132 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, March 25, 2024”

  1. I’ve been too busy to dig out the trump truth social merger with the other company.

    But what I know about it stinks, given that there’s a shit load of money involved in something that appears to be a new version of a pump and dump scheme.
    Or maybe most of the money involved belongs to various super rich outfits willing to bet on trump winning and thereby having insider access.

    Or maybe most of the money belongs to maga types who put it in the collection plate rather than paying their electric bill.?

    I hope somebody here knows enough to throw some serious sunshine on it.

            1. That’s funny until one realizes the dangers

              Goebbels “liked to say that Jesus Christ has been a master of propaganda and that the propagandist must be the man with the greatest knowledge of souls.”

              Albert Speer, told the Nuremberg Tribunal “that what distinguished the Third Reich from all previous dictatorships was its use of all the means of communication to sustain itself and to deprive its objects of the power of independent thought.”

              Joseph Goebbels, the appointed minister of propaganda of Nazi Germany, once said: “There are two ways to make a revolution. You can blast your enemy with machine guns until he acknowledges the superiority of those holding the machine guns. That is one way. Or you can transform the nation through a revolution of the spirit …

          2. WEEKENDPEAK —
            You can get an authentic God Bless America Bible for a mere $59,99. What are you waiting for?

          3. “A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.

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

      2. It’s quite obvious at first glance that it’s a con man’s dream.

        But it’s not as simple as it looks at first glance.

        I’m sure some of the smelliest details will be brought out over the next months.

        It’s likely imo that there are many thousands of nickel and dime level trump foot soldiers who put in a few bucks each, believing in the con.

        Furthermore imo there will be thousands more who put in larger amounts, into four figures or more, hoping to get their foot in the door, to do some business with his administration if he is re elected.

        It could be that quite a few laws have been or will be broken, and that some people will be going to jail, assuming trump loses and isn’t in a position to cover up for them.

        For now, it’s my guess that anybody who is in already, or anybody who gets in within the next few days, will make some money, if he gets out fast enough.

        The price of the stock is just about dead sure to collapse like a house of cards as I see it. The question is when.

        There are regulations that apparently make it impossible, or at least illegal, for trump to sell out his shares for six months or so.

        But he may have a scheme in mind to put his hands on some windfall money within days or weeks. If he manages by some means to do so, his lawyers will as usual do everything possible to delay charges being brought, and then delay the trial or trials as well.

        1. OFM,

          The agreement is set up so that Trump cannot sell his shares for 6 months, but it may be possible to waive that requirement with approval by the board of directors which is packed with Trump’s cronies.

          So we will have to wait and see, maybe Trump will hold his shares for the 6 months and then dump them, though he may piss off his supporters who have invested and will lose all their money as the stock will go to zero, or pennies.

      3. More recent news on DJT stock, I would stay away, but I don’t like losing money.

        https://wccftech.com/trump-media-and-technology-group-djt-truth-social-platform-earned-just-over-4-million-in-revenue-last-year/

        snippet

        This revenue figure corresponds to a Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) Price-to-Sales (P/S) multiple of 2,030x, based on the current market capitalization of $8.39 billion. If Trump Media and Technology Group shares were to start trading at a valuation that is strictly in line with its peers, the stock would lose around 99 percent of its current value.

  2. Anyone want to take a stab at how much impact the Baltimore bridge collapse will have?

  3. In the previous thread Survivalist wrote “IB implied that somebody has, or perhaps should have, a duty to educate, with zeal. I wonder who’s in mind? Big P? The MSM? Joe Rogan? A market solution? Someone else? ” This was in response to the following question, “Why was the public never told about the benefits of having an optimal level of vitamin D with the same zeal that the more expensive interventions were promoted?” That was a rhetorical question (a question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.) Anybody with two working brain cells should know exactly why low cost, readily available therapeutics were not promoted.

    In a government that is working for it’s citizens as opposed to a laissez-faire approach (the one ostensibly favoured by the GOP) private industry is regulated to ensure that the interests of private companies do not impinge on the interests of the ordinary citizen. An example is safety regulations for railroads to reduce the chances that an accident might occur and expose ordinary citizens to hazardous chemicals that could harm or kill them. The pharmaceutical industry in the US and to a somewhat lesser extent worldwide, has captured the agencies that are supposed to regulate it. The profit motives of the industry appear to be taking precedence over the interests of the public. As a result, of all the therapeutics that were shown to improve outcomes with COVID-19 the only ones that were approved by the US regulators were the new, proprietary, very expensive ones That is why the public was not educated about the benefits of adequate levels of vitamin D. Nobody was going to be able to make a windfall (like $100 billion in profits over two years) from manufacturing and distributing vitamin D!

    1. ISLANDBOY —

      Being the anti-COVID-19 preacher you are, I guess you would have been against smallpox and polio vaccines as well. Yes, I too am against the immense profits that the pharmaceutical industry make – so are the doctors I know. However, I’ll go with my health care providers as opposed to those with quack remedies. Remember, COVID-19 was a worldwide virus epidemic that urgently needed a vaccine to combat, not horse medication or vitamins. Canada paid for my shots through its Health Care System. I have no idea what happens in Jamaica.

      1. A couple of points.
        “Those with quack remedies” had a far better results than those that told people to go home and go to the ER if they start to have difficulty breathing. There’s even a book about it: Overcoming the COVID-19 Darkness: How Two Doctors Successfully Treated 7000 Patients which I’m pretty sure most people here are never going to look at much less read.

        The mortality statistics were far worse for the developed world than they were for places where certain tropical disease are endemic, The Nigerian population seems to have been largely unaffected by COVID-19 as was much of Africa despite appallingly low vaccination rates in the case of Nigeria. The worst affected country in Africa was South Africa, arguably the most developed. India was a strange case, making the news with the horrible circumstances there during the Delta wave before new cases miraculously plummeted just as they began their vaccination roll out. Their deities must have decided to spare them further suffering!

        As for Jamaica, the vaccine uptake was around 30% and despite no real restriction on travel into the island, the situation in Jamaica was no worse than anywhere in the developed world. I don’t recall any news of overflowing hospitals. The main public hospital in Kingston, the Kingston Public Hospital actually gave turmeric tea to their covid patients. see: https://c19early.org/tmeta.html and COVID-19 Patients At KPH Receiving Turmeric Tea.

        I’m pretty sure I got the virus as I took no special precautions not to catch it. I loaded up on large doses of vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc and largely ignored the WHO guidance, choosing to go with the so called quack remedies recommended by the quacks at the FLCCC (flccc.net) instead. It must have worked because as you can see, I’m not dead. Someone on this blog implied that natural selection would take care of folks like me. Maybe natural selection is working, just not in the way they thought it would. Strange how that works!

        I am not eligible to vote in US elections (I don’t even have a valid US visa at the moment) but, if I were I would be voting for the candidate that is supporting renewable energy and EVs, not the one that claims that wind farms are killing whales and that “an EV transformation will destroy the US auto industry and kill jobs.” My stance on covid is not determined by politics. You might say it is determined by my world view. I say it is determined by science, just not “the science” as carried out by Big Pharma.

        1. I visited Jamaica during the covid pandemic. I had work that necessitated travel there for the hospital. Restrictions were extremely strict. Travel was only authorized between the hotel and the hospital while I was on the island.

      2. Stop calling Ivermectin horse medication. It has been approved for human use since 1987.

      3. Speaking of polio here’s a really interesting quote from the Cleveland Clinic web page on polio:

        Polio is a disease caused by poliovirus. Most people have no symptoms or mild symptoms, but some become paralyzed. Before vaccines, thousands were paralyzed in outbreaks. Wild poliovirus types 2 and 3 are eradicated, but type 1 still spreads in some parts of the world. Vaccination is the best way to prevent polio. There’s no cure for polio.

        Bold mine. This leads me to wonder why is it that most people have no symptoms or mild symptoms but, some become paralyzed?

        I found the following very interesting in terms of a possible answer to that question:

        The Origin of the 42-Year Stonewall of Vitamin C

        The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was founded in 1938 by polio’s most famous victim, President Franklin Roosevelt, to raise money through the March of Dimes to combat the disease. Most polio research was funded by the National Foundation. There is no mention of Dr. Klenner’s work or of vitamin C’s possible benefits to polio victims in any of the Foundation’s annual reports. Not one dime was spent to prove or disprove Klenner’s claim. Before 1949 a claim of a cure was promptly looked into and money spent until it was proved false. But with Klenner’s claim nothing happened. …[snip]

        To this day it is mainstream medicine’s position that there is no cure for polio.

        The article was written in 1991. Were it written today the title would read “The Origin of the 75-Year Stonewall of Vitamin C”! History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.

        1. “Bold mine. This leads me to wonder why is it that most people have no symptoms or mild symptoms but, some become paralyzed?”

          We coexist with tens of thousands of species of bacteria and viruses that live within and on our bodies.

          This is all reshman level biology, a required course for ag majors. We typically take it in the biology department in the same classrooms at the same hours as biology majors, using the same textbooks, etc.

          Over time, we and our resident guests evolve so as to live together peaceably. A bacteria that kills it’s host must constantly move onto a new living host. No host, no bacteria.

          So highly contagious fatal diseases tend to ” burn themselves out” once hosts get to be so scarce that they can’t reach them. This is why we use quarantines to help control such diseases.

          Right now white tail deer are dying off by the thousands within a couple of hundred miles of my home. The disease is moving this way about twenty miles a year, and when it gets here, it will wipe out ninety percent or more of the local deer population……..until individual deer are scarce enough that the transmission chain is broken to the point the survivors don’t GET infected. Eventually the bacteria and the deer will evolve to co exist without killing the deer, or even making them sick.
          ( This is a specific example of population overshoot and die off of a particular species due to high population density, rather than shortages of food or water, etc. )

          This process of co adaptation takes quite a while, possibly thousands of generations.

          So… it’s quite common for some people to be infected with disease causing bacteria or virus without suffering any harm, or at least any observable harm. Such individual people and the bacteria or virus have evolved to the stage the bacteria has a home, and can continue to live, at no or negligible cost to the host man or woman.

          But these little critters, although they are of the same species, aren’t all alike, they have variations in their own genetics, just as we humans and other animals do.

          SO……. some bacteria make some people sick……. where as the same bacteria can co exist peaceably with other people. Bacteria that kill their hosts die WITH their host, and the hosts that die are removed from the gene pool of the host species. Surviving hosts are less susceptible to the bacteria, and surviving bacteria evolve to be less harmful to the host.

          People who are infected but show no symptoms (or at least no OBSERVABLE symptoms) inherited genes or combinations thereof that either kill of the bacteria or else allow it to coexist in their body without making them sick.

          Countless people are infected in this manner with various disease causing bacteria or viruses without showing any symptoms. They will never get sick because of these infections, unless maybe they are really stressed out due to already being sick, or injured, in which case their one or more of their long term resident guest species flares up because their immune system is no longer up to the job.

          And sometimes you can be infected without showing any symptoms for a very long time, for instance with AIDS. A lot of people infected with this disease will die without ever knowing they have it. If you have had a blood transfusion using blood that wasn’t properly screened or tested, you could have it and die from a heart attack or accident or old age before it shows symptoms.

    2. “Anybody with two working brain cells should know exactly why low cost, readily available therapeutics were not promoted” ~ IB

      America is the greatest country on earth for snake oil salesmen. Why didn’t the manufacturers of vitamin D educate with zeal?

      Vitamin D Supplementation and Clinical Outcomes in Severe COVID-19 Patients—Randomized Controlled Trial
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10005311/

      PS- vitamin C does not cure polio. Duh.

        1. If it has never been confirmed by a double blind RCT then why do you believe it?

          1. I can tell you didn’t even bother to read the conclusion. I believe it because I have employed it myself several times and can only recall one time that it did not help. The one time was an inflamed ear that was cured by hydrocortisone ear drops (steroids). For colds and flu it works like magic.

            I also gave vitamin C to my father in his mid eighties when he was having circulation problems in his lower legs. His doctor prescribed Daflon, a flavonoid fraction often used to treat or manage disorders of the blood vessels. I thought that if his blood vessels were deteriorating despite the fact that he was very thin it might have something to do with his prostate cancer and possible resulting vitamin C deficiencies (see the aabstract of this medical hypothesis from the same Dr. Robert Cathcart).

            The edema around his ankles resolved and only came back when he decided that he didn’t need to take vitamin C daily anymore! The problem went away again when I urged him to return to taking vitamin C daily. He also did mot suffer the severe constipation that he did when not taking vitamin C. Taking vitamin C to bowel tolerance does a wonderful job of getting rid of constipation! My father lived at least ten years after starting on at least 3000 mg of vitamin C daily (in divided doses). The Daflon alone did not alleviate the problem, Vitamin C did, even without the Daflon. He was one month short of 96 years old when he died.

    1. As solar panels get ‘cheaper’, using thinner glass etc, then of course such incidents are going to become more frequent. Then add the effects of climate change, which makes hail storms more likely and frequency goes up yet again.

      All the projections of the nice green renewable future are based upon narratives of cheaper solar panels, yet somehow expect them to last 25-30 years despite the changing climate of more frequent larger storms. To make solar panels be able to withstand increasing hail size, they should be made with thicker glass covers, not thinner..

      In a world of declining fossil fuel use either because of climate or depletion or a combination of both, we have this myth that we can build a lot more renewables, using ever declining resource grades, yet somehow building more will use less, all while maintaining current lifestyles and spread western lifestyles to the rest of the world.

      It’s all make believe fairytale stuff, which every larger hail storm will prove. Having trackers that add ‘hail protection mode’ to panels, increases capital costs and resource use to build it, plus adds maintenance costs because of moving parts.

      We are building $35/Mwh energy with cheap $2-$5/Mwh energy and embedded energy from the past. Entropy never stops and replacing the $35/Mwh energy in the future wont be built with $2-$5/Mwh energy, it has to be built with $35/Mwh energy, from declining resources, which means the next ’round’ of building energy gathering machines can only be built done at a cost of ten times current cost, or $350/Mwh, all in today’s dollars.

      It doesn’t work, it’s a ponzi scheme and to continue current civilization we need to build $2-$5/Mwh energy from current sources, not $35/Mwh energy. The LCOE bandied about is nonsense, it doesn’t matter what the energy source, if it’s more expensive that what we uses to get ‘here’, then it’s not possible to maintain where we are at.

      We have efficiency gains made over decades that mask the real problem of using up all our cheapest fossil energy sources. We are running into massive debt problems by trying to get the harder to obtain fossil energy sources, because the EROEI is lower than the easy to obtain fossil resources, plus we have used all the easy to obtain material resources as well. Improving efficiency in, say, car engines by 50%, doesn’t stop the resource running out, it just takes twice as long providing Jevon’s paradox doesn’t step in. Efficiency gains do not help one iota in the long run.

      It’s simple, civilization as we know it is not possible in the long run unless energy can be supplied as cheaply as it was to build it in the first place. We only get the complexity of modern civilization because of the massive participation of 1 -2 billion people involved, allowing economies of scale of everything. When we lose the cheap energy, the infrastructure we built (including such things as homes, water supply, sewerage, roads etc) wont be able to rebuilt it with expensive energy, or perhaps just a lot less of it, meaning fewer people involved in modern civilization, but we also lose the complexity with less people involved making individual costs much higher. It becomes a self reinforcing feedback loop of less modernity that spirals down to nothing.

        1. All these mines run the generators mostly on gas with fairly recent gas pipelines installed to the generators. piped gas is much cheaper than diesel and the North West shelf area of WA is Australia’s main source of export gas.
          These mines are getting a much cheaper source of fuel in the gas they use, while putting up solar panels and minimal batteries to qualify for all the government subsidies for cutting emissions, plus the Browny points of for ESG requirements.

          In all the cases you cite, fossil fuels are going to provide 60%-70% of the power needed, just to replace the electricity generation. They still rely upon diesel for lots of other uses like most of the dump truck haulage.

          Have a good look at the area cleared for the solar farm in the Pilbara, every tree removed, not a blade of grass…
          https://www.miningmonthly.com/power/news/1423440/fmg-follow-sun

          I’ll ask you the same question I’ve asked several times of others. In Borneo the Adaro company is planning to build 2 large aluminium smelters from over 2Gw of coal powered electricity generation.
          In your opinion should they instead of using the coal, destroy many tens of thousands of Rainforest and pristine rivers by building a solar farm and pumped hydro for storage instead of using the coal?

          You only have to look at all those solar panels in the desert to know we need a lot more Aluminium for the frames of this solar future, so what do we do in Borneo to gain extra aluminium, burn coal or erase rainforest and pristine rivers??

          My choice is neither, because it’s all just further pointless destruction of the environment, what’s yours??

          1. Maybe Adaro should be looking at a location with a bit more consistent sun to locate their solar farms and smelters. In the early days of aluminum smelting, it was mostly done in areas that had access to lots of hydroelectricity. I guess the demand for the stuff meant they had to look at other sources of energy like coal. Maybe in the future processes can be developed that can make use of ultra cheap electricity when it is available and go into a low power, standby mode when it is not.

            Here is a 4 year old article about such an approach

            Australia’s aluminium sector is on life support. It can and should be saved

            Here is an article from reneweconomy,com.au:

            Wind and solar could play key role in future of Australia’s aluminium industry

            Maybe a system could be developed that uses stored heat from concentrated solar power to keep the smelting pots from going cold instead of electricity.

            Why aren’t there more smelters in Tasmania where most of the electricity comes from hydroelectric sources?

            1. Fancy bringing up the Portland Victoria Aluminium smelter in your arguments about costs. That particular smelter is only still operating because the price they pay for power is just $A14/Mwh, which I found buried in a government document when I went looking a year or so ago. The state of Victoria has subsidised power costs from the existing lignite power plants from about 20 years ago to the tune of over $A2 billion!!

              In the last 2 years here in Victoria the retail price of electricity has risen by 25-30% each year, as we close coal fired power plants and have more renewables in the system. The excuse given for the price increases is blamed on the transmission system that needs upgrading and new large long lines built. What’s never stated is that all these new power lines are only needed because of the renewables, so are part of the cost of renewables..

              The Aluminium smelter in Western Australia is closing, at exactly the same time as the last coal power station over there is closing, as that state relies on more renewables and gas fired back up. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence (NOT!!).

              IslandBoy, Adaro is planning a new coal powered generating plant of 2.2Gw to power these Aluminium smelters (2 X 500,000tpa plants), but banks are currently refusing finance for a lot of this. Total cost is around $US4B (for phase 1 and 2).

              Phase 1 $US2B has been financed. That’s the power plant 1.1Gw, smelter and port.
              Assuming $US4B for full operation, if we were to build solar, the equivalent amount of 2.2Gw at 90% capacity = 17,344,800Mwh/yr from the coal power plant.
              They get a consistent 5hrs/d of sunshine throughout the year being very near the equator.
              5hrs/d means 9,500Mw of solar would need to be installed, before we allow for any inefficiencies in storage, batteries, pumped hydro, whatever. After allowing for inefficiencies of storage, probably 11,000Mwh of solar would need to be installed. At a current cost of still around $US1.50/w = $US16,500M.

              $US16.5 billion for a solar farm, before we look at storage to give consistent power over 24hours/365 days/yr. Assuming installed storage batteries and all ancillary equipment at just $US250/kw (cheaper than anywhere) adds another $US16.5B (30 hours). Cheap solar equals $US33B to do what $US2B can do with a coal fired power plant.

              Yet somehow people keep trying to convince themselves that solar is cheaper than new coal power!! It isn’t, solar is way too expensive, and that’s when it’s manufactured with CHEAP fossil fuels!! Once there is nothing but expensive energy, the cost of solar MUST rise.

              Large solar farms around the world are taking up around 5,000ha for around 2.5-7Gw, so to build 11Gw of solar in Borneo would be around 20,000ha minimum. That’s 200km2 of pristine rainforest that would have to be cleared for the solar farm.

              Adaro are going ahead with the coal fired power station as it’s easily the cheapest form of power as they only have to mine the coal, not buy it.

    2. Blood pressure 115/65

      Let’s start by considering the source. This article is from the oil website oilprice.com and written by ZeroHedge a right wing rag.

      And than there is this statement- “Better examples couldn’t exist than Ford and Hertz dramatically scaling back their EV initiatives due to lower-than-expected consumer interest.”

      Basically there is only one good reason to rent an EV if your a regular ice user and that is to experience the EV for the first time. Otherwise it’s a pain in the ass. One most likely doesn’t have an app on their phone to charge or find a charger. Also one doesn’t enjoy the convince pluging in the vehicle at the end of the day and being fully charged ready to go in the morning. The Ford F150 EV is also a bad example today in a similar way as long haul class 8 tractors. The utility of an EV pickup to tow is minimal and not ready for prime time with todays technology.

      EV’s are almost 3 times more energy efficient than ICE. Fossil fuel is a limited resource. That is causing globle warm, smog and unsustainable.

      Just anti EV propaganda

    5. Carnot,

      What is the maximum feasible diesel and jet fuel shares that can be produced from the heavier grades of crude (20 to 35 API gravity) that are most widely available in the World? Also what is the minimum share of gasoline and naptha that can be produced from those same grades of oil?

      1. Dennis,

        This is a little more complicated to give a quick reply and do your question justice. Can you send me a pm on the email account that I log in with. I will send you some information on crude compositions, and the yields that might be achieved. Please be aware that gasoline production is quite complicated as very little naphtha is acutally blended into gasoline directly. The main gasoline components in descending order are ; FFC gasoline, Reformate, Alkylate, Isomerate, Butane + others. It is easier with jet-jero and diesel as the bulk of middle distillate is produced on the primary crude distillation process.
        LTO is quite rich in light and middle distillate but lacks heavy distillate that is used to produce the major part of gasoline.

        1. Carnot,

          peakoilbarrel@gmail.com

          Thanks.

          I realize it is complicated, I was looking for your expert opinion on what might be achieved under a scenario (which I realize you do not believe) where demand for gasoline falls below supply with current refining capacity and adjustments to to refining process which might be feasible to maximize diesel/jet fuel and minimize gasoline/petrol output.

          What are the current refinery yields for diesel and jet fuel in Europe? Currently in the US it is roughly 40% (for jet fuel and diesel combined), but I have read that this could be increased by 40%, so to maybe 56% (if the article I read is accurate), maybe this is where Europe already stands, can it be boosted further and by how much as there are obviously both physical and economic limits.

          1. Dennis,

            This is the quick and dirty version in reply to you question. I will go into more detail over the Easter holiday and email you.

            Here is a link to the EIA petroleum products.

            https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp_dc_nus_mbblpd_m.htm

            All that I am showing here is the relative split of the various products and you will see that gasoline is the main product in the US followed by diesel, jet kero, and petroleum coke (don’t ask me why they quotee this in bbls) You can see that gasoline is a little over 9 million b/d and diesel and jet kero about 7 million b/d. This is very different to the EU in that the EU demand is biased towards jet and diesel by a significant margin. EU gasoline demand is around 80 million tonnes per year(1.85 mb/d) and stable to growing, whereas EU diesel is over 220 mllion tonnes per year(4.5 md/d) and shrinking slowly as diesel cars are phased out. In the EU about 20% of the crude charge by mass is converted into gasoline and roughly 35% by mass is converted into diesel, and 12% into jet-kero so the EU has a quite different product demand mix to the US. The EU actually has about a 30% surplus of gasoline and components relative to demand.i.e. production is about 120 million tonnes per with a demand of about 80 million tonnes. To date EV’s have had no visible influence on gasoline demand in the UK, and the same applies for the US at present.

            As a result of the demand the refinery configurations in the US are a little different to the EU. The EU is more biased towards diseel production whilst the US favours more gasoline production, as a % of the barrel of feed. In both continents the main part of the gasoline supply is provided by FCC units which typically crack vacuum gas oi (heavy distillate) or in some cases atmospheric residue. FCC gasoline typically has a RON about 90-92 (US 87 octane). I will explain this later. FCC units also produce a product called light cycle oil(LCO) which is a poor grade of diesel, high in aromatics, sulphur and low in cetane. The production of LCO is about 20% of the fresh feed flow to the FCC which is about 4%+/-of the crude charge to the CDU (crude distillation unit). FCC’s can be operated in amiddle distillate mode which reduces gasoline production and increases LCO production but this is a minimal increase. FCC units can also be operated in an olefine mode to maiximise the production of C2, C3 and C4 olefines. most of the new build FCC units in china, India and the ME are now max olefines FCC’s which produce petchem precursors (rethylene, propylene, butenes).

            Most of the diesel and jet kero is produced directly from the CDU as side draw-offs. Some refinery configurations include a hydrocracker. A hydrocracker cracks the same feed as an FCC, VGO (vacuum gas oil) A hydro cracker is good at producing middle distillate(jet and diesel). Hydrocracked naphtha is not very good for gasoline blending but can be used as reformer feedstock. Hydrocrackers can also be operated in a mild mode to upgrade heavy distillate, especially high sulphur heavy distillate. Mild hydrocracking produces a heavy feed called UCO (unconverted oil) that can be used for FCC feed or for petchem feedstock. The downside with hydrocracking is the cost of hydrogen. The deeper the conversion the higher the hydrogen demand. A form of mild hydrocraking can be used for the production of HVO (hydrogenated vegetable oils) for the production of SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) and renewable diesel (not biodiesel which is based on methyl esters). There is a lot of hype currently about SAF and renewable diesel, but my view is that this will be a financial disaster as there simply is not enough vegetable oils ( total annual production is 220 million tonnes and that includes everything) to make any meaningful.

            Hopefully readers will appreciate that the ability of a refinery to swing production of finished products is somewhat limited as the refinery configuration very much determines what can and is produced. Another factor is the type of crude oil. Crude oils are a bit like wine. Light sweet, Light sour, Heavy sweet and Heavy sour and everything in between. A common misconception is that refineries have great flexibility on crude types. Wrong. When a refinery is designed it will take a base crude and design the refinery around this crude. I worked on a Malaysian refinery petchem project 10 year sago and the base crude was Iraq Basrah Llight

            The basic crude assay was :
            API (gravity) 30
            Sulphur 2.9%m/m
            LPG 1.6%m/m
            Light N 6.5% m/m
            Heavy N 11.9 m/m
            Jet Kero 8.5% m/m
            Diesel 17.1 m/m
            Gas Oil 4.1 m/m
            VGO 24.1 m/m
            VR 26.2 m/m
            VGO+VR 50.3% m/m

            Why this was called a light crude is somewhat debatable as it is more a more a medium high sulphur crude. Now consider the design of he CDU (crude distillation). The top of the CDU would have to ave a capacity of 20% of the crude flow( LPG, LtN, Hvy N) +10%
            The jet side draw would need to be about 8.5 % +10%
            The Diesel/ Gas Oil side draw would require 21.1+10%
            The atmospheric residue is 50.3% +10%

            As can be seen from this example there is a lot of atmospheric residue. The more flexibility in overcapacity comes at a huge cost in terms of CAPEX and OPEX. Extra capacity costs money.
            In effect what this means is that the refinery is limited by its design in the types of crude it can process. There are ways out of this. You can make up a blend of crudes to mimic the base crude. That could mean blending a light crude into a heavy crude to match the required yield structure of the products, which can cause compatability issues. Many refineries have a planning department who role is to acquire crude supplies and blend them into a mix that the CDU can run.Now imagine a US LTO in this refinery. A typical LTO has less than 10% atmospheric residue. On its own the LTO would quickly overwhelm the CDU by flooding the naphtha, jet and diesel draw offs. There will be a pinch point in one of the draw offs which will limit the capacity of the column. Moreover there will be so little residue that there will be little feed for a hydrocracker or FCC and the heat balance will go so far off piste that the CDU would not operate. This is an extreme example but is the very reason why most of the US LTO is exported. US refiners cannot process LTO in any quantity using existing equipment. Technically it is possible to design a CDU to run on LTO but such a refinery would have trouble making large volumes of gasoline due to the absence of VGO to feed a FCC. I am frequently asked why LTO is exported and not consumed the US. The answer is simple. The US would struggle to make enough on-spec gasoline in the existing refineries using LTO even if there was away to process it. The best value for LTO is the production of middle distillates, light naphtha for petchems and heavy naphtha for reformers. The reformate can be used for gasoline or for BTX production (petchems). China is buying about 1 mb/d of light tigt oil. that is about 7% of their demand . The LTO will be used mainly int the large integrated refinery petchem units.

            Moving back to gasoline. As per my previous post most of the gasoline demand is served by two components. FCC gasoline and Reformate. FCC gasoline is produced from the catalytic cracking vacuum gas oil( and sometimes atmospheric residue), and Reformate from the catalytic reforming of heavy naphtha. Other components might include alkylate, isomerate, isopentane, butane etc.The main criteria for gasoline blending are:
            1. octane
            2. vapour pressure
            3. density

            In addition there are limits on the aromatic content, olefines content and oxygen content. The most dominant gasoline specification is the EU EN228 spec, which has been widely adopted in many countries and copied in full and part in local specifications. The US has a set of specifications which are broadly similar to EN228. For diesel the EN590 is the dominant global specification, and the tightest. OEM’s are supportive of global fuel specifications as it simplifies engine production across continents.

            50 years ago gasoline production was much simpler. Simple refineries could produce gasoline from reformate, straight run naphtha and tetra ethyl lead (TEL) to get the octane right. TEL was magic stuff that could solve the problem of pinking/ detonation. These simple refineries (hydro-skimming) are nearly all gone. TEL worked by inhibiting chain branching reactions in the compression stroke ( a bit like nuclear fission reactions) and thus reducing the tendency to detonate, rather than combust.( ICE fuels should not explode)..In the US the octane number posted on the pump is known as the AKI ( antiknock index)
            Thus a 91 octane( AKI) gasoline is roughly equal to a 95 octane gasoline in the EU. EN 228 requires two octane numbers . The RON (research octane number) and the MON (motor octane number) The EN228 95 RON gasoline has a minimum MON of 85 . Thus there are 10 points between the RON and MON in EN228. In the US the AKI is determined by the following formula AKI=(RON+MON)/2.

            The RON is a measure of the octane number under mild conditions (cruising) and the MON under conditions of acceleration or load. The octane number is determined in a special engine called a CFR engine and the methods are F1 for RON and F2 for MON.
            Jet fuels are almost all set to a universal spec called JET A1. The US has its own spec JetA which only differs in the freeze point to JetA1. There are military jet fuels ( carrier) that differ form Jet A1.
            For diesel fuels the main spec is EN590 with variations in sulphur. The US has a looser diesel spec with higher S and lower cetane.

            In terms of fuel chemistry there is a lot that can be done. A refinery has 4 main operations:
            1. Separation- usually by distillation ( also solvent extraction or moecular sieve)
            2. Molecular re-arrangement – reforming, isomerisation, alkylation
            3. Conversion Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC), Hydrocracking (HCR), Coking,
            4 Treating (upgrading) hydrotreating (sulphur reduction), stabilisation (olefines saturation), metals reduction

            Refineries have good technologies for cracking large molecules into smaller molecules. Making larger molecules from small molecules ( e.g. LPG and naphtha to larger jet or diesel fuels) is much more difficult. In order to make larger molecules you have limited options. One method is to use oligomerisation of olefines to produce dimers, trimers, and tetramers of olefines or the other produce syn gas to take advantage of Fischer Tropsch reactions to produce mainly middle distillates. Both methods are incredibly expensive and require multiple steps.

            This is a very quick and dirty reply to Dennis’ questions. I would have liked to add some diagrams and tables but this is limited to one small jpeg per post. I will forward some detailed information to Dennis and he can decide if he wishes to make this available. I have a colossal amount of data and training ppt’s that I produced over the past 10 years much of which is in a simple to follow format. Much of the data is either now unobtainable or only available if you know where to look. These days the internet is plagued with paywalls. 20 years ago there were huge amounts of data freely available, even from the likes of Exxon and Shell. Now it is either long gone or only available behind a paywall, and is not very good anyway.

            2. Thanks Carnot, very educational. It deserves to become a POB article.

        2. Carnot,

          Please, please, please write a POB post about this subject for us lay schmucks.

    6. CARNOT —
      Conclusively: EVs are less energy efficient than internal combustion engine automobiles. As a result, they will fail to gain widespread adoption.

      Haha. Who are these idiots? America has definitely lost its way when dingdongs like this get coverage.

      But never mind. As I have stated several times here, the future of the car industry is electric and Chinese. American companies will keep building monster trucks backed by TV ads for short term profit and go the way of Harley Davidson. That’s what happens when bankers run industrial companies instead of engineers.

      1. That is obviously written by some FF lobbyist.
        The fact that so many people believe something simply because it’s written somewhere is problematic but unfortunately part of human nature. It requires ongoing persistent pushback.
        Rgds
        Vince

      2. Alimbiquated
        So you think G&R are idiots? Did you actually read and assimilated what they wrote without your usual cognitive dissonance. Probably not.

        Had you read the essay, instead of cherry picking want you want to hear, you would have realised that the essay was about full life cycle, and I think they were being generous. What you and too many others fail to understand is that comparing electricity and gasoline at the point of use is in no way comparable. How was the electricity generated and how much embedded energy was wasted in the electricity grid making it stable because of expensive unreliables, or in many cases charging stations being supplied by diesel generators conveniently placed not to be seen.?Then there is the end of life EV disposal which is much sooner on average than an ICE car, especially if involved in a shunt
        The energy and monetary cost of EV recycling is far greater than an ICE vehicle and I will predict that the last owner will be charged for end of life disposal. That means that used EV’s will plummet in value, as we are already seeing. Who wants to buy a used iPad with four wheels.

        If you know better than G&R step up to the plate with a proof, if you can.

        I looked at EV’s six years ago and concluded a hybrid was a much better option, and I would buy a hybrid every time. I have been driving a hybrid since 2009.

        1. So you think G&R are idiots?

          Sadly, no. The article is so bad that one has to conclude it’s just dishonest. You’ll notice that it doesn’t provide any backup/footnotes for it’s remarkably unrealistic assertions.

          Carnot, when you write unrealistic things, it’s possible to believe that you have simply been misled by people like this. But when someone publishes an article, presenting themselves as an authority, they have a responsibility to be realistic, to dig into claims and make sure they make sense. They’re not doing that at all – instead they’re aggressively pushing misinformation.

          Shame on them.

          1. Shame on the people pushing misinformation??? This from you Nick G that consistently makes claims, like last weeks, “they don’t use diesel machines in underground coal mines”, when in fact they are common, as per the link I provided…

            Again, from you, not a single shred of evidence, yet you complain about no references from someone else.

            I wish you would wake up to the reality of our situation, we are building the future with the last of the really cheap energy provided by fossil fuels, most of it embedded energy in the system. It all deteriorates in a process known as entropy, so will have to be replaced, except we wont and increasingly don’t have the cheap energy to do it, so it will have to be rebuilt with expensive energy making the cost less affordable by society as a whole.

            1. “pushing misinformation”
              The R and G article was an opinion piece trying sell the conclusions as factual research.
              There is a difference, not just when it suits your investment stance or political beliefs.
              Goes for all points of reference.

            2. What is it you think that article is pushing? The only thing I read is “Never in history has a less efficient “prime mover” displaced a more efficient one. We believe this time will be no different.” That is self evidently expressing an opinion. And the number of “out beliefs” and “our claims” make it pretty clear that they are not claiming absolute knowledge. All they are saying is that EVs aren’t doing everything that people have claimed for them in the energy transition, which pretty obviously they are not, just look at current global temperatures.

            3. “Despite claims to the contrary, our research suggests EVs are less energy efficient than internal combustion engine automobiles. As a result, they will fail to gain widespread adoption. Our claim is controversial; most pundits insist EVs are far more efficient. We believe the ICE is clearly the winner once the energetic costs of both the battery and the renewable power required to make “carbon-free” EVs are considered.”

              This is just opinion based speculations, similar to what Hideaway presents. Is their ‘research’ any more than a house of cards built upon false assumptions. Lets see the published ‘factual analysis’ to see the basis of their pronouncements.

              These guys are sellers of their investment belief (fossil fuel industry). Warning- to invest upon your or others ‘beliefs’ in what you expect the world to be is a recipe for subpar.

            4. I don’t care what people believe about the issue. We live a world where
              -global warming from fossil fuel combustion is real
              -petrol sources are depleting

              Both of these phenomena tilt the advantages heavily towards electrification of transportation, since the lifecycle carbon emission and fossil fuel consumption are much more favorable with EV’s than with ICE.
              Sorry guys, if this is painful for you to digest.

              A global comparison of the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of combustion engine and electric passenger cars-
              https://theicct.org/publication/a-global-comparison-of-the-life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-combustion-engine-and-electric-passenger-cars/
              “Results show that even for cars registered today, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have by far the lowest life-cycle GHG emissions. As illustrated in the figure below, emissions over the lifetime of average medium-size BEVs registered today are already lower than comparable gasoline cars by 66%–69% in Europe, 60%–68% in the United States, 37%–45% in China, and 19%–34% in India. Additionally, as the electricity mix continues to decarbonize, the life-cycle emissions gap between BEVs and gasoline vehicles increases substantially when considering medium-size cars projected to be registered in 2030.”

              or
              From a study sponsored by Ford/U Mich
              “The researchers looked at three different powertrain options—fossil burners, hybrids and EVs—in three different vehicle classes—midsize sedans, midsize SUVs and full-size pickup trucks. They found that, on average across the US, light-duty EVs have approximately 64% lower cradle-to-grave life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than ICE vehicles.”
              https://chargedevs.com/newswire/ford-umich-study-finds-evs-have-64-lower-life-cycle-emissions-than-ice-vehicles/
              Study basis- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5142

              or

              ‘According to research by Transport & Environment (T&E), the umbrella body for European NGOs promoting sustainability, an average EU electric car is close to three times better, in terms of carbon emissions, than an equivalent petrol or diesel car – and that gap continues to widen.
              The benefits of BEVs will only increase as the electricity grid becomes greener but even a BEV driven in Poland with a battery produced in China, still emits 37 per cent less CO2 than petrol.
              A reduction of 83 per cent can be achieved with an electric car with a battery produced in Sweden and driven in Sweden. They also predict that electric cars bought in 2030 will reduce CO2 emissions four-fold thanks to an EU electricity grid relying more and more on renewables.’
              https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/10/29/from-manufacture-to-lifetime-emissions-just-how-green-are-evs-compared-to-petrol-or-diesel

            5. Hickory,
              “I don’t care what people believe about the issue. We live a world where
              -global warming from fossil fuel combustion is real
              -petrol sources are depleting”

              I don’t disagree with either of those points. However the global warming is just one of the issues facing us, you leave out not so minor details that around 70% of wild animals and insects have been lost since 1970, ocean life depletion, ocean acidification, loss of forests, species going extinct at the rate of 13/d and human overpopulation.
              Global warming is just one of the issues, the ‘plan’ to solve it, makes all the other situations worse plus just wont and can’t work, because it’s all based upon fossil fuels use, which have increased by 34,000Twh/yr while we have added just 3,400Twh of renewables to the energy mix in the last 20 years!!
              Not only are we making every aspect of the ‘green world’ from fossil fuels, but the processes we use, like making silicon wafers, is increasing the spread of very bad greenhouse gasses like sulphur hexafluoride.

              No-one anywhere is trying to make any of the renewables or batteries out of electricity anywhere. The ‘newer’ providers of the materials are places like the Adaro new coal mines and aluminium smelters in Borneo, right next to where they get the bauxite from!!

              Destroying rainforest and polluting the atmosphere with millions of tonnes of CO2 by burning coal is how we make the cheap aluminium for the frames of solar panels, plus it will employ thousands of poor Indonesians giving those involved an improved lifestyle closer to to Western norm…

              This is the bit you want to ignore, to be CHEAP renewables, every aspect has to be from cheap sources. These new smelters are CHEAP sources, using CHEAP methods and CHEAP labor.

              If you want CLEAN aluminium, then the bauxite would have to be transported to the deserts of Australia, where we can place lots of solar panels and use many billions of dollars worth of batteries to back up the intermittent solar, using EXPENSIVE labour, to get EXPENSIVE aluminium, both energetically and money wise (which are one and the same)…

              Do you think it’s a strange coincidence that sulphur hexafluoride levels are increasing massively from Western China, just where the silicon and solar factories exist?? SF6 has 22,800 times the greenhouse warming effect of CO2 and an atmospheric lifetime of 3,200 years. Your solution puts a LOT more of this gas into the atmosphere…

              Luckily, when we get to the real depletion stage of oil in particular, we wont be able to transport all these different mining products from in the ground at mine sites to factories at an economic cost, so the whole charade of civilization will collapse allowing the natural world to regain some dominance.

              What you and every cornucopian doesn’t understand is that when the oil rate of extraction falls year after year, so will the complexity of our civilization, leaving stranded assets all over the world and people wondering why the green revolution is failing, then the next bit, of lack of food production will kick in, with people more worried where their next meal comes from instead of worrying about greenhouse gasses or anything else for that matter.

              It’s going to happen, no stopping it, so population reduction strategies that should have been in place many decades ago, are the only possible reduction in the overall pain and death that is coming, periphery at first like Lebanon and Sri Lanka now, western countries a bit later, all while we delude ourselves about a green transition.

              IMHO it’s better to fall from a lower height with more of the natural world remaining before we collapse, instead of the path we are currently on, of destroying the natural world first, then collapsing…

            6. Hideaway…I was responding to the R and G claims posted by Carnot
              Tell them these things…they might find it all hard to reconcile with their investment
              spiel.

              Beyond that, it is irreconcilable for anyone who tries to see a compatibility between the human project and nature. As I see it, the best we can do is to limit the damage and purposefully downsize. Part of that is scaling back on any form of combustion as quickly as feasible. The details of that last part are debatable and up for grabs, but its not a concept that just about anyone accepts. Its all not going to stop on a dime. This a 100 year project, just for starters.

            7. Hickory, ” As I see it, the best we can do is to limit the damage and purposefully downsize. ”

              That’s my entire argument, I’ve always thought you were pretty much on the same page as the realists, but without all the facts. The real problem is we should have been trying to downsize everything 50 years ago, especially population. We needed to be rewilding vast areas of low grade agricultural land from back then as well. Instead we have cleared a lot more forests, and sent thousands of species extinct.

              We have left our attempt at change way too late, if was ever possible at all. Hardly any of the current crop of renewables would have been built if the 34,000Twh of extra energy from fossil fuels hadn’t come about in the last 20 years. The cost of investment in all the new manufacturing plants would have been too high as the energy cost would have been high instead of the relative low price it’s been.

              We can only build cheap solar panels because the ‘bits’ are all cheap, made from cheap fossil fuels like the Adaro new smelters.

              Assuming we don’t go past a clear high in oil production and into massive decline of production, then in 10 years time the renewables solar and wind might provide over 15,000Twh of energy at a growth rate of 16%/year (that’s the growth rate over the last 4 years, but it is falling using something like a 10 year moving average, as expected with scale).
              The fossil fuel use will have had to go up to accommodate this massive increase in building and all the associated mining of ever lower ore grades. At the current rate of fossil fuel growth over the last 20 years, we would have added another 30,000Twh of fossil energy use to the mix, making the goal for the transition just as far away.

              I personally don’t think it’s slightly possible to add that much more fossil fuels into the system without causing major climate events that disrupt all types of development.

              Most likely we don’t have the oil that will allow for that type of world development, for either the other fossil fuels, coal & gas, and therefore the solar & wind farms.

              It’s not a simple line argument, there are many moving pieces, like oil decline leads to higher prices of everything, leads to higher interest rates and recessions, meaning less money for investment in mines and manufacturing plants etc. Food prices go higher, leads to disruption in poor countries where many of the remaining mineral deposits are, which hinders development of them, which leads to higher worldwide commodity prices, which feeds inflation etc, etc.

              It’s only when you take the hand wave of we’ll use ‘hydrogen’ or we’ll ‘recycle all of that’, or we’ll just make ‘synthetic fuels for plastics’ and do some rudimentary calculations on it, not in isolation, but as part of the whole, then look at details, you find none of it’s close to possible, unless we totally trash nature and the climate at a deliberate accelerated rate.

              I’m certain that’s where we are heading, as no politician anywhere will ever get elected on a promise of slowdown, degrowth, and purposefully downsizing the economy.

              Luckily for the last of nature, once we are in the rapid decline of oil availability stage, collapse of modern civilization will happen quite quickly.

            8. I hear you, and that is well laid out line of thought upon which I concur with most all of it.

              I come to a different policy stance conclusion than you when it comes to laying a pragmatic policy for this next few decades on energy expenditures. To do nothing but rely on depleting fossil fuels will be the most expensive and least effective and heavily destructive mechanism to deal with the situation as it now stands.
              A small percentage of the fuel should, is, and will be used to produce non-fossil generating sources. Somewhere in the range of 1-10% of the total, easily diverted from frivolous combustion.
              At the same time, strong effort to hit the brake pedal on other sectors that are destructive or not critical should happen. Do we really need yet more aircraft in this world? Do people even need to fly, or cruise, at all?

              Unfortunately there is a deep and unrelenting incompatibility between 8.2 billion voracious humans and the natural world. Changes in behavior can help somewhat, but the eventual downsizing of population is the bigger cure. Humanity won’t downsize purchasing capacity voluntarily, and won’t sit still if they experience forcing. They adapt and fight to maintain whatever consumption they can muster.
              Take that reality of global behavior into account.

            9. Hickory, with your last point,
              I have 2 modes of argument, firstly the what needs to happen, which is totally separate to what I expect to happen, because of those behavioral characteristics of humans.

              Those global behaviors are what leads us to collapse, that’s what I expect, but perhaps don’t communicate it very well.

              What needs to happen is humanity needs to feel ‘safe’ from attack from other humans. We have been doing this for thousands of years by being part of a tribe, safety in numbers, with a history of larger groups taking the resources of smaller or perhaps less well armed ‘other’ groups.
              We still have that fear today, which is why we have ‘borders’ controlling ‘others’ from coming into our territory. We also demonise ‘others’ to help with group cohesion along a common survival instinct.
              Our tribes today can consist of over a billion people, as in China and India, because of modern communications. Even the 5 eyes nations, sort of form one large English speaking ‘tribe’.

              We have the same human psychology as did tribes 50,000 years ago, supporting those of our group against ‘others’. It was long before even this time period where humans feared attack from wildlife as a group. It was wildlife that clearly feared human groups for very good reasons.

              Humans will want to continue ‘growth’ of their group, numbers and technology as protection from the ‘others’, all while knowing these ‘other’ groups are growing in size.

              While we are all separate, and not one tribe, IMHO we have zero chance of getting to a point of deliberate population reduction, hence modern civilization will collapse, based on physics alone.
              The attempts we make, as in continued growth with renewables or nuclear or some other ‘new’ tech, all ignore the bigger picture of the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, plus the damage being done just by trying to deploy them on scale much larger than what we have.

              I’m not against solar or wind, in fact I’m sure I’ve mentioned many times how we have set up multiple solar systems over the years, because they make sense at retail level, when paying retail prices, but they are no different to any other appliance, like a fridge that keeps food in edible form for longer, allowing less food to be purchased. It’s another convenience of the modern world.

              What I’m against is the belief that we can run and rebuild our modern civilization all from renewables, when there is no evidence for it. But the thought logic that’s ‘sold’ to the public ,is we can have modernity in perpetuity, while dragging up the standard of living in the rest of the world, all while ‘protecting’ the environment. It’s a load of croc, we can’t do any of that…

              IMHO we lost the opportunity to ‘degrow’ in any type of way that would save civilization, many decades ago, now any remedy to stop collapse would be deemed too harsh, so the world will just head there anyway, falling from a greater height, with a more damaged natural world to fall upon when the collapse comes.

            10. Hideaway- “What I’m against is the belief that we can run and rebuild our modern civilization all from renewables,”

              More to the practical point-
              We can and will run a modern civilization with a majority non-fossil energy sources (geothermal, solar, hydro, wind, wave, bio, and nuclear). The percent of non-fossil energy production is and will be going up. Get used to it. Make it work.
              There are great reasons to be very aggressive about the project.
              Part of that project is learning to live with much less, and finding the brake peddle.

              Once again…this is not an all-or-none option tree.

          2. Nick G
            As per usual you resort ad hominem attacks because to date I have never seen a shred of factual evidence to support you mouthings. I posted an opinion produced by a company who are not afraid to be controversial. All you did was read the headline, see who posted the message, and the cognitive bias kicked in. It is you who has been misled; by the clowns who push unreliables and EV’s as the savior to our problem of overpopulation and resource depletion.

            “You cannot make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it” – Upton Sinclair ( sadly for you guys he was not a right winger)

            I dare say that you have done the bare minimum of research on you wild claims of renewable utopia believing word for word that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to unreliables.

            1. Sigh.

              My comment was not ad hominem, and not based on the identity of the author of the article. It was simply that their claims were so unrealistic that I have a hard time believing that they believe them. I’m amused that you make an ad hominem argument (that my comment was based on my salary depending on it). given that you have zero evidence for that, and that you actually work in the oil & gas industry, and your conflict of interest is (or should be) obvious.

              I’ve been following and using this stuff in my personal and profession life for quite a long time. You can believe this or not, because I don’t present myself as an authority. I mostly remind people of things that are mainstream in the science and engineering world. I have often provided evidence, but lately I’ve been short of time and patience for people who could easily find realistic information, but instead settle for fringe pro-FF misinformation.

              So, it’s true that I didn’t provide evidence. Fortunately, Hickory has more time and patience than I, and provided some. Again, there’s quite a lot out there, which is why net-zero is a consensus goal almost everywhere, the exception largely being obvious members of the FF industry and poor and desperate countries.

            2. Nick G, how come you keep skipping the part about how your green utopian future is all built with cheap fossil fuels?

              Is it just inconvenient reality??

              How about you answer the question I’ve asked of you several times now about the new Adaro Aluminium smelters?

              In your opinion, is it better for Adaro to use the coal to power the aluminium smelters on Borneo, or should they destroy hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest and pristine rivers to put up lots of solar panels and pumped hydro for backup??

              That’s the cost of the bright green transition you want, more habitat and species loss, more industrialization of natural environments all over the world. The bauxite is already there in Borneo and going to be mined, destroying some more rainforest anyway, all because the world needs increasing amounts of aluminium to build all the renewables and everything else.

              This is the world you are advocating for. To build the mines operating on renewables, we have to build the renewables first, for solar panels, that means 76% of the weight in glass, 10% in plastic (no-one talking renewables ever want to talk about where this comes from in a FF free world), 8% aluminium, 5% silicon and 1% copper and fractions of ‘other’ stuff. The mountings are often made of aluminium, especially if you want trackers, which also means more copper…

              To get the extra Aluminium, it means humans are going to mine and burn a lot more coal in Borneo… how does that help the environment one iota??

            3. Hmm. The old “renewables are derivatives of FF” fallacy.

              You do know that the next generation of infrastructure is always built by the current generation? Oil wells were drilled by horses, and oil barrels were transported by horses as well. The few remaining contemporary horses are transported with gas/diesel.

              With time, wells were drilled and oil was transported using diesel. Some wells are already being pumped by solar power, and the last oil will be transported by renewably powered transportation.

              And eventually wind and solar (and hydro, etc) equipment will be manufactured, transported and installed with renewably powered plants, vehicles and equipment.
              ———————————
              And then we have the “coal vs destruction of virgin forest” question.

              This fallacy is called a “false dilemma”.

              There are obviously many other ways to power aluminium smelters.

              “A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many.”

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

              ————
              Speaking of horses, a fun (though possibly misquoted) quote:

              “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

              Henry Ford

            4. Good grief Nick, that’s the best you can do instead of answer the question, is go off on a tangent of deflection..

              The question is not about Aluminium smelters, it about a particular smelter that is going to be built, based upon local bauxite, a workforce and local coal. It’s a real world situation. The option of solar luckily doesn’t come close economically, otherwise it would be at the cost of 200km2 of pristine rainforest. Phase 3 of the project does involve a hydro power station, destroying another pristine rainforest river system, but that’s OK by you…

              Also renewables being derivatives of fossil fuels is not fallacy at all, it is fact. If you could demonstrate any renewables being built economically using electricity and no fossil fuels, then yes you would have an argument.

              I eagerly await your attempt to prove renewables are being built from renewables.

              The real fallacy is, that it’s possible to build and operate our modern civilization with just renewables, when there is not a shred of evidence it’s possible, yet we will certainly exhaust the possibility of running it on fossil fuels when the energy cost of gaining the fossil fuels needed, oil in particular, become too great for the complexity of the modern world.

      3. IIRC, the problem isn’t bankers, it’s accountants & MBAs. They seem to go for short term profits and financial engineering. They’re the ones who made the lending arms of car companies more important than the actual manufacturing.

        I remember when Chrysler made a comeback under Lee Iacocca. He was an industrial engineer.

    8. I’m not willing to put the time into seriously discussing this article at the moment, but suffice it to say that it totally ignores the cost of processing and distributing fossil fuels, while using highly questionable figures such as sixty to one EROI for oil at the well head. Maybe this is so in some cases. I strongly doubt it’s so nowadays for new wells in new spots.

      And it ignores the obvious fact that oil and gas production must inevitably peak due to depletion of existing fields and the higher costs and generally lower unit cost of production of new fields. We HAVE been cherry picking oil and gas fields for generations now, lol.

      It’s elementary level obvious that barring unexpected and rather unlikely breakthroughs in lowering the cost of production of new oil and gas supplies, the price of the same must increase over time, perhaps to levels that make it impossible or nearly impossible for the economy to grow much if at all, everything else held more or less equal.

      In terms of environmental destruction, there’s essentially NO real difference between going renewable to the whatever extent we can, or just continuing to fuck up the environment and the climate by burning fossil fuels if we fail to achieve a successful transition to renewable energy. The only downside to trying, if we fail, is that we might or might not hit peak environmental damage somewhat sooner than otherwise. If so, this peak damage might be delayed a decade or two by sticking to fossil fuels. In terms of the big picture, this is a trivial pro fossil fuel talking point at best.

      I’m not an engineer myself, but I have spent countless hours over the years learning everything I could about the BIG PICTURE……. not just physics, not just geology,not just engineering, not just economics, not just politics, not just war, not just human behaviors, not just plants and animals and diseases, etc.

      Now maybe I’m as ignorant as my old hound dogs, but it seems perfectly obvious that oil and gas will sooner or later be in such short supply as to be prohibitively expensive……with the result being a stagnant or contracting economy. I don’t see anything published by anybody with any sort of real credentials arguing that we find new gas and oil fields that can be produced at lower rather than higher prices, or that there’s much hope for new production technologies actually lowering the cost of production to any substantial extent.

      On the other hand, the article totally fails to take into consideration that the prices of electric auto batteries are falling like rocks, and that people in the industry expect them to reach price parity compared to ice engines and associated transmissions, fuel and exhaust systems, etc, within five years or so.

      Furthermore it’s quite obvious that the real cost of building wind and solar farms, in terms of constant money is also falling. There’s TONS of new technology in the research and development pipeline of these industries, and it’s a sure bet that some of it will pay off in terms of lowering costs and improving productivity and reliability, etc.

      Furthermore there’s a near zero possibility we will ever REALLY run short of land or water on which to build wind and solar farms, except in densely populated areas, and it’s perfectly obvious that we CAN build long distance transmission lines to deliver power for a thousand miles or more, as easily as we can build new highways, or tanks or planes or skyscrapers or whatever. The obstacles to such construction are primarily political rather than material. Power lines are infinitely cheaper than new highways, because they require nothing more than a support tower every few hundred meters and the necessary transmission wires. Very little or no grading is needed, no pavement is needed, etc. The land under a power line can be used to raise crops or graze livestock.

      The odds are pretty good to excellent that nearly all of the materials used in electric car batteries can be and will be recycled in future years, once the volume of old batteries is such that economies of scale lower the cost of this recycling. ( Ditto the cost of recycling wind turbine materials such as the blades, etc).

      Given my jackass of all trades background, I know quite a bit about heavy construction, and the life expectancy of things built this way. I actually own a big yellow machine or two of my own, and can run some others.

      Once a solar farm is permitted, and built and tied into the grid, it’s going to last indefinitely, more or less forever in day to day practical terms. Such parts of it as wear out can be and will be replaced at a relatively trivial cost as necessary. Grading the land, trenching for buried cables, pouring concrete for panel mounts, the mounts themselves, etc, the cables themselves, will last for generations. New panels are going to cost less while producing more juice, and installing them will take hours instead of months starting a new solar farm from scratch.

      Aluminum can be substituted for copper, if necessary. Aluminum frames and mounts are nice, but not actually necessary. Steel works just fine, and it can be painted so that it remains rust free for twenty years or more.

      There’s every reason to believe that as battery technologies mature, and manufacturers learn how to better control problems involving reliability and durability, etc, that electric vehicles will be cheaper to own than comparable conventional vehicles.

      There’s every reason to believe that once the driving public gets used to electric vehicle ownership and operation that there will be a HUGE market for electric cars and light trucks with very limited range, perhaps as low as forty or fifty miles…. meaning they can be sold with batteries only one fourth or one fifth of the capacity of those in cars with two hundred plus mile range.

      There’s good reason to believe that vehicle to grid, and vehicle to home, etc will eventually be very real things,thereby solving a huge portion of the intermittency problem. There are lots of ways to make better use of cheap plentiful wind and solar juice when the sun is shining and or the wind is blowing, so as to need LESS fossil fuel juice when the weather isn’t cooperating.

      Building a thousand miles of HVDC transmission line, and a couple of nuke sized solar farms out in the boonies won’t cost anymore than a couple of new naval warships, or a handful of new generation fighters, or a division’s worth of tanks and troops trained to run them.

      Generals and admirals are giving quite a bit of thought to such considerations today.

      The primary or operating energy efficiency of a solar farm or wind farm doesn’t amount to doo doo, as a practical matter in most cases, because the input energy is free. What matters is the actual monetary cost of whatever energy IS captured and put to use, so long as there’s ample land or water for building them.

      And for now, assuming long distance transmission lines are used, there’s PLENTY of places to build.

      Upping the grid and production infrastructure is going to be dealt with as a national security and domestic employment issue in coming years.

      More later.

        1. I shouldn’t feed this silliness, but I’m always curious if people have found new ways to misuse the laws of thermodynamics.

          So…which law of thermo are you suggesting applies here??

          1. Does that mean you actually know what they are?

            As you are such an expert how about educating us on the subject.

            Oh, I might work in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry but I am far from being a supporter of BAU. Peak oil is real and we should not be burning it in 200 hp cars and frivolous activities, which includes AI. The major issue is population and resource depletion. I have been saying that for my entire working life.

            1. So….you didn’t answer the question: which law of thermo did your comment have in mind?

              ————————–
              Well, pointing at population, and inefficient use of FF seems to be pointing at red herrings. FF burning is the primary cause of climate change (which is by far our largest environmental problem), and we really need to substantially eliminate FF burning.

              Now FF depletion is a significant problem, and the answer is the same: eliminate our reliance on it.

            2. The article blabs on about entropy, but the laws associated with entropy (the second and third laws) apply to isolated (aka closed) systems. It is preposterous to talk about constraints on the entropy of the biosphere (or economy) given the titanic quantities of energy that are constantly flowing in and out of the biosphere.

              In fact these arguments are just a rehash of the Jesus freak “proofs” that evolution is impossible. Anyone who has has a semester of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics as part of an undergraduate engineering degree can easily see through this gobbledygook.

              How titanic? Well Wikipedia says about 6KWh / m^2 per day on an annual average basis. And the surface of the Earth is roughly 500 million km^2, which is 500 trillion m^2. So that gives us about 3 quadrillion KWh per day. Since the temperature of the biosphere is roughly (but not exactly!) constant, about the same amount must be flowing out (by the first law). The system is wide open, so naive hand waving about the second and third laws get you nowhere.

              You can talk about constraints on entropy for individual closed systems within the biosphere, but not on the biosphere (or the economy) as a whole.

            3. that gives us about 3 quadrillion KWh per day.

              Another way to put that is 125,000 terawatts continuously, 24×7. We can compare that to human civilization which uses very roughly 10 to 20 terawatts. So we only need to harness about .01% of the solar energy hitting the earth.

              Another way to put that: all of the fossil fuel in the ground is equal to only about one month of the earth’s solar insolation.

              In other words: we don’t have an energy resource problem, we have a fossil fuel resource problem.

            4. Alimbiquated,
              Entropy by itself is not the full problem, it’s entropy and dissipation of minerals throughout the surface of the Earth that’s the problem, which is why a 100% circular economy can’t work.
              Think of farm fencing as the simple example, over time the zinc rust proofing wears off. The metal wire can be mostly recycled, except for the bits that rust away after the zzinc coating is gone. However the zinc coating has been lost to the environment in trace amounts spread all over farms.

              We don’t take and use dirt to gain the minerals needed for civilization, we take highly concentrated ore bodies that the planet’s systems over billions of years have concentrated. We have used all the highly concentrated ore and are rapidly using the second tier deposits of everything. It’s too energy inefficient to take dirt and/or basalt to extract the necessary minerals. It can’t be done on a scale to run civilization.

              It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of solar radiation that hits the planet’s surface.

            5. Nick G, you just don’t understand the energy problem… We harness the sun’s energy, about 20-22% of it with solar panels.
              These solar panels, have to be made in a factory from mined minerals, using vast quantities of fossil fuels. You want more solar, then we burn more fossil fuels to build them. Then they have a limited life, the ones built 10-15 years ago seem to be increasingly failing, so I’m not expecting the current ones made from thinner material to do much better..

              https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hailstorm-destroys-massive-solar-farm-sparking-fears-of-chemical-contamination

              Please tell us again how long these cheaper solar panels are meant to last in a world suffering from increasing storms due to climate change??

            6. Hideaway,

              The problem of hailstorms can be mitigated by moving the panels to a vertical position when hail is expected, weather forecasts are typically good enough to give advanced warning of a hailstorm and little solar power is generated during a severe storm in any case so losses in output would be low. Solar installations that utilize such a system would see lower insurance costs.

              The fossil fuel extraction also require materials to accomplish the task, the project is to gradually replace much of the energy utilized with electric power supplied by non-fossil fuel. Your demand that we must demonstrate in every case this can be done before the fact of accomplishing the transition is a silly straw man which no one will bother to answer.

              Fossil fuel output will not suddenly disappear, it will gradually be replaced, much like coal use is doing in the US, oil will be next as electric transport replaces much of land transport use, natural gas use will also be reduced as renewables replace natural gas power plants and heat pumps replace natural gas use to heat buildings and water.

            7. Dennis, then why were these moveable panels not employed in the first place?? Because moving panels to the vertical position during storms involves extra cost both capital and O&M. To continually get ‘cheaper’ systems we can’t deploy such ‘expensive’ options. It’s economics 101.

              You make the false assumption that oil cannot decline quickly. That is a totally naive assumption. Ask the people of Sri Lanka or Lebanon if access to oil can stop quickly.

              You totally avoid the thinking that the future will be anything other than a nice easy change to a bright green future, despite there being no evidence of it being possible.

              No-one anywhere is trying to make solar, or wind, or nuclear, or batteries from just renewable sources. They are trying to build it all using cheap fossil fuels. If solar, wind and/or nuclear were really cheaper, then every new mine and factory would use just these sources for their energy requirements, but none are doing so.

              I know you love using the pictures from NY around the turn of the century that show all horses and carriages on whatever street, then just 10 years later the photo from the same position showing nearly all autos, a fast transition from one form of energy use to another..
              I wonder when it will occur to you that we have had solar, wind and nuclear for many decades, yet they all still need subsidies and tax breaks to get built. There is no transition, all these renewables have not replaced fossil fuels, they have just consumed a lot of fossil energy in their mining and manufacture, then returned some of that energy in the form of intermittent electricity. they still need fossil fuel back up or some type of massive battery back up.

              In my country, just as renewables are increasing their percentage of the grid, and the cost of electricity goes up, just like everywhere else where a lot of renewables are deployed, the heavy industry relying on lots of electricity is leaving, like the Aluminium smelter in WA closing at the same time as the last coal fired power station closes. They can’t compete with places like Borneo where a new coal fired power station is being built to run a new Aluminium smelter.

              It’s really obvious, once you open your eyes and look around at what’s happening in the world, instead of just believing a lot of nonsense papers written by those in academia.
              The EROEI of renewables and nuclear, is nowhere near as good as the cheap fossil fuels we have built and operate the system of civilization we enjoy. As the cheap fossil fuels leave us, we wont have the energy to maintain the complexity of the modern world.
              Because renewables are so material rich, the very aspect we are having difficulty obtaining due to lower ore grades at mines, they take a lot of energy to make, which leaves less energy for everything else, plus they take so much longer to return the energy embedded in them, to the point of not returning more than went into making them on average around the world.
              The world average for solar panels is something like a capacity factor of 11.4% (from IEA/Simon Michaux), wind in the 20’s%.

              Every paper you have cited about the EROEI of renewables, leaves out great swaths of energy used in their construction, because most of the embedded energy is too hard to measure.
              I’m not in favor of fossil fuel energy ‘instead’, as it is also leaving us due to depletion, plus hugely damaging the stable climate we’ve had for 10,000 years. Humans are going to have a lot less energy in the future, which history has shown means a simplification of civilization, with no exceptions. An unravelling of the complexity is guaranteed with lower energy available, all while we are in massive overshoot of population.

              Once we get to oil production falling consistently year after year, we lose the ability to build more and more of anything. We need oil, the diesel component in particular for the mining of the materials, for the farming of marginal country, for the transport of vast quantities of goods around the world. Which sector do suggest misses out? Who makes the decision? Money makes the decisions, feedback loops of less will affect everything.

              You make the absurd assumption that the feedback loops of less and less, will somehow be linear, because you have lived in a world where MORE and MORE is the norm, and so did your parents and grandparents as humanity overall used more fossil fuels and more natural resources from mining.
              We have examples of many civilizations that have collapsed because the complexity of their societies unraveled, fairly quickly at the end with reduced energy input.

  7. To my eye there has been a step change in the rate of increase in methane concentration measured at the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Alaska in the past couple of years, which is most likely coming from permafrost melt.

    1. George —

      Seems like a reasonable conclusion. Apparently summer surface air temperatures during 2023 were the warmest ever observed in the Arctic, while the highest point on Greenland’s ice sheet experienced melting for only the fifth time in the 34-year record. Overall, it was the Arctic’s sixth-warmest year on record.

      https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/warmest-arctic-summer-on-record-is-evidence-of-accelerating-climate-change#:~:text=Summer%20surface%20air%20temperatures%20during,sixth%2Dwarmest%20year%20on%20record.

  8. Speaking of Methane (from Arctic News)

    ATLANTIC OCEAN HEAT THREATENS TO UNLEASH METHANE ERUPTIONS

    Atlantic surface temperatures through February 2024 highlight the potential for the slowing down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to contribute to more heat accumulating at the surface of the Atlantic and methane to erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. As temperatures rise, feedbacks are kicking in with greater ferocity, resulting in increased ocean stratification, less reflectivity, heavier melting of Greenland’s ice and freshwater runoff from land and rivers, all of which can contribute to slowing down of AMOC. While this is causing less ocean heat to reach the Arctic Ocean at the moment, a huge amount of ocean heat is accumulating in the North Atlantic that threatens to abruptly move into the Arctic Ocean.

    https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2024/

    1. Destabilization of methane hydrates could potentially cause a temperature spike that makes 2C look small!! In the geologic record such spikes have occurred very rapidly 7-10 degrees in a decade. Models cannot predict these types of chaotic events. We simply do not know what we are doing. We have been playing with fire, like children, and about to get burned to a crisp if this happens.

  10. Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) emissions, not often talked about,

    ATMOSPHERIC OBSERVATIONS IN CHINA SHOW RISE IN EMISSIONS OF A POTENT GREENHOUSE GAS

    The researchers found that SF6 emissions in China almost doubled from 2.6 gigagrams (Gg) per year in 2011, when they accounted for 34 percent of global SF6 emissions, to 5.1 Gg per year in 2021, when they accounted for 57 percent of global total SF6 emissions. This increase from China over the 10-year period—some of it emerging from the country’s less-populated western regions—was larger than the global total SF6 emissions rise, highlighting the importance of lowering SF6 emissions from China in the future.

    “Any increase in SF6 emissions this century will effectively alter our planet’s radiative budget—the balance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from the Earth—far beyond the multi-decadal time frame of current climate policies,” says MIT Joint Program and CGCS Director Ronald Prinn, a co-author of the study. “So it’s imperative that China and all other nations take immediate action to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, their SF6 emissions.”

    NB The global warming potential (GWP) of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is 24,300 times that of CO2,

    https://phys.org/news/2024-03-atmospheric-china-emissions-potent-greenhouse.html

      1. The vast majority of SF6 emissions come from the electric power sector and occur either during routine servicing of electrical equipment or through ongoing leaks in aging or poorly sealed storage tanks and other electrical equipment.

        Oh my God the irony

  11. So, I guess this is all just more UN Doomer Talk?”

    PLANET ‘ON THE BRINK’ AS UN AGENCY WARNS NEW HEAT RECORDS ARE LIKELY IN 2024

    There is a high probability that 2024 will again break the record of 2023, according to WMO climate monitoring chief Omar Baddour.

    And, reacting to the report, UN chief Antonio Guterres said it showed a planet on the brink. Earth’s issuing a distress call, he said in a video message, pointing out that “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts”, and warning that “changes are speeding up”.

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240319-un-warns-planet-on-the-brink-after-warmest-decade-on-record

    3. A former President has other concerns:

      “It’s Easter, the time of year when I compare myself to Jesus Christ. That’s just the thing I do now, and people seem to be okay with that…I’m going to keep doing.”

      He added: “And if you think that this a bad look, imagine how weird it would be if I started selling Bibles. Well, I’m selling Bibles.”

      1. “[Fascism is] based on an ethnic division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, an extreme ethno-nationalism. It’s based on nostalgia for a mythic past, typically in which members of the chosen ethnic group had an empire – and it represents the present as loss of that great empire, that natural standpoint in which members of this ethnic group dominated their environment militarily, politically, and culturally,” Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University

        “Fascism is about power – it’s not about belief. In “How Fascism Works”, I treat fascism as a particular set of tactics to seize power. Fascists do not need to believe that the panic they spread, for example about immigrants, is justified, in order to use it to win elections. Just using it is a fascist tactic,” Stanley explained.

        Fascists also excel at propaganda, using it as a tool to scapegoat certain groups; however, those groups may differ from country to country. For instance, the Nazi regime demonized Jews and other ethnic minorities, such as the Romani people, while Mussolini’s Italian regime targeted Bolsheviks — radical, far-left Marxists.

        One element of fascism is collaboration with capitalists and the conservative elite. Fascists, even when they start out with radical ideas, always collaborate to move in the direction of protecting private property, Paxton told Live Science. This is, however, an awkward alliance, he said.

        “Conservatives are basically people of order who want to use things like the church and property to maintain an existing social order

        https://www.livescience.com/57622-fascism.html

        1. Imagine an autocratic leader (of which a fascist is one prominent type)
          at helm with the tools of the modern surveillance state at their disposal.
          Thank goodness that there were enough people around trump last time
          that they were willing to say No. I don’t think he’ll tolerate that if given another shot at it.

          China is seeing how this feels. Our version would like provoke a civil war.

  12. Found this old paper (from 1983) which suggests much of the conventional oil known at that time (URR was estimated at 1700 Gb) has about 57% of original reserves with API Gravity between 25 and 35 degrees with about 32% of original reserves above 35 degrees and about 11% between 10 and 25 degrees. It is a very old paper (40 years old). Note that this did not include tight oil or extra heavy oil from Canada or Venezuela (less than 10 degrees API gravity). Note that they also report on 1000 Gb of sub-economic discovered resources, prices at the time were about $29/b and were likely expected to fall more in the future, they likely did not expect the high oil prices of the early 1980s to occur again in the future. Also the march of technology reduced costs over time.

    https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1983/0728/report.pdf

    1. Isn’t another possibility for accelerated atmospheric and sea surface warming because less heat is being taken to the deep oceans (e.g. because of increased stratification in the Atlantic)? They don’t seem to consider this and don’t look at reduced Antarctic sea ice in much detail. The tipping point arguments all seem to be angled towards geoengineering without actually saying so in detail -i.e. the tipping points can be reversed but only through direct intervention.

  14. Is anybody willing to hazard a scientific wild ass guess as to how hot on average it might be in the Mid Atlantic states within the next fifty years or so if we continue on our present day trend, burning as much oil, gas and coal as we like?

    If our local climate this far down the road is expected to be comparable to Mississippi or Alabama present day climate, younger people among my acquaintances will probably stick around.
    But if it gets to be more like the Central American tropical climate, or worse…………

    1. My guess- On average the really hot days might go from 20 to 60/yr, more like the worst of the Gulf Coast today.
      (I had the pleasure of working in southern Louisiana for 4 years when I was younger…it was no hotter than the worse days in DC or Phila, just a lot more of those days).
      But its not the average that really bites…its the dozen extreme days that will be the kind that kills people who have to be out working, stuck on the roads, roofs, fields and parking lots, or who are stuck indoors without AC.
      Don’t get a flat tire. Try to avoid being on a chain gang, or some other sort of laboring slave.
      Don’t get stuck in a masonry apartment block during the blackout.
      I think the biggest risk is that last one- a city that loses electricity during a heat dome event can have many x’s many thousands roasted inside those buildings. You get worn out, really hot and then sleepy…and just never wake up.
      Having an underground refuge, as you have previously described, is going to be paramount.

      Maybe someone thinks I am underestimating how it will be.
      A big story is how corn or soybeans will hold up in places like Carolina and Virginia. Might fail. Maybe sorghum, millet and blackeyed peas will be the fallback. Expect less yield of calories and protein/acre under tougher conditions than we have become accustomed to.

    2. One thing last year has shown is that while average temperatures change by a few tenths of a degree local records for highest maximum and, especially, highest daily minimum can change by several degrees, up to five and more. Models are not fine grained enough spatially or temporally to pick up the extremes. Global averages may change by 2.5 to 3 degrees, with the centre of continents changing by twice that but extreme days could be 20 degrees or more higher than now.

    3. Not just how hot it will be, but how hot and humid it will be. Warmer air has a greater capacity for water vapour.
      Higher temperatures over the oceans will increase rates of evaporation and increase the absolute humidity of the air. There will be more and lengthier hot summers of such levels of reltive and absolute humidity that they will be a serious threat to human and animal life. Whole vast regions of the continents may become uninhabitable, especially in the tropics. Hurricanes and typhoons will increase in intensity and frequency and ravage higher latitudes than the present, and the continental interiors will be racked by ever more frequent and violent tornado storms.

  15. Speaking of Heat Waves (hot off the press)

    STUDY SAYS SINCE 1979 CLIMATE CHANGE HAS MADE HEAT WAVES LAST LONGER, SPIKE HOTTER, HURT MORE PEOPLE

    Since 1979, global heat waves are moving 20% more slowly—meaning more people stay hot longer—and they are happening 67% more often, according to a study in Friday’s Science Advances. The study found the highest temperatures in the heat waves are warmer than 40 years ago and the area under a heat dome is larger.

    “One of the most direct consequences of global warming is increasing heat waves,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis, who wasn’t part of the study. “These results put a large exclamation point on that fact.”

    https://phys.org/news/2024-03-climate-longer-spike-hotter-people.html

  16. I find G&R to be too pretentious for my taste. They try to pass their statements as some profound philosophical principles, based on the Laws of Physics, while in reality our energy preferences have always been a matter of messy tinkering, fickle preferences, considerations for comfort, convenience, health, political narratives, marketing, and what not…

    “Never in history has a less efficient mover replaced a more efficient mover”? That sounds like some iron-clad principle, but is not true, is ambiguous, and has nothing to do with fundamental physics.

    If you are to look, horse locomotion is more efficient than a steam engine. Besides, the horse “fuel” just grows on meadows. So, obviously considerations of power trumped considerations of fuel efficiency and fuel economy.

    The Sterling Cycle engine has theoretical max efficiency (=Carnot cycle), yet you don’t see many Sterling engines around. Obviously, huge engineering disadvantages trump the thermo considerations…

    Diesel is more efficient than Otto. So why are there so many gasoline vehicles around? Why isn’t everyone driving diesel.

    I am not saying that the future is EV, I am just saying that G&R rub me the wrong way as pseudo-scientific wannabes and pretenders.

  17. Guys, I have posted very little in the last few months. Sorry, but I am just getting old and tired. But I have been reading most of the posts, though not all of them. However, I must comment on this ever-raging global warming and climate change argument.

    I am all for everyone doing everything possible to slow the greenhouse gas problem. Some things will be done, but not enough. We have already passed the point of no return. Once positive feedback kicks in, and it has, there is no way to stop it. Some people also talk about “purposefully downsizing. ” That would require massive changes in human behavior. There is no such thing as huge changes in human behavior. People will always do what is in their self-interest. Even when it becomes obvious that we are destroying the ecosystem, people will “rationalize.” They will alter their belief system to convince themselves that their behavior is not harming their environment. Just look around you; that is what the deniers are doing now. And they accuse those who disagree of spreading “doomer porn.”

    We all have, or rather the vast majority, an inner voice that tells us that a massive disaster will never happen to the human race. It has happened before, and it can most definitely happen again. But most of us have the comforting knowledge that it will not happen in our lifetime. Monday, I will bury my brother, five years younger than me. I will soon follow him. My three sons, in their sixties, will also likely outlive the coming carnage of collapse. But I grieve for my grandchildren. I grieve for the entire human race. I grieve for all that beautiful megafauna that will disappear forever.

    1. Well, I’ll say it now then before I lose the chance.
      I have learned a lot from your postings Ron…heavily appreciate all of it.
      I think we share a basic stance of trying to put reality over belief and desire,
      as a basic mode of mental conduct.
      Thanks for calling out bullshit when you saw it…full time job that can be.
      You have been a warrior for blunt truth…salute to that.

      I don’t believe in any afterlife, but I’ll say it anyway.
      If you see him before I do, tell my dog to wait up…that I’ll be coming for him one of these years.

    2. Ron, may your brother rest in peace and those around him grieve for only a few days. Then move forward and make the best of their own lives.

      I have no argument on your statement above. The unknown question is timing. Do we have 50 years or 500. Most likely you and I will never know. Here is one thing I do know from almost 40 years of sales. A lot more success comes from being possitive than being negative. Negativity can destroy a person. It can make a person a loser and quitter before they even get started. What humans have achieved has been amazing and there can be plenty more that can be done. Humanity has no option but to move forward. There has never been a guaranty of our outcome except that one day it will end. Some of us will try to make lemonade out of lemons. Others will just get in the way of success.

    3. Ron,

      RIP to your brother. We are all on the same one way road in this life.

      I share your grief and agree with your views on this.

    5. RIP.
      Your enthusiasm for knowledge has left its mark on many. Thanks for coming out Ron.

      PS – The theory that we can rely on billions of people doing everything they can in their own lives to stem the climate crisis feels like it’s been pretty decisively refuted by the fact that hundreds of millions of people won’t even put on a cheap mask to save their neighbor’s life.

    7. Ron
      Always appreciated your refusal to sugar coat your opinions.
      May the rest of your road of life be free from potholes and broken pavement.

  18. A dose of reality from Australia.

    SOLAR PANEL WASTE TO REACH CRISIS LEVELS IN NEXT TWO TO THREE YEARS

    The immense scale of waste comes down to two factors. Victoria is the only state to have banned the disposal of solar panels in landfill, and the cost to recycle solar panels – $10 or $20 per panel – disincentivises recycling. Additionally, for panels that are recycled, the technologies needed to extract valuable materials is not available.

    Renate Egan, the executive director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics based at the University of NSW, said previous predictions did not consider that two-thirds of Australian solar panels were installed on residential rooftops and were frequently replaced. One in three Australian homes generate solar energy, the highest per capita of any country.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/30/solar-panel-waste-levels-crisis-point-disposal

  19. Peak coal, well, maybe not?

    CHINA MAY UPEND GLOBAL COAL EMISSIONS TRENDS IN 2024

    “Analysts expect China to deploy fiscal tools such as tax cuts and direct government loans to revive investment and spending in key areas of the economy from next month. If successful, the measures may crank up consumption across myriad industries that collectively could raise overall power use and emissions in the world’s top polluter. In turn, given the current delicate state of the economy, power producers will likely opt to use the cheapest fuel sources available when increasing baseload power generation, which in China’s case means more coal. And as China accounts for nearly 60% of worldwide coal use in power generation, more coal use in China means more global use of the world’s dirtiest power fuel.”

    https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-may-upend-global-coal-emissions-trends-2024-2024-02-14/

  20. Price of Ozempic per month:
    USA: Nearly $1,000
    Canada: $155
    Germany: $59
    Cost to Manufacture Ozempic: $5

    Basic Capitalism

    1. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251046

      “This may well be one of the most-complex, well-thought-out and insidious “hack attempts” in the computer age’s history — so far.”

      ” giving them full, unfettered access to everyone and everything on that system.”

      https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/red-hat-warns-of-backdoor-in-xz-tools-used-by-most-linux-distros/

      “PLEASE IMMEDIATELY STOP USAGE OF ANY FEDORA 41 OR FEDORA RAWHIDE INSTANCES for work or personal activity,” Red Hat warned on Friday.

  22. ‘HUMBLING, AND A BIT WORRYING’: RESEARCHER CLAIMS THAT MODELS FAIL TO FULLY EXPLAIN RECORD GLOBAL HEAT

    That 2023 was Earth’s hottest year on record was in some ways no surprise. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about rapidly rising temperatures driven by humanity’s relentless burning of fossil fuels. But last year’s sudden spike in global temperatures blew far beyond what statistical climate models had predicted, leading one noted climate scientist to warn that the world may be entering “uncharted territory.”

    “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in an article in the journal Nature.

    https://phys.org/news/2024-04-humbling-bit-fully-global.html

    1. Mann is wrong. 2016 average sea surface temperatures were only .02 degrees above 2015, whereas 2023 was .24 above 2022, which is twice as big as any other yearly increase, and almost every day in 2023 was warmer than the previous maximum.

  23. IRENA (The International Renewable Energy Agency) is out with new statstical data for growth in renewable capacity for last year.
    https://www.irena.org/Publications/2024/Mar/Renewable-capacity-statistics-2024

    Very much the same trends as preceding years. The renewable industry has recovered fully from Covid now also in the statistics; increased growth in renewable capacity from solar, onshore wind and offshore wind in that order. Hydro power growth at a standstill. China taking up a majority of the increased capacity. Now Saudi Arabia and UAE are also showing up with significant upticks in the statistics for the first time. Other than that it is very much a “steady as she goes” picture and not that different from the 2019-2020 period.

    I wonder how robust the grid would be with reduced fossil fuels supply going forward. It would probably take meticulous planning to get enough long distance high voltage lines placed right, and there is also the possibilty to play around with fossil fuel reserve capacity and possibly hydro power capacity to avoid what is not wanted. And what is not wanted is a shrinkage of the power grid due to real constraints. I could envision there is room to utilise tools to aviod this for some decades or so. The timing being different all over the world. If more renewables are built in the first place, more room to adapt and innovate to live with a higher renewables percentage. That is a real challenge: How to fit more of the economy into a steadily growing renewables sector, until some sort of maintenance mode kicks in.

    1. There are a wide range of solutions, which need to be used in an integrated, optimized way. Many analyses look at simple solutions, used for everything: 100% solar, or 100% chemical batteries, or 100% enormous HVDC transmission bands, etc. These would be very expensive.

      A big one is supply diversity: many regions have either onshore or offshore wind resources. Wind is a bit stronger at night and during the winter, so a balanced mix of solar and wind will do much better in winter than you might expect.

      Another big one is overbuilding: the current US grid has a capacity of 1,050GW, while average demand is 450GW. A renewable grid would do something roughly similar.

      Finally, seasonal backup (that is, winter) storage is unsuited to chemical batteries, which have a relatively high cost per kWh. You want something similar to current natural gas storage: “wind-gas”, probably hydrogen in salt domes.

      1. NickG,

        The system can be overbuilt in the south where there is less of a winter summer change in insolation and lines could potentially be run north south with excess power flowing south to north in Nov to Feb and the reverse from May to Aug. Perhaps not feasible from a political perspective, synthetic fuels may work better, but we are a long way from this, better buildings buit to passive house standards would reduce winter energy loads.

        1. Yes, you would think that specialization would be good: solar in Texas, Morocco, and Spain, wind in Iowa, the UK and Portugal. And yet, countries and states seem to want their own supply, even if it’s more expensive….

          Again, there a wide range of solutions that need to be implemented for an optimal, low-cost high reliability system. These would include:

          -efficiency (passive house, CAFE, appliance standards, etc., etc.)
          -geographical diversity, including exports & imports
          -supply diversity (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, tidal, wave, biomass, etc.,etc)
          -overbuilding
          -improved forecasting
          -dynamic consumer/EV battery charging (G2V)
          -vehicle to grid (V2G)
          -other forms of demand side management (residential/ commercial/industrial)
          -batteries (mostly short term)
          -synthetic fuels (more long term), including H2, syndiesel, methanol, ammonia, etc., etc.

          Fortunately, these strategies are mostly familiar territory for grid managers (ISOs in the US).

    2. Kolbeinih,

      There is likely to be plenty of fossil fuel, the problem will be demand for fossil fuel and falling prices leading to much of the resource being left in the ground. That is a good thing for the environment, there will be enough fossil fuel to provide backup where needed and a widely distributed set of wind, solar and hydro power plants with perhaps some pumped hydro where practical will not require much backup. Eventually there will be enough excess renewable capacity to produce synthetic fuel that can be used as backup in place of natural gas, nuclear could also potentially provide some backup where it already exists. This is a problem that is solvable in my view.

      1. D. Coyne

        That is a way of thinking about it. As difficult as it is to get something right about the future, my thinking long term is something along these terms: Resource depletion is real and it is going to bite, but the world is big and the decline rates are going to stay lowish as long as enough investments are incentivised. It is probably possible to have an extended period of increasingly slightly lower living standard for several decades, relying more on renewable energy at a steady pace. The crisis scenarios can most likely be pushed back. The critical point is more how much renewables we can run at 20% (or maybe 10%) of top point fossil usage. It can be enough, it is something to work towards. Even if this view is not all that positive, we are much better off building a large renewables industry than the alternative. It is simply much more sustainable.

        1. “we are much better off building a large renewables industry than the alternative”
          Indeed. China seems to understand this difficult concept pretty well.

        2. Kolbeinih,

          My thinking is that we could probably run things in 30 years on about 2% fossil fuel, if we get to work building renewables and replacing fossil fuel use with solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, biofuel, and synthetic fuel. Eventually I think fossil fuel use can be reduced to zero, but that is 50 years out in my view. When I look back 50 years, things have changed quite a bit, difficult to predict what the next 50 years will bring.

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