133 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, August 11, 2024”

  3. Russia has declared a counter-terrorist operation in the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions. The decision was made by the Director of the Federal Security Service of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov. The FSB is handling the situation, not the Defense Ministry, which Vladimir Putin has long since lost confidence in. A breakthrough in the Kursk region will most likely provoke a purge of Shoigu’s team.

    Russia’s Kursk region might soon want to have a referendum to join Ukraine.

    1. It’s isn’t clear what motives or plans Ukraine has, but a few ideas are easy to think of.

      Embarrass Putin This worked already. The Western allies haven’t complained. Ukraine may be playing the same game as Russia, pushing limits and testing Western patience.

      Embarrass Shoigu This seems to have already worked, as you mention. I doubt the FSD is any more competent than the Defense Ministry when it comes to waging war, probably much less. So that’s a win for Ukraine.

      Create discontent in the Russian populace. Shutting down the nuclear power plant or causing big movements of refugees might make this happen.

      Improve morale in Ukraine. This is happening, but it probably won’t last long.

      Improve morale in the West. See above.

      Collect bargaining chips for an upcoming peace deal. Ukraine is expecting a Trump victory, so they have to prepare to negotiate.

      Push eastwards to pressure Russian supply lines with artillery and rockets. This is probably a high priority, as they have repeatedly asked for permissions for deep strikes from the West.

      Create a buffer region to protect Ukraine from artillery and border crossings. Doesn’t seem too likely, unless they can shorten the border.

      Take and hold positions inside Russia that are easier to defend than the current border. Maybe, if they exist. Rylsk is on a bluff just west of a river, and taking the area to its southwest would shorten the border. But it is north of the main current invasion. They seem more interested in the East and South.

      Push far enough East to to flank the Russians in Luhansk. This is more a pipe dream I guess. But disrupting north/south traffic has to be a Ukrainian goal.

      Force Russia to defend its entire border with Ukraine. This has already succeeded I think.

      Increase the kill rate of Russian troops by getting them out of their trenches. The Ukrainians seem better at mobile war than the Russians, but they can’t break Russian defenses and are slowly getting ground down. They have been taking a lot of prisoners, which is always a good sign of enemy weakness.

      Just generally make things less predictable and wrongfooting Russia. This seems a good idea in a stalemate, and it’s working.

      Right now it isn’t clear whether they intend to stay or not, or how far they intend to (or can) penetrate. Maybe they want the Kursk nuclear power plant as a bargaining chip for the Zaporizhzhia power plant, but there isn’t much trust to base a swap on. Taking Kursk und Belgorod wouldn’t lengthen their border to Russia, but they aren’t anywhere close to that yet. It’s hard to imagine them going farther.

      1. Has anyone been able to explain why Russia is doing what it is doing? Why are they invading Ukraine?

        I have a speculation.

        1) Russia knows Peak Oil decline is coming.

        2) Russia has 2 advesarial oil importers on its borders (China & NATO).

        3) Russia forecasted 2015 as the peak oil date as many peak oilers did including the USA Military.

        4) Russia invaded Crimea to protect the nuclear subs in 2014 anticipating military conflict.

        5) USA Shale caught everyone off guard and delayed the post peak oil decline by a decade.

        6) Russia, waiting for USA Shale to peak, set off Phase 2 in 2022 a year before it looked like USA shale would peak (2014 is one year before 2015).

        standing ovation!!!!

        1. The “conventional” story is that Putin is fixated on restoring the “glory” of the Soviet Union and is dedicated to restoring the territorial integrity of it. He has called the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.”
          He may have been encouraged by the ease of stealing Crimea in 2014 and the incursion of “little green men” into the Donbas region.
          Historically Ukraine was referred to as “the breadbasket of the USSR”. Even today Ukraine is a major exporter of grain so a valuable source of foreign exchange to whoever controls that grain. Perhaps Putin sees that as a replacement for potential loss of oil exports.

            1. Andre:
              Timing of peak oil?
              I have no idea. I still have a copy of “Twilight in the Desert” on my bookshelf. I’ve been wrong about peak oil for 30 years.
              My thinking is that it’s a race between oil prices going up as costs increase and climate damage causing social disruption. Right now climate disruption seems to be in the lead. Hickory posted this way downstream in this thread. It’s worth reading: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/136-corey-bradshaw

          2. Colour revolution in Ukraine from the mid-2000s (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa) and the repeated pointers in 2007 at Munich by Putin that NATO expansion is a red line.

            Fast forward to Maidan and US backed NGOs and the overthrowing of a pro-Russia gov’t for a EU/US backed one, and the repeated shelling of the Russian speaking Donbas by neo-Nazi Azov forces (https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-killing-civilians), and you have a real mystery as to why Putin decided to regime change Kyiv.

            Putin’s mistake was thinking he would take the capital in three days by a show of overwhelming force, as what happened to Tbilisi in 2008. Instead, Z-man held firm and the Russians massively overextended and fucked up the show of force leading to shock and awe causing Z-man to flee never materialising. BoJo and the US backed Ukraine and told them to keep at it (despite the CIA and MI6 all saying the Ukrainians were proper fucked) and scuppered the peace negotiation, that would have heavily been in Ukraine’s favour, in April of 2022. Putin totally humiliated and isolated, probably pooping his pants too.

            Instead, they got into a war of attrition with the one nation not China that can do attritional warfare better than anybody, and also learn to be less like a liberal nation by accepting material reality, and learning from mistakes like assuming you can just grind on with former Soviet hardware and corrupt officials running things.

            Anyway, now it’s 2024 and the last vestiges of elite troops and heavy armour are doing raiding parties in Kursk and the VKS is having a field day. No one knows what this is meant to achieve, especially as the eastern front is crumbling badly as we speak, but we do know Putin is about to die from being humiliated once again, so I guess the dreadful loss of life in this latest Hail Mary is well justified.

            1. I’m not sure that I follow your stream of consciousness, Kleiber.
              -Are you justifying Putin’s invasion in 2014 because the country chose to pursue a free trade agreement with the EU? The EU is not NATO.
              -I read the Human Rights Watch article that you posted about the Grad rockets. Are we to infer that, in defending themselves from invasion, the Ukrainian government is relying 100% on the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and have no excuse for using the cheapest rockets available to them after being invaded? Since the Azov battalion consists of less than 2,500 soldiers it begs credibility that they were somehow defining Ukrainian war efforts.
              -Do you think this use of Grad rockets fired by Ukraine forces and killing approximately 20 civilians is morally equivalent to the invasion by Russia?
              -Who is “Bojo”? Did backing by Bojo and the US prevent Ukraine from forcing Russia to stop invading a sovereign country? If not what favorable conditions did Ukraine miss out on by taking that advice? Perhaps some rubles in exchange for Crimea and the Donbas?
              -“Last vestiges” I don’t have any knowledge of the quantity or quality of the military forces available to Ukraine. A lot of misinformation is available, however, so I’ll just have to see how things play out.
              -“Dreadful loss of life” I take it from that that countries shouldn’t oppose invasion by dictatorships because some people die. Hard to argue with that.

            2. The AZOV battalion was all but wiped out in the first months of the invasion when it was surrounded in Melitopol and bombed into submission. BoJo – Boris Johnson UK PM at the time. We have had 3 more PMs since then, policies remain unchanged. Crimea has been so heavily bombed in recent months that it has been abandoned as a naval base by Russia and what is left of the black sea fleet is now in Russian ports on the eastern shore. It will be useless as a military asset for Russia going forward. The Ukrainian attack on Kirsk may have been a hail Mary throw as they are running out of front line soldiers, but so far it seems to be working with Russia yet to mount an effective counter attack and Putin looking very weak, as yet another of his “red lines” has been crossed with no retaliation against Ukraine’s Western backers, Russia will now have to put real troops up to defend the 1000km border with Ukraine, which will limit how many more he can use on the front lines. Putin is too frightened of his own people to call another mobilisation, the last one resulted in a million economically active young men emigrating and not returning. About half of the Russian soviet era tanks and other offensive weapons stockpile has already been destroyed in this war. Russia has proved itself as no longer a serious military threat to any Nato country.

            3. I’m not sure that I follow your stream of consciousness, Kleiber.
-Are you justifying Putin’s invasion in 2014 because the country chose to pursue a free trade agreement with the EU? The EU is not NATO.

              Ukraine was accepted as able to become a NATO member at the 2008 Bucharest summit of the group. The very thing Putin warned about.

              I’m not looking to justify anything, merely correcting some statements read on here.
              
-I read the Human Rights Watch article that you posted about the Grad rockets. Are we to infer that, in defending themselves from invasion, the Ukrainian government is relying 100% on the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and have no excuse for using the cheapest rockets available to them after being invaded? Since the Azov battalion consists of less than 2,500 soldiers it begs credibility that they were somehow defining Ukrainian war efforts.
              -Do you think this use of Grad rockets fired by Ukraine forces and killing approximately 20 civilians is morally equivalent to the invasion by Russia?

              You’re out-of-date on that. The Azov brigade has grown to near 10k and was last seen doing quite a bit around Lyman in the Donbas, among other areas that were retaken in the last 18 months.

              You also didn’t read that article too closely if you take that as the far right militias, ignoring Kyiv, lobbing munitions onto parts of their own land was equivalent to their defence from Russia in 2022. It’s talking about events a decade ago, not when Russia invaded and after Ukraine had overhauled a lot of its forces. They were “defending” themselves by throwing rocket artillery into Russian speaking settlements in the east of the country.

              Let me put it this way. Do you think it is right that the Russian aligned peoples in Ukraine should be bombed by Nazis? Should Russia, who had raised this numerous times in the past with international parties, sit by and let their people suffer this?
              
-Who is “Bojo”? Did backing by Bojo and the US prevent Ukraine from forcing Russia to stop invading a sovereign country? If not what favorable conditions did Ukraine miss out on by taking that advice? Perhaps some rubles in exchange for Crimea and the Donbas?
              -“Last vestiges” I don’t have any knowledge of the quantity or quality of the military forces available to Ukraine. A lot of misinformation is available, however, so I’ll just have to see how things play out.

              Boris Johnson, the leader of the UK at the time and a major component of what started the support of Ukraine. Ask the Ukrainian negotiators who went on record earlier this year talking about the Istanbul meetings before they got scuppered. Ukraine could have had a favourable deal in kicking Russia out, not losing hundreds of thousands of young men and materiel, and also have been shown on the world stage that the Russian army was a paper tiger that couldn’t do anything about its inferior neighbour.

              There will be no peace talks now while Russia is happily whittling down AFU forces.
              
-“Dreadful loss of life” I take it from that that countries shouldn’t oppose invasion by dictatorships because some people die. Hard to argue with that.

              You should always throw your population into a meat grinder to gain back fallow land, because human beings, as we know, are much less valuable than soil.

              RALPH:

              I presume you’re going by the ISW and Covert Cabal OSINT that says Russia has started scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to weaponry. I hate to say it, but those are wishful thoughts. And I’ve been hearing this same mantra for near three years now.

              https://postimg.cc/RWy4HN4z

              They haven’t even used up Soviet stocks of T-80s (the least numerous type due to being gas turbine powered and thirsty), and now they’re upgrading T-64s, T-72s and more to modern standards with better optics and powerplants along with anti-drone jamming suites. Uralvagonzavod has brand new T-90MS coming off the production line.

              General Cavoli of the US Army said back in April that the Russian Army is not only not depleted, it’s 15% bigger than it was at the start of the invasion in terms of men and hardware.

              https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-army-15-percent-larger-when-attacked-ukraine-us-general-2024-4

              Keep in mind, Ukraine lost tens if not hundreds of thousands of men when the war started. Russia still has, even with those that were leaving anyway because they had closer ties with the West, far larger pools to draw upon for infantry and personnel. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier as of LAST year was in the 40s. That’s… not good. I dread to think what it is now, especially as we’re going to find out how much more trouble the press gangs will get into when it comes to rounding up warm bodies to send to the front. We’ve already had people fight agents from the recruitment bureau for the AFU as they tried to drag paramedics to the front and any young male on the street.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnw2Abqmu64

              Yeah, sure looks like people are champing at the bit to die for the West bloodying the nose of Russia, a geopolitical rival.

              Doesn’t sound like many enjoy the prospect of briefly taking a bit of Russia off Vlad’s hands for a day and an Instagram selfie while dodging bullets and bombs.

              There’s also this weird obsession with the way Russia reacts. If they throw heavy bombardments after Ukraine does something stupid, they’re seen as violent and unhinged psychopaths. If they don’t unleash hellfire when an obvious provocation has taken place, they’re cowardly spineless and humiliated.

              Putler is real stupid for not wanting to launch all his nukes and start WWIII because some villages got a drive by by some Ukrainian Strykers on a non-stop ride around Kursk before running out of gas and getting FAB bombed. How dumb and humiliating of him.

            4. Kleiber:
              “The Azov brigade has grown to near 10k and was last seen doing quite a bit around Lyman in the Donbas, among other areas that were retaken in the last 18 months.”
              -The Azov Brigade was integrated into the regular Ukrainian army after the Russian expansion of aggression in 2022. As such I think trying to define the size is meaningless. As an aside though I do find the values stated by Azov members particularly repulsive but as long as they are militarily effective I cannot blame the Ukraine government for accepting their help.
              “The very thing Putin warned about.”
              -So you accept Putin’s assertion that he has the right to determine the foreign policy of Ukraine and invasion is justified if they disagree?
              “You also didn’t read that article too closely if you take that as the far right militias, ignoring Kyiv, lobbing munitions onto parts of their own land was equivalent to their defence from Russia in 2022. It’s talking about events a decade ago, not when Russia invaded and after Ukraine had overhauled a lot of its forces. They were “defending” themselves by throwing rocket artillery into Russian speaking settlements in the east of the country”.
              -I think I understood the article. Russia initially invaded Ukraine in 2014. Remember the “little green men?” The fighting that involved the Grad rockets was against an invasion. By definition if someone invades your country you have to fight them in your country.
              “.Do you think it is right that the Russian aligned peoples in Ukraine should be bombed by Nazis? Should Russia, who had raised this numerous times in the past with international parties, sit by and let their people suffer this?”
              -I doubt either you or I know if the rockets were intended to harm civilians but I doubt it if only 20 were killed in four separate attacks. The issue of “Russian aligned” You certainly realize that the issue of “Russian aligned” is more complex than you infer. I am, however, confident that the Russian ordinance landing in Ukrainian hospitals, schools and homes are not intended to injure the combatants on the front line.
              “Ukraine could have had a favourable deal in kicking Russia out, not losing hundreds of thousands of young men and materiel”
              -The best “favorable deal” Ukraine could hope for from Putin would look more like “an offer they couldn’t refuse.” The phrase implies Russia taking some or all the land they have seized by force, a few rubles for a lot of real estate.
              “fallow land?”
              -The Donbas, which Russia is not claiming, is the industrial heart of Ukraine.
              You didn’t answer this question:
              -Do you think this use of Grad rockets fired by Ukraine forces and killing approximately 20 civilians is morally equivalent to the invasion by Russia?

            5. JJHMAN:

              Kleiber:
-The Azov Brigade was integrated into the regular Ukrainian army after the Russian expansion of aggression in 2022. As such I think trying to define the size is meaningless. As an aside though I do find the values stated by Azov members particularly repulsive but as long as they are militarily effective I cannot blame the Ukraine government for accepting their help.

              The problem is that Ukraine reveres a known anti-semite and Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, and has multiple instances of anti-semitism and far right ideologies being displayed. Sonnenrads and Wulfangle and death heads do not belong in an army supposedly fighting one that has been mocked for the deNazification objective.
              
-So you accept Putin’s assertion that he has the right to determine the foreign policy of Ukraine and invasion is justified if they disagree?

              The taking of Crimea, which was aligning with a renewed Russian led federation post-1991 until interference in the Maidan protests showed this was never going to happen, seems to be construed as a mass takeover. There was a few Russian units moved into the area and there as no resistance or uprising from this action. The subsequent referendum which people have mixed views of, also substantiates the fact that Crimea was pretty okay with Russia taking charge, especially as a good number of people there dealt with Sevastopol as being the main naval base in the region for Russia. Likewise, the eastern oblasts Russia is taking were already aligned with Russia and being left behind by Kyiv or outright suppressed.

              And yeah, I assert he has that right. Do you think America would let the Cubans house nuclear tipped MRBNs again like in the early ‘60s? If you thought that was valid, then yes, Russia has every right to dispute the placing of a known unfriendly power’s nuclear weaponry on their doorstep. Only an idiot would think the US wouldn’t have any issues with Russia putting nukes in Canada and Mexico, for example after interfering with their elections and placing puppet regimes in their stead.
              
-I think I understood the article. Russia initially invaded Ukraine in 2014. Remember the “little green men?” The fighting that involved the Grad rockets was against an invasion. By definition if someone invades your country you have to fight them in your country.

              Crimea didn’t do any fighting. It was quite the opposite.

              -I doubt either you or I know if the rockets were intended to harm civilians but I doubt it if only 20 were killed in four separate attacks. The issue of “Russian aligned” You certainly realize that the issue of “Russian aligned” is more complex than you infer. I am, however, confident that the Russian ordinance landing in Ukrainian hospitals, schools and homes are not intended to injure the combatants on the front line.

              We have actually had instances where places that were supposedly civilian in nature were housing AFU forces. There was a big shopping centre that got hit last year because it was seen to be taking in military vehicles and supplies. Just this June, a warehouse in the city was taken out which was found to have been storing NATO supplied munitions as evidenced by the rounds cooking off during the blaze. While mistakes also happen or, in the early parts of the war when older missiles were used to hold back on more modern PGM supplies, they either were not as accurate or got jammed and fell on civilian areas. That is unfortunate, but the argument cannot be made that Russia is deliberately wasting valuable cruise and ballistic missiles on taking out a dozen people at the Ukrainian equivalent of a Walmart when in well under a year, Israel had killed multiple times more civilians than Russia supposedly had in over two years of “genocidal” warfare. Come on.

              Incidentally, as with the Polish missile incident, a lot of missiles falling on civvie areas can be air defence munitions from S-300s or Patriot. In fact, the recent school playground attack in Israel may have been exactly this, because a week or so after it happened, an Iron Dome missile landed on camera on a highway and had the same explosive signature. This has definitely happened in Kyiv and Lviv, we even had videos months ago of Patriot batteries firing missiles that almost immediately lost terminal guidance and hit tower blocks.

              War is hell, and the only way to stop death is to stop the war. No side should be anywhere near civilian areas, yet we have Russia hitting major city infrastructure and Ukraine hitting Belgorod and around Kursk.
              
-The best “favorable deal” Ukraine could hope for from Putin would look more like “an offer they couldn’t refuse.” The phrase implies Russia taking some or all the land they have seized by force, a few rubles for a lot of real estate.
“fallow land?”

              The land Ukraine is losing was not particularly favoured by Kyiv and certainly wasn’t happy with how the country was going anyway. I think they probably lost a few votes when the militias tried to deal with Russian speakers by shelling them.
              
-The Donbas, which Russia is not claiming, is the industrial heart of Ukraine.
You didn’t answer this question:
-Do you think this use of Grad rockets fired by Ukraine forces and killing approximately 20 civilians is morally equivalent to the invasion by Russia?

              Yes, the Donbas is the productive heartland, which makes it even worse for Ukraine to have lost it, but I’m talking about the fighting happening around those areas in fields and woods that are untouched by anything productive since 2022. They’re not fighting in cities and industrial areas if they can help it.

              And don’t get too hung up on the Grad incident. That was just one of the many cited incidents of attacks on civilian targets by varied third parties monitoring the tenuous ceasefire that kept getting broken until shelling really took off just prior to the 2022 invasion.

            6. Kleiber:
              This has been a nice dialog. Thank you for your perspective.
              I will, however, continue to think that fundamentally Russia is the bad guy here. I have no illusions that all Ukrainians are saints or that war crimes have been committed on both sides but the fundamental fact remains that Russia has taken both illegal and dishonest actions in seizing sovereign Ukrainian territory. I discount any elections that Russia claims justifying their actions. Clearly military force was used to control the elections. I understand that much of the Ukrainian population in the eastern portion of the country were native Russian speakers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a native Russian language speaker. To my knowledge no significant pro-Russian protests occurred in Donbas before the incursion of Russian “little green men” and other overt actions there by the Kremlin.
              It’s a sad situation. In spite of the close cultural ties going back to the Keivan Rus, one cannot but have sympathy to the Ukrainian experience under Russian domination.
              Why are the Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine? After the Holodomor it was the Nazi sympathizers that fought for freedom against Soviet oppression. Long term oppression creates memories that last even longer.
              Why are there so many Russian speakers in Ukraine? Because Stalin put them there specifically to dominate the local politics. People remember things like that for a long time.
              Putin has no more right to interfere in Ukrainian domestic issues than Hitler had to invade Czechoslovakia to “protect” the Sudeten Germans or to annex Austria to unite an imaginary greater Germany. It was conquest. It was illegal.
              Putin’s fundament premise, often stated, is to reconstruct the USSR. Ukraine is the biggest prize. That’s the most important fact to understand about the conflict.

  4. ISLANDBOY – You tout, or used to tout, Australia’s clean energy accomplishments; well, here’s the other side of that coin.

    AUSTRALIAN FOSSIL FUEL EXPORTS RANKED SECOND ONLY TO RUSSIA FOR CLIMATE DAMAGE WITH ‘NO PLAN’ FOR REDUCTION

    Australia’s coal and gas exports cause more climate damage than those from any other country bar Russia, according to a new study that argues the country is undermining a global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. The report, by non-profit science and policy organisation Climate Analytics, said based on government forecasts, Australia’s fossil fuel exports were expected to remain at roughly the current level until at least 2035 as it continued to approve new coal and gas export developments.

    Dr Gillian Moon, the project lead of the Australian Human Rights Institute’s climate accountability project, said it was striking that emissions from Australia’s fossil fuels exports had been about 30bn of CO2 over the 63 years since 1961 and this was forecast to increase by 50% between now and 2035.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/12/australian-fossil-fuel-exports-ranked-second-globally-for-climate-damage-with-no-plan-for-reduction

    1. Those naughty naughty Aussies.

      But I don’t see how finger wagging helps, or why you want to juxtapose these two facts at all.

      Yes, Australia exports coal, but we knew that already. That doesn’t call the changes in domestic electricity production in any way. It’s a different topic.

      1. If we naughty Aussies didn’t export coal and gas our currency would be much lower and we wouldn’t be able to import very many solar panels or wind turbines or batteries, EVs, inverters, copper cable for putting it all together etc.

        It’s a system, and we hardly ‘make’ anything anymore, it’s cheaper with a higher dollar to import what we need. If we had a much lower dollar and couldn’t import much, we would try to start up heavy industries to make what we need, using more coal and gas in the process.

        It’s the same everywhere, economies of scale have allowed the places where there is cheap energy and cheap labor to become the centres of heavy industry.

        What counts is what’s happening in the world overall, not in any one area. All renewables have done, is add energy use to the growing overall world energy use, with coal, oil and gas still growing overall on a decadal scale.
        We’ve had solar and wind use growing for decades and they have not ceased fossil fuel growth, let alone replaced anything. Every hundred Gw of solar production is another aluminium smelter opening up in Indonesia burning coal to make the shiny Aluminium frame for solar panels…

        Let’s see how fast we can kill all life on Earth by burning more to ‘save the world’…

        1. Renewables probably reduce primary energy consumption as a matter of fact.

        2. People might take your concern for the ecosystem a little more seriously if you didn’t just single out solar or wind energy for damnation, and rather directed your angst to all industrial and commercial activities of humanity..and of yourself.
          Maybe start with coal, agriculture and the petrochemical industries. Ban these sectors and you can start to get the fast collapse you seem to crave (for others).

          1. I have mentioned the only possible answer many times, that gets dismissed by everyone, and I agree it will never happen and way too late anyway.

            We need to use less, we need to vastly reduce population ASAP, to reduce suffering as we are so deep into overshoot.
            The only possibility to reduce suffering in the future is unacceptable, so people want to believe in renewable fairytales instead.

            We are not burning less to build renewables, EVs, batteries and everything else, we are burning more to build it and keep the rest of the system of civilization going. It’s a never ending journey, as the machines have a short lifespan and have to be replaced. We’ll keep doing it until we can’t, then collapse.

            Every civilization before us has collapsed, so why think ours is different in modus operandi?

            The main differences, are that we use more non-renewable resources than any prior civilization. Solar, wind and EVs are not renewable, they are machines that have to be built from non renewable resources and likewise for every machine that uses the electricity created..

            1. Hideaway. Most energy planners are working hard to ramp up non-fossil energy sources so that when the brisk decline in fossil occurs over the coming decades there will exist a partial offset to blunt the decline. Your story would make some sense if fossil fuels were not entering depletion era. Try to imagine that you lived in a country who imported most of the energy…you would feel differently about domestic energy production from the sun, wind or magma than you do coming from a country with some fossil energy abundance.
              Secondarily, many people in the world would like to see energy production that produces less carbon emission global heating. Its a big deal.
              Third, people in many countries do not sleep well knowing that they import energy in a world with potential massive geopolitical instability. Once again, local or regional domestic energy production from sun, wind and magma makes a lot of sense for security of supply.
              Fourth, consider that domestic energy production means less money sent overseas. Keeping the energy money in the local economy is preferable to all, except perhaps the big exporters.

          2. Hickory,

            The logic for some FF advocates is simple: my industry is threatened, so I’ll argue that the whole world is threatened: The end of my industry is the end of the world.

            For some, it’s just an angle, trying to drum up support for their industry.

            Bu some believe it, and I can sympathize. I wouldn’t want to live in a Bakken boom town after the boom has ended. Russia and large parts of the M.E. are going to have a tough time. Some parts of Texas have been through multiple booms and busts. I think there’s a whole industry on HGTV of renovations of expensive homes that were built during previous cycles.

            1. True. I get the sense that Hideaway and folks like Carnot, JT,etc think/speak from a position dominated by their vested interest. Vested interest clouds the thoughts of anyone.

              I had a conversation once with a guy who was working on a biofuel production facility installation. He was shocked by my comment that most biofuel production was an ecological disaster.

            2. One of my favorite quotes:
              “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair.

            3. It’s interesting that you think I have some sort of vested interest in fossil fuels when I keep stating the only solution is LESS. That means less fossil fuel use as well as everything else. We need to shrink civilization and simplify it as fast as possible to try and avoid some of the suffering that will happen when everything collapses.

              We are in massive overshoot, not just a little bit of overshoot. The population crashes when we no longer have fertilizers, plastics, food distribution, with billions stuck in cities with no hope of providing their own food.
              Your ‘answer’ is more people in cities, relying upon movement of more food and trinkets from more mines, just leads to a greater collapse into a more damaged natural world.

              You Nick are advocating for more burning of fossil fuels by advocating for more renewables, yet don’t seem to understand the connection. Renewables are all built with fossil fuels and totally rely upon fossil fuels for operating and maintenance.

              Have you ever seen a crane on site at a wind farm that wasn’t diesel powered? Have you ever seen anyone doing maintenance on a solar farm driving anything other than a diesel powered truck of some type? What about the building of either?

              We have had solar and wind power for decades now, yet fossil fuel use on a world ide scale continues to grow. You want MORE solar and wind, which means more of normal operation of civilization to build more of the mines and factories to do this building. For civilization to operate ‘normally’ to allow the building of more, requires more fossil fuels use, just like the new Aluminium factories in Indonesia running on new coal mines to produce cheap aluminium.

              A world building more, just means a faster approach to the energy cliff and collapse on the other side. It means more destruction of the environment, in the pursuit of more renewables, and more of everything else as the background system has to operate normally to create a giant increase in anything.

              You don’t have a systems approach to understand what’s going on in the big picture, which is what it takes to understand that normal civilization needs to apply, to grow a large industry by a lot.

              Normal civilization as we have had it for over 200 years is growth in population, energy use and complexity, with each having feedback loops affecting the development of the others. By population I mean population of the market, which at it’s easiest is by growing actual population. Please note that all developed countries are terrified of a population falling with many/most increasing immigration.

              Every statement about growing anything a lot more, is a wish for more business as usual, more population/market/ more complexity and more energy use. They come together. The incessant MORE is what ‘s destroying the natural world around us and driving the climate to uninhabitable levels. This is what you promote and you don’t realise it yourself.

              Please explain how a person always stating that the only answer is LESS of everything including LESS complexity, LESS population and LESS fossil fuel use is a shill for the fossil fuel industry??

            4. Hideaway,

              Nick tends to think that any critic of renewables is a shill for the FF industry, even if they don’t know it. He simply CANNOT comprehend that some people genuinely think that renewables will not work and are not a good solution. I think it is because in his mind there MUST be a solution, so if you’re not seeing wind and solar as the solution, you must see fossil fuels as the solution.

              He fails to realize that many of us do not think there is a solution at all.

            5. A lot of you are premature quitters. Hideaway is like the 8th grader who doesn’t want to do his homework because he’s lazy and says he’s going to die anyway. By the time he should have graduated from high school. He will likely already be an alcoholic. At 30, he will be either dead from an over dose, careless accident or in jail for social abuse. Why, because he’s still an 8th grader at heart and never realisticly planned for the future.

              At 68, I stay active, ride my road bike and go to the gym almost everyday. Most of the 50 plus year old guys I see at the gym look like there 8 month pregnant. Why, because they think 45 minutes of some stupid arm exercise with little effort is going to keep themselves fit and healthy. You have to push yourself hard. I wouldn’t trade my body with most of the 30 year olds who visit the gym. Notice I said visit and not exercise. I plan to live to be over a 100 years old. Why, because I’m taking care of the one life I have by eating right, maintaining muscle mass, lots of cardio, visit the doctor, avoid stupid accidents, minimize stress and get my sleep.

              Humanity and planet earth aren’t any different than our own lives. If you abuse mother earth, rape her resources and don’t try to preserve her beauty, our home. It’s going to be the end of humanity sooner than later. No plan and a race to consume all the fossil fuel is not acceptable. Humanity needs to pull their heads out of their rearends and work on ending their addiction to an early death. EV’s are earth’s statins. There not the cure all. But until we figure out how to take care of our only home. Those statins can buy us some time.

              Quitting is not an option. All of you have a powerful computer and communicator in your pocket. Which 20 years ago, you could have never imagined. It’s not that humanity can’t save it’s self. It’s does humanity have the will to save it’s self. Get over your pitty party.

              Don’t be a lead weight. Start swimming for shore.

              I feel better now, fuck

            7. I would rather have loved and lost
              Than never have loved at all

              I’m not planning on eating barbeque squirrel with tobacco sauce. Hide in the trees until I’m 6 feet under one. I will leave that shit for you.

              There are some hot 40 year old women in there too. I’m going to caught me one. Pretty sure you can’t top that. Even with fresh goats milk.

              Did you get home early from your religious cult tonight of gloom and doom ?

    2. I don’t think Island Boy has posted since Beryl hit his island, has he?
      I hope he’s okay and doing well.

  5. I hear what you are saying Hideaway “That means less fossil fuel use as well as everything else. We need to shrink civilization and simplify it as fast as possible to try and avoid some of the suffering that will happen when everything collapses.”
    I’m interested to hear you put it that way…rather than just singling out solar and wind, and electrification in general. I agree with the notion and concern.
    But we share an irrelevant position since
    Not a single country is on board with a rapid voluntary contraction.
    No politician can lead such a plan without being removed by vote or coup or assassination.
    No successful company has such a business plan.
    No hoards of old people (over 50) are lining up to end their life this very week.
    Very few people who can afford energy consumption are restraining themselves, to the contrary energy consumption seems to go up and up as a persons wealth increases.

    In short, its wishful thinking. If you really want to prioritize ecological preservation then live as small and short time as you can, and give your funds to the Nature Conservancy.

    Unfortunately the human project is completely at odds with the natural world. Ever since Homo erectus first showed up with a fire stick in our hands.

    1. Hideaway’s argument hinges on his belief that renewables consume more energy in manufacture than they deliver in their lifetime (also known as a negative EROEI). I don’t buy it. I believe we can transition from FF to all-electric, maybe at even less cost than BAU (if Seba is halfway correct).

      1. Yes indeed John- solar and wind energy are strongly net lifecycle energy positive when deployed in the favorable areas.
        But I do agree with the general notion that nothing that we do at scale is sustainable or without severe damage to the ecosystem. That applies to basic things we all take for granted like agriculture and energy production.

        1. nothing that we do at scale is sustainable or without severe damage to the ecosystem.

          Those are two very different concepts. I don’t think anyone can disagree with the idea that agriculture has a dramatic impact. But, unsustainable? AFAIK, climate change is the primary problem, the primary cause of existential risks for civilization. And it’s clear that humanity has the technical ability to stop excess GHG emissions. It’s also clear that actual GHG reductions are significant, but not nearly as large as would be optimal.

          The last study I saw indicated that climate change would likely reduce the world economy by 50% by 2100, IIRC. That’s a dramatic impact. OTOH, that impact was the result of a roughly 1% reduction in economic growth over 75 years, from roughly 3% to 2%. That’s not collapse.

          Who, 20 years ago, would have anticipated China’s progress on renewables and EVs? Despite fierce resistance from the FF industry (which we can easily see on POB), we are making real progress…

          1. Degradation of the basic food web- algae, insects, protozoa. Degradation of basic ingredients of life like soil quality, ocean O2 content, ground water.
            I know, this stuff is in the realm of science. But it is integral to life.
            We are big animals now measured in the billions. And we are extremely capable of manipulation and damage.
            I think this is all far worse and far later than you are aware of.

            1. I agree, Hickory.
              Climate change may be the nearest short term danger but the destruction of the ocean ecology from pollution and over fishing, the loss of topsoil, the destruction of the Amazon rainforests, etc. are following close behind.
              We are in severe overshoot in many areas. Any decrease in the availability of fossil fuels, perhaps even a small slowing of the INCREASE in production will be enough to topple the house of cards.

          2. Nick G, …. ” AFAIK, climate change is the primary problem, the primary cause of existential risks for civilization.”

            Yet every prior civilization before ours collapsed, with none of them having massive climate change as an issue due to the Holocene period of stability.

            We are sending many species extinct every day, we are toxifying the oceans and clearing huge tracts of forests, yet you don’t think any of this is an existential threat to civilization. How about lower ore grades of every mineral on average that must be mined to maintain civilization, is that no worry either??

            You have a very closed mind and see a highly complex system we call civilization as a simple thing to change.

            Let’s change energy use A for energy use B, and all problems solved. Except it doesn’t work that way, but in your mind it does.

            Here is a simple challenge Nick, work out the cost of replacing the new coal power station of 1.1Gw Adaro are building in Indonesia with with ‘something’ renewable, to produce the new Aluminium needed for the world. It’s on an island (Borneo), not connected to any main grid.

            Enlighten us about how much cheaper this will be, compared to the coal fired power station and still operate most of the time like the coal fired power station will.

            If you can’t work out a cheaper price than the coal power station how about stopping the nonsense talk of solar/batteries/wind being cheaper. The coal is costing the company nothing, they own the ‘rights’ to it. It just has to be dug out of the ground. It’s free to mankind just like solar and wind, so all the cost is in the machines we need to build to gain access to the energy.

            It’s not a good situation building more coal power stations, yet that is what is STILL happening, to gain access to the materials the modern world needs…

            1. “If you can’t work out a cheaper price than the coal power station how about stopping the nonsense talk of solar/batteries/wind being cheaper”

              Ya Nick, what is the price of humanity going for these days here in Hideawayville ?

              8 billion times say what ?

              Really ?

          3. Nick. Nothing personal. I just don’t think you have the training to understand the delicate nature of the web of life upon which we depend. We are pretty deep into a rapid and severe earth degradation and species extinction event. At some point it will be completely obvious to us all, even those who live much of their life inside, and that point will be near the end of the book called Human Run Amok.

            1. Nothing personal, LOL

              Should I cancel my dentist appointment and stop paying my bills? Oh yes, the science of Human Run Amok. How could I have forgotten. Do we have a date ?

            3. Dude, it’s not personal. But that electric bike isn’t going to cut it. I’ll save those deep breaths for chasing down and out running the assisted living.

              RHR & BP below 60 & 120/80 with a HRR average of 25

              I don’t think your qualified to give health advice

          4. lol, 50% of our GDP will go. Terrible. The outcome of systematically deconstructing the biosphere of a 4.5 billion-year-old planet to build more stuff, will mean half a paycheque for my grandchildren.

            I remember Nordhaus saying climate change isn’t a problem because most economic activity takes place indoors. He got the Nobel Prize in economics for that.

            We are all so utterly boned.

      2. After reading and watching Simon Michaux, I don’t believe it at all, but that is not going to stop me from going off-the-grid solar electric in my little retirement house, which I plan to build soon. Also to have roof solar hot water system, and solid fuel heating (wood/coal combination range), with super-insulation.

        None of us can control the future. It’s time everyone simplified as much as possible and watched out for themselves.

      3. I don’t think hideaways argument hinges on that at all. He is just arguing that the build out of renewables will act to increase FF usage, which is true. And further that renewables do not act to replace fossil fuels, but to add to the total energy used, which is also true.

        1. Niko,

          It’s certainly possible to sincerely believe these things. They’re simply unrealistic. Which is why the scientific and engineering communities are generally strongly behind a transition away from fossil fuels.

          I used to have long discussions on TOD and POB to convey the details of this. Now, it’s clear that the serious discussion is over, and that those who still oppose the transition are not listening to good information, for whatever reason.

          I don’t have as much time for such detailed discussions now, and they seem less important. Though I do hate to see people go off in the wrong direction, so I say things occasionally.

          1. Nick G,

            Which is why the scientific and engineering communities are generally strongly behind a transition away from fossil fuels.

            Well duhh. People in these firms are not going to lose their jobs and funding by saying hey this might not be possible. VESTED INTERESTS!

            It is funny, you and Hickory accuse hideaway of having FF interests, which is ridiculous beyond belief. But fail to see the interests of people having vested interests in “green” companies. I bet a lot of these so called “green energy” companies are partially or wholly owned by big fossil fuel companies. But yea who cares about that as long as BAU.

            2. I Mike…he had been consistently for many months singling out renewables as the big ecosystem catastrophe driver. I am reconsidering my perception of his motivations now that he has basically said that all industrial and commercial operations of humanity, including fossil fuels, are a problem.
              Not that any of it makes any difference since we all just keep burning pretty much everything that we can afford to.

            3. I never took Hideaway for a RE hater. It always seemed apparent to me that, like Hickory, he knew that it wasn’t going to save us and that, regardless of what we do, would only delay at best (though likely accelerate really), the inevitable. If he came off with an axe to grind on that particular topic, it’s likely because many posters in these threads tend to regurgitate media spiel and company press releases about how we’re already basically saved by [insert new tech/power plant/initiative here].

              Pretty sure I’ve seen him comment on new FF projects in the same unflattering way, given at the end of the day it’s all energy going into an extractive machine that is transforming the planetary surface into more hellscape. And what’s funnier is, no one even likes this overall.

  6. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/tech/elon-musk-donald-trump-x/index.html

    “Musk has already asserted his voice in the political sphere for months. He’s pushed racist conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s immigration policies, obsessed over the “woke mind virus,” a term used by some conservatives to describe progressive causes, and warned of the country’s impending “doom” if a “red wave” does not materialize in November.

    But now Musk, who is not only the owner but also the most followed user on X, has shifted to more direct campaigning for former President Donald Trump. It’s an unusual move for one of the world’s richest men and the leader of a mainstream social network.”

    I have believed all along that Musk didn’t give a damn about profit and loss when it comes to Twitter or X.

    It was and continues to be about POWER.

    1. Also direct corporate sponsorship of campaign events like the Trump/Musk interview are probably in direct violation of America’s poorly enforced campaign laws.

      The EU Commission has stated publicly that the campaign event may violate EU law. Musk replied in public that they could go fuck themselves. European governments aren’t too happy about Musk’s involvement in the UK riots, but the British government backed down.

      The platform may get banned in Europe. Musk probably wouldn’t mind that so he can play the victim card. Massive fines are also being mulled over, but A Musk has lots of money and B the platform itself is nearly bankrupt.

    2. Power, and the freedom from any societal restraint that the power allows. Freedom to purchase a political party and manipulate regulations and laws to your advantage.
      I shudder to think what AI will enable, whether it is in the hands of Musk or some other ‘self-proclaimed’ manipulator-in-chief.
      Survivalist saw Musk for what he was earlier than most of us.

    3. Musk is king of the chuds and the sooner Twitter dies from chronic engineer deficit, the better.

  7. Hideaway says fossil fuel use on a worldwide scale continues to grow

    True. But this does not prove that renewables construction is driving it. The net effect of renewables could be net negative but overwhelmed by non-renewables FF growth. That is, FF use would be even higher if not for renewables displacing so much FF electricity and gasoline.

    1. Absolutely correct. It just takes a real look at the numbers.

      For instance, it’s perfectly obvious that coal consumption in the US is falling due to substitution with both renewables and gas.

        1. Fantastic website.

          At night time the lions share of power generation comes from fossil fuels. Both coal and gas. And at times the cross-border energy exchange (I am guessing from French nuclear plants).

            1. Alimbiquated,

              Thanks for that. What a brilliant layout to present data. Fantastic stuff.

            2. Very cool display. Would like to see that for the whole world, and all of energy.

            3. Great display of the electricity flows.

              There are a lot of nonsenical arguments on this thread about that improving the grid is not economical and a meaningless exercise given our overwhelmingly fossil fuel dependency. 7-8% loss for HVDC lines over wast distances are not that much.

              A lot of the European population hubs are centered around the traditional coal based industry. Homes are being improved for example with insulation and public transport infrastructure is also steadily improved. An initially oversized electrical grid is being built out maybe; but a grid steadily based more on renewables as time goes by can potentially relieve problems when it comes to heating, transportation and not at least electronic consumption where homes actually are (we are all getting so very reliant upon electronic equipment by the way).

              Given that unsustainability is the way of life, at least the coming generations will have a somewhat slowed downed energy decline and population decline built in (due to falling birth rates) – at least in the industrialised nations. What can be done is actually a lot ranging from conservation efforts, social awareness, building lasting infrastructure and implementing better, more relevant and reliant technology. Got to have a plan of preserving economics of scale in industry some places as well I guess. The big collapse is not going to happen imo. It is going to be piecemeal and gradual.

          2. In the UK the last coal powered electricity station will shut down in a few months. It has already received its last shipment of coal. Night time electricity costs me ONE THIRD of the rate of daytime electricity, because on average the supply from wind, hydro and nuclear exceeds nighttime demand. Right now, at mid day, there is so much wind and solar that my electricity company is giving away its electricity for the next hour for free. I would charge my EV, but my solar panels have already filled it. I sell the excess back to the grid. My last electricity bill was MINUS 40 dollars. My wind farm shares give me a 7% dividend. I can now buy a bi-directional charger to use with my EV to sell back electricity to the grid at peak demand times. My EV holds enough electricity to power my house for 10 days. Humanity is going to crash and burn at some point in my children’s lifetime, but I will not do more harm to our environment than I have to whilst I am still alive.

            1. Ralph

              “My wind farm shares give me a 7% dividend”

              I would not brag about that because this is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is sad that so many finacially strained people are being overcharged to produce such dividends.

              Clearly the price that the wind farm owner can “get” needs to be trimmed.

              Morally I could not accept this degree of price gouging and would not own such shares.

            2. Carnot – Wind power is by far the cheapest source of electricity in the UK. We are a famously windy country. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of natural gas rose TEN FOLD in europe. That is an expensive source of electricity. We now get more than 25% from wind power, and that number is rising sharply. Nobody is going to blow up a wind pipeline or steal the wind.

      2. It’s also pretty obvious that the US has outsourced a lot of heavy industry to nations with growing fossil fuel use like China, India and Indonesia, which is precisely why looking at the whole world gives the real overall picture of what’s happening.

        Now go and look at the Keeling curve and tell me how much all the extra industrialization to build all the solar and wind has reduced CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 6-7 decades we have had solar and wind electricity production..
        https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

    2. John Norris, I covered this bit up thread …..
      “But this does not prove that renewables construction is driving it.”

      “You want MORE solar and wind, which means more of normal operation of civilization to build more of the mines and factories to do this building. For civilization to operate ‘normally’ to allow the building of more, requires more fossil fuels use, just like the new Aluminium factories in Indonesia running on new coal mines to produce cheap aluminium.

      If you need to build a NEW say 40GW of solar, you need new Aluminium production, new glass production, new solar wafer production. It means new buildings and new machines to build it. New powerlines to the new mines and factories. It means more plastic production for the insulation on wires, for the polymers and plastics used in the solar panels. None of this just materialises out of thin air. It all has to be from more new raw materials, new roads to new mines and processing plants

      We wouldn’t need new aluminium smelters in Indonesia based on coal power unless the demand for Aluminium was rising. The new 40GW of solar will have a demand of around 256,000 tonnes of aluminium each year. The building of the new Aluminium smelter will make the lives of the workers in the factories much better off. They will buy a lot of new products from motor bikes to vehicles to consumer products in their towns. The businesses in those towns will thrive and expand. New roads will be built to accommodate the new traffic, power consumption in the towns will grow, adding more coal use because of the increased demand.

      This same process has been happening for 200 years around the world. The usual way the world economy works is with growth. Without growth economies tend to collapse, because the new money needed to grow is created via loans with interest attached. Without extra new loans, past loans cannot be fully repaid, due to the interest component, so societies without growth end up collapsing.

      It’s all interconnected, you can’t have growth in one major part, without a cascade of other parts greatly increasing in size as well, which are relying on fossil fuels to develop. We are not building the solar panel factories, including all the components they are made from in countries with high solar and wind provided electricity. We are building them in places that are cheap, that rely more upon fossil fuels, like the Aluminium smelters in Indonesia based on new coal power plants.

      1. Hideaway, I’ve answered you before on the Indonesian smelters – don’t build the coal powered ones but wait for the hydro powered one. Or build them in a hydro-rich province like Quebec. Or don’t build any at all and let the price of aluminium go up forcing more efficiency and more recycling, more substitution and less valuable uses of aluminium to be curtailed.

  10. There are people who like to say that non-fossil energy production is not a transition mechanism, rather just an add on to fossil energy consumption.
    And so far that is generally true.
    But if you wait until fossil fuels are in decline prior to beginning the big job of offsetting some of their depletion loss it will be far too late to make a meaningful impact on getting that replacement job done at all. Its a 50 year project that should have started in earnest 50 years ago. Only a few countries seem to have a sense of that.
    And the result of that delay and limp effort will be widespread energy poverty. In a world of energy poverty the forests will disappear even more quickly. Deforestation will be one of the greatest examples of exponential growth that the world has seen.

    And that does not even take into account the other goal of weaning ourselves off of carbon emitting energy. It remains to be proven if humanity can do that intentionally, rather than just through depletion. I am doubtful…people so far are nothing without combustion.
    I think we are in for 3 degree global average temp rise within 50 years, which is double what we have seen so far. The ocean will be hot and with low oxygen content by that time, with 9-10 billion people crowding the shores. Good luck living in that world folks.

    1. HB tomorrow, high 79 and a low of 65. Plus three, ok.

      Still won’t need A/C, but I would expect my tomatoe plants to do better.

      Property values, location, location, location

      1. My rent in HB in 1967 was 30 dollars.
        And the beach was just down the street.

  11. Hideaway advocates the impossible, as Hickory has pointed out. There simply isn’t any viable political path to voluntary collective action reducing population and consumption, in any such fashion as he advocates. PERIOD.

    Physical laws determine the absolute limits of what we can or might be able to do. Economic and political laws or principles determine what we can do within the outer bounds of physical laws and realities.

    But it IS possible, politically and economically, to advocate for and invest in renewable energy, recycling, efficiency, and such, while continuing to conduct ” business as usual ” in terms of the non sustainable fossil fuel economy.

    The jungles will continue to be cleared, and WILL BE cleared. It matters not whether we do so to raise beef or to obtain the materials needed to build solar panels and wind turbines.

    And while it’s true that we currently use more fossil fuel year after year, it’s also true that renewable energy production is growing at a MUCH faster annual percentage rate than fossil fuel production.

    It may seem paradoxical, but if we can maintain this current trend, a day is coming when we will be burning less fossil fuel BECAUSE we have been investing in renewables.

    I can’t offer any hard guarantees, but it seems perfectly obvious to me that at least half of what we hear about the shortcomings of renewable energy is no more than fossil fuel camp propaganda.

    Turbine blades can be made to be recycled. Batteries can be designed and tweaked to make recycling them a no brainer decision. Economies of scale will enable us to build energy storage infrastructure, longer high voltage transmission lines, more energy efficient vehicles, appliances, houses, etc. In the meantime, the population will be peaking and gradually declining, and it may be declining fast.

    There’s a real possibility we can avoid a sudden hard crash, at least in some parts of the world, and gradually adjust our lifestyle to accommodate ourselves to using far far less energy per capita, partly by choice, mostly as a matter of necessity. It seems about as likely, from my own pov, that the coming crash will arrive slowly, over a couple of decades, as that it will hit like a hurricane in the days prior to weather forecasting. Looking at it from this POV, most of us here in this forum seem to believe we’re seeing the early stages of it already, although the general public is still oblivious to the meaning of so many new weather records, etc.

    If the slow collapse scenario plays out, we have a decade or two, maybe longer, to adapt to shortages, rationing, doing without, making do, in countless ways….. and we likewise have that time to continue to build out the renewable energy industries.

    Those who fail to actually THINK such things thru will predictably say that we won’t be able to afford such investments, and they may be right. But I can’t remember ever reading about a country still standing that couldn’t somehow afford weapons when confronted with an invading army…… although it’s often been the case that such a country put off getting weapons until it was a case of too little, too late.

    The industrialized countries of the world CAN afford renewable energy. Only a fossil fuel shill could possibly believe otherwise due to fossil fuel depletion. It’s not a question of affording renewables, it’s a question of affording NOT having them.

    We don’t have to go all the way clean and green right away. What we do have to do, if we can, is to avoid the hard crash and burn scenario, from which there might be no recovery at all, or a recovery that takes centuries.

    It borders on the ridiculous to assume that eight or ten billion of us will achieve a modern western standard of living .

    The depletion of one time gift of nature mineral resources and forced climate change troubles virtually guarantee it won’t happen. The fossil fuel camp is RIGHT about this general point.

    But they’re wrong in that they don’t take into account the usual course of human history. History repeats, over and over. It’s beyond perfectly reasonable to assume that a huge percentage of us will die hard of thirst, famine, disease, war hot and cold, disease, and combinations thereof.

    A very few countries with substantial remaining resources, and powerful military establishments, will take whatever remains from other countries unable to protect themselves.

    And while the depletion argument is very real, the fact remains that there’s still quite a bit of accessible oil, gas, and metal ore in the ground. Plus there’s a very real possibility that there’s resources enough in the polar regions to maintain a scaled back industrial economy for quite some time.

    Some of us can probably pull thru the coming crash with the water working and the lights on, given a little luck in terms of our leadership, if we can avoid WWIII and the climate doesn’t go totally nuts.

    In terms of the BIG PICTURE, we’ve nothing to lose, no matter how much we invest in renewables, if we fail to preserve some portion of our industrial civilization by doing so. That investment, in terms of the BIG picture won’t amount to more than a fart in a hurricane.

    On the other hand…… it could mean avoiding WWIII, or mean the lights stay on another twenty or thirty years simply by stretching out our limited supply of oil and gas.

    1. “It borders on the ridiculous to assume that eight or ten billion of us will achieve a modern western standard of living .”
      We don’t have anywhere near half of today’s population of 8 billion living at a modern western standard. And never will. I think that number may be going down already.

    2. OFM

      A very solid contribution as usual.

      I think maybe manufacuring high tech at scale could be a hurdle in the future. It is very hard to say when (Hideaway for example just repeats himself and never gives a schedule of anything). A reduction of the number of factories producing at scale at some point is far more likely than the all of a sudden collapse of an established industry. The economics of scale will probably be protected even if the fundations are crumbling – because there are no better options.

    3. Yawn,

      We have heard this multiple times before. This is a worn out record. Can you not come up with something better. Try learning basic thermodynamics and EROEi would be a start.

    1. So one big oil platform proves that there is unlimited fossil fuels (maybe even abiotic oil) and there is no need to look for other resources?
      Wow, that sure makes the future look great! I think I’ll buy a big truck.

    1. Beware of flashy websites that promise the earth. Most are boondoggles.

      Then do some thermodynamic analyis on geothermal and you will realise that it does not scale so will need huge numbers of plants to produce any meanigfull output. There will be a need for multiple wells for water exrtaction and re-injection, and a source of fresh water.

      1. Just watch.

        I think it is entirely within the realm of reasonable probability that 2nd gen geothermal will be technically and financially viability for widespread deployment.
        It will give nuclear power a run for the money, with much less risk and complexity.
        It will take about a decade to know how it will go, now that a few companies are putting some effort and capital into it.
        Drillers, and heat to electricity engineers and equipment makers, are going to be very busy.

  14. China Manufacturing going broke

    https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/08/chinas-manufacturers-are-going-broke

    He is an interesting piece. Chin’s Ev producers, PV producers, and chip makers are struggling and going bust.

    For those cornies that think EV and PV costs can keep declining may be in for a shock. Moreover who wants to buy an EV where the manufacturer might be in business in two years. What about all those software updates. You could end up with a large paperweight that has consumed a vast amount of energy.
    Used Ev’s are already hard to sell; they could bet a lot harder. Car lease companies are bracing themselves for a bit hit.

      1. Try reading the link for once before commenting. You might learn something.

      1. As usual you resort to ad homien attacks. I posted a link to a very good paper on geothermal power production a few months ago. Clealrly you either never read it or more likely could not understand it.

        “I think it is entirely within the realm of reasonable probability that 2nd gen geothermal will be technically and financially viability for widespread deployment.”

        You Think?. Like all your arguments you never provide any substance, just your opinion.

        Do you have a scientific qualifications and experience or are you the typical internet genius that populates sites like this.

        When the geothermal heated water reaches the surfaces it has to be flashed to produce superheated steam. Hot water will not spin a turbine. But maybe your science advisor does not know that.

        That means the efficiency is low. Look at the shitty website and the USAF geothermal plant design is 3MW. About the same as a wind turbine. But you also have to drill two deep holes, often into hard basement rock and then ther is all the above surface facilities. The only good thing is that that the supply is not intermittent.

        1. CARNOT
          As usual you resort to ad homien [sic] attacks.

          In the same paragraph:
          Clealrly you either never read it or more likely could not understand it.

          Also CARNOT 5 minutes later:

          Try reading the link for once before commenting. You might learn something.

    1. If you had told a German citizen in 1925 what life would be like in 1945, they would have thought you were insane. Similarly, if you had told an Iranian woman in 1970 what her life would be like in 1980, she would have thought you were delusional. People often say, “It can’t happen here.” But really, why not? We have already seen that America’s safeguards are weak, and people are no wiser than they were 100 years ago. Vote Blue

      @wolfmangoland7972
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYS3_ZvIDi4

      1. I have real doubts whether the republicans in multiple states and in the House will accept and certify the results of a Harris election win.
        And yes- that would change the course history.

        1. Joyce Vance writes about that, and provide some bit of reassurance about how difficult that would be for them to actually pull off.

          “people pushing these schemes are rogue actors—as much a part of the Big Lie as Trump was following the 2020 election. Secretaries of State and Attorneys General across the states will be prepared to ensure the certifying officials do their jobs, even if that means going to court. Despite the fact that the courts held firm in 2020, refusing to let Trump steal the election, there are concerns this go round, especially after the Supreme Court’s decision in the immunity case. But here, where the law is unambiguous about the duty to certify election results after a vote count, cases that will mostly go to state courts, there is little room to wobble.”

          https://substack.com/@joycevance/p-147452036

          She does go on to say: “Knowing this is likely coming [MAGA attempts at stealing the election] underscores how important turnout is in this election. Trump needs to be defeated by such overwhelming numbers of votes that it’s virtually impossible to claim fraud.”

          1. “Secretaries of State and Attorneys General across the states”
            Some of these people are QAnon MAGites, as is the house leadership.

  16. Here is another thing that some of guys here say won’t work
    Sodium Ion Batteries- Natron Energy Announces Plans for $1.4 Billion Giga-Scale Sodium-Ion Battery Manufacturing Facility in North Carolina-
    “Edgecombe County, NC facility to produce 24 GW of Natron’s revolutionary sodium-ion batteries annually, representing a 40x scale-up of current production capacity.
    Natron to invest nearly $1.4 billion in the facility, supported in part by a North Carolina Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG), creating more than 1,000 high-quality local jobs and growing the state’s economy by $3.4 billion over the next 12 years.
    Partnership to meet the rapidly expanding demand for critical power, industrial and grid energy storage solutions…Natron’s batteries are the only UL-listed sodium-ion batteries on the market today, and will be delivered to a wide range of customer end markets in the industrial power space, including data centers, mobility, EV fast charging, microgrids, and telecom, among others.
    Natron’s high-performance sodium-ion batteries outperform lithium-ion batteries in power density and recharging speed, do not require lithium, cobalt, copper, or nickel, and are non-flammable”

    https://natron.energy/

    This is stationary energy storage. This plant capacity is 24GW of battery storage/year!!!

  17. “So on August 10, it was 122 at 5pm, 115 at 8 pm (just after sunset), 106 at midnight, and 101 at 6 am, right before sunrise”

    Guess where?

    1. MY guess would be Phoenix, AZ if in the US and discounting Death Valley.

      1. Death Valley—–
        But Phoenix is the place that is totally beyond humans being able to live there without aircon..
        They did have a population of 25000 before mass aircon—
        But that was in that good old days.

  18. Carnot is back (cool name by the way). He says you have to understand thermodynamics and EROEI like he (and Hideaway) does then you wouldn’t believe this renewables nonsense. I think Carnot said CO2 is probably not a problem? And he works for the FF industry?

    Hideaway seems to be pro-degrowth (less people, less consumption etc). I’m curious, Carnot, are you in the degrowth camp also?

  19. If just one of the renewbie crowd could demonstrate a power grid run completely on solar wind and hydro without fossil fuel backup and a facility building solar and wind using only solar and wind power I’d accept that there is a chance of it working .

    Instead there are long lists of failures here’s one.

    http://euanmearns.com/white-house-goes-green-and-into-the-red/

    And another

    https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island

    1. “I’d accept that there is a chance of it working .”
      Thats doubtful, since you would be going against the party.
      Regardless, between now and then you are going to just have to accept the reality that around the world and including all of the US there is a mixed source electricity grid.
      Its not that hard to get a grip on.

      1. Hickory
        Once again you’ve made my argument. You can’t and won’t find an example that works. Instead you attack. That a Saul Alinsky maneuver. If you have something worthwhile to contribute then contribute it.
        As I have said over and over it’s a physics problem no amount of hand wringing or hopium will change it. Political winds won’t change it. It doesn’t matter one ioda who’s in office. They are all impotent against depletion and the law of diminishing returns.
        Sorry your new math with imaginary numbers won’t fix it.

        1. JT. I didn’t attempt to play your question game simply because you are trying to walk down a road that I consider irrelevant. One can only guess why you’d want to walk down that road.

          I am more interest in spending some thought on realist issues/scenarios. It will be a mixed energy source grid indefinitely.

        2. Sorry your new math with imaginary numbers won’t fix it

          In fact, you can’t describe an AC circuit without imaginary numbers.

        3. JT

          You will be waiting a long time for an answer from Hickory or Alimbiquated. These two fall for all the flashy websites with no substance. Hickory “believes” geothermal will work at scale. Zero proof provided, by him or his scientific advisors.
          The only sensible thing Hickory posted in recent weeks is the Sodium battery link. I have been following this for years and it looks like it is reaching maturity. BUT is is only useful for stationary systems. Were they available I would have preferred a sodium battery over lithium for mu house battery storage due to the significantly lower fire risk. by the way Prussion blue is a dye/ stain or Iron(III) Ferrocyanide. A Version know as Prussion white is made by replacing some of the iron with Sodium or Potassium) which produces a white sold that is used in cathodes.

          There are plenty of patent references; some by Natron and many by the Chinese.

          1. “Hickory “believes” geothermal will work at scale. Zero proof provided, by him ”

            Certainly true. Its just speculation and I have presented it as such. The ‘belief’ is based on early prototype scale production plant results and my understanding of the base factors at play.
            May or may not pan out. Proof one way or another will only come with time.

            And if it does pan out to be viable at scale it will only help those regions that deploys it. Like solar, or a nuc plant, or wind, or hydro.

          2. CARNOT —
            These two fall for all the flashy websites with no substance.

            Weren’t you the guy complaining about ad hominem arguments the other day?

        4. I have never seen an attack on Saul Alinsky the did not demonstrate that the attacker has no idea what Alinsky stood for.
          While Alinsky always acknowledged being left of center, he was never known to have joined any political party. He never identified as a socialist or Communist. His ambitions centered on providing tools for underrepresented communities to gain a voice in the democratic process.
          Alinsky seems to be an enemy of the right wing because he devoted his life to organizing powerless communities against “the powers that be”, and nothing represents entrenched power like the Republican party.

  20. Carnot
    Sadly despite the attraction to this site many are unaware of the significance of peak oil. Yet we are witnessing it in real time and somehow think it’s something else. Tim Morgan recently posted a good piece on the fact that debt growth is a direct consequence of net energy decline. Of course he describes it as ECoE but ultimately the surplus needed to run the greater economy is shrinking.

    Currently the US is adding 1Trillion dollars of debt every 100days so 3.5 trillion per year. We’re talking 10% of GDP I’d hope anyone who’s ever run a business would understand the significance of borrowing your profits every year. Basically you’re insolvent and bankrupt but nation status allows infinite printing. So the inflation we are witnessing is just currency debasement and a rush to the bottom.

    There is now serious misalignment between the financial economy which requires infinite growth and the real economy that requires infinite energy to back stop the monetary growth. Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done. The political class has to campaign that BAU will continue knowing full well it can’t. But the public won’t except anything else.

    So now they want price controls and want to subsidize housing. Well they’ve been subsidizing energy and how is that working out? Globally the energy sector is contracting traditional fossil fuels are merging and solar and wind are going bust.

    Real wages are declining as inflation is shrinking purchasing power. These are all the indicators that were predicted in Limits to Growth. Capital has shifted to the energy sector via subsidies and fracking for the last 15 years while services and industries loaded up on cheap debt through stock buybacks and cheap credit.

    How Limits to Growth ends is with the real economy shrinking while the financial economy does back flips trying to keep the balls in the air.

    The energy transition will never happen simply because it requires the existing system to continue functioning and it isn’t.

    1. There are only three reasons the U.S. is running an annual debt and it has nothing to do with oil production. It’s because of Reagan, “W” and Trump’s unwarranted tax cuts to the wealthy over the last 45 years to drown the U.S. in debt. Make no mistake about it. All these tax cuts do is transfer power from the federal government to the wealthy private sector. Instead of collecting revenue from the wealthy. The government is borrowing from the wealthy. Idiots like Musk wouldn’t be around with their power if it wasn’t for the conservative tax policy of the last 45 years. Only an idiot would believe peak oil has anything to do with U.S. debt. Educate yourself and stop believing this stupid propaganda that is being paid for with the money that should be collected by taxes from the wealthy. Musk has contributed nothing to society to earn his wealth that couldn’t have been done by regulation.

      Keep you eye on the ball and off the short skirts in the stands.

      1. Huntington
        I feel sorry for you because you believe the political rhetoric. You’ve mistaken the symptom for the cause. Peak oil came right on time in the lower 48 and crushed the US industrial economy. 1971 look it up. The 1953-1973 period of economic growth has been unmatched by any historic measure. It was greater than the 150years that preceded it and greater than the 50years that proceeded it.

        Unfortunately you have been duped into believing that the political system creates wealth. It’s all propaganda. Wealth is built on the personal productivity of the masses. This is leveraged through energy per capita. Plan and simple but it takes humility to accept that we are not the masters of our destiny. Rather it’s resources our availability to access them and opportunity.

        Economic growth requires energy growth the 1953-1973 period saw energy growth at 6-7% a year which is a doubling time of 10years. Since then we have had a 2-3% growth and what’s the result.

        No more moon shots man hasn’t left low earth orbit since 1973. No supersonic passenger flight. The fastest plan ever built is in moth balls. As is the shuttle program.

        Energy is everything sorry you’re just wrong and angry about it. But feelings mean nothing and accomplish nothing.

        The Reagan Thatcher years are precisely what they were given the circumstances. They unleashed imbedded prior public wealth through privatization. Which was actually embedded energy. Plus this stimulated lending which was required to create the money needed to pay back previous debts with interest. Allowing wealth to accumulate in assets rather than the masses slows consumption which saves a real economy built on limited energy growth. The rich simply don’t consume as much in aggregate as the middle and lower middle do because if you pour money on the general public they spend it faster that the real energy based economy can provide goods and services to supply the cash flow leading to inflation or hyperinflation.

        Allowing the rich to get richer is a relief valve that soaks up money that the real economy could never service.

        Now you probably haven’t understood a thing I’ve said but that’s ok keep on believing that Kamala/Trump have a plan or a clue. I’ll keep demonstrating they’ve only done what they could given the greater set of circumstances that determine what is possible.

        1. JT don’t feel sorry for me. I’m the one with an education in finance and economics. You are the hole digger with peak oil fear syndrome. I’m going to be just fine.

          You seem very confused about the lower 48 states date of peak oil production. It wasn’t over 50 years ago. The lower 48 has never produced more than in todays economy. Of course that fact doesn’t fit your bullshit now, does it ?

          After World War 2, the U.S. was pretty much the only industrialized country standing which wasn’t bombed to a shell of it’s self. The British empire was handed over to the U.S and it’s clear today, that since that time there has been only one real Super Power. Economic Russia was nothing more than a dictatorship with nukes.

          Yes, for decades after WW2 the U.S was master of the world in manufacturing. During the 90’s and to follow, the U.S. bussiness community closed their manufacturing plants by the thousands and shipped them and their jobs to China to capitalize on cheap labor. The lack of energy has not played any significant factor on the world economy to date than being part of a temporary recession. Energy today is still cheap and the U.S. is still the leader of the world.

          You can live your life in fear if you wish. Americans waste more than half of the energy they use and could keep 99% of their quality of life on half their energy consumption. Their mostly just lazy or ignorant of their behavior.

          No one wants to live in a world of constant sonic booms or useless trips to the moon. The shuttle was an out of date space truck before it was in service. I can say that from the experience of my father who worked on it at Rockwell International.

          “angry about it. But feelings mean nothing and accomplish nothing”

          Nothing displays your ignorance more than your comment above. I have nothing to be angry about. I pretty much have it all. I have my health, financial security, a beautiful home in a place I can’t think of a better area to live and people who love me.

          Your clueless

        2. JT and Hideaway are exactly right. The economy is like a hurricane. As soon as the fossile dissipation energy dwindles, everything collapses. That’s happening now, even in front of your beach eyes.

  22. From JT upthread:
    “If just one of the renewbie crowd could demonstrate a power grid run completely on solar wind and hydro without fossil fuel backup and a facility building solar and wind using only solar and wind power I’d accept that there is a chance of it working .”

    That is easy. Norway and other places with almost 100% hydro electricity source have enough flexibility to add wind/solar into the mix without fossil fuel usage if wanted. It is a cost question in the short term perspective. Places in this category goes on and on: Tasmania, New Zealand, Washington state (US), Ottawa, Ethiopia, Costa Rica etc. On top of that a lot of places can make it with a pretty low level fossil fuel back up system, given that the grid has been built out in a stellar way.

    What is a more interesting question is how much embedded fossil fuel usage goes into the construction and reconstruction of renewables (thinking especially of hydro, wind and solar). Steel can be recycled and be strong enough for a lot of uses in that way, likewise copper and we have to make low carbon cement or find a suitable replacement in some cases. It is unrealistic to remove fossil fuels from the mix in the embedded sense and also for electricity generation and backup a lot of places (but not all). Fossil fuel supplies will also not suddenly just disappear.

    That leaves us with still an even more interesting question for the future; can we do well enough with 20% of today’s fossil fuel consumption?

    1. 20% of US per capita fossil fuel consumption? easy. Most of Europe is already half way there. 20% of Europe’s consumption per capita? We would need significant social restructuring and a change of mindset away from exponential growth and consumerist society, which might trigger financial collapse, but theoretically possible, to provide a 20 century standard of living at least in the developed world. 20% of per capita consumption for all the world for each nation’s current consumption? We are so far into overshoot already, and so much of the poorer parts of the world are already in crisis, which makes any further reduction in fossil energy a guarantee of failed nation status, which it will be impossible to contain geographically. Industrial civilisation is going down. It is simply a question of how long it takes, and what, if anything, survives the crash.

    2. “can we do well enough with 20% of today’s fossil fuel consumption?”
      1. How many?
      2. Who?
      In a world with less fossil fuel, the distribution will be much more uneven than it has been on the way up.
      And the way up was no smooth ride.

    3. This bit …… “and a facility building solar and wind using only solar and wind power I’d accept that there is a chance of it working .”

      Not one of those places using lots of hydro electricity make much of anything let alone build solar and wind plants from materials they have mined and processed themselves.

      Upthread J Norris mentions wishful thinking as a solution as so many people do. Reality, we mine the raw materials where we find them, we manufacture products in the cheapest manner possible, which is why the new nickel and aluminium smelters are in places like Indonesia using new coal fired power for the heavy energy inputs.
      Solar panels cannot be ‘cheap’ unless the Aluminium is cheap, the glass is cheap, the silicon wafers are cheap, the plastic and polymers are cheap, the wiring is cheap, the electronics to make it all work is cheap etc.

      Try making solar panels and the rest of the system cheaply using Aluminium from only solar, wind and battery electricity, glass from whatever ‘only electrical ‘ processes, likewise for silicon wafers, plastics and polymers from synthetic fuels created by plants like Haru Oni where renewables are the only power source and get back to us about how any of this has a long term future…
      Then try mining in more remote places using only electric vehicles and electric drilling equipment to do the searching for the metals, before we can even think of mining them, etc.

      There is vast short termism creeping into every argument of using fossil fuels for the future, just ‘less’ of them, as a time will quickly approach when we have none at our disposal at all, and have used enough to turn the climate into an uninhabitable place for humans and most other life.

      All the ‘green’ plans are not to slightly lower fossil fuel use, but to use ‘alternatives’ as we have burnt too many fossil fuels already. The concept of obtaining all the metals and minerals necessary for this ‘green’ future is not on the radar at all, apparently they will all just magically appear…

      When fossil fuels, especially oil becomes much harder to obtain, which choice will be made, the last of the diesel goes to mine more dirt to make solar panels, or the diesel goes to a farm tractor to plant the wheat crop, into dirt without fertilizer… Most likely neither, it will be needed and used by the military to quell the masses.

      Collapse is approaching rapidly, precisely because most people keep believing in a green future and cannot see the energy and material crunch that is rapidly encroaching upon us all and the complexity unravelling associated with it.

      1. The original question was can we survive with 20% of the current fossil fuel consumption. i.e. 20% coal, 20 % gas and 20% oil. in order to extract the 2)% of all fossil fuels about 20% of the current oil demand is probably being used for the extraction of these resources. About 15% of the current oil and NGL’s is being used to produce petrochemicals. Can we live ina world with substantially less petrochemicals. The JSO mob and it affiliates think so. that would drastically impact not only on our lives, but also on what we can produce, particularly unreliables. How will wind turbines be produced. They need epoxy resins, surface coatings, lubricants, insulated cables. It is not much different for PV. Most will be surprised by how many petrochemicals are used in medical applications, a lot of which ends up as no-recyclable medical waste( PPE, syringes, tubing, packaging and many more). Then there is consumer packaging- food and drinks, clothing and footwear, household goods, building materials. The list is endless.

        Even if we were to replace every light combustion engine vehicle and appliance with BEV and battery appliances there still would be a huge demand for middle distillates and heavy distillate. The diesel engine is much harder to electrify. We are talking about trucks, trains, marine vessels – all essential tools for producing food, minerals, petrochemicals, transporting heavy goods and of course, aviation( like it or not).

        Reducing fossil fuels by any amount would result in deskilling the industry which is already happening. Once those skill sets are lost they will be very difficult to replace. The hydrocarbon extraction and processing industry is increasingly being run by old men like myself. We are dinosaurs on the brink and no amount of AI is going to replace those skill sets.

    1. Old Chemist,

      Thanks you for this dose of reality. If anyone else bothers to read this link they might learn something. Sadly cognitive bias or even dissonance is likely to surface and you (and I) are likely to be lambasted as climate deniers for doubting the claim of climate Armageddon. Pielke Sr and Jr are both very plausible in their analytical approach, as are many others who dare challenge the mighty Mann ( a clown who tried to claim he had won a Nobel Prize, which means nothing these days).

    1. In his summary section he says-
      “Comparing 2040 with 2023, we can expect the Energy Cost of Energy to rise by about 75%, and the conversion ratio of natural resources into economic value to continue to decrease. Significantly, aggregate energy production is likely to decline, with falls in fossil fuels output only partly offset by increases in the supply of renewables.
      On this basis, the aggregate of material economic output is likely to fall by around 18%.
      If population numbers continue to increase – albeit at a decelerating rate – the World’s average person is likely to be fully 27% less prosperous in 2040 than he or she is today. At the same time, the cost of necessities per capita is projected to be about 40% higher in 2040 than it is today.”

      Of course these are projections and so the numbers should be viewed with lots of wiggle room, nonetheless the trends he highlights have a strong base on reality.
      As has been pointed out before, the outcomes to 2040 and beyond are going to be wildly variable based on where you are. There are going be huge disparities….energy haves and have-nots. This applies to individuals, and to regions and to countries.

      The trends point to widely higher costs for energy available to purchase.
      Work to have the capability to make your own energy, personally and in your utility region.
      Learn to live with much less energy…. much less miles, much less purchased products.

      We will know that the impact of energy scarcity is getting real, for even those with incomes, when the global air miles traveled begins to decline…the canary in the coal mine. Not just yet.
      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AIRRPMTSID11

    2. This is one way that Singapore is planning to navigate the next 30-50 years-

      “Australia has approved an ambitious project to export solar power to Singapore via a subsea cable spanning over 4,300 kilometers…The project has an estimated price tag of some $13.5 billion, Reuters reported, and the final investment decision on it is slated for 2027, with electricity set to start flowing along the cable in 2030….The capacity of the project will be a maximum of 6 GW, part of which will be delivered to the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, Darwin, with the rest going to Singapore.”

      This is a second attempt at initiating the project, now with government involvement.
      Time will tell how it works out.

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