99 thoughts to “Open Thread Non Petroleum, March 15, 2021”

  1. Kinda interesting:
    “in 2021, just how many miles of such advanced rail technology they thought the United States and China now had. The answer, as it happens, is a maximum of 34 miles for the U.S. and nearly 24,000 miles and still rapidly expanding for China.”

    I know a segment of the US population doesn’t like rail (I do), but that is a bit outrageous.

    1. I remember riding the monorail in Seattle, an elevated straddle-beam rail line built for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition (a world’s fair) and thinking: wow, this is the future. It’s only 0.9-miles long but impressive at the time — to me anyway. Seems the locals prefer freeways to subways though I understand Seattle does have an excellent bus system.

      Meanwhile, Vancouver, with the opening of the Evergreen Extension in 2016, has its own “SkyTrain”, the longest rapid transit system in Canada and the longest fully automated driverless system in the world. Maybe we were inspired by Seattle’s modest elevated rail system?

      1. DougL,

        Seattle’s bus system is actually King County’s bus system. It’s called Metro. When quarantining got heavy-duty about a year ago the system was made fare-free and still is as far as I know. You board at the back and don’t approach the driver who has been walled off for safety’s sake.

        It’s quite a system: It provides bus service throughout the county and I believe there is even one bus a week to the crest of the Cascades at Stevens Pass and possibly another run to Snoqualmie Pass. Both are on the Pacific Crest Trail!

        All that having been said, I think service in Seattle has been reduced during the crisis, though I see buses (running mostly empty) on the nearby arterial every time I walk down it each morning.

        Still time for tea

        1. Seems like the Cars held up by Cables are quicker solution than the Boring company. Perhaps we could dual purpose the Transmission lines or use the same rightofway.

          1. Bob Nickson,

            No, no: The rule is tea in the morning, Port after midday if I’ve had a meal, and jam every other day.

            I am in the Pacific time zone you see, and it was still well before midday when I sent my post. I’ve just been finishing Port with an eye to turning in a while from now. I’m an early riser–bakers and I emerge about the same time.

  2. ‘Recent summer droughts in Europe are far more severe than anything in the past 2,100 years, according to a new study.

    An international team, led by the University of Cambridge, studied the chemical fingerprints in European oak trees to reconstruct summer climate over 2,110 years. They found that after a long-term drying trend, drought conditions since 2015 suddenly intensified, beyond anything in the past two thousand years.

    This anomaly is likely the result of human-caused climate change and associated shifts in the jet stream. The results are reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.’

    https://phys.org/news/2021-03-european-summer-droughts-unprecedented-millennia.html

    1. It’s sad. But it will be interesting to see what happens when the sea urchins finally starve to death, as they seem to be on the cusp of. There’s a peak oil metaphor there probably…kelp is a fossil resource…sea urchins are rapidly reproducing humans? Time will tell. Of course, only if we live to see it.

  4. 3.2 million plug-in cars sold worldwide in 2020; growth rate averaging 40% per year. That’s out of about 60 million cars sold total om 2020, so it’s now over 5%. Total worldwide car sales per year peaked at 80 million in 2017; there may be some rebound, but don’t expect much. So, around 2029, 100% of new car sales will be electric. Possibly sooner, if car sales continue to decline, or EV production manages to accelerate even a little. The latter seems quite likely, actually, as specific commitments of large amounts of capital have recently been made by two of the largest car companies in the world.)

    It will probably take about 10-15 more years for the old gassers to be pulled off the road. (India has started to ban cars more than 15 years old. Similar legislation will pass to scrap old gassers once they are no longer sold new.)

    The best estimate I can find is that 40 million cars are scrapped or abandoned each year worldwide, out of a global fleet of 2 billion cars (some of which aren’t used much). So at most, the global fleet is growing by 20 million per year. In 2026, all of that growth will be EVs, and starting that year, the total gas-burning fleet will decline in number every year.

    You can figure out what this’ll do to oil demand. It will *utterly destroy it*. It starts out as a smallish demand drop, but the drop accelerates every year. Peak oil demand has probably already happened, according to most estimates, but it will certainly have happened by 2026.

    What will happen to oil prices? It’s a race between collapsing demand and declining production. It is quite likely that nobody will ever drill another well (though if they do, they help drive the price down and help bankrupt themselves).

    Given the massive drilling binge which drunken oil executives went on right up through 2019, the hangover of excess shale oil won’t dry up for 2 to 5 years after that, or 2021 to 2024, so demand declines will continue to dominate 2021 and 2022, and possibly up through 2024. The desperate financial situation of Saudi Arabia and Russia means that they’ll both open up the spigots and dump as much oil on the market as they can (which they already have been). The Saudis can also see the handwriting on the wall and will want to dump their oil before it becomes completely worthless — but their oil fields seem to have peaked, so they can’t get any more out.

    It is possible that the accelerated decline of the shale oil fields will prop the price up for a while between 2022 and 2024. The regular decline of the traditional fields may go faster than the demand decline between 2024 and 2030, which could also prop the price up for a little while. Certainly not enough to drill new wells, though: since every investor will see the handwriting on the wall, oil companies will have no access to capital.

    The decline rate of the post-peak oil fields (which is all of them), not counting the “juiced” shale fields, seems to be around 6%. The demand decline rate from EV adoption exceeds 6% by, at the *latest*, 2032 (probably earlier, if higher-mileage-per-year cars are replaced first), so after that the oil price must fall continuously, and can only be propped up by shutting in and capping wells.

    We have already had experience with the demand decline rate exceeding the production decline rate, this year, and it drove oil futures below $0. This time it was a temporary demand shock… by 2030 it will be permanent.

    The bankruptcies of Chevron and Exxon, by 2030, should provide an interesting sideshow.

    Failure to analyze demand means that Dennis’s models are no good. There’s no way a $75 price can be sustained past 2030, and I actually doubt it’ll be reached between now and then. Right now, production is down because there’s nowhere to store the oil: distillate storage is full, crude storage is full… production had to be cut. The IEA thinks the glut will clear by the end of 2021, but they’re known to be wild, deranged oil cheerleaders whose predictions always overestimate oil demand, so they’re probably wrong. Probably won’t clear until sometime in 2022.

    1. Another thing to consider is that there will be a skew in the introduction of EVs. Fleet vehicles that use a lot of fuel like buses, taxis and delivery vans are likely to be replaced first, because that makes the most economic sense. As a result, demand for oil would be weaker than the raw number of EVs on the road suggest.

      The combustion industry could cut costs of their vehicles by switching to 48V batteries and junking a lot of the clumsy 20th century tech like power steering, power brakes, fluid based automatic transmissions, camshafts, etc in favor of electric/digital alternatives. Maybe some game changers like microwaves instead of spark plugs could finally be introduced. But this means massive investments in new designs, which nobody seems very interested in.

    2. I hope your optimism about the pace of change is rewarded Nathaniel
      Others who specialize in the transport industry are not projecting such a quick shift in the vehicle oil consumption around the world. https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/
      “there will be 1.4 billion passenger vehicles on the road in 2030”, with EV at less than 10%.

      I suspect that plugin vehicle sales will accelerate briskly, but that it will take a very long time for the fleet of ICE vehicles currently on the road, and to be sold this decade, to be retired.

      1. Probably depends on where you live. The sale of electric cars in Norway overtook those powered by petrol, diesel and hybrid engines last year but where I live I have yet to see ONE EV. Lots of brand spanking new ICE vehicles around here (Interior of Western B.C.), especially F250 and F350 equivalent pickup trucks which seem to be ubiquitous among male and female drivers alike. Also, you can park beside any highway and count hundreds of diesel powered semis going past. Can’t see the big truck fleets changing fast, anywhere.

        New car sales in Norway last year were 141,412, of which 76,789 were fully electric.

        1. Norway is a special case. You’re looking at a very wealthy (ironically due to oil) and tiny population which also subsidised the EV rollout in a way few others could manage. A nation the size of the UK or US is not going to get such deep penetration in such a short time, even with the laws for non-selling of petrol/diesel in the next decade.

          1. Totally agree on all points. Norway is my home away from home and I am fully aware of all the ways it subsidizes EVs and why it is easy for them to pay for this — immense wealth all derived from oil and natural gas sales combined with home grown electricity derived from abundant hydro.

            1. My impression was that Norway doesn’t subsidize EVs as much as it heavily taxes ICEs, and eliminated that punitive tax just for EVs.

              Is that your understanding?

            2. No, Norway subsidizes (and encourages) EVs in numerous ways since the early 1990s to speed up the transition. For example, since 2017 it has been up to the local governments to decide the incentives regarding access to bus lanes and free municipal parking. The Parliament has agreed on implementing a 50 % rule, which means that counties and municipalities can not charge more than 50 % of the price for fossil fuel cars on ferries, public parking and toll roads. There are numerous additional incentives. For example:

              — No purchase/import taxes
              — Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase
              — No annual road tax
              — 50 % reduced company car tax
              — Company car tax reduction reduced to 40%
              — Exemption from 25% VAT on leasing
              — Fiscal compensation for the scrapping of fossil vans when converting to a zero-emission van

            3. Hmmm. Well, the import taxes/VAT add up to very roughly 1/3 of the sales price. That’s a lot.

              People talk about Norway having high income taxes and a progressive tax system, but I was surprised to read that Norway’s general sales tax (VAT) is 25%. Sales taxes are regressive, and in the US anything above 6% is considered high!

        2. Adoption of EVs will certainly show geographical bias. During the transition period, some places will be nearly all EV while some places will be nearly all ICE. I mean, this is how the adoption of unleaded gasoline went; is it really a surprise?

          1. Yes the geographic bias will be, I predict, urban vs. rural, worldwide, for several reasons:

            – Urban ICE car use averages only 8-10 mpg due to frequent stoppages;
            – Range anxiety is more justified in rural areas;
            – Pollution from cars is much worse in urban environments;
            – Gas stations are difficult to locate in urban environments;
            – Urban dwellers skew Democratic/left;
            – Charging station build-out will be much more robust in urban environments due to interest/local government subsidy, etc.

            Unfortunately for a time it will be one more political split here in the US and elsewhere. There’s one caveat – EVs have dramatically more power and speed than ICE cars. As silly as it sounds, this is what makes EV adoption inevitable everywhere.

      2. Corporate management in particular and business people of all sorts never cease to amaze me in two contrasting ways.

        ONE, they are entirely capable of failing to see and identify the sun at high noon on a cloudless day as often as not.

        And two, they sometimes see it for what it is, but in public they’re as good at acting as if it doesn’t exist as any actor on Broadway, for reasons mostly having to do with not upsetting their own business apple cart.

        So……… I’m wondering just how much of the corporate rush to electric cars and trucks is about peak oil……. which is seldom mentioned by anybody in a high position in the transportation biz.

        And so far as that goes, very few people in government seem to say much PUBLICLY about oil supplies,in terms of national economic interests and security, except maybe hard core right wingers in the USA and tin pot dictators types in countries with oil to sell.

        But I find it hard to imagine that most executives in the transportation industry haven’t at least a rudimentary grasp of the fact that with growing numbers of people and cars versus oil coming out of holes in the ground, their own LONG TERM interests mean they HAVE to go electric unless they’re within easy sight of retirement age.

        Of course this doesn’t mean they won’t make short and medium term decisions based on what’s best for them as individuals. I’m not THAT naive, lol.

        I am wondering if anybody here has links to comments made by auto industry executives warning their stockholders and the public that it’s NECESSARY to go electric, because oil supplies really are geologically limited.

        Thanks in advance.

        Thanks in advance for any links.

          1. Thanks but these are old, and when they were new, nobody much was paying any attention.

            Global auto sales have taken off like a rocket since then.

            I haven’t run across anything newer.

      3. Oh, I’m not guessing on plugin adoption. I’m working from a ten-year global trend line. I’ve been following ev-sales.blogspot.com. There’s also nothing to stop the trendline.

        Having researched it, I can say definitively that EV sales are essentially limited by factory production rates, and by how fast factories can be built. That 40% growth rate is how fast companies can get factories built, basically.

        BNEF is, hilariously, guessing; that EV report is really way below their standard of work.

        2. Nathanael , disagree . The limitation is the price at the entry level . Too expensive . Talk with a lot of distributers of VW group (Audi, Skoda, VW, Seat) and PSA group ( Peugeot , Citreon ) . This is their general comment . A lot of interest but very poor closures . At least that is what is here in Benelux .

          1. Hole in Head-
            Purchase price parity between ICE and EV will be sometime in mid decade for equivalent models.
            Also the cost/mile and maintenance costs are much more favorable for EV. Here is one of many reports demonstrating this point- https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/evs-offer-big-savings-over-traditional-gas-powered-cars/

            As I see it, the big hurdle in the transition from petrol to plug vehicles is simply inertia. It will take a long time to retire the fleet of ICE that are on the road now, and that will be purchased during the remainder of this decade. ICE vehicles are not like those of our youth. The engines can last a very long time.
            And Nathaniel raises a valid point- the factory production limitation (and battery supply) for EV’s are a bottleneck.

            2. Hicks , parity etc are like the horizon always visible but never reached . However that is not the problem . Do you think that the financial system will be the same in 2025/26 as it is in 2021 ? The period of industrial civilisation where ^ if you build it ,they will buy it is over ^ . The trend was already in before Covid , the virus acted as the catalyst . Take away the trillions printed in fake money and this party was long over . Today 20 million in USA are officially unemployed ( the labor participation rate is MIA) and how many are surviving because of forbearance of rent and mortgage payment ? 42 million on food stamps . How many on food banks ? In Europe 30-35% of the workforce is on govt support one way or another . In India 32 million are pushed out of the middle class and 75 million went into poverty because of Covid . Unemployment in China is 13.1% as per latest figures . Who will buy ? The world is broke . The constraint is affordability .
              P.S : The middle class in India is defined as a monthly income of range $ 300-550 per month . Poverty is defined as less than $ 2 per day .

            3. You’ve brought up this theme before, and before, and I acknowledge that global poverty and decline in universal buying power is a possible dominant theme.
              But I don’t think it is the most likely theme/outcome in the next decade or two.
              This bulldozer (the human economic engine) is rolling on.

          2. HiH,

            My experience is that dealers don’t want to admit it, but they don’t want to sell EVs. Customers who ask about EVs will be steered away from them.

            Dealers make at least half their net revenue from maintenance and repairs, and EVs have much lower maintenance costs.

            It’s no accident that Tesla doesn’t use dealers – it’s a major key to Tesla’s success.

            Dealers are a major problem for legacy car makers.

        3. Nathaniel,
          I agree, the main limiting factor in the spread of EVs is the lack of batteries.

          1. Yep—
            Lithium ion was put into production in the early 1990’s by the Japanese.
            It has been a while comrades.
            (not that improvements have been made to lithium ion— but)

  5. With all the talk focused on EVs, lets not forget our poor oceans. For example:

    WHAT DOES THE OCEAN DO FOR THE CLIMATE?

    A new study reveals for the first time figures on the amount of carbon released into the ocean through trawling of the ocean floor. This fishing method, which drags heavy nets across the ocean floor, is pumping one gigatonne of carbon emissions into the ocean every year, equivalent to all emissions from global aviation.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56430542

  6. GREENLAND’S ICE MELTED AWAY AT LEAST ONCE IN LAST MILLION YEARS

    “The ice sheet atop Greenland — which holds enough frozen water to swamp coastal cities worldwide — has melted to the ground at least once in the last million years despite CO2 levels far lower than today, stunned scientists have reported. The surprise discovery of plant fossils in soil samples extracted in the 1960s by US army engineers from beneath two kilometres of ice is smoking-gun proof that Greenland — three times the size of Texas — was covered with lichen, moss and perhaps trees in the not-so-distant past. It is also a red flag for the accelerating impact of climate change.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-03-greenland-ice-million-years.html

    1. “Stunned scientists” figuring out earth behaves as it does, with or without man. Maybe one day they will realize the time to worry is when the climate stops changing like it always has.

      1. The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago. I expect you don’t understand the significance of this but fortunately climate scientists do.

        1. I can understand the significance, but nobody knows a thing about what consequences may be because earth behaves independently of man. Climate scientists are like consultants. Paid based on the studies and presentations they give. So they say what they think the people who pay their salaries want to hear.

      2. Maybe one day genius level characters who condescend to tell us peasants about how scientists know nothing and they know everything will take time to explain how it is that THEY know the climate has always changed.

        SURELY they’re not accepting the word of SCIENTISTS for this knowledge. They must be getting it from some other source.

        How about it, Mr. William Potash?

        How is it that you know the climate has always changed?

        Did you learn about it reading a sacred text ?

        Or did you learn all about it listening to Sean Hannity, Trump, Rush Limbaugh, and the owners of coal companies?

    2. Until you can explain the **why**, it has no context with present day climate variations. Back then, what was the earth’s orbit? What was the sun’s output? What was the level of volcanic activity? What were the ocean currents like? What were the general fauna and flora like back then? How did they all come together to create a green Greenland?

      To me, the phys.org piece is a wake up call to investigate the reasons **why**. A million years later, are the conditions the same? Not likely but physics hasn’t changed. What were the inputs that caused the Greenland ice field to melt and allow vegetative growth?

      Yes, it is a “red flag” but it would be more productive to stow the flag and have earnest and productive discussions on the reasons why there was no ice cap 1 million years ago. We might learn something and have something to compare to today’s situation. It’d be a lot more interesting.

    3. CO2 is only one of many important global temperature variables. The instability of earth’s climate is quite apparent. As is shown by the instability of ice sheets at the poles.There are no independent variables in the climate system. Changes in cloud cover and snow/ice area have much stronger effects than CO2. CO2 absorbtion is limited to a narrow band in LWIR spectrum which overlaps H2O. Both are saturated and depend upon line broadening for increased effect. CO2 as a trigger and moderator to climate change fits the physics far more than as the major driving force. So it’s not surprising that Greenland melts at lower CO2 levels.

      1. Now that’s interesting and well worth questioning, absorbing, and expanding upon. Thank you Woody!!

          1. Climate ‘Photoshopping’?

            Hi Paul,
            I wonder if it is a little like; to help clear the photographic noise of a digital camera chip in the taking of photos of stars at night (noisy high ISO values), multiple exposures can be taken of the same shot, and a ‘difference’, ‘subtraction’ or whatever can be applied to all frames/exposures so that more or less only the actual ‘pattern’ of the stars can be isolated and revealed.

            So, in your case, might it be as relatively simple as taking a whole lot of ‘snaps’ of the climate at various points in time (core samples, current sampling, etc.) and then do an analysis wherein you remove the noise and get a ‘clean’ pattern or patterns of climate fluctuations over time?

            Reflections

            1. The pattern match for the El Nino variability is to use tidal cycles as input to Laplace’s Tidal Equations, just as Laplace imagined it in 1776 when he devised the equations.

            2. Fair enough, thanks.

              A Laplacian based image filtering using switching noise detector

              “Abstract

              This paper presents a Laplacian-based image filtering method. Using a local noise estimator function in an energy functional minimizing scheme we show that Laplacian that has been known as an edge detection function can be used for noise removal applications. The algorithm can be implemented on a 3×3 window and easily tuned by number of iterations. Image denoising is simplified to the reduction of the pixels value with their related Laplacian value weighted by local noise estimator. The only parameter which controls smoothness is the number of iterations. Noise reduction quality of the introduced method is evaluated and compared with some classic algorithms like Wiener and Total Variation based filters for Gaussian noise. And also the method compared with the state-of-the-art method BM3D for some images. The algorithm appears to be easy, fast and comparable with many classic denoising algorithms for Gaussian noise.

              Keywords: Local noise estimator; Denoising; Total variation; Energy functional; Laplacian”

  7. Solar Industry Sets Records in 2020, On Track to Quadruple by 2030

    WASHINGTON, D.C. and HOUSTON, TX — The U.S. solar industry grew 43% and installed a record 19.2 gigawatts (GWdc) of capacity in 2020, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight 2020 Year-in-Review report, released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.

    For the second year in a row, solar led all technologies in new electric-generating capacity added, accounting for 43%. According to Wood Mackenzie’s 10-year forecast, the U.S. solar industry will install a cumulative 324 GWdc of new capacity to reach a total of 419 GWdc over the next decade.

    This happened under a Republican president wit a Republican controlled senate and the Republicans are not known for any support of renewable energy. In fact they are notoriously hostile to it. Under the Biden administration it is not hard to imagine the dark blue portion of the bars in the graph below disappearing completely. Tony Seba in his 2014 book “Clean Disruption” projected that solar PV would be the last man standing by 2030. Doesn’t look so far fetched now.

    1. They care about making money.

      Someone should tell the people in “flyover states” that by building wind turbines solar farms and transmission lines they can extract big bucks from the “coastal elites”.

      US electricity would be fully renewable in 10 years or less.

  8. Coal drops to lowest proportion of US generation since 1949, but EIA doesn’t expect it to last

    Dive Insight:

    Last year may have given the energy industry a glimpse of the future — but it may only be a temporary glimpse, according to the EIA.

    Coal-fired generation has fallen 61% since 2008, and fell below nuclear powered generation for the first time in decades last year, according to the EIA. And while current economic and social trends have put downward pressure on coal generation capacity, which has dropped by nearly a third since 2008, the EIA believes the current lows are a result of short-term price trends brought on by the pandemi

    As usual, the EIA cannot see the writing on the wall. If you look at the chart below from the solar story I posted earlier, you wonder why utilities would revive coal when the competitive pressure is now coming from wind, solar and batteries?

    Assuming that the average output of the solar PV installed in 2020 would amount to 25% of it’s nameplate capacity, you are looking at capacity equal to almost four nuclear reactors installed in one year with lots more in the pipeline for this year! But, the EIA doesn’t expect the downturn in coal to last? Yeah, right!

    1. “Assuming that the average output of the solar PV installed in 2020 would amount to 25% of it’s nameplate capacity, you are looking at capacity equal to almost four nuclear reactors installed in one year with lots more in the pipeline for this year! ”

      Indeed- The USA cap weighted average CF for installed solar is 26.5%.
      “The U.S. solar industry grew 43% and installed a record 19.2 gigawatts (GWdc) of capacity in 2020”
      is in fact equal to the output of over 5 new nuclear plants (1000 MW size).

      https://emp.lbl.gov/pv-capacity-factors

  9. Although a few would suggest an end to fossil fuels in the near future, the fact remains that these fuels continue to generate the energy that sustains the economic engine keeping the United States economy healthy and vibrant.

    1. Perry- true, but there is this feature of fossil fuels that is inconvenient to the economic near future. You know- depletion of the resource. Fossil fuels aren’t going to end- they are going to be in a state of shortage.

      Some very well informed people believe that we are already beyond peak global oil supply, and many others think we are very close to it.
      Any bright and aware planner/culture would be hard at work developing and deploying alternative sources of energy for the time when we run short on fossil fuel.
      Alternatives- such as wind or solar energy.

      Nothing complicated or mysterious here.

  10. Perry , just to add . Not only the US economy , the whole world’s economic and financial structure .

    1. Perry and Hole in head,

      The fact remains that renewables are growing at rapid rates (in percentage change in output), and the World economy is using energy with greater efficiency (real GDP per unit of energy consumed in Exajoules), before very long the ramp up of energy provided by wind and solarl exceed the growth in demand for energy and then the writing is on the wall for the death of the fossil fuel industry where costs are continually rising due to depletion and prices will start to fall as demand grows more slowly than supply (or demand actually shrinks).

      Assuming the future will look like the present is always a bad bet, imo.

        1. Jevon’s Paradox only really applies when price is the limiting factor in consumption.

          The amount of solar available is vast ,but what would it be used for? One idea is desalination. another is synthesizing rocket fuel for extraterrestrial hijinks. Rockets need insanely huge amounts of energy to get small payloads out of the gravity well. Computing will also continue to consume more and more energy. As hot countries get richer, air conditioning is also growing, but mostly thanks to poorly designed machines and bad architecture.

          Other than that, it’s hard to come up with ideas. I think it’s more likely that energy demand will level off and go into the slow decline worldwide we already see in rich countries.

          1. Jevon’s Paradox only really applies when price is the limiting factor in consumption.

            Oh my goodness, how did you arrive at that bit of logic? Yes, price is always a factor but Jovon’s Paradox, when it is a factor, is what drives the price. Jevon’s Paradox is about the least available resource required to produce a product. If there is not enough lithium to produce lithium batteries, then the price of lithium batteries will skyrocket. But a limited supply of lithium would be driving that price.

            1. “Jevon’s Paradox is about the least available resource required to produce a product.”

              That sounds more like Liebig’s law of the minimum. Jevon’s Paradox is that increases in efficiency paradoxically result in increased consumption, no?

      2. Confusing Increase With Success

        “The fact remains that renewables are growing at rapid rates…” ~ Dennis Coyne

        You could say that ‘The fact remains that more and more lemmings are running off a cliff.’:
        That’s not success just because something is increasing.
        Same sort of thing with becoming more efficient with fossil fuels in the wake of their depletion.

        The ‘world economy’– whatever that means– is hardly economical, Dennis, and you know it. So why play pretend? Are you that intellectually locked into your religion/cult-of-pseudoeconomy or am I missing somethings here? How do we unlock you? Do you have a key somewhere or is it hopeless?

        Anyway, one of the many elephants in the room appears that, insofar as we may increasingly be less able to have the corporate freak shops feed us, via their grubby, greedy, sickly hands– undergirded by their rules they call laws– with its so-called food from depleted/despoiled/’dead’ soils with mined/imported minerals added, and ship it out to us, etc., more of us will be doing it– you know, our new jobs?– more locally, which will have big-time knock-on effects to this bizarro economy of yours.

        I mean, if more of us are feeding and doing things for ourselves again, who will be left to feed your ‘economy’ and assorted corporate, economic and political parasites behind it and behind solar panels and electric cars?

    1. I can see flywheels working in a weapon, where it can be spun up over minutes and slowed down over milliseconds maybe.

      BUT…… while I’m no engineer, I have a fairly decent grasp of what it costs to cast and machine a big old wheel weighing up into the hundreds of pounds, maybe a lot more, and mounting it on a frame sturdy enough to contain it in the event of the failure of a high speed bearing or axle, add all the stuff needed to the wheel and housing to create a generator, add on to that the necessary controls and switches, a big assed concrete pad to anchor the entire machine down, electrical interconnections to isolate this potential electrical bomb from the grid, etc etc etc.

      Even if such a thing goes into mass production, I can’t see it ever costing less than several multiples of a battery with almost or no moving parts( maybe a battery has a cooling fan, etc, ) having an equivalent capacity.
      And I forgot, it will also need to be wired in such a way it can spin itself up when wind or solar juice is flowing into it, lol.

      Now maybe sometime in the future, such a flywheel can be made out of carbon fiber for the most part, and run on air bearings, but if that comes to pass, my money says it will be at least a couple of decades before we see an ad for one for sale.

        1. Gerry-Rigging

          How about putting folks like you in a giant ‘hamster flywheel’ to generate electricity? We could call it the Gerry-Rig.
          In a way, it’s not too far from reality when you consider such things as theft-as-taxation, monied-/means-of-production-elite land-&-labor-grabbing, wage slavery and general neo-feudalism.

      2. But can I buy a mechanical watch ever again? That’s what is sounds like. Maybe we’ll be back to a trebuchet? 🙂 Instead of launching a rock it flings a generator shaft. 🙂

        This might make a good Monty Python skit down the road.

  13. Intersting demographic change accelerations occurring due to Covid: Wealthier developed countries are having a baby bust due to economic anxiety while poorer countries are seeing a baby boom due to loss of access to birth control for women. This could seriously exacerbate existing nationalist tendencies long-term, and I’m sure lots of things that I’ve never thought of:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56415248

  14. This may be of interest to those are engaged in following the transition from petrol vehicles to electric vehicles. What is the timeframe, what are the prospects?
    According to one EV enthusiast who has been digging into the lithium battery industry [batteries being the bottleneck]- the global manufacturing capacity of lithium batteries will be the limiting factor on supply of vehicles. It is not a geologic lithium constraint that is a problem, rather it is the mining/processing/manufacturing ramp up pace that will limit supply in relation to demand.
    Simply, it looks likely that by 2030 the world will not be able to crank out enough lithium batteries to enable a rapid transition from petrol vehicles at the rate needed to reach the goal of ICE vehicle replacement/retirement.

    “there’s a production pipeline rolling that will lead to much more growth in the electric vehicle market, but nothing close to the growth that would get the market to …electric vehicle sales in 2030 at 50 million or more vehicles a year, let alone 100 million vehicles a year.”

    For reading some more of the authors own words and specifics, here is the link
    https://cleantechnica.com/2021/03/21/lithium-other-battery-mineral-experts-30-50-ev-market-share-in-2030-upper-limit/

    1. By 2030 EVs won’t have replaced the current fleet. But they will be so cheap that having an ICE will seem like a luxury most people won’t be able to afford.

      1. HI Alimbiquated,

        Methinks thou art afflicted with the prejudices of the liberal elite, lol.

        This is intended as humor, please don’t be offended.

        Every single conventional or stereotypical liberal I know, with the exception of a very few who have fallen on hard times, has the lifestyle and economic expectations of a person who earns enough money , and is willing and comfortably able, to spend it on something that depreciates away to nothing within a few years.
        ( Young liberals, come to think of it, sometimes ten years out of university, can’t always afford a new car either. The value of a bacheler’s degree in social work is considerably less than the value of a two year degree in any medical technology from a community college.)

        A new car is typically the biggest purchase, other than a house, most people ever make.

        Now if I were to scrimp, being ok in terms of property ( I have a good bit but in a part of the country where prices are very modest) but poor in terms of cash, I could maybe afford a new car.

        But there’s no way in hell I’ll ever buy one. My old Buick, which is reliable, and depreciated to peanuts, gets twenty mpg on mountain roads. My old F150 four by four gets from ten to sixteen, depending on what I’m doing.

        Maintenance AND gasoline for both of them averages maybe a couple of hundred bucks a month, versus at least five hundred to make a new car payment, with full coverage insurance, etc.

        Reality for more than half of the people in this country.

        1. Hi Mac, you wrote: Every single conventional or stereotypical liberal I know, with the exception of a very few who have fallen on hard times, has the lifestyle and economic expectations of a person who earns enough money , and is willing and comfortably able, to spend it on something that depreciates away to nothing within a few years.

          Now that is the strangest definition of a liberal I have ever read. And I think it is simply wrong. I will use my extended family as an example.

          My extended family is about half and half, half liberal, and half conservative. I will describe the conservative half first. About one-third, of that half, have prospered in their economic endeavors greatly. That is they have made a lot of money with their labors. They are almost to the man, and woman, right-wing conservative Republicans. That is when they got money they got the religion of Republicanism. And I must add that they did not become bigoted white supremacists just because they came into money. Only those who were such bigots before they got money were such, they just didn’t change. Money didn’t change their hearts, just their political orientation.

          The other two-thirds of that half are dirt poor white supremacists. They are just naturally Bible-thumping Republicans as all white supremacists quite naturally are. They all love God and hate gays.

          The liberal half of my extended family are mostly middle-class people who love all humanity regardless of the color of their skin, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

          My point is your definition is just not correct. Money makes people more conservative, not more liberal.

          1. Hi Ron,
            I’m damned glad to see you are still your usual crusty old self and hope and pray you are feeling good and catching some fish and seeing some pretty sunrises and sunsets.

            “But they will be so cheap that having an ICE will seem like a luxury most people won’t be able to afford.”

            Read my comment within the context of replying to this remark, humorously, I will add.

            Go on out there and find yourself a hundred or a thousand liberal voter Democrats, and the VAST majority of them will be teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, people with some education earning a salary, or owning a business, that allows them to afford a new car once in a while.

            Let’s not forget that EVERYBODY HERE, myself included, makes pretty much constant fun of how stupid most conservatives are. A college education doesn’t match up all that well with stupidity.

            “The liberal half of my extended family are mostly middle-class people” .

            Just what I said. Most of the liberal people I know, nearly all of them as a matter of fact, are middle class, which means they can afford new cars.

            I did type too fast without thinking and should have added that I know some poor liberals who have not fallen on hard times. They grew up in liberal environments but have failed to make it in the job market and so are working at jobs that don’t pay much…. lots of people with degrees in the wrong fields are working in restaurants or driving cabs or stocking shelves in super markets, etc. I know a couple of women and three or four men at the moment in that situation, out of university with a degree, and unable to find a job that pays any better, because their degree isn’t really a qualification for any particular kind of work.

            It’s a classic conundrum that the harder up you are, the more likely you are to be a conservative if you have a white skin…… which goes along with being religious and ignorant of the larger world.

            And being in a hurry, I failed to mention that I know quite a few black people who are mostly liberals in terms of how they vote, because the ones that DO vote vote ninety percent plus for Democrats.

            But other than for their political leanings in terms of voting, they tend to be very conservative….. they worship the same God and Jesus my folks worship, lol.

            They don’t believe in abortion, or extramarital sex, or not being self supporting, or robbing or stealing or collecting welfare…… if they’re real black liberals.

            If they’re the kind of blacks who DO rob, steal, deal dope, etc, JUST LIKE the white trash side of my own family, well, they aren’t political at all. They don’t vote, and among the ones I’ve met of this sort of people, both black and white, not one out of three dozen could tell you the name of his Senators or his Congress critter, or the name of any politician except maybe the local sheriff and the President of the USA.

            Liberals who have always been in the middle class, surrounded by other middle class people from similar backgrounds and communities just don’t seem to actually UNDERSTAND being poor.

            I do. I have lived all my life in close contact with some very poor people, some of them kin to me. What they have to say to me, and what they have to say to a social worker, etc, are as far separated as the east and the west.

            Of course a lot of hypocritical fake Christian conservatives earn good money or own businesses that make a good profit.They can afford new cars too.

            And all I can say at this point is thank Sky Daddy that lots of people do trade off good cars and trucks while they’re still in good shape and will run another ten years at least. Otherwise I would have to spend fifty grand on a new pickup to get one like the old one I’m driving…….. which cost me only a couple of thousand plus a couple more fixing it up.

            It will almost for sure outlast ME.

            My original and only real point was that half the country can’t afford a new car, and will never be able to afford a new car, but that virtually every discussion involving economics and lifestyles among liberal middle class people is based on the assumption that everybody is a middle class person…….. and can afford middle class stuff.

            Alimbiquated, who is an intellectually capable individual said a new electric car would be a no brainer…… and it will be …… if you can afford a new car.

            All my liberal friends, relatives, and acquaintances, taken as a group, talk about getting rid of their car as soon as it shows some signs of wear and tear or starts needing any significant repair.It’s followed by action.

            They don’t quite ever seem to understand that because I’ve spent the last decade and a half making nothing in terms of salary or business income looking after my parents that I don’t have that option………. it just doesn’t fucking REGISTER.

            The one exception to this observation is when liberals, who are almost invariably middle class, are discussing poverty…… which they mostly don’t understand very well AT ALL.

            (I’m as we say in the hills, broke but not busted, and I am actually worth more net from one year to the next by a fair bit……. but in order to have cash, I would have to sell some property, and I’m in love with my land. It goes all the way back to the time when my people were peasants. You get some land, and you hang onto it.

      2. Alim- I would amend your statement to something like- ‘new’ ICE will seem like a luxury….(or simply a stupid purchase).
        However, the vast majority of the global fleet in 2030 will still be ICE because it will take a very long time to cycle through the current inventory of ICE (plus the ones that will be purchased this decade). The immense inertia of fleet turnover.

        And as that article pointed out- the manufacturing chain of batteries will not be able to ramp up in time to hasten the transition. At the current pace of things. The ramp up in lithium battery production is impressive, but greatly inadequate.
        At least that is what the author of the article is positing.

        More on the industry-
        https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/top-electric-vehicle-markets-dominate-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-growth
        https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/global-lithium-ion-cell-manufacturing-capacity-to-quadruple-to-1.3-twh-by-2030/

        Data/projections point to a fourfold increase in battery production by 2030. How many EV’s will that enable?

        1. Up here, transport Canada set targets to have 10 per cent of all light-duty cars be electric by 2025, 30 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2040. The most recent analysis suggests Canada will only reach between four and six per cent by 2025 and 10 per cent by 2030. No talk of replacing the thousands of heavy diesel powered trucks.

          https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA871CA871&q=What+percentage+of+cars+will+be+electric+by+2030&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1pMTfmMTvAhV5M1kFHTwYDBAQ1QIwG3oECB4QAQ&biw=854&bih=392

  15. MAJOR ‘STATE OF THE PLANET’ REPORT OUT IN ADVANCE OF FIRST NOBEL PRIZE SUMMIT

    “In a single human lifetime, largely since the 1950s, we have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. Now, just a few plants and animals dominate the land and oceans. Our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient, and more prone to shocks than before. Humanity must become effective planetary stewards. About 96% of all mammals by weight are us, H. Sapiens, and our livestock, or cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo or dolphins.”

    I’m still waiting to see the first EV in our area, lots of brand new pickups and SUVs though.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-03-major-state-planet-advance-nobel.html

    1. “About 96% of all mammals by weight are us, H. Sapiens, and our livestock, or cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo…”

      And the vast majority of the surviving wild animals are living on the marginal habitat.
      The lands that humans can’t use for agriculture or industrial forestry.
      Small patches, steep, rocky, dry. Isolated small pockets of breeding grounds, Migration paths limited by human intrusion.

      Another net 1 billion people to arrive on the food lines within 14 yrs.

      1. Don’t forget zoos, and aquariums. As long as we have these you grandchildren will still be able to see elephants, gorillas and dolphins.

        1. That’s what I’ve been saying for years. Also we have lots of high quality nature footage shot in HD, 4K, 8K and IMAX so no animal can really truly go extinct anymore.

        2. That was the late Julian Simon’s argument. However, he was serious, he really believed that was the way to keep animals from going extinct. He also believed that animals had no rights or value except those that served mankind. It was all explained in his book: “The Ultimate Resource”. That resource was of course human beings. The more the better he argued.

          1. Almost sounds like prototypical religious nonsense. “…be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it.” Well, we’ve certainly done that — and created a colossal fucking mess in the process.

      2. About 96% of all mammals by weight are us, H. Sapiens, and our livestock, or cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo or dolphins.”

        It’s worse than that.

        Paul Chefuek, using data supplied by Vaclav Smil here: Harvesting the Biosphere, calculated that only 3% of World Terrestrial Veberate Biomass are wild animals. That is not just mammals but birds, amphibians, reptiles, or any animal with a backbone. The rest, 97% are humans and their domestic animals.

        Indicators of Overuse of the World’s Natural Resources

        Looking strictly at terrestrial vertebrates, other than humans and their animals, there has been an absolute disaster. 10,000 years ago, humans and their animals represented less than one-tenth of one percent of the land and air vertebrate biomass of the earth. Now they are 97 percent.

  16. VW says they will feature V2G and V2L and V2V. While V2G would be good for Fleets,
    I have zero interest in interacting with the collapsing grid.
    V2V is critical, You need to be able to help get a buddy’s car home.
    Very costly to maintain / disable / replace cells in a Tesla Pak. That’s a disaster in the long run.

    1. LongTimber , please explain what are V2G ,V2L and V2V . First time I am reading these . Tks .

  17. hmmm——

    “US power plants will consume 16% more coal this year than in 2020, and then another 3% in 2022, the Energy Information Administration said last week. China and India, which account for almost two-thirds of coal demand, have no plans to cut back in the near term.”

  18. I don’t know where you get your ridiculous ideas about what liberals think. Can you name any specific liberal who thinks that?

    Anyone at all familiar with the car market knows that the used car market is much bigger than the new car market. And used ICE vehicles will get very cheap towards the end of the decade, like horsemeat hamburgers were in the 1920s, and for much the same reason.

    One of the oddities of cheap used cars is that they drive UP the price of new cars. The reason is that leases on new cars are lower if the resale value of the car is high when the lease runs out. The lease payments have to cover the loss in value.

    Since ICEs have higher fuel and maintenance costs than EVs, new ICE leases are likely to get very expensive. There is also some risk that car companies go broke, because millions of leased cars are on their balance sheets. That is one reason stock prices are so low. It is also a big reason they will stop building ICEs if they can.

    1. Alimbiquated,

      Part of what you’re saying isn’t completely spelled out: that even people who don’t lease face the same problem: accelerated depreciation. The small minority who keep their car for it’s life (like me) aren’t affected, but most people trade in their cars in 2 to 4 years, and will see much lower trade-in values, which leaves them upside down on their loans, or at least faced with a much higher cost of buying their next vehicle.

    2. “I don’t know where you get your ridiculous ideas about what liberals think. Can you name any specific liberal who thinks that?”

      Thinks what exactly? Thinks in terms of routinely being able to afford a new car without really having to sacrifice anything else in terms of their day to day life?

      Name one?

      Sure I can. My baby sister is a stereotypical liberal with one adult child, a master’s degree, and a two income household with over six figures in retirement income, living in a place where really nice houses are cheap and taxes are low….. Tennessee. It just never occurs to her to drive a car more than three or four years, and if you ask her why, she says she doesn’t want to be bothered with dealing with any repairs or extensive maintenance, etc. Says she had enough of that sort of problem back when she first left home, lol.

      I live in the Bible Belt and half the people I know are as ignorant as the day is long, ignorant enough to believe trump is a good man, honest, upright, and patriotic, lol. But I don’t spend any more time socially with such people than necessary for maintaining good relations with neighbors and family.

      The other half of the people I know mostly live elsewhere, given that I retired on the backwoods farm, but up until about ten years ago, I spent a third or more of my time in or near the Fan District in Richmond, Virginia, and my social life there involved mostly professional people such as grad students, teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, and various business owners. I had a “special grad student” ID issued by VCU, to which I was entitled because I took at least one course almost every semester, so as to have access to the university library and other facilities, access to programs such as guest speakers, etc.

      THANK SKY DADDY for cell phones, lol. I spend an hour or more almost every day talking to people I don’t actually see more than once every few months, but we don’t have to be face to face to have a good conversation about any of the things discussed here in the open topic thread, such as overshoot, politics, renewable energy, etc……. or about classic novels or what they caught fishing in the Chesapeake Bay the last trip, or what I caught in the New River near where I live.

      So……. I know a lot of liberals, and I maintain that generally speaking they think in terms of having middle class incomes, BECAUSE they HAVE such incomes, and spending money on new cars is pretty much a given for people with middle class incomes……. once they’re established in their careers.

      1. OFM,

        A greater percent of low income are democrats. Now, some aren’t liberal, but the correlation between income and liberal views is pretty weak. If you use legality of abortion as a proxy for “liberal”, you can see a very weak association in the following:

        Percent that believe should be illegal in all circumstances:
        Income less than $40k: 27%
        Income between $40k and 100K: 21%

        Not a big difference.

        https://www.statista.com/statistics/1079527/abortion-support-income-level-legalization-us/

        1. You can usually tell them by their intellect. There are a few very smart conservatives out there, a very few. Like the mob that stormed the Capital on January 6th. Most of them had to be pretty dense to think they were doing “the right thing”. At any rate, I like John Stuart Mill’s take on them.

          John Stuart Mill > Quotes > Quotable Quote

          “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives…

          I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power.”

          John Stuart Mill ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 )

        2. I’m literally up to my ASS in poor people, and have been around poor people from New York as far south as Georgia often enough to know about poor people’s politics. Been lots of other places but didn’t stay long enough to really understand the local people’s politics.

          The BIGGEST single DISCRETE reason I can think of that explains why the Democrats don’t OWN the USA, politically, is that poor people are the ones who are most likely to fail to vote.

          Now I was talking to a couple of nice black ladies ,one middle aged, one twentyish with a kid with her, mother, daughter, grandchild, in line a few days back at the drug store, and we got to bitching about the price of meds, living expenses, etc together. Solid connection, conversationally.

          And then I sort of mentioned that they wouldn’t BE standing in line counting their ones and fives and deciding what they WOULDN’T buy so they could pay for their prescription………. and said I have no doubt you ladies are registered to vote…… they weren’t and were very uncomfortable with the idea of voting. I didn’t have an opportunity to really discover WHY, but I think it’s part of the Jim Crow legacy.

          This was in MAYBERRY, the mythical Andy Griffith home town, Mt Airy NC. The community all around is thoroughly and peaceably integrated. There are black cops, black politicians, ( but the R’s dominate ), lots of black teachers, business owners, etc. Nobody raises an eyebrow in Mayberry these days if they see a black guy with a white girl, or vice versa, which also happens but is not as common.

          Now are they liberals, or not, IF they don’t vote?

          North Carolina is a fast growing, business oriented, business first sort of place, and would be a blue state already except for being gerrymandered to the nth degree.

          Wages and salaries are lower compared to say New York, but I was just talking to a Yankee from the Big Apple who retired and moved here, and he says that he could make only half what he could there, as a mason, but he bought a house here for one third or less what a comparable house in a comparable neighborhood would have cost him up there. Taxes are lower, crime is moderate or less, the schools are about as good, etc. He can live about as well in my area on half as he could in NY on twice the money.

          So you can’t really say NC is a poor state, compared to W Va or Louisiana or Mississippi, etc.

          West Virginia and other rural states are chock full of poor people. You can’t prove to me that poor people are mostly liberals going by their voting record. The R’s OWN small town and rural America, as a general proposition.

          Just about any body in this forum will agree without thinking twice that the dumber, the more ignorant, and the poorer you are, assuming you’re white, the more likely it is you will be a conservative and a Republican.

          When I see statistics that seriously conflict with my own real world observations, Twain’s observation comes to mind.

          There’s lies, damned lies, and statistics.

          This last line or two are jokes, in case anybody is reading me too literally.
          I could be wrong. I thought I was wrong once, lol, but found out later I was right.

          1. “Just about any body in this forum will agree without thinking twice that the dumber, the more ignorant, and the poorer you are, assuming you’re white, the more likely it is you will be a conservative and a Republican. ”

            Yes, and there is a few other categories of people that land heavily in republican voting camp, even to the point of readily voting for a leader with overt fascist tendencies.
            -one category is the type of person who puts their personal perceived benefit far above that of the common good. Simply- who more likely makes me personally a winner- to hell with the country. These people can range from super rich to super poor, and cuts across race and religion lines.
            -the second category are those who are religious fundamentalists, especially Christian (but not only).
            -third are those who are culturally ‘white supremacists’. This overlaps with the automatic weapon crowd.

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