125 thoughts to “Open Thread Non Petroleum, January 22, 2022”

      1. Nonsense. I post the results of the two-slit experiments. The results are clear. It is those results that will blow your mind. And you just don’t have to go with it. It cries out for an explanation. And there are explanations out there. I just don’t agree with any of them.

      2. Paul —

        Your view comes with good company: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Richard Feynman

        1. Yes, personal “understanding” is different than explanation. I finished a dissertation based on the theory behind the observations from electron diffraction experiments, which is essentially the two-slit on steroids. Like Feynman, doesn’t mean that I understand quantum mechanics, but I know the math and the experiments inside and out. If anyone wants to read it on Google books https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reflection_High_Energy_Electron_Diffract/QbKN59MGbrUC

          1. Paul,

            I “read” your paper. I couldn’t understand a single sentence in it. This is depressing for me as I would like to try to best understand the universe before I die.

            Great job…I think. You definitely understand things I don’t.

            1. I like to say that I read “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking and understood every word…some sentences….a few paragraphs…and not a single chapter.

            2. Bigpompapump and jjhman , first let me clarify that I am a student of WHUT since the TOD days . As intelligent as he is , he ignores what Shakespeare said “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
              That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
              And then is heard no more. It is a tale
              Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
              Signifying nothing. ”
              The point is not to demote WHUT , but to point out if you can’t explain it to the man on the street , then you are no more than Shakespeare described . Tks to both of you be being so forthcoming .

  2. In the last Open Topic, Hightrekker said
    ““two-thirds of the commercially available solar panels are made with electricity generated from Chinese coal.”

    I see this argument thrown around on anti renewables forums.

    How much electrical energy does a typical solar panel produce over its life time compared to the amount of electrical energy that could be produced by burning the coal that WAS BURNT to manufacture the panel?

    1. “To produce a solar panel, it takes 11 tons of coal. A typical power plant produces 10 tons of ash for every ton of coal burned – so if the panels are made with this material, you’ve just increased your requirements by 11 tons per panel!”

      But with ever increased efficiency, they seem to coming up positive.

      I’m all for solar panel production.

      1. Where did this “11 tons of coal per solar panel” come from?

        It looks to me to be wildly incorrect.

        The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems updates their nice report yearly, including latest Energy Payback Times (EPBT) – see pages 33 – 36.
        https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf

        EPBT depends on location, but is in the 1 to 1.5 years range.
        And that is the full system, not just the panels (a.k.a. solar modules).

        Even assuming 1.5 years EPBT (conservatively) for a (medium sized) 250 Wp module, and 2000 hrs of sun/year (and ignoring Performance Ratio to be conservative), the module will produce in that time:
        2000 hrs/year * 250 Wp/module * 1.5 years = 750,000 Wh = 750 kWh/module

        Heat rate for a coal plant is around 10,000 Btus/kWh, see 6th paragraph in:
        https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32572

        so we need 10,000 Btus/kWh * 750 kWh/module= 7,500,000 Btus of coal/module.

        The average heat content of U.S. coal for electricity in 2020 was just over 19 million Btus/ton.
        https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=72&t=2

        so 7,500,000 Btus of coal/solar module / 19,000,000 Btus/ton of coal = .4 ton of coal / solar module
        (and as discussed, this is really the whole system, so per solar panel is less – one can eyeball the chart on page 35 of the Fraunhofer link – looks like about 2/3 of that.)

        China doesn’t have as efficient of coal plants or grid as the U.S., but it ain’t gonna turn .4 ton of coal into 11.

        And how does one get 10 tons of ash out of a ton of coal?
        The ash is the non-volatile part.
        https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1625f/downloads/ChapterC.pdf
        says coal ash varies from 3 % to 49 % (50 % and above it’s no longer coal).
        A sample of bituminous coal they cite is 15% ash.

  3. Hickory said
    “The world risks “running out of copper” amid widening supply and demand deficits, according to Bank of America, and prices could hit $20,000 per metric ton by 2025.”

    A typical pure electric car requires from about one hundred forty to two hundred pounds of copper, now, 2022.

    So……. Five or ten years down the road, that would mean a couple of thousand bucks or more just for the copper.

    Hickory also said this won’t matter much, in terms of demand for copper. I believe he’s right.

    Gasoline will likely double or triple by then too.

    Plus manufacturers will figure out ways to cut back on the amount of copper needed.

    1. When prices stay up for long, companies will find out which parts of copper can be repleced by aluminium. High prices are a strong innovation agent.

      I think all the high voltage high current cables in the car can be replaced when the incentive is high enough. Think batteries – LiFePO is used mainly because of high nickel and high cobalt prices, not because of higher internal safety.

      1. Yes, aluminum is not as good a conductor and less flexible than copper, but a lot lighter. Engineers tend to avoid it because it is harder to design aluminum wiring to fit tight spaces, but lack of copper is not an insurmountable problem.

        Also getting rid of 12 volt electricity would reduce the amount of wiring needed anyway.

        1. Yes, copper is the best cross-sectional conductor but pound per pound aluminum is better.

          Copper vs. Aluminum Conductors

          Aluminum has 61 percent of the conductivity of copper, but has only 30 percent of the weight of copper. That means that a bare wire of aluminum weighs half as much as a bare wire of copper that has the same electrical resistance. Aluminum is generally more inexpensive when compared to copper conductors.

          1. Ron —
            An interesting story about the Airbus 380 — when originally designed, it had copper cable. But they decided to switch to aluminum late in the project to save weight. However, this called for changes in the cable layout to deal with less flexible aluminum wires. Aluminum is less flexible than copper even if the wires are the same width, but they are also thicker.

            At the same time, they upgraded their wiring layout software to a new version that provided 3D views of the designs. Nice. They used that version in Toulouse, where the layout was done, but didn’t do the upgrade in Hamburg, where a lot of the the wiring was done.

            The software was supposed to be backwards compatible. But it wasn’t, so the plans couldn’t be viewed by the people who were supposed to use them. In the end this foul-up caused a two year delay in the release of the A380, and billions in losses.

            1. Aluminum is great for high voltage wires. They have a steel center wire wrapped by multiple aluminum wires. But it is terrible for internal wiring. It has a very high surface resistance. You really have to tighten down on any connection or you will get heat and possibly a fire. I would question Airbus for switching to aluminum just to save a few pounds. And I am sure they now regret the change for what it cost them.

      2. Aluminium used to have issues with corrosion and loosening at connections which was partly why it went out of favour. Bauxite imports are likely to lead to more competition between USA, Europe and China than copper imports (I don’t know about pure aluminium but I’d expect most come from China at the moment).

        1. Also the price movement must have something to say sbout how readily available it is (especially as I thought we were building fewer new cars). Metal substitutin is another example of adding complexity – there are reasons why we choose to use the metals we d, basically it is simpler. Overcoming shortages requires additional complexity and eventually the marginal returns to society become negligible.

          1. The 25 year view. Prices have more than doubled since April 2020. But they have less than doubled since 1997 (CAGR of 2.6%)…

            1. I have no idea what your argument is. I can’t read those black blobs so as far as I can see you have posted the exact same graph as I did and somehow that refutes what I’m saying. I was just indicating that recent prices rise would suggest Al is n more readily available than Cu. What may have happened over the past 20 odd years has nothing to do with that, by the definition of “recent”. Therefore your logic seems to fall into the straw man category.

    2. Along the “running out of copper” and other metals line of thinking.. Recently came across Bill Gate’s portfolio which every day I get more convinced it’s a Peak Oil investment portfolio without being obvious it’s a Peak Oil investment portfolio. His 2nd largest holding after Berkshire is $WM (Waste Management). Their yahoo profile has a line: “It also provides materials processing and commodities recycling services; recycling brokerage services, such as managing the marketing of recyclable materials for third parties”. I have yet to dive into their 10k but how viable and strategic might their operation be to a rapidly electrifying world? Especially as energy inputs and lower ore grades compresses margins at miners around the world.

    3. Thinking a little more about the risk of metals shortage as the global civilization shifts from fossil fuels/ICE towards electrical systems,
      it seems to me that cost of some metals ( or restrictions in trade) could limit the extent of energy system replacement at some point. Meaning that batteries or turbines or motors or panels may be unavailable or increasingly expensive.
      That could be a big deal down the line… 8 or 23 years from now.

      And if so, the world will have to make do with they’ve done up that point. Some places will have have done a lot more than others. By ‘done’ I mean taken measures to reduce energy consumption, and purchased EV’s, and installed energy storage, solar or wind or nuclear, and such things.

      Policies that replace fossil fuels rapidly will look brilliant in such a future where metals for transition are in short supply. The saying is- ‘make hay while the sun is shining’

      Which metals might be the first limiting factor?
      I don’t know. If you do let me know.
      I suspect limitation will be less about actual physical reserves and more about shortfall in production/processing facilities, and resource nationalism.
      (ex- China will only supply rare earths metals in exchange for Taiwan and the oil/gas output from Iran- unrestricted and at favorable terms)

      The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transition-
      https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/24d5dfbb-a77a-4647-abcc-667867207f74/TheRoleofCriticalMineralsinCleanEnergyTransitions.pdf

      I predict that companies will be springing up to go after the ocean floor metals. new term to know
      CCZ- Clarion-Clipperton Zone
      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/20000-feet-under-the-sea/603040/

      1. DeepGreen ‘as a company whose primary interest in mining the ocean is saving the planet’-
        “Why is it necessary to mine the ocean?” I asked him. He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow. “I don’t know why you use the word necessary,” he said. “Why is it ‘necessary’ to mine anywhere? You mine where you find metal.” I reminded him that centuries of mining on land have exacted a devastating price: tropical islands denuded, mountaintops sheared off, groundwater contaminated, and species eradicated. Given the devastation of land-based mining, I asked, shouldn’t we hesitate to mine the sea? “I don’t believe people should worry that much,” he said with a shrug.

  4. About our entirely human tendency to expand our range and numbers into every possible niche…….

    Well, we are no more and no less than highly evolved animals, in terms of our abilities to communicate, build things, and kill off the competition, etc.

    And we have moved into just about every possible location where it’s possible for us to live. The few places where we don’t yet live will soon be infested barring being kept free of us by collective action on our part.. such actions as having a wilderness area set aside.

    But while the tendency to have kids IS programmed in, and has resulted in our numbers expanding into the billions given our ability to control and manipulate our environment…. well ……..

    Most of us don’t spend very much time actually STUDYING the intricacies and nuances involved in evolution.

    Evolution doesn’t provide brakes where brakes aren’t needed.

    We for instance crave fat, sugar, and salt because these things taste GREAT…. and they taste great because we evolved needing them in large amounts… whereas they were in continually short supply in our diet. So.. we evolved a craving for them, expressed via our taste buds and sense of smell. This great taste is the simply the way evolution worked to get us to consume them whenever possible.

    BUT and this is a BIG BUT… evolution DID NOT provide any brakes on this craving….. because there was NO NEED…. we were never able to consume enough fat, sugar and salt to harm us until the last couple of centuries, excepting the cases of a few rich or powerful individuals. We actually had a hell of a time getting ENOUGH, never mind too much.

    Over the last couple of centuries we’ve gotten to the point we’re rich enough by way of industrialization of agriculture and transportation, etc, that those of us in rich countries can indulge our cravings to the point we’re dying in huge numbers from diseases mostly brought on by overeating fat, sugar and salt.

    Most of us, even the dumbest and most ignorant people among us, know why so many of us are obese… but the cravings are so strong, and the itch is so easily scratched, that more than half of us here in the USA are SERIOUSLY overweight.

    The point I’ve been working toward is that the urge to fuck is just as strong or stronger…. and everybody past about six or eight these days knows where babies come from.

    The DIFFERENCE is that it’s easy to swallow the pill for a woman, or for a man to get a vasectomy.
    The technologies involved in birth control will continue to get better. There will eventually be pills or even faster and easier vasectomies for men, better implants and other drugs for women, etc.

    So we can screw to our hearts content….. so long as we have free access to birth control devices.

    Mother Nature didn’t put any brakes on our sexual desires, because over the course of our evolution, most of our youngsters died as infants or kids…….. WAY to young to have kids of their own. No sex brake was needed.

    The pair bond that keeps men with the women who have their kids exists largely because we can and do have sex year around….. as opposed to a few days once in a while as is the case in most species of animals.

    We’re different. We have fire, and we can make clothing and built really elaborate NESTS which we call HOUSES, lol. We kill the predators that used to dine on us on a regular basis.

    Birth rates well below replacement level can be and ARE entirely consistent with our intellectual and technical abilities.

    Now maybe I’m just WAY to optimistic…… but I can’t help believe that unless people world wide are prevented from doing so by politicians, birth rates are going to fall one hell of a lot farther, and one hell of a lot faster, than any demographer expects.

    Their work is based on statistical models….. and while the data they put in is mostly fine…. it’s the data they leave OUT that means their results are quite possibly worthless.

    Consider the speed at which the renewable energy industries are growing, and the speed at which the electric vehicle industry is growing. Ninety nine percent or more of the entire goddamned establishment missed the boat. Half of the establishment still doesn’t seem to understand that the boat even SAILED. Some don’t seem to understand the boat even EXISTS, lol.

    Maybe one child families will become the norm as fast as any other technologically based wave has become the norm.

    And if they don’t …… some little microbe or virus doing its own thing may yet have its way with us, and wipe out half or more of us despite anything we can do about it.

    Personally I see a LOT of reasons to believe the world wide population won’t ever get to ten billion.

    1. Well, if population never gets to 10 billion with lower reproductive rates than the current trend,
      perhaps we can get back down to 9 billion by 2100-
      As the Organization for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates (dark blue line in the chart below)

      1. Hi Hickory,
        I guess maybe I’m the Tony Seba of this forum, lol, when it comes to falling birthrates.

        My gut feeling is that ALL the projections in your graph are on the high side by a considerable margin.

        I’ve watched the birth rate crash in one country or society after another since I wrote a speech about the future of food supplies back in high school for a public speaking contest, the same year The Population Bomb was published. Somehow I got hold of a copy even though there was no book store in my one stoplight county seat where I went to high school, lol.

        I was a pessimist then, and remain a pessimist today, but I’m not so pessimistic as I was a few years back.

        A few countries have already more or less solved their over population problem already. All that’s lacking in these cases is to allow another decade or so for the numbers to actually start falling, so long as they don’t open their borders to large scale immigration.

        1. I think you are correct.
          In addition to falling birthrate, I suspect other more tragic events will result in a considerably lower population than the chart projections by later in the century, and maybe much earlier.

          Its amazing how much horrific experiences can be indicated by so few words. I am sorry.

        2. Even if the birth rate dropped to zero overnight, it doesn’t matter. 140 million babies were born last year. Only 60 million people died, however, and that 60 million is the critical number.

          60 million out of 7.73 billion. That’s considerably less than 1% a year. So in 10 years at no births and 60 million annual deaths, you hit 7.103 billion. In 20 years, 6.503 billion. Halving the birthrate instantly rather than going to zero would (obviously) mean it would take 20 years to get to 7.1 billion.

          There is no question that we are going to pass 8 billion. Also no question that that is too many….probably 6 or 7 billion too many. And we all know that things that cannot continue don’t continue.

          The final shape of the curve will be decided by the death rate, not the birth rate.

          1. Lloyd, we are now over 7.9 B, and it is highly likely that 9 B will be ‘achieved’ by 2050.
            The momentum of this human bulldozer is immense, like a Tsunami.

          3. Think one could assume the death rate will be steep on the other side of that bell curve.

            1. My personal belief is that the death rate is going to accelerate like a runaway truck going down a mountain sometime within the next few decades.

              I just can’t see the richer countries being willing, or necessarily even ABLE, to bail out the poorest countries with the highest birth rates, the ones least able to feed themselves now.

              They’re just barely holding on in such places, one bad year from major famine unless they can import food on the grand scale. Consider Egypt for instance. Egypt has nothing of any consequence to export so as to pay for imported necessities ranging from oil to grain.

              My guess, for what it’s worth, is that anybody trapped there might as well expect to either kill or be killed in order to survive at all within another couple of generations at the latest.

              People are going to die in place by the hundreds of millions unless unless they manage to migrate. I don’t see very many making it across the borders of other countries having a hard time producing enough food for domestic consumption.

              Food supplies might be really tight even here in a country as big and rich , with as low a population in terms of our resources, as the USA. We might be damned glad for a chicken on Sunday…. depending on how the climate cards fall.

              Another Dust Bowl, or worse, here in the US is not an IF possibility, it’s a WHEN for damned sure certainty. Equally bad years, and maybe equally bad DECADES are sure to come, sooner or later, in just about every corner of the world, and the odds are very high that such bad years will come to a number of highly populated areas within the next fifty years, and quite possibly sooner.

              The Green Revolution runs on oil and industrial chemicals ranging from nitrates to antibiotics to pesticides. It will grind to a near halt once the supplies of such things are interrupted.

              Resource nationalism is going to be a BIG THING in times to come. Any country with food to spare is apt to hoard it. Any country with oil to spare is likely to leave it in the ground for later domestic consumption….. so long as the money from selling it isn’t desperately needed short term. Deals will be cut between countries with stuff to sell, and other countries with the means to pay ….. in hard cash or by barter.

              Iraq and Iran may still have some oil and gas to sell for the remainder of this century.

              What will the people in Sub Saharan Africa have to sell?

          4. Lloyd —
            60 million out of 7.73 billion.

            This is a good point. A lot of population growth today is driven by low death rates instead of high birth rates. For example, Bangladesh has a very low birth rate, probably under the replacement rate, but will add tens of millions of people by 2050. That is because the number of old people is rapidly growing, thanks to high survival rates.

      2. Don’t worry, with the rough energy transition which is coming, the population will decrease in the hard way (war, pandemics, hunger starvation, exiles…) and we will not be the last to suffer of this.

    1. Thankfully, humans are exceptionally resilient and smart as a species. However, our food is not. That’ll be a natural problem for technology to sort out if climate continues to change. What to do if agricultural yields keep dropping because of droughts and floods?

      1. It’s just about impossible for me to imagine any practical solutions to the loss of yields going forward as the world wide climate heats up.

        It’s not that technical solutions aren’t at least theoretically possible. It’s that there’s no way in hell the people in most parts of the world will ever be able to pay for such solutions.

        Here in the USA, we might actually be able to divert some rivers hundreds of miles to irrigate many tens of thousands of acres of land.. which would cost into the hundreds of billions…. but hey, we spend that much on the military without a second thought.

        Such schemes wouldn’t have a prayer of working in most parts of the world.

      2. The first sign of food shortages is always a spike in meat prices. A big long lasting spike will drive the low footprint meat substitute market.

        Here’s an article about Macdonalds’ new product, McPlant, and wise words about why it won’t work: Macdonalds customers are more interested in price (or something else, it’s not clear from the article) than saving the world.

        https://www.thestreet.com/investing/mcdonalds-expands-beyond-meat-mcplant-history-says-it-wont-work

        But if meat prices spike, the argument gets turned on its head.

    2. The just ended USA 2021crop year had the HIGHEST soybean harvest on record and the SECOND highest corn harvest on record. Rest assured that CO2 at 415ppm had something to do with that.

      1. I’d be interested in seeing data to support that claim. It would only be the case if CO2 was the limiting nutrient in soybean and corn growth.

  6. Globally “2021 was one of the hottest years on record,
    and it could also be the coldest we’ll ever see again”

  8. Parallel Systems raises $50M Series A to build autonomous battery-electric rail cars that move freight

    Parallel’s freight transportation solution is even more energy efficient than freight train because it is lighter and more aerodynamic. The patent-pending platoon technology features self-propelled rail cars that push against each other to distribute the aerodynamic load. Parallel vehicles use just 25% of the energy compared to a semi-truck and offer the lowest operational cost of any surface freight transportation mode. Less energy means smaller batteries, less strain on the grid, and lower charging infrastructure costs.

    Parallel’s zero-emission vehicles could reduce the freight industry’s carbon emissions significantly. Trucking accounts for 444 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or approximately 7%, of all CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, according to the 2019 US Environmental Protection Agency figures.

    https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/01/20220122-parallel.html

  9. For stationary energy storage (non-Lithium) this company has been gaining traction, and funding .
    Ambri- https://ambri.com/benefits/

    The website has plenty of info for quick browsing. Originally conceived out of MIT and with manufacturing near Boston on a small scale, they plant to manufacture worldwide.

    1. Ambri’s Sadoway did a good TED talk almost 10 years ago:

      https://youtu.be/Sddb0Khx0yA

      I used to follow them but they continually failed to get product to market (keeping liquids apart at 500C/ 930F is difficult). It seemed they had more announcements than deliveries. But hey, if they can get it to work…

      1. Yes, I had seen info on their concept and development over the years.
        Perhaps they are getting closer to real.
        “Indian giant Reliance Industries joined Bill Gates and other international investors to back US start-up Ambri, which aims to deploy its ‘liquid metal’ battery technology as an alternative to lithium-ion systems for large scale renewable energy storage.” Aug 2021

        I think long times frames of development are the most common, rather than just a few years.
        Time will tell.

    1. Yes, things start to get interresting.

      The FED already reduced QE and still their rate hike is announced.
      Time for a 180 degree reversal in 1,2,3 …

      I think they panic when this starts sliding and the big margin calls come. Another -20% in Nasdaq and they will start easing – just my take. It’s pure guessing.

        1. Nibbling at V, ALB, BA, GS, NVDA, HON today. Keeping some dry power.

  11. Diving into the copper vs. aluminum for electrical application discussion further up in the thread.

    Aluminum is 1/3 the weight of copper and would be the choice for high voltage transmission in the future most likely. Copper has better conductivity and is the safer choice towards light usage. Industrial use can cope much easier with the shortfalls of aluminum, so there is where the substitution will happen (if the price is right).

    Then again production of primary aluminum is highly dependent on electricity, and much of the production is by convenience located not far from major resources for cheap hydro or coal (not far from a 50/50 ratio, going to lean more towards hydro in the future). It is ideal for recycling with much less energy costs, but it takes a lot of cheap energy to make more of it.

    Copper can have a long duration in its application. The subsea cables that Nexans Norway (Halden) are using are proven with just 1 repair on the inter connectors between Norway and Denmark from the 1970’s. They were surprised the cable showed just minimal signs of deterioration when the repaired it. They used copper with further processes to insulate the cable. No surprise; the North connect cable chose this company and so did the newly awarded New York offshore awards. There is little appetite to mess with a subsea cable technology that is proven to not deteriorate that much even after 40 years. That is a form of sustainability. Building things that last in the first place. Still they are looking to replace the near 50 year cables to Denmark soon. Not many things lasts for a long time; properly built buildings do – but they need to be maintained.

    That is why everyone is going crazy when it comes to long range interconnectors. They last for at least half a century. A repair or two is going to be costly, but not considering the time period.

    1. It would be very interesting to know what the embedded energy content is in a ton of aluminum vs copper wire or cable stock is.
      (how much energy did it take to mine/smelt/process to get from ore to finished product)

  12. Indeed.

    The unique thing about the Irish potato famine episode of history is that many in the population had the option of migrating to a new place with labor shortage and vast lands open for occupation by European peoples.

    Now, when we arrive at the time of great energy and food shortage there will be no place for the vast majority of have-nots to migrate to.

    1. The future will probably see booming metropolises in the Arctic and Antarctica. Those will be exciting frontiers for migration and development. Heck, maybe we’ll have finally colonized Mars by then too.

  13. Meanwhile,

    UN SAYS GLOBAL CARBON EMISSIONS SET TO RISE 16 PER CENT BY 2030

    A UN analysis has revealed a bleak upward trajectory for global carbon dioxide emissions, despite new CO2-curbing plans by scores of countries, including major emitters such as the US and the European Union’s 27 member states. Global emissions will rise 16 per cent by 2030 on 2010 levels under governments’ plans put forward since the start of 2020, according to the synthesis report from UN Climate Change. That puts the world ruinously off track for the 45 per cent cut that climate scientists say is needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding global warming to 1.5°C. “This report is really showing us sobering numbers,” says Patricia Espinosa at UN Climate Change. “But it is also still showing the progress to the 1.5°C goal is possible. The latest IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report says there is still this window open. It’s a very, very small window, that is true. The 1.5°C goal is, in my view, alive.”

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2290746-un-says-global-carbon-emissions-set-to-rise-16-per-cent-by-2030/#ixzz7J09vWNfh

    1. In late June last summer we had a big heat wave in Pac NW, as I’m sure you remember Doug.
      We blew out the old all-time high temp records by over 10 degree where I live, reaching 113F.
      Its hard for me to imagine it getting much hotter around here than that episode, but these episodes could happen more frequently and last 10 days instead of two.
      And if so, someday this coastal forest zone of massive fir forests and dairy farms may catch fire.
      It will be an epic event if it comes.
      I suppose the scenario is approaching inevitable.
      Many other places will have melted by then.

    2. Biden’s Electric Vehicle Push Unites Warring Oil and Corn Allies
      Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News

      (Bloomberg) — Lawmakers who support the rival petroleum and ethanol industries have joined forces to oppose the Biden administration’s push to electrify the federal vehicle fleet, marking a rare moment of unity between oft-warring interests.

      Fifty Republicans — — including 17 from oil-rich Texas and 21 from the Corn Belt — warned President Joe Biden that his executive order requiring the federal government to purchase only zero-emission vehicles risks forfeiting climate progress and will make the U.S. dangerously dependent on China.

      The effort reflects a public detente between warring oil and biofuel interests, which see electric vehicles as a common enemy.

      Biden’s executive order, issued in December, requires federal agencies buying light-duty vehicles to make those zero-emissions models by the end of fiscal year 2027.

      Because almost all critical minerals required to manufacture electric vehicles are sourced from China or countries where China is a significant investor and influence, “this executive order creates a dependency on foreign adversaries,” said the lawmakers in a letter released Monday, spearheaded by Representatives Ashley Hinson of Iowa and August Plfuger of Texas.

      https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/biden-s-electric-vehicle-push-unites-warring-oil-and-corn-allies-1.1712517

      Doug, the only entity that can change the direction of climate change is government and when it’s a democracy that is gerrymander like the United States. 70 to 80 percent of the voting public need to be on board for change. Special interests know this and use misinformation and can stop progress. That’s why it is important not to feed the misinformation beast. The situation is so bad here in the states 20 percent won’t even get a simple vaccination to save their own lives.

      1. The strange thing is all the things to move on to electric transportation ( I write it more generally, since it includes trucks and electric trains ) are present in the USA.

        Even rare earth – you just have to reopen the mines and prospect new ones. China was just cheaper with no enviroment laws.

        And for the oil companies – they’ll be able to sell most of their nat gas for the electricity until there are newer technologies built. This will take time. Oil is downhill anyway, give it a last peak in the USA or not, in 10 years most sweetspots are done even in optimistic calculations.

        So fighting the change isn’t in their interrest when calculated right. We need all the oil and gas for the transformation.

        1. “China was just cheaper with no enviroment laws.”
          I’ve thought a lot about this issue as I’ve watched American made consumer items disappear from store shelves and, as a manufacturing engineer, watch job opportunities disappear. Another issues was OSHA. In retrospect everyone should have seen the handwriting on the wall; if you pay workers well, protect their health and the environment where their families live, you can hardly expect investors to ignore that there are places in the world where none of those conditions inhibit profits. You would think that the Democrats who pushed these laws through the state and federal governments would have seen the repercussions but they didn’t and now we are in a deep hole in terms of self sufficiency. It is almost worth laughing about that even today companies will use dependency on China as an excuse to fight against technologies that we clearly need.

          Was it Marx that said that the capitalists will sell the rope to their own hangman?

          1. Was it Marx that said that the capitalists will sell the rope to their own hangman?

            That was Marx.

          2. JJHMAN
            Actually it’s low labor costs and shipping costs that drive the Chinese export boom. Polluting North America is not going to change that. As I calculated here a few weeks ago, it only costs about 3 cents to ship a T-short across the Pacific.

            America’s job problems are caused by the intense ideological hatred of Republicans for the most important job creating industries of the future, education and health care. That’s where the jobs of the future are.

            You aren’t going to create many jobs making widgets when productivity keeps increasing.

          3. Alimb:
            Low labor costs, low shipping costs AND disinterest in the health of the citizenry are all reasons why labor shifted from the US. Asia was just the most lucrative place for the capital to land. It was certainly ignorant of the Democrats to push through health and safety requirements without some protection from low wage countries that had neither. I learned about how low shipping costs were while looking at a hard right wing site several years ago. The lesson came from the fact that it was actually economical to ship bulk rice across the ocean. That has to have less value per ton than practically any marketable product.
            Republicans have intense hatred for anything that interferes with the prerogative of capital to suck up wealth but you aren’t going to generate any near term wealth with health care or education. They are both long term investments with diffuse returns. Germany seems to fare pretty well with lower per capita spending on health and education while obtaining better outcomes in health and employment. If you can’t generate decent wages with manufacturing jobs I can’t imagine where they will come from. Consider also the risks we are seeing now that we can get neither the electronics nor the natural resources we need today because we have off-shored both key industries. Producing what you consume seems to have an indisputable logic to it. I have worked for three separate manufacturing companies that were quite profitable until the management sold to a larger entity with no sense of community. With 90% of the gains in productivity going to management and investors perhaps redirecting some of those profits to workers would offset the wage difference. Probably too much economic theory for me.

  14. I manage not to think about this stuff most of the time, because it is a dilemma. There is nothing I can do about it, so why allow it to depress me? However, your response flipped a switch. Follow me down the rabbit hole…or in this case, the white mouse hole. Consider this a thought experiment (at least I hope it’s a thought experiment).

    A couple of news stories caught my attention in the past few days: a likely origin for Omicron, and the engineered pig heart transplant. I’ll tackle them one by one, and then synthesize in order to explain how they affect my thinking on the death rate.

    Omicron Origin:
    I am a huge fan of Dr. John Campbell, a retired Professor of Nursing who has a YouTube channel. His stuff on Omicron is typically 2-3 weeks ahead of the general media, because he’s a guy who can read and interpret the appropriate pre-prints and government statistics. Three weeks ago he published this: “Omicron from Mice” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH1u1GIPU2A He talks about a peer-reviewed study that suggests that Omicron has 3 times the number of mutations you would expect to find, and that Omicron seems to have mutated ….in mice. That the original Wuhan strain jumped from humans to mice in 2020, and then it jumped back in 2021.

    I am not the only person whose first thought was ” this was made in a lab”. (Dr. Campbell addressed the idea in a video the next day.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have an explanation as to why the organization that created it (if it was man-made) would release it. If you’re a bio-terrorist, why advertise your abilities? And if you’re not, why would you do this in the first place?

    Engineered Pig Heart Transplanted to a Human
    There was an article in the Washington Post about this where they discussed the ethics of the operation (a pig heart was transplanted into a human on an emergency basis, which bypassed the Research Ethics Review Board). https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/14/questions-about-the-pig-heart-transplant/ My opinion is that this was an experiment poorly disguised as a humanitarian gesture. I remember reading about early artificial hearts, where each time a patient lasted a few more months it was a big deal. I don’t think these Doctors expect him to last very long, and like those early artificial hearts, there are things that can only be discovered by actually trying it. The possibility of getting a jump on the unknown unknowns is why they went around the Ethics board.

    Synthesis
    So these two data points (as well as the death rate question) were rolling around in my brain while driving to the grocery store this afternoon. I had a little epiphany: I realized that a possible explanation for why you would release a lab-created Omicron back into the population is because no one had done anything like it before: that there are things that can only be learned by doing the experiment. Of course, the kind of people who would want to know these things are people who wonder about how to turn plagues on and off. People who do more than just think about it, and who don’t answer to a Research Ethics board.

    Now, this is practically unimaginable: it’s Bond-villain-level crazy. You require nation-state resources, top researchers who can’t publish their work (and whose lack of publishing might be noticed), total and unbroken security, and a management/steering group (that includes the President/premier) who are considering contributing to the deaths of billions of people. However, I don’t think it points to weaponization or bio-terrorism as we think of them. I think it points to a group considering active de-growth, for lack of a better word (genocide doesn’t really cover it).

    That 2040 date comes to mind: less than 20 years off. My wife has a favourite line she learned from a First Aid teacher regarding CPR: “Anything you do improves his odds. It doesn’t matter if your technique is imperfect- he’s already dead.” In the Earth’s case, as the situation gets worse, someone is going to think that whatever they do will be an improvement.

    1. I get your theme, but would like to point out that the genetic constitution of this Covid virus has been put under the greatest scrutiny at dozens of genetic labs across the world and all have reached the same conclusion-
      there is absolutely zero evidence of human or artificial manipulation.
      And that is not a hard thing for these labs to detect. Its kind of like looking at the letters comprising an English short story, and coming across a pasted in paragraph of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Not subtle.

      This doesn’t mean it didn’t escape from the Wuhan lab, but that is entirely a different story from the virus ‘being made in a lab”. its a very important distinction.

      1. Hi Hickory.
        Just to clarify: I was not referring to the original Covid strain being man-made, but rather that Omicron was somehow manipulated (and I now see that I should be more careful with the words “lab made”). I did not know that gene edits would be so easy to spot.

        I gave some thought to taking my comment down, but decided to leave it up because of the broader theme (and in case somebody here knows how to encourage faster viral mutation and select useful variants to get around gene-editing artifacts : ) ).

        Though truth be told, I’m quite happy to be wrong.

        1. I don’t think we should be at surprised that mutations of the virus are very rapid. There are trillions upon trillions of replication events, with each one being a chance of mutation.

          ” a group considering active de-growth, for lack of a better word (genocide doesn’t really cover it).”
          I do think that this topic is very legitimate concern.
          Most people don’t care much at all about other ‘tribes’ even in good times, let alone when their prosperity or survival is at risk. And people have lots of very dangerous tools to experiment with and no oversight.

          1. Four or five years ago I had an off the record conversation with a young microbiologist who teaches a couple of introductory courses at a local community college.
            He said that in his personal opinion he wouldn’t be surprised to see a major new contagious disease emerge every five to ten years going forward, in large part because there was then and going forward so much travel, so much shipping of food, animals, etc, from the far corners of the Earth to major population centers, etc.

            He also said that if progress continued at the usual rate in terms of automating the lab work involved in genetics and genetic engineering that within another decade or two it would probably be possible for a handful of dedicated and well financed individuals, properly trained of course, to create new custom designed variant of a viral disease.

            His opinion, and this is where he wanted it off the record, was that it would be entirely possible that such a team could be small enough to maintain secrecy…… that it would be possible to buy all the needed technology and materials no questions asked, and that as few as a couple of dozen people could pull it off. Young guys hoping to land a permanent faculty position don’t want such opinions publicized of course.

            I have a gut feeling he was probably right.

            Thinking about such things doesn’t help me fall asleep.

          2. The anti vaccination movement is one such deliberate attempt at de-growth, in that the adherents to the tribe are volunteering for self sacrifice.

          3. In an interesting twist, the web site below lists all the members of congress and senators that “either were diagnosed with COVID-19, self-quarantined after exposure to someone with COVID-19, or reported exposure but took other action or no action”.

            https://www.govtrack.us/covid-19

            Here are some prominent Republicans that appear no worse off having tested positive

            Matt Gaetz
            Rick Scott
            Rand Paul
            Mike Lee
            Scott Perry
            Devin Nunez
            Jim Jordan
            Louie Gohmert (age 68)
            Chuck Grassley (age 88)
            Lindsey Graham (age 66)
            Ron Johnson (age 66)
            Donald Trump (age 75, obese)
            Chris Christie (age 59, morbidly obese)

            At a panel discussion he hosted on Monday, Ron Johnson mentioned that he had no symptoms when he tested positive. If Trump and Christie survived, there must be some treatment that they got that helped them. Doctors that spoke at the panel discussion on Monday claim the very few of the patients they treat early have to go to the hospital and even fewer die. A book was published on Monday Jan 24 by two doctors Brian Tyson an George Fareed in which they describe how they successfully treated over 7,000 covid patients. The claim by doctors that advocate for early treatment is that early treatment reduces the likelihood of being admitted to hospital and dying to almost zero.

          4. 878,472 deaths by Covid in US (Hopkins) this morning. (2 years)
            416,800 deaths in WWII by the US. (4.5 years)
            Vietnam US? 58,220 over many years.

    2. There are a whole lot of things in the narratives about this pandemic that don’t make sense to me. My understanding of the likelihood of mutations in RNA viruses is that as the number of copies made rises so does the likelihood of mutations. Considering the number of copies made in a single cell and the numbers of cells infected it becomes inevitable that at some point mutations are going to occur. Looking at populations and the numbers of new daily cases the place where mutations are most likely to emerge is the USA where confirmed new daily cases peaked at over 300,000 on Jan. 8, 2021. at that time confirmed new daily cases in India were around 18k and trending down. Yet where is the delta variant supposed to have originated? India?

      In South Africa before emergence of the omicron strain, confirmed new daily cases peaked at a seven day average of almost 20 k (19,956) on July 8, 2021 and by the middle of November the 7 day average of new daily cases had declined to under 300. In the middle of November the 7 day average of daily new cases in the US was over 70 k. From a Washington Post article:

      The omicron variant of the coronavirus has about 50 genetic mutations, and a whopping 36 of them are in the all-important spike

      We are being asked to believe that an unusually large number of mutations occurred in a relatively small population that was experiencing a very modest number of new daily cases. At the same time a country with more than five times the population of South Africa and new daily case counts over 70k has not identified a single variant that has been alleged to have originated there. IMO this is statistically very unlikely. With the 7 day average new daily cases in the US currently in the region of 750 k the emergence of a new variant in the US is highly likely.

      It does not make sense that mutations are emerging from regions experiencing relatively low numbers of daily new cases and not from regions with huge numbers of daily new cases extending over a significant period. If the mutations are truly random, what is the likelihood of this?

      1. “My understanding of the likelihood of mutations in RNA viruses is that as the number of copies made rises so does the likelihood of mutations.”

        We have Variations of the virus, not mutations.

        In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleotide sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA.

        Common mistake

        2. What is it that gives rise to variations? What is it that makes one variant different from another? If I were to avoid the use of the word mutation by replacing it with the phrase “change in the genetic code” would that change anything?

          2. Doug, I have never really bought into the idea that the original strain or any of the variants is man made. It could be just a coincidence that the wet market is virtually across he street from the Wuhan virology lab. I am simply observing that the idea that the omicron variant originated in South Africa is like winning the lotto. The odds are against it. I think that it just as likely that it originated in a hotspot like the US and was taken there by a traveler. Ditto India and the delta variant.

            It could also be that the variants are emerging in places that use ivermectin with ivermectin putting evolutionary pressure on the virus. Who knows? If we get a variant out of somewhere like Bangladesh or Indonesia that would support the ivermectin argument. Wouldn’t it be great if the ivermectin could be blamed for producing the variants?

          3. Hint:
            RNA viruses have variations with almost every replication.
            This is basic science.

          4. “RNA viruses have variations with almost every replication.
            This is basic science.”

            Yes, yes, yes! And what people don’t get is that most new variations don’t cause concern. It the variations of concern that matter.

            Like mutations: most mutations are silent, synonymous, etc. It’s just the few that matter that catch our attention.

      2. Not at all unexpected.
        “each infected person carries an estimated 1 billion to 100 billion virions during peak infection”
        at any one particular second.

    3. Lloyd, I’d be a little careful with the info that Campbell delivers. He’s a Doctor of Nursing, which is an entirely different mindset than that needed to understand the intricacies of immunology. He’s a wonderful teacher and I’ve learned a lot from him but he occasionally strays into speculative territory. Some of those ideas have been taken up by others who are prone towards conspiracies.

    1. For few decades now India has been building a wall/fence along the entire border of Bangladesh.
      The biggest immigrant border in the world perhaps.

      https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/4/battle-of-identities-at-the-india-bangladesh-border/
      https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india/india-bangladesh-fence.htm

      In regard to the trump wall policy, I think many people who do believe that we need a rational policy to choose who and how many immigrants we allow into the country, became entirely opposed to the idea of Trumps initiative simply because he was such a royal fascist asshole about it all. Comes naturally to him.

      1. Hi Hickory,
        Thanks for the reminder, I forgot about that . The news from that I’ve run across from time to time mostly about border clashes. The fence isn’t mentioned very often.

        Comes of thinking from a Western USA Eurocentric point of view for the most part.

        I have never been optimistic about what’s happening and will happen in most of Asia and Africa.

        1. You have been right to be reminding us that that the migration/border issue is going to bigger and bigger as time goes on. And it will be a big issue on dozens of borders.
          All it is takes is a slight perceived advantage to survival on the other side to set up a huge dynamic.
          One of the hardest policy questions we will face is just how many refugees in dire straits we can/will take in.

          1. HICKORY —

            Yes, perhaps one of the biggest dilemmas, and one being progressively exacerbated by climate change. Imagine a small but immensely rich country like Norway. How many refugees do they accept? I would hate to be the one making this impossibly difficult decision.

            1. That is going to be a very heated debate a lot of places. People in Norway are going to be enraged if the standard of living goes down; one example is being upset about very high electricity prices this winter. But that is the case in most western countries for the time being.

              I think it is more or less settled that we are in bed with EU ( UK) and the US. Meaning that we will take in refuges from Europe mostly. There was a time when a lot of political refuges came to Norway from Pakistan and Somalia and more recently Iraq, Syria and Turkey. But in the future I guess we will take in more young and able people from Europe instead. Norway is about 100% supplied with food if you like fish (or most likely salmon). Fish is 50% of the total food supply. It is possible to continue to import the soy bean oil etc used to feed farmed salmon and livestock, due to the strong trade surplus and the big oil fund invested abroad. So I think we would accept to cramp together quite a lot of European “refugees” or fortune seekers, just because the renewable energy supply per capita is so high in the country. But it is a big point that some places uses renewable energy to keep alive some industry that also is not fossil fuel based; to embrace consumption and neglect the industry is not the best approach.

              So I guess our population will grow. Maybe a few million more from 5.4 million. If you abroad trade us some food, that is.

            2. For a preview of the immediate future, see the ancient past of the Near East, Aegean, and Levant, c. 1200 BC. Inquire about “Sea Peoples.” Watch the cities burn.

  17. Man, these are dismal threads! Here’s a hit and run–for my own mental health.

    Climate: All of the above doom and gloom presupposes that man has lost the ability to think. Just one method of changing the climate is anthropogenic geoengineering. Then there’s hydrolysis. And carbon capture.

    Novel Coronavirus: When the genome was published, the leading scientist in this said in an email, “this doesn’t appear to follow evolutionary theory.” Upon duress, he retracted that and later received a $20M grant from the NIH. I’m sure that was a coincidence.

    Variants: The very definition is one or more mutations. By this point, the phylogeny has been changed quite remarkably. The last variant had a great number of mutations. At once, it was more contagious and less lethal.

    Evolutionary Virus Propagation: Double-stranded DNA and RNA viruses have a repair mechanism whereby if a mistake is made, the misfitting segment is cleaved out in the form of oligonucleotides and new nucleic acids are inserted. In single-stranded RNA viruses this is attempted using RNA polymerase, which is a sloppy enzyme for repair work. The natural mutation is to hungrily infect more and more cells–it becomes a frenzy–so more mistakes are made, and in the course of trillions of replications a viral variant will eventually emerge that has been exuberantly mutated, with more contagion but less lethality. That would be the Omicron twins.

    Geology Rocks: There are some smart geologists on this board. You recall that geology drives the carbon cycle. The volcanism that formed the Siberian Traps dropped the sword of Damocles on the neck of most living organisms on earth–but the worst of it was from a coal-bed fire, which would never have occurred had not the magma splatted on the Siberian craton. With that perturbation of the carbon cycle, it got very hot and CO2-laden on Planet Earth, creating the Great Dying Off, the Permian Extinction. But then, when the Indian Subcontinent traveled north through the Tethys Sea due to subduction of plates, the Himalayas resulted. So much fresh feldspar was hydrolyzed by the elements that it sucked all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and deposited it in the oceans, creating the Pleistocene Glaciation–the Last Ice Age.

    Well, let’s use a little carbon capture, convert some basalt to limestone, spray some aerosol precursors into the tropopause, cool this place down a bit. Crops will grow and Elon Musk will acquire the rest of the money on earth. We will all be Jetsons, still being told that the Novel Coronavirus that made the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sick and, alas, took away sense of smell in three, was from the wet market. No war. No famine. No more freak storms. Egypt can survive. Hell, all of Africa.

    There, I feel better already!

  18. On the previous thread on the metals debate ( copper etc) , I had posted the shutdown of the Alcoa plant in Spain . The reason was that in spite of aluminum prices up by 40% they cannot pay the energy bill . Now comes the latest . Zinc smelters shutdown in Europe because they can’t afford the energy bill . I keep on repeating ” If you can’t afford it , you can’t have it ” . Don’t believe me call up Erdogan in Turkey and Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka or Oli in Kathmandu (Nepal ) or Imran Khan in Pakistan . I can go on and on . Enjoy it while it lasts .
    https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/zinc-squeeze-worsens-second-european-smelter-closes-2022-01-28/

    1. It’s surprisingly hard to find good information on how much it would cost to run heavy infrastructure on intermittent wind and solar electricity, but maybe somebody here knows where to find it.

      Suppose for instance you can build a water desalinization plant that can be run anytime you have sufficient electricity from the wind and sun, and maybe enough gas to enable a safe no hassle shutdown, or compensate for a relatively minor short fall.

      Such a plant would likely be capable of producing anywhere from ( WAG) forty to seventy five percent as much clean water as it would running it around the clock on gas or coal.

      Storing water in a reservoir is a piece of cake.

      So… the question becomes one of capital costs versus operating costs.

      If the energy costs are high enough, it’s likely that such desalinization plants can and will be built to take advantage of the low costs of wind and solar electricity.

      Ditto metal smelting and processing plants….

      If they can be made to operate efficiently on an intermittent basis, a country such as Spain will be in tall cotton in terms of the aluminum industry.

      Of course the same would apply to the American mid west…… at least in terms of recycling aluminum.

      1. OFM , you cannot run heavy infrastructure with intermittent . Electricity required in smelters , refining etc not only requires a certain volts but also cycles . In USA all electric motors are 110 v 50 Hz . In Europe it is 220V and 60 Hz . This cannot be maintained with intermittent electricity .Practical experience . Several years ago ( could be 10 years ) there was a momentarily spike in the Hz in Germany . I was asked by an electric motor distributer to rush a motor to Koln within 3 hours under all circumstances . It was a plastic processing plant . On reaching the plant I asked ,why 3 hours ? The engineer told me that they must replace the motor within 4 hrs maximum while the plastic is still warm/hot and in the fluid stage or else the plastic in the pipeline will solidify and they would have to shutdown the plant , cut thru the pipes and replace the pipes . There was a similar incident in an aluminum plant ( don’t remember where ) . They had to shut down the furnace and actually replace the refractory lining etc as the aluminum had solidified because of the spike in Hz of the electricity supply . I know that the two largest aluminum manufacturers in India have captive power plants to avoid such incidents . Forget it . Intermittent does not work for 24/7 operations .

        1. “Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.”
          ― Henry Ford

          “Successful people have no fear of failure. But unsuccessful people do. Successful people have the resilience to face up to failure—learn the lessons and adapt from it.”
          ― Roy T. Bennett

          “How much you can learn when you fail determines how far you will go into achieving your goals.”
          ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

          “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
          ― Suzy Kassem

          “There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
          ― Elbert Hubbard

          1. All very wise statements, but one of the crucial questions is which choice or combination of choices is the best, apart from the bottleneck of speed of mining of rare earth metals.
            Nuclear energy, hydrogen, wind/solar energy, hydroelectric energy, thermal energy ? All of them ? Yes, all. All will be used.
            Every country will take their own decisions, there will be no concerted plan and effort. A lot of EV’s will be used, everywhere. It doesn’t eliminate most of the problems caused by overshoot though.
            Fossil fuels are just too damned easy to use. Increasingly carbon and wood from trees will be used by poor people, who cannot afford gas and other FF.

            1. I can’t find it now, but sometime back I had a link to a piece written by a pro forester who worked for the federal government.

              His calculations indicated that for the USA to go entirely to using wood to replace fossil fuels at then current rates of use, there wouldn’t be a tree left in the entire country after about four or five years.

              My personal belief is that most reasonably stable governments will be farsighted enough to go proactive, eventually, in terms of policies that severely restrict the use of fossil fuels and other non renewable resources in order to prevent outright economic collapse in the short to medium term. I’m cynic enough to also point out that various elite factions in each country will continue to live quite well while the general population just gets by….. hopefully.

              The best we can hope for, in my own estimation, is that we can move to something along the lines of a war time planned economy, at least in countries such as the USA, Canada, Western Europe, and Australia, once the people as a whole come to understand that their only realistic choice is to do so.

              Of course by then it might be too late to stave off a general economic and industrial collapse in some of these countries, or even in all of them.

              But a country such as the USA still has enormous remaining one time gift of nature resources, and if we use them wisely, we ought to be able to pull thru more or less whole, but skinny once again. ( Nine out of ten older men who want a WWII era Jeep can just BARELY drive it because the seat’s too small, and their belly is tight against the steering wheel, lol. ) Skinny will apply right across the board.

              But suppose there’s a ten grand tax on a six thousand pound car, and that money is spent subsidizing the production of three thousand pound electric cars…… cheap ones, with extras such as ac added to the cost paid by the customer.

              Suppose we spend the price of one fifth generation military aircraft on subsidizing really energy efficient appliances…..

              And we mandate that all new rental housing have charging stations for electric cars, washer and dryer connections for the residents………

              And that poor people get refundable tax credits for any money spent on upgrading the energy efficiency of their houses…..

              And that we put in a serious gasoline and diesel fuel tax …. and charge it at the same level to commercial aircraft owners.

              Trades people can be put to work on USEFUL jobs, such as planting trees or building water reservoirs just as easily as they can building football stadiums….

              This sort of thing can go a very long way, but they won’t be enough to solve the problem.

              It might be necessary to make sure every or nearly every home has a minimal but functional kitchen, and slap a serious luxury tax on some foods, such as beef.. because chicken and pork require only one quarter to one half as much in the way of inputs for their production.

              I can’t see any reason we can’t survive on as little as a third of the energy we use today, per capita, in the USA, if we make the necessary sacrifices.

              I’ve mentioned here before that most of my furniture was hand made from locally grown trees, and that it will last indefinitely … centuries……. and that it was never warehoused, boxed or hauled except from the old man’s house where it was made to my house… and that it’s worth enough now, forty or fifty years later, to buy ten times enough throw away furniture to replace it.

              Of course he made only one or two pieces a week….. but nobody has ever thrown away a piece he made, to my knowledge. Each piece has three or four times as much wood in it, compared to factory made……. but in the end….. making it only ONCE is hands down more sustainable by a factor of five or ten at least, in my estimation.

              If I were young again, I could set up a water powered mill such as the one operated by one of my great great grandfathers, and raise corn and wheat, and sell meal and flour for one quarter what they cost at retail in local super markets….. except for whatever taxes would be levied on my business.

              Sure such a mill is inefficient in terms of capacity and labor…. but so is hauling the grain hundreds of miles to be processed, packaged, hauled to warehouses, hauled again to super markets, and finally sold to cooks who burn a gallon of gas every week, or more, just driving to the super market. That mill combined with local farm production was probably four or five times as energy efficient, all things considered, as the modern industrial method of putting flour and meal in the pantry.

              I have pictures of my parents ( as little kids) and grandparents wearing clothing made from the bags used to sell meal and flour up into the thirties and beyond.

              We can’t go back to that way of life, because there are many times too many of us for that to work… but there are lessons to be learned from history.

            2. Sure,

              Just one comment about electric cars. It is easy to criticize EV’s due to excessive use of expensive metals. There is a recycling potential, but also the gradual downsizing potential after the market is more saturated with EV’s (recycling based on a blend of virgin metals with recycled, using hopefully renewable electricity). It is also the very obvious advantage tied to less oil consumption. And the last advantage is that it fits very well with intermittent energy sources.

              It could be very easy to limit consumption both in energy usage and traveled distance with EV’s, but more important will be that we will have for the most part a level of transport associated with modern life. Which means a more acceptable quality of life. Even a less frequent air travel now and then will do wonders to freshen up life as we live it.

        2. Many standard operating procedures that we have taken for granted (like flying around the world in airplanes or eating bananas in Europe or importing energy from other countries) may become past history in the next few decades.
          Some adaptations will be made, and some failures will be experienced.
          Of that we can be certain.

          When it comes to critical industries some countries will effectively prioritize continuous energy supply while others will fail to. Prioritization may include rationing or pricing schemes will severe economic penalties/rewards for noncompliance/compliance.
          Will governments be effective at funneling energy towards critical use rather than towards the wealthy?

          The coming energy (food) shortage will severely exacerbate all prior wealth gap tensions we have seen since the fossil age began!!!

          A countervailing force is the ability for individual families, communities, companies to generate their own solar electricity.

          [you can draft a future book with robots scouring the countryside confiscating solar panels and battery packs]

        3. We need absolutely zero airplanes. That will save a lot of aluminum for solar panels.

          1. Once in a while people should be able to sit on a plane as Boris Johnson stated not that long ago (a vacation every 2 year by air together with less eating less meat and milk by 2030 was the message I believe). But to reduce the huge inventory of airplanes I would think is given at this point.

          2. Actually. a Cessna 150 is very economical, much more than an auto.
            Haven’t been in one in a while.

        4. Actually 120 volts and 60 Hz in the US, 230 Volts and 50 Hz in Europe (Germany anyway)

        5. HI Hole in Head,
          Your description of the problems is right on the money….. IF you are describing currently used infrastructure in many heavy industries.

          SO….. what I’m asking, is whether it’s possible to adapt the technologies to limited and intermittent energy supplies.

          The likeliest reason I’m not hearing anything is that nobody much is yet doing any engineering work on this possibility.

          It seems to be obvious existing businesses are simply counting on having coal, oil and gas sourced electricity available to them indefinitely, going forward.

          I actually worked myself once upon a time for a few weeks in a small local plant that melted down plastic pellets and forced the liquid thru dies to make plastic string or strands which was then woven into rope.

          Any failure of the motors that drove the pumps, or any interruption in the power supply meant a weeks hard work disassembling and cleaning each “extruder” individually.

          Sometime later, I heard from a guy still working there that they had a system to DELIBERATELY shut down without problems, which involved pumping a solvent thru the machine… while it was still hot to flush out the liquid plastic.

          The company eventually got a large diesel generator that sufficed to keep the extruders hot long enough to shut them down using the solvent procedure.

          I’ve not been able to find out if a desalinization plant could be made to run intermittently without having serious technical problems, or if a new design could run that way.

          Almost any sort of distillation process involving water based solutions could probably be adapted to intermittent operation ,although such a strategy would no doubt raise overall costs considerably…… but some product out the door is better than none.

          Volts and cycles aren’t a problem. The people who run wind and solar farms put the juice on the grid at whatever specs the grid operator asks for. A local captive wind or solar farm would of course have to have it’s own equipment to go from variable dc to spec’ed ac matching the owner’s needs.

          1. OFM , doing something about it ??? No sir , nothing . To prepare one must be aware . For the same company I deliver electric motors to Exxon , Total refineries in Antwerp , Shell in Rotterdam and the biofuel plant of BP in Mol (Belgium ) . I always strike up a conversation with the engineers in the technical services on peak oil . Till date I have not met one person who was/is aware of peak oil . The distributer of Total lubricants in Flanders is also a client . Till five years ago the manager there did not know about peak oil until he got an earful from me . The awareness or the lack of it is astounding . This is the situation when their very jobs depend on this, then what can we expect from the rest of the public . I get despondent as I imagine the scenario when the world will be caught with its pants down .

            1. HI HiH,

              You’re in the money, the world will mostly get caught with its collective pants down.

              I’m just hoping that a few countries will see it coming in time to go proactive, and that some more will still have the capacity to respond in a meaningful way.

              Luck will probably have as much to do with what happens to us as anything else.

              This is why I’m hoping for a series of WAKE UP events, such as a short hot oil war, a few super floods, a super drought or two, some few killer heat waves, a hurricane or two worse than any ever seen before……..

              We will have to pay an enormous price to do whatever is possible after such events to keep affected people alive and the economy functioning, but this price will be trivial compared to what will happen later if we DON’T go proactive.

              It took us two years to really get our economy effectively on a wartime footing in terms of producing war materials and training men enough to take the fight to the enemy……..

              If we hadn’t had a small peace time military establishment capable of providing the leadership to train those men….. we wouldn’t have been able to fight effectively for at least another year, maybe two more years.

              Whatever we have in the way of renewable energy industries, electric cars and trucks, etc, is the base we will be building on when the coming shit storm hits the fan.

              Building up the renewable electricity and electric vehicles NOW could easily be the difference between a crash and burn economic scenario and squeaking thru more or less whole.

            2. OFM , luck and hope are not going to work . Richard Helms had warned that it takes 20 years to transition from one energy source to another . You are an old-time TOD guy so you know it surely . So where we stand today the battle is going to be the ” last man standing ” . The govts say ” nothing is off the table ” when negotiating . My take is ” there is nothing on the table to negotiate ” , the choice is simple ” You die today so that I can die tomorrow ” . Makes me nostalgic with the Ed Murrow sign off ” Good night and good luck ” .

        6. Excuse me! What is this?

          German Firm Turns Aluminum Smelter Into a ‘Virtual Battery’

          Here’s a look at what the technology could do for Australia:

          Smelters could lead switch to renewables by acting as giant batteries

          If there’s enough money to be made/saved, creative solutions can often be found.

          In terms of the system failures you outlined, I seriously doubt that “frequency spikes” had anything to do with them for reasons I outline below. Far more likely is a brownout or momentary disconnection resulting in a motor stall. It is sometimes impossible to restart an electric motor if it stalls under heavy load and attempting to start it will just burn it out.

          One of my first job prospects was in the systems control department of the local utility. My batch from the local technical college (polytechnic in the UK) got a tour of the SCADA facility that runs the operation and one of the central features was the “frequency clock”. We were told that the frequency was an indication of the balance between supply and demand. Too much supply or too little demand and the generators speed up ever so slightly. Similarly if there is too little supply or too much demand they slow down. it is pretty much the same world over with the difference being the amount of fluctuation tolerated. In most jurisdictions a 1% change in frequency is well within spec but really small grids will allow for maybe 5%. Beyond this range protective devices will be triggered and if the situation is one of under supply the grid can collapse. For an idea of the limits in different European countries see:

          Review of Grid Codes: Ranges of Frequency Variation

          Renewable energy is just one more input for systems controllers to monitor. Batteries are being added to grids because they provide a useful means of balancing demand and supply. They are turning out to be really useful (South Australia) because of the speed with which they can transition from being a load (charging) to being a generator (discharging).

          Electric motors are some of the most reliable pieces of equipment used in industry, easily tolerating minor fluctuations in voltage and frequency. If an electric motor is connected to a supply that can deliver all the current it needs at the nominal voltage and frequency and it is not overloaded it is extremely unlikely that it will fail. Modern industrial facilities are increasingly using variable speed motors driven by electronic variable frequency drives (VFD). In the case of motors driven by VFDs the VFD is in charge of maintaining the optimum voltage and current at whatever frequency. EVs are a special case of a VFD that gets it’s power from a battery rather than the grid. In some cases there is a feedback loop allowing the VFD to sense the motor speed and make adjustments for very precise speed control (servo motors). It is extremely unlikely that any electric motor in use today will fail as a result of frequency related issues.

  20. Some grim reality. Go ahead, shoot the messenger.

    FAR FROM DYING, THE COAL INDUSTRY IS ACTUALLY BOOMING

    “Looking at the market the benchmark thermal coal price in Asia last week jumped to almost $244 per metric ton, the second-highest ever and only a handful of dollars below a peak in October. In a sign of market frenzy — triggered in part by an export ban by major producer Indonesia — one small shipment last week traded above $300 a ton in what many in the market believe is the most expensive coal transaction ever. The coal that’s used in steelmaking — so-called metallurgical or coking — is also trading at a record high, changing hands above $400 per ton.

    And, last year, the world burnt the largest amount ever of coal to produce electricity. Under current trends, total global consumption, which on top of power generation also includes industrial uses such as in steel and cement, will hit a record high this year, according to the International Energy Agency.

    Optimists will say coal is losing market share in global electricity production as green energy sources like wind and solar take hold. On paper, they are right: In 2022, coal is likely to account for about 36% of the world’s electricity production, down from more than 40% only a few years ago. But that’s of little help to the atmosphere, which only cares about the absolute numbers of coal burnt — and therefore, CO2 emitted — rather than percentage of market share. The optimists are technically right — but wrong, in practice.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/far-from-dying-the-coal-industry-is-actually-booming/2022/01/28/7fb02ff0-8019-11ec-8cc8-b696564ba796_story.html

    1. Excellent point- “coal is likely to account for about 36% of the world’s electricity production, down from more than 40% only a few years ago. But that’s of little help to the atmosphere, which only cares about the absolute numbers of coal burnt — and therefore, CO2 emitted — rather than percentage of market share.”

    1. Doug , where is the coal in Europe ? Even if it exists , where is the manpower ? Am I to expect ” the white shoe boys ” , the Facebook , twitter , Tiktok and Instagram wizards to pick up shovels and pick axes ? Can any of the young even know how to work on a CAT even if they do open cast mining . Crap . The music is playing but the party is over .

      1. Well in Germany for one place. The Ruhr Coal Basin and the Saar Basin in the south-west Germany account for more than 75% of that country’s hard coal production. Poland as well, ranking 9th in the world for about 2% of the world’s total reserves. Apparently Poland has proven reserves equivalent to roughly 200 times its annual consumption. There are a number of active mines in Eastern Europe, even Grease has some reserves.

        1. Doug , here we go .
          https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/06/miners-protest-in-warsaw-against-polish-government-s-plans-to-phase-out-coal-production
          Why are they phasing it out ? Simple EcoE is negative ( Economic cost of Energy ) .
          As far is Germany is concerned they are burning the shittest of the shittest coal quality available . However I ask Alim , Eulen or any other gentleman who I am sure know more about this then I do . The situation is hopeless .
          This is today .
          https://www.politico.eu/article/polish-coal-miners-protest-demand-pay/

          1. Europe has big coal reserves- russia, poland, germany ukraine czech have the most.
            Countries will pivot hard to coal if they don’t have better alternatives.
            Coal and Wood.
            Even older men like you HinH will go digging for it if there is nothing else.
            Despite all your cheeky comments.

            1. These reserves are not economically exploitable. Poland has passed its coal production peak in 1988. Germany has passed its coal production peak in 1982. Czech republic has passed its coal production peak in 1984. Russia and Ukrainia seem effectively to have still some reserves. UK has passed its coal production peak in 1913 and France-Belgium in 1957. European union has passed its coal production peak in, I would say, 1981. Facts are facts.

            2. “These reserves are not economically exploitable”
              because there are alternatives that are cheaper, such as nat gas, wind, nucs, hydro etc.

              But if these alternatives to coal become in physical short supply or become too expensive, people will be going after the coal again at full effort.

  22. Some food for thought.

    STUDY SHOWS WIDESPREAD RETREAT AND LOSS OF MARINE-TERMINATING GLACIERS IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE

    In their article “Retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers, 2000-2020″ published in Geophysical Research Letters, two researchers from the University of Ottawa analyzed all 1704 glaciers that touched the ocean in the year 2000 and documented their frontal position in 2000, 2010, and in 2020. Since 2000, glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere that end in the ocean lost a total area of 390 km2 per year. That’s 6.6 times the area of Manhattan, or more than 1 km2 per day. Glaciers flowing from the Greenland Ice Sheet accounted for over 60% of total area losses. Of the 1704 glaciers that ended in the ocean in the year 2000, a total of 123 of them no longer met the ocean in 2020 due to retreat. Overall, 85% of glaciers retreated,12% did not change (within uncertainty limits), and only 3% of glaciers advanced from 2000 to 2020. Of the few glaciers that defied the odds and advanced instead of retreating, most were due to internal instabilities called “surge events,” which cause the glacier to move 10 to 100 times faster than normal for a few years.

    https://phys.org/news/2022-01-widespread-retreat-loss-marine-terminating-glaciers.html

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