103 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, July 27, 2024”

  1. https://lailluminator.com/2024/07/26/customers-who-save-on-electric-bills-could-be-forced-to-pay-utility-company-for-lost-profits/

    While the idea might seem like a straightforward solution to cut back on waste, utility company executives aren’t very happy with it. In general, utility companies earn more profit when homes and businesses waste electricity. Less waste leads to lower electric bills, which could mean lower profits for the utilities.

    Until you get rid of the current economic paradigm that infected the majority of the world, you’re not getting a better life. You will be bled until the planet burns. Then you get sweet oblivion. But you must not stop Number going up. Shareholders demand it.

  2. “Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?”

    https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

    1. A great read. I always like to remind people about how Graeber points out the many bullshit jobs that exist despite people knowing they’re bullshit. In fact, that causes more mental anguish as consequence, leading to a malaise that destroys people from the inside out.

      It’s also, alas, a load bearing pillar of the economy to have more bullshit consumption and busywork go on to try and prop up profits. So it’s super fun that the capitalist machine has now expanded via globalisation to the point where there are no more hidden troves of treasure or labour to be readily exploited like when neoliberalism got going in the ’70s. Hence the rent seeking going on with bullshit like crypto and AI as capital chases elusive returns and does everything possible to avoid spending money on things like investment.

    2. in fact, we haven’t moved even computing to the point of progress that people in the fifties expected we’d have reached by now.

      I disagree with this.

      In the Foundation books, Asimov writes about how the Foundation out competes the rest of the galaxy with miniaturization. That story happens a billion years in the future. In reality, it’s already here.

      In one of my favorite sci fi books, Rendezvous with Rama, they don’t have drones to explore Rama. We already have one on Mars.

      Practically nobody predicted that the moon landing would be broadcast live to millions of TV viewers.

      But more to the point, the main reason we don’t have flying cars are Mars colonies is that both are stupid ideas.

      What we are experiencing now s what Buckminster Fuller called ephemeralization in the 1920s. That is the ability to “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.

      This is already evident in manufacturing. The way costs keep falling is unbelievable if you haven’t seen it yourself.

        1. Labor costs may be rising, but so is efficiency.

          https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/productivity-vs-annual-hours-worked?time=1950..2019

          Cherry picking economic data won’t help you understand what is happening. You seem more interested in scoring points that getting an overview.

          The same applies to commodity prices which are notoriously volatile, but have been steadily declining as a percentage of GDP for decades.

          Take gasoline for example. Consumption in the US is much higher than in 1990, but costs are flat or in slight decline.

          https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2022/06/17/long-term-trends-in-gasoline-prices

    3. I like this essay, and Graeber in general, but in this essay he shares the general energy-blindness of the vast majority of the population.

      He observes, correctly, that so much of what was expected in the 50s and 60s failed to arrive.

      He observes, again correctly, that the areas where progress has continued are areas which involve low mass (computers, medicine) and that areas that require energy and the movement of mass (eg. speed of travel) have stagnated.

      But then he fails to connect the dots that it was the failure to develop any further energy sources, and the end of cheap oil in the 70’s that put an end to the dreams and the material progress of the 50s and 60s.

      He wanders off into various sociological explanations (too much bureaucracy, etc.) for the decline in progress, but none of his digressions can, or even attempt to really account for the timing of the decline or the bifurcated nature of the decline, in which low energy, low mass areas of innovation, that depend solely on accumulation of human knowledge, have continued to make great strides, while any area requiring energy and the movement of physical mass from one spot to another has stagnated.

  3. Stellantis is thinking about killing both the Chrysler and Dodge brand.

  4. “Great news –> YouTube is gonna get blocked in Russia.

    Posted by: AI | Jul 28 2024 17:23 utc | 4

    —

    To do this before TikTok is banned in USA is a foolish idea.”

  5. Bank of Japan has a policy meeting this week. Talk of interest rate hikes and letting their balance sheet shrink some or QT as it’s known.

    Keep in mind Japan is currently in recession. They intervened heavily in the currency market during the month of July.

    My opinion is if they make a move to hike rates and unwind some QE. It’s going to force money out of Japan. As it will be seen as not supporting either their economy or markets.

    Citi bank estimated earlier this year that Japan had about $200-$300 billion that Japan could use to fight currency depreciation. My guess is they have already spent roughly $150 billion.

    Japan imports about 90% of its energy.

    Wonder what happens when they are unable to intervene to stop their currency from falling?

    1. Love to destroy my economy for America. Truly the best brains running things over there.

      1. BOJ raised rates by 0.25% and plans to taper bond purchases by half by March 2026.

        None of which changes a damn thing. The need for yield still exists. So money will continue leaving Japan for better yields elsewhere.

        And the taper of the bonds doesn’t really even matter. Japanese commercial banks will just buy more. There is nothing preventing them from buying however many bonds they want to. As they don’t need money in a vault to buy bonds. Just as they don’t need money in a vault to make loans into the economy.

        Now that they have shown their hand so to speak. Their currency is likely to accelerate lower because nothing has really changed.

        They managed to move the exchange rate USD/JPY from about 162.00 back to about 150.00 Maybe buying them a month or two before it goes back to 162.00 and above.

        Having to import 90% of their energy needs. The purchasing power in dollar terms is hugely important.

        1. On the plus side, Japan gets to enjoy a mass influx of American tourists because their currency is dying. So it’s not all bad…

          Lucky duckies.

          1. True, but their people will be impoverished when their currency’s blast through 200.00 on its way to wherever it’s value ultimately ends up.

            2. Yeah, I agree. Eventually there will be an opportunity to buy Japanese assets that are in dollars terms extremely cheap. Due to currency devaluation.

              But they might not be worth owning at such a time. If you don’t have enough energy some assets will go to zero and never recover.

            4. Japanese stocks are imploding. Not sure what the percentage is but they have fallen from around 42,000 to 34,500 in about 3 weeks.

              But they raised interest rates during a recession. So money is leaving. In the end they have to choose between the currency or their markets.

              Falling stock prices aren’t goods for tax receipts.

              My understanding of it is the populous isn’t very happy with the current leadership. Japanese retirement funds are taking a hit from the recent sale off of stocks.

            5. I am going point out that currently the Yen is extremely over bought. More overbought than it was during the height of the pandemic.

              Being that nothing has materially changed we will likely see this go the other way and yen will start weakening again. Remember probably 97% of this move has been all about intervention. Not because the economic outlook changed. Not because the cost of borrowing dollars changed.

              Once we get pass this round of intervention the fundamentals call for a weaker Yen.

    2. “Japan imports about 90% of its energy”

      Imagine being an oil tanker during post peak oil decline and having to get to Japan.

      Thru the Strait of Hormuz, Past India and Pakistan, North Korea and South Korea, thru the full of submarines South China Sea, Past mortal enemy nanking China…………….

      My advice to Japanese is to move somewhere else.

      Canada at one point was importing people with Geology degrees for 150k salaries.

      1. ‘My advice to Japanese is to move somewhere else.’

        That advice goes for most people in the world. Almost everyone.
        Certainly Korea, Taiwan, Israel, most of Europe, Africa, the middle east, South Asia,…
        heck lets just call it a universal condition.

        1. Well said, Hickory

          There’s a very real possibility that the entire world is headed to hell in a hand basket.

          A country such as Germany or Japan can survive and even thrive by way of importing raw materials and processing and selling them, plus technical support for their exports, so long as they can maintain an edge in terms of efficiency and technology.

          But capital can and does move to places where wages and other expenses are lower, and people in less advanced countries are EAGER to work for lower wages, rather than NO wages, while in the meantime catching up in terms of efficiency and technology.

          So…. Korean and Chinese cars are taking a huge bite out of the market for Japanese and German cars……

          American companies that moved production of appliances and clothing overseas a few years back find themselves in cutthroat competition with their former suppliers…… so that the American brand name on a cheap window AC, or battery powered hand tool, etc, means nothing or next to nothing when shopping for the same. There are at least three or four brands of such tools and appliances at my nearest big box store……. brands I never heard of four or five years back.

          I’m not well informed as to what the Japanese are trying to do to position themselves for the long term, but it’s obvious the Germans are pedal to the metal in terms of solving their own imported energy problem.

          It’s often said that even the blackest clouds have a silver lining. I often say our only real and best hope is that we get a series of Pearl Harbor Wake Up events upside our collective head such that we collectively realize it’s do or die time, in respect to the BIG PICTURE.

          Some day in the fairly near future somebody is going to sink an oil tanker or two. This could be the wake up broken brick that gets the attention of the people in countries that import oil and gas such that they get their asses in gear in terms of going renewable, going electric, doubling down on energy efficency.

          Or it could be the opening shot in a hot war that morphs into WWIII.

          1. I think as Peak Oil gets to be accepted by more and more people..

            Nefarious characters are going to see an opportunity!

            How many Taliban members are in the Pakistan Nuclear armed government right next to the Strait of Hormuz?

            Some people cheer for an apocalypse.

      2. Let’s just learn to live without 90% of the energy we consume. It’s probably pretty simple.

        Just don’t apply it to me. I’m okay with others doing their bit that way, but I liked and shared an article about planting trees that one time, so I’m already doing my part.

  6. I thought Ron’s post in the previous thread needs to be read carefully………….!!!

    it just happened as the thread rolled over….

    Trump loves Kim Jong Un…..Think about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Ron P ”
    Believe him! Trump, in this one minute video tells Christians that if you vote for him you will never have to vote anymore. He will have it fixed so you will never have to vote anymore. This will be the last election ever if he is elected. What he is saying is that he, or a dictator just like him, will rule America forever. No more elections.

    Click on the link below. It will blow your mind. He actually said it out loud.

    You will never have to vote again!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGTCKQklPQ
    “

    1. Thanks Andre. There is an article out from Bloomberg out this morning on that decleration that he wants to be president for life. Normally their articles behind a pay wall. But they did not do so with this one.

      Believe Trump When He Says He Won’t Give Up Power Bold mine, Trump’s actual words.

      The former president has floated the idea of remaining beyond another term too often and praised too many dictators to dismiss his conjecture as hyperbole.

      “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore,” he told a religious group at a Florida event. “You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

      The Trump campaign insisted the remarks had nothing to do with thrones and scepters. Steven Cheung, a spokesman, said that Trump “was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”

      Perhaps. But the great unknown is how much time Trump truly wants to spend righting this ship called America — and when he’ll ever be ready to pass it on to the next generation should he return to the Oval Office. The wisest course is to recognize that he has repeatedly said over the last several years that he wants to occupy the White House for more than two terms. If Republicans gain control of both chambers of Congress in November and eventually secure support from at least 38 states, they could toy with the Constitution and repeal the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms.

      Trump has never wanted to surrender power. After all, he and his allies unsuccessfully waged dozens of legal challenges to the results of the 2020 presidential election. They created slates of fake electors to undermine the Electoral College tally, and Trump personally pressured state officials to dispute the results. He also fomented an insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to overturn the election more baldly and brazenly. He continues to perpetrate the lie that that election was rigged against him. And he has said in the past that eight years in the White House might not satisfy him.

      That is only about half the article. Click on the blue headline to read the rest.

      1. Like many here I think Trump is a genuine threat to representative government but I’d like to suggest a less dangerous meaning to his idiotic statement. If you read the whole thing I think he says that Christians generally don’t vote but if they vote this one time they can go back to their non-voting habits after he “fixes things”.
        This phrasing is likely a Freudian slip on his part as was the “dictator for a day” comment. More than part of a nefarious plan it represents just the incredible sloppiness of his speech and the confidence he has in his slavish audience.
        To me the question is whether his opposition should spend a lot of time on this kind of nonsense or focus on the bread and butter issue that the non-aligned voters are going to base their voting decisions on. Any voter who hasn’t already decided that Trump is a danger is so low-information that they probably haven’t heard his moronic speeches and think that today’s cost of gas for their pickup truck is the most important issue. How do Democrats get to that portion of the electorate? It’s not by focusing on the plethora of stupid things he says at rallies of the faithful.

        1. Jjhman, I think the Harris campaign is capable of both. They can point out the problems promised by Trump, point out what needs to be done and also point out the very stupid and dangerous things Trump says and promises to do. To neglect pointing out his dangerous and stupid statements would be a serious flaw in the reporting on their point.

          But I disagree on your opinion of what Trump meant. He meant exactly what he said, and you should believe him. He said he would fix it so they would not have to vote anymore. He meant he would fix it so he would be president for life and then name the dictator that would succeed him upon his death. We all know that if Trump is elected, he will never “voluntarily” leave office. He will refuse to go and declare martial law to keep himself in office.

          Just one more point. What Trump said has been repeated and reposted thousands of times in the media. Any damn fool would have known that what he said was horrible and would make him look exactly like what he is, a wannabe dictator. The fact that he had little enough sense to say such a thing tells you all you need to know about his intellect.

          2. Hi Ron,
            It’s taken me a number of years to fully come to grips with the obvious fact that half or close to half the potential voters in our country are as dumb as fence posts, and utterly incapable of thinking thru even the very simplest of issues.

            Maybe the biggest single failing of the left/ liberal political establishment, and the better educated half of the people, is that we’re collectively incapable of recognizing just HOW IGNORANT, JUST HOW STUPID, just HOW ILL INFORMED typical right wing voters actually are.

            They’re simultaneously capable of believing Biden is senile, but also capable of successfully pulling off the biggest heist in history….. stealing the last election.

            They’re simultaneously capable of believing Democrats are commies…… while THEIR lord and savior trump tells us in so many words that he LOVES characters such as the Dough Boy Dictator and trusts Putin above his our own intelligence establishment.

            That Red is the color of law and order……. but that the people who invaded the Capital with the intent of overthrowing our government are patriots….. and that he’ll pardon them, and apologize to them, one and all…….. AFTER calling them what they were, in the days and weeks after that came to pass.

            Of course there’s no simple way to deal with this problem…… because you just can’t go out there and tell it like it is…… because such people are VERY quick to take offense, and vote Red if you actually point out their intellectual short comings.

          3. I stand by my statement that what he said to Christians was that since they haven’t voted in the past they only need to vote this one time and, with him elected, they can return to their non-voting past. I think he said what he was thinking instead of what he intended. Perhaps I wasn’t clear that I do think he imagines himself dictator. I don’t give him credit for thinking far enough ahead to imagine a successor. So, in an effort to be clear, I think he’s trying to say whatever he thinks the imagined Christians want to hear but just isn’t bright enough to say it in a way that doesn’t open him up for both ridicule and condemnation.
            You may not have the sense that I do that he says so many stupid things that trying to counter them all, in the strange ways of democracy, just gets his name in the news all that more often. He is the poster boy for “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”.
            It remains to be seen if the Harris campaign has the bandwidth to chase an infinite number of his idiotic ramblings individually and get a coherent message to the low information voters. I hope so.

        2. “He lies about EVERYTHING…. depending on what he thinks will best serve his own interests.”

    1. He won’t need Twitter once he gets a Neuralink brain implant into everyone.
      The Fox news audience won’t need the actual implant since they are already under effective thought control.

      1. No brain to hack anyway. Hyuck hyuck.

        But seriously, fuck Elon Musk.

        1. Yeah I’m definitely not a Musk fan, but that won’t stop him. As a little reminder, I was just out in the yard staring at the North Star when a procession of about 10 satellites crossed the sky. I’m pretty sure that was SpaceX.

          1. I recall hearing that the Starlink sats actually have a horrible environmental impact when they get deorbited and burn up, since they also have such a short service life.

            Another win for saving Earth via Big Tech effective altruism.

            1. I have a very low opinion of Musk taken all around but let’s be realistic about such things as a few satellites, or even a few hundred or thousands of satellites burning up on the way back to the ground.

              Every satellite that’s ever been launched would probably fit comfortably on just one corner of a large container ship, with a ton of space left for other junk such as throw away appliances that will be equally destructive in environmental terms.

        2. Perhaps we could take up a collection to fulfill his dream of dying on Mars, sooner than he imagined.

    1. Mühlrose is a strange name for a German village, but it’s just the German rendering of the Sorbian name. The Sorbs are a small Slavic nation that live where the modern states of Germany, Poland and Czechia meet.

      This is former East Germany, where the Greens are so hated that they even get attacked on the street when campaigning. Putin has done a number on them. So shutting down the lignite business is a ticklish affair.

    1. We saw Boeing and Intel destroy their institutional experience and thought that was a great model for the economy.

      We can always just hire smart people as gig workers when we need to think about things like new jet turbines and laser lithography techniques. It’s easy and cheap.

    1. Sociopaths tend to rise to the top of organisations. I have worked for a few.

      Their lack of empathy, narcissism, I need to have more money than u to validate myself, fake charisma works wonders.

      They can make you feel like they love u while they are stabbing you in the back!

      That’s why those traits are in the GENE POOL.

  12. I knew this was going to happen, I just didn’t expect it this soon.

    Kamala Harris Carves Open Huge Polling Lead Over Donald Trump

    Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump by her biggest margin yet, according to a new poll. The poll, conducted by polling company Leger between July 26 and 28, shows that when third party candidates are included, Harris leads Trump by 7 points, with the presumptive Democratic nominee on 48 percent compared to the former president’s 41 percent.

    Meanwhile, only 5 percent of likely voters polled said they would vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Third party voters have shifted towards the two main political parties since Leger’s last poll in June, with the Democrats gaining 4 points and the Republicans gaining 3 points.

    The number of voters who would support another candidate in the race other than Trump and Harris has also decreased since Leger’s last poll, with only 5 percent saying they would, compared to 12 percent in June, when Joe Biden was still on the ticket.

    In a head to head matchup, Harris retained her lead over Trump, winning 49 percent of likely voters to Trump’s 46 percent. That represents a 4-point increase in the Democrat’s lead over Trump since Leger’s June poll.

    The July poll surveyed 1,002 adults over the age of 18 and had a margin of error of +/-3.1 percent.

  13. Harris wins going away in terms of the overall vote, in my opinion.

    But in terms of the Electoral College…….. who can say ?

    1. Good point OFM.
      Also, I do worry that the republican strategists have learned from the failed attempt at theft of state electoral college votes last time around. This time they may have the honed mechanisms in place to actually pilfer a few choice states, such as Arizona or Wisconsin. The country is naive to underestimate their fervor….its literally a religious mission to them, to hell with the constitution if it stands in their way.

      1. Listen to Hickory folks,

        He’s generally in the bullseye, or damned close. The trumpsters are surely plotting the theft of some state election results even as I type this reply.

        And if we once get our heads around just how VILE trump and his cronies are, THEN we’ll understand why he SUPPOSEDLY made such a fool of himself with the Black Journalists.

        VIrtually everything he said was raw red meat to his base voters….. people such as the large majority of my older, very poorly educated,Bible thumping, generally hard up, SCARED white neighbors. Scared for their future, scared for their way of life…. and desperate to at least HEAR what they want to hear from anybody at all.

        He knows his words will mostly be ignored in terms of how better informed, more reasonable people will vote…… because such people simply ARE NOT going to vote for him.

        So….. he has calculated that saying what’s actually on his mind isn’t going to cost him very much if anything at all, on election day. He’s betting he said the right things, in terms of keeping his base motivated.

        It’s not that he is or isn’t a racist of the worst sort. He IS.

        He lies about EVERYTHING…. depending on what he thinks will best serve his own interests.

        1. I still think that Trump is not a conventional racist. He’s special.
          He thinks everybody is beneath him and fair game for theft, exploitation and demeaning as needed. He will cozy up to anyone that he thinks he can use regardless of race, culture, color or beliefs.

  14. Let’s go back to the sustainability discussion for a minute.

    It’s possible, but not at all likely in my own opinion at least, that the overall world wide economy will go down like dynamited sky scraper, with little or no warning.

    It’s far more likely that various industries, international banks, and governments will start going broke one after another, with each additional failure adding ever more fuel to the fire.

    When this happens, such governments as are still reasonably stable will necessarily resort to emergency measures in hopes of maintaining the peace and internal stability as best they can.

    What will actually BE done in such a situation depends on the character of the leadership when the crisis arrives. A trump type leadership would do things VERY differently compared to a Harris type leadership.

    But in ANY case, it’s safe to assume that dramatic actions will be taken, ranging from A to Z.

    The general nature of such actions will be similar to the actions taken during wartime by countries doing whatever they can to WIN, either as aggressors or as defenders, or maybe even as both, depending on how the cards fall.

    Non essential industries will be summarily shut down, or taxed out of existence, or allowed to die because people no longer have disposable income to spend on them. The people working in them will be put on some sort of welfare program, to the extent possible.

    Such resources as are still available will be diverted to ESSENTIAL industries… such as food production and distribution, manufacture of military goods, and machinery essential to maintaining a skeleton industrial economy.

    In the military, you see ONE kind of sidearm in use by just about everybody in a given country’s uniform, one kind of rifle for almost every soldier, one kind of tank, just two or three kinds of trucks that are very much alike except for the size of them, a very limited number of military aircraft in service in terms of design. In the civilian world, there are hundreds of variations of side arms and rifles, hundreds of variations of trucks, dozens of variations of aircraft in terms of design, etc.

    The fewer the variations, and the lower the quantity manufactured, the easier it is to maintain production at a level keeping the wheels from falling off.

    If we HAVE to, we can go back to making trucks that use no computer chips at all. I used to own and drive such trucks. They worked about as well as new ones, and building them again wouldn’t be any problem at all. They would actually be one hell of a lot cheaper, and could potentially last just as long or longer….. and WOULD last indefinitely if DESIGNED to be indefinitely repairable.

    Some trucks on the road today were built this way…… so that if you have a really old Mack dump truck, and the transmission goes out, you can fix it, knowing that it will likely run another year or two before it needs another major repair. If you put on ten new tires, and wreck it beyond repair, the ten tires and wheels bolt right onto another old Mack. If the engine in the wreck was rebuilt five years ago, and has another five years of life left in it, a good mechanic can swap it into a truck needing an engine in a day, or two days at most, in a properly equipped truck shop.

    Of course given time, it does eventually come to the point it’s more economical to just trade up to a new or newer truck….. but the point is that it’s possible to GET BY OK with what’s available by building it to last , and by using it, truck or whatever, for ESSENTIAL work. Hauling potatoes is essential work, hauling vodka or beer is not.

    And solving the sustainability problem is an ACADEMIC issue, in terms of survival in the day to day world.

    It’s our job today to do whatever we can to keep the wheels on and turning as long as we can.

    Going renewable to the extent we can is our only real choice…….. unless you’re willing to just give up.

    Now we MAY run out of fossil fuel before we can build out enough wind, solar, and other renewable energy infrastructure to keep the wheels on. We MAY not.

    The population is going to be shrinking, the overall economy is going to be shrinking.

    There is still quite a bit of oil and gas in the ground, and there’s PLENTY of man power and capital that can be diverted from present day uses to reorganizing our lives so as to go renewable to the extent we can hang on for a while…… maybe two, three, four, five or more generations.

    Whether we do so is a political question…. rather than an economic or engineering question.

    It wouldn’t cost more than maybe an extra ten percent to build a pickup truck that will run reliably twice as long as today’s latest model, all costs considered. So……. how many wind and solar farms could we build using HALF what we spend on pickup trucks, minus that ten percent?

    A twenty five thousand dollar car almost certainly uses less fuel and lasts about as long as a fifty thousand dollar plus car, or longer, in many cases. How many solar and wind farms could we build with HALF of what we spend on high priced automobiles?

    How long would it take to recover the extra cost of having RELIABLE highly energy efficient appliances if the manufacturer is OBLIGATED to provide a cast iron warranty good for say five years, and guaranteed parts availability, plus open source repair data, for another five?

    I know a dozen people at least who spend at least three thousand dollars a year on cigarettes alone. We spend a fortune on taking care of a substantial portion of them when they fall victim to cancer and heart attacks.

    When the shit is once well and truly in the fan…. we can go proactive better late than never.

    Will we?

    1. To this one point-
      “Non essential industries will be summarily shut down, or taxed out of existence, or allowed to die because people no longer have disposable income to spend on them. The people working in them will be put on some sort of welfare program, to the extent possible.”

      If things do get broken badly then I expect state and federal government ability to provide payments to citizens to dry up…social security, pensions, unemployment assistance, housing support. And severe curtailment in the medicare/medicaid programs. Which means the medical system won’t be able to pay wages to support staff, nurses, doctors or keep hospitals in working order.
      Last to see wages cut will be the state security apparatus.

      I don’t know if we’ll see that level of disruption anytime soon, or where.
      But we’d be wise to realize that a sharp unwinding could begin on any particular day, with a wide range of triggers…intentional, or simply happenstance to a walker on thin ice.

      1. Hi Hickory,

        It’s quite possible, and maybe even likely, that you are right about things going entirely to hell in terms of the government maintaining any significant level of support for people over the longer term.

        What I’m arguing is that with a generous dose of luck, we will have a functional government capable of maintaining a bare bones welfare state for some time, possibly a fairly long time, by means of implementing war time economic measures across the board.

        You’re certainly right that such support as people on SS and so forth will gradually dry up…. and that such support might dry up very quickly, depending on how the cards fall.

        But hardly anybody here seems to have a realistic grasp of what a war time economy really means, when a country is fighting for its own survival.

        Consider housing for instance.

        When all the chips are on the table, governments simply nationalize essential war time industries, or seize their assets and run them until the war is over or it’s lost.

        When people quit paying mortgages, and property taxes, so that a substantial portion of the housing stock is or would normally be in foreclosure, nobody is going to kick the people living in such houses out in the street.

        Doing so would actually be impossible. Nobody other than the banks and predatory lawyers would support evictions on the grand scale, and a thousand empty houses would have squatters in nine hundred of them anyway within a matter of a few weeks or even days. Anybody holding such a mortgage with two working brain cells would very shortly realize that the security, namely a house or apartment building, is one, practically worthless and sure to be vandalized or more likely deliberately burned to the ground, if unoccupied, and two, that if the current residents stay put, they MIGHT eventually salvage something beyond an empty lot and foundation covered with ashes.

        Any sort of tax paid intensive and expensive health care would be one of the first things to go. Such care would very likely gradually decline to the point that just getting every body immunized to the usual diseases would be a major problem in and of itself.

        A hundred million cars, paid for or otherwise, will be essentially worthless, unless you happen to be one of the relative handful of people who can get a gasoline ration. Anybody getting a comfortable pension may continue to get it, for a little while, but after a while…. he’ll be lucky to get enough to pay his water and electricity bill, and some food stamps.

        I fully expect most people in most parts of the world to die hard,either fast due to violence or starvation or exposure, or slow, hanging on as best they can for a few months or years, depending on how the cards fall in their country.

        But in a country such as the USA, there’s a real chance that with some luck, we can avoid a crash and burn scenario, with some or maybe even most of us walking away from the crash site.

        There’s enough oil, gas, and other essential resources to keep the wheels on and turning at a bare bones skeletal level for quite some time….. assuming such resources are properly husbanded and rationed.

        The population will be crashing fast with old geezers like me departing in a hurry, if we have a stroke or heart attack or anything serious in the way of a medical problem. The standard of care in a nursing home will decline to the point that residents will die on average within months rather than years, if the facility doesn’t simply close its doors. Closing won’t be an IF question, it will be a when question.

        IF we’re lucky, and we manage to keep the water flowing, and the lights on, and something in the way of food available, and a few cops or soldiers in the street maintaining some semblance of law and order, we’ll nevertheless be murdering each other at ten or twenty times the usual rate. Going to jail, if you do get caught and prosecuted, will mean going someplace along the lines of prison slave labor camp, a gulag, of the sort common in the old USSR. Your trial will be over in a day or two, and you’ll be on your way within another day or two. Only a few of the many sent away will ever come back.

        But some of us may be able to save something in the way of a modern industrial civilization. We’ll have some time to adapt to our new circumstances if we manage to avoid the crash and burn scenario.

        1. Yes to all of that.
          The scenario that I think has a pretty high probability is where there is a sustained need for government belt tightening step wise over a decade or two.. The game of kick the can down the road reaches its limit.
          We’ll know that this time is closer at hand when a federal VAT tax goes into effect
          “The term value-added tax (VAT) refers to a consumption tax on goods and services levied at each stage of the supply chain where value is added. As such, a VAT is added from the initial production of goods and services to the point of sale.”

          Overall, it seems that belt tightening might get severe enough to accentuate severe poverty in many parts of the country. Getting this country back into a ‘lean and mean’ condition is going to be something we don’t want to witness.

    2. OFM, I continually ask you about the energy part of all your long rant solutions, where does it come from?

      OFM… “There is still quite a bit of oil and gas in the ground”. Yes there is, and it takes an increasingly complex set of machinery to get access to it. Do you think they could have accessed the fracked shale oil with 1920’s drilling techniques?

      The ‘war footing’ you keep referring to was a period where we had a huge amount of excess energy from oil, rapidly growing. This is totally different to what faces us in the future.

      Let’s say we spent all the remaining easy to get fossil fuels on building renewables, EVs, batteries etc, the whole kit and kaboodle over the next couple of decades, taking CO2 to 600ppm in the process and destroying most of the remaining natural world at the same time, to gain all the resources needed to build out all these renewables…

      Then what??

      All the renewables last a decade or 2, the batteries less, so what comes next? We’ve used up what remains of the natural world to buy a couple of decades of ‘the good life’, while making the world unlivable for the next generation, while increasing the number of extinctions of both plants and animals with all the mining and pollution to build all the renewables, EVs and batteries…

      Congratulations for destroying the environment your grand children get to live in.

      Luckily for the rest of the natural world, it wont come to the above ‘plan’, as civilization all falls to pieces when we get to an accelerating decline of oil production and modernity becomes impossible to maintain.

      We, as in all humanity, have a choice of making the future less bad by reducing the human population as much as possible, as quickly as possible now, and simplifying everything possible, or heading into collapse without planning for it.

      Clearly most here prefer civilization to collapse abruptly, doing the most possible damage, through the self delusion of not wanting it to happen while believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

      1. Hideaway, given that the population increase came as a consequence of the benefits from fossil fuel isn’t it putting the cart before the horse to think of voluntary population reduction strategies as a means to make things “less bad” or are you anticipating involuntary population reduction, war/famine/pandemic, providing the change. Seems to me the time it takes for population changes to occur is too long for the time in which multiple stressors that can bring collapse.

        1. The 8+ billion people on the planet is only possible because of fossil fuels and was built by fossil fuels. During the process of increasing modernity over the last 200+ years, the fossil fuels allowed vastly increased complexity, which has enabled us to gather minerals and metals from minute quantities in effectively plain rock, from deeper in the ground and more remote locations.

          If there is just one less person born today, that is one less person alive to suffer the consequences when civilization collapses sometime in the near future, so suffering has been reduced by one. If it was just 2 people less, isn’t that ‘less suffering’ overall?

          There is nothing that can stop civilization collapse, we are way too deep into overshoot for that and the denial that we are headed that way, just makes future suffering worse.

          We are going to get massive population decline because we are magnitudes above carrying capacity. As e are meant to be ‘wise’ (sapiens) e can either choose to reduce population or let nature do it to us. Nature tends to be savage upon plague species at the end of the plague phase.

          1. Go for it Hideaway, jump. End your ” suffering” and mine.

            One Less

            1. I’m sure shooting the messenger would help your psyche, but it changes nothing.

              You’re the classic example, that would prefer not to find out early, so you can blame ‘someone’ when it all falls to pieces.

              Sorry there is no-one to blame, the end of civilization was baked into the cake when it started, hope you have enjoyed the party, the hangover will be a doozy…

            2. “8 billion people on the planet is only possible because of fossil fuels”

              Hideaway, you confuse your opinion or theories with facts. You talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. There is no proof humans could not evolve to a population of 10 billion without fossil fuels. You live in the comfort of fossil fuels and can’t imagine a life without them.

              You’re not a messenger. Just a life fearing Tverberg type cult follower and quiter. Who thinks their more intelligent than others and you are not.

              The more you learn, the more you will realize you don’t know anything.

              Try listening

            3. Huntingtonbeach…
              “There is no proof humans could not evolve to a population of 10 billion without fossil fuels.”

              What’s your evidence or proof that it is possible??

              We had a few million humans at best in the ‘natural world’ before agriculture, so you assume 10B is possible, with no evidence.

              To my knowledge over the last 10 thousand years we have had many agricultural based civilizations that all collapsed well before they reach a population of 10 billion people, so I’d say pretty compelling evidence, unless you don’t accept history as evidence…

              Is it theory or fact that we are mining lower and lower ore grades of just about everything? I think it’s fact as I can point to a lot of literature that highlights this!!

              Does entropy and dissipation happen? I’d say it’s factual, not theory.

              Those 2 facts alone are evidence that civilization based on non renewable resources is self terminating, as we would require an ever increasing energy supply to maintain whatever level of non renewable resources is deemed appropriate to keep civilization going.

              Civilization is a mathematical certainty to end, what is your prediction for when this will happen??

          2. Hideway

            Can you quantify or place bounds on your concerns?

            For example, is your projected crash 1 year, 10 years, 100 years or 1,000 years out?

            Is there any minimum carrying capacity for us? If so, how does that compare against some reasonable demographic based population projections that show global population ending the century well below current numbers?

            How about the various scenarios in LTG? Downside guaranteed and upside scenarios not even possible?

            1. T Hill, I continually place ‘bounds on my concerns’.

              Collapse will come during the period when oil production declines at an accelerating rate, with feedback loops of less energy accelerating the decline.

              One of the reasons I post here is to learn from all the experts that spend their time going through all the oil production numbers, of what’s known/released, to get an idea of when the crash in oil production is likely to happen.

              I’m very aware that every past call of ‘peak oil’ has so far been incorrect, but it has to happen sometime and when the feedback loops of overall lower energy availability kicks back into oil, metals, minerals, finance and food production, the downslope of oil production will accelerate.

              Oil production decline at an accelerating rate is the catalyst, it will be all the feedback loops that collapse the entirety of modern civilization fairly rapidly.

              We have a combination of 3 aspects that have driven civilization to where it is. Energy consumption, complexity and population. All 3 had to grow to get us where we are. All 3 rely upon each other. To get to the complexity we have, needed a large population as a market so that so many specialist factories could exist to produce their widgets. To get the large population needed an increasing supply of energy, that complexity helped us gain access to.

              Compared to 200 years ago, we have a huge population, that can only gain access to the remaining energy, metals and minerals because of size, complexity and energy use. Cut any one and the rest quickly unravel.

              Think of a small population, a village with around the Dunbar number of people (~150). There is no possibility of them mining the metals, smelting, refining and then building a factory to make modern sensors (or anything else complex), if they also had to provide their own food, medicine, child care etc, etc. In other words no modernity without the huge population to support every aspect of it.

              If complexity unravels, how do we drill fracked oil wells, as the horizontal drills need sensors and microprocessors to keep them on track?

              To continue to gain all the resources to keep modernity operating takes an increasing level of complexity, no sensors, no fracked oil as a simple example, so as ore grades of everything decline, we need increasing complexity and the larger system needs more energy to keep everything going.

              Less oil, means less energy, means the complexity of modernity is not possible to increase, means resources are harder to get, means less, which because of complexity means failures when different parts of complexity can’t be maintained, means a cascade of failures throughout the complex system and resources that can only be obtained with complex technology become unavailable, meaning further falls with a large, angry, hungry population likely to disrupt complexity and energy flows further.

      2. Hideaway. I understand that you think that all new energy (and industrial/commercial activity?) production should cease immediately, so that the phenomena of severe population overshoot gets stopped in the tracks via severe energy poverty over the next decade or two.

        A few comments on that-
        The human wave is not about look at the prospect of energy poverty in the eye, and just lay down.
        Rather, the vast majority of humanity is going to fight like hell for energy…even down to last lump of coal or tree if it comes to that. A barren fucking landscape.
        Perhaps that is in the cards regardless of the various attempts at policy adjustments at this very late date… yours as a 70 something yr old or anyone elses.

        Secondly, maybe you are right- Lets just get on with the inevitable collapse as quickly as possible. Why even wait for energy poverty to gradually whittle away at humanity, over the next 20-50 years. Now that you are in your 70’s you don’t seem to mind that abrupt program prospect as much as when you were in your 30’s, eh?
        Problem is I just don’t see how to get humanity to sign onto the rapid cease and desist program. Its a behavior not part of the dna set.

        1. Hickory,
          I agree with you that the measures needed to reduce suffering on all species, including humans will not be taken. They appear too harsh, precisely because we have left it way too late to act. We are in such deep overshoot that denying there is a problem seems preferable to most.

          I’ve always agreed that the actions necessary would never be taken, and a simple look at the Keeling curve after 28 COP conferences highlights this.

          Instead of managing a decline, which should have happened decades ago, we go head first into collapse when we get an accelerating decline in energy availability, which starts with oil declining at an accelerating rate sometime in the near future.

          Hickory… ” the vast majority of humanity is going to fight like hell for energy…even down to last lump of coal or tree if it comes to that. A barren fucking landscape.
          Perhaps that is in the cards regardless of the various attempts at policy adjustments at this very late date…”

          Yes, exactly correct… What most don’t want to understand is that because we have degraded the natural world so much, and rely upon very low grades of ores, minerals, soils, water resources etc, as we used up all the high grade ones, it takes immense energy to just maintain our systems.

          Once the quantity and quality of the energy falls, the ability to gain access to all the resources needed to maintain our system quickly evaporates. The ability to manufacture anything disappears when the supply lines dry up, due to the mines becoming uneconomic as energy price rises rapidly, especially the diesel most totally rely upon.

          In the long term civilization was always self terminating, we just couldn’t see it, or didn’t want to work it out. Civilization needs to constantly grow or it collapses, steady state was never possible if civilization relied upon any non renewable resource.
          The grades of ores always get lower as the best quality is used first, so an ever increasing quantity of energy is required to maintain production as ore grades decline. Entropy and dissipation back into the environment guarantee that mining is always needed for every civilization.

    3. OFM, seems to me attempting to maintain the status quo with debt and cannibalization are more likely to occur than a guided rationing of resources.

  15. “Donald Trump is proving he’s racist and stupid with his latest post.”

    Lets not degrade racist and stupid people by comparing them to Trump.

    1. Hmmm.
      I don’t think you can be truly stupid and arrive where Trump is.
      Calling him stupid is risking underestimating the danger he poses to civilization. I prefer to think of him as a person of average intelligence with an incredible sense of what actions are to his advantage in any given circumstance. A kind of cunning. People like him, I like to compare him to Mussolini, by demonstrating their history of achieving success are inordinately capable of drawing to themselves effective actors willing to perform any nefarious behavior to advance the fortunes of the leader.

      1. No, he is just down in the dirt stupid. He knew that disinfectant knocks the covid virus out. So why not just inject it and knock it out of your body? As I said, he is just down in the dirt stupid. End of story.

      2. Well, one can always sample the opinions of some of the “very best people” that worked for Trump”

        John F. Kelly, White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump: “Unhinged, idiot, off the rails.”
        Jim Mattis, United States Secretary of Defense 2017-2019: “Has the understanding of a fifth grader.”
        Gary Cohn, Chief Economic Adisor to President Donald Trump 2017-2018: “dumb as shit.”
        H.R. McMaster, United States National Security Advisor 2017-2018: “Dope, intelligence of a kindergartner.”
        Steve Bannon: “like an 11 year old child.”
        Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State: “fucking moron”
        Bill Barr, Attorney General: “detached from reality, shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”
        John Bolton, National Security Advisor during the Trump administration: “Laughing Fool”
        Steve Mnuching, United States secretary of the treasury during the Trump administration: “Idiot”
        Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff during the Trump administration: “Idiot”

        1. I’ll stick with Trump having “average intelligence”.
          Calling people stupid, ignorant, dumb, etc. is such common usage as an insult here that folks tend to forget what it actually means. Besides, virtually everyone is smart about some subjects and woefully ignorant about others. I remember quite well a fellow barracks-dweller in army basic training who was so dumb he had other people read to him mail from his wife. That was especially dumb at the time because there was a draft exemption for being married! Then pay day showed up and the card games started. He cleaned ’em out. Was he dumb or not?
          Then there are types of intelligence. Einstein was analytical, Edison was creative, some are quick witted, others have broad memories. Trump is cunning and intuitive but undisciplined and knows how to repeatedly pursue his objectives at the expense of others. He is able to gather others to follow him. I think calling him dumb infers that he represents less danger than he actually does.

        2. Yet with all that his supporters love him. I live in totally Trump country and it baffles me how folks who value integrity and honesty can support him.

    2. What gets me about him the most, and many in his crowd, is just how mean spirited he/they are.
      He would have slaves if he could get away with it, I believe.

  16. Solar, wind capacity surpasses coal in China

    Rystad Energy added that as China’s clean power capacity grows, it will need to address challenges such as low utilization and intermittency, through upgrades to grid infrastructure and adding battery storage to maintain grid reliability.

    In India, the world’s second-largest coal consumer, the share of coal in the country’s total power capacity fell below 50% earlier this year, for the first time since the 1960s.

    The disruption marches on!

    1. Meanwhile.

      INDIA’S COAL PRODUCTION RECORDS DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH TO SCALE RECORD HIGH

      “India’s coal production has increased by a robust 11.7 per cent to scale a a record level of 997.83 million tonnes during the financial year March 31, 2024. The minister said that coal production has risen steadily in the last four years.”

      https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/coal/indias-coal-production-records-double-digit-growth-to-scale-record-high/112190331

  18. FAO [Global] Food Price Index [red line] marginally declines in July…

  20. This is a fun site, bio cubes, visual representation of the Earth’s biomass and human made mass.

    https://biocubes.net/

    The growth in plastics and concrete in the last 30 yrs is impressive.

    1. That was fascinating.
      I’ve never heard of protists or archaea so I looked them up. Some sources list archaea as a subset of “Monera”
      Biology is weird.
      “Aggregate” surprised me. I don’t think of it as independent from concrete and/or asphalt. I’m not sure if the aggregate listed independently is in addition to that mixed into concrete and asphalt.

  21. Maryland flops on EV bus project.

    https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2024/07/electric-school-buses-led-to-millions-in-wasteful-spending-montgomery-co-ig-says/

    The bigger take away is the numbers. Each EV bus cost over $500,000.00 compared to $160,000.00 for a diesel. Had the EVs worked and they had taken full delivery the ultimate savings was 3000 gallons of diesel daily. (Not 365 but we will give it to you anyway)
    Let’s for argument say they save $12,000.00 in diesel and let’s say the charge was free for all the solar renewabies.

    The annual savings would be $14,500,000.00 per year. So on a 326 bus order that about 7.5 years to break even and doesn’t include cost of money because that’s free to right just like electricity.

    The world I come from says that’s a problem however in the new fake it till you make it renewable fantasy world they say it’s progress. Only one problem it didn’t work. It doesn’t work. It can’t work.

    It’s not a money problem it’s a physics problem. Money can’t fix physical problems.

    Hello McFly but time travel can🤦‍♂️

    1. JT

      Let me fix one of your last sentences for you: “It’s not a physics problem, it’s a money problem. Markets can distort what is right to do long term”

      The introduction of new types of electrical transportation can lead to adaptation pains. Still, the electrical motor is as well proven as any technology can be. It is very efficient in transferring energy to do actual work. And batteries keep getting cheaper due to scale of economy and improved technology at the moment.

      The point about batteries being heavy compared to the compact nature of a diesel engine and storage, or for that matter a jet turbine and storage is well known. That only means that when economic (and domistic) activity slows down eventually, more transportation can be done with the electric engine. All the “fun” extravagances will still use fossil fuels, and I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.

      I would go as far as to say that to have non-electric traffic in the core of a metropolis city is nonsensical. Traffic jams, pollution, car size, parking spaces, the fact that electric propulsion is relatively better at slow speed… the list of arguments goes on and on. It is only as a matter of practicality that vehicles with ICE travels inside big cities. Outside cities, it is much more an even game.

  22. Here’s another example of why EVs will remain rich boy toys not an industrial prime mover.

    The lowest hanging fruit to eliminate diesel consumption and power with lithium batteries are refrigerated containers and trailers. Refrigerated trailers are all dual fuel already so all that is needed is to replace the diesel tank, and generator in the case of containers, and strap a lithium battery pack and inverter to the undercarriage instead. Simply stupid right? Millions of gallons of diesel saved every year.

    So why don’t they do it? Charge time is one consideration but that can be handled with a quick swap system right.

    The real problem is weight a 50 gallon tank of diesel weighs 400lbs the equivalent storage in lithium batteries weighs 10,000lbs so to stay in regulation you would have to reduce your net weight over 15%. Which means at the very least you have to increase your rates by 15% or increase trucking by 15% or most likely both.

    In the real world truckers wouldn’t make a dumb choice like that in the fake it till you make it renewbie fantasy world. You subsidize it into existence yes you can. Repeat after me I can subsidize anything into existence. After all haven’t we done it all ready? EVs, solar, wind, housing, lunch…… What could possibly go wrong?

    How about 35trillion things?

    1. “the equivalent storage in lithium batteries”
      Are you comparing apples to apples? If you are just comparing energy content it is a meaningless comparison.
      The conversion efficiency of electric motors is on the order of five times higher than than diesel in a transport environment. That in itself would drop the battery/diesel fuel weight ratio from 25x to 6.25x. I’m not sure how much more a diesel engine weighs than an electric motor but I’m sure that the electric motor weighs a lot less. You have to include with the diesels a lot of accessories that the EV doesn’t need; radiators, starters, emission controls, complex transmissions, exhaust systems, drive shafts….
      “rich boys toys” When the EV industry has sucked up as much government loot and done as much costly health and environmental damage as the fossil industry has over the past 100 years I’ll start to get nervous about whether it is a bad idea. We’ll know the answer in about 50 years I suspect. That is if burning oil hasn’t killed us all by then.

  23. Here a a slap in the face by reality. It’s 2:45 pm and all of Texas is above 90 and about 20% is at 100 or higher. The 39,000 MWs of installed wind capacity is supplying 3,000 MWs. Two of the points made are, wind generated power is cheaper than gas or coal and carbon dioxide is going to destroy life on earth as we know it. Without the 52,000 MWs being supplied by gas and coal, what would the catastrophe for the citizens look like.

    1. But I have it on good authority that climate change is a liberal hoax.

    2. Hint for Ervin- rather than slap yourself upside the head
      simply realize that a mixed source electrical grid is how things work.
      Over the timeframe of a year Texas wind and solar allows a great deal of coal to be left unburnt.
      Unburnt coal is a beautiful thing!

    3. ERVIN —
      The real problem in Texas is the dumb city planning that leads to such fantastic waste of energy. Spreading all your buildings out in unprotected single story units is the worst way to deal with an extreme climate. Paving vast areas of land and providing no shade is just stupid.

      They say that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. I guess in an energy blog you can’t expect people to actually think of a solution to the problem.

      2. Putting all the people into high rise buildings close together, when the outside temperature goes to 100, and the power is off because the wind isn’t blowing that night, is probably not going to end well…

  24. And in the meantime, while the fossil fuel campers are telling us it’s hopeless……..

    https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/07/31/renewables-cheaper-and-faster-than-methane-says-nations-largest-utility/
    “This marks our second best origination quarter ever. These results support our belief that the bulk of the growth demand will be met by a combination of renewables and battery storage…we also are well aware of the realities of new build gas-fired generation, it’s more expensive in most states, is subject to fuel price volatility and takes considerable time to deploy given the need to get gas delivered to the generating unit and the three to four year waiting period for gas turbines.”

    We may well run out of the critical minerals needed to build batteries using current day designs, and we may run short on enough of oil and gas to the point we can’t get the renewable energy industries built out to the point they can carry the load.

    On the other hand, the population is going to peak and shrink, and imo it’s going to shrink far faster than commonly expected. The so called third world may continue to experience fast economic growth….. or it may not.

    There’s some reason to believe that there’s a LOT of oil and gas to be had in the polar regions… and while getting it is going to be expensive, if it’s there, I don’t see any real reason it can’t be done.. especially on dry land, even if it’s covered with a few thousand feet of ice. Drills go thru ice like a sharp knife thru warm butter. The climate may be going to hell, but in terms of exploiting the far northern seas, and Antarctica, this will just make it easier rather than harder.

    Powerful countries will invade and exploit weaker ones, as has been the usual case thru known history.
    Virtually every major country in the world maintains an astronomically expensive military establishment….. knowing ( or believing) that it’s have it or die or be enslaved for the lack of it.

    It’s reasonable enough to believe that tomorrow’s leaders, and maybe some of today’s leaders, will come to understand that spending every possible dime on renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency is essential to their own security and prosperity… and that they will spend as much on renewable energy as they spend on aircraft carriers.

    1. China now has cumulative installed solar capacity of over 600 GW by the start of this year!
      If you assume a capacity factor of 20% (US average utility scale CF is 23%),
      then you have the average annual PV output in China equal to the output from
      140 full size nuclear plants (1GW size operating at 90% CF).

      And their deployment of PV is escalating briskly.
      They are on a path to far outpace all other countries electricity generating capacity by 2050, by a huge margin.
      They have created PV manufacturing system at scale, with an excellent net energy return on energy input. (Sorry Hideaway, they are not hamstrung by your 20th century calculations on that.)

      If you haven’t been watching this unfold then you are missing a huge trend in the energy sector.

      1. They also build it all with fossil fuels and use fossil fuel products like plastic for the insulation on all the wires and backing, using diesel trucks to transport all the metals and minerals to the factories, then the product out to the desert or wherever. Something like 10% of every solar panel by weight is plastics and polymers..

        These huge solar farms will last 20-30 years at best. They all suffer from entropy. Changes in temperature from night to day puts stresses on the different components that expand and contract at different rates. Every single panel will eventually fail, it’s not like we can keep them out of the weather….

        How much food, fertilizer and new metal resources are these huge solar farms going to create??

        How many products like plastics, fertilizers, explosives, chemicals (needed for recycling), asphalt, concrete etc will these massive new solar farms create for future generations?

        How much diesel will these panels produce so that food can be taken to the cities?

        How much warmth at night will these solar panels provide in winter so people don’t freeze in their apartments?

        Then 20-30 years go by….

        Then what!!

        What happens when we don’t have the fossil fuels available to make the next generation??

        All solar, wind and nuclear power is just a derivative of the fossil fuel world. Great, we use up the remaining fossil fuels faster by building all these complex pieces of machinery. How does this help anything??

        It reminds me of the Easter Islanders using up the last of their trees to build statues for the gods. I suspect the great renewables god will save us as much as the Easter Islander gods saved them…

        Eventually some bright spark will work out we don’t build civilization with electricity, we actually need physical materials and food to build and maintain it, of which electricity supplies zero.

Comments are closed.