117 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May 26, 2023”

  2. WTF? … is going on in the Antarctic, enquiring minds want to know. Only a few months after revolatutory and deeply worrying research that the SOC would slow down 40% by 2050 comes observations that it has actually already slowed 30%. Judging by the speed with which sea ice is being lost (and this year so far is noticeably faster even than the accelerated rate since 2014) the slow down is getting worse as we watch (see below).

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230526-dangerous-slowing-of-antarctic-ocean-circulation-sooner-than-expected

    This is really end of life as we know it and mass extinction in decades stuff, the atmospheric CO2 concentration and emission rates are inconsequential in comparison. It could be worse than a “Don’ look up” asteroid, which we could maybe do something about and anyway would be over in a few months either way. So party on and cue the zombie hordes and prepper hoards

    Without the SOC heat and CO2 can’t be taken down into the deeper oceans so warming and surface acidification accelerates. More importantly the oceans don’t get fully oxygenated so things start dying from the bottom up (a trophic cascade starting with plankton, which is the real “lungs” of the earth). Ultimately it can end up with stratified oceans with anoxic layers and hydrogen sulphide production, aka a Canfield Ocean I think. In theory that is millennia away, but with the “faster than expected” applying to everything who knows.

    1. George , this is not worrying , this is alarming . Moves the clock to our demise a lot ( not few } notches in the wrong direction . In 2005 I learnt about peak oil and climate change . At that time it was thought that PO will be the end of TEOTWANKI but now climate has accelerated . Got to go back to prioritize of the ” bucket list ” . Thanks .

        1. Just like the increasing methane in the Arctic, it’s positive feedback. That is feedback that increases the problem instead of decreasing it. It means that we have already passed the point of no return.

          1. We have not passed the point of ”no return”. If tomorrow, extraterrestrials decide to launch genocidal attacks against humanity, everything will return to normal. Just an extreme idea. We are in a glacial era. For some interglacials of Pleistocene (MIS 5 and MIS 11, for instance), there was no ice-sheet on Western Antarctica and possibly not much permanent sea-ice in the Arctic ocean. This didn’t prevent the fact that these interglaciacials from being followed by hard glacial periods.

            1. Huh? What the hell has that got to do with global warming destroying civilization as we know it. You are talking the next several millennia and I am talking about the next couple of decades. Of course, over the course of many thousands of years all kinds of catastrophes will take place. However, I am talking about what will happen in the next half century or less.

              Yes, we have passed the point of no return. The earth is destined to get a lot warmer in the next couple of decades. There is now no way of stopping that. However, if you wish to talk about the next fifty thousand years, then I am in no position to argue with you.

            2. Ron,

              I think he meant if aliens come tomorrow and kill 90% of the population. Then it will be a screeching halt to emissions. And the climate possibility falling into some steady state and then over a longer period of time back into glacial periods.

            3. Iron Mike, you may be correct. But he is still mistaken. If indeed we have reached the point of no return because of positive feedback, then stopping emissions would not help at all. The CO2 would still be in the air and still be doing its thing. The positive feedback would mean more methane would be released from the permafrost. The ocean circulation would still be slowing down. And the atmosphere would keep getting warmer, the runaway methane dump would continue. It has happened before you know.

              No, we have passed the point of no return, and even aliens cannot bail us out. The NOVA documentary linked below should be retitled, “We have passed the point of no return!” The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the earth and there is now no way to stop it. (The video below says the artic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world but I have read other articles that say it is warming 4 times as fast.)

              Arctic Sinkholes (2022) – A WGBH-NOVA Documentary – Frozen Regions of the Earth are Melting!<.b>

            4. About the documentary, it is exact that the Arctic areas is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world (as Europe). And there are impressive consequences : thawing of permafrost, increase of methane emissions (but there are still negligible), forest fires and so on. But in the mean time, it must be pointed out that Arctic sea ice pack has reached a new (and temporary) steady state ; the volume of sea ice pack for the months of April and September, is more or less stable since 10 years or so. I don’t how much time it will last but it is the proof that all the points of no return have been reached. A second point is about Antarctica. The problem about Antarctca is the migration of climatic bands toward the poles. In Antarctica, it has the result to displace the location of depressions and anticyclones and in turn it sends the waters of the circumpolar deep water current (CDW) toward the continent. The depth at which this current circulates coincides with the depth of the under glacial cavity between the ice-front of the Antarctic glaciers and the grounding lines of these glaciers. The intrusions of this water masse more or less mixed in replacement of the brine produced by the freezing of sea water is the factor provoking the melting and the withdrawal of the Antarctic glaciers. On the other hand, glaciologists have been amazed of the current position of the Antarctic glaciers grounding lines. Actually, the glacies are currently perched on shoals with retrograde slopes upstream. And some glaciologists thought it was little odd if the idea that the current positions of the grounding lines are the last positions after the deglaciation was to be followed as these positions are highly unstable especially for thousands of years. The discovery of marine sediments dating from the Holocene in the basement of some ice currents of WAIS upstream of their current grounding lines provided some insight into what happened. Actually at some points during Holocene, between 8000-5000 BP, some ice-streams of Antartica and especially of WAIS were affected by instability caused by the repeted intrusions of CDW with the result of the withdrawal of their grounding lines upstream of their current position. As the climate cooled (at least for 2000 years) with the decrease of the obliquity of Earth rotation axis, the climatic bands migrated toward the equator, decreasing the thermal stress on the Antarctic glaciers and enabling them to rejoin their current positions. So, I think that for this matter, we have also not reached the no retrun point. I am highly confident that with the threat of a massive rise of sea level because of the melting of Antarctic glaciers, the next generation and those following will implement the necessary measures to replace at least partially the use of oil and gas and furtherly will additionally begin the withdrawal from the atmosphere of the excess of carbon dioxide that we have dumped and that we continue to pour in the atmosphere.

          2. “It means that we have already passed the point of no return”

            I’ll drink to that!

      2. The peak oil doomers were wrong, it’s not a problem at all.

        We’ll have cooked our entire civ well before we hit peak fossil fuels. Checkmate, doomers.

        1. Kleiber, no one here is talking about peak fossil fuels. Peak natural gas and peak coal is something to discuss if you wish, but it has never been a serious part of discussions here. Yes, it has been mentioned from time to time, but no projections as to when they will peak that I know of.

          So don’t try to make peak fossil fuels the subject because they have never been the subject here. You are just trying to move the goalpost by saying they are the subject. That is just bullshit.

          Peak crude plus condensate is another matter altogether. That happened, so far, almost five years ago. Peak oil doomers were right. If C+C production ever surpasses the point hit in November 2018 of 84,585,000 bp/d then you can crow. But until that happens you can take your checkmate and stick it up your ass.

          1. You might want to reread my post. It does not say what you think it says.

            I’m sorry Americans are disabled when it comes to recognising sark. You have my sympathies.

            1. And you have my sympathies Kleiber. You have no idea how to be sarcastic.

              You have my apologies but there was not the slightest hint that you were being sarcastic. There is an art to being sarcastic you know. Obviously, you are not very proficient in that art.

              Again, sorry for my language.

            2. Haha, it’s fine. But as a German living in the UK, I am over exposed. 😉

              My point anyway, to put it clearer in real talk, that it’s academic when we hit maximum FF output rates. We’re already at the point where none of that will save us/doom us because we already suffer from oil limits AND we’ve already fucked the planet enough before getting to such production rates.

              It rather makes the problem worse to find we have extra sludge we can burn in the tank given we’re well over any acceptable limit. Had we hit peak oil/gas/coal long before now, we may have had a better transition plan. Though I doubt it.

            3. I hate it when the adults here (oil and gas professionals) fight. It scares us children (lay persons). Actually, most everything I read here is scary but I just can’t stop, like rubber necking at a car crash.

              One other thing. I wish folks, not the ones I’m replying to now, would stop posting links to zerohedge.com as if it’s a credible source. Zerohedge is rotten with pro-Russian and right-wing extremist propaganda.

            4. Zero Hedge is fine if you find the original story. It’s no different to posting a Wiki and not seeing the sources cited in the article.

    2. about 10 years ago I sort of flipped from the “peak oil will kill us” to the “climate change will kill us” camp. mainly when I realized that a steady decline in living standards amongst the middle and lower classes and a freezing up of the gears of capitalism could be worked around through financial ninjitsu (i.e. socialism for the rich). I think that sort of ongoing crises can be pretty easily managed with coordinated economic downturns etc.

      But climate change hits large portions of the population very suddenly and are harder to cover up if your town is completely flooded or burns to the ground or an entire crop is lost.

      2. I went “Limits to Growth”, mostly forgot about it for thirty odd years, peak oil, general resource limits, gradual climate change, overshoot and planetary boundaries, but now rapid and irreversible climate change seems most likely and consequential. A pity because there’s a lot I like about civilisation and nature, but they seem incompatible and so we’ve destroyed both.

        A year ago I might have recommended Electrifying the Titanic as an excellent summary of our condition (if you don’t want to buy it listen here: https://soundcloud.com/michael-dowd-grace-limits/popular-tracks) and the book referenced in it, Why the West Rules for Now. But these have both been bypassed by the speed with which the the climate and earth systems are currently changing.

        If, as seems increasingly likely, we are in transition from a clement holocene to an unforgiving hot house then it is not so surprising that things are changing so fast. Nor, as our cultural evolution since our modern brains formed 50 to 80kya has been in fairly stable, if often harsh, environments, is it difficult to see why we can’t really handle the speed of change.

    3. The Antarctic seems to have paused any refreeze efforts, maybe volume of sea ice is still increasing, though I don’t see how, but area isn’t. Another indication of rapid and poorly understood phase shifts in earth systems. The joint US/UK missions that went down there to look at the melting of the glaciers did some great research but may have been looking in the wrong direction for the real immediate threat. The slowing of the SOC probably explains why there has been such a jump in the earth’s energy imbalance recently. I don’t see any way this can be reversed or slowed down, or even prevented from accelerating. We have obviously already passed a couple of important tipping points and several others are likely to go like dominoes now.

  4. TRACKING THE ACCELERATED MELTING OF GLACIERS IN GREENLAND

    Mass Loss of Glaciers and Ice Caps Across Greenland Since the Little Ice Age—published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, said Greenland’s glaciers have lost at least 587 km3 of ice over the last century, accounting for 1.38 millimeters of sea-level rise. It estimated that the speed at which the water melted between 2000 and 2019 was three times higher that the long-term—since 1900—average.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-05-tracking-glaciers-greenland.html

  5. Since we are talking greenhouse gas warming today
    you can consider the amount of CO2 lifecycle emission per kWh of electrical generation sorted out by various energy sources.
    Lifecycle emissions analysis includes ‘four stages of a life cycle: material production phase, manufacturing phase, use phase, and end-of-life phase’, and includes such aspects as mining, manufacturing, operations, decommissioning.

    Here is an example of the measurements/calculations of such an analysis- [All values are in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh)]- https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf
    Coal- 1001
    Oil- 840
    Nat Gas- 486
    Nuclear- 13
    Wind- 13
    Solar- 43
    Li Battery Storage- 33

    You may find other numbers presented, but the overall story is pretty damn clear.
    And yet the world moves at a snails pace on making changes, even as both global warming and fossil fuel depletion are marching on.

    1. Meanwhile, India’s coal production grows 47% to 893.08 MT during last nine years, says their Coal Ministry.

      1. And they still use far less per capita than dozens of other countries. Seven times less per person than Australia for example.

        Is one person more important, or responsible, than another?

        1. Hickory,

          That is an unrealistic comparison in my opinion.

          One reason for that could be Australias income per capita is 55k while india is 7k.

          Wait till India starts catching up and increasing their standard of living. Then we’ll see if that ratio of coal usage per capita holds up.

          1. I hope that all countries will decrease their coal use.
            The easiest regions for decrease coal use are the ones who use the most per capita,
            and those who have more wealth/capita.
            The higher wealth/capita means that they have a better chance to spend on other mechanisms, and weed out optional/wasteful uses of energy.
            For places like Australia, US, UK it is relatively easy to cut out coal compared to poorer places likely India. Nothing complex here.

            1. Hickory,

              The easiest regions for decrease coal use are the ones who use the most per capita

              That is true in an idealist view, but in practice if a rich country is sitting on mountains of coal and/or natgas which you could not only export but use domestically. It becomes opportunistic from a capitalistic view and more reluctant towards a renewables policy from a government view.

          2. India will literally be on fire and/or totally desiccated if they up it any more. If their move is to throw as much sulphur into the atmosphere to stop the heating locally, that’s one they’re probably going to achieve.

            But if they even decide to clean that air up, hoo boy.

    2. Secondly, I offer a comment about a commonly heard fallacious argument-
      “You can’t build renewable energy without fossil fuel”

      I’ll accept that as true although others may call me wrong. But in the current world it is true, and also is true for building hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants, and the turbines and electric grid that sends their energy out around the world.
      Nonetheless it is an argument with little relevance-
      It simply does not take a large fraction of the global fossil fuel consumption to build these ‘other’ energy systems. And it is energy well spent…if the goal is to keep the engines of humanity from going still.
      Using natural gas to make N fertilzer is a similar example of ‘well spent energy’…for the time being.

      If the goal is to let the engines of humanity become motionless and cold, then by all means it would be best to obstruct all attempts to replace the current fossil fuel based system with alternatives. Another reason would be the hope to make a profit on oil or coal in a scenario of global energy shortage. A persons intent for making the fallacious argument should be stated upfront for clarity of discussion.

      1. Hickory nails it.

        In principle we can build renewables using renewable energy, just as we went from using horses and mules to build oil infrastructure around 1900 to using oil to build oil infrastructure over the next ten years. By 1910 horses and mules were pretty much on the way out and by 1920 the internal combustion engine ruled the industrial world.

        It’s not impossible to go from using fossil fuels to build renewables to go to using renewable energy to building renewables…….. even including mining, metal smelting, heavy manufacturing, etc.

        Of course I’m only pointing out( as Hickory has) that this is possible in principle, rather than as a practical matter at present or over the next couple of decades.

        After that we might have enough wind and solar juice to seriously contemplate running the various essential heavy industries that make live as we know it possible on renewables rather than fossil fuel.

        The key point to keep in mind is that the highest and best possible use for our depleting one time gift of nature fossil fuel energy is to build renewable energy infrastructure.

        Maybe we’re totally screwed, and that those of us who survive over the next century or so will be living an eighteenth or nineteenth century lifestyle.

        ( One bright spot at least in this black cloud is that our great great grand children won’t have to go all the way back to stone tools. There’ll be millions of tons of easily salvaged metal available for a thousand years at least.Some common every day tools will last that long…….. consider a heavy stainless steel butcher knife or cleaver. )

        We’re in a life boat situation.

        The value of a kilowatt hour of electricity is inversely proportional to the scarcity of the same. Keeping a refrigerator running, or a water and sewer system running is a thousand times better use of a kilowatt hour than using it to light up an advertising sign.

        High flying industrial civilization and life as we know it is not necessarily doomed to a global crash and burn landing.

        My personal belief is that some huge portion of us, maybe half or two thirds of us, will die hard before this century is out.

        But some of us have a fair to good shot at keeping the lights and water on……. assuming the climate doesn’t go completely nuts, and assuming we come to a rational collective decision to take the big picture environmental question as seriously as the proverbial heart attack.

        Back in the WWII era, one of the seldom mentioned but absolutely critical things we had in our favor on our ( winning ) side was that we had a large number of well trained men who knew how to run an army in the field, and how to train ten times as many new men to do the fighting.

        We had the engineers and manufacturing men who knew how to scale up industrial production of everything from steel to ships to air planes in a hurry.

        Right now, we’re in a similar situation.

        We have the basic renewable core infrastructure up and running, and men enough who know their stuff to expand it by a factor of five, or even ten, within a few years, IF we come to the collective decision to do it.

        I must admit that right now the odds appear to be rather high against getting on with it but there’s some hope the cards will fall so that we’ll go to a wartime type of planned economy and get on with it to the point that fossil fuel depletion isn’t THE issue, or even a really critical issue.

        There’s enough easily recovered coal, oil and gas in the ground to last at least another fifty years, no problem, considering conservation, peaking population, and yes, forced austerity as well.

        The real question is whether we use a very modest percentage of it to stay pedal to the metal building renewable infrastructure from A to Z……… meaning including mining, smelting, manufacturing, transportation, etc.

        I’m somewhat optimistic, because at least two very good cards have already fallen into our hands.

        One of them is that the cost of renewable electricity, compared to the cost of fossil fuel electricity, has already fallen to the point going renewable is a no brainer in general terms. This cost advantage will continue to grow, and we will continue to find hundreds of ways to make good use of more renewable electricity while using less ever more expensive fossil fuel.

        The other is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has worked wonders in terms of focusing the attention of Western Europe in particular and the rest of the world in general on the problems associated with depending on imported fossil fuels.

        Maybe we’ll get another good card or two over the next few years.

        1. Ovi, Hickory, you both are correct in what could be done. The only problem is nothing of the sort will be done in time to make a difference. The CO2 in the atmosphere is still increasing today. We hope to get down to zero increase in a couple of decades. Then hopefully, if everything goes as planned, there will begin a slow decrease over the next hundred years or so.

          Of course, it is good that we are doing all these things. It may begin to slow the warming rate in about 50 years. And that can’t hurt. But it won’t help much because it is already way too late.

          We are already well past the tipping point. The tipping point is the point where positive feedback has taken over, and the warming feeds off itself. That is the point of no return.

          You guys are cheering the heroic efforts to lock the barn door. Just look inside guys, the horse is not there anymore.

          I will post this link again. This 53 minute NOVA PBS video tells you all about positive feedback, tipping points and the point of no return.

          Arctic Sinkholes (2022) – A WGBH-NOVA Documentary – Frozen Regions of the Earth are Melting!

          1. “US wind and solar together produced more electricity than coal in Q1 2023, according to a review by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).”

            If you looked at this 10-15 years ago, it would have been hard to believe that this would come to be.
            In another 10-15 years Global Peak Combustion Day [all fuels] will be in the rear view mirror.
            Just how fast we work to wind down combustion will make a big difference to living beings of all sorts.

            2. Kleiber . in case of barbecue do I get to choose the sauce ? Just asking . 🙂

            3. Hickory, UK solar (by itself) produced more electricity than coal in Q1 2023, 2.2% v 1.2%.

              UK wind, at 32.2%, produced 26+x more electricity than coal.

            4. John , challenge . Shutdown all FF / nuclear based power plants in UK , after all the renewables are so proficient . Who needs FF power plants ?

        2. Thanks for the comments OFM and Ron.
          I agree Ron that we are far late to show up for the battle…about 40-50 years. And so whatever constructive actions that are taken currently will only serve to slow or moderate a brisk retreat from Overshoot ‘bliss’.
          OFM…yes to it all.

      2. @Hickory
        ….”It simply does not take a large fraction of the global fossil fuel consumption to build these ‘other’ energy systems.”..

        No it doesn’t. However how much will be built if the background system is in serious decline when we get to real shortages of oil, with corresponding high prices creating inflation in everything, including renewables?

        We have a whole system, not lots of separate parts that act independently. Systems within systems that most people seem to want to ignore with their favourite paradigm. Everyone that keeps thinking renewables can be built in the future at current increasing rates, makes the underlying assumption that the future is similar to the recent past, yet we know sometime soon we reach peak energy (if we haven’t already).

        I agree that we will see increasing renewables built, while we have increasing fossil fuel consumption, but with serious fossil fuel declines, we’ll also see reduced renewables built, plus older ones failing and/or reducing power output due to degradation. We have had renewables go up over 2,000Twh in supply since 2005, while fossil fuel use has gone up 21,000Twh in the same period. Can anyone explain how renewables will grow while fossil fuel use declines?

        Solar, wind and nuclear are very complex systems, relying on supply lines from all over the world. With declining energy we’ll get declining complexity, with parts shortages, supply disruptions and countries trying to take care of themselves. The building of new mines, new smelters, new factories will become very difficult and very expensive, which will lead to less building of everything, not just solar, wind and nuclear.

        There will be less trade between countries, with everyone becoming poorer in a lower energy environment, government subsidies will disappear, while taxes will rise as governments try to maintain the existing system.

        My question to those that think ‘modern renewables’ are the answer, in a declining energy environment, how do you explain where the food will come from, given the current total reliance on fossil fuels for agriculture? How do you build factories to make lots more batteries and brand new electric tractors and electric fertilizer and large electric trucks when society overall is becoming much poorer every year with less fossil fuel energy every year??

        We have an entire system that it is easy to grow any sector in while the overall system grows, but when real decline sets in, as it will with declining energy availability, growing anything becomes much tougher if possible at all. The world has not had a system of declining energy availability for over 250 years, so why the optimism that building more renewables is even possible in an environment we have never experienced, while the demand for food and basic necessities will demand an increasing proportion of the smaller energy cake?

        1. Hideaway,
          I agree with the notion that we a have a short window of time to make big moves before fossil fuel shortfall results in much higher prices for everything, in fact we have probably already entered that phase of that process. Sure we might have price drops during recessions, but the general long trend will be a decrease in affordability of most energy and energy derived products.

          That limited window of opportunity (and fossil fuel global warming) is why many people have been clamoring for aggressive action since this all became obvious in the 1970’s. As I see it, that window has only a decade or two left, which is a very short time to get such a big job done.
          The sluggish mental state of the world in regard to energy and science issues, and the outright obstructionism by vested and political interests, has resulted in a pretty weak effort to date.

          So I agree with the gist of your comment as I understand it. Transitioning away from coal and oil will only get accomplished to a partial degree, meaning that a big portion of the affordable energy that people 8 Billion people have become accustomed to will not be replaced.

          We who have the privilege of using enough energy to send our comments over the internet may not realize that billions of people in the world already live in a relatively energy starved world. The disparity of energy availability on the way up over the past hundreds of years will likely become much more extreme on the way down.

          A bright spot that is contrary to this trend is the ability of individuals/small groups/communities to now be an owner their own power plant. About 80% of the worlds people live where it is sunny enough to make PV a viable project. People would be wise to use this short window to get as much local production deployed as possible.
          China, on a country level, seems to be well aware of this issue. In addition to building a navy to protect their front door sea lanes, they are working hard to have local control over important supply chains, and have deployed roughly 1/2 of the worlds PV and wind capacity.

          The US could be a huge player in PV and wind energy if it was taking oil depletion (and global warming) seriously.
          But the window of opportunity is starting close.

        2. The same energy constraints that will come to limit solar and wind energy deployments in the future will just as readily constrain the deployment of other energy sources/equipment. That includes things like oil rigs, LNG handling facilities, nuclear power and geothermal and hydroelectric plants.

    3. It matters.
      ““The world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, but we are not there yet,” said Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s Director of Energy Markets and Security.”
      “Global coal use is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time and eclipsing the previous record set in 2013, according to Coal 2022, the IEA’s latest annual market report on the sector. Based on current market trends, the report forecasts that coal consumption will then remain flat at that level through 2025 as declines in mature markets are offset by continued robust demand in emerging Asian economies. This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far.”

    1. Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.

      — Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002)

      1. Similar things could said about tens of millions of European peoples, who over the past 500 years have exploited to death or severe impoverished hundreds of millions of others, or voted for or turned a blind eye to it [slavery, colonialism, piracy, conquest, crusades, inquisitions, etc]
        And not just Europeans, but the ruling segment of most cultures.

        Welcome to humanity, and the ‘glorious’ history.

        1. Don’t think I’ve been to Cambodia, but my passport has stamps from countries that I have no reelection of ever being in.

  8. HT , this was posted at TAE . Copy /paste . Makes me weep . The American way of life is non negotiable . Kill Brownies , kill the slant eyes , kill the Russkies . Kill , kill ,but must get to the Mcdonald drive thru in my F 150 .

  9. I was fighting in the first wave to secure the strategic Chicken McNuggets stockpile in the ongoing food wars.

    No American should relinquish their way of life. Take up arms and show entropy what for!

    1. No American should relinquish their way of life.

      “Why should black folks fight a war against yellow folks so that white folks can keep a land they stole from red folks? We’re not going to Vietnam. Ain’t no Vietcong ever called me ——!”

  11. If enough carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere to stop and reverse the melting of Antarctic glaciers and ice-streams in order to limit sea level rise, as in the same time, the climate is and was programmed to cool due to the current decrease of obliquity of Earth rotation axis, the presence of the heat accumulated in the oceans during the rise of carbon dioxide level, could provoke an ultra humid phase for some areas at least or at worst, the inception of ice sheet nucleus in Scandinavia and perhaps the apparition of perenial snow and firn on high lands of Quebec and the same in the south of Baffin Island. Indeed, during the end of the MPT (Mid Pleistocene Transition), oceans remained warm during the end of the interglacial and the following glacial, the moisture of oceans feeding the growth of large ice-sheets. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38337-4

  12. How do the rose coloured glasses boys put a positive spin on this?

    THE DECLINE IN COAL APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED

    “We must not forget the world’s biggest coal player – China. In 2022, the Asian superpower approved the equivalent of two new coal plants a week, making its highest approval number since 2015. according to a study from earlier this year. Despite promises to cut its carbon emissions, China is continuing to rapidly build new power plants. The report from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found that the coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/The-Decline-In-Coal-Appears-To-Have-Been-Exaggerated.html

  13. “For the first time, global demand for each of the fossil fuels shows a peak or plateau across all WEO [World Energy Outlook] scenarios…
    For the first time ever, a WEO scenario based on today’s prevailing policy settings – in this case, the Stated Policies Scenario – has global demand for every fossil fuel exhibiting a peak or plateau. In this scenario, coal use falls back within the next few years, natural gas demand reaches a plateau by the end of the decade, and rising sales of electric vehicles (EVs) mean that oil demand levels off in the mid-2030s before ebbing slightly to mid-century. This means that total demand for fossil fuels declines steadily from the mid-2020s to 2050 by an annual average roughly equivalent to the lifetime output of a large oil field.”
    “Global fossil fuel use has grown alongside GDP since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century: putting this rise into reverse will be a pivotal moment in energy history. The share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix in the Stated Policies Scenario falls from around 80% to just above 60% by 2050. Global CO2 emissions fall back slowly from a high point of 37 billion tonnes per year to 32 billion tonnes by 2050. This would be associated with a rise of around 2.5 °C in global average temperatures”

    source- IEA
    https://www.iea.org/news/world-energy-outlook-2022-shows-the-global-energy-crisis-can-be-a-historic-turning-point-towards-a-cleaner-and-more-secure-future

    Opinion- It will not turn out exactly like this, but roughly so.
    Rough in many ways.
    Peak Global Combustion Day- July 27th, 2033

    1. Hickory

      The period we are in can not be described as anything else than a bumby plateau for fossil fuels. Oil, imminent. Coal uneven, the bunch of expansion happening in developing economies. Natural gas more aboundant for some time – the boundaries to what is economical in the end has been improving (technology regarding shale gas especially promising). Economic engine dependent on recession mode or boom.

      As for the window of opportunity to invest in renewables “to the max”, I just have a personal opinion it would be this decade. When decided to make the investments, everything has to be brought into the plan, and the delays would be severe if the global economic system craters at some point. Also, getting the best locations for wind and solar power matters. There is an awful lot of considerations to take into account when building out renewables. When the acreage is seized and the power grid expanded, the job of maintenance is much less difficult. Even in the long run. No wonder some prominent persons are promoting getting more aggressive when it comes to renewables. The difficult part is the economics; where are the best areas, should there be substantial subsidies, how much investments by private sector or at state level…

      1. “The difficult part is the economics…”

        As I watched this for the past decades, it looks to me like the most difficult part is to get enough of humanity to look forward more than 6 months, and to be proactive about the fossil fuel depletion/global warming issue.
        And yes, what you say is correct. In the US we have a huge problem with an electrical system that is hard to add new projects to. Hard as in management….getting permits and contracts all aligned. There is a huge backlog queue for getting projects onto the grid.

        1. Agree,

          A partial crash landing is in the cards. Whatever that means. There are several innings to peel when it comes to cutting back on prosperity, so it would take something very special if this (the energy transition) is not a long drought out process.

          Economics and renewables – way too many parts in motion to give an accurate assessment. The sober answer would be that the projects would not have been set in motion if it did not make sense. A bit of risk taking maybe, but also that the EROI could improve versus fossil fuels during the lifetime of the proposed build out.

    1. Thanks Alim. When I click on the link it gives week 22. This shows 76% renewables for the entire week. Very impressive.

    2. Yes, it was for a Day or for à few jours. By the way, do you know that most of wind elelctricity of germany is sent to the south of germany through thé polish and thé czech grids ? The germans have not still been able to build the necessary grids to transport the electricity of wind farms of the North to the south where it is consumed despite the fact the problème has been on the table for 20 years or so. The fact that they have massively privatized their electricity production helped well in this. The result of this circuit is that the polish and czech electricity grid authorities are fed up with the irregularity of the wind farms production which disorganizes the distribution of electricity on their own grids. The polish grid authority invested in devices intended for rejecting the surplus of electricity coming from the german wind farms and the czech grid authority is thinking to this as well (the devices are expansive to but and install).

      1. It’s about 68% renewable for the month of May. That’s ten percentage points higher than it’s ever been.

        For comparison, it was about 40% in May 2015 and 20% in May 2010.

    3. I apologize but I request the elimination of the previous post which have so much slags due to a stupid cell phone with which I was writting in a train. Here is the correct answer. ”Yes, it was for a day or for a few hours. By the way, do you know that most of wind electricity of Germany is sent to the south of Germany through the Polish and the Czech grids ? The Germans have not still been able to build the necessary electrical grids to transport the electricity of wind farms of the North to the South where it is consumed despite the fact the probleme has been on the table for 20 years or so. The fact that they have massively privatized their electricity production helped well in this. The result of this circuit is that the Polish and Czech electricity grid authorities are fed up with the irregularity of the wind farms production which disorganizes the distribution of electricity on their own grids. The Polish grid authority invested in devices intended for rejecting the excess of electricity coming from the German wind farms and the Czech grid authority is also thinking about it (the devices are expensive to buy and install)”.

    1. Gar, thanks for the link. They drill out ice cores. Then they slowly drop a thermometer into the hole, measuring the temperature at every inch as they lower the thermometer. They state that the ice keeps the same temperature as the air temperature when the snow fell hundreds to thousands of years ago. That is the first time I have ever heard that theory. That just doesn’t sound right. I would love to see that theory peer-reviewed. After all, even in the Arctic, they have different temperatures from winter to summer. And that temperature change is far greater than the year-to-year change in the average yearly temperature. I think this story is just bullshit.

      1. I’ve never heard of that ‘dropping a thermometer into the hole’ to reconstruct the temperature?
        It is standard practice to use isotope ratios to determine past temperatures from the ice core.

        1. I haven´t even bothered to watch the video, but if it´s like you´ve said with dropping thermometers into the ice boreholes it has to be the stupidest thing I ever heard of. (and I´ve heard of plenty)
          Maybe I´ll watch it anyway, just to make sure.

          1. Seems simple enough to me.

            Could be that Water, when frozen at a specific temperature, freezes with a particular formation that can be evaluated at a later time.

            I sort of recall ice cubes out of a chest freezer are more solid and perhaps displace less volume than those out of the one next to the refrigerator. At least, they’re harder to knock out of their trays. OTOH, I could be making stuff up.

            1. Watched the video, twice, and there are interesting points but also some not so convincing things in it. From what I´ve learned, water freezes at 0C (a very hard defined physical property (and also tied to some unlogical F number)) and I don´t think that has changed very recently.
              They however showed thaving specimens, that would perhaps tell “FCC/BCC” structure-differences but that´s not what they sell. So I´m still very sceptical.
              Also. the thermal conductivity of ice is not negligible, even if it´s thick.

      1. And each one has a mouth at one end that needs to be fed, and an exit hole at the other end that needs to be accommodated.

        But don’t worry. Chat GPT. . . .

  19. Why do car dealerships oppose the direct sales model?

    Really, the past hundred years had been great. Auto dealers are one of the five most common professions among the top 0.1 percent of American earners. Car dealers, gas station owners, and building contractors, it turns out, make up the majority of the country’s 140,000 Americans who earn more than $1.58 million per year.

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans-party-car-dealers-2024-desantis.html

    1. Although dealers are maligned as parasites, their relationship to the GOP is pure symbiosis: Republicans need their money and networks, and dealers need politicians to protect them from repealing the laws that keep the money coming in.

  20. Dr Ugo Bardi has shutdown his blog ” The Seneca Effect ” . Bad news . In his comments section is a comment which in my opinion is thought provoking . Best of luck Dr Bardi .

    Anonymous May 21, 2023 at 6:22 AM
    Our Western Civilisation today is an injured animal – cannot tolerate realising – it has foolishly destroyed almost all fossil fuel reserves in 150 years – for nothing…

    Today, before they drill an oil well in Iraq, they build first a massive infrastructure, shipped from all over the world, to inject liquids and gasses into the field of – yet to be drilled – oil wells….

    There is actually less and less remaining oil left in the ground…

    Shell pulled itself out – from a business partnership with the Iraqis developing new oil fields…

    Shell et al are – as if telling the Iraqis – you guys keep dealing with an EROEI of 1000 barrels burned – to get just 1 barrel extracted – producing your national oil to depletion – proudly – and we will be pricing it – at he bottom of the food chain – anyway…

    Watch here – the Control room of a recent oil field in Iraq – which looks like a cheap Chinese Car – a show off – more than anything real – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QngJpjvuWQ0

    The system that prices 23000 hours of useful work in a barrel of finite oil – at the bottom of the food chain – just to play a fake Invisible-Hand, fake Social Engineer, fake History, fake Civilisation, fake Free Internet – will sooner or later – run out of the finite stuff…

    Price it rightly at the top of the food chain – being finite – and everything comes to a grinding halt: humans cannot manufacture Energy…

    No matter how Ugo tried hard to hold the narrative from the middle – it was clear he has been under pressure to remove lines of thoughts, and even comments – that sounded just a little bit non-mainstream…

    Our Western Civilisation today is an injured, wounded and dangerous animal – that cannot tolerate listening to anybody – only escaping forward…

    Traumatised, out of the last ice age, the European mind dealt with exploiting fossil reserves – like no tomorrow – unwilling to hear a word from sunshine-latitudes on any of their ages-old Wisdom – “And neither allow thy hand to remain shackled to thy neck, nor stretch it forth to the utmost limit [of thy capacity], lest thou find thyself blamed, or even destitute” – Quran

    Treating the World as children, playing a nanny Civilisation – has been the wrong path for the West to take, since Jevons in the 1860s, at the latest – destroying all fossil reserves in a blink of eye – when it should have lasted 3000 years – plus…

    “No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores”

    Time to let people understand how harsh are the Laws of Nature – and let them having a real future – rather then imprisoning them in a vicious, theatrical, synthetic and nonsense Hollywood-style cockfight, a reality of an – Energy Musical Charis Game…

    A real future that has not been pre-decided, turned a dead history before it even born – burning finite fossil fuels to waste in – killing the future…

    One day soon, there will be no enough fossil fuels to juggle fossil fuels around – anyway….

    The Sun of a new day – dawns….

      1. Old men fear change Ugo is no different. He’s now a flower child. No more talk of collapse. It plays better for the grandkids.

        1. In fact the entire EROI discussion is largely irrelevant, because there is more than enough ambient energy. The claimed that an industrial society needs at least EROI of X are mostly moonbeams.

          And getting bent out of shape about the difference between EROI of 10 compared to EROI 15 disguises the fact that we are talking about the difference between 90% efficiency and 93.3% efficiency.

          1. I just don’t get Art Berman’s EROEI response in terms of the Tesla battery being rechargeable many 1000’s of times, whereas oil is a non-rechargeable 1-time use.

            “If we use Bardi’s 90% efficiency for a battery and 30% efficiency for a barrel of oil, the battery delivers 12.2 kWh and the barrel of oil, 510 kWh. Oil wins.”

            Yes it wins — a one time cycle. But hook the battery up to a solar cell and let it recharge, over and over again. Hook the oil reservoir up to the sun and it will take millions of years to recharge.

            Is Berman the one being dishonest here?

      2. Bardi might have lost the plot, what with the Covid stuff and before that the entropy in oil production rubbish, now this (EROI only matters in respect to what is available to the consumer, i.e. society, not the universe as a whole – that minimum level for oil refining is complete tripe). I watched a couple of interviews with him and at the end couldn’t quite figure out what he had said, if anything. I think he is so desperate to see civilisation survive he’ll grab at any straw (or straw man). It’s increasing noticeable how scientists are tying themselves in knots in order not to actually say that we are completely fucked.

        Here’s a couple of important new papers:

        The resulting findings, which build on a study published in March in Nature Sustainability (J. Gupta et al. Nature Sustain. https://doi.org/grwfbk; 2023), show that seven out of eight thresholds have been crossed (see ‘Planetary boundaries reboot’)

        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01749-9

        Aerosol demasking enhances climate warming over South Asia

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6

        And an op-ed: Climate code red

        https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/filozofski-vestnik/article/view/12054/11185

        And why nothing’s really changing:

        Global Investment in Coal to Increase by 10 Percent: IEA

        https://financialtribune.com/articles/energy/118309/global-investment-in-coal-to-increase-by-10-percent-iea

        1. George,

          I have not seen a good critique of the Murphy et al 2022 paper.

          https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098

          This is not really that hard to understand.

          Let’s take 100 MJ of oil at the wellhead that requires 3 MJ of energy inputs (as measured using a wide boundry life cycle analysis) which would have an EROI of 33.3 at wellhead. Now we account for the energy cost to transport the oil to the refinery, refine the oil, and then distribute the petrol or diesel to a petrol station which requires an additional 11.5 MJ for all of these steps so the consumer can fill their tank with liquid fuel. The EROI now becomes 100 MJ of product requires 13.5 MJ of energy inputs and the EROI is 100/13.5=7.41. If we account for the 30% efficiency of an internal combustion engine we get about 30 MJ of work from the fuel with 13.5 MJ of energy spent to extract, transport, refine and distribute the fuel which would be 30/13.5 or an EROI of about 2.2.

          If we compare this with PV with an EROI of 9, for 100 MJ of PV electricity about 11.1 MJ of energy would have been needed to produce it, for an EV utilizing the electricity about 90% is converted to work so we would have 90 MJ/11.1 MJ for an EROI of about 8.1 almost 4 times better than oil used as a transport fuel.

          2. I’m not sure if I’m missing something here

            For fossil fuel, we include the energy to produce, refine, distribute, and consume the fuel at the petrol station.

            For EV, we include the energy to produce and consume. Shouldn’t there be an energy cost to distribute the electricity to the home/charging station, or is that included in the 11.1 MJ?

          3. Niko,

            Art perfoms a bit of sleight of hand in his piece by arbitrarily reducing the energy input to the refinery process. This is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Simple trickery.

            See paper linked below

            https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwij6JfBxKL_AhXmFFkFHQbpC-U4ChAWegQIHRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgreet.es.anl.gov%2Ffiles%2F1c49xpjg&usg=AOvVaw3ay6QNi0PxDblcWN4a__PE

            The average US refinery has an efficiency of 87.8% (see page 42 of the paper).

            For 100 MJ of product output this corresponds to a 14 MJ input of energy to the refining process. See equation 2 on page 42, where we set e(p) to 100 and e(s) to 14, efficiency would be 100/(100+14)=0.877. Note that Berman sets e(s)=3 with no justification, he just arbitrarily changes the value.

            Also note that Berman knows very little about the refining process, he is a geologist not a chemical engineer. His claim that refining is profitable so EROI must be high is silly. Profits are unrelated to EROI. One could just as easily claim that electric power plants are not profitable because EROI is less than one (typically for every 100 MJ that gets fed into a power plant only 40 MJ of energy output in the form of electricity is produced (this ignores the cost of the capital investment in building and maintaining the plant and the energy used to produce all those inputs). For this example we would have 40/100=0.4 for the EROI of the power plant, which means it could not be profitable according to Berman. That is nonsense.

          4. Was looking at Sankey diagram for US and for transportation only about 21% of energy from liquid transport fuel is converted to energy services. So for the energy service provided by petroleum for transport it would be about 21 MJ/13.5 MJ or about 1.55 for the EROI for oil at the wheel compared to about 8 for an EV powered with PV with an EROI of 9 roughly a factor of 5 better for the EV/PV combo at the wheel vs fossil fuel/ICEV.

          6. Niko,

            I found the following comment from Robert Rapier at OIl Drum under Nat Hagen’s post linked above:

            Now, I make a small coal to liquids plant on site (that takes, say 10 joules of coal to make one joule of oil, and provides all the electricity, steam, heat, and whatever else is needed by the mine). Now my energy input is 0, and my output is 90 joules.

            Rapier’s response to the comment above:

            I guess I am not following this at all. For this step, if you input 10 joules of coal and got one joule of oil, your energy return on energy invested it 1 joule of oil per 10 joules invested, or 1/10. Nine joules were apparently consumed while making the oil.

            To be sure, people apply EROEI in many different ways. This becomes especiallly important in 2-step processes like you describe above. I have seen people calculate 5/1 and 9/1 for exactly the same process, depending on the assumptions.

            For instance, let’s say I have an oil extraction EROEI of 10/1 and a refining EROEI of 10/1. If you do the calculation correctly, the overall EROEI is 5/1. However, here is how to do it incorrectly and get 9/1. Use 1 BTU to extract 10 BTUs of oil. Now, take 1 of those BTUs of oil, and refine to gasoline and diesel. The apparent EROEI is 9/1. I input 1 BTU, and got 9 back out. But can you see the problem with this scenario? Hint: It is like the difference between simple interest and compounded interest.

            The “wrong” way to calculate EROI is just what we find in Berman’s post.

          8. GerryF,

            I am including transmission and distribution of electricity. Possible it is a bit less than 90%, doubtful that it is less than 85%.

        2. GerryF,

          Researched this briefly and my guess of 85% is too high. The transmission and distribution losses are about 5%, so 100 MJ at utility scale PV would become 95 MJ at my home after these losses. Then there are a number of losses at inverter, charging battery and converting battery power to power at the wheel, this is about 25% according to some studies. If we take 75% of 95 MJ that would be about 71.25 MJ of power delivered to wheels. So it would be an EROI for the EV/PV combo of 71.25/11.1=6.42 compared to 1.55 for the ICEV/oil combo, so the EV/PV is about a factor of 4 better than the ICEV/oil combo in terms of EROI.

          Thank you for the suggested correction.

          Sankey diagram at link below was used for the lower ICEV efficiency.

          https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png

      3. On a practical basis, actual EROEI can be detected in the real world simply by looking at the price of energy produced. The price also reflects the costs of inputs other than energy, such as uranium or cobalt, aluminum or concrete, frac materials or copper.

        Nonetheless…the energy input gets priced in to the product, just as it does for all products.

        With PV the output per panel has only improved a small amount over the past 20 years, but the cost of energy input/panel has dramatically declined with mass manufacturing.
        This means that the EROI has improved dramatically over the past 2 decades, as reflected in the pricing chart below.
        Most people formed their opinions/conclusions on EROI of renewables before the current era, including people like Nate Hagan. As far as I have seen he has not updated his calculations with current data inputs.

        1. In all the talk of EROEI, most forget that all natural energy resources, solar, wind, oil, gas, coal, wood, uranium, geothermal, wave and tide movement are free to humanity.

          We must build something to harness the energy. With wood, a simple pile will give us net energy when we burn it, or perhaps a wood furnace to get better directed heat into a house we built at a slower rate of wood consumption.

          We build machines to harvest the energy from all sources in the modern world to spread far and wide to a growing population. We build multiple machines and pathways to transport energy in ever growing quantities to service human growing needs on a finite planet, despite obviously reaching tipping points of gross overshoot of the natural system.

          We have vast quantities of embedded energy in the existing system we have built over the last 2 centuries , but it all needs maintaining, upgrading and replacing over time, at a great energy cost. None of the methods, nor papers presented by anyone include this cost, so they are all incorrect, mostly delusional thinking of avoiding lots of energy costs to make their own chosen energy source look good and ignoring the simple fact that EROEI is not a stable nor constant number.

          Say you have a 2Tcf gas trap, put one well in right next to existing infrastructure, pipeline etc. It might have an EROEI of 200/1. However if you double the energy input, by building a second well in the same trap 5km away, you just doubled the energy input so halved the EROEI to 100/1. Then some bright spark decided to build a LNG plant to export this new gas, so EROEI crashes again with this vast new expenditure of energy in the build..

          Like wise for solar or wind with the amount of copper wiring involved, if the copper mined to build them came from mines with 10% copper grades the EROEI might be very high, but if the copper mined came from 1% copper grades the EROEI will be much lower.

          Not one paper anywhere considers any of the above, so they are all delusional, but nearly 99.99% of all people don’t want to know about it. There is mass delusion that the existing system can keep going with minor tweeks to how we collect energy while pillaging the planet that we have greatly overused already.

          1. Like I said- it all gets factored in at the level of the price of the end product.

          4. Gail on some subjects is not the brightest porch light on the block.
            Conservatives never are.
            But she is open to talking, even if ignoring the data.
            Not as tight as some.

    2. Hickory,

      The obvious solution is to use excees output to produce synthetic fuel, store the synthetic fuel and burn it in thermal power plants as backup. Also with a bigger EV fleet, demand pricing can be used to encourage charging when power output is high. The car could be programmed to charge when the price falls below some value during periods of excess output.

      1. Dennis . I want to loose weight . The ” Obvious solution ” is I must eat less and exercise more . Work in progress . 🙂

  23. Renewable Energy Market Update – June 2023
    Momentum building-
    “Global additions of renewable power capacity are expected to jump by a third this year as growing policy momentum, higher fossil fuel prices and energy security concerns drive strong deployment of solar PV and wind power, according to the latest update from the International Energy Agency. ”

    Get used to this headline…we’ll see it every year of the decade, and beyond-
    “With the global energy crisis as a catalyst, solar PV and wind are set to lead the largest annual increase in new renewable capacity ever, new IEA report shows”

    https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-on-course-to-shatter-more-records-as-countries-around-the-world-speed-up-deployment

  25. Glad I was wrong about debt ceiling debacle. McCarthy and Biden did a much better job than I anticipated and the crazies at the fringes on the right and left did much less damage than I expected. It seems the moderates in the middle pulled us through, these legislators do not make a lot of noise, but they quietly keep the nation running in spite of the noisy people at the fringe that get most of the media attention.

    1. Doug,

      Have you noticed that it is only you who says this? EVs use less energy and have fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to ICEVs over their life cycle. There are multiple problems and no silver bullets. I don’t eat beef or most other animal products, at least for the past 40 years or so.

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