%2C%20March%2011%20(,mix%20to%20a%20record%2080%25.
Meanwhile, adding fuel to the fire.
INDONESIAN THERMAL COAL EXPORTS SCALE NEW HIGHS IN EARLY 2024
“The world’s top exporter of thermal coal is on track to smash last year’s record sales after projected shipments for the first two months of 2024 jumped nearly 25% from the same period in 2023. Indonesian exports of thermal and thermal bituminous coal – used in power generation – are on track to top 90 million metric tons for January and February, up 24% from the same two months in 2023, ship tracking data from Kpler shows.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indonesian-thermal-coal-exports-scale-new-highs-early-2024-2024-02-20/
So, Reality Check
“Worldwide, more than 107 countries and 2,000 entities are using coal across roughly 13,800 coal units. Some 204 new coal power plants are currently under construction, another 93 such projects have been announced and 260 new ones are in the pre-construction stage. Worldwide coal use still generates 36 percent of global electricity production, reaching a new record of 10,440 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2022. It is the primary energy source in China, India, Indonesia and many other countries. China, India and Indonesia combined account for about 70 percent of worldwide coal demand. Together with ASEAN, the figure rises to 76 percent of global consumption – contrasting the U.S. and EU, whose share of global consumption is projected at 8 percent in 2024 (down from 40 percent 30 years ago).”
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/peak-coal/
I am posting a video showing that produced coal left in the open air for a year or so, when exposed to water under high pressure could generate lots of gas, it is the same principle as shale fracing.
Without the fracing, the gas in the produced coal will just slowing release the methane to the air — imaging how much impact this is, but so far no clue about this magnitude.
It has huge implications — we need to water frac the coal before production to get all the clean methane out as cleaner fuel, and also help reduce the methane emissions and green house warming budget, and reduce the accident and difficulties in coal mining.
Sheng Wu
Without watching your video, I would say every option to capture methane in an economical way should be pursued. There is a need for ample water resources as I understand it, so it works better some places than others.
Doing things ‘economically’ is part of the problem. I like the word ‘humanely’. Here’s a live view of how to deal with methane economically:
https://viirs.skytruth.org/apps/heatmap/flaringmap.html#lat=32.80848&lon=-103.37361&zoom=5&offset=15
China’s coal consumption, currently at 5.2billion will continue to increase 0.15~0.2 billion ton each year until peaking around 2030 at around 6.5billion tons per year.
India coal consumption is just 1.2billion tons per year level for now, will increase 0.15billion each year for 40 years and peaking at 7billion tons per year in 2070.
If so, in year 2030 India and China will be burning a little more coal than the whole world combined does currently [8.5 B ton in 2023].
Hicory,
yes, it will be still quite close to 8.5 B ton in 2030 for China and India combined, with China around 6 B, and India at least 1.5B.
Last year in 2023, China coal consumption increased 8%, from 4.82 to close to 5.20B
Ok, take a look-
https://149357548.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/shutterstock_2164829265.jpg
Arizona’s Monstrous Near-Total Abortion Ban, Based on a Law Written By a Child Rapist in 1864
I guess I have seen worst actions by our conservative friends, but they continue to surprise me—-
New posts are up
https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-april-2024/
and
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/