69 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, August 31, 2023”

  1. Here’s a tip:

    Don’t let one idiot say something provocative, demonstrably false, or otherwise triggering, and then go on to monopolize the entire comments section.

    If you walk down the street, and fall into a hole, after several more trips across town, you can learn not to fall in the same hole, every damn time!

    2. That bottleneck was natures last chance to prevent the emergence of Homo sapiens about 500,000 years later. Missed opportunity.
      Combustion, and all that comes with it, won.

      not sure why they added this sentence….chat AI?
      “Bioengineers can now synthesize genetic diversity in animal populations through cloning and gene editing.”

      1. You gotta add the positive spin on the end, else people get a depression and won’t read your stuff anymore which makes the sponsors have a depression too.

        We’ll just use the power of AI and Bitcoin and make whole new species to replace the ones we ate/burned/evicted/ran over/shot over the years. It’s no big deal and is a great win with shareholder value being made too.

        1. Exactly, Kleiber. Does the name Tyrell Corporation sound familiar?

          Can they suspend natural selection while they’re at it? Otherwise we’ll still just be left with fancy rats pigeons cockroaches and jellyfish anyways.

  3. On weather extremes-
    “And South America saw some of its warmest winter temperatures ever.
    South America is living one of the extreme events the world has ever seen,” tweeted climate historian Maximiliano Herrera as the heat wave unfolded. “This event is rewriting all climatic books.”

    ““There’s not a ‘weird’ acceleration happening” in the Earth’s climate, said Noah Diffenbaugh, a scientist at Stanford University. “There’s an expected acceleration happening.”

  4. And now there are roughly 8,000,000,000 people on the planet (no mention of Adam & Eve).

    THE EARLY ANCESTORS OF HUMANS WERE REDUCED TO 1,300 INDIVIDUALS AND CAME CLOSE TO EXTINCTION

    • Early human ancestors faced near-extinction between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago.
    • An extreme climate event might have caused the evolutionary bottleneck.
    • The population of our ancestors might have been reduced to just 1,280 individuals for about 117,000 years.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/human-ancestors-were-down-1300-faced-extinction-900000-years-ago-2023-9

    1. Yes indeed …see the comments on this up above from WeekendPeaks post.

    2. Hey, it got even worse about 4,350 years ago when the population of the earth was reduced to just eight people. All the other millions of men, women, babies, and little kiddies were drowned in one big flood because God was pissed off at their daddies. Now, that was near extinction if there ever was such a thing. 🤣

      1. 8 people? Nah. You’re just quoting the official version put out by the Church. Haven ‘t you heard? There was a coupla stowaways disguised as gorillas.

        1. I always wondered: “What did they feed the lions and whose bright idea was it to bring the mosquitos?

          1. Well, it was never really proven but lions were strong suspects in the murder of unicorns!

    1. Thanks OFM! Long indeed but filled with insights into the police state that China has become.

    2. Thanks for sharing this. Ian Johnson is a very good reporter from and about China who knows what he’s talking about. His sources are real people for sure, and you can trust him to be recounting their words accurately.

      1. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there’s a real possibility that China will revert to its previous status as a near totalitarian state while continuing to be one of if not the most powerful country in the world in terms of control of a couple of key industries…….. namely the manufacture of renewable energy goods and the rare earth market.

        Fortunately there are quite a few major deposits of rare earth ores in the West, and I’m hoping they will be developed if the environmental camp wakes up and gets its head out of its ass. Otherwise the west will morph into a Chinese colony, grand scale, leading to consequences familiar to anybody who has read a few history books……. war on a similar scale, and the continued use of fossil fuels to the point that the climate is not only wrecked but even to the point that depletion forces the price of oil and gas up high enough to result in a major depression or even economic crash, ON TOP of ever greater climate troubles.

        We’re in something of a paradox. The essential fast growth of the renewable energy and conservation industries are absolutely dependent on Old Man Business As Usual remaining on his feet, because if he ever falls to his knees, there won’t be money and political will to continue with long term investments such as long distance transmission lines, wind and solar farms, etc.

        About the best we can REALISTICALLY hope for, in my estimation climate wise and in economic terms, is that the renewables grow fast enough that they start displacing oil and gas at a very fast clip, thereby eliminating the worst aspects of the depletion scenario and possibly preventing an otherwise inevitable catastrophic run away greenhouse scenario.

        Unfortunately, at least half of world’s leaders seem to be convinced that national security, in military terms, is a bigger problem than climate and resource depletion combined. If you look into the military news, you will see that at least four countries that were never until very recently mentioned , are building new generation fighter aircraft, rockets and such.

        It’s too bad that money isn’t going into the renewables industries. If it weren’t for the risk of war, we could easily pull off the renewables transition using money spent on military hardware and training people to use it.

        1. The global EV industry would do just fine if the rare earth market disappeared. Tesla demonstrated that induction motors are perfectly viable, w/ just a couple of % lower efficiency. Nissan and BMW are now switching to no-magnet externally-excited-rotor synchronous motors, similar to the giant synchronous motors and generators used since Westinghouse was battling Edison in the AC/DC wars. These motors can match or exceed PM motor efficiency. Other OEMs are developing ferrite-magnet-based motors.

          Lithium and graphite are where the real EV resource bottlenecks are developing.

        2. OFM —

          Be careful making generalizations about rare earth deposits because you might be comparing apples with oranges. Put very simply, there are heavy REE deposits, light REE deposits and even middle REE deposits. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare-earth elements because they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties, but have different electronic and magnetic properties. All are not equal. Don’t feel bad, as a young exploration geologist I made the same mistake.

          The largest rare-earth deposit in the U.S. is at Mountain Pass, California, sixty miles south of Las Vegas. It is a light REE deposit consisting of mainly of carbonate-fluoride (bastnäsite). At present, all of the world’s heavy rare earths (such as dysprosium) come from Chinese rare-earth sources such as the polymetallic Bayan Obo deposit. The Browns Range mine, located 160 km south east of Halls Creek in northern Western Australia, is currently under development and is positioned to become the first significant dysprosium producer outside of China.

          I have visited many rare earth deposits including the main Chinese and American ones. Bayan Obo remains stuck in my mind because: 1) it extends as far as the eye can see and 2) seeing children wading in vast fields of highly radioactive waste. Perhaps they were the children of miners.

          2. Don’t forget Lynas ( LYSCF). they are sitting on a very rich deposit. Separating it of course is a messy business and Malaysia is not happy about that.
            rgds
            WP

          3. Thanks Doug,
            I don’t really know much at all about rare earths but it’s my understanding that China dominates the industry only partly because of their domestic ore deposits, and as much or more so because they dominate in the refining of many kinds of ores yielding various metals and other minerals…. and that they can profitably refine rare earths separated from these other ores because so much of the cost is already sunk into the job.

            And I do read about various deposits of some rare earth elements in various places that are at least potentially worth mining…… but maybe at very high costs, compared to buying from the Chinese.

            It seems that a large part of their marketing strategy is to sell at a good profit but at a far lower price than they COULD charge, the intent being to discourage anybody anyplace else from spending the huge sums necessary to open a new mine and refinery from scratch.

            So this way they maintain their monopoly or near monopoly on some of the rare earths in the market place.

            At any rate this is the way I read the news about rare earths.

        3. ”China will revert to its previous status as a near totalitarian state while continuing to be one of if not the most powerful country in the world in terms of control of a couple of key industries” : before that, they will have to manage their real estate crisis and second, decrease the expanding unemployment of their young people. And third, they will have to cut their dependence on coal and oil which are beginning to run out otherwise, their economy will collapse.

  8. How long will it be before you can call a local small time electrical contractor who will come to your house and set up an easily expandable ground mount solar array coupled with an easily expandable battery storage?

    I’ve just looked at batteries from a Chinese company that look just like car batteries which will be available one at a time, so that you could install just a few panels plus a couple of these small batteries and get max use out of your system, while allowing you to add to it piecemeal as money is available. They’re supposed to be good for four thousand cycles. No price mentioned.

    There’s a potential here for getting a fairly fast bang out of your bucks.

    1. In Calif and other places with active solar sector, there are scores of electrical contractors doing this work. They are swamped with orders…long wait times are common.

  9. That husband of mine. He calls himself “a dumb carpenter,” and he is a stroke survivor, but sometimes he says things that are just so . . . succinct.

    Looking at XOM’s projections for future emissions, how they fall off, but not enough to curb climate disaster, we both think curbing emissions at all is impossible under a continued regime of growing population and consumption. He said:

    “You can’t grow and cut!”

    1. “You can’t grow and cut!”
      Kind of true.
      Replacing coal with nat gas or solar is a very big gain on carbon emissions.
      On the other hand, a growing population will certainly lead to higher emissions.
      Also, a prosperous (growing) economy can afford to install more efficient and cleaner equipment (heat pumps, EV’s, better windows, higher efficiency furnaces, etc),
      whereas a stagnant or contracting economy can afford little of these improvements, and will resort to even more coal and wood as oil and nat gas supplies deplete. [you grow emissions as you contract]

      Can you intentionally clean up as you contract? I suspect theoretically with a very well-behaved and bright population it would be possible, but not with this humanity.

      Overall, I largely agree with Old Chemist who has said something along the lines of – ‘humanity will burn all of the fuel it can get its hands on’.
      I’ll add – “and then it will stop growing”.
      And the earth will be hot!

        1. So did total energy consumption go down, or did coal just get replaced with other sources?

          1. Coal was just replaced.

            Of course, one of the reasons coal was eliminated was that Thatcher hated the coal mining union, and was determined to destroy it.

            Most of it was the cheapness of other energy sources – the UK still has a *lot* of coal in the ground. It’s just not competitive, and is no longer treated as a reserve because it’s clear that it will never be competitive again.

            2. There’s a significant difference between a peak demand of coal in the 1950’s vs a peak production of UK coal in the 1910’s. Should read what ChatGPT has to say: https://chat.openai.com/share/eac1962e-2894-4472-9005-32a1468fa0ba

              The rest of the coal is much deeper. There’s a UK writer and former banker named Matt Ridley who benefits financially from coalmines on his estate — he’s a viscount — and constantly bemoans climate change concerns.

            3. Paul,

              The ChatGPT discussion seems entirely consistent with my comments: the UK has a lot of coal left, but it’s more expensive to extract than the competition.

              The UK was a large exporter of coal in the teens and twenties, and up to that point coal was considered essential to national security: both industry and the Royal Navy ran on coal. Starting with WWI the Navy converted to oil (from Iran!), and over time domestic coal became more expensive and less important to national security.

              So domestic coal became uncompetitive – that doesn’t mean there isn’t quite a lot that could be extracted if desired.

              There is an enormous amount of fossil fuel in the ground that will never be extracted because it’s not competitive in cost. Just a few examples: the Illinois Basin has about 80 billion tons of coal which are being abandoned because of high sulfur and low demand; Green River kerogen, which burns just like coal (though even less cleanly); and Alaskan coal, which looks like it has between 250 billion and 2.5 trillion tons – we’ll never know for sure because no one considers it worth investigating further.

            4. So, one might ask: why is this question of competitiveness is important?

              Because competitiveness and substitution is essential to understanding the dynamics of energy production and consumption. Fossil fuels compete with each other, and all sources compete: nuclear, geothermal, renewables, etc.

              The world is awash in vast amounts of energy, and which ones we use depend mostly on the state of the art of conversion and utilization of that energy: PV didn’t exist 100 years ago, but the 100,000 TW of power it taps into existed back then. Coal existed in Britain 2,000 years ago, but the tech didn’t exist to use it. Now coal is abundant and…it’s obsolete. Uncompetitive due to it’s pollution and extraction costs.

            5. “There is an enormous amount of fossil fuel in the ground that will never be extracted because it’s not competitive in cost. “

              It’s now not as much about cost but about EROEI because of the excess energy required to extract it and the amount of CO2 emissions that will produce (and the amount of water, etc required). The easy coal in the UK is GONE, just like the chart shows.

              “Just a few examples: the Illinois Basin has about 80 billion tons of coal which are being abandoned because of high sulfur and low demand; Green River kerogen, which burns just like coal (though even less cleanly)”

              It’s probably lignite coal. Green River oil shale requires water which that basin doesn’t have, unless they want to siphon off Colorado River water.

              Read the Myth of Saudi America from 2013

              https://slate.com/technology/2013/02/u-s-shale-oil-are-we-headed-to-a-new-era-of-oil-abundance.html

              “Does all the new American oil give us yet another way to fry ourselves? At 0.1159 metric tons of carbon per barrel of oil, the oil in Bakken and Eagle Ford amounts to a carbon pool of 81 gigatons, and the Green River shale adds up to 232 gigatons. Given that burning an additional 500 gigatons of fossil fuel carbon is sufficient to commit the Earth to a practically irreversible warming of 2 degrees Celsius, these are scary numbers. However, if oil analysts such as those speaking at the American Geophysical Union are right, almost all of this oil will remain inaccessible. In that case, coal—which certainly contains enough carbon to bring us to the danger level and probably much beyond—remains the clear and present threat to the climate, and the fight to leave as much coal as possible in the ground remains the front line in the battle to protect the climate. This does not mean the threat posed by the carbon pool in unconventional oil can be completely ignored. The case against oil abundance seems persuasive, but I’d hate to bet the planet against the ingenuity of future oil engineers, which is why I feel that some rearguard actions that inhibit development of unconventional oil are warranted, notably in the case of the Keystone XL pipeline, which taps into Canada’s Athabasca oil sands.”

          2. “It’s now not as much about cost but about EROEI”.

            Do we have any information about UK EROEI? Coal doesn’t need refining or conversion like bitumen or oil – my impression is that higher costs are primarily due to the labor required for deep underground mining. It seems to me that EROEI isn’t very important for coal (or bitumen) because you can power your operation right at the mine-mouth. EROEI of anything above about 1.5 works (though it certainly chews through your resource that much faster).

            Have you seen any historical price data-series for coal? I haven’t been able to find anything that goes very far back.

            “The easy coal in the UK is GONE, just like the chart shows.”

            Sure. But there’s still a lot of coal, it’s just not as easy. It’s still viable and affordable, it’s just not COMPETITIVE with gas, with coal imports, etc. There’s an important dynamic here: in a competitive, free-market environment small price differences make a big difference. If UK coal becomes .1 pence more expensive per kWh than it will lose out. The UK was a coal exporter for a very long time, and it was competing with the world. If other producers were a tiny bit cheaper then UK exports would go down. So production declines tell you something about RELATIVE COST, but nothing reliable about UK costs or EROIE.

            “It’s (Illinois Basin coal) probably lignite coal.”

            It’s bituminous. It’s been used in large quantities, it’s just losing the competition, primarily because it’s sulfur content makes it slightly more expensive.

            http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/environmental/l4/2.html

            “Green River oil shale requires water which that basin doesn’t have, unless they want to siphon off Colorado River water.”

            I’m not talking about oil conversion, I’m talking about burning it like coal. Kerogen is roughly similar to wood in energy density. It’s perfectly burnable, it’s just not competitive with coal, and never will be.

            “the fight to leave as much coal as possible in the ground remains the front line in the battle to protect the climate. ”

            I agree.

            “I’d hate to bet the planet against the ingenuity of future oil engineers”

            I also agree with that.

            We cannot rely on depletion or geological shortages of FF to save us from climate change. We cannot be complacent. We need to take political action to maintain and accelerate the transition away from FF.

        2. Answer-
          UK didn’t de-industrialize due to loss of coal.
          Although de-industrialization of every country will happen if they each don’t
          act to offset fossil fuel depletion quickly.
          Depends on the goals of a nation.

          It is true that industries requiring high electricity consumption do relocate to lower electricity price regions. As an example
          “It has been estimated that electricity from Grand Coulee Dam alone provided the power to make the aluminum in about one-third of the planes built during World War II.”, with a big migration of the aluminum and aircraft industries to the NW.

  10. https://electrek.co/2023/09/04/worlds-longest-subsea-power-cable/

    If the money and political will are there, things can happen on the renewable energy front that appeared to be impossible just a few years ago, because the cost of such infrastructure as this long distance power line has fallen to the point building such lines is approaching the no brainer category.

    This line cost less than ten percent, ball park, what a nuke capable of providing the same power would cost, and by comparison, it’s perfectly safe.

    And Denmark has built up the country’s domestic wind and solar industry to the point they get over fifty percent of their domestic power this way.

    So that power line will be heavily used most of the time, because Denmark therefore has a lot of excess capacity more times than not…… plus with the line built, adding more wind and solar capacity will be profitable, with a ready market for the juice in the UK.

    This will go a long way towards freeing our Limey friends from the need to buy oil and gas from countries that are not necessarily our friends.

    Assuming Old Man Business As Usual stays on his feet, I expect to see long distance HVDC power lines being built like we once built highways, all over the place, over the next twenty years or so.

  11. Some good comments here.

    What to make of the energy transition so far?

    Probably that it is going to be a deteriorating slow grind when it comes to energy over a substantial period of time. You could look at risk factors like geopolitical conflicts, nuclear war and also social breakdown. If economic theory is of any use at all (the ones educated in natural science would say they get it all wrong), I would argue that the principle of utility maximisation could be relevant in an economic degrowth scenario as well as the growing one. No dictator, elites or people in general would do something that make them worse of in most situations. That would probably mean finding a way to succumb significant “humps” or problems going forward, even if the trajectory is downward. All down to the established human trait of self interest.

    1. Note that although Walrasian economics is elegant, to make the theory work a number of unrealistic assumptions must be made about how a real economy operates. The maximizing of utility and productivity sounds nice, but in practice it is likely an illusion.

      2. Hi Dennis,

        It’s at least possible that a country can collectively realize it’s in a do or die situation in respect to energy supplies, even in a time when the economy is contracting, and make tough decisions involving major sacrifices in other areas in order to build out renewable energy infrastructure.

        Such countries are apt to make extreme sacrifices in other respects so as to build up their military power when threatened by more powerful countries.

        Renewable energy infrastructure has recently won a place as a fundamental element of national security plans.

        Keep in mind that Putin put his boot in the ass of the renewables industries all across Europe.

        Personally I don’t see this as necessarily involving any particular theory of economics. It’s just a part of the ever evolving ” big picture” of history.

        1. OFM,

          I agree. My point is that claims that the magic of the free market will take care of the energy transition requires magical thinking about how the economy works, neoclassical economic theory taught in many graduate schools doesn’t really match the real world very closely.

          We will need governments to step in to guide the transition and spur infrastructure investment by streamlining regulations.

  12. https://electrek.co/2023/09/05/worlds-largest-wind-turbine-record-typhoon/

    This super giant wind turbine has turbine blades that can automatically adjust to wind speed and therefore can continue running at full capacity in winds in the fifty mph class.

    I don’t see any reason, other than patent issues, why this technology won’t be widely implemented in the near future when new wind turbines are manufactured.

    This could go a very long way towards gutting one of the fossil fuel camp’s anti wind propaganda.

    The worse the storm, the more power available from wind farms so equipped, at times when fossil fuel plants may be down for repairs or maintenance.

  13. This year is turning out to be very hot around the globe.
    It is not due to el nino since the effects of the current el nino are just beginning, and thus far it is not a strong el nino.
    “Modern day research and reanalysis techniques have managed to find at least 26 El Niño events since 1900, with the 1982–83, 1997–98 and 2014–16 events among the strongest on record.”

    1. THE LAST 8 YEARS WERE THE HOTTEST ON RECORD

      “We are continuing the long-term warming trend of the planet,” said Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at Berkeley Earth, an independent organization that analyzes environmental data. “If you draw a straight line through temperatures since 1970, 2022 lands almost exactly on where you’d expect temperatures to be.”

      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/earth-hottest-years.html

  14. At 12:54 pm 9/6/2023 ERCOT reported installed wind capacity 39,411 MW and production of wind generated electricity 1,941 MW of power. Therefore, 37,470 MW of non cash generating power sitting motionless. Please explain how that 37,470 MWs are the cheapest source of electricity.

    1. Cost of electricity generated by a particular source is not determined at any particular moment,
      or day, or week, or month, or year.
      The standard used by utilities for these determinations is 30 year cost.
      And oh yeh…the cost of the fuel is free.

      Its not complicated Ervin.

      1. Hickory
        Ok, how about the 10s of millions of borrowed money to build the system. The principle and interest has to earned. Oh I forgot they get all of that free money from the tax payers. Think of this, every cable, switch, fuse and transformer has to sized for that maximum output but rarely ever used. Wind and solar systems, to me, is as if I bought a school bus to use to go to the grocery store. I get my milk and bread but there are plenty of empty seats. What seems not to be said is that we are running out of fossil fuels and anything, no matter the cost, that will delay Armageddon is worth the cost. Lastly, NOTHING IN LIFE IS FREE.

        1. ALL of the costs associated with a particular source including financing are accounted for when calculating the LCOE. If you’re sincerely curious you can take a look at the following web page:

          Levelized Cost of Energy+

      2. Ervin…in Texas the current average retail electricity rate is 14.4 cents/kWh.
        This year wind energy projects in Texas are contracting to sell electricity to the utilities at 3.2 cents/kWh.
        Its a really good deal for the citizens of the state.
        Pretty simple.

        And that is why the utilities in windy areas are very eager to purchase the electricity from wind projects.
        Similar deal with solar PV in sunny areas.
        Texas will grow to be huge.
        I know the state will grow into the big shoes.
        Its too good of deal to pass up, even despite the
        bizarre political stance.

    2. The cost of electricity from wind turbines is calculated based on typical actual capacity factors. When the accountants do the math they take that into consideration . From a quick Google search:

      Capacity factor of land based wind in the U.S. ranges from 24% to 56% and averages of 36%.

      In a similar vein the calculated cost of solar electricity takes into account the fact that sun isn’t always shinning.

      Despite the fact that both of these sources have average capacity factors below 40%, they produce some of the least expensive electricity available. Like Hickory said, when they are producing, the fuel is free.

      1. It’s worth pointing out that fossil fuel also has a low capacity factor, of about 40%.

        The US grid has a total capacity of about 1,050GW, IIRC, and average generation of about 450GW. Subtract about 100GW for nuclear and 90GW average nuclear generation and we get 950 capacity and 360GW average actual generation. Subtract wind at 140GW/ 50GW (36%), solar at 70/17GW (24%), and hydro at 80/30 (38%) and you get remaining capacity of 660 and generation of 263, or 40% capacity factor for fossil fuels.

        That means that a lot of FF generation spends a lot of time sitting idle.

        1. Wind and solar have the distinct benefit of first in line. If a gas or coal plant is running and the wind starts blowing the gas and coal plants are cut back or shut off completely. The ultimate annual capacity factor of a gas or coal plant is not a function of its technology but the political favor that wind and solar are given.
          Explain where the in the equation of the LCOE for wind and solar is the expense of staffing and maintaining a coal plant that HAS to run, let’s say 500 to 1000 hours a year because it’s night or calm. Last December Duke power turned off over 400,000 customers one night and morning because of low 20 degree temperatures caused the utility completely ran out of electrical supply. Over the passed decade Duke has been shutting down their coal plants and building solar farms. So how useful is a solar farm when it’s dark and 22 degrees. ZERO.

          Again the world is running out of fossil fuels and no coat or inconveniences is too great to endure to delay Armageddon.

          The solar and wind ERCOT power system is at 7:20 CDST has a cost of $5000/ mWh.

          1. Ervin,

            Well done for speaking up against the cognitive bias towards renewables. Few understand the true cost and LCOE is a bit like shale oil economics i.e. total crap.
            An earlier post suggests wind turbines can sustain and generate more power in typhoon. Utter BS. Wind turbine are a comprimise.They are built like any aircraft. Total mass, and rotating mass has to be minimised to reduce stress loads. Rotor rpm must be controlled to mimise torque loads on the hub and gerbox. THe rotor rpm must be constant once cut in speed is achieved and this is done by pitch control. The blade is a wing , and like an aircraft there is a maximum speed just like the Vne (velocity never exceed) on all aircraft.As for lifespan look at the manufaturers and no-one is making money. Lifespan is a major issue, and even re-use of the mast is unlikely.
            Using the Danish model as a way forward is plain dumb. They have a small amount of excess power and are surrounded by countries with a much larger population. The idea that the UK or Germany can transition to renewables is fantasy. The amount of redundancy required would exceed even the cost of nuclear.
            I am not concerened about carbon dioxide. Mann has done a disservice to science. THE real threat is a population of 8 billion and resource depletion.

  16. Global CO2 cuts required.

    https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition

    If every country started cutting CO2 emission in 2000AD achieving the cuts needed would have been expensive but very doable.

    However China, instead of going down the route of highly efficient public transport such as Singapore decided on duplicating the American model of road building and mass car sales.

    https://www.timeout.com/travel/best-public-transport-in-the-world

    One electric trolley bus can take 100 people to work for the same electricity used by 10 electric cars.
    With electric cars you need 10 times as many wind turbines to achieve the same thing.

    The window of opportunity of preventing runway climate change has passed, the graphes below tell us the cuts now required are impossible to achieve. Unless you can’t count that is.

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c

    The wild fires happening now are pushing us further and quicker to an ecological collapse and in 5 years time who knows how bad things will be.

    https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires

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