105 thoughts to “Open Thread Non Petroleum, Jan 19, 2025”

  1. Does anyone know what became of George Kaplan? I miss seeing his posts and comments.

  2. Biden’s Legacy: Rescuing America From COVID, Then Getting Replaced By A Criminal

    i guess it is part of the times

    1. Are you serious? How exactly did Biden rescue the US from Covid? If you want to credit the vaccine it was developed by the previous administration. In reality the credit for ending the pandemic should go to the Omicron variant. It spread easily, infected virtually everyone, and rarely caused severe disease.
      Biden’s real legacy is that he enabled Netanyahoo’s genocide in Gaza. He is a war criminal who should be put on trial along with Netanyahoo and others. The other legacy is that he allowed between 10 million – 15 million people to enter the US without authorization and vetting and forced the American people to pay for their upkeep at a time when budgets are strained at every level and significant number of struggling Americans need help. His own party decided that he was too cognitively challenged to run for office. So maybe he shouldn’t be put on trial after all on account of diminished mental capacity.

      1. Yes, he’s serious. As serious as Nick G’s last comment where he said Palestinians are the only people in the world re-litigating post-WWII land partitions and that “Palestinians weren’t allowed to move on and have normal lives: instead their Arab and Turkish & Persian neighbors chose to bottle them up as a weapon against the normal development of Israel. And October 6th was a calculated tactic to prevent peace between Israel and KSA.”

        1. So, if you disagree please provide thoughtful and specific feedback. And, please try to avoid the temptation to focus on details which sound good, but don’t really get to the heart of the issue. Because, of course, a short paragraph or two can never capture everything.

        1. All you need to know is Biden and the Dems lost the election so badly, a convicted felon from reality TV was the better candidate.

          That’s how bad the Democrats were running the country. And the polls reflected that.

          Now for a very funny 100 days of Trump doing whatever pablum he’s waffled on about today. Gulf of America and Martian bases here we come…

          1. Not really Volya. Most Americans that bothered to vote voted against Trump.

            1. Hey Alimbiquated,

              I’m confused. I thought that Trump won both the electoral college and popular vote. What am I missing?

            2. Hey T HILL
              The popular vote was basically a toss up. Third party candidates got just over 2% of the vote.

            3. Trump got 49.8% of popular vote and Harris got 48.3%, with the rest (1.9%) going to third party candidates. So technically 50.2% of votes cast were not for Trump, but he got more of the popular vote than Harris.

            4. He got votes from 22.7% of the US population, while Harris got 22.0%.

              He pardons all 1600 who engaged in the attack on the US capital while the constitutional transfer of power was underway on Jan 6 2022.
              “Trump has once again sent a disturbing message to his supporters: If you engage in political violence on my behalf, I will protect you.

            5. Hickory,

              If you don’t vote, you don’t count in terms of an election. About 155 million voted of 244 million who are eligible to vote about 63.5% turnout of eligible voters. So of eligible voters about 31.6% voted for Trump and 31.9% did not vote for Trump. We obviously don’t know the opinions of the other 36.5% of eligible voters as they chose not to participate.

              I wonder how many just don’t care about the rule of law, I doubt many expected the blanket pardons that Trump chose.

              Would be interesting to see if Bush decides to speak out. Reagan is spinning in his grave no doubt.

      3. Trump was in denial of Covid and suggested that bleach might be injected into people as a cure.
        Netanyahoo held off the prisoner exchange to benefit fellow criminal Trump.
        The Republicans negotiated a bipartisan bill on Border Security, and then backed off on it because Trump said to.

        Trump was impeached twice and let off by the GOP for political reasons and is an adjudicated rapist. The SCOTUS essentially made him a King and delayed one of his trials. Cannon’s corrupt rulings delayed the other.

        And if you think Biden is senile, well, Trump is already doing stupid stuff…and it will only get worse.

        1. Oh fu*k Lloyd, you live on the side of the border of facts, truth and common sense. Just down load the Tic Tok app, open up a Z and Facebook account. Stream Hannity and Fox 24/7. And I’ll bet you never thought One America meant Canada being the 51st state. Welcome to the Fascist States of America. Lloyd help us, we’re going to need it.

        2. Indeed Trump is a stupid, incompetent, low IQ person. However attacking Trump does not absolve Biden. The fact remains that Netanyahoo carried out genocide and Biden helped him by supplying weapons. Biden could have stopped the genocide any time. US has all the power and Israel is an insignificant country that cannot survive without US military, economic, and diplomatic support.
          The fact remains that Biden failed to defend the US border from large scale organized incursions over 4 years. Why do you need an immigration bill to stop people from entering without a passport and visa? It is already illegal. He could have pressured Mexico to stop the caravans but did nothing. To make things worse when Texas tried to enforce the border Biden administration actively opposed and sabotaged their effort.
          We all know how Biden’s family sold access to the Whitehouse for millions of dollars in bribes with 10% for the “big guy”.
          Genocide Joe’s final act was to pardon his degenerate, drug addict son who is dumber than my dog. That will be his legacy.
          I usually lean Democrat and used to really love Obama back in 2008. The fact that people like me now hate Democrats tells you bad the Biden administration was.

          1. Well, no, it tells us how successful Republican propaganda has been.

            In theory, the US has great leverage of Israel. That doesn’t mean that Biden could do anything he wanted. He faced an obviously close election against someone who pandered badly to evangelicans who were willing to allow Israel to do anything at all: the more self destructive the better, because of course Israel’s destruction is considered the gateway to the end times.

            So, Biden had very little leeway when dealing with Israel.

            Large scale organized incursions? Sigh. I haven’t tried to follow the immigration debate closely, but it’s perfectlyl obvious that business loves illegal immigration, and that Trumps enforcement will do nothing to help Americans: it will only drive immigrant further into a grey economy and lower their wages even further (obviously harming low income Americans).

            We really don’t know how Biden’s family sold access. That’s a bunch of Fox News hooey.

            The fact is that low income folks need help, and Trump promises that help. He also sells an enormous load of crap about both the causes and solutions for their problems. He does everything to raise incomes and lower taxes for the wealthy, and does the reverse for low income folks: don’t listen to the promises, look at the actions, from lowering minimum wage, attacking labor standards, raising taxes and various costs for low income folks. Tariffs are a really good example: they’re regressive sales taxes, which Trump is pursuing to give him money for cuts in progressive income taxes.

  4. Oh Joy. Sometimes I feel more for species other than the human one.

    US TO WITHDRAW FROM PARIS AGREEMENT, EXPAND DRILLING

    “President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday announced the United States’ intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord for a second time, a defiant rejection of global efforts to combat planetary warming as catastrophic weather events intensify worldwide.

    The Republican leader also said his administration would declare a “national energy emergency” to significantly expand drilling in the world’s top oil and gas producer and scrap upcoming stringent pollution standards for cars and trucks, which he has derided as an “electric vehicle mandate.””

    https://phys.org/news/2025-01-paris-agreement-drilling.html

    1. This is all a “well, duh” when you had Trump and Musk coming in. It’s nothing unexpected.

      I mean, he has to beat Biden’s record oil lease bonanza, so why not also tear up environmental legislation too?

      None of this was going to matter so long as the imperial mode of living requires that the core pillage the periphery for all their resources and the treats keep flowing to enable people to live reasonably comfortably. Capital is not going to strand those assets without a fight, so unless we radically change our economic system, climate change is a no big deal next to profit.

      1. I’m watching US bond yields closely. They might collapse here and head much lower. Flight to safety. With all the chaos that will be coming. Too early to call it just yet though.

        10 year is down 30 basis points. Which is a big move. Safety and liquidity will thrive during the chaos.

        Falling bond yields here in the US can cause the Japanese carry trade to unwind a bit btw. Something else to look at. When trying to make sense of where we are heading to.

  5. Trump Makes History: First Convicted Felon To Take Oath As President

    (Lets not degrade felons by comparing them to Trump)

  6. Just a thought for you people. I know, I know, our personal biases affect everything and can’t be completely overcome.

    But let me remind you: Trump was not running against Joe Biden! There was a living, breathing, human being Trump was running against…and she had a name: Kamala Harris.

    So what everyone should be discussing is Trump vs Harris. And that’s a debate I’m willing to have. Kamala Harris has to earn a vote, and if she didn’t do it, that’s on her.

    But some of you still can’t wrap your head around the idea of a colored woman even running for President, so you are still having this useless debate about what Biden did or didn’t do. Because, of course, it can only be an old white man vs an old white man for President, right?

    Obama, Hillary…NEVER AGAIN! Right?

    1. Biden the genocidaire vs. the woman who failed to get any backing until the original candidate was pushed out (and who was generally a terrible person in her previous roles).

      Wonder why the electorate didn’t light up at these options. Perhaps the Dems could have not thrown Bernie under a bus so we could have Trump the accelerationist throw us under one collectively as a species.

      Having a different ethnicity counts for nothing if you’re a shitty person. I don’t care how Kenyan Obama’s background was, he was vile but gets a pass for doing shit Dubya the warhawk yokel did because he was a black liberal.

  7. Hi all. I wonder if the impact of the new US Presidency on domestic petroleum extraction has been discussed here before. Growth seems to be petering out, can new policies (or lack thereof) change the predicament somehow?

    1. Opening ANWR seems one such policy. Although I don’t know how much is there left untapped.

  8. Another “tipping point” crossed?

    AFTER MILLENNIA AS CO₂ SINK, MORE THAN ONE-THIRD OF ARCTIC-BOREAL REGION IS NOW A SOURCE

    “An international team led by Woodwell Climate Research Center found that a third (34%) of the Arctic-boreal zone (ABZ)—the treeless tundra, boreal forests, and wetlands that make up Earth’s northern latitudes—is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere. That balance sheet is made up of carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake from plant photosynthesis and CO2 released to the atmosphere through microbial and plant respiration. When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%.”

    https://phys.org/news/2025-01-millennia-arctic-boreal-region-source.html

    1. Passing 1.5 °C and losing major sinks seems sub-optimal to our species.

    1. Republican policy is heavily influenced by the Koch family’s long term campaign on behalf of FF.

      Trump’s ideas are not original, and they’re not coherent or thought through. Kind’ve looks like his personal understanding comes mostly from bits and pieces of random information on Fox. His anti-wind executive order actually refers to “windmills”!

      Of course, you can’t underestimate Trump’s corruption/conflict of interest. Specifically, he was involved in a long and painful fight against offshore wind power that was (barely) visible from his Scottish golf club.

  10. Has anyone seen Fred Magyar in the comments of any other collapse blogs? Is Fred still shilling for Musk?

      1. I missed it too. Thanks for re-posting; I always enjoyed Fred’s posts. I once pointed out that EV charging points were minimal here in W.Wales. Fred replied that Tesla were planning to build a 6-stall 250MW charger in Aberystwyth. I replied, right, they have been saying that for years. And then Tesla did it…

      2. The odd thing is that survivalist didn’t see this the first time as it was a response to an earlier post.

        I though Fred was great and appreciated his perspective, he is missed by me.

        I imagine Fred would be appalled by Musk if he were still alive.

          1. It is a car not a political statement. Probably won’t buy another.

  11. Cornucopians please note: It’s not just California burning.

    BRAZIL SAW 79% JUMP IN AREA BURNED BY FIRES IN 2024

    “Wildfires in Brazil last year consumed a total area larger than all of Italy, a monitor reported Wednesday, as the country continues to battle blazes often set by farmers and ranchers illegally expanding their territory. Some 30.8 million hectares (119,000 square miles) of vegetation were burned in Brazil in 2024, a 79 percent increase from 2023, monitoring platform MapBiomas reported. Fires in the Amazon, a crucial carbon sink for the rest of the world as well as a global hotspot of biodiversity, accounted for 58 percent of the damage. The 2024 figures represent the largest area burned since 2019.”

    https://phys.org/news/2025-01-brazil-area.html

    1. Meanwhile,

      WORLD’S ADDICTION TO FOSSIL FUELS IS ‘FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER’, SAYS UN CHIEF

      The world’s addiction to fossil fuels is a “Frankenstein’s monster sparing nothing and no one”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. “Our fossil fuel addiction is a Frankenstein’s monster, sparing nothing and no one. All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master,” Guterres said in a speech days after 2024 was revealed to have been the hottest year on record and Donald Trump began his second term as US president by pulling the country out of the Paris climate agreement and pledging to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry gave $75m (£60m) to Trump’s campaign.

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/22/worlds-addiction-to-fossil-fuels-is-frankensteins-monster-says-un-chief

    1. Hickory __
      LOL and meanwhile we have,
      Daily CO2
      Jan. 21, 2025 = 426.34 ppm
      Jan. 21, 2024 = 422.77 ppm

  13. Then we have an educated Canadian’s view of your new president. Andrew Coyne, pulling no punches, on the incoming US administration:

    “Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies. The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please. There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero. The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions. At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric. At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there. The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful. Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation. Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late. We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?” Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things. All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington. All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them. Written by Andrew Coyne”

    1. Yes, I expect including this will get me banned from this blog.

        1. Hi Dennis —

          Andrew Coyne columnist with The Globe and Mail newspaper and a member of the At Issue panel on CBC’s The National.

          1. Doug,

            So the Wikipedia link is to the right Andew Coyne? I don’t read the Globe and Mail or watch CBC, except the occasional hockey game.

        2. Trump won because of the extremism in the other camp. Black politicians who make it clear they think all white people and particularly white police officers are all racist.

          These people have defunded the police leaving honest hard working people not just scared of going out but scared in their own homes.

          https://www.illinoispolicy.org/vallas-police-overtime-shows-defunding-police-doesnt-work/

          Decent black, white and Latino people rejected this extremism that Harris did nothing to stop.

          Trump is the natural reaction to left wing nutters who know how to smash societal structures apart but can’t build anything better.

          Defund the police is nothing short of full scale anarchy.

          1. So we pardon 1500 people many convicted of violent attacks on policewhile trying to overturn the will of the American people, is this your idea of law and order? Seems to fly in the face of the rule of law in my view.

            1. Why don’t you answer my point directly rather than jump to some else I did not comment on.

              Typical left wing woke and you wonder why the majority of Americans voted for Trump. Because of the arrogance of the likes of yourself

            2. loadsofoil,

              Most of the Democratic party does not support defunding the police and I imagine not many who post here support defunding the police. I don’t know anyone who is afraid to leave their home, you must live in a really bad neighborhood or you are afraid of your shadow.

              I support the rule of law, which used to be something I shared with conservatives, but it seems the Republican party no longer believes in the rule of law or the US Constitution.

              Who was it that did not support the peaceful transition of power? Trump and the MAGA faithful, that is that fact of the matter.

              You mentioned the police in your comment, so it seems an action which is not supportive of the police and the rule of law is quite relevant. If that seems arrogant to you, perhaps it just is because you have no good answer for it.

              You seem to believe the crap you are fed on X and at Fox News.

          2. “full scale anarchy”
            Trump did absolutely nothing to stop the attack on the US Capital Jan 6 2022 while it was underway despite pleas from numerous people in his camp.
            Dereliction of Duty of the highest order!,
            and extreme display of disrespect for law and order.

          3. The first picture of link provided says it all. Nine white men police officers standing around doing nothing and the report one of them writes up will be boxed up and stored in the basement for the next 40 years. We all know the problem. To many guns in the hands of the public and no living wage jobs for high school graduates.

            Those nine officers make a million dollars a year and can retire at age 55 with 90 percent of their income for life. What a waste of money directed to the boys club.

          4. Loads of it- The idea of ‘defund the police’ is a view held by maybe a couple percent of voters, and is by no means Democratic party policy. The strong majority of people of both parties want safety, law and order. And some people even expect that at the Capital during official/constitutional proceedings.
            But of course that is not the story that Fox has trained its sheep to know.

    2. Indeed. I am so very profoundly disappointed in and deeply embarrassed for the US.

      What most people fail to understand is that we are in the early phase in a massive escalation of wealth sequestration. It is likely that we are beyond the point of no return. Trumps administration net worth is roughly 1000 times that of Bidens, and guess where all contracts for energy and security and space and robotics and AI are going to be funneled to.
      I believe that billions are on the verge of being left in dust.

  14. “Dear President (Donald) Trump. Listen very carefully. Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for 800 years. It’s an integrated part of our country. It is not for sale. Let me put it in words you might understand: Mister Trump, fuck off.”

    The Fat Boy might understand that?

  15. The wind executive order from Trump (link copied from weekendpeak above).

    https://heatmap.news/politics/wind-executive-order-trump

    I believed the whole point of building up a renewables industry was to leverage remaining fossil fuel resources to a much higher degree than what was done historically. It can in principle not be detrimental to the interest of society as a whole. The idea is not to replace fossil fuels completely; which is impossible anyway due to the annual sustainable outtake of 2-3% of forest carbon resources.

    When that is said, the industries related to renewables should take this input as a spur to improve cost efficiency and practical application going forward. Which I am sure they will.

    1. Pretty much all the major Big Oil companies had a renewables programme in some way (Exxon in the ‘70s, BP in the ‘80s all started major solar subsidiaries). And all were sold off in the last twenty years or so as they were deemed unprofitable. At the very same time they became grid parity in cost and massively outperformed models on rollout.

      The problem is that they would mean asset stranding the trillions of dollarydoos that are in balance sheets for major FF corps. Those shareholders are absolutely NOT going to take that write down, even if the oil fields, rigs and mines they own are running their core systems off.. Solar and wind and hydro to make profitability improve and running costs low.

      You will never get a transition under capitalism. The day you ban these resources from being exploited is the day you start the transition. Right now, we are simply boosting our ability to get every nugget of coal, drop of oil and fart of gas out of the ground by using renewables at the precise time we absolutely should not be doing this.

      It’s all pretty funny, really.

      1. Kleiber … “The problem is that they would mean asset stranding the trillions of dollarydoos that are in balance sheets for major FF corps.”

        Here’s the problem, if renewables were really cheaper than fossil fuels for every application, then the fossil fuels would have no value in a true market economy, so the the fossil fuel companies would have to write their ‘assets’ down to zero anyway.

        BTW with accounting rules all the assets of any resource company are how much they have spent exploring and developing a mine/oil field.

        In asset terms on the books the resource in the ground has zero value until it is extracted. Stock held for sale, as in already extracted from the ground, does have a value in the books.

        Of course shareholders/potential shareholders will have their own ‘valuation’ of what’s in the ground and a company’s stock price will reflect this changing valuation.

        When talking balance sheets, the resource/reserves in the ground don’t count, you can look up any major mining/oil company’s financial reports to confirm this, by going into the details of their ‘assets’..

        1. But again, this is all stuff that Big Oil has done, and statements like that by Looney of BP about seeking “value” as they expand oil and gas investment and totally cut renewables bear that out. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that we have seen the majors do exactly this in the last few years.

          None of this means renewables will save us anyway, just funny that they sold off such assets and use PV or turbines as enhancement for extractive pursuits. Like we all are globally.

      2. “You will never get a transition under [unregulated] capitalism.”

        Not really. You would get a strong effort at a transition when the depletion of fossil fuels is far enough along to result in higher and higher prices.
        But by that time you be at an extreme disadvantage to those who enacted deliberate proactive economic policy. And your free market will bight you in the ass.

        I’ve observed that it very hard to have an effective transition from extreme reliance on depleting fossil fuels in the setting of a dysfunctional partisan political system. Especially one with a very gullible and poorly informed voting public.

        1. At that point we basically run state capitalist/socialist systems that direct industry, as they should. The CPC is effectively doing that, though still building out masses of coal and oil and gas to supplement their REs.

      3. Saudi Arabia is not waiting for the oil to run out before they go looking for alternatives.

        How investment in solar capacity is powering Saudi Arabia’s sustainable energy future

        RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is embarking on a transformative journey to establish itself as a key player in the global renewable energy sector.

        With a goal of sourcing 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, the Kingdom is investing heavily in solar energy, capitalizing on its abundant sunlight.

        This commitment is part of the broader National Renewable Energy Program strategy, aimed at diversifying its energy portfolio and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

        By the end of the decade, Saudi Arabia aims to generate 58.7 gigawatts of renewable energy. This includes 40 GW from solar photovoltaics, alongside 16 GW from wind energy and 2.7 GW from concentrated solar power.

        1. Isn’t that wonderful. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has produced an estimated total of over 100 billion barrels of oil since it began commercial oil production in 1939, with current daily production hovering around 11 million barrels per day.

        2. Saudi going 100% green matters not one jot if they sell off all that crude under their feet to the rest of the planet. They don’t get a climate catastrophe exemption pass for being good opportunists.

          1. Indeed. And we also have NEOM still being a thing which, frankly, shows that they’re not really living in reality and simply fishing for investors for boondoggles that don’t have the taint of fossil fuels.

            I need to watch Syriana again.

        4. We have been accustomed to taking political signals from the Middle East with a grain of salt. It could be virtue signaling after all.

          But looking at the face of it, I am not so sure that would be the case here. The point is that PVs on “every rooftop” is a good way to ensure energy security for the individual household. If we are talking about 50% renewables with solar in the 30% region it is a reasonable target. Fossil fuels will back up everything anyway, and the willingness to invest in the grid will set the limits to the policy target.

    2. Kleiber

      I am not sure if the renewables industry in the 1970s or 80s is a benchmark of how it is today. I can agree that renewables is a threat to the fossil fuel industry in the short term perspective. But you have to agree in some way if you are British (as the spelling of “programme” would suggest), that an EROEI investment comparison with a future perspective would be useful in any case? (These calculations would be very difficult to have an opinion about; no doubt about that)

      1. The problem isn’t so much the energy costs as the profitability of moving from a valuable labour intensive stock to a “free” flow like sunlight and wind. If you’re in the business of making money, it’s nowhere near as profitable.

        Which is why you can’t have transition with the economic paradigm as it stands. It literally cannot happen.

        1. Exactly. When the primary question is “Where is the money in that?” then we shall remain on the road to doom.

          1. That’s right. The reasons we as a species should move to these technologies and modes of living are the anathema to the way such companies operate.

            Selling an everlasting gobstopper as a sweet company is not conducive to great profits long term.

        2. KLEIBER —
          I agree that the energy industry will radically change. As I have been saying for some time, renewables are profit killers and the industry exists to make money.

  16. Is Trump a pervert or a closet trans sexual ?

    ‘He just came strolling … in’ on naked contestants

    Women recall Trump’s actions as owner of Miss USA pageant while they changed

    By Fred BarbashThe Washington Post

    On an April 11, 2005, Howard Stern show, Donald Trump bragged about some of the special perks he enjoyed while owner of the Miss USA pageant. They came not in a locker room but a dressing room.

    “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he said. “And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it.”

    Said Stern: “You’re like a doctor.”

    Responded Trump: “Is everyone OK? You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”

    https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=1ef52d45-710a-4716-b166-2b3650f615eb

    Background On Trump Day One Executive Orders Impacting The LGBTQ Community

    Refusal to Respect Transition – Including in Use of Pronouns and Bathrooms for Title VII regulated employers. The order directs the Attorney General to issue guidance allowing people to refuse to use a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct pronouns, and to claim a right to use single-sex bathrooms and other spaces based on sex assigned at birth at any workplace covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federally funded spaces.

    The EO directs the Attorney General to immediately issue guidance to agencies to “correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County” (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. Bostock held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity constitutes illegal sex discrimination. If implemented, this directive could allow federal agencies to refuse to acknowledge discrimination against the full LGBTQ community in the workplace, education, housing, health care, and more.

    https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/background-on-trump-day-one-executive-orders-impacting-the-lgbtq-community

    Pervert- a person whose sexual behavior is regarded as abnormal and unacceptable.

  17. Pete Hegseth is now SecDef. Makes as much sense as Donald in the Whitehouse.

    1. LEEG,

      A man who could not run a small non-profit well is now in charge of largest military in the World. What could possibly go wrong? Still waiting for Bush to step up.

      1. I figure the most likely thing is some folks hunkering down to not lose their piece of the DOD pie while opportunists and ideologues fight over what’s available. I’d be surprised if Hegseth survives in the position if he’s managing alcoholism, let alone sobriety, and the demands of the job.

        As you say it’s not like he’s got a resume of success in managing organizations and he can compartmentalize bad habits. He’s a FoxNews hair products model and culture warrior. What a farce, but he does provide a perfect model for the value of loyalty to Donald above all else. It’s a clear message to everyone in gov’t.

  18. Regulars here will remember that i sais musk didnt give a damn about the money he lost on gainimg ownership of X.
    He bought raw political power worth many times what he paid.
    And he has already made out like a bandit using this power to steer public policies to his benefit.

  19. TRUMP REIGNITES COAL INDUSTRY AT DAVOS

    “The President’s message, delivered by video at Davos, is this: dominance is the goal, and no stone—or coal seam—will be left unturned. Trump’s sweeping policies aim to make U.S. energy production not just robust but untouchable. Federal lands and waters are open for exploration, infrastructure projects will be fast-tracked, and bureaucratic red tape will be shredded with glee.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trump-Reignites-Coal-Industry-at-Davos.html

    1. Saying “energy dominance” is just another way of saying “I’m stupid”.

      The phrase has no meaning. No surprise Trump loves it so much.

      1. I think what Trump means to be “energy dominant” is what others might call
        “energy independent” but who knows.

        1. It could mean 100 things by tomorrow. Consensus reality is not the field a gas lighting crook plays on.

  20. Meanwhile,

    2024 SAW FASTEST-EVER ANNUAL RISE IN CO2 LEVELS

    The UK weather service said Friday that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 2024 grew at the fastest annual rate on record, exceeding their own projections by some margin. The sharp rise in planet-warming CO2 was driven by fossil fuel burning, devastating wildfires and a weakening of Earth’s natural carbon stores. Scientists said at such rates, the world cannot hope to hold global warming to the 1.5C limit that nations have agreed would avert the worst consequences of climate change. Last year the atmospheric CO2 level at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which has been taking such measurements for more than 60 years, spiked by 3.58 parts per million (ppm). This blew past the Met Office’s prediction of 2.84 ppm and even the uppermost range of its estimate at 3.38 ppm.

    https://phys.org/news/2025-01-fastest-annual-co2-uk-weather.html

    2. “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
      — Richard Nixon

  21. “congratulations on being one of our top readers globally – you’ve read 408 articles in the last year”

    I need to get out more—-

    1. OR, people need to read more and less short form video content.

      Break that record. Go for 500 this year.

    1. It’s pretty cool that we got a load of AI models out of China that are not only way more efficient and potentially even more effective, but open source and free to get just a few days after Trump’s Project Stargate $500bn. boondoggle.

      Chinese LLMs are still a waste of resources (just less so here), but if it kills this stupid tech bubble dead, that’s a win for humanity. I already see tech stocks red and Microsoft has halted planned funding for more OpenAI data centres. OpenAI also had to cut prices on their subscriptions. Totally not blind panic.

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