87 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, December 28, 2023”

  1. Attention all cornucopians.

    WORLD WILL LOOK BACK AT 2023 AS YEAR ‘HUMANITY EXPOSED ITS INABILITY TO TACKLE CLIMATE CRISIS.’

    The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s ability to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior scientists have said. As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 will be remembered as the moment when failures became apparent: “NOT ONLY DID GOVERNMENTS FAIL TO STEM GLOBAL WARMING, THE RATE OF GLOBAL WARMING ACTUALLY ACCELERATED.”

    Hansen’s comments are a reflection of the dismay among experts at the enormous gulf between scientific warnings and political action. It has taken almost 30 years for world leaders to acknowledge that fossil fuels are to blame for the climate crisis, yet this year’s United Nations Cop28 summit in Dubai ended with a limp and vague call for a “transition away” from them, even as evidence grows that the world is already heating to dangerous levels.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/world-will-look-back-at-2023-as-year-humanity-exposed-its-inability-to-tackle-climate-crisis

    1. Meanwhile,

      RECORD GLOBAL GASOLINE CONSUMPTION DEFIES IEA FORECAST

      “Global gasoline consumption hit a record 26.9 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, exceeding the 2019 peak and defying estimates that the last pre-pandemic year was the time when gasoline demand worldwide would peak. The data, reported by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas, shows the latest figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The same agency, which has been strongly advocating for a faster energy transition for years, had predicted just this year that 2019 was the peak demand for gasoline globally.”

      Of course global coal consumption climbed to a new all-time high in 2022 and will stay near that record level this year as strong growth in Asia for both power generation and industrial applications outpaces declines in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA’s latest market update — but that’s another story.

      https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Record-Global-Gasoline-Consumption-Defies-IEA-Forecast.html

      1. Doug, there has never been a transition from one energy type to another, ever. Transport is often referred to as a transition from coal (steam trains) to oil, however coal use just increased.

        Going back further it is often claimed the industrial revolution transitioned from wood to coal, however once again the use of wood/biomass didn’t decrease, it went up on a world wide scale.
        According to Our world in Data world biomass use in the year 1800 was 5666Twh. In 2022 biomass use was 11,111Twh.
        So far on a world scale solar, wind and nuclear have been additions to energy use, not replacements.

        Solar, wind and nuclear are simply not energetically good enough to replace fossil fuels, plus they all totally rely on fossil fuels for their mining, processing, manufacture, transport, operation and maintenance. We only get these ‘alternatives’ provided we use fossil fuels.

        There is only one answer to the massive overshoot humans have put on every aspect of life on this planet. It’s degrowth, decomplexify and fast population decline, yet no-one is interested in doing this as a plan, so we will get collapse when it happens ‘naturally’ anyway. It’s just the fall will be steeper because humans told themselves nice fairytales about how infinite growth on a finite planet was possible.

        1. Hideaway

          Basically you are quite correct but biomass use per capita has effectively reduced since 1800, BUT only to be replaced by consumtion of fossil fuels. This Jevons paradox in actio Overall consumption of all types of combustable fuels continues to increase in spite of efforts to reduce consumption. Much is being squandered on so called solutions to shift to green power, and green transport.

          I have analysed many, many so called green energy sources. Biofuels, Wind, Solar, Carbon Dioxide recycling and other crazy ideas. None are enegy dense enough to continue BAU.

          The ideas that we can produce all the materials we take for granted are fanciful- steel, aluminium, paper, base petrochemicals and base chemicals. Peak oil demand is a myth; oil demand will grow until the supply peaks. As we have seen, global gasoline demand continues to grow. The switch to EV’s is a long way off – probably never.

        2. Interesting point, but horsepower is an exception I think. Also whale oil isn’t used much any more.

          1. @ Alimbiquated, regarding “whale oil isn’t used ‘much’ any more” we also cut back drastically on eating Dodo, now we can all sleep better at night, all is well.

        1. Not here in New England. We’re drowning in rain. The jet stream is broken.

          1. And in old England, rain rain rain, dull dull, dull, mild, mild, mild. Two frosts in Buckikinghamshire between October and December. Leaves green on trees into Late November. Arable fields perpetual mud. Daffodils already shooting in December.

        2. Just a few years?….I was thinking centuries.

          In many major grain growing regions people are going to have to gradually switch to other crops. For example in the US various millets, sorghum and cowpeas are more adapted to dry and hot conditions than are corn and soybeans.
          Corn for ethanol (about 40 million acrers) could all be shifted out to direct human grain production if things came to a head.

          Adaptation in places like India, Egypt, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria is going to be a lot harder to come by since many of these countries are already utilizing the tough condition agriculture methods and crop selection. And these places are filled with many people.

    2. The “generational shift of leadership” that is suggested is pretty clearly going to be a move towards autocratic demagogues not towards caring-sharing social democracy as is implicitly hoped for, and hence even less climate action will occur. Demographics (about 50 to 80 years since the last bouts of fascism got killed off), economic woes, climate and conflict migrants are all lined up as driving forces for a shift to the right.

      1. Agree.
        Borders will be fortified. Isolationism in foreign policy. Tolerance for domestic civil repression. Economic benefit for the most compliant to the authorities. Credit for exposing ‘subversives’ (like in Germany in the 1930’s you get to have their house).
        These trends will be reinforced by technology tools that the Nazi could only have dreamed of such as facial recognition, surveillance of all digital interactions (financial, social, political), robotic and automated policing, and restriction of basic freedoms such as travel when necessary to maintain order….just try to travel or have market interactions without leaving a digital footprint.
        Are you authorized, did you vote and pray the correct way, did you donate to the correct political party?

        Its a grim outlook. Nonetheless I believe that civil society is worth fighting hard for. Don’t vote for authoritarians no matter how glossy the brochure, no matter how much personal gain you have been promised, no matter how simple the cure to your problems has been depicted.

    3. Well, the USA is first in some things:
      “Americans are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than people in other wealthy countries, with homicides, suicides, and mass shootings on the increase. For the past four years, mass murders have skyrocketed into the 600s per year, breaking all past records. Since 2020 more children and teens are killed by firearms than any other cause.”

  2. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12880829/Are-living-simulation-Scientist-claims-simply-characters-advanced-virtual-world-says-easy-way-prove-it.html

    I read both of Ron’s books and they are great and a very unique argument.

    This guy in the link above wrote a book that says the fine tuning of the constants are a sign we are being simulated.

    It’s why light has a finite speed.

    Why there is Quantum Entanglement.

    Why there is Super Symmetry.

    That’s not the argument Ron made ( I don’t think ) but in a similar ball park (haven’t read the book above)

    I highly recommend reading Ron’s book, I learned heaps!!!

    https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ron Patterson/author/B0BKWHWT46

      1. I enjoyed that John. Thanks!

        It’s easy for human’s to assume the universe is a traditional Von Neumann/Alan Turing machine. Because that is what we understand.

        I accept that we are being simulated or something else ( I thought that what Ron was explaining in his books).

        Perhaps what created the universe………..Is dead? Everyone assumes the “Higher Power” is immortal.

        Back to Peak Oil and Overshoot! Happy New year.

        1. Andre,

          Death implies time, space and causality, all of which began with the big bang. So no the creator of the universe cannot be dead.

          1. For the universe to be simulated, as per the video, I would assume something would have to be doing the simulating.

            It is always assumed that “the something” exists forever.

            Maybe the creator of the universe killed himself (of course it has to have a human penis) when they set off the big bang.

            I am agnostic so don’t have any skin in the game. 

            1. Andre,

              I have no skin in the game either. But again killed himself/itself, those words are only attributable to this universe, and its specifc laws and pre-requisites, specifically time, space and causality. Unless you mean the creator simulated the universe, entered into the simulated universe and killed itself ? Even that is very far fetched but who the hell knows.

            2. Accidental suicide.

              “What happens if I do this?” BOOOM! Big Bang style.

          2. time space and causality all all assumed to have begun with the Big Bang in the current physics models of the universe, but we don’t really know that…

  3. Laplander wrote.

    “Actually one of the smarter ex-collegues of mine bought an “old” model S with free supercharge and refurbished batteries for about 1/3 of the original price, he will drive for free for quite some time.
    I´m a bit jealuos”.

    This was posted in the the earlier thread and few commented, probably due to the holiday.

    Do the math. There is not an age of the vehicle but it would be less than 7 years by my reckoning. That effectively means the vehicle had no residual value if the battery pack was replaced. No wonder the leasing companies are squeeling and the rental car businesses are not buying EV’s.

    Buying one of these things at the moment is only doing more harm than good as they eat up disproportionately more resources during manufacture and consume fossil fuels when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Fast tracking to the cliff edge.

    1. Nice try Carnot,

      A reductionist scheme actually works better for electric vehicles than fossil fuel based ones. The “all or nothing” or maybe “black versus white” line of thought does not work well in the real world. You could perhaps argue effective transportation modes are reliant on decent roads or that EV’s are based on too advanced technology. Other than that electric vehicles utilise electric power that can very well be renewable based with less heat loss compared to fossil fuels. As oil is a transportion fuel mainly; who knows what the price equilibrium is in relative terms is going forward? It is also the most flexibile of fuels and there are supply constraints when it comes to the cheap oil left. That the EROI of renewables are low after all boundaries are taken into account is a given. The same is the case with a lot of oil prospects going forward. Not all though, as is both true for both oil and renewables. A lower EROI world is what we have to adapt to no matter what. It can, and probably will be, a very long process.

      1. kolbeinih

        Also a nice try but as usual the net zero proponants such as yourself believe that renewables have a high EROI. That is the view of Dave Murphy but I am not convinced by his arguments one bit. Time will tell. No-one to date, has provided a viable pathway to produce all of the raw materials required for net zero made purely from low carbon electricity. How are you going to produce the silicon for PV’s . What about the epoxy resins and carbon fibre for wind turbines, which probably will not last past 15 years. Then there is all the metals.
        I would be intrigued to know how you think this will be acheived because it will not be any time soon. Most likely we will offshore the carbon emissions to China and India and kid ourselves we are green. What plan do you have for when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Batteries, excess renewable capacity, or will it be fossil fuels. `Probably the latter.
        I would love to be proven wrong but to date the evidence of success is next to zero. Carbon emissions are growing except in a few countries who are in the process of de-industrialisation.

        1. “No-one to date, has provided a viable pathway to produce all of the raw materials required for net zero made purely from low carbon electricity. ”
          If this sentence implies producing all of the materials needed to continue with population and per-capita consumption growth then nothing, not fossil fuels, not nuclear, not supposed sustainable energy sources are going to provide what BAU needs.

            1. Fine, then quite bitching and moaning about the worthlessness of non-fossil fuels and get on with working for a less-shitty non-BAU future, and that is NOT fossil fuel based, right?

        2. “the net zero proponants”

          That is a pretty notion…and its a nice aspiration for a world that is heating due to this one-time massive carbon pulse of combustion.
          Of course for most people and countries the bigger aspiration aside from food, water and a safe place to live, is secure and affordable energy supply. Lower carbon energy is a much farther down the list concern.

          A much hotter world is baked in cake, and so is a shift to contraction in population, resource consumption and energy supply. Just what the slope of these trends is the big unknown, and is not yet determined.

          It should be clear to everyone that ‘business as usual’, meaning generalized unending growth, is no longer an outcome on the table. But that does not mean that everything contracts, or all at once, or everywhere. The particulars of regional decision making and policy choices will make a big difference for the people who live there….just as always. And so yes, I believe strongly that all places should work as hard as they can to learn to live with less and less fossil fuel as quickly as possible. And less of other things too.

          1. The many types of folks who got their Covid information from a dipshit comedian pandering to a right wing audience prob ain’t gonna do too well on the ‘slope of these trends’. Perhaps best to have a plan and some preps, Hick.

        3. Natural Log of carbon emissions from Energy (millions of tonnes per year). Yes still growing, at an annual rate of 0.32% per year from 2019 to 2022. The rate of growth has slowed, it is likely to peak soon and then decline.

          1. I have pegged (guessed) Peak Global Combustion Day to be July 31st 2033…
            or was it July 31st, 2037?
            I am granting myself some wiggle room on that since there a re far too many variables to digest or project.

  4. Yet another dose of reality folks

    OVERSHOOTING 1.5 C LIMIT ‘LOOKS INEVITABLE’ WITH RECORD CO2 EMISSIONS FROM FOSSIL FUELS.

    The year’s emissions trajectory pulls the world further away from preventing global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. “It now looks inevitable we will overshoot the 1.5 C target of the Paris Agreement,” said Exeter’s Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, who led the research. “Leaders meeting at COP28 will have to agree rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions even to keep the 2 C target alive.” Emissions from coal, oil and gas all rose, driven by India and China. The Chinese rise was caused by its economy reopening after COVID-19 lockdowns, while India’s was a result of power demand growing faster than the country’s renewable energy capacity, leaving fossil fuels to make up the shortfall.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/co2-record-emissions-1.7049257

  5. Below the average global temperature anomaly is taken from Climate Reanalyzer, which now uses ECMWF data. 2023 shows a huge jump and, baring in mind it was the first year of an El Nino that has now entered the strong category, 2024 is likely to be notably higher still. The open bar at the end shows what would be expected if 2024 increases as 2016 did from 2015. The trend line shown is a quadratic and is a better fit than linear, and in agreement with an approximately linear rate of change increase, which the earth energy imbalance is showing.

    For the two previous strong El Ninos, in 1998 and 2016 as highlighted, the two years following the peak had reduced temperatures but then recovered and overall for about seven years the average was about the same as the first El Nino year. If that happens this year then we are pretty much at the 1.5 Paris threshold already. If the quadratic curve continues to be followed (implying a continued linear rise in EEI) then things will be worse and if the jump in 2023 wasn’t just a one off, and I don’t think it can solely be explained by the El Nino, then 2 degrees isn’t far away.

    1. Similar patterns are seen in average sea surface anomalies, below, which is more worrying as the oceans should have a much larger thermal capacity so shouldn’t be able to change as fast (last year’s jump was almost twice the previous largest).

      Two recent papers (admittedly both from Columbia but with different lead authors) have shown that, based on the close correlation – in fact causation, so inevitably close – between CO2 and temperature over the past 66 million years, earth sensitivity is higher than IPCC numbers and is likely at least 4 degrees for a doubling of CO2, and maybe as high as 6. In the definition of sensitivity it is assumed that non CO2 GHG concentrations (excluding fast feed back from water saturation) are kept constant. In fact methane, N2O and some industrial gases like SF8 are rising quickly so we are actually close to an effective doubling already. We are cooler than the equilibrium temperature because of lagging effects in feed back loops, masking by aerosols and a lower than expected relative humidity, which is expected to catch up as the average temperature increases and aerosol effects decrease (by another recent paper). All this fits in with the steady increase in the energy imbalance and the higher than expected jump in 2m atmospheric and sea surface temperatures last year.

      For the next few years the world will experience annual multi ten billion dollar plus extreme weather events just as economies contract and societal disruption increases, making recovery more difficult, crop failures that are immediately seen as food price inflation with possible local famines, and areas that are hit repeatedly before they can recover from the last event (e.g. floods following drought in East Africa). The next El Nino will take us close to two degrees with an exponential increase in frequency and magnitude of the extreme weather events.

    2. This last 10 years has been much warmer than the prior centuries.
      And yet before too long these will be considered the good old cool days.

      Some people and companies use the term ‘carbon net zero’ energy.
      There is no such thing as carbon net zero human activity, except when your hands are empty for brief moments.
      But people can live with much less combustion if that was their strong intent.
      Wake me up when there has been no contrails in earths sky for a decade.

  7. People often ask how much raw material must be mined for renewable power, and how that compares to fossil fuels. You could call it the ratio of lifetime power production to material input: Energy Return on Material Input, or EROMI.
     
    Well, let’s look at coal. Roughly 5 billion tons (5,000,000,000,000 kilograms) of coal was consumed worldwide in 2023. That produced roughly 10,000 terawatt hours (10,000,000,000,000 kWh) of power, for about 2 kWh per kg of coal. That, of course, doesn’t include the overburden that must be removed to get at the coal or waste & purification losses, and doesn’t include any energy or other materials for the coal mining, the rail transportation to the generation plant, or the coal generation plant itself.

    Oil is in the same order of magnitude: there are about 40kWhs in a gallon of oil, and after refining and combustion losses you probably get about 10 kWhs of output from about 3 kilograms of oil, for roughly 3.3 kWhs per kg of oil.

    Now, let’s look at solar power. A KW of solar panels weighs 50 kg (or less) and produces about 50,000 kWhs of energy over it’s life (1 kw x 8,760 hours per year x 20% capacity factor x 30 years). So that’s about 1,000 kWhs per kilo of product weight. Again, this is end product weight, so it doesn’t include waste and other inputs, but that’s not likely to be materially different from coal.And, of course, there are factors that are likely to reduce the inputs: recycling could increase EROMI dramatically, lifetime extensions (40 years is likely possible) and local consumption of power (that reduces transmission & distribution overhead costs).

    So… we need about 500 grams of coal per kWh, vs 1 gram of PV panel per kWh. A 500 to one ratio. Or 300 grams of oil per kWh for a 300 to one ratio.

    Sure looks like renewable power requires a lot less in the way of raw materials.

    1. Starting the new year with more fairytales are we Nick?? The PV panels might be made of lots of silicon, in the glass and the silicon wafers, but they are also made of around 10% plastic or polymers. Where are these going to come from in a fossil fuel free world??

      Then there is this metal called copper that’s needed with everything electrical, especially EVs, batteries, heat pumps etc, plus the minor detail that we couldn’t produce the aluminium to make the frames of solar panels, with just solar panels because of the intermittency issue.

      How about we compare the mining of coal with the mining of copper? Coal in the seams is 100% coal. There is indeed waste and overburden, with the waste being between the seams of coal. In the Latrobe Valley where the Brown coal exists, the seems are 100-200m thick and protrude at surface over large areas. Overburden removal is very minor, and eventually when they get through the top 100m or so there will be waste before getting to the next wide seams.

      Meanwhile copper is often only found deep these days as we have mined all the easy to get stuff, the average grade currently being mined around 0.53%, and new mines opening up with average grades of 0.39%.

      So lets look at the average when you want a tonne of coal or a tonne of copper. With coal, after the overburden has been removed you dig a tonne of coal, with copper at the new mine average rate you need close to 300 tonnes of ‘ore’.
      The 300 tonnes is needed at the 0.39 rate because you then have to spend a lot of energy crushing and grinding copper ore to micron size, run it through a floatation plant where the recovery is only around 90%, and gets lower with lower grade ore!!
      Of course most copper mines do all the digging, transporting and processing of copper ore with fossil fuels usually diesel, because the location is too far from the grid to bring power, which would be a much cheaper energy source.
      We could go and discuss lithium, where the main source these days is hard rock spodumene, which takes similar processes to copper, with lithium oxide grades often being around 1-2% for the best mines, but the spodumene concentrate having only ~6% Li2O content, needs to be heated to 1100*C to turn the spodumene into beta spodumene, usually with natural gas. Heating 94% waste to 1100*C, in the process to make lithium batteries, seems a bit wasteful, but that’s how it is done..

      The problem Nick is that it’s all done with fossil fuels, that will be becoming scarcer and scarcer as time goes forward. The EROEI of solar is too pitiful to run a complex modern civilization on. Even the current EROEI of all energy is becoming harder to run our civilization upon, which is manifesting itself as much higher debt and lower median standards of living in developed countries.

      I’m not an advocate for fossil fuels, they are polluting our environment in many ways as well as climate change, but the numbers in nuclear, solar and wind do not go close to adding up to replace fossil fuels. There is not one new mine of any type that is planning to operate on solar, wind and batteries (or nuclear) for their total energy supply, just like there is not a single Aluminium smelter planning to do so either. The reason being the dollar cost is way too high compared to using fossil fuels.

      Once fossil fuel use starts to decline in earnest, especially oil, due to depletion, the ability to build new solar, wind, nuclear, batteries, and for that matter everything else (including new oil, gas and coal!!) will also decline rapidly as we just wont have the investment dollars available to do it, nor the available energy.

      2. Educate me here. Is there an imperative that we stop using fossil resources aside from combusting them? It’s hard to imagine that we will ever run out of enough oil for polymers.

        1. Is there an imperative that we stop using fossil resources aside from combusting them?

          I don’t think so. In fact, some oil majors are moving their refining operations in that direction in anticipation of the transition away from burning oil.

          And plastic & chemicals can be made from a wide variety of fossil fuels and other hydrocarbons, and they can be recycled. We’re not going to run out…

          1. Nick G,

            Really. Are you and expert in petrochemicals and refining. Your last missive was demolished by Hideaway quite succinctly. What do you know about the majors and their petrochemical intentions? Perhaps you could provide some names and locations to sunstantiate your claims?

            You are clutching at straws hoping for BAU. Your understadning of EROEI is basic to the point that you don’t quite get the idea. Try reading up on works by Charles Hall and Dave MUrphy.

            https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226607619_Peak_Oil_EROI_Investments_and_the_Economy_in_an_Uncertain_Future

            Murphy has since come up with the conecpet of EROI at point of use but this is flawed because comparing the energy form fossill fuels with electical power is not equivalent. Fossil fuels have mutiple pathways for use – heat, power production, steam raising, torque. Electricity can provide some of these functions. Refineries do not use electric heating yet. Same for petrocehmicals. If you manage to read the link you will see the Hall cheese slicer model. Very roughly about 10% of the energy in a barrel of oil is used for extraction. <5 % for transport to the refinery and about 5-10% in the refining process. A further 5% is used in distribution. That means that about 60-65% of the energy content is vailable for other uses. Some will be required to power the economy- and some will be left over of discetionary use. Non-essential uses mainly travel. When the oil supply peaks then discretionary use will be pinched.

            Currently about 10% of the oil barrel is used in petchems. Not all of the barrel is suitable for petchems – jet/ diesel/ residues need upgrading.

            Recycling of polymers is minimal at the present time. It is increasing but is fraught with issues. Post consumer scrap is the hardest to recycle. If polymers are upcycled then the acutal yields of monomers are quite low and multiple steps are required to produce a usable pyrolysis oil.

            Some conceptual high conversion refineries have been built but they are few and far between and most of the new planned ones are based in China.

            There are many academics proposing all manner of whacky theories to continue BAU and solve all the worlds problems. The snag is that most a have never worked in the business and are less than hopeless in understanding the economics and complexities of refining and petrochemicals. I have been doing it for 45 years and one thing I have learened is that progress with new technologies is slow to glacial. Refineries and petchems are conservative. They have to be because there are many "good ideas" but few that are commerically viable.

            The chinese have built no end of duds, which in the west would have led to bankruptcy.
            It might be a good idea to see who in the west is contemplating building a high conversion refinery/ petchem complex. I will give you a clue – none.

            Sure you could dream about not using fossil fuels for transport fuels, and keep the remaing oil for petchems, but this is wishful thinking Do you think the ME, and the BRIC countries are going to stop using oil. The idea of using unreliables for our transport needs- both necessary and discretionary is pure fantasy, as is carbon capture, biofuels, carbon recycling and hydrogen.

            1. Carnot,

              In the Murphy et al recent paper (2022), they assume EROI at well head is infinite (a bit on the optimistic side, but once we include transport, refining and distribution, the EROI falls to 8.7, which would be about 88.5% of the energy left of the original energy at the wellhead. If we assume at the well head the EROI is 20, the the net energy would be about 84%. Once this energy is utilized in and ICE engine (the major use of most crude plus condensate) which would have efficiency of no higher than 40% in real world conditions we are left with about 34% of the energy of the oil being converted to work.

              Electricity does much better and most processes can be converted to electric heat if thermal fuels are unavailable. Costs determine which is used and as cost curves shift as thermal fuel depletes or is forced to pay for carbon pollution thus raising costs, more thermal processes will switch to electric heat or in some cases heat pumps.

            2. Carnot,

              You asked for a reference on a transition by oil majors towards chemicals. Here’s one:

              “Demand for Exxon Mobil’s refineries will persist even after gasoline demand fades, the company said Wednesday during an event at its headquarters north of Houston.

              The oil giant unveiled detailed plans to make new products at its refineries as the value of petroleum-based transportation fuels diminishes and the need for new kinds of products increases. One such product is a new polymer made from gasoline that is so strong and durable that Exxon says it can replace steel rebar at a fraction of the weight.

              Exxon presented the steel replacement as an example of how it plans to redeploy low-value molecules in novel, potentially lucrative ways as the fight against climate change accelerates. Exxon said it aims to triple the earnings of its refining and chemicals segment by 2027 compared with a 2019 baseline. It’s already halfway there, said Jack Williams, the company’s senior vice president. ”

              https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/exxon-refining-chemicals-energy-transition-climate-18378578.php

        2. Riban. I agree. The feedstock for much (or all?) of the polymer industries are nat gas liquids and oil condensates.
          “petrochemicals are part of the fabric of our societies. Clothing, tires, digital devices, packaging, detergents and countless other everyday items are made from petrochemicals. Petrochemical feedstock accounts for 12% of global [oil] demand”

          Some of theses products can and should be replaced by things that are biosourced/biodegradable. For example-
          ‘Dental floss is typically made from synthetic waxed nylon or Teflon. The mixed materials used in traditional floss make recycling too difficult–some research suggests it can take 80 years to break down in a landfill.’
          Consider replacement product such as –
          Hello- Hemp Seed Oil and Coconut Oil Infused Floss, Natural Fresh Spearmint, Vegan Wax, No Shred, Non-GMO, SLS and PFAS Free
          This is real…search it.

          1. Hickory
            That is another pearl of wisdom. Just how much dental floss is produced every year ? You give no data.

            Your are correct, petrochemicals are the fabric of our societies. Your 12% of oil used for petchems – is that by volume or weight? Petchem plants usually use mass units for feedstocks and output, so your 12% of global oil demand is likely to be a volumetric unit.

            This is important if you are using natural gas liquids and condensates for petchem feedstocck. For instance ethane has 17.66 barrels per metric tone and condensates vary but around 8 barrels per metric tonne would be a good start.

            As you are clearly knowledgeable on the oil and gas business perhaps you could enlighten me how the petchem industry is going to survive on NGL’s and condensate alone. The bulk, by far, of NGL’s comes from wet gas production, most of which comes from oil production. Go to the EIA website and look up NGL production stats and where most are produced. You will find the Permian Basin the largest producer (IN THE WORLD).
            So as oil production declines please explain to me how, in plain English, the E&P’s (what is left of them) will maintain NGL and condensate production. In a declining market, either by choice or by imperative the ability to drill will continually fall as personnel and equipment leaves the business. This will not only raise costs but will also have a major impact on supply chains. That means gas plants, NGL facilities. It is not that easy.
            You have mentioned one example of a bio-sourced/ bio-degradable product. Would you care to cite a few more. How about a car tyres, polyester firbres, polyurethanes, thermoset resins.

            There is no fast way out and no BAU will be a hard sell. We are governed by loonies from the left and right afraid to see the wood from the trees. A managed decline is all but impossible now and the fairytale says we can keep growing the population and energy consumption ad infinitum. All we need to do is to shift to unreliable energy and all will be hunky dory. There are plenty of minerals to mine- we just have to dig deeper.

            On a more serious not below is a link to the Exxon crude assays. In the list you will find numerous condensate assays. If you are interested and not offensive I will talk you through what they mean.

            https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/what-we-do/energy-supply/crude-trading/assays-available-for-download

            1. Carnot
              Your are correct, petrochemicals are the fabric of our societies.

              It’s mostly wasted. The world is suffering from a massive oversupply of petrochemicals.

              About seven billion tons of plastic waste are produced every year. As a scare tactic, dire warnings of less plastic seem pretty lame.

              https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Plastic_pollution

      3. UK aluminium: 100% renewables
        Iceland aluminium: 100% renewables
        UK steel: 6.6% renewables
        US steel: 17.5% renewables

      4. A lot to reply to, so I’ll just choose one, copper.

        Due to dramatic cost and input reduction in the last few years, the copper intensity of PV (1% of 50 kg, or .5 kg*) appears to be roughly comparable that of a coal generation plant at about 1.1kg** . Data for PV is all over the place and much of what’s available is badly out of date, but overall it shows a trend of sharp reduction due to the general trend of extraordinarily fast pace of decline in PV inputs…hence the need to pull from several sources. If you can find a good *current* source for PV, that would be interesting.

        And, of course, there are factors that are likely to reduce the inputs sharply: PV recycling is still at an early stage, but it can recycle 90% glass and aluminum and 40% of copper.

        * Copper intensity of PV: https://earthworks.org/assets/uploads/2019/04/MCEC_UTS_Report_lowres-1.pdf
        ** Copper intensity of coal (PV number appears old, and has no source shown): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/minerals-used-in-clean-energy-technologies-compared-to-other-power-generation-sources

        1. Copper intensity of PV farm Nick, not just the panels.
          It’s a system, a panel by itself is a statue, it needs to be connected to all the others and also inverters then to the grid.
          About 5 tonne per Mw of capacity in last documents I read and and only small amounts in the PV panel itself.

          If you put the ‘boundaries’ in the advantageous place you can prove anything you want…

          1. Copper intensity of PV farm Nick, not just the panels.

            Good thought. I’ll re-review the studies I looked at.

            About 5 tonne per Mw of capacity in last documents I read

            Do you have that source?

        2. Nick, your IEA source has PV at 2.82 tonnes/MW. Hideaway states ~5 tonnes/MW. Copper Development Association has it at 4.1 tonnes/MW.

          All of these are a lot more than coal at 1.15 tonnes/MW (IEA). Not sure where you get your 0.5 PV number from…

            1. Or this from the Solar industry magazine…
              “A well-designed solar PV plant might use approximately 9,000 pounds of copper per megawatt of peak capacity – a figure that does not appear to vary significantly over installations ranging from large rooftop units to multi-megawatt utility farms.”
              https://issues.solarindustrymag.com/article/rise-solar-unique-opportunity-copper

              “A photovoltaic solar power plant contains approximately 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of power generation”
              https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/01/will-the-transition-to-renewable-energy-be-paved-in-copper.html

              I would expect that larger solar farms in the plus 100Mw range would have slightly higher intensity as they need all the smaller wire connections, then larger ones carrying power over a longer distance back to a central point for grid distribution.

              I’ve actually tried to get the total copper used in a large wind turbine farm from the managers and techs involved in building one. They were silly enough to invite questions… There was stunned silence from the lot of them, it just came in on trucks, bought from somewhere else as a ‘cost’, it was not recorded anywhere…

            3. Need to use wayback machine, even though from 2017..
              It took me about 2 minutes to find, they are in the references from a wikipedia page after searching for “copper content of solar farm”

      1. Good catch, Mike, it’s always nice to try for good numbers. I believe I was thinking of China.

        Unfortunately, coal statistics are inconsistent (tons? exajoules? watt-hours? BP vs IEA?), the IEA’s number is a forecast because the latest numbers aren’t in yet (and the IEA isn’t very good at forecasting), and some coal is used for things other than electricity. I’m just hoping for a ball-park, order of magnitude kind of calculation.

        Next time I’ll use this: Coal–0.88 kWh/pound per https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=2
        Which give .88 kWh per 454 grams, or 515 grams per kWh. Not too far off from my first try…

        1. Nick G

          These calculations are all very well on paper. In the real world things are so much more complex.
          Asked some years ago how many wind turbines the UK would need to supply it’s electricity needs, a renewable firm said about 7 thousand large turbines.

          Well the UK now has over 11,000 and this is the result.

          https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

          This is quite a good day for wind, many days it’s delivery is under 10% and at least once a month wind and solar will produce less than 5% for over 12 hours.

          When you talk about renewables you have to work out how much storage you will need to prevent a grid collapse. How many batteries would you need to power the UK for 12 hours.

          It would be great if storage were cheap but the production, maintenance and recycling of millions of batteries is vastly expensive. That is why China is burning 4.5 billion tonnes of coal, it’s cheap.

    3. Interesting calculation Nick

      HIDEAWAY you’re just muddying the waters with random off topic remarks.

      1. Do you guys understand that most of the time natural gas liquids and condensates are by-products from methane production!!
        If we are not drilling and using the gas where does the nat gas liquids and condensates come from for turning into plastics, polymers, etc??
        Or are we going to drill for gas but just extract the fluids and spend a lot of energy re-injecting the gas underground??

        Taking the Walyering gas project as an example, they are producing 33Tj/d of nat gas and 265bbls/d of condensate. There is 9,166,410Mwh of energy in the natty and ~450Mwh of energy in the condensate. Do you geniuses really think anyone could afford to waste 99.99% of the value of a well to just get the other liquids??

        Nick G … Do you understand that we need metallurgical coal for a range of products and uses. Try producing those from just electricity. At some point in the future, even if we continued to use the last of the metallurgical coal, we would have to revert to turning electricity into products.

        It’s so horribly inefficient as per the example of the Haru Oni plant in Chile. After a years worth of production from their $US74M facility they sent off their first ‘commercial’ batch of synthetic fuel, 24,600 litres!!
        If we assume that it was only 6 months worth of production after commissioning and ramping up the plant, that would mean a yearly total of 49,200 litres!! That’s around 80% of ONE barrel of oil a day!! LOL, it’s a total joke!!
        Yearly input of energy from the wind turbine operating at Tierra Del Fuego, perhaps the windiest place in the world, 3.4Mw Siemens Gamesa X 70% capacity factor X 24d X 365d/yr =

        = 20,848Mwh of wind energy collected turned into 49,200 X 10kwh/ltre = 492Mwh

        This is a process efficiency of just 2.4%, before allowing for any embedded energy in the capital of building the plant, or the operating and maintenance cost. In other words 2.4% efficiency if we leave out the major energy costs, if including them, well less than 1% efficiency!!! (they haven’t bothered to release the O&M costs to the public).

        We simply cannot run a modern civilization off anything we have to replace fossil fuels, the EROEI is too poor, and the ability to make the products we need from fossil fuels is horribly inefficient. We are going to be without fossil fuels at some point in the not so distant future and relatively shortly, the way we use them now.

        Fossil fuels in all forms are leaving us, one way or the other, yet instead of waking up to the damage it will do to modern civilization, all we’ve done is told ourselves fairytales about how we don’t need them, by making up numbers to show renewables/nuclear are great (by leaving out most of the energy cost of building and operating them), and forgetting about all the products we get from fossil fuels that are not replaceable by electricity.

  8. The Great Lakes typically have an ice coverage of 55% during the winter months, causing at least half of their surfaces to freeze.

    “As of yesterday, they had a combined ice cover of just 0.2%. Lake Superior 0.5%, Lake Michigan 0%, Lake Huron 0%, Lake Erie 0%, Lake Ontario 0%.”

    Got mosquitos?

  11. From here in Maine, a partial acknowledgement of the refractory nature of the human predicament, in line with the view that many here hold:

    Human evolution may prevent us from solving climate change.

    A new study led by an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maine has come to a grim conclusion: The very traits that have allowed humans to dominate the globe might prevent us from solving global environmental threats like climate change.

    Since the origin of our species, humans have developed a keen ability to adapt to our environment, creating better and better technology – from primitive fishing weirs to the modern oil well – to exploit our natural environment, the study says.

    When a resource starts to run low, or a method threatens our health or home, humans have a track record of moving to the next resource-rich area or fighting on the battlefield or boardroom over the scraps that remain rather than coming together to solve the problem.

    “We’re entering a new era of the human relationship to the environment,” UMaine Associate Professor Tim Waring said. “Climate change is a global crisis. We can’t just move on or fight amongst ourselves. If we do that, it won’t go well for us. The nature of human evolution has to change.”

  12. Well no its not truly exponential but interest on US debt (now over 34 trillion) is now a cool trillion per year. Anyone concerned?

    THE DEBT TREADMILL: HOW EXPONENTIAL DEBT GROWTH SPELLS TROUBLE

    “Between the years of 2000 to 2016 a period of 16 years, the US Gross National Debt grew 182% to a staggering $19.9 trillion. In the last 7 years, the debt has grown almost $14 trillion more. This growth of debt is exponential in nature…

    The one conclusion you can draw from studying the numbers is that if you believe that DEBT is good, the United States economy has never been in a better place. However, if you have concerns about debt and recognize how it can be highly destructive to freedom and productivity, you will arrive at completely different conclusions.”

    https://www.vantagepointsoftware.com/blog/exponential-debt-growth/#:~:text=statistics%20in%201790.-,From%20that%20date%20until%20the%20year%202000%20the%20Gross%20National,debt%20is%20exponential%20in%20nature.

  13. Food for thought.

    2023 MAY HAVE BEEN THE U.S. OIL INDUSTRY’S BEST YEAR YET

    “After the pandemic, many pronounced the shale boom dead. Of course, those same people found out in 2023 that this wasn’t strictly true. Despite a continued focus on capital discipline and the flurry of cash they returned to shareholders, U.S. drillers managed to boost their overall output to over 13.2 million barrels daily in September. And they did it with fewer rigs, at that. And with zero—if not negative—support from the federal government…

    Smart money knows to never bet against this industry,” Tim Stewart, President of the US Oil & Gas Association, recently told David Blackmon, energy industry vet and Forbes author. “We are going to be around a lot longer than any politician. Why is that? Because we produce wealth while they produce nothing.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/2023-May-Have-Been-US-Oil-Industrys-Best-Year-Yet.html

  14. Alimbiquated

    More of your Gish Gallop

    “it’s mostly wasted. The world is suffering from a massive oversupply of petrochemicals.

    About seven billion tons of plastic waste are produced every year. As a scare tactic, dire warnings of less plastic seem pretty lame.

    https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Plastic_pollution”

    That is a pretty big number You might wish to check your number as the total polymers produced are less than 400 million tonnes, and especially as the production of NGL’s and crude and condensate amount to a little over 4billion tonnes.Read the article again.

    You are quite correct recycle rates a on the low side but you have to consider that there is short and long life polymers, and some petrochemicals are single use. Ammonia,, ethoxylates, surface coatings, thermoset resins. The largest polymer is PE followed by PP and PET. Were we to cut down the use of these products then food waste would spiral. That is the sad fact. Globally the ability to recycle is improving, but this requires designing products with recycling in mind. Car interiors are still nt being designed with a view to recycling. I do not like see polymers wasted but having spent several years looking at recycling options it is not that easy. Take clothing for instance. Shoes are another example. Few people appreciate the difficulties and you just cannot send polymers to be remelted. There are many types of PE and PP. Up-cycling to new monomers is very challenging and we are still learning. There is not an oversupply. Demand regulates supply and demand is still growing along with the global population. The notion that polymer consumption could be for instance halved would create untold difficulties. That is the reality.
    Oh, and by the way medical polymers – vast quantities of- are incinerated. PPE, bags, tubing, packaging all incinerated.
    I applaud your concern for the environment but you are thinking like the Just Stop Oil idiots. It will take time and we probably do not have enough time or enough fossil fuels left.

    If governments were to really become serious then they would introduce carbon budgets per capita and restrict the horse power of passenger vehicles- both ICE and EV. But that would be too much to ask. So we will muddle along believing the fairy tale of unreliables powering the global economies so we can maintain BAU.

    1. And,

      With only 9% of annual plastic waste recycled, the myth that we can recycle our way out of a mounting plastic pollution crisis doesn’t add up. Around 85% of plastic packaging worldwide ends up in landfills .

      1. Doug,

        Sadly I have to agree with you. More will be recycled in time but it will not be even 50%. Designing products with recycling in mind is essential, and we are a long way off that goal. The biggest polluters of the marine environment are not in the west. Most occurs in the 5 main rivers which are used as a rubbish disposal route. My pet hate is fast food packaging.

  15. Dennis Coyne
    I have read the Murphy paper and am sceptical to say the least.
    Murphy and Hall did some good work – see the link.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226607619_Peak_Oil_EROI_Investments_and_the_Economy_in_an_Uncertain_Future

    I do not like the idea of comparing the EROEI at the point of use. The electric motor will always be more efficient. I do not doubt that. As of ICE efficiencies then even your figure might be on the high side. The fundamental point is how much of the fossil energy and unreliable produced is available for discretionary use. By discretionary use that means the energy available to fritter away on holidays, recreational use, non essential travel and the like. A large amount of energy is required to power the economy. Provision of services, space heating (and cooling), food production, public transport, housing, utilities – etc. What is left over after these have been accounted for are discretionary. Covid gave us an indication of the discretionary oil demand. I am not against EV’s per se but they have a lot of of drawbacks. Providing dispatchable power is a huge issue and requires inertia in the system, and much of the power is still provided form fossil fuels in the developed economies. The idea that sufficient capacity can be built to provide 100 % dispatchable power is an illusion. The cost of providing back up generation, by CCGT and/ or battery storage is whimsical.None of the assets would be used optimally. The second law of thermodynamics will ensure that every round trip into / out of storage, step up/ step down, impedance losses will ensure than a substantial part of the power generated is lost to entropy effects. That means that by the time your Tesla plugs into the super charger the power losses are probably of the order of 25% or more. I know on my own PV battery storage that the losses are 20%. So if you are going to make comparisons you have to consider the power losses to the point of delivery, and in the case of the EV the round trip efficiency of the battery.
    I am not against EV’s but there are many drawbacks that are now becoming apparent. I did my homework and decided to stay with a hybrid.

    1. Carnot,

      Most charging is done at hme, superchargers are used on the occasional long trip. The losses are far lower for an electric motor, even when transmission and distribultion losses are accounted for. Hybrids are nice, I drove them from 2004 to 2022. The system will be adjusted to handle higher renewable power generation. A highly interconnected system of wind and solar, widely distributed will require very little backup.

      Last I checked a 20% loss beats a 60 or 70% loss, every time.

      1. Dennis, except solar is only 20% efficient. Even the best panels are only 21-22% efficiency, which likely goes below 20% after inverter inefficiencies.
        All sun, wind, coal, gas, oil and uranium is free to humanity as a whole. We build machines to harness these free energy sources.

        What comes out of the machine is what’s important, yet we seem to want to count what goes into a coal power generator, but only what comes out of a solar panel or wind turbine. We are not comparing like for like.

        Assuming people charge their EV at home at night, like some of my friends are doing, what’s the actual efficiency of the solar they are using?? I know the coal is around 35% efficient. The coal plant doesn’t need grid scale batteries at night to charge the EV, so the energy cost of building those batteries comes into the overall calculation, plus the losses of charging them, then discharging them back into the grid. Grid losses would be about equal for both depending on the distance the power had to travel.

        Coal is bad for the environment, and we will eventually run out of it anyway, so it’s not good for sustainability. The problem is that renewables and nuclear are no-where near as good economically, or energetically as coal, when a full accounting is done over how we run our civilization.

        Plus, we get a major range of products from fossil fuels as a by-product of the energy production. We have no replacements from the 100% electricity production machines, yet can’t run a modern civilization without them.

        1. Hideaway, do you understand what “solar panels are 20% efficient” means? Could you explain what you think it means?
          Cheers, Phil

          1. They convert 20% of the energy in the sunlight that hits their surface into electricity, most of the rest turns into long wave radiation that directly heats the atmosphere.

      2. Dennis Coyne,

        Well you might like to think about those city dwellers who cannot charge at home and also those people who have to travel as part of their job, like my colleagues, some of whom succumbed to EV’s lured by tax breaks. Now they regret it. Just to add grist to the mill people like me, who used to rent car, now shun EV’s and the rental car co’s have stopped buying. Why because the punters do not want to rent them and the rental car co’s loose their shirts when the come to sell the cars. Last time I went to the US I landed in Boston and drove to Bridgton Maine, at night in a snow storm. Had I rented an EV there is no way on this planet that I would have reached my destination.

        In reality an EV is only any used ofr distances up to 30 miles from where you live – local journeys and where I live you cannot park your EV is a garage and it must not be parked closer than 30 ft (10 metres) form you house.; and you insurance will be double that of an ICE, and rising as acts of EV self-immolation increase.

        As for your wild idea of endless interconnectors then I will reserve judgement until I see all these interconnectors actually working reliably( often not) and all the excess unreliable capacity actually supplying dispatchable power 24/7 in any weather. Oh, and by the way affordable.
        No process that has excess capacity can make any money and that is THE fundamental problem with unreliables. If you are lucky you can get about 30% of the installed capacity over the year.

        My tracking PV system manages 10% of the installed capacity over a year, which feeds into a battery storage. It will never pay out.I If installed 10X the amount of capacity I still could not power my house in the winter months. If I installed a wind turbine at home, it would never power my house (24/7) or pay out, and I am not a big power user. All I would get is expensive power, which is what we currently get from the grid due to unreliables.

        Yes at the point of use an electric motor beats an ICE for thermodynamic efficiency. But how much energy and cost is embedded in your vision of the future of Ev’s and heat pumps.? That is the big question?

  16. Morning trivia,

    • The global average surface temperature in November 2023 was 1.69°C above the average for the pre-industrial comparison period of 1880-1920.
    • November 2023 was the warmest November since 1880.
    • The average of the November temperatures for the last 10 years is 1.15°C above the average for November from 1880 to 1920.

  18. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/31/former-trump-aides-warn-of-serious-threats-if-he-wins-in-2024/72072594007/

    “Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House director of strategic communications, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

    …

    Fellow former top-level White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who delivered bombshell testimony to the House Jan. 6 Committee last summer, echoed Farah Griffin’s message and criticism of Trump.
    “The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he’s a weak and feeble man who has no sense of character and integrity and has no sense of leadership,” Hutchinson said, referencing recent comments by Trump that he would be a dictator only on “day one” if reelected.

    1. That someone like Trump is even a realistic candidate shows the political illiteracy of the USA.

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