106 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 22, 2021”

  1. Regarding EVs and the transition to “clean” energy. I noticed a lot of people downplaying the environmental impact of EV batteries. Especially Nick G who usually downplays everything bad regarding renewables. Or the monumental engineering challenges regarding the transition etc.

    This is a recent article, the sources look quite impartial. Basically if new technologies and recycling aren’t cost feasible which at the moment they aren’t. Wall street and the spin of “green” will guarantee the plundering of our ocean floors if the demand and price (of the respective commodities) are ripe for the picking. I almost have no doubt this will happen and billionaires will cash in once again at the expense of a stupid population and the further trashing of the planets ecosystems.

    https://therevelator.org/ev-batteries-seabed-mining/

    This is the 2019 study by UTS (a reputable university in Sydney Australia) PDF format
    https://www.earthworks.org/cms/assets/uploads/2019/04/MCEC_UTS_Report_lowres-1.pdf

    Please I advise people to scroll to the last page of this report. A neat table is showing the path to 1.5 degree warming from 2015-2050, and dare i say the monumental task and cooperative efforts required world wide that is required in terms of electricity generation and EVs.

    For me i say, it might be possible to get to those targets but i just can’t see it happening with an odds of < 1%. Either way the task required might further destroy vital ecosystems and god knows what else in the process. Or maybe i am just a pessimist.

    Dennis might want to weigh in on this as he is usually the antidote to my pessimism lol

    1. Good articles IM.
      I have no doubt that the aspiration of mankind to keep the economic ball rolling fast and hard will continue to be destructive as hell, whatever the mechanisms employed. Be it biomass on a grand scale as the UTS study (and others) foresee, new nuclear, photovoltaics filling all the cargo ships, or coal until the last chunk, the footprint will be huge as we move towards 10 billion people. And that is regardless of whether carbon emissions is part of the battle to be fought.
      Just about nobody is talking about sitting by and letting the whole factory and farm run down.
      That path isn’t in the cards.

      1. “Just about nobody is talking about sitting by and letting the whole factory and farm run down.
        That path isn’t in the cards.” ~ Hickory

        Actually, an increasing many are talking about and doing many things about it, such as getting into permaculture (which includes natural farming) , relocalizing and shirking much of the trappings of global industrial civilization. This was before C-19, but it’s probably helping to accelerate the process.

    2. “Regarding EVs and the transition to “clean” energy. I noticed a lot of people downplaying the environmental impact of EV batteries. Especially Nick G who usually downplays everything bad regarding renewables. Or the monumental engineering challenges regarding the transition etc.”

      Sorry, that is stupid. You only come with your “important” personal opinion, not more. Your contribution lacks substance. To provide one source YOU consider good is weak when the source is not addressing some of the obvious solutions/issues:

      1) To extrapolate from current battery chemistry which will change within the next five to ten years is strange. You provide noo evidence that the potential issue is still one in a few years. With EVs the market for batteries grew at least three orders of magnitude and in the research field the situation is now like a pool with shark in which bloody meat has been thrown.

      2) Recycling is not available because there are not many used batteries. BTW: EV batteries have a second life in stationary storage systems which willl delay need for recycling further.

      4) Car makers like VW are actually doing R&D for battery/cell recycling, because old cells whatever chemistry have to be handled. They understand the issue.

      “Or the monumental engineering challenges regarding the transition etc.”

      BS. Replacing a system in a BAU scenario also requires huge resources and has challenges, the differential “costs” are in may cases not high. To sell absolute numbers as the more relevant differential numbers means you are not very smart, or you are dishonest.

      1. “Sorry, that is stupid. You only come with your “important” personal opinion, not more. Your contribution lacks substance. To provide one source YOU consider good is weak”

        Thanks for sharing your personal opinion. Got any sources? Even just one source YOU consider important would be nice, especially the part about “battery chemistry which will change within the next five to ten years”, although perhaps just one reference would be a little weak.

        PS- HB sounds deep in denial/in need of distraction, and somewhat passive aggressive.
        http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-15-2021/#comment-718384

        When you’re in denial, you:
        Won’t acknowledge a difficult situation
        Try not to face the facts of a problem
        Downplay possible consequences of the issue
        https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/denial/art-20047926

        …. cue HB’s next day at the beach.

        1. After one minute of research on Google, here is “just one”.

          “In the long term, the Volkswagen Group has set itself a very ambitious goal: to recycle 97 percent of all raw materials. Today, it is 53 percent, and the pilot plant in Salzgitter will bring this figure up to 72 percent. There is still some way to go before reaching the grand target of 97 percent. Even if a lot of small steps are necessary, it all serves an overarching agenda: the Volkswagen Group is doing everything it can to make e-mobility sustainable.”

          https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/02/lithium-to-lithium-manganese-to-manganese.html#

          Hey Debbie Downer, if your head wasn’t so far up your ass with fear of the future. You wouldn’t have to hug your bug out bag for comfort on a Saturday night with butt breath.

          Passive aggressive, let me make this perfectly clear to you Debbie. Your an ill informed idiot wrong about everything. Get a life coward.

          1. Recycling batteries is addressed in the European Directive on batteries and accumulators of 2006. It has been incorporated into national law in most EU countries.

            Currently about 45% of batteries sold in Germany are recycled.

            By weight, much of a EV battery is made of of materials that have been routinely recycled for decades, including steel, aluminum and plastic. There is little reason to doubt that lithium, graphite, cadmium, cobalt can also be recovered, since these and other metals are routinely recovered from other sources.

            The entire claim that batteries “can’t be recycled” is nonsense.

            1. Alim , I want to keep away from this discussion but your “Currently about 45% of batteries sold in Germany are recycled.” forced me to respond .
              Are you willing to have a drink which is 55% water 45 % Potassium Cyanide ?

          2. There is absolutely nothing sustainable about car culture. Worrying about battery recycling is like fretting about the deckchairs getting wet on the Titanic.

            By all means, champion the profit model VW is going for. I’m sure they only have the planet’s best interests at heart.

            1. Kleiber , well said . ” I’m sure they only have the planet’s best interests at heart.” .

            2. Doubling Down On Denial and A Near-Pathological Focus On Technology?

              Kleiber, your comments are refreshing in the context of some of the ‘technocommentary’ that often seems like a kind of near-pathological denial of nature and of the kinds of discussions and movements about and toward it that are absolutely necessary.

    3. Great recently written piece about battery recycling procedures.

      https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/millions-electric-cars-are-coming-what-happens-all-dead-batteries

      So far, direct recycling experiments have only focused on single cells and yielded just tens of grams of cathode powders. But researchers at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory have built economic models showing the technique could, if scaled up under the right conditions, be viable in the future.

      1. IM , no quibble with you . The write ” if scaled up under the right conditions, be viable in the future.” . Yeah , but then ” If my grandma had b^^^s she would be grandpa ” . 🙂

        1. HiH,

          I have no quibbles with anyone so you don’t need to worry. I guess the article suggests we should try to keep an open mind as conditions change in the future, battery recycling might become economical. Not sure how it will play out so it has an advantage to have an open mind regarding the future.

          1. IM , tks at least we are civil . Open mind is different from reality . I have an open mind but I cannot ignore reality and having a choice between the two , I stick to reality . Reality was never meant to be tasty just like truth .

        2. H in H, consider it a challenge to doublecheck your various proclamations- almost all are based on suppositions/assumptions that are acceptable to you, but are certainly not based on factual events yet to have occurred.
          And hey, you are certainly not the only one who runs that way, but apply the same grace to others as you routinely ask of them.

    1. Important information Dennis.
      For clarity, this is sources of electrical generation.
      I wonder what the CO2 emissions per mile is for the average car fueled by petrol vs average EV powered by Solar PV is?

    2. We are lucky in France to have 75% of electricity production coming from nuclear power station. JM jancovici describes the nuclear electricity as a ventral parachute in a time of forecasted oil production decrease.

      1. Nuclear energy won’t do France much good if oil declines, unless EVs are in use. Oil isn’t a very good source of energy — it’s too expensive, and rarely used to generate electricity. It is really useful as a method of storing energy in a moving vehicle however. The only likely replacement for oil is batteries.

        1. The only likely replacement for oil is batteries.

          Yeah, just how many ocean-going cargo ships are battery-powered. If not any, then what is the schedule to put them all on battery power? Or airlines? What is the timeline to replace all jet fuel passenger or freight aircraft with battery powere?

          I live right off a main highway. About a thousand trucks pass by every day. I don’t think a damn one of them is battery-powered. And if I ask one of the drivers when his rig will run on battery power, he just looks at me like I am a damn fool.

          Hey, I am all for renewable fuel. But you guys are living in a proverbial dreamland. It just ain’t gonna happen.

          1. Never say never Ron, I remember you saying in 2014 or 2015 it was peak. After selling class 8’s to owner operators in the second half of the 80’s. I wouldn’t get future technical advice from truck drivers. There not drivers because they graduated with a 4.0. But your right, EV trucks aren’t running around out there.

            I expect EV heavy trucks to break into the industry with day cabs and bobtails. They come home very night, deal with a lot more city traffic were EV’s excell and can manage with smaller batteries. Until road tractors drive themselves, I don’t see them going battery without some major advancement. But, when you take the driver cost out. You could see half the energy demand removed. That’s a game changer. Wind resistant is by far the primary demand and it’s exponential.

            1. Driverless cross-country battery-powered truck rigs? HB, I think you are reading too much science fiction.

              However, if all those truck drivers were out of a job, you would have an even bigger problem. I know, it wouldn’t happen suddenly, but even a creeping unemployment problem is something to be considered. But if I were a truck driver, I really wouldn’t be worried that a robot was going to take my job.

          2. Ron,

            If people were meant to fly, they would have wings. 🙂
            A computer that can fit in your pocket, that is just crazy talk (or what the heck is a computer?)

            All fantasies that have become reality.

            Land transport can convert to batteries for most things, those that cannot can use electrified rail. Ships can use natural gas, nuclear or synthetic fuels, air transport can use synthetic fuel produced when wind and solar produce excess energy that cannot be utilized and the energy (which will be low cost and abundant during those periods) can be utilized in the production of synthetic fuel.

            1. Land transport can convert to batteries for most things, those that cannot can use electrified rail.

              Dennis, I know that statement seems so realistic to you. Yeah, convert all land transport to battery power, yeah, that’s the trick. No, that is just not realistic.

              Yes, rail would be nice but we just don’t have that many railroads or trains. And anyway, they are by fossil fuel, that is diesel. Yes, they could be converted to overhead electric power or a third rail. But such a scheme is not even on the drawing board. That is thousands of new rail lines with the overhead electric line. You and I can sit around and dream up such schemes but if it were realistic it would have already been in preparation. It is not, that should tell you something.

              Dennis, my point is, all the things you believe could happen, just ain’t gonna happen. Yes, companies are working on electric cars like gangbusters. But all those other very impractical schems, are just not on the drawing boards.

            2. One Person’s Fantasies Are Another’s Nightmare

              “All fantasies that have become reality.” ~ Dennis

              Hey Dennis, look where many ‘fantasies’ have gotten us.
              Much of your American economy, for example, has been predicated on economic wars of various sorts against others, both on your own soil and over land and seas.
              I don’t have to tell you about how that sort of morally bankrupt seed can grow into a monster that does the same with the rest of the planet do I?

              Fantasies will only truly succeed when they encompass moral integrity. Until then, all the realized fantasies in the world that don’t are worthless and worse.

            3. Ron —
              The US doesn’t have a lot of passenger trains, but it has a very good freight train network.

              Shipping is mostly used for bulk cargo. In fact more than half of sea cargo is fossil fuel, I believe. So reducing fossil fuel demand on land will reduce fossil fuel demand on ships. A lot more is shipping grain, which could also decline if replacements from meat are found.

              A for airplanes, there is a good chance that small electric planes could replace nearly all first class travel, because flights would be much cheaper. Without first class travel economy class isn’t viable, and could vanish. Most flights are less than 100 miles anyway, and could be replaced by surface travel, like high speed rail.

              You tend to imagine that everything has to be kept the exact way it is right now, even though you can remember a time when there were no container ships. In fact the world is changing quickly.

            4. In fact more than half of sea cargo is fossil fuel, I believe.

              You believe? Got a link that supports that assertion? You need one to prove you are not just making shit up, which I believe is exactly you are doing. I don’t think that assertion is even close to being correct.

              A for airplanes, there is a good chance that small electric planes could replace nearly all first class travel, because flights would be much cheaper.

              No! There is not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. Small planes have a serious drawback. They carry far fewer passengers and therefore require more pilots and flight attendants. And even a small battery-powered passenger plane is far down the road. They would be slower by perhaps half because they would have to be all prop driven. That would make air time much longer and they would be good for only short hops.

              Without first class travel economy class isn’t viable, and could vanish. Most flights are less than 100 miles anyway, and could be replaced by surface travel, like high speed rail.

              Now where on earth did you get that statistic? Now you are just making shit up again. I googled it and could not find the average passenger flight mileage. But I would bet my bottom dollar it is several times your 100-mile guess. Again, if you are going to quote really hard-to-believe statistics, post a link to prove them.

              I don’t mean to be hard on you Alimbiquated, but you should not just pull stats out of your ass that supports your argument. Any stat that you quote should have some basis in fact with a link or some other proof that the stat is correct.

            5. I too am very doubtful about electric air travel.
              The smallest niches perhaps.
              One company serves the Puget sound region out of Vancouver BC named Harbour Air. They do short hop seaplane commuter type business and tours. They are the largest seaplane operator in N.America, but they are a tiny company in relative terms. They have announced plans to convert to all-electric. We’ll see if they can do it.
              https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-electric-seaplane-test-flights-1.5884479

              I wouldn’t be surprised if they can do it, considering their short length trips without much weight. Beyond that, I’ll believe it is feasible when I see it in action.

      2. I noticed that few people think about where the electricity for electric vehicles will come from. The fact is that electricity consumption is not uniform and has peaks both during the day and during the seasons. This means that to smooth these peaks it is necessary to have “hot capacities” for short-term activation are expensive, capacities must be large.
        -Moreover: the nuclear power plant park in the world is old and will soon have to be disposed of, it will require money comparable to the construction of new ones. In the presence of a large share of green energy, nuclear power plants are not needed because they cannot operate during peak periods, for this diesel or gas power plants are needed.
        More: With an increase in the number of electric vehicles, it will be necessary to change the power supply system because the existing substations and electrical networks were not reckoned on the increased consumption …

    1. Well aware of this, the farmers are hoping for a winter die off. As the regions where the plaques are centralised are in freezing night time temperatures.

      Unless climate change is already impacting the average low temps. Which will wreck havoc during sowing season as populations could quickly bounce back during spring.

      1. I seem to recall a similar issue at some points with rabbits and cane toads.

        1. Indeed, Rabbits, cane toads, pigs, camels, cats, foxes. There are a lot of feral animals which are decimating the local wildlife.

    1. Sure it possible, but very unlikely. These kinds of fungi are widespread in the environment (with or without oxygen)-
      “Mucormycetes, the group of fungi that cause mucormycosis, are present throughout the environment, particularly in soil and in association with decaying organic matter, such as leaves, compost piles, and animal dung.”

      These kind of infections are called “opportunistic” and ‘are defined as those infections occurring due to bacteria, fungi, viruses or commensal organisms that normally inhabit the human body and do not cause a disease in healthy people, but become pathogenic when the body’s defense system is impaired’

      Impaired immune system such as is seen with ageing, chemotherapy, poor nutrition, diabetes, steroids, and other chronic diseases.

      There are many opportunistic infections like this that normally cause no problem in healthy people. For example Pseudomonas aeruginosa is extremely common in soils throughout the world. But is only seen as causing pneumonia in immunocompromised people (again with or without oxygen).

  5. There a a group of beliefs that have been called “hopium” here. Hope Opium.
    These hopes/beliefs/ideas/aspirations generally center around the notion that the human global ‘farm and factory’ can adapt to changing conditions and continue on unimpeded into the future, despite overpopulation or global warming or running out food and/or energy. There are some variations and details, but that is the gist.

    Well, I’ll throw a new notion into the category of ‘hopium’, even though I thinks a bad term and use it solely so that people recognize what I’m saying here.
    It is a false hope to expect that the vast majority of the world population is willing the go along with the default plan suggested by many here, either directly or indirectly. That default plan is to voluntarily do the ‘Big Fade’. As fossil fuels depletion, the earth warming, the arable land/person, and the health of the biosphere all continue to trend in extremely unfavorable directions, collectively we will just do little or nothing in the name of adaptation. The result will be a big fade in the human ‘farm and factory’, and thus population.

    Well, the Big Fade will happen to some degree regardless, but it is a false hope to think the 6 billion plus people under 50 yrs old are going to sit in bleachers to watch it go down passively. No, the world is going to fight like hell for alternative sources of energy as petrol depletes. Sorry, but that is just the way it is. You may find that unpalatable, or ecologically destructive, or unlikely to be successful. But we each only get one vote. Well, some get more votes if they have more dollars, but that is a whole different discussion.

    I guess most have their hopes one way or another. Just different perspectives and priorities.

    1. Hi HICK —
      “… but it is a false hope to think the 6 billion plus people under 50 yrs old are going to sit in bleachers to watch it go down passively.”

      How does sitting around watching billionaires become trillionaires while your wealth, security and freedoms erode via inflation, violence, pollution, etc. fit with this “reasoning”? How many Jews decided to stab one Nazi to death before being trucked off to a gas chamber (or more likely shot)? It wouldn’t be hard to find examples closer to home from the Great Depression and history is littered with examples of people who simply faded away. Starvation (even poor nutrition) and disease tend to adversely affect one’s incentive to do much of anything. BTW My Mum who had seen some pretty gloomy times was always reminding me: “Even if you are trapped in a garbage pit there will be pockets of beauty, such as a spider weaving her miraculous web, so don’t get caught up in the ugliness”, a lesson I try not to forget.

      AMERICAN QUALITY OF LIFE DECLINES OVER PAST DECADE

      “The U.S. decline in quality of life is greater than the only other two countries that fell in an annual measure of social progress. That’s a 12-spot drop from when the full index was first published in 2014, when the U.S. came in at No. 16.”

      https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report

      1. I’m not sure what your point was Doug, but to be clear- the horde of humanity will , in the face of petroleum and other fossil fuel depletion, go ahead and burn all the wood and coal they can get their hands on, and build out solar and wind and even more hydro, and go all out on biofuels, and mine the ocean floor if need be, rather than voluntarily go short on energy. Regardless of anyone’s concerns about global warming or destruction of the environment, unfortunately.

        To hope otherwise is to fail to understand human nature and the trajectory of a population in severe overshoot condition.

        Sorry to be blunt (I am from Philadelphia so it comes naturally), no ill will intended.

    2. ‘Fossil fuels’ or ‘Solar Panels’ is a false dichotomy.

      Furthermore, using the former to fuel the latter at this dubious stage of the game is very questionable, to put it mildly.

      Second, there are many Millennials for example who are and will be ‘going down fighting’ by learning about such things as resilience, solidarity, local gardening, community revitalization, and other things like those that have been lost through succumbing to this way of (life) death. So this is not hopium.

      Best we offer them and others more discussion, inspiration and examples in these regards, rather than forcing a path bent on further personal, social, economic and natural destruction.

  7. It’s not just a question of electric this or that, or renewable energy this or that.

    We are completely and totally out of control in every possible way. Population, resource consumption, the financial system, deregulated capitalism, motorization of all cars and transport, the media and fictitious entertainments, computers and AI, etc., it’s all exploded on steroids and nobody wants to put anything back in.

    The powers that be benefit tremendously from this system. They make continuous money, you work for them as things get more competitive and worse for you by the year. They drown you with entertainments to distract you from the decline, and feed you political theater (The Republicans care about you and will change things after this election! The Democrats care about you and will change things after this election!). White cops are evil and racist and want to kill you! Or blacks and immigrants are taking over and want to kill you! Etc. etc.

    It’s all hogwash. They are just engaging in population management so that you keep your heads down and don’t change the system. And why? Because when the system changes, it will collapse and change permanently, never to return again, ever. So they need to milk this for all it’s worth. Trillions, Quadrillions. They aren’t going to stop until everything, and everyone, is used up and dead.

      1. Agreed. That comment is parroting InfoWars/Alex Jones talking points.

        On the topic of media distracting the populace with ‘bread and circus’, or whatever; I feel that any reasonable analysis would acknowledge there is a supply side and demand side for such entertainment. Kardashians/NFL/Whatever are not being forced down anyone’s neck. The ratings and polling industry, which is very reliable in America, determines it is popular and that people want more of it. What is the alternative; make it illegal? That would infringe on autonomy.
        ….. that dude needs to ask themselves the question- So what?

        1. Edward Bernays and his legacy has been devastating for this planet.

          1. Survivalist’s comment– and perhaps it’s deadpan sarcasm– would seem to indicate that Bernays et al. have less relevance and that people want what they want, as opposed to what they can be conditioned to believe they want or want more than they actually do.

            “It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

        2. From The Archives:
          The Physical and Spiritual Manifestation of A 100 IQ World
          (to the day, six years ago)

          Glenn Stehle
          05/25/2015 at 1:37 pm:

          “I like how the dissident and unorthodox mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot put it in The (Mis)Behavior of Markets:

          ‘Markets no longer appear in the entirey rational, well-behaved patterns of past financial theorists. They are seen for what they are: dynamic, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous systems for transferring wealth and power, systems as important for us to understand as the wind, the rain, and the flood…

          It is the Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm’. In finance, I believe the conventional models and their more recent ‘fixes’ violate that oath. They are not merely wrong; they are dangerously wrong. They are like a shipbuilder who assumes that gales are rare and hurricanes myth; so he builds his vessel for speed, capacity, and comfort — giving little thought to stability and strength. To launch such a ship across the ocean in typhoon season is to do serious harm. Like the weather, markets are turbulent. We must learn to recognize that, and better cope.’ ”

          Caelan MacIntyre
          05/25/2015 at 3:46 pm:
          “Glenn, it is like that bell curve for intelligence, and they say that average intelligence– the majority– is not that smart.

          So society averages out at average. We can have all the great technology and ideas we want, but somehow it all gets averaged-out/diluted at the peak– the majority– of the bell curve of human intelligence.

          So maybe culture is a kind of averaged-out manifestation of 100 IQ, which is not that bright as some have suggested.

          Looking around, that seems to make sense. We should be skateboarding on Mars by now, for example, yes? Or have nuclear fusion and nuclear fission waste all taken care of by now, everything all neatly decommissioned? We should be working far less by now, with no wage-slaves, poverty or illusions of democracy. We should be living in a kind of Frescoesque Venus Project World by now, no? Doing art, music, philosophy, leisure, mountain biking and hiking in the trails, swimming in the pristine local waters of happy fish and making love beside a knocked-over tray of tea-and-crumpets?

          But we’re not. Not quite.

          We are living with climate change and ceaseless arguments about it; with ecosystem despoilment and depletions and Fox News.

          In the physical and spiritual manifestation of a 100 IQ world.”

          BC
          05/25/2015 at 4:27 pm:

          “Caelan, my observations precisely. Thanks.

          We are still stuck in an evolutionarily determined predator-prey situation in which the most successful predatory top 0.001-1% gain disproportionately by manipulation and enforcing of self-serving symbols and beliefs, perpetuating the mythos of meritocracy and perpetual growth of population, resource consumption, and–choose your particular poison–’capitalism’, ‘free markets’, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘progress’, or whichever religious-like basis for meaning, purpose, and motivation suits us this week.’ “

  8. To all: Everyone may be asking “Why is Ron so damn pessimistic?” Well, let me try and explain. Way back in the late sixties, I was concerned with the destruction of our environment. I was mostly concerned with overpopulation. The world population then was about 3.5 billion people, less than half today’s population. I read book after book about what had to be done to save the environment. I had great hopes that we were going to figure a way out of this predicament. But nothing ever got done.

    I later figured out why. One cannot convince the whole world to do one damn thing. Every person, every nation, is looking out for number one, themselves and the environment can just go to hell.

    I see in all the green energy people here, the same optimism I had in the late 60s and 70s. I had it all in my head how we were going to fix things. But I later figured out just how the world worked. If anyone can see an advantage, to themselves, in adopting any change in behavior or products they will purchase, they will readily change. But there must be a clear and direct advantage or they will simply ignore it and go on about their environment destroying and energy-wasting ways.

    When airlines, railroads, ocean-going vessels, heavy truckers, farmers, and other heavy petroleum users see an advantage in switching to battery power, they will immediately switch. And when it is more economical for the grid to switch to solar, wind, and battery storage, they will do it. But my life experience tells me that this stuff just ain’t gonna happen. I hope I am wrong. But I very seriously doubt it.

    1. Personally I don’t find you pessimistic. I would use the word realistic. I feel you have a good grasp of the problems going forward.

      “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~ William Arthur Ward

      1. “Blow the Man Down is an English sea shanty, listed as 2624 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The lyric ‘Blow the man down’ most likely refers to a common mishap at sea during the age of sail wherein a strong, sudden gale catches a ship with its topsails fully set – the force of the wind, depending upon the load and balance of the ship’s cargo, can actually ‘blow the man down’, or blow the man-o’-war down into the water, partially capsizing it. When this occurs during a violent storm, the result is almost always a loss of the ship…” ~ Wikipedia

        Blow The Man Down

    2. “But there must be a clear and direct advantage or they will simply ignore it and go on about their environment destroying and energy-wasting ways.”
      Yes indeed Ron.

      Survivalist on Ron- “Personally I don’t find you pessimistic. I would use the word realistic. I feel you have a good grasp of the problems going forward.”
      Agreed.

    3. Ron, no need to justify your viewpoint . Anyway to perk you up ” A pessimist is an optimist armed with the facts ” . Same as Survivalist said ” realistic ” . Don’t be hard on yourself . You did your best and is appreciated by many . Be well .

    4. Ron —

      “By feasting on earth’s resources, we are creating imbalances of such epic proportions that the world is hurtling rapidly forward, passing a series of tipping points which will irreversibly lead humanity to a point of no return where we will need to “bunkerise” ourselves in air-conditioned towns and cities, where particles will need to be seeded into the atmosphere to geo-engineer decreases in temperature, where water will come from desalination of lifeless seas, and where exposure to the natural world will be limited to indoor zoos and indoor botanical gardens.”

      https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/features/our-systemic-and-systematic-assault-on-the-natural-world-must-stop/

      1. Doug, the headline from your link reads:

        Our systemic and systematic assault on the natural world must stop!

        I remember reading such headlines back in the 70s, lots of such headlines. It didn’t stop then and it won’t stop now.

        1. Ron,

          As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation…”

  9. One of the things I find interesting about Cornucopians is that their predictions for the future align with their hopes for the future, aka their interests aka a 1/4 billion personal EVs plus EV trucks and planes and everything else for America. Anyone who doesn’t agree with this prediction, and has a less rosy one, is accused of hoping for something nasty. It seems difficult for them to understand that one could predict a future that one is not very happy about. It’s a cognitive bias; I poke holes in their premise and conclusion; they accuse me of moral failure and distract/deflect/deny and insult. It’s straight out of the Musk/Trump playbook.
    Anyway, for those interested in getting a little more tolerant and perseverant vis vis The Future, I would recommend giving some thought to Hardiness. It’s an interesting characteristic that is likely to make it through any sort of population bottleneck. Perhaps pass some Hardiness on to the younger folks in your groups.

    “Hardiness is conceptualized as the existential courage that facilitates facing stresses directly and learning from transforming them to advantage. In this explanation, life is considered to be an inherently stressful phenomenon, which involves having to make decisions concerning ongoing developmental requirements, to which get added imposed megatrends of change. In all this, the hardy attitudes and skills involve not only surviving but also thriving. This form of resilience leads to enhanced meaning, performance, health, and fulfillment.”
    https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-6527-6_18

    “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

    1. hey, consider that the term cornucopian is often used as a blanket reason to denigrate a whole host of adaptations that are part of developing resilience and ‘hardiness’ at a community, regional or even national level.

      If people think that certain adaptations like growing food more locally, and living with a smaller footprint, or converting the nations vehicles to electric, are measures that are going to ‘save the world’ or allow ‘business as usual’ out into the far future, well that is wishful thinking to be kind.

      But the same mix of measures along with a dozen more such examples (like having a personal woodlot or garden) are appropriate measures to adapt to the situation that people become aware they are up against.

      The only difference being the expected outcome- what some may characterize as wishful thinking vs constructive acts of attempted resilience knowing full well that it is all leading to a retreat. People can hope for a managed retreat, but for many that scenario will be wishful thinking.

      Me, I am certainly not a ‘cornucopian’. I’m just about as realistic as Ron, although I keep most of those thoughts untyped. More accurately, I could be termed a ‘managed retreatist’, which is something I hope for but don’t have high expectations for. We are too deep into overshoot, with a very unruly and undisciplined crowd.

      1. Hickory,

        I am more of an “adjust the sails” kind of person, when there is a problem I try to find solutions. It is likely many will never be adopted widely. As oil becomes scarce and or climate change becomes apparent to all (in the same way that LA smog and burning rivers made this apparent to many in the US in the seventies), crazy projects like electrified rail, HVDC grid infrastucture, and better education may be adopted because people at large see that adopting better policy will be better for them and their family.

        At that point it may well be too little too late, but motivated humans working together can accomplish amazing (and terrible) things. We can hope for the former and not the latter. Reality will be some of both.

        1. Dennis , ” As oil becomes scarce and or climate change becomes apparent to all (in the same way that LA smog and burning rivers made this apparent to many in the US in the seventies), crazy projects like electrified rail, HVDC grid infrastucture, and better education may be adopted because people at large see that adopting better policy will be better for them and their family.”
          Sorry , incorrect inference . All what was done was send all manufacturing to China and other countries so basically pollution from the West was shifted to the pollution in the East . Anyway it is as you pointed out ”At that point it may well be too little too late, ” is the correct conclusion . The train has left the station . As much as I like your spirit but adjusting the sails in ” the perfect storm ” does not work .

          1. The Perfect storm . What is that ? It is a synchronised system failure of 3 E ( Energy, Economy and Ecology ) plus 3D ( debt, deficit and demographics ) . We are there or at least we are almost there . The combination is lethal .

        2. “adjust the sails”
          Thats as good a stance as any Dennis, and much more mentally healthy than most.

  10. Welcome to the future and it ain’t Bangladesh.

    WATER CRISIS ‘COULDN’T BE WORSE’ ON OREGON-CALIFORNIA BORDER

    “The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-05-crisis-couldnt-worse-oregon-california-border.html

    1. This is the Klamath River basin -“The situation in the Klamath Basin was set in motion more than a century ago, when the U.S. government began draining a network of shallow lakes and marshlands, redirecting the natural flow of water and constructing hundreds of miles of canals and drainage channels to create farmland. Homesteads were offered by lottery to World War II veterans.”

      Its pretty dry country, and that watershed is not big (wet) enough to serve both the local farms (in Oregon) and the river downstream (California) with salmon habitat, in many years. Too many immigrants came out along the Oregon trail, and on I-5 in more recent times.

      I had the good fortune to kayak on one of the main Klamath tributaries -the Trinity River, many times. Gorgeous territory- https://cacreeks.com/trin-wp.htm

      The SW drought is big time now- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drought-western-united-states-modern-history/

      1. I also have spent many a day on the Trinity.
        But it is located in the mountains closer to the coast, and has a different supply issue.
        I currently live just up the road from the Klamath– things are very interesting.

  11. Oops, another mega climate screw-up?

    ‘WAR’ FOOTING NEEDED TO CORRECT ECONOMISTS’ MISCALCULATIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

    • Economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change grossly underestimate the reality and have delayed global recovery efforts by decades,

    • Mainstream economists “deliberately and completely” ignored scientific data and instead made up their own numbers,

    • Now, a “war-level footing” is required to have any hope of repairing the damage.

    In other words: “We are toying with forces far in excess of ones we can actually address.”

    Further: Referring specifically to a report produced by economists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was instrumental in outlining global climate targets including those presented at the Paris Agreement COP21, Keen said even their most severe estimates were a “trivial underestimate of the damage we expect.” That is because they “completely and deliberately ignore the possibility of tipping points,” a point at which climate change can cause irreversible shifts in the environment.
    .
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/war-footing-needed-to-correct-economists-climate-change-failings.html

    1. War level response, as in global war level response? Won’t a highly accelerated technical response just exacerbate the problem by increased emissions to quickly build industrial facilities and maximize production/deployment?

      1. Its a good question Woody.
        Coal consumption in the USA dropped from 1,128 million short tons down to 477 million short tons from 2007 to 2020.
        Was the drop in coal burning CO2 emission offset by increased CO2 emissions produced by the replacement energy generation?
        I doubt it, but thats just a guess.

        Surely, the replacement of coal and oil over the next 20 years will require a major industrial effort (with its CO2 emission). Whats the alternative path? No replacement? A rapid fade?
        I think that people advocating a rapid fade will have trouble getting elected or holding decision making positions in the business world.
        Perhaps more importantly, the global consumer will vote with their wallet, in their beds (having offspring) and to a lesser degree at the ballot box. I doubt they will vote for a rapid fade. Everyone wants someone else to make changes.

      2. An example of this industrial scale tradeoff will be seen with offshore wind on the west coast, with the initial phase of a big buildout just approved by the federal government.

        This will be a big project, in deep water-
        “floating offshore wind systems (FOWS) …Each FOWS is moored to the ocean floor using conventional properly sized, vertical load, drag imbedded, or torpedo anchors, a technology that requires no piling and is well suited for deep and variable seabed conditions. The installation is completely reversible, meaning no permanent infrastructure is left on the sea bed upon decommissioning and performed with minimal acoustic disturbances. Individual FOWS are electrically interconnected with inter-array cables to form an offshore wind farm. ”

        If this deepwater deployment proves technically and financially viable at large scale, this will be just the beginning of a very big industry worldwide.

        “the technology in California faces major challenges. Although there are a handful of farms with floating turbines in Scotland and other areas, none has been built on the scale that California is considering. And while wind energy costs are coming down, the costs of projects off California’s coast are not yet fully understood”

        And yes, it will take plenty of industrial effort (and CO2 emission) to make this happen.

    2. I never give up when it comes to talking about the absolute necessity of instituting war time economic policies in order to hopefully prevent the coming crash from being “crash and burn”.

      The crash is built in now, there’s no escaping it. But there’s still a very good possibility that a hell of a lot of us can walk or at least hobble and crawl away.

      Pilots have a saying. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

      We need a series of PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP EVENTS…….. such that they really get our attention, cause enough pain and hardship to arouse our fighting instincts, but not so bad that they substantially reduce our capacity to proactively do the things that need doing to ensure the survival of our more or less modern comfortable way of life.

      It’s going to be a life boat kind of situation at some point. A few countries such as the USA, Canada, Russia, parts of Western Europe, etc, have the resources and the skilled people essential to preserving the most important aspects of our modern way of life.

      I’m all in favor of electric cars, etc.

      But what we really need is tax law that encourages people to spend forty grand not on ANOTHER car but rather on upgrading their homes so that they run on a third or even a quarter or less as much energy. Zoning laws and regulation that restore neighborhood business opportunities so that people can WALK or bike to restaurants and stores.

      Pedal to the metal renewable energy investments.

      Sooner or later the better informed man on the street will understand the need for such policies. Let’s hope it isn’t too late.

  12. Paramotor Range: How Far Can A Paramotor Fly On A Tank of Fuel

    “So how far can a paramotor fly? The expected range will be 217.5 miles! Sounds pretty precise right? Let’s find out how we came to this conclusion.

    Let’s assume that you take off to zero wind, and you fly with trims open and no speedbar. This will give the average paramotor wing a top speed of around 30 mph. You have a full 14.5 litre tank of fuel, and you’re flying the Top 80. You climb to 500 feet and fly in a dead straight line to where you want to go.

    The Top 80 burns between 1.5 and 2.5 litres of fuel per hour, so we’ll go for the middle number, and say you’re burning 2 litres per hour. So you should be able to fly for 7 hours 15 minutes on a tank of gas, giving you a range of 217.5 miles, not bad ay?

    Now, the wind will never stay at zero mph for over 7 hours, you won’t stay at exactly 500 feet, and you’ll have to make some turns, so this isn’t going to be completely accurate. But you can see that a paramotor can actually have an amazing range.”

    “October 16, 2019
    David

    ‘Can powered paragliders soar to boost the above mentioned range numbers?’

    October 16, 2019
    Darrell

    ‘Hi David
    Yes, in the right conditions the engine can be switched off, and you can use strong thermals to stay in the air for longer.’ “

  13. Ron —
    Numbers in the cargo business are a bit hard to come by, and the data is muddied by distinctions between short and long haul, and between ton and ton mile measurements.

    Also most public data doesn’t break down bulk dry cargo, which is mostly coal, iron ore and grain. So I hedged my comments.

    About air travel, the industry has been staggering from crisis to crisis for decades, despite huge growth. The industry is ripe for disruption, and like all industries, it exists to make money. Cheap flights are an artifact of the current business model, which may not survive.

    New technology may very well kill bigger planes off. The biggest planes , the 747 and A380, are already dead, because they depend on the hub and spoke, and are primarily financed by first class travelers. But first calls travelers prefer point to point travel, so smaller long range point-to-point flights are winning out.

    Up into the late 60s the bigger faster farther ideology prevailed, but since the mid seventies flights have been gradually slowing down to conserve fuel, and airlines have focused on packing more passengers into existing plane formats instead of buying bigger planes. They have made up for lost time with faster baggage handling, electronic tickets to reduce check-in time and so on.

    Batteries need to double or maybe triple density to be viable for air travel. Airplane engines are extremely inefficient compared to electric motors. Furthermore, the big engine planes have are design for takeoff, and waste a lot of fuel cruising. There is a real possibility that much of the first class traffic could be taken over by small electric (or hybrid) planes, and that might kill coach class. Mankind survived for eons without coach class.

    1. ALIMBIQUATED —

      “Furthermore, the big engine planes have are design for takeoff, and waste a lot of fuel cruising.”

      That is not correct, in fact, most commercial airline engines are designed to maximize efficiency at cruise, since that is where most fuel is burned.

      Furthermore, “Fueled energy system weight change during flight is another important consideration, strongly influencing aircraft range or the takeoff weight needed to achieve a fixed range. Because current aircraft typically lose 10-40 percent of the initial weight as fuel is burned, the net propulsive energy (i.e., the energy supplied to the vehicle by the propulsor) that is needed to keep the vehicle aloft decreases during a mission, allowing flight at higher altitude, which further reduces drag. By contrast, the weight of a closed battery system such as Li-ion stays constant during a flight, so the system would require more total energy than a fueled system all else being equal.”

      NB The efficiency of gas turbine and electric propulsion aircraft is discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively.

      https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23490/commercial-aircraft-propulsion-and-energy-systems-research-reducing-global-carbon

      1. Doug,
        Aircraft engines have a job to do at takeoff that they can’t avoid — taking off. So yeah they are designed to cruise efficiently, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be more efficient if they didn’t also have to execute takeoff.

        Various ideas have been floated to deal with the problem, including JATO, which is strapping rockets to the plane to help get it off the ground. But in the end the world settled on extremely long runways. Long runways reduce the maximum power required for takeoff, allowing smaller, more efficient engines. The reason is that assisted takeoff is simply too expensive. The military uses catapults on aircraft carriers where long takeoffs aren’t an option.

        So they are designed to be as efficient as possible while cruising, given the fact that they are oversized for the job, but that isn’t the same as saying that they wouldn’t be more efficient if they had assisted takeoff.

        If you look at NASA’s experimental X57 electric plane, you can see that they have taken this into account.

        https://www.wikiwand.com/en/NASA_X-57_Maxwell#/Design

        All 14 electric motors will be used during takeoff and landing, with only the outer two used during cruise.

        By shutting off the engines they don’t need, they save a lot of energy. A two engine plane doesn’t have that option.

        This leads to another interesting point — electric planes are likely to be much quieter and may need smaller runways as well. So their airports may be more accessible to large population centers. This is an added attraction to first class travelers. If they abandon big airports, coach class may be doomed.

    2. Furthermore, the big engine planes have are design for takeoff, and waste a lot of fuel cruising.

      Alimbiquated Again, you are just making up stuff, stuff that is absolutely not true, just to support your argument. You must stop doing that. Such tricks work if you are talking to an uninformed audience, but people on this blog know that trick. It just doesn’t work here. As Doug pointed out, commercial jet engines are designed for maximum efficiency at cruising speed.

      I don’t think the big planes are dead. The airlines don’t seem to be retiring them at a higher rate than other aircraft. But if you have a link with stats, I would love to look at it.

      I have no idea what percent of ocean-going vessels are oil tankers, but I would guess it is somewhere around 10%. Your statement that it is more than 50% is just not realistic.

      If you wish to present a credible argument, you should state only facts that you can verify. But when you just make up shit, you lose all credibility.

          1. Ron,
            I don’t know much about Merchant shipping, so all those numbers were an eye-opener for me.
            I thought your guess was pretty good!

      2. Ron – the engines are designed for maximum efficiency at cruise, yes, but they are still much bigger than they need to be to cruise, because taking off requires a lot more effort than cruising. Doug’s comment does not in any way contradict mine.

        You, on the other hand are claiming I said half of ocean going ships are tankers, which I never did. Like many oilmen (including the idiot former governor of Texas the Republicans put in charge of the bomb squad) you confuse energy with oil. There’s also this stuff called coal, which you may have heard of.

        In fact, as I have said repeatedly, oil is a piss poor energy source, much too expensive. It’s handy for storing energy in moving vehicles, but other than that it’s a niche player.

  15. ALIMBIQUATED may have gotten it wrong about commercial aircraft engine design, but I think he probably got it right about the really big planes losing market share, long term, because people prefer to fly point to point rather than switching places if possible.

    There are apparently more point to point flights available year after year.

    1. Ron,
      My remarks about airplane engines re in fact correct, and Doug’s claim in no way contradicts them. Engineering is complicated.

  16. “According to the IEA, just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), currently supplies more than 80% of the world’s cobalt, and another — China — 70% of its rare-earth elements. Similarly, lithium production is largely in two countries, Argentina and Chile, which jointly account for nearly 80% of world supply, while four countries — Argentina, Chile, the DRC, and Peru — provide most of our copper. In other words, such future supplies are far more concentrated in far fewer lands than petroleum and natural gas, leading IEA analysts to worry about future struggles over the world’s access to them.”

    1. I share these concerns about access to these minerals, but to the best of my knowledge there are deposits of most or all of them that COULD be worked in many other countries, but the price might have to go up quite a bit to make mining these deposits profitable.

      China gets a lot of rare earth metal as by product from mining other minerals, and may be making a habit of manipulating the prices so as to scare everybody else out of opening any new mines to compete with them.

      We’re likely in for a wild ride over the next half century or so when it comes to Mother Nature’s one time gifts of high quality metal ores, for sure.

      But I’ve read that at three times the current price, lithium for instance could be extracted profitably from sea water. I have no idea if this is true of course. Such claims may be made by anybody with access to the internet.

      1. Hightrekker, OFM,

        There’s more to it than where the metals can be found. When the US sold the Mountain Pass rare-earth mine to China there was thought to be little reason to retain refining and fabrication capabilities so those were let go too. The rare-earths we can or could produce are to be sent to China because they have those capabilities–they’re the world leaders. They planned ahead, you see. I suspect that they couldn’t believe their luck, or our stupidity.

        Canada and Russia are other sources of supply, and I believe Australia is too, and perhaps South Africa, but for fabrication China is just about the only game in town as far as I know.

        Brazil may also have supply potential. Ask Doug Leighton.

        1. I agree, we’ve acted like idiots in many respects, and it’s hard to get either conservatives or liberals to admit the truth about such things, or to refrain from using such knowledge, cherrypicked of course, to beat the opposition over the head with a club.

          In times gone by, we maintained our national security by having the biggest and best planes, tanks, soldiers, and bombs, etc.
          That’s history now.

          The name of the security game, long term is morphing to industrial policy.

          If we ever need a lot of steel to build a conventional war fighting army again, we will likely have to go hat in hand to get it from China, lol.

          We still have a ship building industry that’s world class, but only TWO really important shipyards…… which survive only because they get all the orders for Navy ships.

          If it weren’t for military orders, both of those yards would be out of business in a few months.

  17. Oops, someone’s not following the script!

    COAL HITS A THREE-YEAR HIGH

    “Thermal coal used to produce electricity rose above $100 a ton on Monday and was last trading at $106/t, the highest in three years. The unexpected coal-price revival has sparked a recovery in the share prices of Australian coal mining companies which have been able to find markets to replace China. Whitehaven Coal which had seen its share price on the Australian stock market weaken for much of the past 12-months has enjoyed a 25% share price rise over the past two weeks.”

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/timtreadgold/2021/05/26/coal-hits-a-three-year-high-despite-china-trying-to-control-prices/?sh=d449f4a78b7a

    1. I’ll trade you 17,000 carbon credits for 3 month relief on the lumber tariffs this summer and 120,000 Mwh EU certified electricity deliverable in Dec/Jan 2024. Plus 204.75 Bitcoin. My final offer.

  18. I am surprised that the 2009 financial crises and the current covid pandemic cannot be seen on the atmospheric CO2 charts. Apparently, measures of gdp do not correlate well with global emissions, and/or the huge oceanic CO2 sink is smoothing out the short term variations. It means there is a strong momentum to the CO2 escalation in the atmosphere.
    https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/

    1. If you don’t have rooftop solar for air conditioning (or even if you do), you may want to think about building an underground stone refuge for use during the heat waves. Like fallout shelters, except you will use them every year.

    2. Yup, not only are atmospheric concentrations still climbing, but the rate seems to be accelerating — Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s CO2 Program.

      CO2 April 2021 = 419.05 ppm; April 2020 = 416.45 ppm

        1. Well Hick, if you can’t wait, as reported May 14, 2020, by NOAA-ESRL with an update to its AGGI webpage, the combined influence of all greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere reached the equivalent of 500 ppm CO2 in 2019. With carbon dioxide and other GHGs continuing to accumulate in the atmosphere, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, humanity’s climate crisis has now surpassed the symbolic milestone of 500 ppm CO2e.

          https://www.co2.earth/annual-ghg-index-aggi

          1. Highest Co2 that homo sapiens have ever experienced, by a long shot.
            Let’s see how we do.

    3. Hickory,

      The correlation with CO2 and GDP is strong generally. GFC and COVID recessions might not have been long enough to give us a sustained decrease noticeable in the CO2 datasets.

      Or there could be other reasons. Such as the positive feedback tipping point well and truly reached, and or global dimming effects receeding from OECD reduction of coal usage coming into play possibly. All of which i said is conjecture and should be taken with a grain of salt.

      On another note. CH4 had it’s highest rate of increase from when records started in the 70s i believe, during the covid pandemic which is quite strange.

      1. One proposed reason has been that oil and gas wells have been getting less planned and unplanned maintenance so the leaks have been larger and for longer. I’d add that there has been a drop in P&A activity so newly abandoned wells are not being properly sealed.

        1. Any attempt to stop this phenomenon, regardless of it is real and regardless of if it is human or natural in cause, will not work. Failure will come at the cost of whichever controls and freedoms are given up in the process.

          1. Perry “Failure will come”
            Yeh, likely.

            “whichever controls and freedoms are given up”- so you are for a women’s right to choose [reproductive freedom]. I hear you.

            Are you also for the freedom to die on your own terms (called suicide by some)?
            yes, that is the most important freedom.

  19. Civil War II. Its not as unlikely as you may think or hope in the USA. Do you value an intact USA, a USA with democracy?

    “people begin to seriously doubt whether other groups in their country have the larger community’s best interests at heart…come to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is evil and actively working to destroy the community…is hard not to see echoes of this dynamic at play as Republicans condemn other Republicans over their loyalty (or lack thereof) to former U.S. President Donald Trump…
    “The whole story of the United States’ long descent into civil war is too long to tell here, but several main causes stand out. To begin, after the failure of former President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics and the end of the Cold War (which undermined the Republican Party’s national defense appeal), Republicans had a choice to make. They could either compete with good ideas or resort to emphasizing respect for authority over critical thinking, restricting voter franchise, and making it easier to convert wealth into votes.

    The Republican Party chose the easier path. It’s been a minority party nationally and in many so-called red states for more than two decades, but its representation in Congress and the White House has stayed at around over 50 percent. And once you start taking short cuts to win, you really can’t stop. The GOP knows it could lose everything in a fair fight (one-person, one-vote), so it built a powerful infrastructure to tilt the local, state, and federal playing fields.”

    “..The gridlock across the federal government became yet another argument for shifting power to more conservative states. It also convinced many U.S. citizens that the solution to gridlock was a strong authoritarian leader…Fox News was the pioneer of co-opting a journalistic facade to support a specific political agenda…In a conflict like this, no one wins… Just consider the tragic case of former Yugoslavia, which started its descent in the later 1980s, succumbing to large-scale political violence in the 1990s. ”

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/18/how-civil-wars-start/

    1. “Do you value an intact USA, a USA with democracy?” ~ Hickory

      Girdap (Whirlpool)

      Translated:

      “Come on, take me with you
      To your fallen kingdom
      All I hear is
      A cheeky laugh
      And life
      Upside down
      A Vortex
      Taking you in
      Its drowning order
      Prisoner
      Come on, take me with you
      To your fallen kingdom
      All I hear is
      A cheeky laugh      “

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