Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
41 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum June 4, 2025”
So much for peak coal.
CHINA’S COAL POWER PLANT APPROVALS REBOUND
“After last year’s first annual decline in coal power plant approvals since 2021, the Chinese pipeline of newly-approved coal-fired electricity generation rebounded in early 2025, Greenpeace East Asia said in new research on Thursday. China approved 11.29 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity in the first quarter of 2025, Greenpeace’s review of official documents showed. This pace of coal-fired electricity approvals already exceeds the 10 GW China approved in the first half of 2024.”
Meanwhile, at the end first quarter 2025, total capacity of wind and solar installations at 1.483Peta Watt, already higher than coal fired installations at 1.451Peta Watt.
Total wind and solar electricity now at 22.5% or 4.3% higher than last year; and non FF electricity at 39.8% or 4.8% higher than last year.
West extremists like GreenPeace never had a plan a fraction as decent as China or Pakistan or Saudi, they are just ideaologists implementing energy plans that are driving up inflation and unreliability.
China,Pakistan and Saudi only started ramping up solar and wind when cost is going down, and storage become economic, and FF cost keeps goind up.
The west extremists never gave half cent thought on these.
The solar energy boom got kick started when German Greens got into government and push the feed-in tariffs policy that provided favorable rates to early adopters of (then) expensive solar panels.
The explicitly stated goal of the policy was to push down prices of solar by increasing production. It worked.
Here is a country ranking of solar energy as a percentage of total national electricity production in 2024. China ranks 34, Pakistan 80 and Arabia 88.
Fossil fuel extremists choose to ignore the external costs of continued burning of fossil fuel. This is consistent with the long term conservative moral philosophy so endearingly quoted by a life-long conservative: “Let them eat cake”.
Short life, though.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
Idealistic thoughts but I am reminded that the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years. I think their greed and arrogant ideology prevented them from achieving their objectives but it wasn’t second class scientists or generals.
Likewise Stalin accomplished a lot for the USSR if you ignore the human suffering.
I think Mao did a pretty good job of bringing China into the 20th century, that is for the people who survived his murderous ways.
Trump is different. Unlike Hitler, Stalin and Mao he isn’t smart enough to discern talent from servility.
I think the problem never seems to be competence, it’s values. The dictators just surround themselves with terrible people. Often what decent people call terrible results are the objective.
Totally agree with that view. Furthermore i’d add Hitler and Stalin were born into poverty and abuse. Both experience extreme hardships. I’d say both were above average intelligence and unique though goes without saying they caused an enormous amount of suffering.
Trump was born into a wealthy family. He didnt experience hardships anywhere near these men. I’d also make a conjecture that he is below average intelligence.
the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years.
Not really, they were dumb as dirt. But the highjacked what was arguably the world’s leading scientific power at the time.
That is not true. During the Nuremberg Trials, U.S. military psychologist Gustave Gilbert administered IQ tests to the Nazi leaders on trial. The results showed that all of them had above-average intelligence, with some scoring significantly high.
And also if they were dumb why were the Russians and Americans scrambling to get their scientists at the end of ww2 ?
Certainly Speer, Goebbels (PhD), and probably Goering the junky were of high intelligence. Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.
Quite obviously, Werner von Braun, Rommel, and others of that ilk were well bove average intelligence.
History is littered with the names of “great” men and women whose indisputable intelligence was not matched by high personal moral and ethical codes.
Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.
Of course. Intelligent evil is much more potent and dangerous than dumb evil.
Haha Americans are always so quick to play the white knight if anyone insults Nazis. Just look how many responses my comment got. Nobody is ready to just shrug his shoulders at a remark like mine.
I first noticed this decades ago when I took German classes at the University of Tennessee. Very creepy.
Alim
So you weren’t impressed by the Stuka, the buzz bomb, the V2, the MG42 machine gun, the Bf109, the wolf pack, the 88 or the ME-262? The Germans were defeated by the industrial strength of the US, the grit of the British and the human endurance of Russia. German weapons, training and tactics were top notch.
Overall cultural and military goals were insane, not dumb.
Aside from the Wolf Pack, MG-42 or 88, the rest are in the category of barely impactful or the wunderwaffen category of Hail Marys that feed into the narrative that the Nazis had amazing tech that could take on multiples of the Allied equivalent. You see this all the time with the tanks, especially that fucking King Tiger that is emblematic of a machine that was made like an artisanal piece of tech that was never meant to win a war with peer powers with larger industrial bases. I say this as someone who personally squealed when I saw the only thing existing one at Bovington decades ago.
You see this stupid bullshit thought pattern with Ukraine today, where every new weapon delivery is hailed as The One That Will End The War. And they all achieve minimal changes because, amazingly, everyone in the West learnt the wrong lessons from WWII from the captured idiot Nazis who filtered into NATO roles, because they could never admit that an agrarian nation they turned against made simpler and more effective weapons, and clobbered them by churning those out by the million.
Count how many functioning T-34s exist. Now how many Panzers (all varieties) exist. QED.
Note that I didn’t mention the German tanks. Russian tanks were far superior, as were the later American ones. On the ground in the USSR “simpler” weapons were indeed smarter. No one here, including me, has suggested that the Germans were smarter than anyone else, but they weren’t stupid. They were captured by a perverted story of their history and by the cultural norms that included an extreme adherence to hierarchy.
The later American airplanes were far superior to the German ones. None of this takes away from the talent the German engineers and manufacturers demonstrated building up to the war. Nor does it justify or support the evil that virtually the entire German nations supported and defended until the very end.
As an American I am horrified to see such a large fraction of my own nation support an individual who is clearly capable of the same evils as the Nazis. So far we are lucky to see a little protection from his lack of competence and that of those he has chosen to fulfill his ambitions. With impeachment impossible until 2027 and the 24th amendment out of the question it is not clear what can be done to stop the madness.
Dictatorships inevitably fail because they run out of ideas. Democracy’s strength is its ability to adapt by bringing in new ideas. As a rule of thumb, any country ruled by the same person for 20 years is in trouble. No matter how good or smart he was twenty years ago, he’s stuck in a rut by now.
That is why democracy is about much more than just elections. Free press, free markets and anti-corruption/government openness are just as important. You can see it in America now, where Trump isn’t just a threat to elections, he constantly attacks the press and uses his cryptocurrency to sell pardons and other favors.
Most dictators just end up trying to steal more money when they get bored from being at the top. It’s really weird. My favorite example is Spain’s king Juan Carlos, savior of democracy back in the day, taking bribes from the Saudis. WTF does the king of Spain need more money for? Makes no sense. But the pattern repeats itself over and over.
Right, except we live in a capital led system that suffers from BEB thinking where your idea to change the system is to vote for the other side of the same coin.
Do we want the fascist Trump, or the war criminal Biden? They both shafted you on the economy and made pumping as much oil out of the ground as possible their mandate, while saying something about the climate. What a choice! Pay no heed to the decline in sentiment in almost every nation polled regarding democratic systems in the West. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
Democracy with the present government economic system is WORSE than a dictatorship, because it leads to the manifestation of “just VOTE!” magical thinking and kicking the can down the road on the assumption maybe the next favoured political party to get in will fix things. While people are uselessly handwringing over which party of the elites to tick a box for, the neoliberal rot continues apace.
Kleiber
I disagree 100% with you statement that a dictatorship would improve anything. Clearly our economic system needs improvement. It is out of date and does not match the needs of the country. Dictatorships generally operate to match the needs of dictators. The current Trump administration is attempting to operate in that mode and it is clear that it is making matters worse.
My own interpretation of the present situation is that there is too much money in politics and that the monied interests have, as a result, too much sway in policy making. As a result many policies are driven primarily by short term considerations that benefit “investors” and others who operate only on the basis of greed.
There is a downside to democracy that is worth bearing. That is the inertia to change. A good example is the length of time it took to get the US into WW2. But when we did enter the war it made a big difference.
Yes, the economic system needs a change but the change can and must be done within the scope of democracy. I see signs that a movement is growing to get past the zig zag of swapping parties in control while the parties are both moving the wrong way, towards the right.
Biden was a big mistake for the Democrats. Calling him a war criminal is just a waste of syllables, you could probably say that about every political leader since Hammurabi with some justification. On the up side you can see how much better the government performed under Biden than it would have (is) under Trump. Biden upgraded America’s underwhelming health care system, he invested in environmental protections, he invested in improving the employment situation, he improved our international relationships. Yet he now gets no credit for it because Trump will do everything he can to destroy the Biden legacy just because he feels chagrined by having lost an election to him.
Musk already changed his mind about Dragon. Some random dude on X told him to calm down and he obeyed. They’re like little kids.
Meanwhile he’s calling for Trump’s impeachment. Musk wants Vance, who is Peter Thiel’s creature, to replace Trump.
Peter Thiel financed Paypal and facebook and has led Silicon Valley’s charge into the extreme right. The theory is that the are so rich they must be much smarter than the rest of us. They want to shut down democracy for the good of mankind, since only they are smart enough to know the way forward.
The richest half has saved trillions in tax over the last 50 years. Some have calculated that the tax cuts are equivalent to the debt increase.
Some economists in the pay of the elite say that the debt does not matter. Really?
The trillion dollars of debt interest comes out of tax money that would have gone into schools, police, roads etc. it is the poor who pay the price of poor schools and lack of police and social care.
Millionaires are not affected, in fact they now have far more money for private schools and hospitals.
Scum economists told us in the 1980s and today that if you tax the rich less they pay more tax. Exactly what the Rich and powerful wanted us to believe. Now everyone is saddled with massive government debt that falls upon the majority who rely on state schools and police. Etc. more taxes less and less services.
Who owns the debt? The rich!!
One day riots will come that will not stop until those that have created this unjust system are removed.
Another important factor in our financial dilemma is that the reduced taxes incentivize the wealthy to support the politicians that are so generous to them. It creates a vicious cycle that today has the top 1% owning and earning a greater share of the nation’s wealth than the bottom half while taking away any good that the government has done both at home and abroad. And the Trump regime is almost a caricature of that distortion. He longs for the “good ole days” of the robber barons.
This is what ChatGPT has to say about the total energy efficiency:
To assess the energy efficiency of the sodium-air fuel cell described in the paper — including the energy cost of producing the consumable sodium metal — we need to compare:
* **Energy input**: The energy required to produce 1 kg of sodium metal.
* **Energy output**: The energy delivered per 1 kg of sodium when consumed in the fuel cell.
—
⚙️ Step 1: **Energy Output (Useful Work)**
From the paper:
* Theoretical energy density of sodium: **3.63 kWh/kg**
* Practical energy delivered (including system inefficiencies): **2.1 kWh/kg**
* Operating efficiency: **\~58%**
So, from 1 kg of sodium, we can extract approximately **2.1 kWh of usable electricity**.
—
⚡ Step 2: **Energy Input (Production of Sodium Metal)**
Sodium is typically produced via electrolysis in a Downs cell:
* **Thermodynamic minimum energy**: \~4.0 V per mole (per Faraday’s law)
* **Practical operating voltage**: \~5.5–7.0 V
* **Faradaic efficiency**: \~90%
Energy required to produce 1 mole (23 g) of Na =
E = \frac{(Voltage \times Charge)}{\text{Efficiency}} = \frac{(6 \, V \times 96485 \, C)}{0.90} = 643,233 \, J
This means for every unit of energy used to produce sodium, you recover about 27% as electricity via the fuel cell. This aligns with typical thermochemical-to-electrical conversion systems.
🧮 Summary Table
| Component | Value |
| ——————————– | ———— |
| Theoretical Na energy (OCV) | 3.63 kWh/kg |
| Practical delivered energy | 2.1 kWh/kg |
| Energy to produce Na | \~7.8 kWh/kg |
| Round-trip energy efficiency | \~27% |
| Faradaic efficiency (production) | \~90% |
| Fuel cell electrical efficiency | \~58% |
🧩 Notes
* **Economic viability** improves with co-product utilization (e.g., chlorine, NaOH).
* **Environmental impact** is offset by CO₂ capture via NaOH discharge products.
* **Efficiency can improve** with better voltage matching and heat integration.
Trump is pushing for Tip income to be tax-free.
If it gets signed into law then expect many wealthy system players like law firms to shift toward tip billings/income.
Trump knows a lot about this subject-
How does a bride differ from a tip?
A tip is paid after a service,
A Bride is paid before a service is rendered.
“In a move that fuses domestic revival with international strategy, the Trump administration has greenlit the expansion of Montana’s Bull Mountains coal mine—unlocking nearly 60 million tons of coal destined for key U.S. allies Japan and South Korea.”
“When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm). By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm. This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.”
So much for peak coal.
CHINA’S COAL POWER PLANT APPROVALS REBOUND
“After last year’s first annual decline in coal power plant approvals since 2021, the Chinese pipeline of newly-approved coal-fired electricity generation rebounded in early 2025, Greenpeace East Asia said in new research on Thursday. China approved 11.29 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity in the first quarter of 2025, Greenpeace’s review of official documents showed. This pace of coal-fired electricity approvals already exceeds the 10 GW China approved in the first half of 2024.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Coal-Power-Plant-Approvals-Rebound.html
Meanwhile, at the end first quarter 2025, total capacity of wind and solar installations at 1.483Peta Watt, already higher than coal fired installations at 1.451Peta Watt.
Total wind and solar electricity now at 22.5% or 4.3% higher than last year; and non FF electricity at 39.8% or 4.8% higher than last year.
West extremists like GreenPeace never had a plan a fraction as decent as China or Pakistan or Saudi, they are just ideaologists implementing energy plans that are driving up inflation and unreliability.
China,Pakistan and Saudi only started ramping up solar and wind when cost is going down, and storage become economic, and FF cost keeps goind up.
The west extremists never gave half cent thought on these.
The solar energy boom got kick started when German Greens got into government and push the feed-in tariffs policy that provided favorable rates to early adopters of (then) expensive solar panels.
The explicitly stated goal of the policy was to push down prices of solar by increasing production. It worked.
Here is a country ranking of solar energy as a percentage of total national electricity production in 2024. China ranks 34, Pakistan 80 and Arabia 88.
Yes been great for German industry and household
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-german-companies-mull-relocation-due-high-energy-prices-survey-2024-08-01/
Fossil fuel extremists choose to ignore the external costs of continued burning of fossil fuel. This is consistent with the long term conservative moral philosophy so endearingly quoted by a life-long conservative: “Let them eat cake”.
Short life, though.
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
Idealistic thoughts but I am reminded that the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years. I think their greed and arrogant ideology prevented them from achieving their objectives but it wasn’t second class scientists or generals.
Likewise Stalin accomplished a lot for the USSR if you ignore the human suffering.
I think Mao did a pretty good job of bringing China into the 20th century, that is for the people who survived his murderous ways.
Trump is different. Unlike Hitler, Stalin and Mao he isn’t smart enough to discern talent from servility.
I think the problem never seems to be competence, it’s values. The dictators just surround themselves with terrible people. Often what decent people call terrible results are the objective.
JJHMAN,
Totally agree with that view. Furthermore i’d add Hitler and Stalin were born into poverty and abuse. Both experience extreme hardships. I’d say both were above average intelligence and unique though goes without saying they caused an enormous amount of suffering.
Trump was born into a wealthy family. He didnt experience hardships anywhere near these men. I’d also make a conjecture that he is below average intelligence.
Stalin caused an immense amount of suffering to Nazis, and this is good and I thank him every day for it.
Stalin probably caused more suffering inside the USSR.
the Nazis came up with some incredible weapons in that horrendous 12 years.
Not really, they were dumb as dirt. But the highjacked what was arguably the world’s leading scientific power at the time.
Alim,
That is not true. During the Nuremberg Trials, U.S. military psychologist Gustave Gilbert administered IQ tests to the Nazi leaders on trial. The results showed that all of them had above-average intelligence, with some scoring significantly high.
And also if they were dumb why were the Russians and Americans scrambling to get their scientists at the end of ww2 ?
Certainly Speer, Goebbels (PhD), and probably Goering the junky were of high intelligence. Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.
Quite obviously, Werner von Braun, Rommel, and others of that ilk were well bove average intelligence.
History is littered with the names of “great” men and women whose indisputable intelligence was not matched by high personal moral and ethical codes.
Having a high IQ des not necessariy make people nice.
Of course. Intelligent evil is much more potent and dangerous than dumb evil.
Haha Americans are always so quick to play the white knight if anyone insults Nazis. Just look how many responses my comment got. Nobody is ready to just shrug his shoulders at a remark like mine.
I first noticed this decades ago when I took German classes at the University of Tennessee. Very creepy.
Alim,
I am not American, haven’t even been to America. Stop projecting your biases on others when your bullshit remarks get called out.
Very smart people.
“Let’s go invade Russia!”
Just the biggest brains.
Alim
So you weren’t impressed by the Stuka, the buzz bomb, the V2, the MG42 machine gun, the Bf109, the wolf pack, the 88 or the ME-262? The Germans were defeated by the industrial strength of the US, the grit of the British and the human endurance of Russia. German weapons, training and tactics were top notch.
Overall cultural and military goals were insane, not dumb.
Aside from the Wolf Pack, MG-42 or 88, the rest are in the category of barely impactful or the wunderwaffen category of Hail Marys that feed into the narrative that the Nazis had amazing tech that could take on multiples of the Allied equivalent. You see this all the time with the tanks, especially that fucking King Tiger that is emblematic of a machine that was made like an artisanal piece of tech that was never meant to win a war with peer powers with larger industrial bases. I say this as someone who personally squealed when I saw the only thing existing one at Bovington decades ago.
You see this stupid bullshit thought pattern with Ukraine today, where every new weapon delivery is hailed as The One That Will End The War. And they all achieve minimal changes because, amazingly, everyone in the West learnt the wrong lessons from WWII from the captured idiot Nazis who filtered into NATO roles, because they could never admit that an agrarian nation they turned against made simpler and more effective weapons, and clobbered them by churning those out by the million.
Count how many functioning T-34s exist. Now how many Panzers (all varieties) exist. QED.
Note that I didn’t mention the German tanks. Russian tanks were far superior, as were the later American ones. On the ground in the USSR “simpler” weapons were indeed smarter. No one here, including me, has suggested that the Germans were smarter than anyone else, but they weren’t stupid. They were captured by a perverted story of their history and by the cultural norms that included an extreme adherence to hierarchy.
The later American airplanes were far superior to the German ones. None of this takes away from the talent the German engineers and manufacturers demonstrated building up to the war. Nor does it justify or support the evil that virtually the entire German nations supported and defended until the very end.
As an American I am horrified to see such a large fraction of my own nation support an individual who is clearly capable of the same evils as the Nazis. So far we are lucky to see a little protection from his lack of competence and that of those he has chosen to fulfill his ambitions. With impeachment impossible until 2027 and the 24th amendment out of the question it is not clear what can be done to stop the madness.
Dictatorships inevitably fail because they run out of ideas. Democracy’s strength is its ability to adapt by bringing in new ideas. As a rule of thumb, any country ruled by the same person for 20 years is in trouble. No matter how good or smart he was twenty years ago, he’s stuck in a rut by now.
That is why democracy is about much more than just elections. Free press, free markets and anti-corruption/government openness are just as important. You can see it in America now, where Trump isn’t just a threat to elections, he constantly attacks the press and uses his cryptocurrency to sell pardons and other favors.
Most dictators just end up trying to steal more money when they get bored from being at the top. It’s really weird. My favorite example is Spain’s king Juan Carlos, savior of democracy back in the day, taking bribes from the Saudis. WTF does the king of Spain need more money for? Makes no sense. But the pattern repeats itself over and over.
Republicans say
Right, except we live in a capital led system that suffers from BEB thinking where your idea to change the system is to vote for the other side of the same coin.
Do we want the fascist Trump, or the war criminal Biden? They both shafted you on the economy and made pumping as much oil out of the ground as possible their mandate, while saying something about the climate. What a choice! Pay no heed to the decline in sentiment in almost every nation polled regarding democratic systems in the West. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
Democracy with the present government economic system is WORSE than a dictatorship, because it leads to the manifestation of “just VOTE!” magical thinking and kicking the can down the road on the assumption maybe the next favoured political party to get in will fix things. While people are uselessly handwringing over which party of the elites to tick a box for, the neoliberal rot continues apace.
Kleiber
I disagree 100% with you statement that a dictatorship would improve anything. Clearly our economic system needs improvement. It is out of date and does not match the needs of the country. Dictatorships generally operate to match the needs of dictators. The current Trump administration is attempting to operate in that mode and it is clear that it is making matters worse.
My own interpretation of the present situation is that there is too much money in politics and that the monied interests have, as a result, too much sway in policy making. As a result many policies are driven primarily by short term considerations that benefit “investors” and others who operate only on the basis of greed.
There is a downside to democracy that is worth bearing. That is the inertia to change. A good example is the length of time it took to get the US into WW2. But when we did enter the war it made a big difference.
Yes, the economic system needs a change but the change can and must be done within the scope of democracy. I see signs that a movement is growing to get past the zig zag of swapping parties in control while the parties are both moving the wrong way, towards the right.
Biden was a big mistake for the Democrats. Calling him a war criminal is just a waste of syllables, you could probably say that about every political leader since Hammurabi with some justification. On the up side you can see how much better the government performed under Biden than it would have (is) under Trump. Biden upgraded America’s underwhelming health care system, he invested in environmental protections, he invested in improving the employment situation, he improved our international relationships. Yet he now gets no credit for it because Trump will do everything he can to destroy the Biden legacy just because he feels chagrined by having lost an election to him.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14784545/elon-musk-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein.html
Trump and Elon in the Epstein files.
Elon attacks Trump as a P**do.
If Elon knew this about Trump, why did he support him??
Tesla shares down 18 %
Trump says he ‘ll cancel all government contracts with Musk companies, Musk decommissions the Dragon, apparently immediately.
As if we needed any more proof that these two are completely transactional. Neither moves a muscle unless personal gain is afoot.
Musk already changed his mind about Dragon. Some random dude on X told him to calm down and he obeyed. They’re like little kids.
Meanwhile he’s calling for Trump’s impeachment. Musk wants Vance, who is Peter Thiel’s creature, to replace Trump.
Peter Thiel financed Paypal and facebook and has led Silicon Valley’s charge into the extreme right. The theory is that the are so rich they must be much smarter than the rest of us. They want to shut down democracy for the good of mankind, since only they are smart enough to know the way forward.
Rumor says the real cause of breakup is after Trump called Xi — they agreed to cancel EV subsidies in both countries.
Now that musk has shot his bolt, who are the cornucopians attaching themselves to? Who’s the new Messiah?
I am sure they will find some other tool to worship.
I thought everyone knows there never has been and never will be a “Messiah”
Keep dreaming if harboring the delusion makes you feel good, I suppose.
Haven’t been around here in a long while.
Are Ron Patterson and Old Farmer Mac (OFM I think was the nym he went by) still around?
Did one or both of them pass away?
I felt I learned a great deal from them both over the years.
Could anyone say?
Thanks!
OFM hasn’t chimed in for a few months, and less and less for about the last 9 months.
Ron occasionally chimes in.
I tried to get in touch with Old Farmer Mac in January, but there was no response to my email.
Ron just commented today, but he now has other interests so he does not comment often.
OFM’s most recent post was April 9, 2025 at link below
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787703
U.S. Debt and tax
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
If U.S. debt in 1979 was the equivalent to $3 trillion today. Why has it increased so much.
Here is a clue.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates
The richest half has saved trillions in tax over the last 50 years. Some have calculated that the tax cuts are equivalent to the debt increase.
Some economists in the pay of the elite say that the debt does not matter. Really?
The trillion dollars of debt interest comes out of tax money that would have gone into schools, police, roads etc. it is the poor who pay the price of poor schools and lack of police and social care.
Millionaires are not affected, in fact they now have far more money for private schools and hospitals.
https://wir2022.wid.world/chapter-4/#:~:text=By%201970%2C%20the%20top%201,both%20sides%20of%20the%20Atlantic.
Scum economists told us in the 1980s and today that if you tax the rich less they pay more tax. Exactly what the Rich and powerful wanted us to believe. Now everyone is saddled with massive government debt that falls upon the majority who rely on state schools and police. Etc. more taxes less and less services.
Who owns the debt? The rich!!
One day riots will come that will not stop until those that have created this unjust system are removed.
Another important factor in our financial dilemma is that the reduced taxes incentivize the wealthy to support the politicians that are so generous to them. It creates a vicious cycle that today has the top 1% owning and earning a greater share of the nation’s wealth than the bottom half while taking away any good that the government has done both at home and abroad. And the Trump regime is almost a caricature of that distortion. He longs for the “good ole days” of the robber barons.
Global Food Price Index falls in May on lower cereal, vegetable oil and sugar prices…
A new(?) energy dense ( 1kwh/kg) energy storage:
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(25)00143-6?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2542435125001436?showall=true
This is what ChatGPT has to say about the total energy efficiency:
To assess the energy efficiency of the sodium-air fuel cell described in the paper — including the energy cost of producing the consumable sodium metal — we need to compare:
* **Energy input**: The energy required to produce 1 kg of sodium metal.
* **Energy output**: The energy delivered per 1 kg of sodium when consumed in the fuel cell.
—
⚙️ Step 1: **Energy Output (Useful Work)**
From the paper:
* Theoretical energy density of sodium: **3.63 kWh/kg**
* Practical energy delivered (including system inefficiencies): **2.1 kWh/kg**
* Operating efficiency: **\~58%**
So, from 1 kg of sodium, we can extract approximately **2.1 kWh of usable electricity**.
—
⚡ Step 2: **Energy Input (Production of Sodium Metal)**
Sodium is typically produced via electrolysis in a Downs cell:
* **Thermodynamic minimum energy**: \~4.0 V per mole (per Faraday’s law)
* **Practical operating voltage**: \~5.5–7.0 V
* **Faradaic efficiency**: \~90%
Energy required to produce 1 mole (23 g) of Na =
E = \frac{(Voltage \times Charge)}{\text{Efficiency}} = \frac{(6 \, V \times 96485 \, C)}{0.90} = 643,233 \, J
Convert to per kg:
{Energy per kg-Na} = \frac{643,233 \, J}{0.023 \, {kg}} \approx 27.97 \, {MJ/kg} = 7.77 \, {kWh/kg}
🔁 **Overall Energy Efficiency (Energy Out / Energy In)**
{Efficiency} = \frac{2.1 \, \{kWh}}{7.77 \, \{kWh}} \approx 27\%
This means for every unit of energy used to produce sodium, you recover about 27% as electricity via the fuel cell. This aligns with typical thermochemical-to-electrical conversion systems.
🧮 Summary Table
| Component | Value |
| ——————————– | ———— |
| Theoretical Na energy (OCV) | 3.63 kWh/kg |
| Practical delivered energy | 2.1 kWh/kg |
| Energy to produce Na | \~7.8 kWh/kg |
| Round-trip energy efficiency | \~27% |
| Faradaic efficiency (production) | \~90% |
| Fuel cell electrical efficiency | \~58% |
🧩 Notes
* **Economic viability** improves with co-product utilization (e.g., chlorine, NaOH).
* **Environmental impact** is offset by CO₂ capture via NaOH discharge products.
* **Efficiency can improve** with better voltage matching and heat integration.
Rgds
WP
edit – cleanup formatting
Trump is pushing for Tip income to be tax-free.
If it gets signed into law then expect many wealthy system players like law firms to shift toward tip billings/income.
Trump knows a lot about this subject-
How does a bride differ from a tip?
A tip is paid after a service,
A Bride is paid before a service is rendered.
A bit of Saturday morning coal trivia.
TRUMP’S COAL COMEBACK GOES GLOBAL
“In a move that fuses domestic revival with international strategy, the Trump administration has greenlit the expansion of Montana’s Bull Mountains coal mine—unlocking nearly 60 million tons of coal destined for key U.S. allies Japan and South Korea.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trumps-Coal-Comeback-Goes-Global.html
Meanwhile,
CO2 LEVELS JUST BROKE ANOTHER RECORD.
“When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm). By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm. This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.”
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/co2-levels-just-broke-another-080000039.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink