Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 9, 2022

Ovi Uncategorized

A guest post by Ovi

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

154 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, June 9, 2022”

  1. The 2022 United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR2022: https://www.undrr.org/gar2022-our-world-risk) was issued in early May. It didn’t get much media coverage, maybe because there were so many other newsworthy stories around. Even for recent UN reports it is especially downbeat, and yet there has been at least one report, quoting an anonymous insider, that the worse bits were significantly emended before release. The executive summary reads as a lot more upbeat than the body of the report warrants. The authors show a naive faith in expecting the Covid crisis to wake us all up to the risks we are facing; this hasn’t happened of course, we’ve hit the snooze button (or asked Alexa to do it) and decided another half hour is just what we need.

    The absolute key role that the availability of cheap (I.e. high EROI) energy, in particular oil with its high flexibility, plays in ameliorating risks and in triage after disasters is completely missed.

    Four future pathways are shown, only one doesn’t lead to societal collapse, this is “stable earth” and I’d say we’re now far too far into overshoot ever to get onto that route. It’s difficult to tell much difference between the other three except in timing, confidence and the exact mechanisms involved. There is much discussion on how collapses exacerbate and cascade by the interconnections of social, resource and ecological factors, as we are currently finding out with the knock on impacts from post peak oil, the Ukraine invasion, and climate impacts.

    Part 2 (of 3) concerns communication issues around systemic risk and Part 3 discusses methods to improve future resilience. I have trouble seeing how the suggested “solutions” scale globally in a world with a steadily degrading environment, reduced supplies of energy and other key resources, inappropriate economic systems, demographic issues and polarised political and social groups.

    It must be increasingly difficult to produce reports, especially non gentrified ones, such as this, as the inevitability of some form of societal collapse becomes more apparent, which shows the UN has broadly failed and continues to fail, and from there it’s a short step to questioning the point of having such an organisation. Something must be wrong when almost every sustainable development goal is missed every year (leaving aside any discussion of whether “sustainable development” is an oxymoron).

    1. The report references the planetary boundaries (see below), most of which are now well into the red. This years two new assessments have been added: one covers solids pollution, which, as might be expected is well into the red zone, and one covering part of freshwater use (green water, which is soil moisture content and is in the red zone). Ocean acidification boundary will be exceeded soon and functional biodiversity will almost certainly be in the red once it is assessed. Aerosols have not been assessed and might be OK, especially after the switch to low sulphur marine diesel for shipping, but as the recent calculation for the earth’s energy imbalance shows, loss of reflective aerosols might not be so good for global warming. That leaves only ozone and blue freshwater use (lakes, rivers) that are looking OK. Not only are most in the red, they are also getting worse and I think at an accelerating rate despite our best, though lamentable, efforts.

      1. Thanks, this is interesting. But I had to google “novel entities.”

        “Novel entities” can broadly be defined as “things created and introduced into the environment by human beings that could have disruptive effects on the earth system.” These may include synthetic organic pollutants, radioactive materials, genetically modified organisms, nanomaterials, and/or micro-plastics. (My highlights.)

        “Broadly”! No shit, Sherlock.

        That “could” is a hole you could fly a space shuttle thru, and the inclusion of “genetically modified organisms” is extreme horseshit.

        GMOs are some of the things that “could” actually help ameliorate the clusterfuck we’ve created for ourselves. They “could” reduce the use of insecticides and herbicides (the definition of “synthetic organic pollutants”); they “could” reduce tillage; they “could” help us produce more food on less land.

        Sounds like some organics cult acolytes had a hand in this report…

        1. It’s UN science, thus the purpose is to serve the UN’s masters, organics cult acolytes or not.

        2. Mike B-
          “genetically modified organisms”
          This can go both ways.
          An example of a good innovation regards apples, developed in Canada
          https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/arctic-apples-fresh-new-take-genetic-engineering/

          On the other hand I have no doubt that GMO can also go very badly with either unintentional or intentional negative affects, akin to releasing a non-native robust predator into a new territory.
          Its the rogue actor operating solo or with private lab that we should be most concerned about.

          1. Nice to hear GMO “hopium” (as some like to say around here).

            By far the most common use of GMO technology by far is making plants “Roundup ready”, that is, to make it commercially viable to dump huge quantities of the plant poison glyphosate into the environment.The hopium here is it will extend the life of the obviously unsustainable current farming system. Bayer shareholders have their doubts lol.

            GMOs make be a good thing, but so far they have mostly been a disaster. If you are the kind of thinker that claims that history proves fossil fuels are needed for economic growth, you should not be too optimistic about GMO, because the history of this technology hs been a disaster.

            On the other hand, people like Tony Seba from RethinkX think GMO will wipe out the meat industry in the coming decade, leading to much mot sustainable agriculture. He also thinks renewables will kill the fossil fuel industry and lead to a ultracheap near limitless energy.

            You have to thoroughly cherry pick your arguments to be a New Energy pessimist and a New Food optimist. I guess in this case the priority is “sticking it to the greenies”, and the “I hate the United Nations” conditioning you get from Fox News.

            1. Mostly a disaster? Ask those whose lives depend on rDNA insulin. See tobacco used to grow vaccines, virus resistant plums and papayas, vitamin enriched rice, insect resistant corn.

              And no farmer “dumps vast quantities” of glyphosate on crops. Done correctly & timely, 12 oz of product in water will suffice per acre.

            2. MIKE B —
              Individual farmer don’t dump vast quantities onto their crops but there are a lot of farmers around.

              There are approximately 280 million pounds of glyphosate applied to 298 million acres annually in agricultural settings

              And that’s just in the US.

              https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2019-04/documents/glyphosate-response-comments-usage-benefits-final.pdf

              That the problem with pollution. People tend to think “Oh, it isn’t too bad if I pollute a little”. But they forget the cumulative effect of millions of people thinking and doing the same thing.

            3. So what? It’s just glyphosate.

              http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/archive/glyphotech.html

              Its discoverer was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Franz

              The organic cult has attempted to demonize glyphosate–and failed.

              “EPA scientists performed an independent evaluation of available data for glyphosate and found: No risks of concern to human health from current uses of glyphosate. Glyphosate products used according to label directions do not result in risks to children or adults.”

            4. Mike B
              You switched from “We don’t dump” a lot of poison into the environment” to “yeah we do but I don’t care” pretty fast.

              I admire you mental agility, but it does little to attract be to you Weltanschaung

            5. Al, glyphosate is NEVER “dumped.”

              You know nothing about farming.

            6. When Mike +B praised the inventor of glyphosate by mentioning his induction into the ” National Inventor’s Hall of Fame” I was reminded of Thomas Midgley jr. who won the Priestly Medal and the Willard Gibbs Award from the American Chemical Society, was elected to the US National Academy of Science and president of the American Chemical Society among other awards.
              What wonderful scientific gifts did he grant us? Tetraethyl lead and Freon primarily. Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed “an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny.

            7. jj, glyphosate is nothing like the materials you mention. It has been around since 1974. Surely, something would have captured the attention of regulators by now.

              Here is the EPA’s own assessment. Read for yourself.

              https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/glyphosate

              The organic cult’s smear of glyphosate is a scandal. It is a distraction from the shit that really matters (such as that which POB is dedicated to describing).

            8. Alim – Very well said in terms of the cognitive dissonance here. I admit I’ve had trouble calibrating my opinions on GMO. I wonder how much of our current array of health issues – cancers, mental disability birth defects, weight gain, take your pick, come from GMO and related activities. Or are we not experience increased health issues in your opinion. Also how would you rank the various GMO issues in terms of importance vs energy or climate?

              For instance, your arguments sound convincing and then I read the Sri Lanka thread below and start to feel that evidence is compelling. Maybe address the Sri Lanka aspect as well.

              I’m serious here, I am completely open to a debate on this issue and I think its an important question. Not that my opinion matters but I think a lot of people may be in a similar situation as me – not entirely convinced either way.

            9. Mike B
              My intent wasn’t to compare the chemical composition of glyphosate to Freon or Tetraethyl lead rather to compare the ultimate credibility of formal expertise to the ultimate outcome of introducing unique chemical compounds into the environment. Lead was first added to gasoline in 1921 and not banned until the 1970s, not because of its direct health effects but because of its effect on catalytic converters. Freon had a similar long life in public use.
              I don’t pretend expertise in the long or short term environmental effects of glyphosate. I did read a lot of the EPA documents you posted. Thanks for that. I would say that the EPA work showed careful assessment of the situation but didn’t pretend to assert that there was no negative effects, only that they hadn’t seen enough evidence to ban the substance. Fundamental to their justification was that they rejected most studies because there were so many formulations used around the world that they could not definitively say that the effects seen were from glyphosate or from other substances in the commercial products tested. That shows, I think, the prejudice in industrial culture to force regulators to prove an introduced substance was harmless rather than requiring those introducing the substance to prove it is harmless before introducing it. Even so the EPA experts used the phrase “if used as intended”. That’s no comfort to me.

            10. jj, thanks for the thoughtful comment.

              There are hundreds of chemicals around that farmers use, but glyphosate–one of the most harmless!–gets picked on the most, all because of the organic cult, who hate glyphosate because it gives the lie to their “synthetic compounds are bad” ideology.

              Bottom line for me–glyphosate use is a fly speck, a non-issue, in terms of the massive problems in agriculture we’re going to be facing shortly. And possibly glyphosate simply won’t be available anymore.

            11. Like so many issues the public generally takes a naive or extremely uninformed view of science topics, including chemicals, radiation, climate change, energy production, food production, genetically modified organisms, nutrition, etc
              Not surprising really, considering how poorly educated, distracted, easily manipulated and perhaps most importantly- just how gullible for ‘belief’ systems, that humans are.

        3. Sounds like some organics cult acolytes had a hand in this report…
          DEAD ON.

            1. Yes. I was once very much into organic farming, even working on an organic farm for 4 years.

              Then I did my research. Then I started trying farming on my own. Then I tried growing apples in New England.

              Oy veh iz mir…

            2. Survivalist , you beat me to this , but no regrets . The foolishness must be exposed . Keep exposing the stupidity . I am on your team .

            3. Sri Lanka has really cut down on glycophosphate use, much to their chagrin.

              Sri Lanka facing imminent threat of starvation, senior politician warns
              “Sri Lanka is facing the imminent threat of starvation for its population of 22 million as the economic crisis in the country continues to worsen and food becomes increasingly scarce”
              https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/sri-lanka-facing-imminent-threat-of-starvation-senior-politician-warns

              Who are the activists and politicians that led Sri Lanka to reject science and embrace disastrous all-organic farm model?
              “Vandana Shiva, proclaimed Hero for the Green Century in 2002 and winner of numerous awards (including the Right Livelyhood Award and the Save the World Award) is considered an icon of sustainability, the agricultural turnaround and degrowth in the West. For decades she has been calling for a move away from modern agriculture.
              In 2021, Sri Lanka was the first government to follow her advice. The experiment failed miserably.”
              https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2022/02/18/viewpoint-who-are-the-activists-and-politicians-that-led-sri-lanka-to-reject-science-and-embrace-disastrous-all-organic-farm-model/

              Sri Lanka faces ‘man-made’ food crisis as farmers stop planting
              “Once self-sufficient nation reels from fall-out of ill-conceived shift to organic agriculture”
              https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/5/18/a-food-crisis-looms-in-sri-lanka-as-farmers-give-up-on-planting

              Sri Lanka puts glyphosate back on banned list
              https://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail—41175.htm

              Sri Lanka tea under threat from pests, fungal outbreaks, weeds due to agro-chemical ban
              https://economynext.com/sri-lanka-tea-under-threat-from-pests-fungal-outbreaks-weeds-due-to-agro-chemical-ban-87275/

              Impacts of Banning Glyphosate on Agriculture Sector in Sri Lanka; A Field Evaluation
              https://www.croplifeasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Impacts-of-Banning-Glyphosate-on-Agriculture-Sector-in-Sri-Lanka-A-Field-Evaluation.pdf

            4. Glyphosate is one of those wonder inventions that have made life less miserable for farmers. It is effective and harmless. But the organics cult has vilified it. Why?

              Because if glyphosate is safe and effective, it undermines completely the lie of organic sustainability. The CEO of Stonyfield Farm yogurt is one of the crackpots who have sullied farmers in this country. Organic propaganda.

              Part of my megadoomerism rests on this: People fail to identify what is good for them versus what is bad. They worship TV, plastics, gasoline, cars, etc. but vilify vaccines, GMOs, pesticides, etc.

              They pump CO2 regularly and unthinkingly into their atmosphere to drive Suzy to ballet school in their hummers but don’t want Kemikals in their foods.

              We have what it takes to get out of the shit hole we’ve created. We have zero chance of doing so, however, because human appetite always outstrips human innovation.

              At the bottom is this: the general failure to recognize that the world is essentially a Darwinian place.

            5. The cornucopians and the anti GMO crowd seem to have much in common, beginning with plenty of stagnant idealism.

            6. Survivalist – thanks for the post. I had been tracking Sri Lankan economic downturn for work and didn’t really know the reason (just followed the signal). I’m starting to think this might have been the cause of that.

            7. I really wanted to be organic. Raising small acre melons convinced me that dumping on gallons of “organically” labeled factory-made pesticide likely did more harm than ounces of targeted artificial poisons. I gave up.
              A study: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100622175510.htm

              In the scope of peak oil, global warming and soil conservation, glyphosate et al (alone and in combination with engineered genetics) has likely conserved more oil than Tesla, more carbon than windmills and more soil than the whole of government. Conservation tillage just doesn’t work without GMOs and herbicides or humans would never have invented the hoe or plow.

        4. One word: Plastics. Novel entities was originally called chemical pollution. I think the way the Stockholm Institute assess it is mainly looking at plastics, heavy metals and radionuclides.

  2. As the Arctic sea transitions to an ice free state each year has new surprise and the environment goes through a state that it’s probably never going to repeat. This year the sea ice coverage has been relatively high compared to recent trends through early spring but it has been clobbered in the first week of June. Particularly in the Atlantic side peripheral seas.

    https://cryospherecomputing.com/regional.html

    Concentration (i.e. area/extent) has been fairly low as high pressure has kept the pack spread out and there has been a lot of export through the Fram and Nares straits. Now, as the air warms, the thin ice that has formed in the racks formed as the pack has split is fairly easily melted. There is little thick, multi year ice left so the pack is easily split up. In previous years the heart of the central basin has stayed fairly concentrated but at the moment the pack is spreading out over the whole area.

    https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/navo/arcticicen_nowcast_anim30d.gif

    The high melting seems likely to continue through June as the temperatures are expected to stay above freezing over most of the Arctic, with very high anomalies in Siberia, high pressure allowing clear skies and high insolation and encroachment of warmer seas, especially from the Atlantic.

    https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/fcst/?mdl_id=gfs&dm_id=arc-lea&wm_id=t2

    1. George

      Attached is a chart of Arctic ice volume. Since the low of 2018, the volume has stabilized and is hinting at growing. Note the higher lows and the higher highs. Not sure why this is happening, but it is surprising. Maybe the thin ice is not as thin as many expect.

      “Average Arctic sea ice volume in May 2022 was 22,000 km3. This value is the 11th lowest on record for May, about 2,100 km^3 above the record set in 2017. Monthly ice volume was 39% below the maximum in 1979 and 24% below the mean value for 1979-2021. Average May 2022 ice volume was 1.5 standard deviations above the 1979-2021 trend line. Ice growth anomalies for May 2022 continued to be at the upper end of the most recent decade (Fig 4) with a mean ice thickness (above 15 cm thickness) at the middle of recent values.”

      http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

      1. Things looked good, too, between the all-time low in 2012 and the new ten-year high in 2015.

        Then things slipped into the abyss again . . .

  3. Here and there you see something that lends a little hope for avoiding an outright economic and ecological collapse……….. at least in a few places.
    https://newatlas.com/energy/energy-dome-co2-sardinia/

    If this tech really does achieve seventy five to eighty percent round trip efficiency, it’s a game changer….. because it needs next to nothing in the way of rare or expensive materials to build.

    But I haven’t yet seen anything about what it’s going to cost.

    Properly built, to electrical generating industry standards, such a plant should last indefinitely, with some components replaced on a routine ten to twenty year maintenance schedule.

    And there’s just about zero doubt in my mind, assuming Old Man BAU manages to hobble along for another ten years that there will be AMPLE dirt cheap juice to run them, because we’re going to be building wind and solar farms out the ying yang.

    If anybody has cost estimates, please post them and thanks.

    1. There is an Israeli company doing a similar thing.
      Using air in underground tanks rather than CO2 in above ground bladders.
      They claim greater than 80% round trip efficiency, 5-15 sec response time, <$150 kwh
      https://www.aug-wind.com/

      Seems like a ripe area for robust competition

      1. I don’t see that there’s anything at all that’s fundamentally new about this sort of mechanical battery.

        All the component parts and all the basic physics are old hat.
        As far as I can see, it’s just a new way of utilizing lots of old technology now that the costs of manufacturing the necessary equipment ( in combination with wind and solar farms ) has fallen dramatically in comparison to the cost of providing electricity by burning ever more expensive fossil fuels.
        Something tells me that anybody who can build himself a wind and solar farm or two or three, plus a mechanical battery of this sort, and get it financed at a low fixed rate, is going to make a KILLING later, if he can sell his stored juice at the going market rate.

        It’s true that seriously inflated money doesn’t buy much……. but I know a lot of people who have rented out houses at double or even triple the monthly payment plus maintenance costs after ten years….. and that monthly cash flow, even after allowing for inflation, still buys a LOT of stuff.

        1. Yep-
          this compressed gas or fluid form of energy storage is not based on any technologic /engineering breakthrough.
          Its just a matter of putting together a smoothly operating, safe, cost effective and durable system that is optimized for the purpose.
          I expect these systems to be very widely deployed.

    2. I think batteries will make the race for this intermediate day scale storage.

      Tesla is already going to LiFePO in his Gigapacks, downscaling from Lithium Ion. Cheaper, less raw material and more fire safe. The last one is really important for big installations.

      The next step will be sodium and iron batteries – no rare elements needed. Industrial production ramping up at the moment. Even cheaper.These steel pipes and pressure tubes need high quality steel most times. Which needs additional elements and is expensive.

      And it’s space, too – in some countries ground costs a lot. In others it’s the pure size of installation. A warehouse full of Gigapacks (or similar producers, I just picked this one) will replace hectars full of these air installations, making construction and maintainance cheaper.

      Pumped hydro has the problem of huge investment costs – but can get really big. And in western countries you have to fight enviromentalists to build one. A superbattery can just be build in a warehouse in an industrial zone.

        1. Yup – and no more industrial connections until it has been figured out. They also reduced their NG extraction from Slochteren quite quickly. And new construction residential is not allowed to have NG connections.
          rgds
          WP

        2. These measures to restrict nat gas and to promote the shift to heat pumps is exactly what we should expect in countries that don’t have plenty of domestic production.
          Those are the kind of early stage responses that is what people and economies do when supplies get tight and the prices rise.
          De-industialization is to be expected in places that don’t have enough affordable energy.
          No surprise, except for those who have not digested the notion of and repercussions of
          population overshoot and peak energy supplies.

          ‘De-industrialization’ is going to apply to certain sectors, locations and product specialties, but you’d be wrong to think that certain industrial sectors aren’t going to be growing very fast over the next few decades.
          Those sectors those that supply heat pumps for example. And all sorts of mechanisms related to improved energy efficiency in transportation and electrification of the global economy. There will be a huge growth in sectors related to this attempt at transition from combustion based energy.

          I won’t guess how much of the current combustion based global energy production can/will be replaced. But have no doubt- it will be a huge effort. An industrial effort.

    1. I am one of those Texans, and don’t get me started on our wonderful State government’s response to our electrical crisis. I’ve done everything I can to prepare, extra thick insulation in our house, 8 kw solar panels, and geothermal HVAC, but it still hurts.

      1. I personally have a couple of gasoline powered generators, and a bigger one seldom used that works on the pto of a farm tractor. The smaller ones are handy because on a farm you need more juice out in the field than just what you get with portable battery powered tools.

        It would cost over a hundred bucks a day for gasoline to keep a house cool using one of these in a Texas style heat wave………. but even so….. such a generator could pay for itself in only two or three emergencies lasting a couple or maybe three days each……….. compared to doing without juice.

        Even here in Virginia, I have a friend moved his wife and three kids into a hotel for four days due to a power outage in the aftermath of a hurricane. Hotels were cheaper back then, and Virginia is not a high cost state as such things go…… but that hotel rooms plus the restaurant still ran him well over two grand.

        ( When you’re at the end of the line with only a dozen or so houses in a rural area, you just WAIT…….. until our guys get back from bailing out you guys down where hurricanes knock out the power for a few million people for a hundred miles or more at a stretch.)

        You can bet he has a generator now, big enough to keep the well pump, refrigerator, lights and so forth powered up, and he has a couple of kerosene heaters which stink up a house………. but you won’t need a plumber to fix ruptured pipes after a winter outage.

        The total for the generator and the heaters was under two grand ten or twelve years or longer ago.

    2. Grifters with Cowboy Hats.
      Eventually the proletariat will wake up?

    1. Gerry F , ” There is many a slip between the cup and the lip ” . ” If wishes were horses , beggars would ride ” .
      I can go on ,
      P.S : My post is not intended to insult you , it is intended for the idiots at ” interestingengineering ” .

      1. I spent the first eight years of my engineering career working on high temperature gas-cooled reactors. Any reactor sent into a combat zone is begging for a disaster, that one not the least.

  7. Some chaos in the markets this morning.
    Not that most of us were not expecting it.

    1. HT , expected only if one was not in the ” FED PUT ‘” camp . There is no FED PUT this time . The FED is broke .
      “In the past year the Fed has crashed Emerging Markets, Ark ETFs, Cloud internets, IPOs, SPACs, Crypto currencies, and the global bond market. ”
      The CB’s are trying a controlled demolition but they will fail . They are treating an ” energy crisis ” as a ” financial crisis ” . Wrong diagnosis , wrong medicine = the patient dies .

    2. “Who lost Afghanistan ?”

      Do you really expect anyone to take anything you say seriously or with even with one ounce of respect when you
      throw shit at the wall like this? Have you no respect for the intelligence of those who spend a moment at this site?- it seems not.

    3. HiH, no one lost Afghanistan. Afghanistan is still in the hands of its original owners, the Afghans. George Bush, and his incompetent regime, got us into Afghanistan. Both Obama and Trump promised to pull the troops out of that country. However, Biden was the only one with the guts to do it. We should thank him for the many American lives that have been saved since the pullout.

    1. First, we need to get passenger trains back to where they were in 1940.
      Then high speed rail.

      1. When you have a clean slate, you can make it right.

        Go for city interconection with magnetic rail trains – this will replace most inland flights. And then connect the smaller towns with 1940 ;). 100 mph is enough here.

    1. This pretty much says it all:
      “The world has changed. The period of American colonialism has come to an end and will never return. In this new world, Russia will be the power, the moral compass, the landmark of purity, truth and correctness, to which sensible people will flock from all over the planet.”
      Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian Duma’s Defense Committee

  12. This analysis was before the sharp jump in rates today.
    “The median monthly payment of a 30-year mortgage is up 56% year-over-year”

  14. Inflation, Scarcity and the Road to Survival
    “An in-depth 2021 study by Simon Michaux at the Geological Survey of Finland illustrated this inconvenient reality. It calculated that to replace a single coal-fired powered plant of average size producing seven terawatt-hours per year of energy would require the construction of 213 average sized solar farms or 87 wind turbine array facilities. Renewables just have to work harder.”
    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-10/inflation-scarcity-and-the-road-to-survival/

    A Bottom-up Insight Reveals: Replacing Fossil Fuels is Even More Enormous Task Than Thought
    https://www.gtk.fi/en/current/a-bottom-up-insight-reveals-replacing-fossil-fuels-is-even-more-enormous-task-than-thought/

    1. Nate Hagen’s interviews with Simon Micheux and others on “the Great Simplification” are worth a listen although you don’t get too much self deprecating humour or fart jokes.

    2. The average energy output/acre/yr from utility scale Photovoltaic installations in the US (actual output)
      provides equivalent transport energy as does 424 barrels of oil.
      That assumes both ICE and EV’s have the same efficiency of energy use-
      which they certainly do not-
      “EVs convert over 77 per cent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12 per cent – 30 per cent of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels,” according to the US Department of Energy

    3. The question is not whether we can afford the 213 average sized solar farms, or the 87 wind farms………. but rather whether we can afford NOT having them.

      I haven’t read the links given yet, but I’ve read hundreds along the same line by now, and as a damned near set in stone rule, they are written by people who fail to take into account that we can continue to live about as well as we do now with half or even less as much electricity per capita, and that the cost of new wind and solar power are still falling like a rock.

      Furthermore they generally fail to mention the national security implications of renewable energy. Each and every wind farm and solar farm means spending a little less money on soldiers and guns.

      I am NOT arguing that we will avoid a crash and burn economic and ecological scenario as far as large parts of the world are concerned.

      There’s a fair to good chance, given some luck with the climate not going entirely haywire, etc, that some of the better situated and more technologically advanced countries can pull thru with the lights on and the water and sewer working, food in the stores, cops on the streets, etc.

    1. The steady tick-tick-tick of impending disaster eats away at my patience.

      …diminishing Arctic sea ice thickness…Antarctic Thwaites glacial melt…blocking highs and locked weather patterns…persistent droughts, floods, storms…soaring CH4 emissions and thawing permafrosts…appalling heat domes…rampant fires in forests, deserts, tundras…failed wheat crops…falling sea water pH…stagnant, impotent political systems…

      I bide my time in my orchard and in the graveyard…

  18. Poor farming practices have led to the loss of 57 trillion tons of soil in the United States.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220316114958.htm

    On current trends the world will run out of topsoil in 60 years. Ever wonder why the Mississippi is so muddy? Ask a farmer, that’s his farm running into the Gulf of Mexico.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america

    American history has been punctuated by a series of ecological disasters.

    Appalachia was rich in the mid 19th century, until logging, poor farming practice and the chestnut blight wiped out the economy. They there was nothing left but coal mines. In my native East Tennessee they say “The good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise”. But flooding isn’t an act of any gods. It happens when you don’t have your hydrology under control. In the Japanese village where my wife was born, the flood all the rice fields on the same day. I often wonder what Appalachia would look like if it had been settled from East Asia instead of the British Isles.

    My grandmother was born in 1888 in Colby Kansas. “I I always told them not to cut down those cottonwoods, they were the only thing keeping the wind from blowing their farms away,” she once told me. By the time the dust bowl came, she was long gone. Probably a good thing she didn’t live to see them using center pivot irrigation on the thirsty corn crop for ethanol. That won’t last long I guess, the aquifer is drying up fast.

    Take a walk in the woods in New England, and your likely to find stone walls from old farms running through the woods. Sadly they weren’t built on contour, which would have resulted in terracing. They run up hill and down dale, ignoring the lay of the land. The result was massive erosion and the collapse of agriculture in the region. People blame the glaciers for the bad soil, but poor farming practices are the real culprit.

    The water table in California’s Central Valley has fallen 30 feet since the 1920, not least from growing thirsty crops like alfalfa and tomatoes. Meanwhile dutch farmers us a tenth as much water as California farmers per kilo of tomatoes.

    Arizona was settled from the East by cattlemen. Now the symbol of the sate is the saguaro cactus, which is not ideal fodder, to say the least. Wiping out the beavers (in Arizona, California and Nevada, among other places) was as stupid as overgrazing, and its still going on.

    Asking a farmer how to manage the land is like asking a pedophile how to rise children.

    1. Lovely post . . . I am engaged . . . until this line:

      Asking a farmer how to manage the land is like asking a pedophile how to [raise] children.

      Really? All of them? Nothing about the 340 million mouths to feed in the US?

      What an ugly, monstrous statement.

      You have just vilified a critical sector of society, just as the “organics” people do.

      Not that I don’t agree about some of the horrors of farming:

      The Worst Mistake in the
      History of the Human Race

      Go off and grow your own food.

      And people wonder why I am a superdoomer. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

  19. My last word on this goddamned subject in this goddamned thread:

    Farming–no matter how you slice it–is by definition “unsustainable” because it:

    Takes over land

    Depletes natural resources

    Grows populations

    And what are you going to do about it? Vilify farmers? Demonize agricultural chemicals? Have a shit fit about “industrial agriculture”?

    Good luck with that foraging in the outskirts of Toledo.

    1. Speaking of which, over 30 million acres of prime farmland goes for corn ethanol, which has a net energy yield/acre/year equivalent to 3.1 barrels of oil [in terms of gasoline and diesel equivalent]
      Both republicans and democrats have been in favor of this mandated and incentivized industrial scale monoculture use of this precious part of the ecosystem.

      [btw- the same amount energy could be provided by 18 solar panels, assuming the average US PV facility output]

      I will have more on the details of this topic later.

      1. There are a lot of exciting things happening in the ethanol industry, not the least of which is the world’s biggest carbon sequestration project to date. Check out what is being proposed across five of the largest ethanol-producing states, the Summit Carbon pipeline system, if you don’t believe. This will put ethanol on target to be a net-zero renewable energy resource within the United States in about a decade.

        1. Hi Frank,
          I’m thinking you’re new here.

          Now here’s a question for you, FROM a farmer, who has heard the story of the transition from horses and mules to trucks and tractors as a child, from his grandparents and great grand parents, who LIVED that transition.

          I actually caught the VERY tail end of the horses and mules as a kid myself, because my family kept a couple of horses and mules for old times sake, and we actually worked them in the fields a few days every year up into the late sixties. I’ve plowed a few furrows myself with a mule, lol.
          So……. here’s the question.

          How far can you drive an electric car on the amount of electricity produced by one acre of solar panels in the corn belt, compared to how far you can drive it on the amount of moonshine you can produce from one year’s yield on that same acre?

          The answer will BLOW YOU AWAY.

          Then stop and consider that while putting that acre of panels out there costs a hell of a lot, you won’t have to spend ANYTHING plowing, spraying, liming, fertilizing, harvesting, drying, or hauling that electricity to market, lol.

          No worry about running short of rain, or using up the last of the fossil irrigation water we’re using up FAST, now.

          No worry about politicians changing the laws that affect the price of grain from one year to the next.

          There’s no soil erosion.

          We’re already losing top soil at a rate that’s going to leave your grandchildren in one hell of a pinch, in terms of affordable food.

          No diesel burnt raising corn, hauling corn, no gas and coal burnt distilling the moonshine. No tractors and combines worn out growing corn to feed automobiles.

          BUT I will tell the rest of the story…….. which renewable advocates generally manage to either ignore or don’t even KNOW.

          The leftovers are great stuff if you’re in the beef business. You feed the mash to cows. It doesn’t go to waste.

        2. Frank-
          the net energy yield of US corn ethanol/acre/yr is equivalent to 3 barrels of oil
          the net energy yield of one acre of US photovoltaic/yr is equivalent to 440 barrels of oil

        2. Corn is not well suited to combination with solar panels, because the machinery used is generally just too damned big to put the panels close enough together.
          Plus corn gets tall, and the panels would need to be mounted higher than usual.

          It could be done on smaller farms using smaller equipment such as was used a generation or two back. That way you could get a reasonable corn yield, say maybe seventy five percent, and still get quite a bit of juice too by spacing the panels closer.

          But panels plus a crop can be a killer combination for many other crops, especially ones with a much higher cash value plus the need for more hands on work, and especially in places with a surplus of people glad to have a hands on job on a farm.

          1. Yup.
            For most farms that want to have PV it will be installed on the roofs of building/barns/sheds, or in tight clusters with most of the land clear for crops.

  20. https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=246101

    KD declares Russian victory and the West is fucked.

    Putin’s goal….Revenge for the collapse of Soviet Union and he goes in history books as the guy who did it ( My prediction of why he was doing this months ago).

    Putin is a narcissistic, selfish prick …but he is talented.

    The guy’s going to be dead soon yet he needs to cause such misery.

    1. “Europeans have wars so Americans will study geography.”
      -Twain

  21. The people who say electric cars and trucks just won’t work, or that they will always be unaffordable, are fighting an ever more desperate rear guard action, the intent being to keep Republican anti renewable politicians in office, so as to hold up the transition.

    But money does the talking, and in the end, they aren’t going to have money enough to buy anti renewable politicians, long term.

    Consider Texas. The leadership there never misses an opportunity to bash renewables, but Texas is building out wind and solar farms like crazy now.

    And according to this link………. Tesla’s new type of battery cell is roughly a third cheaper to make, while working just as well or better, and requires far less in the way of materials such as lithium, which is in short supply.

    Of course this technology is patented, and so the bottom line reads more profits for Tesla, over the next few years……. but other companies are coming up with other new batteries as well.

    My guess is that an electric car will be at least twenty five percent cheaper to own and drive than a comparable conventional car within five years.

    https://www.torquenews.com/11826/tesla-s-4680-cells-prove-revolutionary-refreshed-model-y-revealed-have-50kwh-battery-pack

    ( My opinion of Musk as an individual is down in the mud, but you have to admit that he’s a GITERDONE guy, as a businessman. )

  22. https://www.earthday.org/california-breaks-record-by-achieving-100-renewable-energy-for-the-first-time/

    I’m worried as worried can be about what the future holds for all the little kids, but there IS some sunshine breaking thru the black clouds here and there.

    This link talks about renewable electricity in California as if the entire future of the industry belongs to the battery industry.

    But nothing could be farther from the truth. Conservation and de facto batteries are going to take care of a HUGE slice of the intermittency problem.

    By defacto battery I mean such things as a pit under a new house full of crushed stone, with some wires and pipes running thru it. It can be heated or chilled as suits the circumstances and time of year, and time of day. In the winter it can be heated to provide domestic heat and hot water when the wind aren’t cooperating. In the summer, it can provide air conditioning needing only enough juice during peak demand hours to run the pump and duct work.

    And the vehicle to home and vehicle to grid things are going to be VERY REAL indeed.

    Tens of millions of people are going to be charging up at work and at home using dirt cheap solar electricity during the day, and wind whenever it’s available, day or night.

    When they get home from work, they’re going to plug in not to charge up, but to supply their own home needs during the evening demand hump.

    If they’re not cooking a lot or doing the laundry, etc, and it’s not very hot or cold, so that they won’t need much in the way of heat or air conditioning, they will be SELLING juice into the grid.

    If otherwise surplus wind or hydro or nuclear or gas fired juice is available cheap during the night, they will top off during the small hours.

    Retired people who don’t have to drive a lot will be able to use their electric car to run their homes up to ninety percent of the time without having to buy grid sourced juice if they have a decent solar panel system of their own.

    They won’t NEED POWERWALL or similar batteries except maybe in an emergency, because retired people don’t have a lot of obligations in terms of being away from the house on a SCHEDULE, like working people.

  23. BTC-USD
    23,473.90
    -4,462.16(-15.97%)

    When is something worth nothing, actually worth nothing?

  24. “Donald Trump may have remained in power despite losing the presidential election had he marched with his supporters to breach the U.S. Capitol during last year’s insurrection, according to an expert on fascist leaders and movements.”

    This fails to take into account that Trump can’t walk more 40 steps without sitting down, or leaning on podium in his awkward manner.

      1. Who’s orders would they have followed?
        He was still President.
        Incompetent true…but that didn’t seem to matter for the preceding 4 years.

    1. WHAT A BUNCH OF BS, PERIOD

      Let’s just start with the fact that if the American drivers a bided by the maximum speed limit(about 10 mph slower). Fuel demand would drop by 10 to 15 percent. Apply that to gasoline and diesel supplied in America, that’s 1.2 to 1.8 barrels per day. Add another million barrels a day if everyone optimized their speed for fuel efficiency. Apply this simple alternative world wide and save even more. Multi-task transporting, car pooling, Zoom, electric biking and walking(to school) all can be done effective tomorrow. Or, we can ignore these items and let the FED do it’s dirty work, turn down the economy and force 100 times more pain on society than conservation.

      Medium and long turn, the world can transform to electric transportation, solar panels , wind and other renewable sources of energy. The pandemic has shown us we don’t have to replace all fossil fuels to reduce there high cost or replace Russia’s fossil fuel.

      Economics teaches us alternatives are available. The deniers just need to give up BAU.

      2. “Economics teaches us alternatives are available”

        I believe classical economics assumes infinite resources.

        1. If you want to sum up what economics means, you could do so with the following statement:

          Individuals and societies are forced to make choices because most resources are scarce.

          Economics is the study of how individuals and societies choose to allocate scarce resources, why they choose to allocate them that way, and the consequences of those decisions.

          Scarcity is sometimes considered the basic problem of economics. Resources are scarce because we live in a world in which humans’ wants are infinite but the land, labor, and capital required to satisfy those wants are limited. This conflict between society’s unlimited wants and our limited resources means choices must be made when deciding how to allocate scarce resources.

          https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-macroeconomics/basic-economics-concepts-macro/introduction-to-the-economic-way-of-thinking-macro/a/lesson-summary-opportunity-cost-and-the-production-possibilities-curve

            1. How There’s More to Economics Than the Science of Scarcity
              “One way economists describe their discipline to themselves has proven beguilingly seductive since it was codified by Lionel Robbins 90 years ago — that economics is the science of scarcity and that it is, therefore, paradigmatically about trade-offs. So ingrained is this approach that my questioning it may come as a shock. But that is my purpose here. As Mark Twain apparently didn’t say, “it’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, but what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Indeed, I show this approach has become a kind of counterfeit metaphysics — a means by which practice becomes increasingly thoughtless and alienated from economic reality whilst practitioners affect rigor and insightfulness.”
              https://evonomics.com/how-theres-more-to-economics-than-the-science-of-scarcity/

          2. Good point.

            I should have sobered up before I posted that one.

            https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/neoclassical-economics/

            “Classical economics emerged in the 18th century. It includes the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and many other economists. The value and distribution theory of classical economics states that the value of a product or service depends on its cost of production. The cost of production is determined by the factors of production, which include labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship.”

            It was the cost of production, not that the resource was finite.

            1. When doing a project in reality, all ressources are always very limited.

              You have a fixed etat, limited manpower, short time frame and infinite demand. So you try to fit it best.
              The opposite is state planned and executed stuff. Unlimited demand, no etat – and then nothing happens besides producing paper.
              Or the antique approach. Unrealistic plans, and you whip your slaves undtil something happens or they die. Then you need new ones and you need a new war.

              So economy is the best we have.

              PS: My work is in software in the economy. It’s all about optimizing processes. You can call this profit – but in detail it’s reducing waste and getting more for less.
              Inefficiences are costs, and costs are a no-go.
              Be it driving longer then necessary, wasting material by chosing the wrong or exceeding best before dates (because of wrong planning or inefficient storing).
              Optimizing cargo loads is a big thing the last 20 years – driving air around for good money doesn’t help profit.
              An company I worked before sold a delivery truck optimizer – you could choose 50 trucks and 500 deliveries, selected all and after half an hour calculating you got 50 load and drive plans. The system eliminated more than 20% of all miles driven – and could even hold drivers worktime and other restrictions.
              Ride sharing would be a big thing to save costs for people. It would be more easy today with apps.

            2. I am talking about what classical economists thought.

              These guys lived in a relatively bountiful world.

              Their models were limited by the “cost of production” not because they had to worry about running out of a resource ( lumber, oil, cow dung, etc )

              This is not because Adam Smith was dumb. It was just the world he lived in.

              Most of us have lived in a world with plentiful oil and declining interest rates.

              That is going to change. VERY SOON.

              And if Adam Smith was alive today, I bet he would see it coming!!

            3. @Peak

              Economy and national economy are completely different things. In Economy you can calculate with infinite ressources – escecially in the time of the 18th century. Concerns and huge factories haven’t been constructed yet, manufactories where very small compared with today. And in economy you look at just one of these.

              With national economy the limits are known even in the 18th century – you have only x acres land suitable for crops, so many horses to breed and feed and so on.
              That’s why in this time there have been many plans to expand these – by irrigation or embanking wild rivers. Yes, it was before ecology – but at least you could call all agriculture in this time organic in modern language.

              It’s the same in physics and geographics. If you for example calculate a new subway net for a city, you use planning based on a flat earth. Yes we all know since at least 500 year it’s a ball but for a town it’s good enough. So is calculating the economy of a small company. You can calculate with a infinite market and infinite ressources – because you will never have even a promille of the market.

              Making the plans for Nestle is another thing than making the calculation for a local steel shop.

        1. “I beg your pardon
          I never promised you a rose garden
          Along with the sunshine
          There’s gotta be a little rain sometime
          When you take you gotta give so live and let live or let go
          Oh-whoa-whoa-whoa
          I beg your pardon
          I never promised you a rose garden

          I could promise you things like big diamond rings
          But you don’t find roses growin’ on stalks of clover
          So you better think it over
          Well, if sweet-talkin’ you could make it come true
          I would give you the world right now on a silver platter
          But what would it matter

          So smile for a while and let’s be jolly
          Love shouldn’t be so melancholy
          Come along and share the good times while we can”

          “The deniers just need to give up BAU.”

          You will adapt because the alternative is less desirable.

      4. regarding -“Economics teaches us alternatives are available”

        I say it differently- “alternatives will be searched for, and attempts will be made to adapt”
        ‘Creative destruction’ is what economics calls the process we entering.

        But economics does not provide a pleasant cure for Overshoot.
        All of the worlds mechanisms and efforts of kicking the can down the road (avoiding the tough consequences) will not prevent the eventual balance sheet reconciliation.

        1. “alternatives will be searched for, and attempts will be made to adapt”

          Agreed, better worded.

          “But economics does not provide a pleasant cure for Overshoot”

          The economy has given humans birth control in many forms. Maybe it’s similar to oil. A macro problem and society is using alternatives as a micro tool until it will be forced on themselves more painfully (“kicking the can down the road”). “The deniers just need to give up BAU.”

          1. Yes, downsizing will be forced since the proactive choice was not made beginning about
            50 + years ago.

            1. It’ll be interesting to see how those who the market soon doesn’t feed decide to deal with it. I wonder if economics has a model for that?

      5. I’ve been banging on the efficiency and conservation drum for a long time, lol.
        See my other comments in this thread.
        But I also mention what I refer to as PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP EVENTS quite often.

        As I see it, the only real hope we have, in terms of political reality, is that we suffer a steady stream of such events, each one painful enough, to enough people, to eventually FORCE us to arrive at a general consensus that we don’t have any CHOICE but to go and stay pedal to the metal in terms of renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation.

        Unfortunately, times have been so good for so long that most of us, and nearly all of the so called social conservative voting block, just don’t see the need.

        Pictures in the news of a bad car wreck involving strangers from other communities just don’t make a significant impression at all.

        But when you actually SEE such a wreck…….. when it involves somebody you know…….. it makes an impression.

      1. Survivalist , false hopes . Nothing to see here , let’s move on .

  26. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/15/new-data-reveals-extraordinary-global-heating-in-the-arctic

    “New data has revealed extraordinary rates of global heating in the Arctic, up to seven times faster than the global average.

    The heating is occurring in the North Barents Sea, a region where fast rising temperatures are suspected to trigger increases in extreme weather in North America, Europe and Asia. The researchers said the heating in this region was an “early warning” of what could happen across the rest of the Arctic.

    The new figures show annual average temperatures in the area are rising across the year by up to 2.7C a decade, with particularly high rises in the months of autumn of up to 4C a decade. This makes the North Barents Sea and its islands the fastest warming place known on Earth.”

  28. New report. Nothing new.

    GREEN ENERGY ‘STAGNATES’ AS FOSSIL FUELS DOMINATE

    The Renewables 2022 Global Status Report says the share of wind and solar in the global energy mix has risen minimally in the last decade. While renewables boomed in the electricity sector last year, they didn’t meet the overall rise in demand. In transport, which accounts for a third of energy, renewables provided less than 4%. The current situation in Ukraine has exacerbated this trend

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61802802

    1. Jesus… Imagine what things might be like now had we listened to Hubbert in the 1980s.

      “We can do it now …”

  29. “bp has today (June 15) announced it has agreed to acquire a 40.5% equity stake in and become the operator of the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), in Pilbara, Western Australia from July 1, 2022.

    The project intends to develop 26GW of onshore wind and solar power generation, to supply local customers an established mining region, in addition to green hydrogen and ammonia production.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/15/global-fossil-fuel-giant-bp-buys-40-of-us30bn-pilbara-renewable-energy-project

    This is a very big project. Example of the early stages of the big pivot.
    Only 3 or 4 decades late.

    1. I took a look at that twitter shit.

      There’s no doubt in my mind that Tesla management massages numbers when it’s possible to do so without being TOO obvious about it. That’s pretty much sop, in the corporate world.

      But there’s also no doubt in my mind that over any period of six months to a year, on average, that Tesla delivers as many cars as claimed.

      There are literally thousands of people who are paying VERY close attention to Tesla, either because they’re professional analysts, doing their job, or because they’re journalists looking for the NEXT BIG STORY…… or because they just happen to own some stock in the company, lol.

      My personal opinion is that such things are published mostly by people who lost their ass shorting Tesla, or trying to short Tesla NOW.

      1. Tesla is going down regardless. Nothing in the NASDAQ is remotely based in reality. Tesla worth more than Ford? Haha!

        1. Maybe it is because Ford has about 135 billion in debt and Tesla has almost none. Or that Tesla is producing 80K plus EVs per month in 2021 while Ford produced 17K in April. Tesla stock has taken quit a nosedive, but what stock hasn’t?

          1. Tesla laying people off and increasing prices must be the secret sauce to this strategy.

            And Ford sell WAY more vehicles than Tesla. EVs are a tiny fraction of the market which is already in turmoil with delinquencies rising alarmingly.

            People can’t afford to drive anymore.

            1. Why Ford’s value is down:
              Ford can’t produce cars because they made strategic errors with their chip supply and the engineering of their electronics systems (old, single-supplier, outdated chips that no one wants to produce).

              They face the challenge of managing the changeover from gas to electric: managing two competing production streams at the same time.

              Their electric vehicles may not be as well engineered as the competition.

              They may not be able to produce enough of their successful vehicles (their pickup truck is officially sold out, and the people at the end of the que have a 3-year wait).

              They are still developing new ICE engines (unlike some of their competitors), which they will be unable to amortize the cost of.

              They are likely, in my opinion, to have a lower market share once the transition to electric is complete.

              Still want to buy their stock?

            2. The whole story is the workers laid off are mostly management and administrative to accommodate more production workers. Inflation is hitting all companies causing price increases and I do see where affordable driving is becoming more and more a problem. But regardless, the EV sales are still very robust and likely to stay that way for a few years.

              On quite another subject, did everyone see the articles on the 2000 head of cattle that died around Ulysses, Kansas recently? They are saying it was the result of the heat and humidity increasing so rapidly the cows couldn’t adjust. Seems like we have talk about such events coming our way. I guess they are here now.

          2. “Maybe it is because Ford has about 135 billion in debt and Tesla has almost none”

            How about that?

            I believe Ford will survive……. but profits for the next five or ten years determine the value of stocks more than anything else.

            Tesla will be making money hand over fist. Ford, being saddled with huge costs associated with being a legacy car company?

            We will have to wait and see.

      2. We shall see—
        But shorting Tesla has been a nightmare for anyone attempting it.
        But a rescission (or depression) is on the horizon.

        1. According to Musk, one of Bill Gates investments was shorting Tesla. He said that months ago, so Bill Gates could have already realized a 40% return. Might compensate for the losses in other investments.

        2. When they can demonstrate a reason for that valuation that doesn’t rely on divine right, sure.

          And look, QE wrapped up and interest rates up means Tesla is going to be more of the blood in the water we’ve seen this week. I’m savouring the death of crypto right now. Musk losing a fortune? Genuinely cannot wait.

  31. Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

    (Unless Europe’s Large Hadron Collider coughs up a surprise, the field of particle physics may wheeze to its end)

    A dead end for physics, so far.
    The Standard Model is fading in the rearview mirror.

    https://www.science.org/content/article/ten-years-after-higgs-physicists-face-nightmare-finding-nothing-else?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=84730d2057-briefing-dy-20220615&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-84730d2057-42316671

  32. “So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

    Voltaire

        1. “Common sense is not so common.”
          ― Voltaire,

          The extent of death and destruction in Mariupol “strongly suggests” serious international law violations that will leave an “indelible mark” on generations to come, according to the UN rights chief, Michelle Bachelet.

          Western and Ukrainian rhetoric claiming Russia will be required to pay reparations for the damage caused by its invasion of Ukraine is not backed by a coherent roadmap based on international law to achieve justice for Ukraine’s victims, a new report prepared by the British thinktank Ceasefire has warned.

          The report, one of the first detailed studies on how reparations for Ukraine might work, says little progress has been made in setting up a global mechanism to require Russia to pay compensation and says the delays must end.

          It says it is remarkable how far plans are lagging in comparison with the number of war crimes investigations being launched, even though history suggests the numbers of Russian soldiers or politicians likely to be prosecuted is low.

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/jun/16/russia-ukraine-war-european-leaders-expected-to-meet-in-kyiv-us-pledges-further-1bn-arms-package-live

          Russia targets full control of south
          Russian forces initially made rapid gains in the south, with their main objective being the creation of a land corridor between Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and areas held by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

          But strong resistance from Ukrainian forces near Mykolaiv in the west and in Mariupol significantly slowed Russian advances.

          Russia is now fully in control of the port city of Mariupol, after a siege lasting more than two months came to an end on 20 May.

          There is a shortage of fresh water and medical facilities in Mariupol and the city is at risk of a major cholera outbreak, according to the MoD.

          https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682

          1. Madeline . BBC is now called ” Bulls*** Broadcasting Corpn ” in UK and Europe . It is also termed as HMV ( a popular record label in 70’s) His Master’s Voice . Don’t pay attention to their drivel . War repatriations from Moscow ? Ha, ha . Who has the b***s to collect ? What is NATO going to do ? Nuke Moscow . ROFL .

            1. “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
              ― Voltaire

    1. The Dow isn’t a real number, it’s part of a marketing campaign to get naive investors to put money in stocks.

      That said, the American stock market is insanely overvalued. Here’s hoping that higher interest rates will make things a little more realistic.

      1. The Dow isn’t a real number, it’s part of a marketing campaign to get naive investors to put money in stocks.

        Now just where did you get that information? What is the source of that bit of wisdom? Who makes up that number? How do they determine what the number is? That is, who benefits from those naive investors?

        The Dow Jones Average is the total weighted number of 30 industrial stocks that changes every time any one of those 30 stocks trades either up or down from the last trade of that stock. Just rattling off shit off the top of your head like that does not impress those among us who know what the Dow really is.

        1. It’s not a real number because when a company fails they take it out of the list and replace it with the latest market favorite. So looking at the long term trend is meaningless.

          In the short term, The Dow is just a random walk. I know the man in the TV talks about it every night, so it seems like it must be important. And of course its perceived importance is a self fulfilling prophecy. However that would also be true of a high priest sacrificing a goat to the sky god every night on TV News and predicting America’s well being for the next day based on the entrails. The configuration of those entrails would have real consequences, but it would be meaningless by itself.

          It’s a cult.

          1. Of course, when a company goes bankrupt or otherwise becomes irrelevant it is replaced on the Dow. Else there would be only half a dozen companies on that index.

            The Dow is just a measure of the market index, nothing more. I think the S&P is better but the Dow has been around for over 100 years and that is just the most popular index. It is no more a random walk than the S&P, the NYSE index, or the NASDAQ index. Its only importance is it is a market indicator, telling us what the market did today. It does not make any prophecies whatsoever. Why would the Dow be any more of a self-fulling prophecy than the S&P? Or perhaps you think the S&P index is also just another tool to ripoff naive investors.

            You, Alimbiquated, are a cynic.

  36. https://www.popsci.com/technology/flow-battery-for-army-fort-carson/

    Sometimes there are some things to be said for having a gigantic MIC that are generally overlooked.
    Making flow batteries work, moving them from drawing boards to actual reality, means paying for the first ones built at scale, and this one will be big enough to be a REAL test bed project.

    I don’t know that flow batteries will ever be built in large numbers, but one thing is for sure. They won’t be, unless somebody builds the first few dozen big ones.

    Six big new solar farms just got the go ahead in Wisconsin.

    https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2022/06/15/alliant-energy-add-six-more-solar-farms-central-wisconsin/7626453001/

    Maybe it isn’t really too late, at least for countries such as the USA, which still have a lot of natural resources.
    Maybe we will get the wake up events we need to go to a war time like economic footing and REALLY PUSH renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation.

      1. From Huck Finn,
        “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”
        These words are those of one of a pair of hucksters fixing to rob an entire town, lol.

        Unfortunately, they fit the narrative of a poorer, hotter, and less free America perfectly.
        Somewhat more than half of our citizens are so abysmally ignorant the realities of today’s world that they are dead sure they know who the enemy is……..

        And they’re dead wrong.

        The poorest county in West Virginia, one of our poorest states, went well over ninety percent for the Republicans last time around……even as the Republicans vowed to cut off the money on which most of them depend for groceries and electricity, not to mention such medical care as they get.

        As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

        ― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

        He was a little early, but he was right . Trump is not only an outright moron, he’s also a dangerous maniac.

        1. Over half of the US reads at less than a 6th grade level.
          In other words, they are illiterate.

        2. “Trump is not only an outright moron, he’s also a dangerous maniac.”

          A reflection of or creation of his voting block.

  37. https://www.eenews.net/articles/doe-heres-where-renewable-costs-are-heading/

    Lets suppose you can get a new solar or wind farm built, using a reasonably low interest rate loan, within the next couple of years, with the loan payment locked in.

    Let’s suppose that inflation continues at three percent or more per year, in terms of every day life, meaning the actual purchase costs of every day goods, from food to housing to gasoline. My guess is that inflation will be double that, maybe worse.

    The price of energy from conventional sources will surely rise AT LEAST as fast.

    Now let us speculate about a the likely cost of energy ( using estimates or guesses provided by any regular here in this forum! ) of the annual actual cash price of gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, gas for home heating, cooking, hot water, etc, taking BOTH depletion AND inflation into account over the next ten or fifteen years.

    I’m personally willing to estimate that electricity, wholesale, will cost twice as much in fifteen years as it does today, if it’s generated using gas, due to the combination of depletion and inflation.

    It occurs to me that anybody who has a lot of wind and or solar capacity that can sell it into the spot market a decade down the road is going to be positioned to make a KILLING.
    And if that doesn’t pan out, when any CONTRACT for sale for a given period of years expires….. the owners of wind and solar farms are likely to be in some pretty tall cotton…. if they have low cost financing for twenty or thirty years from the date of construction.

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