116 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, January 1, 2023”

  1. On Excess Death

    More Republicans than Democrats died after COVID-19 vaccines were available
    https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/more-republicans-than-democrats-died-after-covid-19-vaccines-were-available

    What can explain the excess mortality in the U.S. and Europe in 2022?
    https://healthfeedback.org/what-can-explain-the-excess-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-europe-in-2022/

    China COVID deaths accelerate to 9,000 a day – UK research firm Airfinity
    https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-covid-deaths-accelerate-9000-day-uk-research-firm-airfinity-2022-12-29/

    1. That’s not even a published paper in an actual journal. It’s a political opinion piece that attempts to make forward-looking predictions about the future that may or may not come to fruition.

      1. Hi Alex,

        I could post links to people with diametrically opposite opinions.
        In the meantime,
        from CNN last summer

        “In the US, 92 all-time record high temperatures had been set through July 16, compared with only five all-time record low temperatures, according to data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Globally, 188 all-time heat records were broken versus 18 cool records.”

        It’s getting hotter, on average, year after year.
        Get used to it.

        Just how hot it will get, nobody actually knows.

        It could be even worse.

        Personally I mostly deal with it by thinking about it as little as possible, given that I’m pretty old already and not likely to be around all that much longer anyway.

        Denial may work just fine for you……. until it doesn’t.

        1. James Hansen, like many posters here, enjoys taking the most pessimistic view possible on climate. Consequently he doesn’t have a good record of making accurate predictions.

          1. Probably because everything has been “faster than expected”. The paper is being reviewed and potentially is a major deal, just like when he assessed why sea level rise was going exponentially faster than models expected.

      2. It’s not yet peer reviewed. It’s a scientific paper. Not an ‘opinion piece’.

        Once the multiple breadbasket failures begin I suppose more folks might begin to take notice.

    2. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (James Baldwin).

      If you don’t want to wade through fifty odd pages of dense and arcane science this is a pretty good summary: https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com

      On a similar theme I like this chap’s everyman approach, possibly because, by his accent, he was brought up within a few miles of where I was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln2JRqIlMuM

      1. You’re welcome Iron Mike.

        I would like to thank all here for posting as ya’ll do, even the ones I get a little spicy with. POBs comment thread is hands down the best feed on the internet.
        I’d go for a beer with any of ya’ll here. Even Nick and HB lol, good sports; prob not with that bigoted pro-putin ecofascist dewd though, that wouldn’t go well lol.

        I’d love for Mr Coyne and Mr Shellman to do debate and post it on youtube. I’d pay a few quid to see that! Pure Gold.

        All the best in 2023!

  3. This is the best short piece I’ve seen about what went on in our country and in the world last year.
    I strongly encourage everybody to read this and pass it on.

    xxxx

    Just a year ago, we were focusing on Russian troops massing on the border with Ukraine, which the U.S. government and allies recognized as an attempt both to keep Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a longstanding military alliance resisting Russian expansion, and to test the unity of the democratic nations that made up NATO itself. Former president Donald Trump had weakened NATO and vowed to pull the U.S. out of it if he won a second term, demoralizing our allies, but Democratic president Joe Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had worked hard to pull the alliance back together.

    Biden worked the phones and Blinken flew around the world, talking to allies not only to warn them but also to get pledges to pressure Russia, help Ukraine defend itself, and accept refugees if necessary. On one day alone, Biden spoke with leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, and Romania; the secretary general of NATO; and the presidents of the European Union. 

    Biden and Blinken anticipated Putin’s pretenses for an invasion of Ukraine and publicized them, taking away from the Russian president a key propaganda lever. Along with their allies, they warned they would respond to any invasion of Ukraine with heavy economic sanctions that would crush the Russian economy. This was a threat many observers met with skepticism, since sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2014 invasion and subsequent occupation of Ukraine had not been strong enough to force Putin to a reckoning.

    On February 4, Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in Beijing and pledged mutual support and cooperation, issuing a statement saying their authoritarian regimes were actually a form of democracy. On the same day, the Republican National Committee (RNC), meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, censured Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for joining the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. That attack was an attempt to overturn our democratic form of government by installing a candidate rejected by voters, but the RNC defended the events surrounding January 6 as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and attacked the investigation as “persecution.” 

    It appeared that a global authoritarian movement was coalescing for an attack on liberal democracy and that the leaders of the Republican Party were on the side of the authoritarians. The United Nations was formed after World War II to protect the idea of a rules-based international order so that countries would not unilaterally attack each other for their own advantage and start wars. If Russia, a member of the U.N. were allowed to violate the fundamental principle that had preserved relative peace in Europe since World War II, there was no telling what might come next.  

    And then, on February 24, 2022, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, a country that had fought Russian invaders since 2014 but was clearly—everyone knew—no match for Russia’s powerful military. Recent reports show that Russian leaders expected the assault to take ten days. Ukraine’s best hope was to get President Volodymyr Zelensky to safety to preserve the Ukrainian government-in-exile. 

    But then, something surprising happened. 

    When the U.S. offered to evacuate Zelensky, he said: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” Within days, he and his cabinet had recorded a video from Kyiv, demonstrating that the Ukrainian government was still in Kyiv and would fight to protect their country. Ukrainians defied the invaders as the U.S., NATO, the European Union, and allies around the globe rushed in money, armaments, and humanitarian aid. In Brussels, London, Paris, Munich, Dublin, and Geneva, and across the globe, people took to the streets to protest the invasion and show their support for the resisters. 

    In their fight for their right to self-determination, the Ukrainians and their defenders reminded the United States what cherishing democracy actually looks like.

    Meanwhile, at home, the administration and Congress showed Americans that the government could, indeed, help ordinary people. In his first year in office, Biden and the Democrats had passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion package to jump-start the economy after the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. Together with Republicans, they had also passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more popularly known as the bipartisan infrastructure law, which invested in long-overdue repairs and extensions to the country’s road, bridges, broadband, and other hard infrastructure. 

    But with just 50 votes in the Senate, Democrats had to get all their senators on board for more legislation, and it appeared that they would not be able to do that in 2022. As global post-lockdown inflation hit the U.S., it both made lawmakers cautious about more spending and seemed to give Republicans a ready-made tool to attack Biden and the Democrats before the upcoming midterm election.

    It was at this juncture that the hard work of knowing how to negotiate, something we had become unused to seeing in Washington, paid off. Over the spring and summer, Democrats worked with Republicans when possible to build the economy not through the supply-side theories of the Republicans, which say that freeing capital at the top of the economy by cutting taxes will spur wealthy investors to create jobs, but by creating jobs and easing costs for wage workers. 

    They shepherded through Congress the PACT Act, expanding healthcare and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits; the CHIPs and Science Act, to bolster U.S. scientific research and manufacturing, especially of silicone chips; and the Inflation Reduction Act, which makes historic investments in clean energy and finally lets Medicare negotiate drug prices (which will cap insulin for Medicare participants at $35). They passed an expansion of the Affordable Care Act that has dropped the rate of those without health insurance to a new low of 8 percent.

    They passed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring states to recognize marriages performed in other states, and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which had languished since 2018. It passed the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. The administration also announced debt relief of up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants. 

    Finally, just yesterday, Biden signed into law an omnibus funding bill that includes a reform of the Electoral Count Act, making it harder for a Trumplike president to use the terms of the law to overturn an election. There were key measures left undone—neither voting rights protections nor the childcare, eldercare, and education infrastructure package Biden wanted passed—but the list of accomplishments for this Congress rivaled that of the 1960s’ Great Society and the 1930s’ New Deal. 

    Meanwhile, the reactionary Republicans illustrated exactly what their rule would mean for the country, and it was not popular. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized reproductive healthcare as a constitutional right. Immediately, stories of raped children unable to obtain abortions and women unable to obtain healthcare during miscarriages horrified the 62% of Americans who supported Roe v. Wade and even many of those who did not support Roe but had never really thought that the U.S. government would cease to recognize a constitutional right that had been on the books for almost 50 years.

    The justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, including the three Trump added to the court, had publicly assured senators they would not challenge settled law—a key principle of jurisprudence—and their willingness to do so indicated they intended for their ideology to replace legal precedent. Just days after the Dobbs decision, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court decided that the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases because Congress cannot delegate “major questions” to be decided by the executive branch. This doctrine threatens to undermine government regulation.

    The court went on to fulfill a right-wing wish list, deciding a number of cases that slashed at the separation of church and state, expanded gun rights, and so on.  

    At the same time the court’s decisions were making the right wing’s plans for the country clear, the January 6th committee’s public hearings exposed the deliberate plan to overthrow our democracy. Led by chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and vice chair Liz Cheney, the committee used shocking videos and powerful testimony primarily from Trump’s own relatives and appointees and other Republican officials to show how Trump and his cronies planned even before the election to claim that Democrats had stolen victory, and then had used that Big Lie to inflame supporters to keep him in office. 

    Inflation, though starting to ease, was still high enough in November that political pundits expected the Republicans would sweep back into control of Congress. Instead, despite gerrymandering and the new voting restrictions many Republican-dominated states had imposed in response to the Big Lie, voters put Republicans in control of the House by only four seats. For the first time since 1934, the president’s party did not lose a seat in the Senate in a midterm election; instead, the Democrats picked one up.

    At the end of 2022, more than 300 days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, what seemed a year ago to be the growing power of authoritarianism appears to have been checked. Finland and Sweden took steps to join NATO, while the Biden administration expanded its work with Europe and traditional allies by pointedly nurturing partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, investing in those regions as both Russia and China have had to pull back.

    At least so far, the rules-based international order is holding. Putin’s military, which a number of right-wing Republicans had championed as more powerful than that of the democratic U.S., turns out to have been poorly trained and ill equipped as Putin’s cronies siphoned money from military contracts to funnel into expensive homes and yachts in other countries. And the Ukrainians turned out to have trained heavily and well, especially in logistics, and to be determined to fight on to victory.

    The Russian economy is reeling from global sanctions, and in its troubles, Russia has turned to Iran, which is also suffering under sanctions and which has provided drones for the war in Ukraine. But Iran, too, is facing protests at home from women and girls no longer willing to obey the country’s discriminatory laws.

    China’s economy is also weaker than it seemed, owing to changing supply chains, a real-estate bust, and increasing dislocations first from a zero-Covid policy that prompted extreme lockdowns, and now from the easing of those restrictions that has turned the virus loose to ravage the country. 

    The crisis of democracy in the United States is not over, not by a long shot. Anti-semitism and anti-LGBTQ violence rose this year, along with white supremacist violence and gun violence, while a right-wing theocratic movement continues to try to garner power. Wealth and its benefits remain badly distributed in this country, and the ravages of climate change are getting worse. Those things– and others– are real and dangerous.

    But the country looks very different today than it did a year ago. I ended last year’s wrap-up letter by saying: “It looks like 2022 is going to be a choppy ride, but its outcome is in our hands. As Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who was beaten almost to death in his quest to protect the right to vote, wrote to us when he passed: ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part.’”

    The story of 2022 turned out to be how many folks both abroad and at home stepped up to the plate. 

    —

    Notes:

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/world/autocracies-democracy-pandemic-analysis-intl-cmd/index.html

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/biden-laws-passed-priorities-to-get-done-executive-orders/index.html

    https://www.politico.eu/article/protesters-take-to-the-streets-across-europe-support-ukraine/

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/21/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2022.html

    https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/world/europe/russia-iran-military.html

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2022/12/29/2022-in-review/

    https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-year-the-west-woke-up/

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    1. OFM —
      Making pv panels is a lot like making chips — the initial cost of creating the manufacturing capacity are high, and the additional cost per unit is low. This means that once you have the capacity, you have a strong incentive to sell as much as possible, even if it means cutting prices. Chinese pv manufacturers are not a monolith. They are competing against each other, pushing down the price.

      The overall level of solar installations in China is supposed to be set by the central government’s 5 year plan. Installations have far outstripped the plan. Capacity is increasing so quickly because the companies are being financed by the provinces, not the central government, and the provinces are competing with each other to be the leader in pv tech.

      Meanwhile pv production capacity is very high — some estimates are 500 GW /year of panels can be produced. Compare that to 2022 sales about 260 GW, and you see the problem. 260 GW was a huge increase over the previous year as well, and much of the demand came from China. Companies will be eager to sell overseas because domestic sales are much higher than the 5 year plan allows and a crackdown may come.

      Production capacity has increased so quickly because the provinces are financing it. They are competing against each other to be leaders in the industry. The central government’s 5 year plan for installations is much lower than what is happening, but they haven’t found a way to reduce demand.

    2. One trend on this is the cost of manufacturing polysilicon.
      There is a big multiyear ramp up coming to fruition now-

      “PV InfoLink forecasts polysilicon prices to be halved by end of 2023”-
      “The consulting firm expects prices to decline gradually through the first semester of 2023, followed by an accelerated decline in the second half of the year, with prices falling from the current CNY 300/kg ($36.64) to below CNY 150/kg by the end of 2023. Polysilicon production capacity may increase from 500 GW in 2022 to 975 GW next year [2023].”

      1. Thanks Guys,
        I take it that there should be plenty of affordable chips for the various industries that use them and plenty of processed silicon available to make solar panels.

        So…… if we have inflation problems going forward the next year or so , it shouldn’t be due to a shortage of chips or polysilicon.

        But there’s still likely to be serious inflation anyway, if I’m reading the signs correctly.

        The silver lining in a general economic slump could turn out to be that the solar power industry can continue to grow at a very fast pace, if labor costs and the costs of other materials hold steady or possibly even decline.

        1. I don’t know about semiconductor chip supply. That is a whole different sector.

    1. Good chance some of the minerals needed for complete replacement of the current energy system with EV, solar wind, nuc etc will not be available in sufficient or affordable quantities.
      But quite a lot of the job will get done.

      Collapse now and avoid the rush.

      1. I have friends from bygone days who are paying three grand and up for apartments in NYC that aren’t much bigger than my sun room.

        They pay it because that’s all they can afford there.

        If the materials needed to manufacture electric car batteries by the tens of millions aren’t available………

        Doctors and CPA’s will drive subcompact short range electric cars…….. because that will be the only sort of car they CAN buy or lease.

        It will be possible to build anywhere from four to six such car batteries using the materials in just one three hundred mile range full size electric car.

        Once there’s little or nothing else available for sale, they’ll sell like ice water in hell.

        When times get really tough, Uncle Sam and his brother Leviathan governments will do what has to be done to hold things together.

        The doctors and CPA’s will do what they have to do to continue to live in their suburban mcmansions.

        Where the hell else COULD they go?

        Even fully autonomous self driving cars will work in many cases with short range batteries. A hundred miles would be enough to deal with morning and afternoon rush hours, getting people to work,and a car with only half a charge could still be sent out on a twenty five mile trip at other times, and fully charged before the next rush.

        1. Personal transport is the easy part of the transition to electrification, since around the world it can be smaller and lighter, much less frequently used, and shared.

          Commercial and industrial transformation will be harder, due to the big scale. And this includes all of the big large scale work it will take to switch to an electrified system. Also a pretty big portion of the worlds buildings will need retrofit and rewiring.

          This will be hard to get done in just a couple decades since we have done so little of it yet.
          Bottlenecks over supply chains of key components, including minerals, should be expected as likely.

          A lot of money will be flowing towards the mining industry. We’ll see if it is enough, and if the marketplace between countries is somewhat functional.

          On minerals, a wildcard is ocean floor mining. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this get big.

    1. Thanks GA. I often find myself taking different views than PZ, but I do like the data he presents.

      1. The only major things I disagree with Zeihan are:

        1) His belief the USA has 100 years of Shale oil and can therefore disappear from the world.

        2) His haircut and pompous body language which makes him come across as a know it all.

        I really like Peter, and reccommend his work,

        I think he is a good guy trying to do a good job….ain’t none of us perfect

        Grape Ape…Burp!!!

        1. Zeihan has serious problems imagining other countries aren’t like America and tends to project American problems on them.

          Also he often confuses what he wants with what can be reasonably expected to happen. He always makes dire predictions about people he doesn’t like..

          In general, he likes to think of himself as a big picture guy, but he suffers from tunnel vision.

        2. “ain’t none of us perfect” ~ GA

          Quite right. I have respect for those who are willing to stick their neck out and make a prediction.

          1. Agreed.

            And what would a perfect human look like?

            Based on Darwinian natural selection, the more you reproduce and have surviving children that ultimately reproduce, the better you are!!!

            That would make the “Octomom” alot better than me!!!

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

            “Natalie Denise Suleman (born Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman; July 11, 1975),[a] known as Octomom in the media, is an American media personality who came to international attention when she gave birth to the first surviving octuplets in January 2009“

  9. Zeihan generally has good data. He’s better at facts than the large majority of people on the net, but Alimbiquated is right about tunnel vision.

    The facts he presents do without a doubt leave you asking about the long term consequences thereof.
    But I’ve already read a TON of stuff about such consequences. Just about everybody who posts anything about population trends tends to focus on the supposed economic problems involving the imbalance between old and young people.

    What I’m most interested in now is finding stuff written by people focusing on the ECONOMIC UPSIDE potential of populations peaking and declining.

    There will be a bunch of hurricane sized economic storms to be dealt with as the result of the inverted population pyramid…….. but I don’t see any reason why these storms can’t be weathered, with most people coming thru ok.

    It’s not like the next generation of people coming after the peak are going to have to spend a third of their income on building a new house. Even cheap tract houses BUILT TO CODE will last at least a hundred years with routine maintenance and some repair work.

    The kids and grandkids are going to inherit all the highways, parks, shopping centers, industrial parks, reservoirs, water and sewer systems, houses, hospitals, schools, and other built infrastructure they will have any need of.

    Sure most of it will require a substantial amount of maintenance and or major refurbishment but maintenance and repairs cost peanuts compared to building new from scratch.

    So……. maybe the discussion should be centered more around how we will look after ourselves in our old age, and how younger people make a living.

    I can see auto mechanics who are good on autonomous cars having an easy transition to servicing household robots and robotic systems.

    Young guys who make a career of building new houses won’t have much trouble switching over to remodeling and refurbishment of older houses and buildings.

    People who make a living styling hair can make a living working as home health aides or live in housemates….. with part of their pay consisting of a specified inherited share of the house, say for instance five or ten percent ownership for each year of service, in addition to any salary, room and board, etc

    We aren’t going to run out of consumer junk due to a lack of manpower in factories, which will be automated to an ever greater extent.

    Any and all links to discussions of such matters will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!

    1. It will be interesting to see if new and improved methods of cold winter retrofit of existing building comes out of Europe, in response to the high costs of energy there. The incentive is huge.

      Its a daunting (expensive) task to retool a building that wasn’t built for energy efficiency.

      1. Hi Hickory,
        You’re dead on as usual about the expense of retrofitting old buildings.
        But it’s still dirt cheap to do so, compared to starting from scratch, building new.

        The road is there, the water and sewer system is in place, the electrical service is up and running, and the cost of the job typically runs mostly to labor, with materials being the minor expense.

        And when times are tough, meaning jobs are scarce, lots of people are either on relief ( unemployment, food stamps, rental assistance, etc ) or on some sort of subsidized job.

        Lots of trades people, quite possibly millions of them at some point, can be put on subsidized energy refurbishment projects, or on renewable energy infrastructure such as new wind and solar farms. That will be a lot better way to spend the money than just using it to pay for food stamps or rental assistance.

        I have a friend who is in the planning stages of refurbing an older frame house with two by four walls, fiberglass insulation, and drywall or sheet rock construction.

        Rather than ripping anything out, he’s planning on simply covering the existing sheet rock on the outside walls with one inch thick, possibly up to two inch thick foam board insulation, and putting a new layer of sheet rock over the foam. This will cost him about two inches of living space around his outer walls……. but his demolition costs will be close to zero, and the nature of this work is simple enough that he can do it himself with just one helper.

        With new insulated doors and new triple glazed windows, plus blown in insulation overhead, he’s expecting to cut his heating and cooling bill by more than half and maybe as much as two thirds.

        Hardly anybody realizes it, but a couple of tons of sheet rock is enough to serve as a heat sink to a substantial extent.

        1. Regarding adding insulation, which is really, really good, there is however a risk of trapping moisture within the outer wall if you do it wrong. The important thing is where condensation might occur due to the temperature gradient between in- and outside, depending on dew point. So a bit of caution is required so you don´t have two layers of more or less impermeable layers in it.
          Here in northern Sweden we have the moisture barrier (thin plastic film in most cases) at the warm side, i.e. as close to the wallpaper as possible, and the rest of the outer wall with just a little bit of moisture travel possibilities outwards, but things might be different at other latitudes so just a general heads up.
          Edit: Would be interesting to see a 1/sqf/kwh comparison for different locations/latitudes, not that easy though…

      2. Hickory —
        The main problem is windows, which need retrofitting every few decades anyway. Another common solution is adding insulation outside the facade.

        The government subsidizes this in Germany, but not terribly effectively.

        There has also been a boom in heat pumps, which cut inputs and switch from gas to electricity. Since gas heaters die every few decades, a few percent need to be swapped out anyway every year.

        There are also a lot of smaller fixes, like adding an insulating pad to the wall behind the radiator. That is cheap and helps.

        1. In the US many buildings have far too much window space, which could be scaled back during window replacement.
          For many homes it may make sense to retrofit a couple key rooms to be extra insulated for the times of most extreme hot or cold weather, with an additional layer of insulation and sheathing as well described by OFM.
          There will be an escalation of experimentation as time unfolds.

  10. I don’t even pretend to know what will happen in climate terms, other than that it will be either bad or worse, lol.

    But consider that with a shrinking population, and an excess of affordable housing becoming available as one result, some people will move from places where it’s getting unbearably hot and dry, and away from places where it’s likewise too cold for comfort.

    So maybe places like Phoenix dry up and blow away, and cold places like Minneapolis likewise shrink.

    Lots of people moving into areas with more moderate climate can mean there’s enough workers to properly maintain essential local infrastructure.

    I just met new neighbors today who are California refugees……. running in their case not from climate troubles but rather from crowding and high taxes.

  11. If you want a deeper understanding of the Russian bear, and it’s behavior, watch this.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7uwtNoWBK0

    Aug 3, 2022
    This ANU Public Lecture by Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre examines why President Putin decided to invade the Ukraine and what the implications are for international order, including the risk of a wider war in Europe and the potential use of nuclear weapons.

    2. Thanks for the link Survivor…but where does he get this conclusion
      “could cause a temperature rise from pre-industrial of as much as 18.44°C by 2026. ”

      I thought it was a typo with the decimal point off by one space, but it was printed twice in the article.

        1. But is he referring to temperatures in the arctic?
          The poles warm up more than the lower latitudes. Right now, I believe that Canada has warmed 0.7 overall, but some parts are 2C, and the arctic is 6C above normal.

      2. Surely they can’t be serious. A temperature rise of that much will cause the end of most life on earth given the miniscule timeframe.

        Sounds more like alarmism to me.

        1. Yes indeed- silly.
          But there is an important chart presented [Global monthly temperature anomalies, with ENSO status]
          that shows a relative trend of cooler temps during la nina times and warmer temps during el nino years.
          We can have reasonable expectation that the upcoming el nino runs
          will be surprisingly hot globally. Sometime in the next 2-5 years.
          Maybe the whole time.

          https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202210/supplemental/page-4
          “Several observations are apparent in the figure. First, nearly every month since the late 1970s has been above the 20th century average, and has generally warmed through the period. Second, El Niño-like conditions (those months in red) tend to be warmer than neighboring periods, and La Niña-like conditions (blue) tend to be cooler. Third, protracted El Niño-like episodes tend to warm through the event, while La Niña-like episodes tend to cool through the event. Fourth, and finally, there are exceptions to all of the above points.”

          1. Hickory,

            Definitely. The Bureau of meteorology models in Australia are predicting an end to the la Nina around March this year. And tiping from neutral to El Nino around May.

            During the La Nina here from 2021-2023 on the east coast of Australia there has been several significant flooding events and below average mean maximum temperatures. Some areas experienced significant below average temperatures for this time of year in summer.

            The next El Nino will likely be significant. And cause significant heat waves in summer here and bushfires.

  13. I live in North Alabama, right on the Tennessee border, and the temperature hit 73 yesterday. It has been in the high 60’s for over a week now. It only got down to 62 last night. If it doesn’t cool off soon, the trees may start to put on foliage.

    I just checked the temperature in Williston, N.D., where the Bakken is. It is 7 degrees F right now at 7 AM. But they are predicting a high of 22 later today.

    1. I’ve been working outside in my shirt sleeves for the last week. A short sleeved shirt…… in the mountains at least three hundred miles north of Ron.

    2. There are also records being smashed all over Europe. Quite frightening how extreme weather events seem like they are becoming more and more common all over the globe.

      2. True enough.

        Parts of Western Australia just received more rain in one twenty-four-hour period than they received in the previous twenty years.

        Search ” Australian Kimberly floods” if of interest.

    3. It did not get below freezing at all here last night.

      Oh, I should mention that I’m in Maine…

      As for that Sam Carana link… I just don’t know what to think of that doomy forecast. It’s way over the top.

      1. Most of it is grasping at straws. Anytime someone shows a graph of sunspot activity it’s evidence that the don’t understand the mechanism. BTW Sam Carana is a pseudonym from what I have heard.

        2. Guy McPherson Is the only other I’m aware of pushing the 2026 deadline.

    1. Old territory for me- used to live and work around there.
      These rains are excellent news for the countries economy- in the west water equals habitability and crop prosperity. Big California reservoirs are getting some good filling action.

      1. Flooding is already expected to be dangerous enough with this incoming bomb cyclone and pineapple express, but with at least 4 more additional atmospheric rivers possible over the next 10 days, I’m getting very concerned about extreme flooding potential, especially in NorCal.

        Cali typically has atmospheric rivers a couple times a season, if that. This will be 3-5 over 10-11 days. And the first brought the second highest rain total in a day on record for SF; winters of 95, 96, 97 might be comparable; a month straight of rain, with a lot of floods, landslides. January 2017 was a bad one also.

        I think NorCal has Top 3 all time snow pack. Now repeated warm atmospheric rivers are coming…..

        Hopefully not too much porcelain is broken.

      2. Old territory for me also—
        But lost house in fire, not flood.

        1. Fires and Flooding.
          But as you know, the other 347 days a year are glorious…
          if you don’t count the smoke days.

          An excellent series of storms lined up to come on shore over the next 10 days.
          Redwoods happy.

    2. I live about 5 miles from the Russian River. We seem to be missing the predicted peaks of the storms that are passing through. They seem to be hitting farther south. San Francisco had a record 5.5″ in one day last week yet nothing special here. Overall, as of today, we are actually behind last year’s rainfall to date (since October). More expected tonight though. I’ve lived in this house for 44 years. The last ten have been pretty consistently below any previous period (multi-year) rainfall. It is recognizable on the ground from the spring through the late fall. The ground in my orchard used to stay a rather pretty yellow, now it turns to a shade of brown that really alarms me as to my well. Also we normally have a charming little river running through a swale south of the house during big storm periods like this but the swale so far, after a week of repetitive rain, is still not showing moving water. I see climate change here is almost every season.

        1. I see the sense in that as we see climate becoming not just warmer on average but more erratic and extreme. The deciders in California are swirling around big increases in storage capacity, that is capturing water and preventing it from being discharged into the ocean. Eco-engineering. Like so many big ideas these days I wonder about the consequences. We already know that dams have killed of many fish species that depended on access to specific locations on rivers. Salmon specifically have been devestated up and down the Pacific coast. I know that desalination plants can have damaging effects on coastline ecosystems by the increased salinity in the discharge. Is is possible that we can “capture” water that would normally flow to the ocean, put it in wells and resevoirs ultimately re-routing it to the atmosphere or polluting it and not have yet another negative effect on the ability of the region to sustain life? Maybe, maybe not.

  16. Poland’s Defense Minister has signed the deal to buy 116 M1A1FEP Abrams tanks with accompanying vehicles from the U.S. for USD 1.4 billion.

    All to be delivered by 2024

    I anticipate Poland’s current stock of about 200 PT-91s (T-72M1 knock-offs) to go to Ukraine.

  17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEnD9Bu29qk

    50% of this this video is serious oil and natty gas talk. This was presented at Langley!

    Peter Zeihan (yes I am sure people are getting annoyed at seeing his name again)

    Is predicting serious imminent problems this YEAR!!!

    1) Putin’s new strategy is to make the Ukraine unlivable and unable to export anything (grain, potash and neon gas). Zeihan says this will lead to 1 BILLION deaths

    2) German industry is going away. Buy your BMW while you can!!!

    3) Oil will go to over $250 a barrel

    4) 5 million barrel of oil from Russia are going away

    5) Certain types of microchips will not be available for import.

    1. Hi GA,

      I seriously doubt any of those predictions will come true since they are given within the same timeframe of this year.

      For example:
      If 1 billion people die, oil will never go to $250/barrel. Since 1 billion people worth of demand will go away permanently (in the short-medium term). If anything that will have a significant effect of lowering oil prices.
      In contrast if 5 Mbbl/day of Russian crude disappears from the market, that is a tailwind for oil prices but for how long and how high ? Russian crude can always come back on the market through “illegal” channels also. But even if that fails oil will never go to $250 dollars in my opinion, if it does that will cause the biggest depression known to man, which will eventually take oil prices back to negative territory again like the start of Covid.

      1. Russia will continue to sell oil but under the price cap. Their main customers will be China and India. Their production will drop but not by 5 million bp/d. Perhaps by 2 to 3 million bp/d by the end of 2003, or sooner. On February 5th, they will no longer be able to sell oil products, meaning refined products such as gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.

        However, within one to two years, their production capacity will drop to around 9 million barrels per day. That is from a peak 12-year average in 2019 of 11.3 million barrels per day. Their production, after that, will never rise to above 9 million barrels per day.

      2. You are probably correct.

        I don’t think is completely off however, exactly why do people import grain and potash if they don’t need it to survive?

        Did you see the part where “Neon Gas” comes 80% from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus?

        and the remaining 20% comes from China?

        Neon Gas is critical for creating microchips ( I am not an expert but I believe for certain chips it can’t be done without it? )

        seems risky to me!

        1. Neon is extracted from the atmosphere. Like many natural resources, including the lithium needed for EV batteries, currently comes from countries that can produce it the cheapest. If it becomes impossible to obtain it from Ukraine or Russia plenty of other potential sources are available. But probably at a higher price.

    2. That was from early last year, he got most of the trends right but he’s far (far) too hyperbolic in almost everything he says.

      1. You are correct. Sorry if I mislead.

        Based on the dialogue sounds like it was around the time Nordstream blew up.

        He makes an interesting point though

        German Natural Gas is sourced from:

        1/3 from Nordstream
        1/3 from Pipelines that are in the Ukraine!!!!
        1/3 Marginal supppliers

    3. The guy is a hoax. He practices the worst of the prognosticators’ lot: blab intemperately and as much as possible, blab it long and hard, and blab it with such conviction that people think you have to be right.

      1. I don’t agree he is a hoax. His research seems pretty good to me.

        He sees the worst case scenarios in other countries, but not the USA, where he lives and makes his money.

        And he isn’t a climate change denier, he just thinks we don’t have the supply chain and resources to replace the fossil fuel industry.

          1. The guy is on the road promoting his books at the best time he can for his specialty.

            In one of his videos he said he needs to pay his bills.

            Geopolitical analysis based on demographics isn’t the most lucrative job.

            Neither is being an author when no one buys your books

            You got to strike while the iron is hot!!

            1. Maybe he’d find things a bit easier if he spent less on hats, sunglasses, hairdressers and airplane tickets.

            2. I learned the hard way fifteen years ago–through the likes of J Kunstler, M Ruppert, M Simmons, that Druid, et al.–to be extra careful of prognosticators who run their mouths glibly. They crashed and burned awfully–and credulous me with them.

              There’s little worse than setting a pair of balls in front of a microphone and camera.

            3. Mike B,

              Yes there have been lots of early predictions. These guys/gals that you mentioned ( I don’t know who druid is ) will be correct eventually.

              There is a war going on in Ukraine and it is obvious Putin is using his resources as a weapoin.

              Ziehan is talking about a scenario that might be signaled by Russia blowing up it’s own infrastructure and destroying the Ukraine’s ability to export theirs……… as a pretext for doing it.

              Why else would u blow up your own Natural Gas Pipelines and Incinerate another countries grain snd neon gas production?

              Thanks for your input!!

      2. Mikeb, I’m actually replying to your comment below listing all the failed prognosticators, but for some reason I don’t have a Reply button on that post.

        It’s a great list I am well familiar with. Kunstler – his writing can be entertaining, but his end of year predictions have been famously wrong now for so long… one day he will be right. The broken clock. Ruppert – you don’t hear that much anymore but it goes back to the cocaine for guns stories in Socal. RIP. Greer has stood the test of time and writes about other things. You forgot about Martenson!

        One thing I’ve noticed is that the genre gets more shrill, the longer they are wrong. Martenson wrote about how you could see the Chinese crematoria from space, back when Covid was starting. He might finally be right.

    1. ” a slow to really sick economy over the next few years most likely starting within a year”

      I wouldn’t be at all surprised by this scenario, and I think it is likely.
      We have all gotten used to growth, and an economy that bounces back from disruption and then reaches yet higher levels.
      But its all been fueled by a growing debt pile (and other extremely tenuous financial maneuvers),
      and a growing energy supply, among other one time advantages.
      How long will these favorable condition underpinnings last?

      Someday the growth story is going to end for good,
      and the transition to permanent contraction could start any day.
      Just ask the Syrians or the Ukrainians for recent experience on this.

      It is easy for me to get lulled into a false sense of a stable world.
      I have really enjoyed living in a time and place of relative civility, stocked grocery and hardware shelves, functional electric grid and stations with petrol, music on the airwaves, and a freedom from religion and warlords.

      I’ll say it now in case there is not an opportunity later-
      I wish all you guys some smooth waters once contraction begins in your area.

      1. The only natural model for infinite growth is cancer and that never ends well.
        Given that I think that my generation ( I’m 79) had it the absolute best of any generation ever past or future. With the tiny, tiny proviso that to be in that “best of the best” catagory it really helped to be a healthy,white, male, American who didn’t get sent to Viet Nam.

        1. I’m also 79 and agree with you on every point. The 50’s were a great time to grow up.

  20. Latest global food price index.

    For 2022 as a whole … the FFPI averaged 143.7 points, up from 2021 by … 14.3 percent.

    1. Somebody commented on that recently that they would trust that thing with their baby after a year goes by that a Tesla on autopilot hasn’t killed anybody.

      1. “down a billion peeps by 2030”

        I won’t be surprised at all.

        But 2030 might be too soon to see the total population start to crash.
        I wouldn’t bet on it, either way, without getting odds in my favor.

        But I’m ready to bet and give odds that that population world wide will peak and decline before 2050.

  24. This article would be required reading if I were teaching any course touching on the environment.
    https://www.popsci.com/environment/thwaites-glacier-history/

    There’s not much in it that the regulars here don’t already know, but it does a great job explaining how it is that we have come to know as much as we do about sea level rise and glaciers in Antarctica.

    Read it, I guarantee everybody here will come away with greater appreciation of the big picture.

  25. In case you were wondering.

    COMPOUND EXTREME HEAT AND DROUGHT WILL HIT 90% OF WORLD POPULATION

    “In the wake of record temperatures in 2022, from London to Shanghai, continuing rising temperatures are projected around the world. When assessed together, the linked threats of heat and drought represent a significantly higher risk to society and ecosystems than when either threat is considered independently.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-01-compound-extreme-drought-world-population.html

  26. Genius Elon Musk was up at 2:30am pontificating about tanks with Richard Garriott, the guy who made Ultima. His opinion on combat tactics in Ukraine is entirely formed by reading Twitter posts from gamers in the U.S.

    Ukraine side has used tanks very effectively in this war to support their offenses, the fact that the Russians forgot how combined arms works at the start of the invasion and lost a lot of tanks doesn’t speak to a broader trend in combined arms warfare. Using tanks in unsupported thunder runs where you try to just drive straight into a city is a bad idea, it turns out.

    Since the Bradley IFV might enter the war in Ukraine I would like to point out that it has BGM-71 TOWs integrated. The TOW-2B (Aero) variant can easily kill a Russian tank without even hitting it directly. Turret toss included.

    https://youtu.be/9IjAPVTtYDE

    1. MIKE B,

      I’m going to read your link but first, here’s what Art Berman has to say about him:

      “The role of science is to describe the present state, form testable hypotheses & develop probabilistic scenarios about the future. @PaulREhrlich has done these things masterfully. Population is the main cause of climate change, pollution, species extinction & overshoot. Period.”

      https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1610675104106807297

      1. Conceptually, Erlich is right on. But he should never have indulged in specific predictions. No one knows what’s going to happen or when. The tragedy is that because his predictions were so spectacularly wrong, no one listens to his core message.

    3. Mike B,

      I read your link and that’s the last substack article by that guy, economist Noah Smith, that I’ll be reading. It’s mostly factual, well supported with links and pretty graphs, but I don’t buy any of it. It’s cornucopian fluff by an economist. I’d read Art Berman over him any day.

      Edit: I agree about Ehrlich being mistaken in making his preditions too specific. The climate/energy/population problem is the size of an entire planet of full of humans. No one of us has a grasp of the whole thing but Ehrlich sounded an alarm at the appropriate time. Now, it’s probably too late to do much as disease, famine, mass migration, and resource wars have already started, conventional oil production peaked in 2005, and it looks ever more likely that unconventional oil production peaked in 2018.

      Seven billion of us exist because of excess energy and nitrogen based fertilizer. Before the first oil well was drilled in 1859, there were only 1.2 billion of us. We should have listened to Paul R. Ehrlich and others like him. Jimmy Carter, for instance, told us in 1977 that ending our dependance on foreign oil was the “moral equivalent of war.”

    4. Paul says civilization will collapse in 30 years.
      He’s wrong.
      It’s 15.

  28. Humans Will Soon Go Extinct Unless We Can Find 5 More Earths

    * Scientists warn humanity is running low on the resources that sustain it, leading to the destruction of our way of life within decades.

    * This is considered the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, but it isn’t the first caused by a natural disaster.

    * Fossil record research says today’s rate of extinction is 100 times faster than typical history.

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a42396777/earth-humanity-mass-extinction/

    1. This article is nonsense. Animal species just do not go extinct. They are driven into extinction by other species who outcompete them for food, territory, and resources. We are driving every other species of megafauna into extinction by taking over their territory and food resources. Other species will never take from us what we took from them.

      After we drive almost every other species into extinction, our numbers may dwindle to less than ten percent of what it is today. But we will be the only species of megafauna left alive. There will be no other species left on earth to drive us into extinction. We will have very little left but enough to keep our much smaller population from going extinct. After all, it will all be ours. No other species will be left alive to get a damn bite of it.

      1. Ron,

        I agree. We can still go into population decline and essentially extinction by famine, pestilence and war. Also genetic decline might be another factor which might lead us to atleast population decline.

        1. Genetic evolution does speed up in times of stress. When only a small percentage of a population survive, only the absolute fittest will be among the survivors. But that does not necessarily imply a genetic decline. Two genetic characteristics will determine who survives and who dies. Those two characteristics are strength and intelligence, brawn and brain.

          Which direction will that take us? I will not even venture a guess.

      2. Will there still be any other primates alive in 2060?
        This is a story of the tropics/subtropics, where we came from.

        “~60% of primate species are now threatened with extinction and ~75% have declining populations. This situation is the result of escalating anthropogenic pressures on primates and their habitats—mainly global and local market demands, leading to extensive habitat loss through the expansion of industrial agriculture, large-scale cattle ranching, logging, oil and gas drilling, mining, dam building, and the construction of new road networks in primate range regions. ”

        There are still over a million crab eating macaques.

        https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600946

    2. I agree that things are bad, but I just read a book, “The Ends of the World,” about the big five extinctions. The writer uses this as a platform to look at what is happening today, and the experts he talked to emphasize that we are NOT in a “sixth mass extinction,” not even close. I learned something new by reading this book.

      In the last 400 years, about 800 species have gone extinct (species, not taxa). That’s less than one tenth of one percent. Compare this to the End-Permian, when over 90 percent were wiped out!

      A true great extinction means that whole taxa are wiped out. They can be sudden, like the K-T event, or drawn out, like the End-Ordovician extinction event. The point is that a true extinction event is massive. We are nowhere near the magnitude required for “mass extinction.”

      Here’s paleontologist Doug Erwin:

      “People who claim we’re in a sixth mass extinction don’t understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument. … if it’s actually true we’re in a sixth mass extinction, then there’s no point in conservation biology. [By the time a mass extinction starts, the world would already be over]…you can ask, ‘Okay, well, how many geographically wide-spread, abundant, durably skeletonized marine taxa have gone extinct thus far?’ The answer is, pretty close to zero…. The only hope we have of a future is if we’re not in a sixth mass extinction.”

      The key word there is taxa, not individual megafaunal species, but whole taxa. That defines a mass extinction.

      It’s a good book: The Ends of the World.

  29. With Russia eyeing a spring offensive & mass mobilization, Ukraine needs tanks like never before.

    To get them to Ukraine by March, with some training, a decision is needed in the next 10-14 days.

    That is why some unacknowledged pro-Putin elements of the media landscape are wishing to draw scrutiny upon tanks at this time.

    https://securityboulevard.com/2023/01/elon-musk-knows-tanks-twitter-is-tanking-tesla-is-tanking/amp/

    Pentagon has about 3500 M1 Abrams in storage.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_of_influence

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