115 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum February 11, 2025”

  1. Is zero carbon electricity possible in a country with limited hydro power?

    There are a few countries which are blessed with lots of rain and plenty of places to build hydropower such as in Norway or Colombia. Most countries are not that lucky and hydro power can only make up a small percentage of their electricity comsumption. Due to pressures on land for living and growing food, most countries cannot afford to flood thousands of square miles of land.

    https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48

    The United states peak consumption is around 530,000 Megawatt hours and hydro supplies around 22,000 Megawatt hours.

    Wind and solar installed capacity is about 330,000 Megawatt and production at best hits 130,000 Megawatts on any hour, falling to around 40,000 Megawatts most days with lowest output being around 25,000 Megawatts.

    The US has plenty of gas, coal and nuclear enough to cover 100% of demand with no solar and wind.

    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61242

    What would happen if all the gas and coal were shut down as some extremists want?

    Taking the easy to understand graph which shows output by source, the US would need to build double the amount of solar in order to remove coal generation, just for the few hours during the middle of the day.
    Wind which obviously does not fluctuate as much as solar would have to be increased by 700% from current levels in order to remove most of the burning of gas and cover closure of ageing nuclear power stations.

    This level of investment would only remove most coal and gas production. In order to construct a wind and solar based grid that is stable excess capacity and storage needs building. Experts say that a third of consumption in any month needs storing. Batteries in the very short duration and Hydrogen storage which would meet daily and weekly variations of as much as 70%.

    Once the United States has done all that, it would have to add far more to electrify all it’s cars and trucks.

    Greenpeace China says, China is only building a tiny percentage of the storage needed, and building another 50Gw of coal is making that impossible. The chinese government says it is making sure people get affordable electricity and storage is far too expensive.

    1. “Is zero carbon electricity possible…?”

      How about considering a few other questions
      -Can your region get by without coal being a part of the generating mix?
      -What will your region do to replace Nat Gas when it goes into the depletion phase?
      -How much of the properties and real estate value in your region are on the path to becoming uninsurable and thus ineligible for mortgage loans, and subject to large decline in value?

        1. Indeed, cornucopians please note.

          THE END OF COAL IS NOWHERE IN SIGHT

          • Retirement of coal-fired power plants in the West has done nothing to reverse global coal demand.
          • Global coal consumption is set to remain at these high levels—or even hit new all-time highs—for a few more years.
          • Global operating coal power capacity has increased by 13% since 2015, data from Global Energy Monitor shows.

          Global operating coal power capacity has increased by 13% since 2015, data from Global Energy Monitor (GEM) shows. Since 2015, when the countries reached a deal on the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world has added 259 GW of operating coal power capacity. As of the end of 2024, total operating coal power capacity hit a record high of 2,175 gigawatts (GW), while another 611 GW of capacity was under development, according to GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker.

          https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/The-End-of-Coal-Is-Nowhere-In-Sight.html

          1. All that’s happened is environmental legislation has put enormous costs on western industries. Those that did not go bust moved to China, India, Vietnam and others.

            Countries with high gdp growth have one thing in common they burn loads of coal.

            They are China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia.

            Our economies are being kept from sinking by borrowing more and more. It is very sad

            1. Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese government is very interested in environmental protection. The Communists have identified environmental protests as one of the things most likely to get them booted from power.

              Chinese coal plants are cleaner than American coal plants. The American coal industry is dying not least because of the lack on investment in the last 40 years. Companies prefer to hand cash out to their shareholders.

              https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-age-of-existing-coal-power-plants-in-selected-regions-in-2020

              The same is true of the nuclear industry. Investment stopped in about 1985 due to lack of demand, and nobody is about to fill in for those decades of underinvestment. So the fleet is dying.

    2. “Is zero carbon electricity possible…?”

      To get directly to the answer-
      No. Not even close.

      The outcome of this whole experiment will be to run short on fossil fuels and to overheat the planet at the same time.
      We can arrive there fast, or perhaps a little slower if we’d like to try.

    3. How high can global solar PV capacity go? In 2024 the amount already eclipsed 2,000 GW as opposed to the 1419 GW shown in the chart pictured below. When does the exponential phase of growth of solar PV slow down? The web sites I have been monitoring keep reporting robust increases in PV manufacturing capacity suggesting that the growth phase is far from over.

      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity

      1. Islandboy

        That is installed capacity not production.

        https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

        This is a nice simple graph to understand. This is production which reflects how much coal and gas are actually burnt.

        10,400Tw of coal which is the highest ever, 6,600 Tw gas as high as ever.

        Perhaps you not heard how much ice is melting in Greenland and Antarctic.

        https://unric.org/en/greenlands-ice-sheet-loses-2-5-million-litres-of-fresh-water-every-second/

        By the time emissions will be zero, CO2 levels will be so high that the world will be on a heating spiral of melting tundra ice. Exponential increase of wild fires and global droughts.

        1. Oh well! I guess i’d better just forget about all this renewable stuff and await doomsday! I guess I should also abandon any plans to get an EV and just throw the solar array on my roof and all the associated electronics in the trash. Fat chance! Solar PV is on a tear and I will continue to watch it with interest. Anything that is growing this fast will eventually overwhelm everything else. Oh, and I am fully aware that capacity is not the same as production but, if capacity is doubling every two years or so, production won’t be far behind. In the US the share of electricity generated by solar went from lass than 1% to greater than 5% between 2015 and 2023 and while Biden administration incentives may have helped a little, the main driver is the fact the solar PV is getting really cheap as are the batteries that can store the electricity for night time use.

          Battery prices are continuing to fall but, the GOP seems intent on making sure that US participation in the new energy paradigm is kept to a minimum. The right wing party in Australia is also trying their best to hold Australia back with limited success so far. Meanwhile, China to roll back wind and solar energy subsidies after hitting targets six years early

          1. Islandboy

            I understand why people do futile things in desperate situations, it helps them cope.

            As a member of Greenpeace over 30 years ago, there was hope then that deforestation and pollution could be curbed. Now it is obvious to me and most other people that only when greed, corruption and desperation are removed can the planet be saved.

            There is nothing in the last 30 years to show that is happening. In fact you only have to look at the brutality of people around the world. The Chinese government and how it murdered thousands of Falungong practitioners. Iran regime is as blood thirsty as ever.

            The wonderful China you so often champion, is facing a ground water shortage which will affect food prices around the world.

            https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/iran-authorities-covering-up-their-crimes-of-child-killings-by-coercing-families-into-silence/

            Russian soldiers raping and killing young women, a hundred thousand shells, missiles and bombs have turned cities into rubble.

            https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/04/ukraine-russian-forces-extrajudicially-executing-civilians-in-apparent-war-crimes-new-testimony/

            How many armed conflicts in Africa, not very conducive to building solar panels or protecting wildlife is it. Drug cartels in central and South America are so powerful they can take on the army.

            It is not a question of giving up, I do what is right, but it is about facing the reality of an evil world.

          1. Thanks Dennis.

            Based on the numbers from that same source, the average annual rate of growth in electricity generation from 2013 to 2023 for solar was about 28%. Wind was 14%.

            As a thought experiment, if those rates were to continue, we’d see the two generate the equivalent of today’s annual global energy production a little past 2041. It seems unlikely that these growth rates will be sustained, but still amazing rates of growth recently.

            1. T.Hill ….”As a thought experiment, if those rates were to continue, we’d see the two generate the …….”

              Instead of a thought experiment on the what ifs about the bright green future, how about trying to calculate the amount of mines, metal processing plants, metal refineries, factories, new educated workers in all the fields required to build it?

              The increase has to be built from scratch from new materials, including all the metals and minerals required for all the machinery, batteries for intermittency, EVs, ETrucks etc all this electricity is meant to be used on.

              Going from a really small base as solar has done over the last couple of decades, huge growth rates can be had while the overall system is growing.

              However a now large industry and supply chains, cannot grow at the same types of rates unless the overall system also grows robustly in the same type of time frame. To grow as your thought experiment suggests, would produce a magnitude more production of every aspect of solar in 10 years.

              As it’s all being built with fossil fuels at every stage, then the amount of fossil fuels used must also rise dramatically for all the new mines, factories etc required, so please also factor this into the calculations.

              If anyone can actually be bothered to do all the calculations, it will burst your bubble of thought on how possible the task really is. What happens instead is the hand wave of of we can do this as if the solar, wind batteries etc, were in isolation to everything else, but their not, they can only be built in an industrial environment where everything else is operating normally.
              The ‘normal’ over the last 2 centuries has been growth, which we all know is coming to an end because of resource limits or population limits or climate limits, most likely a combination of the lot…

              The other aspect forgotten about in the thought experiments like you have proposed is how we use 97-99% of all current energy and materials on maintenance of the existing system to keep it growing, all while the energy cost of gaining energy is going up and the energy cost of metals and minerals are also going up..

            2. Hey Hideaway,

              Yes, I’ve looked at the materials, capex and labor associated with the ongoing energy transition.

              Again, I’d suggest care with the rhetoric you use to describe some of the associated challenges. For example, you state that “The increase has to be built from scratch from new materials.” Nope, not true today and not true in the future in the sense that you suggest it all needs to be new primary steel, aluminum, etc.

              As another example, you note that “it’s all being built with fossil fuels at every stage”. Again, your inference is an absolute that we all know is simply not true. This is similar to your oft repeated argument about aluminum smelters. Just silly when the global energy mix includes other sources like nuclear and hydro.

              I never said it was possible, impossible, likely or unlikely. Just shared a reminder about the power of exponential growth. These growth rates will obviously not continue forever. I would expect that the majority of readers on this site are familiar with the S curve concept. If not, I’d suggest starting with Vaclav Smil given the topic.

              You’re not going to burst my bubble. I’ve spent years managing a physical infrastructure system with a replacement value in excess of $200B. I’m familiar with scale, entropy, declining EROI for fossil fuels, declining ore grades and ‘maintenance’ needs of many sorts. Not forgetting about any of this.

              At the risk of dating myself with the reference, I’d certainly agree that the Jetsons remains a farcical cartoon future.

              I’m still not picking up your white flag.

            3. T Hill …. “Nope, not true today and not true in the future in the sense that you suggest it all needs to be new primary steel, aluminum, etc.”

              So where does all this new materials, infrastructure, factories and mines come from that are greater than today if not new? All existing scrap is already used, so are you going to rob current uses of old for the green future?

              Current factories have current outputs, if you want an increased output of solar, wind and batteries, then there needs to be expansion/new factories, likewise for all their source material and machinery, likewise for the extra workers all the way along the line.

              T Hill ” Just shared a reminder about the power of exponential growth.”

              So did I!! I just keep pulling people up on the nonsense of exponential growth using lower grade materials on a finite planet.

              Because of entropy and dissipation, any civilization based on metals and minerals will fail because of the exponential requirement for energy and materials, to mine the lower and lower grades of ores. As energy cost of energy is also rising it’s a double whammy with no way out leaving less energy for the rest of the economy.

              T Hill … “You’re not going to burst my bubble”.

              No I’m not trying to, I was asking YOU to do the research to come to the conclusion yourself!! Only people who do the real research, without falling for the propaganda of
              vested interests and go back through the references of references to find the truth will work this out themselves.

              I use the off grid Aluminium smelter as the simplified example of how to cut through all the bullshit portrayed. If solar, wind and batteries really were cheaper than fossil fuels for electricity, then it makes perfect sense for businesses to go off grid, meaning zero grid fees, and use their own cheaper power to do the smelting. It would mean they could outcompete all other smelters that are tied to expensive fossil fuel power plus grid fees….

              Yet despite the potential massive commercial advantage if solar, wind and batteries really were cheaper, no company has decided to take this path!!
              The answer is obvious, yet so many people simply deny reality, they are not cheaper!!

  2. In light of Trump and Musk’s auto coup events of recent weeks, I feel I owe an apology to some posters here in considering this less likely. Clearly we’re in a new regime where America’s executive do whatever the fuck they like, even if it means sabotaging their own standing on the world stage. This speed surprises even me in how quick they realised they have power and how easily they can wield it to fuck things up. Especially when you can do it with this one weird trick of simply ignoring court orders saying to cease and desist.

    On the other hand, though: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

    lol 24% unemployment is depression levels.

    1. Apologize? We are all just random people on the internet.

      Also…Americans are pathologically unable to think about any sort of breakdown of anything occurring in the country. That’s not their fault, it’s a result of a remarkable history of success that arguably dates back to the civil war which ended in 1865.

      So everyone assumes in America that everything just “continues” forever in perfect, automated fashion. But people elsewhere live through revolutions, upheavals, regime changes, wars, inflations etc. all the time so they are used to it, and expect it more.

    2. “lol 24% unemployment”
      What we have seen in the US is real wage stagnation for something like 30 years for a pretty big segment of the population, while another segment in has done very well indeed. There has been/is work for just about anyone who wants it if they have a little bit of physical and mental fitness (a very little bit), and a trace of motivation.

      But I do think we are on the verge of a big shakeup, and a big escalation in the gap between haves and have nots-
      The replacement of many workers with AI enabled processes, and automation. We are going to have a sudden surge in ‘dead wood’.

    3. My present suspicion is that the broligarchs are providing all the rope in the world to allow Trump to hang himself, that we are on a freeway to Trumps third impeachment, and his first removal from office, this time with vox populi.

    4. I’ve thought since the election that the failure of the Biden administration was inevitable as is the coming failure of the Trump fiasco. You don’t even have to dig through the mire of statistics about employment and the various methods of counting income. Just look at the rate of GDP growth and rate of income inequality growth. The latter is spelled out in the published IRS statistics. The economy is growing as is the income gap:
      https://motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/averagehouseholdincome.jpg
      Biden made some good policies that will have long term benefit but voters are hurting now and want relief now. Trump is making so many bad decisions that any positive outcome seem incredible.
      We are seeing the weakness of democracy blowing up in our faces. Business as usual is not working and we are bouncing back and forth between a failing business-as-usual effort and would-be tyranny. In November we chose tyranny.
      As Hunter Thompson said “Buy the ticket, get the ride”

      1. JJHman,
        Last month I did buy the ticket… to see Painted Mandolin in your neighborhood at the Hopmonk. Nice venue, fun show.

    5. Kleiber,

      That politico piece is very good in my view, everyone should read it.

      1. Dennis. Another thing that isn’t measured is quality of work/life balance for blue collar Americans.

        I live in a shift work town. About 1,000 people work at a major candy factory. It pays decent with good benefits. Most workers work 12 hour shifts. 6A to 6P or 6P to 6A. 4 days on, four days off. Have to work 5 on 3 off sometimes. Not an easy schedule, especially with a family.

        My father in law passed last summer at age 72. He worked his entire life as a shift worker, first at an oil refinery, and later at a coal fired power plant. 43 years total, retired at age 67. The man almost always seemed tired. He had a lot of health problems and I believe shift worker contributed to his poor health. Just lived 5 years in retirement. Very sad. He was a good man.

        I have been very fortunate to have had a white collar day job my 31 full-time working years. I have worked long hours at times, but I always sleep at nightime .

  3. Has Trump been playing the board game Risk? (see Greenland, Canada and Mexico)

    1. Putin and Macron might have some issues with the order of the colors. so they likely won’t sign on as co-sponsors.

          1. I first heard on the Radio this morning, and then later read in a national “newspaper”, there´s a petition (not clear by whom or where for me atm.) that´s been apparently signed by 200 000 to let Denmark buy California.
            It included renaming Disneyland HC Andersen land, among other things.
            But I think buying Cali would be a huge mistake for the Danes…

    2. Everything is so stupid and I can’t wake up from it. Just gonna have to keep laughing until I become The Joker.

      1. The current situation in America reminds me of Chairman Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution.

        The Red Guard decided that since the color red symbolized progress, it was wrong for people to stop at red lights. Instead they should stop on green. It wasn’t official law, but the new rule was enforced by Red Guard mobs standing at urban street corners. They dragged people out of vehicles who stopped at the red light for impromptu kangaroo court convictions on charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy. The sentences varies from beatings to being sent off to labor camp.

        You might be laughing. Trump promised to export 12 m people as soon as he got into power. I’m waiting with bated breath to see what his “well ordered militias” will do.

        1. What I don’t get is how the MIC and CIA haven’t merc’d Musk or Trump yet, or even just other oligarchs. They can’t all be so rotted out and braindead as to think these things work out for them longterm.

          Maybe Boeing make a new Air Force One in only the very special way Boeing makes planes now. That’s their endgame to remove these two.

      2. Kleiber, count me in, I initially thought it would be interesting to see things unfold, but now my slightly sarcastic side has been taken over by my cynist/told you so side.
        But congrats to Vicky, a very good job!

  5. Don’t worry, we’re talking geologic time here, not human time scales (but, with great graphics).

    GREENLAND ICE SHEET COULD FULLY MELT AFTER REACHING SPECIFIC TIPPING POINT

    Greenland’s ice sheet currently spans over 1.7 million square kilometers and is the largest freshwater reservoir in the northern hemisphere. The ice sheet has already lost over a trillion tonnes of its total mass since the 1980s, with melting rates six times higher in the last decade. Indeed, a recent study found that an average of 30 million tonnes of ice is now being lost every hour.

    https://phys.org/news/2025-02-greenland-ice-sheet-fully-specific.html

    1. Doug – not a slam on you at all but my problem with large numbers is that they are meaningless to me. They are just sounds. Trillion/Billion. Intellectually I know what it means – I know exponents – but it just doesn’t resonate. Same with attempts to make it relatable – “65 Olympic sized swimming pools” – is also meaningless.
      Not sure if there is a better way to communicate these large numbers to the masses in a way that may trigger understanding or even perhaps action….
      Rgds
      WP

      1. WEEKENDPEAK —

        Here’s a number you can easily relatee to: The Greenland ice sheet has been responsible for an estimated 14 millimetres of sea level rise globally since 1992, largely due to the melting ice caps. Hotter temperatures around the globe, along with warmer ocean temperatures, have created an environment in which the melting ice is flowing more and more into the ocean.

        1. I get that. I wasn’t clear in my point. Which is – I guess – that just throwing numbers at the public doesn’t emotionally resonate. I think a picture of a destroyed coastline or the pics from the recent CA fires bring the message home much more clearly. Very few people have the ability to convert numbers into something that is emotionally strong enough to create action. And again – my comment has nothing to do with your post – just an observation.
          rgds
          WP

  7. Following on to a post I made several weeks ago about being in a race against time/resources to develop fusion power before it’s too late. Something I’ve considered regarding global warming that I don’t think I’ve seen discussed on here before

    1. I’m a man of science and math so I understand that CO2 and methane will contribute to a warming world, all things equal.

    2. But is this necessarily a bad thing? Understanding that we’re in the midst of an interglacial period within a large ice age cycle, and understanding that we only have so much time until we start to run low on fossil fuels and also easily accessible ores/minerals….

    3. …it seems to me that one of the major risks to modern civilization outside of bollide impact, biological war, nuclear war or supervolcanoes would be another advance of the large ice sheets like we saw not all that long ago. It’s hard for me to imagine there wouldn’t be huge negative impacts to civilization should we fall into another one of these periods. I live somewhere that has proper winters and life is just so much more difficult all around when there’s cold and snow.

    4. Possibly if we were able to geoengineer a way to prevent or at least delay the onset of another glacial period as long as possible it would be an advantage to human civilization. Obviously in a warming world there are winners and losers, there’s no getting around that just like there would be in any change of climate. And at some level of warming the negatives would outweigh the positives, but I’d rather take my chances in a warmer world than a colder one.

    idk, just something that’s been bouncing around in my head for several years. Pollution as a result of fossil fuel use is definitely an issue, even ignoring CO2, but we have the technology to greatly reduce things like NOx and heavy metal pollution from power plants using BAT and continued development in that area will help even further, as does using lighter HCs like CH4 instead of coal.

    1. LNGGUY,

      In the last thread we talked about Natural Gas replacing OIL. Not just ICE vehicles, but deisel, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals…

      Do you have an opinion on this. Would love to hear it.

      Very Big Man – Andre

      1. I don’t see a good path for natural gas in personal automotive transport. CNG just isn’t energy dense enough and I don’t think you’ll ever convince a significant part of the population that driving around with essentially a high pressure bomb under their seats is a viable mode of transport. As much as I would love to see LNG used for transport it just isn’t realistic for personal use…the temperature, constant boil off and so on make it impossibly complex for autos. Large ships, trains or even dedicated trucking is different as they can incorporate expense BOG management systems, but not autos.

        I don’t own any electric cars but clearly the technology is there to make them usable for large segments of the population and I assume battery tech will continue to advance.

        I think if we really put our minds to it then we could build and sell highly efficient ICE powered cars that along with the reasoning in my previous post make the CO2 emissions concern largely moot. We know how to make cars that don’t pollute much.

        My opinion is that if we replaced oil with ch4 for industrial use then we’d suddenly find we have a lot less ch4 than we thought, and outside of electric generation i wouldn’t encourage it.

        1. The most efficient gas power plant appears to be the Mitsubishi J Series turbines at 64%.
          Modulating variable speed furnaces are now at 98% efficiency, and the Bosch Singular 5200 boiler on my radiant hydronic system is (AFUE) rated at 95%.

          Doesn’t it make sense to prioritize use of NG resources for space heating over power production to the degree (ha!) possible?

          1. Well, if you can get a COP (compare to SEER) of 5 or more in your heatpump, and using NG (or even better Bio-NG) in a good electricity generating setup, possibly with district heating to boot, I´m pretty sure it would be good business.
            Regarding CNG, there´s been some fire incidents with Bio-gas busses in Sweden, but also a lot with Diesel ones, since that burns too.
            Airliners have been designed for H2 and CNG fuels also, some many years ago so solvable if wanted.

    2. LNGGUY

      >0.5 million deaths are already attributable to climate change.

      We are currently on track for:

      3C by 2100

      Passing tipping point for WAIC (before 2100), locking in 7m sea level rise long term (past 2100)

      Passing tipping point for Greenland ice sheet (before 2100), locking in 3m sea level rise long term (past 2100)

      Passing tipping point for AMOC collapse. Range of consequences, including potential cessation of agriculture in much of Europe. 1m on east coast of North America. In addition to what is already baked in otherwise.

      >1 billion displaced due to heat, storm or sea level rise by 2100.

      The economic forecasts are more uncertain for many reasons, but generally suggest GWP loss greater than 25%. Possible much greater.

      The list goes on.

      How does this balance for you on the scale?

    3. “being in a race against time/resources to develop fusion power before it’s too late”

      It may be an intriguing science/engineering project, but it is not a strategy that you can rely on since there is no guarantee that it will ever pan out as a net energy source on any planet.
      True, you won’t know until you try (for over 60 years now).
      But you cannot plan on ever having any result to stand on.

      One project is headquartered 17 miles from where I live. I drove by. Its a, inauspicious medium size warehouse from the outside, right next to Fluke plastics, a Fed Ex shipping center and an industrial uniform distributor.
      Who knows- Helion Energy

      1. The problem with companies like Helion is that their best hope is to produce a giant expensive Rube Goldberg machine that spits out heat and hard radiation, the two least useful forms of energy.

        To get anything useful they’ll have to boil a lot of water in a second giant Rube Goldberg contraption. That may be able to compete against current battery tech, but not against solar which is solid state and uses ambient energy.

        The idea of getting mechanical energy from hot fluids was great in the 17th century, and has served us very well. The same can be said for horse collars and buggy whips, mechanical typewriters and watches, phonograph records, silver halide camera film, cathode ray tubes, abacuses, slide rules and other mechanical calculation, sextants, drafting equipment, steam locomotives, non-rotary printing presses and a huge variety of ingenious mechanical gadgets in manufacturing now replaced by software and actuators.

        1. “The idea of getting mechanical energy from hot fluids was great in the 17th”
          I’m still big on hot fluid….heated the molten innards of the earth. Geothermal.
          I think it ends up being viable at scale and widespread.

          Regarding fusion, I bet that we learn the hard way that the only way it is viable is on a massive scale…we call it the sun. Maybe someday AI will crank 20 trillion fusion prototype scenarios and all come up with the same conclusion…the sun.

          1. “Regarding fusion, I bet that we learn the hard way that the only way it is viable is on a massive scale…we call it the sun.”

            LOL When I was an Engineering Physics undergraduate student many decades ago, one of our Profs said much the same thing. I’m 84 years old now and doubt if anything has changed that much. Keep up the excellent comments Hic.

          2. Geothermal has many of the same basic problems that thermal plants have, including the production of huge amounts of waste heat. One advantage is that it doesn’t require fuel. But like nuclear, it needs two separate fluid cycles. It also has to deal with lots of hot brine containing whatever comes up out of the ground.

            Using geothermal steam directly for industrial processes might be a better idea than using it for electricity generation.

    4. “if we were able to geoengineer a way to prevent or at least delay the onset of another glacial period as long as possible it would be an advantage to human civilization”

      This interglacial is expected to end in roughly 50,000 yrs [10,000-100,000].
      Humanity will be hitting the wall in a short timeframe…onset this very century.
      Focus man.

    5. The slope of the cooling curve for previous glaciation events is one degree per thousand years. The impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will have come and gone before we have to deal with the implacable forces of the next glaciation.

  9. Wind and solar are sooo cheap.

    The countries with the highest percentage of electricity coming from wind and solar
    .

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production

    As the table shows countries such as Denmark, Uruguay, Germany etc have high levels of wind and solar.

    These countries are now facing the costs of wind and solar being highly variable and require backup plants which must be ready to deliver electricity at a moments notice. This means burning coal or gas even when not producing electricity. Batteries backup are only interested at delivering at the most expensive time of day otherwise they would make no money.

    https://www.cable.co.uk/energy/worldwide-pricing/

    As the map shows the cheapest electricity prices are in countries with the highest levels of coal.

    Roughly speaking a grid can cope with 20% of electricity coming from wind and solar with minor cost adjustments. After that gas and coal plants have to be paid to stop and start production far more than normal.

    1. Entropy is a well known DEI initiative brought in under Obama. It’s time to dismantle it with the power of DOGE.

      1. I keep losing track. Which is worse today, DEI, Woke or Communism?
        Yesterday it was feeding hungry children that weren’t white.

  11. For those who are so inclined I offer up a very interesting podcast interview with one of the guys pioneering ‘Enhanced Geothermal’. He came out of the Oil/Gas drilling industry and the company is pushing the envelope on drilling deep for heat….and is making great strides. Put this on your radar if its not firmly planted in your scope of energy sector developments.
    Volts podcast- ‘Catching up with enhanced geothermal’

    here, or wherever else you go for podcasts
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/catching-up-with-enhanced-geothermal/id1548554104?i=1000691502024

    Regarding financial and technical viability, this ranks something like 10,000 to 1 higher than fusion power.
    Give it a listen.

    1. This one for Trump’s director of BLM , 20 years head of Western Energy Alliance ” which engages in federal legislative, public lands, environmental, regulatory, wildlife, tribal and public affairs issues on behalf of companies involved in all aspects of environmentally responsible oil and natural gas exploration and production in the West”

      https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-taps-us-oil-advocate-lead-public-land-bureau-2025-02-12/

      All gonna collapse on Trump

      1. Paul,

        Please expand on what you mean when you say “all gonna collapse on Trump”.

  13. If you’re pissing off the Canadians, you’re doing something wrong.

    1. Canadian Army killed more Taliban in their first six months in Afghanistan than everyone else put together in the first six years. They’re brawlers. They don’t hit their NATO spending obligations, but they seem to have no trouble hitting their NATO killing obligations. I’d just say thanks and leave them alone. Don’t need to micromanage it.

      1. Survivalist,
        Do you have a source for that first sentence that you could share?

  15. For those not familiar with The Peter Principle, it basically states that as a low/middle manager you´re promoted up to, and then by inertia a bit beyond your competence level, thus sadly rendering you incompetent at that last level.
    I have however realized that the glass ceiling can be broken if you are just ignorant and incompetent enough, just a few examples: Scholz, Marin, Kallas, Kristersson, I could name a bunch more too.

      1. Excellent example Ron, the trick seems to be getting support from the really powerful ones. Should they stay behind you regardless of polls, votes and such nonsense all will be well for you. If not, you´re out.
        (A bit of a tangent, but still relevant IMHO)

    2. I’d say most Western leadership refutes the Peter Principle and absolutely supports the “failing upwards” technocratic route to ruining a nation.

    1. If the EU wasn’t so cucked, they’d have not demolished their industrial capacity because America needed more juice for itself. If they have any sense left, they’ll be looking eastwards too.

      I would laugh a very hearty laugh if the EU and UK and Canada joined BRICS.

      Gonna role play this in Civ V or VI since the recently released Civ VII is absolute garbage thanks to more capitalist greed and rot.

    2. It seems clear to me that the US played some of the best cards ever dealt in an extremely feeble and glutinous manner, after ww2.
      The isolationist and narcissistic stance that Trump embodied in his first term could have seen as an aberration, but with re-election this country has declared that we have a new (even worse) character….not to be trusted, not to have your back, not to be an honored team member.
      If I was a planner from other countries, I’d certainly be looking hard for better partners.

      A few things that could have gone differently
      -Opened the doors for citizenship after ww2 to the homeless surviving Jews from Europe, instead of creation of Israel as an attempted sanctuary. Think of all that could have been avoided.
      -Focused international policy on being against authoritarianism, rather than based on economic policies. For example flooded places like VietNam in 1960 with economic aid, education, infrastructure spending rather than napalm and mass ballistics. Even if they chose communism as their base economic policy.
      -Thought of Mexico as a brother rather than a low caste afterthought. Mexico economic ranking is right in the mix of Australia, Spain, S Korea, and considerably higher than Turkey or Indonesia. It could be doing much better if we had been a better partner all along.

      1. Gathering the tribe of Judah into one small geographical area just makes the final solution 2.0 easier to execute, חלילה.

        1. Indeed. Especially in such a brutal/hostile neighborhood which was already fully inhabited at the time. The US was a closed door.

      2. The US failure after WW2 was in part due to our rabid focus on protecting unhindered capitalism.
        The greatest policy error of the United States, from the Civil War until today has been conflating socialism with tyranny. If nothing else it demonstrates the terrific power that the very wealthy had, and still do have, over our feeble democracy. It has allowed us to maintain the world’s worst medical system, caused us to be hated in much of the world, enabled the worst income inequality in the industrial world and encouraged some of the worst oligarchs in modern history. Our “help” in forming new governments in post-Warsaw pact east Europe and post Allende Chile are glaring examples of rabid ideology over common sense or even self interest.
        Now, with Trump and Project 2025 we may see the first serious push to return to feudalism in three centuries. Feudalism being, of course, the programmed end of unrestrained capitalism, a Gini coefficient of 1.0 and a government whose only role is protecting property.

        1. “conflating socialism with tyranny”
          Completely agree. The truth is that tyranny and its death squads can come from the right or the left.
          It takes a lot of work and attention and intention to build and hold on to a civil society.

  17. COAL CONSUMPTION REMAINS HIGH IN THE UNITED STATES

    “While many countries worldwide are moving away from a dependence on coal, the U.S. still relies heavily on the dirtiest fossil fuel for its power. The U.S. has experienced an accelerated green transition since the introduction of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022, which has spurred a massive increase in the country’s renewable energy capacity and attracted billions in private funding.
    However, this shift has not stopped the U.S. reliance on coal, as the third-largest consumer of coal in the world after China and India. The U.S. continues to be the fourth-largest producer of coal, after China, India and Indonesia, and it has more coal reserves than any other country. The U.S. had 206 active coal plants remaining in 2023. Around a quarter of domestic coal generation is expected to be retired by 2040 but the pace of planned retirements slowed last year as energy demand increased.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Coal-Consumption-Remains-High-in-the-United-States.html

    2. Dust and Coal Soot-
      “Black carbon… accelerates Himalayan glacier melt…
      Dwindling ice in the Himalayas has long troubled researchers and decision makers in southern Asia. Nearly two billion people rely on the water produced by Himalayan snowmelt, and glacier loss could lead to water shortages and an increase in extreme floods.”

      -The Himalayan-Hindu Kush-Karakoram region is known as the “Third Pole” because it contains the largest reserve of fresh water outside of the polar ice caps. The region includes the Tibetan Plateau, the world’s highest and largest highland.

      And the bulldozer rolls on.

    1. “the US is no longer interested in defending freedom and democracy”

      Abroad…and at home.
      The policies are more about laying the groundwork to cull all the ‘dead wood’…those who don’t enrich and empower you and your team. He looks to Putin as a role model on that.

  19. Trump tweeted today “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”.

    Congratulations Republicans. You are well on your way to destroying American democracy.

    Well he didn’t tweet it, he published it on his own social media platform which he calls Truth. Note that he named his platform after the Soviet newspaper Pravda, which means truth in Russian. I strongly suspect Putin helped him pick the name.

    1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o

      The US government is trying to bring back nuclear safety employees it fired on Thursday, but is struggling to let them know they should return to work, NBC News has reported.
      The National Nuclear Security Administration workers were among hundreds of employees in the energy department who received termination letters.
      An email obtained by NBC said the letters for some NNSA employees “are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel”.
      …
      The nuclear security officials who were laid off on Thursday helped oversee the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. That included staff who are stationed at facilities where the weapons are built, according to CNN.

    2. I’m not a big fan of Trump but I do appreciate Elon trying get rid of useless bureaucracy. I despise wastefulness.

      1. Cactus,

        Many intelligent people do not seem to understand that without the “useless bureaucracy” we would have anarchy.

        Many older folks watch old westerns on TV and long for the Wild West, be careful what you wish for.

        How does Afghanistan look to you? That’s what we are heading for. Musk is an ass that knows nothing about government, nobody elected him, he was not approved for any position of power in the Senate, he is a rogue actor empowered by a senile old man who also knows nothing about governing.

        1. Well, to be truthful, no one elected Ursula Van der Layen (from the public that is, it´s a complicated and mostly hidden procedure to get there) or Victoria Nuland either.
          And much of the current mess hinges a lot on them, though mostly Vicky and Boris J in my view.
          Must feel good for the Baltics now, they surely got you know what, along with the Germans.
          https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/

          1. Update, (not good manners to expand on your own post, I know, and probably blocked by some anyway but might be interesting to some) the grandstanding of the Baltic rulers have really put their people in a not very pleasant spot. But that matters not to Kallas since she´s now in Brussels and could probably not care less.
            https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
            On a grander scale, the whole thing about resources of different kinds are picking up a bit, nést pas?

        1. Mike B,

          Medical research in the US will go down the tubes with RFK Jr as HHS Secretary. Everyone thinks things will be fine, everyone also thought Trump wouldn’t follow through with his campaign promises, they seem to have been mistaken, everything will not be fine.

          This don’t worry be happy attitude may be similar to Germany’s attitude in the 20s and 30s as the fascists consolidated power. It is often said that history repeats, unfortunately not many people have studied history in any depth.

            1. Germs definitely cause disease but, germ theory does not explain why any two people infected with the same pathogen can have vastly different outcomes, Why doesn’t ebola kill every single individual that becomes infected with the virus? For that matter, why did COVID-19 not kill everybody that got infected? The other thing is that germ theory fails to explain medical conditions that have become the major causes of death and/or discomfort in modern times. Heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, alzheimer’s/dementia, lupus, cancer and others have no known connection to specific pathogens but, some people are just not affected by any of them.

              I got interested in vitamin C in my early twenties and my interest has only grown over the years. When the internet arrived on the scene it allowed me to find out a lot more about the nutritional approach to health care and lead me to a group of physicians that subscribe to that approach. The one physician that most intrigued me was one Robert F. Cathcart. He was an expert in the use of vitamin C to treat a wide variety of conditions but, encountered rejection and even scorn at the hands of scientific and medical journal editors. Despite his unorthodox practice I am not aware of any malpractice suites being filed against him. It is the rejection of Cathcart and his ideas that first made me skeptical of allopathic medicine.

              Enter the covid pandemic and before the pandemic was even declared I was getting suspicious. The notion that this infection could not be treated was preposterous to me so I quickly went to my preferred sources of information and found a completely different narrative. I ended up getting my guidance from a group of medical doctors that came together to form The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (now renamed the Independent Medical Alliance). Here’s the link to a Wikpedia page about them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Medical_Alliance. It says “is a group of physicians and former journalists, formed in April 2020, that has advocated for various unapproved, dubious, and ineffective treatments for COVID-19 (e.g. hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and other miscellaneous combinations of drugs and vitamins).” The strange thing is that this group provided what i consider to be the best advice on how to treat infections with covid. Doctors in this group and others that used their protocols or similar ones claim that none of the patients that they treated early died. I watched their weekly zoom meetings and saw or heard testimonies of lots of people that were treated with their protocols and survived as well as families of people who were refused the opportunity to use their protocols and died. The end result is that the two lead doctors that started the group had their medical board certifications revoked!

              One of the doctors, Paul Marik, came up with a treatment for sepsis in 2016 and published his findings in 2017 for what became known as the Marik protocol. it involved the use of high dose intravenous Vitamin C, together with thiamine and steroids. Rather than embracing this protocol many in the medical community approached it with extreme skepticism. In January 2020 a study was presented at a medical conference in Belfast that quashes controversial vitamin C treatment for sepsis with global trial. I watched a video of the presentation of this study on YouTube at the time (just days after it was presented) and Marik was invited to offer an editorial after the presentation of the study. He offered a very harsh criticism of the study and submitted that the study was an example of how clinical trials could be designed to prove that a particular treatment does not work by failing to adhere to critical aspects of the treatment.

              The weirdest thing is the following video on YouTube: COVID patient with sepsis makes ‘remarkable’ recovery following megadose of vitamin C | ABC News. The ABC (Australia) story was not viewed by many people (11,000 in five years) and it was only picked up by two other sources, Sky News and UNTV News (Philippines) .It was not picked up by any major international or western news network. The weird thing is that one of the principals in the ABC News story, Rinaldo Bellomo, was also involved in the VITAMINS Trial (YouTube video with Marik’s editorial starting at 33 minutes in).

              All if this stuff has made me very skeptical of allopathic medicine and the activities of the pharmaceutical industry. So maybe RFK is not the catastrophe many people are suggesting he is.

            2. Islandboy,

              Germs don’t cause all disease and vitamins don’t cure all disease. Don’t believe every clown who posts stuff on the internet, or feel free. Hey, smoking cigarettes is good for you, just ask the tobacco companies.

              No RFK Jr is an idiot and it seems the same is true of Republican Senators, maybe he can be minister of health in your nation.

            3. Mike B,

              Canada is looking better and better. Hopefully they don’t build a wall, if they do they should have Trump pay for it.

            4. Dennis, I am somewhat taken aback by your response. I never claimed that germs cause all disease or that vitamins (nutrition) cure all disease.

              Do you consider the late Dr. Robert Cathcart (died 2007) some “clown who posts stuff on the internet”? What about Dr.Paul Marik (a highly published specialist in critical care medicine)? Another medical doctor I have followed is Dr. Michael F. Holick, Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicne. He advocates for sensible sun exposure and an increase in the RDA for vitamin D, especially in winter at extreme latitudes.

              I have watched several of Holick’s public lectures available on YouTube and he makes a lot of sense. Is he a “clown who posts stuff on the internet”? Holick has faced a lot of push back, originating from sunscreen manufacturers and been accused of grifting from his work on vitamin D! He also recommended increased use of vitamin D during covid. He published a paper in September, 2020 suggesting that adequate levels of vitamin D reduce the severity of covid infections He was roundly criticised for it and the journal was pressured to retract the paper. Publishing a paper in a medical journal is a far cry from being a “clown who posts stuff on the internet”!

              Have you ever visited the web site https://c19early.org/ ? The site list thousands of studies on over a hundred different treatments for COVID 19 .One of the things that stands out at that site is that the only treatments that were considered effective for covid and approved for use, were all new, patented and expensive. Anybody trying to provide information on any low cost treatment was accused of spreading misinformation and encouraging vaccine hesitancy. What a coincidence!

            5. Islandboy,

              Vitamins are a good thing, more than a certain amount of water soluble vitamins is a waste of money with excess expelled in urine, for fat soluble vitamins excessive doses can harm health. Everyone does not die from exposure to germs obviously, in some cases it depends on the health of the patient and the level of exposure. This is all quite evident to a biologist.

            6. Island Boy, I generally agree with your comments regarding vitamins and unapproved medical protocols. I am 91 years old and maintain an 80-acre hobby beef farm and provide a large garden and orchard for my family. I have, for many years, taken vitamin C and D daily. On January 1, 2021, I became sick with Covid-19. At the end of the week, I was in serious trouble but I refused to seek professional care. My reticence was due to the fact that people in my condition were being imprisoned in the local hospital and an advocate was not allowed to interfere. I did not have prescribed Ivermectin, but I had a bottle of bovine pour-on Ivermectin. I massaged the recommended ml/# on my thighs. Following the second treatment, I was well. My PhD (cellular biology) grandson scoffs at my treatment protocol, but …

            7. I think the attitude of the people working on this forum is that we work and try to make progress on things we can solve given access to the data. Clinical trials and statistical studies require a significant number of cases to be evaluated and should never be treated anecdotally. Take a look at PubPeer.com, a post-peer-review of published papers for how these battles are fought.

  20. Not so easy to simply ramp up, or even maintain, the grid.
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-transformer-shortage-nrel-niac/738947/

    Unless perhaps you are China, who has recently approved the building a new dam that is triple the capacity of Three Gorges, upstream of the Brahmaputra.
    “After years of speculation, China last month announced it would build what it described as the world’s largest hydropower dam in its Tibet region—a $137-billion megaproject nearly three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam to be located on the Yarlung Zangbo River in one of the deepest gorges on Earth. But the estimated 60-GW project”

  21. If oil prices continue lower I think we will get a weaker dollar. Lower oil prices ease inflation and lead to interest rate cuts. It also makes buying oil cheaper. Even if China can buy all of it’s oil from Russia in the Chinese currency. Oil is still priced in dollars. So it becomes cheaper as the value of the yuan or purchasing power goes up because oil went down in price in dollar terms.

    It’s a demand issue. Oil prices go down because of lack of demand. The amount of dollars needed to buy oil goes down with it.

    Might just be temporary though. Kinda depends on what the US treasury does with bond issuance. If the amount of T-bills ever for any reason shrinks which could happen under DOGE it will cause a liquidity issue in the Eurodollar market. Not enough collateral. But until then we are probably going see weakness in both oil prices and the dollar.

    The opposite is true as well. If oil prices were to go up for any reason. So would the dollar rise against other currencies.

    A lot job losses at the Federal level will lead to less demand. Severance packages only last so long and people tend to hoard their money until they know they have another job.

    But these high paying federal jobs support a lot of demand and a lot of other jobs. Unemployment likely to end 2025 higher than where it is currently.

    As lack of demand increases and becomes more apparent you’ll will see the carry trade unwind and Japanese yen strengthening. Which will have implications on asset prices.

    Also there was a tremendous amount of front running potential tariffs. So demand will be down because demand was inflated by potential tariffs to begin with. And that front running happened on a global scale.

    1. HHH

      We’re likely even deeper into the weeds already. Considering we’ve been in recession for three years already.

      https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

      https://brownstone.org/articles/recession-since-2022-us-economic-income-and-output-have-fallen-overall-for-four-years/

      It explains the dollar shortage we’re seeing globally. Inflation is the only thing propping up GDP which as we already know is a useless metric. MSM is also a useless metric because they do nothing but tow the government lies.

      1. Hadn’t heard of Brownstone before. Now I know better.

        Public service message for other readers to try to help you avoid a wasted trip down the rabbit hole. Appears to be another right/libertarian leaning agitprop shop with a founder more interested in ideology than science and fact.

      2. JT,

        The problem I see ahead is 75% of US debt is in duration of 1 month to two years. So we constantly have to rollover huge sums of debt.

        If ever for any reason the US decided to term out say 10% of the duration into 10-30 year bonds. Which is actually reasonable. Or DOGE finds and cuts enough waste. Say 3-4 trillion. The amount of collateral could shrink abruptly. Causing an acute dollar shortage in the Eurodollar market that the FED and other central banks can’t paper over because they are in fact powerless to do so.

        A more of a longer term problem I see is Japanese and Italian debt that is used as collateral in the Eurodollar market. Both these countries are heavily reliant on imported energy. As those energy imports disappear over time due to oil depletion. That collateral will eventually get rejected. And a seriously catastrophic dollar shortage will happen.

  22. Islandboy —
    How is green revolution going down you’re way? According to reports we get here more than 94% of your electricity is generated from petroleum-based fuels. And, you have all that high angle sunshine. Doesn’t sound great but what do I know.

    1. Not very well. The last utility scale solar farm was commissioned in the middle of 2019 and the process for new capacity just started early last year so we are looking at 2027 before we see any utility scale addictions. Having said that the local electric utility is proceeding under what it calls “right of first refusal” to replace 115 MW of existing capacity with solar PV which should be complete sometime in 2026.

      In the EV space, the governments EV policy can only be described as a failure with less than 500 EVs (my estimate) registered out of a fleet of roughly 575,000 vehicles. The government had promised to acquire 200 electric buses for the municipal bus fleets but to date has only acquired 6. Instead they went ahead and bought 100 CNG buses after our US supplier New Fortress Energy (NFE) offered to fund the CNG fueling infrastructure at the bus depots.

      I sense an almost complete lack of urgency on the part of politicians in Jamaica to do anything different when it comes to energy. The influence of US media has possibly lulled them into a state of complacency. Public opinions on EVs appear to have been heavily influenced by US media as well. Only a small group of people, myself included, are aware of the tectonic shift (disruption) that is taking place in China! They see all the new cars coming from China and do not realize that what they are seeing will soon be a minority in terms of the type of vehicles produced in China. You folks in North America should check this website occasionally to keep abreast of what is happening in China with respect to EVs China Jan NEV sales fall to 944,000 while exports hit record high, CAAM data show (Chinese vehicle sales always decline as they head into their new year celebrations in late January)

  23. About how you’d expect, apparently.

    HOW TRUMP’S ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’ PLEDGE IS AFFECTING OTHER COUNTRIES

    The UN climate summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023 ended with a call to “transition away from fossil fuels”. It was applauded as a historic milestone in global climate action. Barely a year later, however, there are fears that the global commitment may be losing momentum, as the growth of clean energy transition is slowing while burning of fossil fuels continues to rise. And now there is US President Donald Trump’s “national energy emergency”, embracing fossil fuels and ditching clean energy policies – that has also begun to influence some countries and energy companies already. In response to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” slogan aimed at ramping up fossil fuel extraction, and the US notifying the UN of its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Indonesia, for instance, has hinted that it may follow suit.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce85709xdk4o

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