Peak Oil Barrel

Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 25, 2025

D C

Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thanks.

D C

37 responses to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 25, 2025”

  1. Doug Leighton

    Not good.

    ‘WE ARE PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO THE POINT OF NO RETURN’: CLIMATE SCIENTIST ON AMAZON RAINFOREST’S FUTURE

    “We estimate that a tipping point could be reached if deforestation reaches 20-25% or global heating rises to 2.0-2.5C [above preindustrial levels]. Today, 18% of the Amazon has been cleared and the world has warmed by 1.5C and is on course to reach 2.0-2.5C by 2050.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26/tippping-points-amazon-rainforest-climate-scientist-carlos-nobre

    1. Survivalist

      Northern hemisphere, where most of the food is grown, is leading the rise.

      https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/customize.html

    2. Kleiber

      2 ºC by 2050?

      Wow, still got optimists in the field.

  2. Andre The Giant

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKeCr-MAyH4

    Growing Evidence: We live in a black hole!!!!

    1. Doug Leighton

      Disagree. It’s not likely that we live inside a rotating universe or a black hole.

    2. Andre The Giant

      Do you have the answer sheet?

      Please share it!!!

      I certainly don’t know.

      Things certainly seem BLACK for a large part of universe.

    3. Alimbiquated

      The black hole thing is just fun speculation because the average density of the visible universe is ruoghly the same as a black hole (which is mostly empty “inside” the event horizon).

      The rotating universe thing is more interesting, but based on a small sample. A study showed more galaxies rotating one way than the other, and the angular momentum has to come from somewhere.

    4. Iron Mike

      Alim,

      I think you are mistaken. Inside the event horizon as we get closer to the singularity density approaches infinity, so extreme density beyond of neutron degeneracy pressures in a neutron star. Which means in a black hole the density of a sugar cube would have to exceed ~ 400 million tons. It is an unknowable state of matter.

      In contrast the average density of the visible universe is extremely tiny (very very close to zero).

  3. Survivalist

    It appears to me that the implications of peak oil will perhaps “kick in” at pretty much the same time as rising global temperatures will dampen the world’s capacity to produce food from most staple crops. Either one on its own is a severe predicament. Both will occur together within a few years. What a time to be alive. I might start a YouTube channel; Smash that Like Button.

    1. Kleiber

      It’s great, isn’t it?

      We are such a smart species.

    2. Survivalist

      I’m curious to stick around and see what the population bottleneck selects affirmatively for, other than for people who want to stick around and see what the population bottleneck selects for.

    3. Kleiber

      You’re in luck as everything is taking to heart the mantra Faster Than Expected. The future will be with you before you know it!

    4. hillcountry

      Check out Magnetic Excursions and Evolutionary Leaps by Robert Felix for an interesting take on population bottlenecks resulting from excess cosmic radiation penetrating Earth’s weakened magnetosphere.

    5. got2surf

      What if a resurgence of global fascism really takes hold? Regular folks won’t be able to distinguish between peak oil, and just a regular old boot on their necks, will they?

      If the uber rich have everything they want, and the poor masses don’t, who is going to credit global resource depletion? Hint: Nobody.

      If you are literally starving, while the rich eat like pigs, you’re not going to blame crop failure.

      I personally think crop failure (along with failed states and mass migration) will usher in our new climate change apocalypse, but it won’t be recognized as such.

  4. hightrekker

    “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”

    — Zohran Mamdani, on NBC News.

    1. Kleiber

      The political elite are already concocting a way to get rid of the only commie in US politics.

    2. Survivalist

      Trump is threatening to take away healthcare and the only thing the Dimocrats have to say is that Zohran Mamdani needs to take back what he said about Israel.

    3. JJHMAN

      I wonder about someone who could get elected saying something so politically dumb. Oh well, I live a long way from NYC.

  5. Doug Leighton

    Time to launch the lifeboats?

    EARTH IS TRAPPING MUCH MORE HEAT THAN CLIMATE MODELS FORECAST— AND THE RATE HAS DOUBLED IN 20 YEARS

    “In the mid-2000s, the energy imbalance was about 0.6 watts per square meter (W/m2) on average. In recent years, the average was about 1.3 W/m2. This means the rate at which energy is accumulating near the planet’s surface has doubled. These findings suggest climate change might well accelerate in the coming years. Worse still, this worrying imbalance is emerging even as funding uncertainty in the United States threatens our ability to track the flows of heat.”

    https://phys.org/news/2025-06-earth-climate-years.html

    1. JJHMAN

      A lot of Americans support the Trump policy that if you turn off the sources of information the problems will go away. Maybe at my age (81) I should adopt that view. I would feel a lot less anxiety.

  6. John Norris

    Fertility rates are falling faster than UN projections…

    >> The fertility rates that doomed the Japanese economy ranged from 1.3 to 1.5. So imagine what’s in store for modern-day Colombia (1.06) and Chile (1.03). How will they grow with so few workers? How will they ever become rich if each worker is expected to provide for so many elderly people?
    <<

    Gift link:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/birth-rate-population-decline/683333/?gift=DKNNSspiF0WafPt2o1jA-tc1sTpAfod923uy3wPjZ-8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

    1. T HILL

      Thank you John. Another solid piece of work pointing out how very unlikely the UN projections are.

      No doubt that FF energy will peak and drop. Less clear about the per capita availability trend with the kinds of plummeting fertility rates noted in the study behind this article.

    2. Hickory

      The author paints declining fertility rates as catastrophic-
      “Because if the birth rate continues to drop around the world at its current pace, economic growth and workers’ retirement prospects will go the way of those projections: adjusting every few years to a smaller, sadder, poorer future.”

      Well, sorry to say there is no easy cure for gross Population Overshoot. There is no everlasting growth fairyland, with new earths to exploit right behind the moon. True there is no recipe for economic function in a contracting system. But that is on the menu, sooner or later.

    3. D C

      Hickory,

      We will look to examples like Japan where population is declining and real GDP has been pretty stagnant

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNRGDPEXP

      Japan’s real GDP per capita has been growing at an average annual rate of 0.66% since 2000.

      For the past decade real GDP in Japan has grown at an average annual rate of 0.23%.

    4. WeekendPeak

      I think that per capita GDP is a whole lot more indicative of how life for the people in a country actually is going vs aggregate GDP which tells you how many wars a country can fight.
      Same with energy consumption btw.
      rgds
      WP

    5. old chemist

      Dennis
      For the past decade, the working age population of Japan has decreased by 0.5% a year, so productivity per worker went up by three quarters of a percent per year.

  7. Iron Mike

    Donald Trump’s Ukraine Promise

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8RITIuS8i8

    1. JJHMAN

      Well, that was ugly, but it lead me to a recent Trump TV interview on Fox where he explains why he’s switching the nation’s energy policy from those terrible renewable sources back to good ole coal.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWfOBKGHI8

      That’s equally bad in a completely different direction. Can someone point us to a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel?

    2. hightrekker

      “Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one.”
      — A.J. Liebling

      Is Trump just stupid, or a sociopath?

      Probably both?

    3. Mike b

      I seem to have good crops of potatoes, corn, onions, sweet potatoes and even apples in spite of a shitty New England spring. That’s something.

    4. got2surf

      The light at the end of the long dark tunnel is an efficient electric train, powered mostly by renewables and hydroelectricity, bearing down on you.

      Just like millions of animals per year, here in California, you are about to be killed by a fast incredibly efficient killing machine. It’s deer, bobcats, skunks, racoons, owl, hawks, mountain lions, elk, antelope, bears, coyotes, hundreds of thousand of people’s dogs and cats.

      We don’t care about smaller things much, but snakes, lizards, frogs, salamanders, mice , rats, voles, birds, pretty much every living thing on the planet, including thousands of actual humans, will be killed in the next 12 months by cars, and in your case, a train.

      Once the train hits you, your suffering will end.

    5. Iron Mike

      Trump edition of kids say the darndest things.

      Idiocracy at it’s finest.

  8. Doug Leighton

    DROUGHTS WORLDWIDE PUSHING TENS OF MILLIONS TOWARDS STARVATION

    “Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/02/droughts-worldwide-pushing-tens-millions-starvation-report

    1. Doug Leighton

      Meanwhile, the old mantra reigns: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’

      KEY CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTS REMOVED FROM US GOVERNMENT WEBSITES

  9. hightrekker

    “Thanks to Senate Republicans, 17 million people will lose their health care.

    Thanks to Senate Republicans, three million Americans, including veterans and seniors, will lose food assistance.

    Thanks to Senate Republicans, families will see their energy bills go up by $400 a year.”

    Our population is to large anyway?

    1. Survivalist

      Sometimes the garbage takes itself out

  10. Ovi

    A new Open Thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-3-2025/

    The US April Oil Production report has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/us-april-oil-production-hits-new-high/

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