123 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, May28, 2024”

  1. Chevrolet Silverado EV RST Goes The Distance #electricvehicle

    With a bladder busting range of 440 miles, the impressive 2024 Chevy Silverado EV RST packs a punch. It’s all here- Fast 350kW charging, dual motor 4WD, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, four wheel steering, air suspension, vehicle-to-home power ability and Super Cruise. Quiet, comfortable and surprisingly nimble there’s a lot to like… so long as you have $96,500 to spare for a pickup truck. Tom Voelk and John Voelcker team up and spend a day with the Silverado EV. They have some thoughts to share, especially about the new interface.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJzc6bjgjzU

    1. F150 Lightning with 320 miles range is about 70k minimum. The Rivian with 352 miles of range is about 78k and one can get a 3750 tax credit if eligible (high incomes are excluded) which would bring price to roughly 74k before sales tax. Only the high price version is available for Chevy. The Tesla pickup has only 320 miles of range and costs 96k so the Chevy seems the better deal for those who need an EV pickup truck.

      1. A great platform for a camper van to house the PV nomads of the future.

    3. Considering that pickup trucks are now four door five passenger vehicles with a vestigial bed, the primary reasonable argument for their utility is towing. In my area, contractors use their trucks to haul tools to the job site, but rarely building material; those are delivered. Weekends are for recreation though, and then the toys are hitched up; campers, boats, ATV’s, snowmobiles et cetera. There is heavy range impact from towing though, and now that 400 mile range is 200, and then if there are chargers near your wilderness adventure, you must charge up a 200kWh pack.

      Far more sensible for light duty trucks to be PHEV’s. An onboard turbocharged gas or diesel generator energizing a 50kWh pack would provide plenty of daily range for the normal use of the truck, the towing utility of the truck would not be compromised, and potential 240V AC vehicle to load (V2L) capability would still be an option for powering tools at job sites. What would be lost, is the frunk space, which is freaking ideal for secure tool transport and storage. Admittedly, a truck with a 200kWh pack and V2L would make a great emergency backup power supply.

      1. EVs don’t have to be “Land Yachts”. I got the land yacht term from the following article: Biden’s 100% China EV Tariff Fails History 101
        I found the following idea from the article very intrguing

        Can American car companies adapt and sell the equivalent of Japanese econoboxes from the early 1980s? Not a chance, just as they couldn’t do it then. Could America say to Chinese automobile firms, sure, sell cheap cars that the average person can afford in North America, just do it with Chinese cars built in Chinese-owned factories on American soil, mostly employing Americans? Of course.

        This is almost exactly what the Chinese did to western automakers so if the US were to insist on the same terms, China would have no basis to complain!

    4. Legacy of Schedule 179 tax policy benefitting those wealthy enough to buy $100k boutique “work” trucks.

    5. At 8,800 pounds, it’s a bit scary to see vehicles like this share the road with my 2800 pound compact. But they do keep the orange barrel makers in business.

  2. 70% of the rubber that is used to make tires is synthetic rubber. Made from oil.

    EV’s are twice the weight of ICE vehicles. We are going to need a lot more tires to drive the same amount of miles using EV’s.

    Roads will also need fixing a lot more often as the heavier vehicles do more damage.

    2. Road wear of a 4-5000 lb ev is insignificant compared to a 40-60,000 lb semi.

        2. My 1972 Dasun pickup weighed 2300 lbs. ‘82 weighed 2800 lbs. A 2024 midsized Frontier weighs 4800lbs the same as my ‘97 F150. I’m glad vehicles are safer but what a used vehicle inventory to pass on so as to have the cheapest fuel possible. Those EV pickup trucks have as much utility as cheesy gold painted statues on a movie set.

      2. In theory, you could replace the bitumen in the road and the rubber in the wheels with sometething different, steel perhaps, would give a much lower rolling resistance too.
        And in theory, you could power some device with electricity driving on such a thing, I think there is something called electric rail?
        As a bonus, the steel for the wheels and rails could be made with some new, elaborate technique that uses the sun and H2 in a mysterious way that also reduces CO2.
        But one can dream…

        1. Your radical thinking is impossible. You might as well talk of living on Mars with such a contraption.

          1. First step profligate car use and along with that a continued decline in per capita vehicle ownership. Unfortunately US culture and politics are so intertwined with the power a personal vehicle provides it looks like we’ll choose debt over sacrificing the luxury of burning as much fuel as we can afford.

  3. So Dennis in response to your previous comment, I never said the climate change isn’t real. Merely said CO2 is not the poison people think it is and it’s not dirty..

    The reality is historic warming periods tend to lead CO2 not lag it. CO2 also has a narrow greenhouse warming effect that is not linear. Many of the refrigerants that we presently use have warming effects in the order of multiples of thousands and tens of thousands And are very stable molecules that take thousands of years to breakdown.

    The laser focus on CO2 and only CO2 is purely to promote energy transition, which is a distraction from the real crisis, which is energy deficit.

    Somehow, my comment, which was a simple statement of truth that CO2 is necessary for life was twisted into me being a climate change denier. That is simply an ignorant attempt to dismiss the point I was making.

    To put things simply the earth is warming and evidence suggests that human activity is a factor. To say it’s all CO2 and not include water vapor, methane, refrigerants, solar cycles, reduced Sulfur emissions and host of other factors is willful blindness.

    We will never replace fossil fuels with renewable energy systems because it can’t be done and the efforts we’re making is exacerbating the problem. Renewable energy cannot provide the chemicals our present way of life requires nor the heat needed to produce the steel and concrete.

    Green energy is not about saving the planet it is about saving this industrial way of life that can’t and won’t exist without fossil fuels. The attempt to transition to renewables by any measure is a dismal failure despite mountains of money having been thrown at it. The transition from horse and buggy to cars was quicker and didn’t require subsidies.

    Maybe I’ll coin a new label ‘Reality Deniers”

    1. What a festival of red herrings JT. No informed people, most especially climate scientists, are saying what you claim they are saying, or ignoring what you say they are ignoring. How many renewable advocates are there that insist that fossil minerals can’t be used for chemical feedstocks? And yes, green energy is about having a type of industrial life, but it won’t be the current one.

      “The attempt to transition to renewables […] is a dismal failure”? US Q1 2024 renewable electricity generation was just under 25%. In March, it was 29%. Generation by wind and solar exceeded coal, and it exceeded nuclear. Next up to go down: gas.

      https://electrek.co/2024/05/28/renewables-us-electrical-generation-march/

      The transition is happening faster than I expected. What did you expect? 100% in 25 years?

      1. Bob, “The transition is happening faster than I expected. What did you expect? 100% in 25 years?”

        What transition? On a world wide scale we are just adding solar and wind to the energy mix. In the last 25 years we have added nearly a magnitude more fossil fuels into the mix than solar and wind.

        If it was a transition at all it would have been adding solar and wind while decreasing fossil fuel use.

        BTW it’s always been like this, we (as in humanity) didn’t transition from wood to coal in the 19th century either, we burnt more wood at the end of the 19th century as we did 100 years prior. Once we added oil and gas to the mix we were able to burn more coal and wood than ever before.

        It’s all just an attempt to keep industrial civilization going at no matter what cost to the environment. It all looks good on paper for any individual developed country that has outsourced their heavy industry to countries that continue to build new coal fired power plants.

        Without cheap steel, cement, aluminium, copper, silicon, glass, polymers and plastics there would be no cheap solar and wind. Yet we continue to build new factories to make the renewables reliant upon fossil fuels to function, decades after we first built solar and wind turbine factories. There is no attempt to turn the industrial base over to totally renewable energy use, because it’s simply not economically competitive.

        A quick look at the keeling curve and you have to ask, What transition??
        https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

        1. Hideaway,

          All of the building of solar and wind requires an increase in the use of fossil fuels in your estimation, so we would expect that an increase in the output of wind and solar power would be associated with an increased use of fossil fuel compared to a previous period when the growth in wind and solar output was not as large.

          From 2012 to 2017, World wind and solar gross generation increased by 955 TWh and from 2017 to 2022 the increase was 1840 TWh (a 92.6% increase compared to the previous 5 year period). We would expect, at minimum, to see a higher increase in fossil fuel use in the later period due to a near doubling in the rate of increase in wind and solar gross power generation (as these are supposedly just derivatives of fossil fuel consumption).

          What we find is that global direct primary consumption of fossil fuel increased by 6181 TWh from 2012 to 2017 and increased by 4717 TWh from 2017 to 2022, or 23.6% less of an increase in fossil fuel consumption than the previous 5 years.

          1. Dennis, as per my post above the numbers you’ve presented are just proving my case. The new solar and wind have not replaced any fossil fuel use, they have just been added to total energy use.

            If there was any transition going on then for the increase in solar and wind of 1,840Twh during your 5 year period, there should have been a corresponding decline in fossil fuel use.

            What actually happened was that fossil fuel use also rose, by more than double the rise of solar and wind output!! 4,717Twh..

            We haven’t even reached the point of solar and wind being the only new addition of energy use, nor even close to to it.

            When we have a decade where solar and wind has gone up by XXXXXTwh and during the same decade fossil fuel use has gone down XXXXXTwh then you will have a case, but it’s simply not happening.

            We need at least decadal scales to work this all out, as it takes a lot of time and energy to increase new mine capacity, and build new factories that the solar and wind are built in, then more time for it to be deployed, before we see increases in solar and wind output. Future increases are going to be based upon the new mines and factories being built today and tomorrow.
            You seem to be blind to all the mining, land clearing and building of industrial premises that needs to happen for more solar, wind, EV’s and batteries to happen.

            None of it just magics into existence…

            1. Hideaway,

              The increase is wind and solar should have led to an acceleration in the increase in fossil fuel use according to your hypothesis, this did not happen. Instead there was a deceleration in the increase in fossil fuel use. This will take time, as more wind and solar get built the deceleration will continue until fossil fuel use stops increasing, then the decrease in fossil fuel use begins. Think of it like a ball thrown up and the velocity of the ball, but in slow motion, with the rate of increase in fossil fuel corresponding to velocity in the direction away from the ground.

              Fossil fuel will deplete and eventually decrease, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power will replace some of that fossil fuel energy consumption. A significant portion of fossil fuel energy that is used for electric power (about 60%) and most of the energy in oil used for land transport (about 65%) is simply waste heat. This will be reduced when land transport is electrified (rail, subway, and passenger cars, buses, and heavy duty trucks) and space and water heating move to heat pumps (air and geothermal). There is a lot of energy waste in the system.

              Cheap short term private cost must be balanced with long term social and environmental costs in any cost benefit analysis.

              The wind, solar, and EV investment replaces older technologies gradually over time, I agree it will be a decades long process.

              In the meantime there are a set of policies to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, empower women, and transform agriculture and food see the Earth for all initiative.

            2. Dennis, the reality is that we have increased fossil fuel use in the last decade as we have added more solar and wind into the energy mix.

              It’s interesting that you try to twist what I’ve been saying, instead of looking at the facts..

              There has been no transition of ANY energy form, it’s ALL just been added on top of existing energy uses. We now use more wood than 3 centuries ago, Coal never replaced wood!! In fact coal helped to increase wood use!!

              Oil didn’t replace coal, it helped to increase coal use.

              How hard is this for you to understand? It’s plain and simple in the world historic numbers of energy use.

              Solar and wind have been added to the energy mix, they have not replaced anything, we have increased fossil fuel use by more than the added solar and wind in the last decade!!
              The numbers YOU presented clearly showed this 1,840 Twh increase in solar and wind, came with a 4,717 increase in fossil fuel use over the last 5 years!!

              My opinion is that 5 years is too short of a time frame to look at the statistics as it takes time to build mines and factories to make machines, so a decade is better. Solar panels, wind turbines, EVs, batteries are all just man made machines in which there will always be a lag from concept to production and deployment.

              If you want double or triple or quadruple solar, wind, EVs, batteries etc, then we need more mines, processing plants and factories to build it. Do you not understand this simple reality??

              Where do you suggest the energy to build all these new facilities comes from??
              The reality on the ground is it’s coming from fossil fuels, because any attempt to do it with just renewable energy is too expensive!!! How can you be so blind to the reality of what’s going on in the world??

              It all comes back to new sources of metals like the Aluminium smelter being built by Adaro in Indonesia. It’s coal based because it’s cheaper!! It’s uneconomic to use solar panels and batteries to create the power to produce the Aluminium!! Likewise for thousands of mines and processing facilities around the world.

              If you want more solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, EVs, batteries etc, then you are in favor of more fossil fuel burning to make all these machines.

              You are also in favor of destroying more pristine areas of nature, causing more extinctions to supply the metals and minerals needed, you just don’t want to admit it….

        2. Funnily enough, one of the places where the transition appears to be gathering pace is your neck of the woods but, it appears you have a filter that precludes you from viewing anything at the web site https://reneweconomy.com.au/ so you would never know!

    2. JT,

      Green energy is not a term I use, I tend to say wind and solar or more generally non-fossil fuel. Yes there are other greenhouse gases, but the biggest effect comes from CO2, water vapor cannot be avoided and responds to temperature in a positive feedback loop. Also CO2 once emitted remains in the atmosphere a very long time, some is reabsorbed by the carbon cycle quickly (roughly 50%), but about 20% of CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years. The only way to reduce the continued buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is to eliminate the burning of fossil fuel, this is not well understood by many. Your previous comment suggests that you might be one of those.

      See https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004JC002625

      Especially the last line of the paper:

      A better approximation of the lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 for public discussion might be “300 years, plus 25% that lasts forever.”

  4. Peak coal?

    INDIA’S COAL CONSUMPTION AND EMISSIONS HIT RECORD HIGHS IN Q1

    “India, which still relies on coal for over 70% of its electricity generation, saw its coal-fired power generation jump by 9.6% year-over-year to 338 terawatt hours (TWh) in the first quarter of 2024, according to data from think tank Ember cited by Reuters columnist Gavin Maguire…

    India raised the share of coal in its power generation in April as sharply lower hydropower output has threatened blackouts as summer approaches. The share of coal in India’s power generation jumped to 77% in the first week of April, rising by around two percentage points compared to the same period of 2023, per data from the Grid Controller of India cited by Bloomberg.”

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Indias-Coal-Consumption-and-Emissions-Hit-Record-Highs-in-Q1.html#:~:text=India%2C%20which%20still%20relies%20on,by%20Reuters%20columnist%20Gavin%20Maguire.

    2. Weekend peak,

      Sorry, no. Only images allowed (png, jpg, and gif) but you can put a file in google docs or some other place and post a link as Mr. Norris has suggested.

  6. Delhi set a new temperature record today, over 50 degrees Celsius, 13 degrees above body heat. Only a small proportion of its inhabitants have access to air conditioning.

    However, with the worlds largest population, they can afford to lose a few thousand to heat stroke, every day.

  7. In the last thread (Hickory, et al) there was reference to new transmission corridors. I have not seen reference to the advances in the electrical transmission lines themselves. A search will give lots of technical information – but the important. description is in the article
    https://portside.org/2024-05-28/us-urgently-needs-bigger-grid-heres-fast-solution
    this is possibly a reprint of the same article in NY Times
    ‘..most power lines consist of steel cores surrounded by strands of aluminum, a design that’s been around for a century. In the 2000s, several companies developed cables that used smaller, lighter cores such as carbon fiber and that could hold more aluminum. These advanced cables can carry up to twice as much current as older models.’
    My wife and I are presently dealing with a new power line that runs across half of Wyoming and crosses about a mile of our property. The power utility is holding public meetings with the landowners and I am certainly going to raise the issue of whether the new line will use the newer cable… seems to be a real waste if they just put up the cable they have been using for a hundred years… especially since the line crosses mile after mile of vacant land that could well support wind turbines and panel farms night next to the line….

      1. Hickory,

        Thanks. I agree quite interesting.

        Some key points from the executive summary

        1. Advanced conductors can up to double line capacity within existing
        rights-of-way (ROW).
        …
        2. Reconductoring projects typically cost less than half the price of
        new lines for similar capacity increases.
        …
        3. Reconductoring enables nearly four times (4x) the interzonal
        transmission capacity expansion by 2035 compared to new-build
        alone, given restrictions on greenfield transmission build-out.
        …
        4. Reconductoring with advanced conductors can help provide the
        majority of near-term interzonal transmission capacity needs,
        providing time for new lines to be developed for long-term needs.
        …
        5. Pursuing a strategy of simultaneously reconductoring with
        advanced conductors and addressing barriers to new greenfield
        transmission provides the largest savings in total system costs of
        all considered scenarios, yielding cumulative savings of over $400
        billion by 2050 compared to the business-as-usual case.

        The entire paper is worth a read in my view.

      2. “The Biden administration on May 28 launched a joint grid modernization initiative with 21 states in connection with an aspirational goal to upgrade 100,000 miles of existing transmission lines over the next five years.”
        https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/052924-biden-administration-partners-with-21-states-on-grid-modernization-initiative
        https://www.utilitydive.com/news/states-doe-modern-grid-deployment-initiative-gets/717338/
        https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Federal-State-Modern-Grid-Deployment-Initiative-Principles_formatted.pdf

        1. Hickory,

          Thanks. Interesting that it is states with Democratic Governors that have joined this initiative, maybe the Republican Governors might join the initiative after the November election. In the previous piece you linked (the technical paper) Texas was cited as an example of one of the largest “reconductoring” projects to date, but often Texas prefers to not work with the Federal Government. It would work better if all states worked on this problem, but perhaps private companies will join this initiative regardless of politics.

      1. No. Transwest is the big one of course, one of several (many) proposed to run from Wyoming to California, but the first one being built.
        This one is tiny in comparison – the ‘Ready Wyoming Project’ (Cheyenne Light Fuel Power built by Black Hills) running from Glenrock (near Casper) to Cheyenne and then on to Nebraska (Scottsbluff). This project is a ‘two wooden poles and a crossbeam’ designed to meet the ‘minimum requirements set forth by the NESC. I have sent an inquiry to our PSC but have not received any response.
        Missing the comments by Hickory is a faux pas on my part – usually my reading is more thorough than this..

        1. Skyline,

          For a smaller project like that they may go for minimum cost. They may not be able to justify the higher cost cable as far as time to payback.

  9. This is for all you BAU advocates through a decarbonised future such as renewable, nuclear energies, batteries and EV uptake etc. Are you guys okay with the destruction of pristine environments for metal mining, or deep sea floor mining and the devastating impacts it has on the biosphere ?

    I know these things will happen regardless because there is profit to be had and the status quo and their trickle down economics must be preserved at all costs, but i am just curious, are you guys okay with things like that as long as there is lower CO2 emission in the future ?

    2. Its a good question for everyone to ask themselves, not just regarding the sectors you mentioned but the whole damn ball of wax.
      Are you/we/I OK with war, and borders, plastics and plutonium, grandiose wealth sequestration, dams and slaughterhouses, refineries, explosives, clear-cutting, and concrete?
      Lets say we are not ‘ok’ with all of it…we will/would have simply faded under the bulldozer of human civilization, drowned out by the roar of a hundred thousand weapon chamber and ICE combustion events.

      Or if you decide to try and have a lighter footprint you can attempt to conduct yourself differently…how you vote, what you purchase, what modern conveniences you use. Do you/we/I fly, do you eat food from over the horizon, do use plastic for your toothpaste and toothbrush, do you drive or purchase an AC unit or refrigerator?

      Anyone who doesn’t find the whole project a little troubling has simply adopted the standard blind-eye approach…desensitization to basic harsh destructive realities of our mere existence. As children we learn to ‘digest’ the idea of warfare, which sets the tone for accepting all sorts other horrors that we collectively engage in.

      Regardless of these considerations, the bulldozer rolls on.

      1. “Regardless of these considerations, the bulldozer rolls on”, you say.

        AMID RECORD-HIGH FIRES ACROSS THE AMAZON, BRAZIL LOSES PRIMARY FORESTS

        “The number of fires across the Amazon this year continues to rise, with several regions and countries registering all-time highs. In the first quarter of 2024, the Brazilian Amazon registered 7,860 fires, the highest in this period since 2016 and representing more than half (54%) of all the fire records in the country.”

        https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/amid-record-high-fires-across-the-amazon-brazil-loses-primary-forests/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20fires%20across,fire%20records%20in%20the%20country.

    1. The demographics are so interesting. Basically the world minus Africa peaks by 2050. And then the question is, what will happen to Africa? I hope they can bring down their population trajectory or else they may end up like Haiti except on a grand scale of human misery.

      But the idea of a population peak misses a lot. Because the population of so many places will be older, much less is happening economically. Look at Japan and their bear population explosion. A rewilding has already begun.

    2. African countries are often as far apart as East and West in terms of overall climate, mineral resources, arable land, industrial development, education, etc.

      It’s my personal belief that within twenty to thirty years Africans in various places will be dying not by the thousands and tens of thousands as usual in recent times due to violence , famine, contagious diseases and such but by the hundreds of thousands and millions.

      The birth rate is dropping, but even today, with today’s populations, a major crop failure is enough to put tens of millions of lives on the line.

      Considering the state of the world today, it’s hard for me to imagine that there’s going to be enough money available to keep them alive.

      And even if we were collectively willing to foot the bill……… There’s a very real possibility that there won’t be a surplus supply of staple foods available for export.

      We might be reduced to chicken, beans, potatoes, cabbage, bread and such here in the USA……… depending on the climate.

      We might be starving ourselves.

      Barring extraordinarily good luck on their part, Mother Nature will solve the African peoples’ population problem in her usual way.

      We spend countless hours here talking about overshoot.

      Somehow even though quite a few of us are well educated as well as WELL INFORMED, we tend to overlook the obvious…….

      Darwin demonstrated that we humans are just one more kind of animal, a naked ape.

      My training as a professional farmer, half of it being straight up biology, enables me to understand that Malthus was right as rain, except for one generally overlooked detail. He didn’t have a crystal ball enabling him to anticipate the industrialization of agriculture, or the discovery and implementation of basic but effective public health principles.

      When the crops are bountiful for a generation or two or three, and there’s no out break of war or fatal highly contagious disease, the population grows pretty fast. Then the inevitable drought or blight or locoust plague or war wipes out a substantial percentage of the population.

      The same basic observation applies right across the animal kingdom, anytime conditions are right for rapid population growth. Booms are terminated by crashes.

      The most obvious immediate example in my neck of the woods involves whitetail deer. We created an environment where, excepting hunters and automobiles, they have almost no predators. There are probably more deer within twenty miles of home than cows.

      AND they’re dropping like flies a hundred miles away due to a contagious disease. . CWD will wipe out anywhere from half of them to ninety percent or more of them, locally, within the next decade or two.

      Unfortunate as it is, for them, the people of Africa aren’t going to play all that big a role in the overall human overshoot crisis.

      They’re going to be just about dead last in terms of maintaining their food production.

      Tractors, trucks, diesel fuel, fertilizer, pesticides…… you name it.

      They’ll be needing more and more such stuff.

      I can’t easily visualize them getting what they need considering the outlook even for countries such as the USA.

  11. Iron Mike/ JT/ Hideaway/ HHH

    Well as usual the Reality Deniers( I like that one) have stepped up to the plate and think BAU is merely a case of building out wind and PV and migrating transport to EV’s. All that has to be done is dig all the minerals out of the ground- With What?. Fossil fuels of course.

    At the top pf the there are the various promoters of huge pick-up truck EV’s with ranges of 400 miles- you wish. The reality of EV’s , and the actual range as opposed to the posted range are poles apart. A good idea is to take the range quoted by the lying OEM’s and multiply it by 0.5, and that is being generous. What with not charging the battery above 80% when fast charging, and not going below 20% capacity puts a huge limit on actual range achieved.

    The range scandal is little different to the Dieselgate scam Vehicles are tested in totally unrealistic situations to produce a driving range that would be difficult to replicate. Lets us call it Electricgate.

    But what really bothers me is that the US in particular seems to want to buy a huge, heavy vehicle with 300-400kW of power and batteries of up to 200kWh. Acceleration times that might be impressive but also consume energy at an alarming rate. It’s Jevons paradox again. The die hard EV drivers think that they are saving the planet by using vast amounts of electricity to continue BAU.

    “Weekends are for recreation though, and then the toys are hitched up; campers, boats, ATV’s, snowmobiles et cetera”.

    A perfect example. How might you be powering the campers, boats, ATV,s snowmobiles I wonder. One idea was to place diesel generator in the pick-up to charge the EV battery. Ye gods- the perfect Reality Denier. Completely oblivious of the dilemma that this type of conspicuous consumption will wreak on the environment.

    Per capita the US is still the largest consumer of gasoline, close to 25% of the global demand. Much of that gasoline is frittered away on needless heavy vehicles with atrocious fuel consumption( I also include SUV’s). Now the US wants to swap shit for shiola with equally environment damaging EV’s.

    The good news is that EV sales have flattened out. In Europe the 2024 target is 22% of new cars sales as BEV’s. The period Jan-Apr 2024 recorded 11.9% of new car sales BEV’s and that is only because on incentives for business drivers. Meanwhile private buyers are steering well clear of EV’s due to the skyrocketing cost of ownership and plummeting used car values. Who wants to buy a used battery and obsolete iPad aka A Tesla Model 3. Does anyone have an iPad that functions after 5 years ? The killer for all new cars will be the electronics and the idea of autonomous driving vehicles is wishful thinking.

    But what really bothers me is that few people, especially the Reality Deniers on this blog, have sod all idea about EROEI. Think about swimming in a tide. Just about everything is becoming more energy intensive as resource depletion bites, and the global population continues to grow by 80 million per year.
    With regard to illegal migration ( frequently referred to as asylum seekers) you have not seen nothing yet.

  12. Two interesting energy innovations/new companies-
    Joule Hive
    https://cleantechnica.com/2024/05/30/electrifed-firebricks-may-the-answer-to-low-carbon-process-heat/
    https://electrifiedthermal.com/technology/

    Exowatt-
    https://www.exowatt.com/
    https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/energy/article/55021480/thermal-battery-solar-technology-soon-to-rapidly-deliver-on-site-power-generation-for-data-centers
    (no this application is not just for data centers, rather that sector is a prototype installation funder)

  13. “A New York jury has found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, marking the first time a former U.S. president has ever been convicted of a crime.”

    All felonies
    But being a criminal all his life, he has his ways.

  14. I have been saying for quite some time that I think the global population will peak sooner and likely decline faster than mainstream demographers are predicting.

    Part of my reasoning is that as women get some education, the birth rate seems to decline in proportion, or thereabouts.

    The other part is that I believe various disasters, natural and man made, will be wiping out people by the tens of millions, maybe by the hundreds of millions, within the next couple of generations. War, pandemic disease, starvation, thirst, and genocide ( not necessarily best considered to be a ” typical ” war, because of the different underlying causes) will all play a significant to substantial role.

    The depletion of Mother Nature’s one time gifts of oil and gas, mineral ores, fossil water,reduced seasonal runoff from major mountain ranges due to forced warming, loss of top soil due to development and or lack of good management, etc, will be playing significant to major roles in various areas. Some regions and some countries are going to be up shit creek without a paddle even for coal….. because coal is useless until it’s mined and delivered…….. which won’t happen if the customer has no foreign exchange to pay for it, or if the owners of ships refuse to send them to send them on their way due to war on the high seas.

    ( I’m not a soldier, but I know a number of retired officers and enlisted men….. most of them well informed and smarter by a mile than the typical man on the street. Here’s something they tell me, off hand, in the same way they would say you can protect yourself from a tropical disease by way of immunization………….

    Any obsolete old fighter that can get off the ground can fire an UNGUIDED rocket into a target as big as an oil tanker or collier, as easily as falling off a long, unless it’s escorted by navy ships and planes, or near enough to shore to rely on land based aircraft. Such ships aren’t armored. They’re not built to survive having big holes punched in them. Any weapon good enough to take out a tank or armored personnel carrier is ample to sink such a ship. Their crews have commercial level fire fighting skills, and such equipment as they have is not even remotely comparable to the stuff on navy ships…. which have crews typically several times as large….. men enough to USE the equipment.

    Any of the larger howitzers currently used by the Ukrainians and Russians can easily sink any ordinary ship out to twenty miles or so. And I haven’t even mentioned modern day guided rocket artillery…… good for fifty to three or four hundred miles, even farther in some cases.

    There will be local and regional crop failures not only because of climate problems or lack of fertilizers, pesticides, fuel, and machinery, but also due to invasive species, the extinction of predator species that keep down the number of pests, government corruption……….. I could go on all day.

    So…….. I don’t think anybody can reasonably accuse me of wearing thick pink eyeglasses, in terms of understanding the nature of collapse. The depletion of fossil fuels may actually be one of the less important factors involved in modern civilization suffering a crash and burn scenario over large portions of the Earth. There could still be plenty of mineral ores, crude oil and natural gas in the ground…… depending on how the cards fall and when.

    Got a few things I have to do now.

    Back for the rest of this rant later.

  15. I didn’t realize that the energy efficiency of steam turbine conversion to electricity, whether the source is coal combustion or nuclear fusion, is only about 30%.

    1. Welcome to the world of thermodynamics. Now is the time to read up on the Rankine cycle which covers steam generation and steam turbines. 30% is a bit low. These days the Rankine cycle is in the high 30’s or even higher if the boiler is supercritical ( 374+ deg C and 22+ Megapascals). There will be some additional losses at the alternator – but that is a fact of life with electricity generation and transmission, even with wind turbine and PV. It should also be borne in mind that operating any process below optimum reduces overall efficiency, even wind turbines and PV. Thus standby fossil power plants frequently operate in balancing mode which is less efficient.

      Entropy never sleeps.

      1. So, when a nuclear plant or coal generating facility has a nameplate capacity of 1 GW does that refer to the maximum power output upstream or downstream of the steam turbine?

        I came across this consideration when reading about the MIT thermoelectric heat engine (exowatt- linked above), which has an energy conversion rate of only 40%. Despite that low rate it compares well to the steam turbine conversion, and has no moving parts.
        It will be interesting to see if the viability for commercial application pans out.
        https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/29/1053177/a-better-heat-engine/

        1. It’s interesting that some of the people that have been arguing about renewables being able to replace everything, didn’t even know these basic facts about energy use.

          Someone else last week made this mistake as well, thinking the nameplate was the input energy, not the output energy.

          It’s probably given some people a false belief in how much energy is actually used by the system of modern civilization overall, thinking we only get 300-400Mw out of a 1,000Mw coal plant, instead of the reality we get 1,000Mw per hour out of a coal fired, or nuclear power 1,000Mw plant.

          In 24 hours that’s 24,000Mwh of electricity. In Indonesia they are building a 1,100Mw coal plant and an Aluminium smelter for $US2B, the coal is in the ground free to humanity to use..

          Work out how much it would cost to produce a consistent 24,000Mwh of electricity every day, with the use spread out over the day, with solar backed up with batteries where you live, with the hours of sunlight you get wherever you live in the world. Remember to include efficiency losses going into and out of batteries and inverters etc..

          Do it for yourself to see if solar really is the cheapest form of electricity, then remember you will need to replace the batteries at 10 years or so, the solar panels at 20-30 years, while a coal power plant or nuclear power plant lasts 40-60 years.

          1. Hideaway: ” the coal is in the ground free to humanity to use.”

            I’m always a little confused when you write this. Sure, nature provided the coal for free, but mineral rights by landowners, extraction, and transport all cost.

            1. Hi Bob, it will take a bit of explaining..

              In most of the literature about how great renewables are, is the part where sun and wind are free, but in reality so are coal, wood, oil, uranium, gas, wave power, tidal power and geothermal.
              Not one of them costs a cent to humanity overall, they all just exist in nature. The cost to humanity as a whole, is the ‘cost’ of mining it. Everything else is an artificial addition by humans, it has nothing to do with the energy cost of gaining that useful energy.

              There is nothing stopping any government from placing a tax on every Kw of solar or wind energy collected either, like they have ‘royalties’ on every mined mineral.

              Just because a dollar charge doesn’t exist yet, on some aspects of energy collection is no reason to exclude it on some and include it on others. It’s not an energy cost, it’s all an artificial dollar cost placed by humans.

              I’m trying to look at an even playing field in comparison of energy types, compared to what we built our system of modern civilization with. We built our power stations right next to the coal mines and the owners had ‘free’ access to the coal. The only cost was digging the shallow coal out of the ground and placing it on the conveyor belt into the power plant. Yes it’s a cost, but usually still done with electric shovels running on electricity from the power plant itself.

              Every aspect of our modern civilization suffers from both entropy and dissipation of the components (rust being iron disappearing back into the environment, likewise for the green off copper pipes being copper oxides dissipating into the environment and becoming unrecoverable, zinc galvanising on fences etc). It all has to be replaced over time, 100% of it at different rates of attrition.

              We know fossil fuels worked to build our existing system, simply because it exists, the real question is can we continue our modern civilization with just solar and wind being the new forms of energy replacing fossil fuels, including maintaining and rebuilding everything that currently exists?.

              I thought the answer was yes up until a couple of years ago. I’m onto my 4th solar system, with batteries for running a rural property.
              I tried to work out how much it would cost to provide the power for a mining operation in a remote part of Australia, from just solar, wind and pumped hydro initially, then added batteries into the calculation because it was meant to be cheaper than the pumped hydro. Even halving the ‘cost’ of every aspect, didn’t come close to being viable…

              It’s why there are zero Aluminium smelters set up off grid relying upon their own solar power and batteries, with zero grid connect fees for doing so. It’s way too expensive compared to being connected to the grid that operates with lots of cheap fossil fuel inputs from existing coal power.

              Likewise, how many companies have set up their own Aluminium smelters to run off their own nuclear power stations? Zero, it’s too expensive, when we take the full cost into consideration.

              We have a narrative claiming solar and wind energy are cheaper NOW, not some time in the future, yet zero companies taking the huge advantage of this supposedly cheapest form of energy. Why?
              The ‘why’ is because solar and wind are only cheaper if you make up a story, or provide a set of circumstances to include some bits and exclude others, that looks convincing to those not really paying attention.
              If you look closely at Lazard’s LCOE calculations, they only get solar and wind cheaper by including a cost for coal, plus lowering the capacity factor, plus adding carbon capture and storage etc.

              If we had all those conditions placed upon coal a hundred years ago, we wouldn’t have built the modern civilization we have. Everything would have been built from far more expensive electricity, so we would be many decades behind in the modernity we have, including the inventions of solar panels, lithium batteries etc.
              We also cannot rebuild and maintain our existing world on just coal assuming those same conditions. What Lazard type reports apply to modern coal is a much lower EROEI than what we built the system with. This means much less energy for every other purpose.

              It’s not just solar and wind don’t work, it’s also coal, gas and nuclear can’t work either, with the parameters they set for each!! They didn’t compare with how we built the system!!

              If solar and wind do not give us the same excess energy to run the rest of modern civilization off, like the low costs of how we built the system, then they are a dead end. It just means destroying more of the environment, with more mining, more transmission lines etc, in an attempt to do something that’s not possible in the long term. Instead of powering down now and reducing population now, we will crash harder in the future..

              how have solar and wind become cheaper over the last 2 decades? Simply by building larger scale manufacturing plants, and using cheaper labor in Asian countries. The new Adaro Aluminium smelter being the classic example. Building more of these provide the cheap Aluminium for all purposes, including solar panel frames and mounting infrastructure.

              We built our civilization with the cheapest, most efficient methods, with zero attention to the effect on the environment. To replicate the energy needed to not only maintain the system, but to allow for lower ore grades, meaning mines need a greater share of energy, means we have to be honest in what works, what will replace this energy. If the answer is nothing, then pretending otherwise is just going to make the situation worse.
              The most efficient operating method of every industrial manufacturing plant is continuous operation, which we have had from coal plants, sitting next to coal pits to build everything. The cost is getting the coal out of the ground, into the power plant, nothing else on an energy basis.

              I’ve come to the conclusion that modern civilization is just a flash in the pan, a brief period of human ingenuity using the natural resources of the world. It was never sustainable in the long term, the combination of using all the high grade ores of everything, plus the combination of entropy and dissipation means that once past peak fossil energy use, the whole of modern civilization has to unravel. We have a choice of being honest that it’s not sustainable, or we can deny the reality of the future. Our choice was soft landing by deliberately reducing population and powering down to simpler lives, or tell ourselves fairytales and crash hard at some point. We have as a species clearly chosen the latter.

            2. Hideaway, there are some very important things in your excellent post, and I think the main thing/conclusion is that downsizing in a more or less brutal way is needed. If it´s voluntary or not, and if it´s violant is the question.
              Btw, on a much more technical note, besides powering the ore railway there were plans for an aluminium smelter in Porjus, in the north of Sweden, powered by Porjus and Harsprånget hydro plants, combined rated at 818 417 Mw. Utility rate average currently ~35% from what I remember, discussing with a former collegue, so that leaves ~400 Mw availible, with some fluctuations, quite a big reservoir upstream.
              On the other hand, now there will be a new powerline built from Porjus to Gällivare to power electrolyzers for Hybrit, that aims to make CO2-free steel. So in essence, very interesting times on many fronts.
              (Perhaps Svanberg, CEO of BP at the time around Deepwater Horizon comes to mind? He was raised in Porjus)
              https://powerplants.vattenfall.com/porjus/
              https://powerplants.vattenfall.com/harspranget/
              But as always, it´s location, location, location.

          2. In the real world power consumption is not fixed, so constant power 24/7 is never needed systemwide.

            For US coal power here is monthly generation. For the month of March 2024 average power output was 51559 MW and nameplate coal power plant capacity was 185940 MW, so only about 28% of capacity was utilized. Net winter capacity in March 2024 was 172825 MW, so about 30% of net winter coal power capacity was utilized in March 2024..

            1. Dennis, which industry are you going to tell, that they don’t need power 24/7??

              Last I looked industry was spread around the system…

            2. Hideaway,

              Not all industies operate at full capacity 24/7, the reality is that coal power is not used 24/7 at full capacity, any claim that this is not the case can objectively shown to be false. For all of 2022 coal nameplare capacity was 205.4 GW and average power output from coal power plants in the US in 2022 was 94.9 GW, so on average for 2022 about 46% of nameplate coal power capacity was utilized. If we look at capacity vs net generation for coal, petroleum and natural gas combined for 2022 annual US data output for the year was 36% of nameplate capacity (290 GW average power output for the year vs nameplate capacity of 807 GW in 2022).

            3. Giant aluminium smelter seals future with groundbreaking “reverse battery” and renewables deal
              This article outlines the kind of thing that Hideaway insists is impossible. Here is an article from 2020 that discusses the same issue.
              Smelters could lead switch to renewables by acting as giant batteries<blockquote)The report also quotes Tomago Aluminium CEO Matt Howell, who acknowledged that this re-imagining is an important part of his thinking in supporting the continuation of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader scheme.

              “We’ve got a very large load that can come off in a very short space of time to avoid large-scale rolling blackouts, and that has value,” he said, referring to 600MW of capacity which can be switched off within minutes,” Howell said.

              In fact, according to the report, most smelters can provide a very periodic reserve system of demand response, specifically the ability to occasionally reduce electricity demand for up to 3 hours at a time.

              However, without technology upgrades, this capacity presents a significant risk to the integrity of smelter potlines. For example, an unplanned 5.5-hour outage at Portland in Victoria in 2016 reduced smelting capacity down to 27% for many months.

              As such, investing in upgrades that yield greater technology and operational controls would allow more flexibility while at the same time reducing the risks to smelter investment.

              If it has to be done, it will be done!

            4. Island Boy, I think you missed this bit from the Aluminium smelter article…

              “the mainly hydro powered Tiwai Point smelter”

              Last time I looked hydro power was NOT solar power or wind power and batteries!!

              It remains a FACT that no one anywhere has set up an Aluminium smelter based upon JUST solar and batteries, yet the ‘claims’ continue to be this is the cheapest form of electricity..

              It’s all bullshit until you can show one, just one, large Aluminium smelter operating without subsidies on solar and batteries alone, then you might have a case. This would mean they were operating without any grid connection fees, so should save them money, if it was true about being cheaper..

            5. Dennis, you just don’t get it do you??

              We built the system on cheap coal based power. We have now added a lot more expensive power into the system and seen large heavy industries leaving western countries where the change from coal has happened. We need the cheap energy to rebuild and maintain the entirety of modernity over time as everything suffers from entropy.
              Using lower coal capacities at present because rules of how contracts are being written only muddies the waters.

              Less coal power stations with backup batteries for peak times would be the cheapest form of power, allowing the plants to operate at maximum efficiency. however doing this destroys the climate with the CO2 releases. mining the world for the battery materials also does no favor for the environment, with more destruction of natural systems for the raw materials needed and the left behind pollution.

              In this country of Australia, that is way ahead of the US in terms of solar and wind installed as a percentage of the system, we are running into huge problems and the govts are PAYING the coal plant operators to stay open longer than their planned lives.
              Far too often we have times of both low solar and wind, and battery back-up is just a drop in the ocean of what’s required. To build the batteries required for when solar and wind are really low in winter is just not feasible, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to do so.
              What’s already happened with the huge roll out (which is stalling as there is no money for new grid scale solar!!), of renewables, is the cost of electricity to retail customers has gone through the roof. We are paying around US thirty cents per Kwh, with back to back 25-30% increases in power over the last 2 years!!
              The local Aluminium smelter is on huge govt subsidies for power pricing, to keep operating….

              All that’s happening with more solar and wind in the system is the overall electricity system is being weakened the whole time while pushing prices higher for consumers, all while more fossil fuels are being burned elsewhere, natural habitats destroyed, to mine and process all the materials needed to build the solar, wind, EVs and batteries.

              It’s an overall system of modernity we have, yet you keep looking at individual pieces as if they were in isolation to the rest of modernity…

            6. “Dennis, you just don’t get it do you??” Really, Hideaway

              “Dichotomous thinking, also known as “black or white thinking,” is a symptom of many psychiatric conditions and personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (BPD). Dichotomous thinking contributes to interpersonal problems and emotional and behavioral instability.

              When people engage in dichotomous thinking, they see things in extremes—it’s all or nothing; black or white; this or that. It’s a common feature of borderline personality disorder, but it can also take place in other conditions like anxiety, depression, OCD, and some types of eating disorders.

              Signs of dichotomous thinking include:

              1. Use absolute language like “always” and “never” to describe things
              2. Ruminating over extreme feelings
              3. Seeing things as either perfect or useless
              4. Being unable to see the middle ground
              5. Shifting between seeing things as good or bad
              6. Engaging in impulsive behaviors due to sudden shifts in how you see a person or situation

              How Therapy Can Help

              If you often think in extremes, your therapist can help you identify the middle ground, introducing you to a new, more balanced way of thought. As you progress, you will learn to consider your own assumptions by asking yourself the following questions before you allow your thoughts to upset you:

              Is there evidence that supports my thoughts?
              Am I considering all angles or am I leaving things out?
              Could my assumption be challenged by someone else? How?
              Does everyone else see it this way?
              Am I being fair to others in making this opinion?

              Keep in Mind
              If you recognize that you have a tendency to dichotomous thinking, it is also important to avoid acting on your extreme thoughts or making sudden decisions.”

              https://www.verywellmind.com/dichotomous-thinking-425292#:~:text=When people engage in dichotomous,some types of eating disorders.

            7. Huntingtonbeach…

              I keep asking people to look at the ENTIRE picture not just one bit in isolation, and you think it’s me with dichotomous thinking, not those that look at one aspect in isolation the whole time to prove/show a point of view..

              Attack the messenger is the usual course of action for those that have nothing as you have done here..
              Dennis made a claim, so I asked for him to back up his claim with numbers..
              BTW last week Dennis was also stating I wasn’t considering the opportunity cost of the coal in Indonesia being used instead of being exported for income..

              I didn’t notice you accuse him of dichotomous thinking then, nor bothering to back any argument with real world numbers…

              You only have to look at the entirety of modern civilization in broad physics terms to see it’s not close to sustainable in the long term…

              Civilization is a heat engine where humans turn the natural world into the man made stuff all around us. We use all the easy to get resources first, then use greater quantities of energy to get access to harder to obtain materials of lower grades and further away from where we want to use them. Entropy and dissipation mean we continually need more resources..

              In a world where wholesale price of energy is around $US40/Mwh over a decadal time scale, the ‘cost’ in dollars of gaining a Mwh’s worth of energy is around $2.50 for some oil and gas projects, is around $5-9/Mwh for coal power, around $35 for wind and solar (without backup!!) and up to $66/Mwh for Hinkley PC nuclear power, the evidence is VERY, very clear.
              It is not possible to run a modern civilization off the newer sources of energy, all before we consider all the products we get from fossil fuels. To make these products of modern civilization from ‘modern’ forms of energy is not possible in any type of way that keeps modern civilization going in the long term. All before we consider environmental effects, that cut off the ‘green’ future even more.

              We are running into ‘the great filter’ that answers the question of the Fermi Paradox. We are using up the last of the cheap ,easy to get energy to maintain modern civilization that only ever allowed around 15% of all modern humans to reach.

              What is the psychological term for those that believe in fairytales by denying the existence of the reality we are in?? Because whatever it is a lot of people have it, always (should I put that in capital letters for you?) deflecting to minor side issues of ‘look at this one thing happening over here’ or ‘there’, but never (perhaps that needs capitals as well?) looking at the overall picture..

              Attacking the messenger, or ‘shoot the messenger’ is alive and well, even shown in Harvard studies. It seems it’s a universal weakness of humans, you don’t like the message, therefore the messenger must have ‘motives’ for delivering it and is a bad/dislikeable person because they did it.
              https://www.hbs.edu/ris/download.aspx?name=John%20et%20al%202019%20-%20Shooting%20the%20Messenger.pdf

            8. Huntington Beach,
              Hideaway is completely correct, and it is way out of line for you to now accuse him of some psychiatric disorder. If you want more detailed explanations
              as to why modernity is guaranteed to fail, just as HIdeaway has tried to explain to you,
              spend some time reading a textbook by Tom Murphy. The book is “Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet.” Murphy is a (now retired ) professor of physics,and explains in one of his essays on his website that he has repeatedly tried to find faults in the process of reaching that conclusion. His site is “Do the Math “. The essays and book are
              both well worth reading.

            9. Hideaway,

              When I look at the big picture I include all costs. I agree we cannot continue to grow human population and resource use, my expectation (following the work of Lutz, Samir, et al on demography) is that World population will peak around 2050 to 2060 followed by decline. We need better international policy that focuses on poverty, inequality, empowerment of women and education, transformation of agriculture, and an energy transition to non fossil fuel energy.

              I also agree fossil fuel consumption has been rising, but the rate of increase has been slowing over time as the chart below (which uses the natural log of fossil fuel consumption to better visualize rates of change). From 2018 to 2022 World fossil fuel consumption rose by only 6 EJ (from 488 EJ to 494 EJ or 0.3% per year). My expectation is that the increase will stop soon and begin to decline while other forms of energy will fill the gap.

              When I point to studies that look at the big picture you come back with very specific examples of other places such as the aluminum smelter project by a coal mining company (which has plenty of ports available to export coal as that is its business) and will need a port and transportation facilities to export the aluminum produced in the smelter. For the Adaro you claim we cannot consider the price of coal on World markets, when guessing at solar cost I use US estimates (in Indonesia it would likely be lower cost as labor may be cheaper than in the US) but I don’t buy the coal is free, just like sunshine argument, it is a scarce resource like oil or natural gas that has value on World markets.

            10. Dennis, looking at the natural log of fossil fuel use, you have come to the conclusion that per capita use is falling, so can fall much further, please correct me if this is a misinterpretation.

              However falling use per capita should be expected because of 2 factors. Firstly normal efficiency gains, cars, trucks, air travel, shipping, tractors are all way more efficient than decades ago. This will take care of per capita use by itself in a stable population.

              The second factor is the scaling of urban centres over time. As an urban centre doubles in population, it’s need for resources only goes up by around 85%, offering further savings on resource use, and therefore the energy to make these resources available. We have been urbanising the world’s population for decades making these savings that are hidden from just about all studies.

              This is the big picture, we have to take everything into account.
              We have used up all the easy to gain returns from efficiency gains, while the scaling into cities can continue for a while.
              We don’t have any viable processes to turn electricity into the products modern civilization relies upon, that are currently provided by fossil fuels, and are counted in ‘energy’ production numbers, even though they are mostly not burnt.
              We have one example of making synthetic fuels from renewable power, and it’s an unmitigated disaster with a process efficiency of 1.7%, in energy terms before including capital or operating and maintenance costs, which would lower the efficiency substantially.
              This is about a quarter of expected efficiency or synthetic fuel output. I would suggest that it’s the intermittency, in a 70% capacity factor area, that is the real problem reducing expected output..
              Assuming efficiency gains to cover capital and O&M costs, which would have to be a lot, we would need over 900,000Twh/yr of renewable energy to cover just the base synthetic fuel, before we build plants to convert the fuel to products. That is over 5 times current total world energy use…

              We have never transitioned from one fuel to another, they are all near record levels. Any transition would mean one form of energy would be falling as another grew, this is not the case at all. We still have fossil fuels increasing at a greater absolute amount than new renewable energy.
              For renewables to continue growing we need vast increases in many minerals, many in excess of what exists in economic resources. The USGS numbers for ‘reserves’ are clearly wrong, I’ve already shown we don’t have 70% of what they count as ‘reserves’, here in Australia, the only country I bothered to look at. What they counted as ‘reserves’ were resources that will never be mined, the copper price could double and they are still uneconomic, so their ‘reserve’ quantity is just a sham….

              As it is we are increasing energy use to gain minerals, which on average the grades are lowering, all over the world. The ‘green’ revolution needs mountains more minerals, meaning more fossil fuels use to gain access to them. These minerals are in more remote locations and deeper in the ground on average as well.

              We don’t have until 2050, to wait for peak population, we are in deep population overshoot right now and we were too many 50 years ago!! We only have our current population because of fossil fuel driven tractors, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. We couldn’t maintain 1/4 of the current population without them. The transition to a different form of agriculture that can feed 8B+ without fossil fuels is just a myth. Biosolids from sewerage treatment plants have been recently poisoning farm land, too many toxic chemicals returned when they try…

              We are in deep overshoot, and the direction we are heading means collapse when the energy base is undermined, which accelerating falls in oil production of millions of barrels/d/yr will induce..

            11. “We have used up all the easy to gain returns from efficiency gains, ”

              Depends how you define ‘easy’. For example in most of the world internal combustion engine transportation could be replaced with much more efficient electrified transport, with the supplied electricity being from locally produced solar energy.
              Similarly, much of the heating and cooling facilities of the world could be shifted to heat pumps, with the cooling portion of the electric load coming from local solar.
              Also, road transport speed limits could be lowered by 1/3rd with strict enforcement.

              These efficiency gains require some changes in behavior/purchase patterns. Not too difficult when you consider the alternative of holding to the old path. So far we have dodged much of the high costs associated with overshoot, fossil fuel peak/depletion, and global warming (damage/food shortage/insurance/forced migration).

              As higher costs are experienced the incentive to achieve higher efficiencies will be felt more strongly.

              btw- energy collection efficiency can be low if the source is free such as magma, solar, or wind. Photosynthesis is a good example. Energy collection/conversion efficiency of the process is very low, but its still a very good deal for life.

          3. thinking we only get 300-400Mw out of a 1,000Mw coal plant, instead of the reality we get 1,000Mw per hour out of a coal fired, or nuclear power 1,000Mw plant.

            No true. China burns about half the coal that gets burned in power plants, and their capacity factor is about 50% and falling. This is in line with international averages.

            https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants

            Gas plants are usually about 40%.

            Nuclear capacity factor tends to be higher, but has been in steady decline for the last 25 years or so.

            https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Worldwide_Nuclear_Power_Capacity_Factors.png

      2. “Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, or maximum effect, is the intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power station, electric generator, a chemical plant, fuel plant, metal refinery, mine, and many others.”

        Definitely maximum power output from the steam driven turbines.

        It would be great to be able to control the energy generation of fission better; unfortunately it is not that easy. At least waste heat recovery from a nuclear reactor can be used for a lot of different purposes.

        The nuclear experts lurking around here could probably tell if waste heat energy is added to steam power output for nameplate capacity.

        The best combined circle combustion for electricity is the natural gas ones often claimed to be 60% efficient. Here is one article measuring it to 45%-57% (still very good efficiency overall).

        https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/natural-gas-combined-cycle

        For fusion energy the same issue, but magnified. I would welcome a clear positive EROI, if it ever comes to that.

    2. Hickory,

      The Energy Institute assumes a standard power plant (World average) currently is about 41%, coal might be lower, perhaps 35% on average and modern natural gas combined cycle plants (using several stages with high temeperature gas turbine followed by a lower temperature steam cycle) having 55% efficiency or higher. From 1965 to 2000 the average World power plant was assumed to be 36% efficiency and the Energy Institute assumes the average power plant efficiency increased linearly from 36% to 01% over the 2000 to 2017 period. From 2018 to 2050 the Energy institute assumes a linear increase from 40% to 45% thermal efficiency for the average World power plant (coal, natural gas, and oil).

      For a gasoline ICEV typical average efficiency is about 30% and for diesel engines might be 40%. For gasoline hybrid vehicles the efficiency may be about 40%.

        1. -34 felony convictions, 54 pending criminal charges, 2 impeachments, 2 popular vote losses, $88M owed to E Jean Carroll, $450M owed for civil fraud, $8T added to nat’l debt, 2.9M net loss of jobs, Is this what Trump meant when he promised “numbers like we’ve never seen”?–

          Things are a bit different

  16. On modular nukes:
    https://newatlas.com/energy/modular-nuclear-reactors/

    “”The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.””

  17. Upon reflection…its a pretty hilarious example.
    Last week JT (don’t take it personal, its an example) indicated that Google AI was not going to amount to much,
    having given instructions to add glue to a pizza recipe so that the cheese wouldn’t slide off.

    And yet tens of millions of people voted for a man to be president who said during the height of the pandemic during a national press conference that people should think about injecting disinfectants into their veins to fight the virus.
    No joke.

    Luckily over 7 million more people voted for the other candidate.
    Lets do it again.

    1. From the other side of the world, the US political scene is just a poor sick joke.

      How can either party put up the candidates they have, to be president of the largest nuclear weapon power in the world.

      Why would anyone think either of the major candidates was capable of rational decision making when it comes to being in charge of the nuclear football, sachet or whatever it’s called??

      There is some deep levels of stupidity in both major political parties leaderships. Both parties should have rejected even allowing these 2 to be on the voting ticket in the primaries. What it states of the voting population of the US is even worse.

      Surely a sensible policy would be that anyone that wants to be a candidate for president, the person who has the power to blow up the world, should pass a rigorous competency IQ test and pass a rigorous dementia test before being allowed to stand…

        1. No Dennis it isn’t. Our government is a puppy dog for the U.S and follows more or less in their path. Our politicians are all gutless losers who pander to the big business lobby. They couldn’t care less about the younger generation or any long term thinking regarding the policy decisions of the country. Typical career politicians is all we have.

          1. Iron Mike,

            At least you don’t have convicted felons (afaik) being considered for prime minister. It is not a good look for the US.

  18. Hideaway

    Your long post to Bob Nickson was spot on.

    I cannot wait to see the first electric arc furnace for steel production powered solely by unreliables. I think it will be a long wait. All that is required is more subsidies.

    On a more realistic note is that locating a WT or PV array requires a land which comes at a price. Even offshore WT is not free.

    Here in the UK tennant farmers are being bullied off their farms by greedy landowners. Rent for farming is about £100 per acre ( 0.4 hectare). Rent for PV about £1000 per acre.

    What is not taken into account is the subsidies for PV, in the form of guarenteed pricing and cost of back-up, which is passed onto the consumer

    My delivered price of gas is £.0714 per kWh. My electricity price is £0.2835 per kWh. The £:$ is about 1:1.25

    Why on earth would I install a heat pump with a COP of 2, which is the relalistic performance that you could expect in the UK. You would be nuts and cold; and it would cost 4x a gas system.

    Th e so called cheap unreliables is myth, a figment of the imagination of clueless people.

    1. I guess Carnot also does not understand the idea of opportunity cost. A good heat pump, such as Mitsubishi minisplit will deliver about 3.4 kWh of heat for each 1 kWh of electricity input over a typical heating season (COP is 2.37 at 5 F ). A geothermal heat pump would deliver about 4.4 kWh of heat per unit kWh of electric power input.

      1. Dennis
        The way I understand it, Carnot’s energy cost for electricity is roughly four times that of gas, so the opportunity cost is the capital cost to install a geothermal heat pump system without any savings in operating cost. Negative return on investment.

        1. Old chemist,

          At current prices, yes that is correct.

          Not all of that natural gas is turned into heat, often there are cheaper heating rates for heat pumps, not clear we are getting the whole story from Carnot. Keep in mind that boilers tend to be 80 to 90% efficient. Lets take 85% then we get .0714/.85=.084 pounds per kWh of heat, for heat pump we get 0.2835/3.4=.083 pound per kWh. Currently natural gas prices are low and electricity prices are high so the heat pump may not make economic sense at present in the UK where Carnot lives.

          In Massachusetts natural gas is about 6.84 cents per kWh and electricity is 18.2 cents per kWh, assuming a boiler at 90% efficiency the natural gas would cost about 7.6 cents per kWh of heat output. The heat pump with HPSF2 of 3.4 would deliver 1 kWh of heat at 5.2 cents per kWh. so a savings of about 30% on heating bill. The saving will vary from place to place and over time depending on relative prices.

          Also consider energy use of natural gas (ignoring prices as Hideaway sometimes does) in the UK where natural gas in a modern combined cycle plant produces about 1 kwh of electricity for every 2 kWh of natural gas input, now assume we lose 10% of the electricity over transmission and distribution lines to reach the average home in the UK. Input the electricity to a heat pump with COP of 3.8 and the 0.9 kWh of electricity is transformed to 3.42 kWh of heat compared with 1.8 kWh of heat from a 90% efficient boiler with 2 kWh of natural gas input. So we get 90% more heat in this scenario from the heat pump rather than the boiler from an equivalent amount of natural gas.

          Page for most efficient Mitsubishi minisplit heat pump

          https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-mini-split-heat-pumps/details/2417411

          The HPSF2 is 13 BTU/Wh, and 1 BTU=0.293 Wh so we get 13*0.293=3.8 Wh/Wh, so a COP of 3.8 (that is we get 3.8 kWh of heat output from 1 kWh electric input on average over the heating season.)

          1. Dennis

            The fact that a government subsidy improves the finances of an individuals heat pump installation does not change the overall economics , and socializing the costs of the installation by adding it to the national debt merely transfers it to the next generation, who will find it burdensome , indeed. A most unfair imposition, in my opinion.

            1. Old chemist,

              I give an example with no subsidies, the heat pump still saves money.

              See https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may28-2024/#comment-776252

              On subsidies, I disagree, especially if the subsidies are only given to lower income individuals (say families within 120% of median income). This would be a transfer from those with more income to those with less, the deficit can be solved easily with more progressive income tax and eliminating special treatment of investment income (dividends and long term capital gains). I don’t have a problem with a more equal distribution of income such as that which existed in the US prior to 1980. Below are the US income tax brackets for a family married filing jointly for 1964 with the brackets adjusted for inflation to 2023 US$, these should be reestablished with no special rate for dividends or capital gains (whether short or long term), a capital gains break of one per lifetime can be given for primary residence for those with income level within 150% of median family at retirement.

              Proposed rates for married filing jointly in 2023, brackets adjusted annually for inflation.

              $0 14%
              $21,464 15%
              $42,928 16%
              $64,391 17%
              $85,855 19%
              $171,710 22%
              $257,565 25%
              $343,421 28%
              $429,276 32%
              $515,131 36%
              $600,986 39%
              $686,841 42%
              $772,696 45%
              $858,551 48%
              $944,406 50%
              $1,116,117 53%
              $1,373,682 55%
              $1,631,247 58%
              $1,888,813 60%
              $2,146,378 62%
              $2,575,654 64%
              $3,004,929 66%
              $3,434,205 68%
              $3,863,481 69%
              $4,292,756 70%

      2. Dennis, and pig’s might fly past my window. @ 5 deg f you must be on the wacky backy. Try teling tha to the poor saps who bought into heat pumps in the UK. The typical lower temperature is 5 deg C for an air source heat pump. That means below 5 deg C you will need a magnifying glass to find your balls, which will not even look like prunes, but will be more like the prune stones.

        As for geothermal am I going to bore hole hundreds of metres down. Look up the thermal gradient

        Give me break.

        1. Carnot,

          I have a heat pump, works fine at 5 F, you just need a good heat pump, where I live it routinely gets to 5 F in winter, in the UK perhaps Northern Scotland occasionally it gets that cold. Typically you don’t see average winter weather below 28 F.

      3. Dennis, your the one making the claims on economics, so how about fronting up with an example???

        ” A geothermal heat pump would deliver about 4.4 kWh of heat per unit kWh of electric power input.”

        OK, Your claim, so please show how it’s feasible with some costings on economic grounds. How much to install a geothermal heat pump, include commercial rates of interest on the capital as there is the opportunity cost on that capital as well, plus electricity costs, compared to simple cheap gas heater…

        Or is this another one you will just leave hanging as it was just an off the cuff comment, with no real knowledge of the subject??

        1. Hideaway,

          In the US there are incentives to install heat pumps. I gave an example for Massachusetts, savings of about 44% for heating costs per kWh. For Massachussetts in 2024 the average home (1800 aquare feet) used about 10715 kWh of heat at 8.5 cents per kWh for natural gas that is about $911 of heating cost per season. With a heat pump with a heating season COP of 3.8 only 2820 kWh of electricity are needed for the heat pump at electricity cost of 18.2 cents per kWh that is $513.24 for the heating season a savings of roughly $400 per year. Typical cost for a boiler replacement is about $6000 and net cost of a minisplit installation is about $15k with state and federal incentives of about $12k so a net cost of $3k compared to a new boiler the heat pump would be cheaper and save, but even without the boiler replacement comparison (assume no boiler replacement currently needed) the payback would be 7.5 years.

          Not sure the economics work for a geothermal heat pump on a refit, for new construction it probably works out especially in a climate where both heating and cooling are needed.

          Note that I am less familiar with ground source (aka geothermal) heat pumps. A comparison that would be realistic is to compare new construction with a ground source heat pump compared to a natural gas furnace plus central air conditioning. Typical cost for a standard (non-heat pump) HVAC system would be around 12k and for ground source heat pump about 17.5k for new construction, US federal government gives 30% tax rebate for ground source heat pump so the cost gets reduced to close to the standard HVAC system (only $500 more for ground source heat pump) with significant savings compared to standard system in both heating and AC cost. On top of Federal tax rebates Massachusetts state government pays for 10k on ground source(GS) heat pump along with 2k from federal government so at net cost for ground source heat pump after government subsidies is 6.5k cheaper than natural gas with standard central AC. AC costs would be reduced by about 60% compared with a high end AC unit (SEER 20 vs 49 for GS heat pump and heating costs would be reduced by 45% at Massachusetts electric and natural gas rates for 2023 period, future prices for natural gas and electricity are of course unknown. Moving to electric power provided by non-fossil fuel energy will tend to be better for the environment.

          The cost for this system would be rolled into a mortgage payment, my current mortgage is 2.25%, if I got a construction loan today it would be more, 30 year mortgage rates are currently about 7.2%, not familiar with details of a construction loan as I have never done that. Supposedly construction loan rates tend to be about 1% higher than standard mortgage rates, so today in the US about 8.2% for 30 year fixed mortgage with 20% down payment. I wouldn’t be in the market for a home at these rates.

          1. Dennis, whenever we have to use subsidies and tax credits or whatever to prove cost of A is better or worse than the cost of B, it is certainly not a real example of how it would work for the whole world.

            I will take advantage of cost subsidies every day of the week personally, economically I’d be foolish not to, and indeed the last 2 solar set ups I bought were both heavily subsidised by both federal and state governments.

            In your reply above, you didn’t just look at the geothermal heat pump compared to the gas heater. BTW gas heaters here do not have a boiler, they are just heaters, stand alone and cheap around $A800-$1500. I assumed Carnot has one already installed.
            It might be early in it’s life or near the end, I have no idea, but buying a geothermal heat pump to run off electricity, that in this country has gone up by 25%-30% in cost for 2 years running, would be a ludicrous decision.

            If you have to use subsidies and artificially low interest rates on a mortgage to back up an economic argument, you know yourself it doesn’t stand the sniff test for long term sustainability. Just because something is a bit more efficient, doesn’t mean it’s ‘better’.

            The last coal fired power station built in this country, has a higher efficiency than earlier coal power stations, which is seen as good, yet this super critical power plant has given much more trouble than old inefficient clunkers, plus was more than double the capital cost to build. Considering it’s sitting next to the coal pit, with huge resources, it was a dumb decision to go for ‘efficiency’ instead of burning a bit more coal of which there is more than enough for the power plant life of either.

            The argument that we have to get off fossil fuels for both climate and depletion reasons, I fully understand, no argument from me about either. However if we can’t build the solar, wind, EVs and batteries without fossil fuel inputs, it’s all just a charade, an extension of modernity until it’s no longer possible.

          2. The example below assumes no subsidies from the government.

            Quick look at a 15 year mortgage scenario with rates at 6.7% fixed, then add 1% for construction loan (which converts to permanent mortgage) to get 7.7% rate. The ground source heat pump is an extra $5500 compared to a standard natural gas furnace plus central AC system, this adds an extra $619 to mortgage payment per year, but savings of the ground source heat pump over standard system is about $900 per year, over 15 years this adds up to $4210 of savings, if we assume this money goes into a money market account (currently at a rate of 5% annually) the account with interest would be at $6359 in savings plus interest over 15 years, even when paying 7.7% interest on the mortgage. In reality rates would probably drop and I would refinance the mortgage at a lower rate (the interest rate on the money market account would also drop in this scenario).

            This example assumes no subsidy. I am assuming a proper heating system and using prices for the US (Massachusetts).

            A heat pump both cools and heats so a proper comparison compares like with like systems. Probably in Australia an air source heat pump is a more sensible choice and it is what I have in my home.

            You seem to have an all or nothing take on things, fossil fuel energy use will gradually decrease while non fossil fuel energy use will gradually increase, eventually fossil fuel use can be eliminated or if not reduced to very low levels, the sun will continue to provide power for another billion years or so, the entropy arguments apply to a closed system with no energy input, the Earth system has energy input from a nearby star so second law arguments for the Earth system must take this into account.

            1. Dennis, Re. your statement about the Second Law of Thermodynamics not being applicable to the entropic dissipation of metals and other elements : Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen ( “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process”) knew that that was technically correct, and argued convincingly that there needs to be another thermodynamic law added to the existing thermodynamic laws. The entropic dissipation of elements is a fact that we have to contend with in the functioning of this civilisation, whether you want to pretend that it is otherwise or not.
              There is a long list of examples where this occurs. Hideaway has given you some examples. Another example is the supply of phosphorus for industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture has converted a cyclic system of plant nutrition ,which exists in a natural ecosystem, into a linear system, where the required nutrients (nitrogen requires a separate discussion ) are mined, transported to agricultural fields, then transported to cities in the produce from those fields, where the vast majority ends up as sea-floor deposits. When the mines supplying those minerals deplete , this agricultural system can’t continue to function. Phosphorus will be the first limited supply mineral, but the same problem exists for the others. The entropic dissipation of that phosphorus means that a prohibitive amount of energy input is required to reclaim it from its dissipated state.

      1. Hightrekker —
        The hurricane season may end up being pretty intense this year. If it continues like this, I wonder how viable the Caribbean will be for human habitation.

    2. Buy FCOJ (or was it sell?)
      Over here in Sweden, from what I can tell the price of OJ has doubled in ~2-3 years, so I´m not optimistic. But the actual reasons are unknown to me, might be a monetary issue too, or most likely a combination.

  20. Global sea surface temperatures continue to be about 0.1 degrees above 2023 despite El Nino having finished. 2023 was a huge jump higher than any previous recorded maximums. If this was due to changes in marine fuel sulphur would there not be obvious step changes in the earth energy imbalance slope in 2015 and 2020 (admittedly there’s a lot of noise in the signal). To me it looks more like less heat is being taken to the deep oceans so more is accumulating at the surface and in the atmosphere, with the most likely cause being a slowing of the southern meridional overturning circulation because of increased Antarctic ice cap melt and reduced winter sea ice formation.

    See also: https://arctic-news.blogspot.com for other explanations.

    It looked in mid May that the sea ice might be recovering but after a few days of no net growth the area has now gone back to second lowest after 2023.

    1. Another anomaly in the Antarctic is that the usual annual dip in CO2 concentration was much less pronounced that usual (even though it was normal in the Northern hemisphere) and there was a noticeable acceleration in the rise of concentration last month (maybe indicating a change in the efficiency of the southern oceans as sinks, which would be consistent with reduced vertical transport of the waters).

  21. Test program.
    Some people talk about the need for Universal Basic Income.
    Perhaps instead we need, from an ecological perspective, a global Universal Voluntary Death Benefit.
    The payment could go to your surviving immediate family members or to ecological preservation programs.
    The payment level could be toggled to achieve the annual goal.
    We should be able to wean ourselves from coal combustion and clear cutting more rapidly.
    Save a few species.

    1. “We love you Gran. You know that, right? And we know that you love us, don’t you Gran. Just think, if you kill yourself now, the Climate Cash for Clunkers program will give enough money that we’ll be able to go to college. You would love for us to go to college, wouldn’t you?”

      😉

      1. Heck, why let Granma get all the credit.
        Make it whole family group experience. Anyone over 25 is eligible for the program.

      2. I’m pretty sure that way the anti-lockdown argument during the Covid. “Sure, a lot of weaklings will die, but we’ll increase shareholder value!!!”

    1. Copper today is about $4.58/lb, close to an all-time high. Ten years ago it was about $3.04. A CAGR of about 4%.

      The prior peak (excluding last 30 days) was about $4.90 in March 2022. It fell rapidly to about £3.23 in July 2022.

      1. It’s really difficult to keep fighting misinformation that keeps arising on every aspect of modernity.

        That document you linked to is not accurate as they double counted copper from factories. World production in 2023 was around 22 million tonnes, not the 26Mt they claimed.

        Of that 22Mt, 18Mt from mines and 4.4Mt from recycled equals around 20% of copper comes from recycled.
        For over 40 years that there are records for, recycled copper has made up 15%-20% of the annual copper production. I would expect that trend to continue unless there is a massive fall in new copper from mines, which would mean we are in collapse anyway.

    2. Alimbiquated,

      Thanks for the link with easily digestable information.
      “Copper is one of the few materials that can be recycled repeatedly without
      any loss of performance” it is said there. Another one being aluminium.

      It makes a case for diverting enough resources to recycle more (preferably) high grade copper and aluminium long into the future. The collection system for metals can be blamed for not recycling more, but price and regulation will be the ultimate push to recycle what is needed. It can be made a case that other issues and bottlenecks can be more prominate than running out of these two important metals. I would argue for that.

    3. John, of the 890Mt the USGS considers reserves, and the definition of reserves being the economically mineable proportion of resources, in the small print I noticed they counted JORC compliant resources as reserves for their outcome for Australia.

      https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-copper.pdf

      I was keen to see where the 97Mt they attributed to Australia were as I’ve been invested in the copper sector and followed it keenly for over a decade in this country.

      They have included all the inferred resources of low grade that are definitely uneconomic to mine. In the Olympic Dam deposit of 11B tonnes of ore at around 0.62% grade, they have included the entirety, yet for over a decade BHP have been mining a grade of around 2% (high grading the deposit) and losing money on the operation!!
      They use underground mining of around 10Mt/a. The deposit is between 350m to 1,350m deep, and while they high grade their operation, the remaining grade is falling making it even less economic…

      There is zero chance the low grade stuff will ever be mined as it is way to costly to do so and is not considered ‘reserves’ by BHP either..
      The low grade waste rock accounts for around 60Mt of Australia’s 97Mt total. There are also other deposits known that can’t attract funding at all which also have large areas of low grade resources that will never be mined, bringing the total of over 70Mt or well in excess of 2/3ds of what USGS considers ‘reserves’ to be non existent..
      This is just for Australia that makes up nearly 11% of world reserves.

      I would assume that if they have done this lousy a job with Australia’s reserves, then I would assume they have done similar or worse with the rest of the world, where the information is much more sketchy.

      It all comes back to the price of energy. If energy were nearly free, then the rest of Olympic Dam could be mined as they could then remove the 23 billion tonnes of overburden and have an opencut mine and very cheap processing plants.
      If energy costs what it actually costs, then most of these resources are no better than waste..

      BTW, the BHP Olympic Dam is one of the mines I tried to work out how much it would cost using renewables to mine all the resources. It doesn’t work at any scale unless you consider a much higher copper price and a much lower renewables and batteries price than what exists.

      Those USGS reserve numbers are rubbish a clear case of GIGO, which really means we, as in the world, are in far more trouble than most care to imagine..

      The green renewable future is based upon a lie on every aspect I go into details of, with a bit of research, and so many people are falling for it, even on this Peak Oil website, where you should all know better or at least do a bit of research to find out how accurate all the reports you rely upon are.

  24. Its a case of putting the cart before the horse.
    There is a sizeable group of technology pioneers who understand that energy supply is a huge constraint to their industry progress (data centers/cloud/digital currency/DI/automation of transport).
    They are making plans as if fusion power is a done deal not far over the horizon. As if they could just throw a lot money and compute power at the project, and that financial and engineering viability can be considered a foregone conclusion.
    I acknowledge that you will certainly not achieve success if you do not make a ‘reach for the stars’ effort.
    But also, no matter what the effort or capital applied there is absolutely no guarantee that viability will ever be achieved.
    To rely on the foregone conclusion of success in fusion power is faulty planning.
    I don’t fault them for the aspiration, but for now the project is simply in the bucket of wishful thinking.

    https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/sam-altman-s-openai-eyes-deal-for-fusion-powered-data-centres-to-meet-soaring-energy-needs/2-1-1655048

    The HQ of Helion Energy is only 15 miles from my home, I see.

    For me, I actually do not hope for success of this project. It would enable an even greater human footprint in this solar system, at sake of all other life. But that is a whole other topic.

    1. The way the capitalistic system is structured, it makes sense to actually waste some resources to high risk innovation. It can be debated in what way the limit for what is acceptable should be set. It ought to be a point of strength of the system anyway. We have a lot of cooperations working for something, even if we are battling with a lot of challenges overall.

      Research into energy is in many ways mature, but there are still areas that are not explored enough. In my opinion “the sky is the limit” research have got to much attention, and the less sexy low EROI solutions are probably more interesting. Interesting in the sense of what is actually scalable in a somewhat sustainable way.

  25. I’ve been reading the sometimes prescient essays from 1964 by the astrophysicist and SF writer, Sir Fred Hoyle (Of Men and Galaxies). He remarks that the most obvious prognostication is that the population of the world is going to rise with several consequences, including that is a good idea to buy real estate. Other consequences of increased population density include a rise in social pressure, and in affluent countries where basic needs are satisfied, a central role of the quest for status. But eventually he transitions to the big Kahuna that Tom Murphy has so elegantly explored in Do the Math: “It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.” (By intelligence in this passage, I believe he’s referring to a modernist civilization.)

    Hoyle shared the common mid-century belief that nuclear reactors would provide essentially limitless energy to the human technological enterprise. He and others were wrong about a nuclear powered future, but also failed to appreciate that limitless energy would likely enable humans to annihilate their ecological surround. In conjunction, these processes and limits makes the “Fermi Paradox” appear not to be paradoxical all.

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