Comments not related to oil or natural gas in this thread please. Thanks.
148 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, November 18, 2023”
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Comments not related to oil or natural gas in this thread please. Thanks.
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OpenAI seems to be collapsing. One of the main arguments is whether the newest versions of Chat GPT is “too dangerous” to be released as open source.
Looks like a lot of people are quitting and going to Microsoft.
AI is good at text, voice and pictures.
It sucks to mediocre at anything that has to adapt. Like cars and living in a world full of uncertainty.
Look at the AI Algorithms….they have been here since the 1970s ( back propogation of neural networks is an exception)
that’s my 2 cents
Get ready to have your ideas on this get blown out of the water over the next 5 years, and beyond.
Perhaps this accomplishment got by you unnoticed, or you don’t have the science background to understand just how dramatic an accomplishment this was. If it had been a team of humans they all would be up for a nobel prize on it.
Its an example of a specific task that “DeepMind’ was focused to accomplish, rather than ‘general intelligence’ that can do all kinds of things.
“Artificial intelligence (AI) has solved one of biology’s grand challenges: predicting how proteins fold from a chain of amino acids into 3D shapes that carry out life’s tasks.” Dec 2020
Alpha Fold- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.370.6521.1144
That is impressive. Thanks for sharing.
By adaptation I meant when you can’t be certain what the future holds and you have to change your algorithm to deal with a new situation.
What proteins do aren’t unpredictable ( I don’t think ) they are just very difficult for the human mind to figure out how it got from input to output.
Still waiting for my self driving car.
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
If you know the science of protein synthesis and function,
this accomplishment is astounding!!! and it was accomplished very quickly.
Agreed. It is astounding.
Is it because of AI or Moore’s law?
Big Data Architecures. Massive amounts of data can be processed orders of magnitude faster than before.
Probably some of both.
If by Moores Law you mean the enabling effect of massive computer power…then yes.
But more important than the hardware is the progress in designing the training process of computer systems, which are now taking the ball and starting to learn how to chart their own path forward.
Early days.
Andre —
AI can also beat any chess player, no matter what he tries. AI can translate spoken language in real time in a wide variety of languages. AI can also sort pictures into categories much faster than humans.
The idea that there are things humans can do that aren’t reproducible by machines is mostly wishful thing.
John Henry said to the Captain
A man ain’t nothin’ but a man,
But before I let your steam drill beat me down
Gonna die with the hammer in my hand.
Lord, Lord.
Die with the hammer in my hand.
John Henry hammered in the mountain
His hammer was striking fire.
But he worked so hard, he broke his poor heart.
He laid down his hammer and he died.
Lord, Lord.
He laid down his hammer and he died.
Romantic but futile.
There are several hurdles to self driving vehicles. One is the lack of training data. AIs learn very slowly compared to humans or animals, and need huge numbers of examples. Tesla and Waymo are trying to solve this by using data from their cars as training data. Generated data is also heavily used. The quantity may make up for the quality. A related problem is how slow AIs learn. Finally, the lack of clear goals is a major issue. Self driving vehicles are expected to perform in all circumstances, even though there is a huge market for much more limited applications, like trucks that can only operate on limited access highways.
“AI can also beat any chess player, no matter what he tries. AI can translate spoken language in real time in a wide variety of languages. AI can also sort pictures into categories much faster than humans.”
Andre: “AI is good at text, voice and pictures.”
If you have ever progammed in your life, the failure of all software is it’s ability to adapt. Software can run circles around humans on things that are repeatable and deterministic. But it sucks, at adapting to uncertain scenarios.
AI has been around since the 1970s ( Alan Turing?? ) my Microsoft Windows should be talking to me every night by now about what is going to happen in the future but it still can’t.
Linear Regression, Logisitic Regression, K-Means Clustering, K- Nearest Neighbors
……………..
Humans are better at adapting to unpredictable situations, AI must train on data that is predictable.
After all that data is in a predictable data set. Unsupervised data you don’t know if you got the answer correct or not.
And don’t assume training on data always produces great results, you can overtrain or when circumstances change your training drives you off a cliff.
If you have ever trained data, it is not as sophisticated as it sounds (supervised learning)
AI will get there one day. But I don’t believe that is any time soon.
GLOBAL ONE-DAY TEMPERATURE SPIKES ABOVE 2C FOR FIRST TIME
“The global average temperature on Friday was more than two degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial levels for the first time on record, Europe’s Copernicus climate monitor said Monday. The first day to exceed the 2C target is part of a series of records this year: October was the warmest ever recorded globally, as was every month since June, according to Copernicus, which said that 2023 would with “near certainty” surpass the hottest year on record set in 2016.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-global-one-day-temperature-spikes-2c.html
Meanwhile,
GREENHOUSE GAS CONCENTRATIONS HIT RECORD HIGH. AGAIN.
The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year and there is no end in sight to the rising trend, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Global averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, in 2022 were a full 50% above the pre-industrial era for the first time. They continued to grow in 2023. The rate of growth in CO2 concentrations was slightly lower than the previous year and the average for the decade, according to WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. But it said this was most likely due to natural, short-term variations in the carbon cycle and that new emissions as a result of industrial activities continued to rise. Methane concentrations also grew, and levels of nitrous oxide, the third main gas, saw the highest year-on-year increase on record from 2021 to 2022 “Despite decades of warnings from the scientific community, thousands of pages of reports and dozens of climate conferences, we are still heading in the wrong direction,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-record-high-again
About 1/2 of the CO2 from coal and oil and wood burnt in year 1900 remains in the atmosphere now ,
and about 1/4 of it will still be there in year 2150.
And that doesn’t even begin to address the emissions from year 1901.
EVs Are The Only Bright Spot In Global Efforts To Reach Net Zero Emissions
EVs Are The Only Bright Spot In Global Efforts To Reach Net Zero Emissions
Electric two-wheelrs are probably an even brighter spot.
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-11-world-million-electric-bikes-mopeds.html
Hell will freeze over before my fella Muricans ride two wheels for a 15mph ride. But for folks who are already accustomed to no car living they do work well.
Two points:
First, it doesn’t really matter how most Americans want to get around, at least in the near future. If 20% used a bike, the 80% still wouldn’t. But 20% is a lot of people, spewing a lot of pollutants. I’ve been in the high tech industry for decades, and when you are introducing a new product, you need to focus on who WILL buy, not who won’t. The number of likely buyers determines the product’s likely success, not the number of non-buyers. Something very similar applies to biking in American cities.
Second, surveys show that the primary reason so few Americans bike is safety. This just means the lack of safe convenient infrastructure. Most Americans aren’t given the choice of whether to use a bike, so any claims that they don’t want to are hard to back up.
It’s worse than that. Twenty percent of Americans drive their SUV in the bike lane looking at their stupid phone.
Just my experience as a bike commuter since 1973. People have the choice just as they have the choice to buy a $60k pickup or $60k sedan or used equivalents but the poll is correct, it isn’t safe.
I’ve put a midrive motor on my bike and am having a blast but we’ve got so much inertia trying to preserve BAU folks will elect a Trump 2.0 before they will tolerate rational fuel prices.
Leeg…do you have any idea how much land (and work) it takes to feed a horse year round? And just how many ‘muricans’ have that much land and time and fitness to get to market or work on a horse?
Instead of a horse I’d rather have one of these-
https://www.viamotors.com/
I have some idea. As much as I’d like a $9k Riesse and Mueller ebike I’d get a Honda 150. What are your thoughts for the next decade in the US regarding auto ownership? My sense is that EVs are another form of fossil fuel expenditure and that most folks will simply drive less as they don’t have the money to buy new.
“What are your thoughts for the next decade in the US regarding auto ownership?”
Ownership will be little changed.
New vehicle sales is a different story… Shifting strongly toward electrification. Number of total sales depends almost entirely on the overall state of the economy.
I expect a big decline in sales, as people try hard to keep current vehicles running longer and many having trouble affording the frivolous travel miles.
Leeg, that’s because fat ass Muricans can’t get 15 pounds of carbon fiber to go 15 mph without help. They prefer a cardiologist and six pack bearthe.
Nahh, bikes are toys in the US, only the poor use them out of need and you can get a 15 yr old used car for the price of a carbon bike. What blows my mind is that while I can get up to the speed I used to get as a middling amateur racer I really don’t have the whole body resilience to ride safely. 15mph is fast enough to enjoy the countryside.
A week ago, my wife had taken one car, and I found that the other one had a flat tire (no spare). But I pumped up the tires on my ebike, and it got me to work on time. It makes a great spare vehicle.
The Last Internal Combustion BMW Engine Has Been Made In Munich
Say goodbye to the ICE era in BMW’s hometown.
The beginning of the end? Methinks the speed and extent of the ongoing disruption is going to catch a lot of people, including many on this blog, completely by surprise. Five years ago, the thought that BMW would stop making ICEs at any of it plants would seem far fetched.
https://www.carscoops.com/2023/11/bmw-ends-ice-production-in-germany-with-last-v8-but-wont-abandon-combustion-power/
Confirmation bias abound each according to its need.
“While many competitors have pledged to transition exclusively to electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030, BMW is skeptical and doesn’t think this is achievable. As a result, it will continue to sell ICE vehicles and EV models alongside each other in many markets.”
Considering that Germany is in an energy bind who wouldn’t expect them to reduce production. By offshoring engines to UK and Austria they’re likely benefiting from government grants desperately trying to shore up lagging manufacturing sectors.
Read the lines or read between them. Eyes wide open or wide shut.
We shall see. Where’s the growth in vehicle sales?
Electric Vehicle Sales Continue to Grow, Despite What Some Automakers Are Saying
$.02 in the US is that the future of cars is fewer cars regardless of the motor.
That is what Tony Seba projected in his book and subsequent RethinkX report. He is off in terms of the timing in the graphic below but, the message is clear.
Islandboy
I guess looking on the bright side of any issue is good for the mind.
But in order to fix a problem you have to understand the enormity of the problem.
The amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases today is already causing wildfires that I cannot remember when on holiday in these countries 30/40 years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/19/spain-battles-wildfires-fuelled-by-one-of-earliest-heatwaves-on-record
Some 5 million more hectares of forest are destroyed by wildfires than in 2001
https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires
On top of that 40 million trees are cut down each day ensuring global warming will go well beyond 2C.
https://trilliontrees.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Trillion-Trees_Defining-the-real-cost-of-restoring-forests.pdf
Repairing the damage cost lots of money
Fact is human being destroy, we destroy soil by building roads and houses and building and farming.
Destroying trees is good for profit, destroying fish stocks makes lots of money and mining for electric vehicles chemicals destroys clean water.
https://www.theinertia.com/environment/sperm-whale-stuffed-with-64-pounds-of-plastic-washes-up-dead-in-spain/
Cleaning up the billions of tonnes of plastic waste in the oceans is so expensive nobody wants to pay for it
Cost to repair all the damage over the last 50 years, about a trillion dollars each year from here on out
Not good & not surprising.
EARTH TO WARM UP TO 2.9C EVEN WITH CURRENT CLIMATE PLEDGES
Countries’ greenhouse gas-cutting pledges put Earth on track for warming far beyond key limits, potentially up to a catastrophic 2.9 degrees Celsius this century, the UN said Monday, warning “we are out of road”. Taking into account countries’ carbon-cutting plans, UNEP warned that the planet is on a path for disastrous heating of between 2.5C and 2.9C by 2100. Based just on existing policies and emissions-cutting efforts, global warming would reach 3C. But the world continues to pump record levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with emissions up 1.2 percent from 2021 to 2022, UNEP said, adding that the increase was largely driven by the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes.
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-earth-29c-current-climate-pledges.html
Complicating things:
EARTH CLOSE TO ‘RISK TIPPING POINTS’ THAT WILL DAMAGE OUR ABILITY TO DEAL WITH CLIMATE CRISIS
“Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned, including the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food supplies.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/25/climate-crisis-threatens-tipping-point-of-uninsurable-homes-says-un
https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/Lithium-ion-battery-recycling-goes/101/i38
This is a longish read, but well worth the time.
I came away with the impression that the people in the battery industry are quite confident that recycling is going to work quite well, with the biggest single problem, for now, actually being the limited quantity of old battery feed stock.
OFM
Sorry but this is wishful thinking at best. The energy inputs and hence EROEI will be be highly negative. Possible ,yes but the inputs will greatly exceed the outputs making much of the recycling unprofitable. Lest we forget, we are governed by economics; like it or not. Unreliable energy is not going to help this. It is the swimming against the tide again I am afraid.
People who are locked into energy efficiency as Holy Script seem to be very reluctant to consider the possibility that if energy is cheap enough, energy efficiency doesn’t matter under some circumstances.
I may be totally wrong now, but a few years back I was a hard core doomer, based on my belief that we were dead sure going to run desperately short of nonrenewable resources on the one hand and screw up the environment to such an extent that industrial and cultural life as we know it would cease to exist.
But after thinking hard for a long time about the BIG PICTURE, I have come to believe that there really is a serious possibility that renewable energy CAN be cheap enough that the energy cost of recycling such things as electric car batteries not only possible but practical and profitable. That we can run ESSENTIAL industrial processes on nearly all or even all renewable industries, and get by going without a lot of things we take for granted today, if we must.
People who spend their lives in given industry often tend to believe that their industry will always operate more or less the way it has over their career…… which may or may not reflect the realities of changing times.
I believe renewable energy will continue to get cheaper for decades to come, in terms of constant money…… that energy storage, in constant money terms, will get cheaper…….. that electric cars will in constant money be cheaper to buy and drive than comparable conventional cars, etc.
I believe that the lack of range and charging infrastructure arguments pushed so hard by fossil fuel funded propaganda and right wing politicians will eventually just fade away, and that people will GET USED TO driving short range electric cars as a matter of day to day necessity…….. so that the battery materials needed to build one three hundred mile range car will be enough to build four or five short range cars…….. cars that WILL go far enough, every day, if charged at work or home at night, to meet the needs of the vast majority of drivers.
I believe that batteries based on less efficient but substantially cheaper technologies will be ACCEPTED by the driving public…… just as people adapt to living in smaller and smaller houses and apartments as a matter of necessity, while giving this matter no more than a passing thought. Such changes in attitudes won’t come about overnight of course……. but they will come about over a couple of decades or over a generation.
We’ve barely scratched the surface, when it comes to what can be accomplished by way of energy efficiency in housing, etc……. if we’re willing to pay for it. It’s true that paying for it may be painful, but once it’s understood that it’s NECESSARY, we will pay for it……. just as we pay for police, firemen, and soldiers, and the equipment these people use…….. because bottom line, we have no choice but to pay or perish without them.
Birth rates have been falling like a rock in just about all the places that really matter in terms of a modern day industrial civilization and lifestyle.It’s cruel to say so, but so long as as their passing doesn’t lead to WWIII, a few hundred million or even a billion or two deaths from starvation, exposure, disease, or violence doesn’t matter all that much…….. within the context of the continued existence of an industrial civilization based on renewable energy, recycling, conservation, and simply doing without, as necessary.
No guarantees of course.
Physics stay the same , in terms of the basics, but technologies based on new research bring new industries into being. I’ve seen half a dozen of them come into being in my own lifetime…… television, computers, solar panels, genetic engineering, lazers…………..
Up until the last few months I’ve been hopeful that the climate won’t get so bad in the near future that we can’t make it ok, at least in big rich diverse countries such as the USA…….. but the new records being set month after month now worry the crap out of me.
Things may well be spinning out of control to the point that the shit will hit the fan to such an extent and degree that most of the biosphere implodes, and just about all of us naked apes die hard……. including Yankees like me.
But there’s no point in just giving up.
OFM, everyone is free to believe whatever they want, religion being the perfect example… Doesn’t make any of it true, no matter how hard you believe..
‘Renewables’ are misnamed, they are machines that capture energy and transform the energy to a form we find useable, just like coal power stations, or nuclear plants. The whole lot are built with fossil fuels..
Recycling of batteries happens by either pyrometallurgy or hydrometallurgy, both totally reliant on fossil fuels.
We have a global civilization that relies on fossil fuel driven agriculture and transport to feed over 8 billion people, where we had 600m before fossil fuels were used.
We are rapidly changing the climate, we are sending species extinct at the rate of 13/d. We have spread un-natural endocrine disruptors around the world, we have polluted the planet with forever chemicals.
The numbers clearly show that modern civilization totally relies upon fossil fuels that are rapidly degrading the environment, while building more renewables means burning more to do it.
If renewables or nuclear were anywhere near an answer, then we would be totally mining, making and transporting them with just electricity, however it is simply not happening as it’s too expensive and too energy inefficient.
When we don’t have fossil fuels, we wont be building any renewables, nor recycling them as we don’t have the processes available to do so. Food will become hard to obtain, for whatever number of people are still alive by then.
We live in a vastly complex system where the feedback loops from declining everything will drag down modernity very rapidly long before we get to the phase of having no fossil fuels. Just the downslope of availability Decades worth of building renewables, while acknowledging climate damage by governments world wide, has not changed the trajectory of fossil fuel use one iota. the reason of course being only 15% of humanity have been able to enjoy ‘modernity’ and most of the rest want the same.
HIDEAWAY
‘Renewables’ are misnamed .. [blah blah] …The whole lot are built with fossil fuels
Yeah, and horseless carriages are misnamed. Everyone knows you can’t built a factory without horse-drawn wagons. The whole thing is preposterous.
OFM
Birth rates have been falling like a rock everywhere that matters!
Are you serious?
Global population has increased by 70 million last year, and many are moving legally and illegally to countries that do matter.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth
India now burns as much coal in a year as the UK does in a hundred years, it is impossible to mitigate that sort of consumption.
Global soil loss is as high as ever and extreme weather events is making it even worse.
More humans are cutting down trees for fuel and to open up farm land at a rate of 40 million trees destroyed every day.
Environmental destruction is so great now that many species are becoming extinct
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
All we can do, is to decide to do a little good
India now burns as much coal in a year as the UK does in a hundred years, it is impossible to mitigate that sort of consumption.
In 2022, coal comprised 2.4 per cent of UK energy demand
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1174010/DUKES_2023_Chapter_2.pdf
Nice cherry picking
In 2022, coal comprised 2.4 per cent of UK energy demand
Alim, it gets better. UK, last 12 months, coal was 1.2%.
If coal is so cheap, why is demand dropping?
Also, in the same time frame, solar/wind/hydro were 34.1%. Damn unreliables!
https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical
Alim
Pathetic
Tom, Hickory: I read the Peter Turchin article that Tom linked to re Ukraine, arguing that Russia would win a long war of attrition. But, the article’s assumption is:
These projections assume that this conflict in Ukraine will continue (and end) as a war of attrition. If the nature of war changes, all bets are, of course, off.
Also, the article also shows a chart where Ukraine casualties are 4x Russian casualties. WTF? Isn’t it the other way round?
The West is supplying enough for Ukraine not to lose but not enough for Ukraine to win. Now is the time to support a quick Ukrainian victory.
Garry Kasparov says we should be doing everything we can to defeat Russia as soon as possible; this is the clearest mandate the free world has been given since the end of the Cold War.
I recommend this interview with Dr Ben Tallis:
Benjamin Tallis – Russia will Keep Prosecuting its Genocidal War in Ukraine for as Long as we Let it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isGqDOiumWE
I´m sorry to say, but you´ve likely been mislead by western MSM regarding the eastern front.
As always, seek information from multiple channels, and then form your own oppinion, that includes PO and wars as well as other topics.
I have several suggestions on interesting websites to read, but to do your own research first would be my suggestion. Sorry about the harsh language.
Driving in my petrol burning non SUV into the local market town here in the South Midlands of England, I wondered how many of my fellow motorists noted that most of the trees and hedgerows still had their full complement of leaves, and that indeed half of them were still green rather than autumnal gold, yellow and brown. in nine days time it will be December, and the solstice is due in 30 days: will the trees have finally lost their leave by then? I remember doing this same drive thirty years ago, when invariably leaf fall would be at the end of September. So far, my back lawn in early morning has suffered only two frosts, and these have been sparse scatters of white powdering the grass. Our local postman still makes his deliveries in shorts, and me, I find no need to wear outsie much the sane as I was wearing in September. I suppose I should be pleased that in this El Nino year of record world wide temperaturs, autumn has been so mild that the cost of central heating at home has central heating my home has been lower than any previous year. But I am in the top 10% of the population here in the UK, and this morning, my newspaper told me that myself and the rest of my middle class carbon burners are responsible for a vastly dispropotionate of global warming. So do I ditch te car? impossible, living in a rual area with no bus services, and looking at the price of EVs, and the sparcity of charging points. We are heading for 3 degrees by 2050, and I wil have been doing my bit.
The so called climate crisis is not the problem. Resource depletion is, which is driven by population growth. No politician has the cajonnes to even talk about that one. Just look at the population growth of Gaza. 3% per year which is breeding poverty on a grand scale. This is what awaits us in the west if uncontrolled immigration persists, and no country is exempt. We are approaching the limits to growth- most likely exceeded.
“The so called climate crisis is not the problem. Resource depletion is, which is driven by population growth.”
This isn’t an either/or problem: it’s both. And climate change is also driven by population growth.
“The so called climate crisis is not the problem.”
This is like like a guy with a ten pound ulcerating tumor growing on his neck who says
“what lump ?, I’m more worried about my age”
“The so called climate crisis is not the problem.”
Rising temperatures fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food-water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict/terrorism, sea levels rising, the Arctic melting, coral reefs dying, our oceans acidifying & forests are burning but that’s not the problem. Please remind us what planet you are on.
Resource depletion is primarily driven by improper valuation of resources. Human population is nearing its peak, and will start declining in a few decades, but the depletion problem will continue to get worse until we stop wasting resources.
“THE problem” varies according to context. For Syrians and Central Americans experiencing exceptional drought 15 yrs ago the choice was emigration or starvation. Their resource for living, food production, was constrained by lack of water from the sky.
Most Syrians have a bigger problem with bombs falling out of the sky.
No doubt the Syrian gov’t played a role in worsening the farmers lives, as did US invasion causing millions to flee into Syria from Iraq but my point is system collapse doesn’t require one factor for it to fail.
Haha are you really still pushing Putin’s talking points about Hillary Clinton invading Syria?
Alim ha ha, the refugee crisis that came after the invasion of Iraq was reality. It happened. Hillary and Putin have nothing to do with it.
Well worth a watch. An Irish documentary on Climate Change. Comment by Ivor Cummins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZwdn2kBcmY
Denialist nonsense from Ivor Cummins.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12779445/Cannibal-rat-plague-Australia-Karumba.html
For those interested in population overshoot.
It’s the RAT-pocalypse!
IISD Production Gap Report
https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/production-gap-2023#:~:text=The%202023%20Production%20Gap%20Report,°C%20temperature%20limit%20allows.
Taken together, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050. This conflicts with government commitments under the Paris Agreement, and clashes with expectations that global demand for coal, oil, and gas will peak within this decade even without new policies.
Given how most elections are going (i.e. swings to the right: Argentina, Netherlands, etc.) this is not going to change out of choice (oil is probably going to be forced down but the gap might be filled by coal as much as renewables).
Meanwhile, according to David Stockman,
“The US Treasury closed the books on FY 2023, bringing the four-year cumulative deficit to $9.0 trillion! So, during the last 1,461 days (FY 2020 thru FY 2023), Uncle Sam has generated $6.2 billion of red ink each and every day including weekends, holidays and snow-days. For anyone keeping score, that’s $4.2 million of red ink per minute. For perspective, here’s how long it took to generate the first $9 trillion of US government debt: It took all of 43 presidents and 219 years to reach $9 trillion of public debt in July 2007. The US national debt clock has now accelerated to hyper-drive.”
That IISD Production Gap Report jives pretty well with my prior guess that
Global Peak Combustion Day will be July 27th, 2033
It is worth reiterating that the carbon yet to emitted from human combustion of fossil fuels is a huge pulse…maybe equivalent to about 1/2 of all that has been emitted so far.
Which means that we have 1/3rd left to burn…do your part!
EEI for September just came out and still climbing despite September being hottest month ever recorded (though currently getting trounced by November average) and therefore with highest outgoing long wave radiation from surface.
Charles has been around a while. Carnot and Hideaway not so long, a few months? They seem to share a few common beliefs:
– renewables are a waste of time
– climate change is not the problem (population is) [this might be just Carnot]
– we are wasting fossil fuels building renewables
– recycling doesn’t work
– “business as usual” is the inevitable way forward
Just curious, does anyone else recognise this as a list of Libertarian talking points?
hmmm…Libertarian?
I hadn’t thought of it in that way.
These are old guys (like Gone Fishing) who have lived the luxury of unlimited energy availability during their lives who now seem to believe that everyone younger than they should simply cease life’s activities as fossil fuels deplete, rather than working to adapt with change in life and mechanisms.
I think it is folly to expect everyone to stand still, even if the efforts will fail to enable everlasting growth or prevent a vastly overheated and silent earth.
An argument I some affinity to is that of abrupt purposeful de-industrialization.
But I realize that the ‘purposeful’ part is simply not going to happen at course altering scale.
They just remind me of what I have read about all the folks that proclaimed that heavier than air craft would never fly in the run up to the Wright brothers first flight in December 1903. A little more than 110 years later the Solar Impulse 2 circumnavigated the globe using power from PV cells on it’s sky facing surfaces. With the advances in technology since that achievement it should be possible to build an aircraft that outperforms the Solar Impulse on almost every metric (lighter, faster, less expensive, longer ranger etc.).
There’s also the matter of German automakers proclaiming that a practical electric car could not be built until Tesla made one. I regret not saving an article I read on line when the Tesla Model S was first introduced in Germany. The writer asked “why was this car not made by a German company?”. If the companies that should have developed it did not believe it was possible, how could they have developed it?
The Tesla Roadster was released in 2008. In the same year, BMW presented the Mini E at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Three years later the released the mass produced i3.
But their marketing was never really behind it.
s inception as Ron Patterson was one to the TOD founders, he also did time in KSA, as I did, and I agreed with many of his views. But when I started to read the non- petroleum blog a little more I realised how polarised and insular it has become. There are a few with rabid opinions of climate change which I do not agree with. Good science requires good debate, not a polemic view of a theory that has yet to be proven.
We are being dragged down a pathway born out of the WEF/ UN and the IPCC. The IPCC does not absolutely agree with the likes of Mann & Co and their hockey stick rise in global warming, which was a shameful manipulation of the data to suit their ends. The so called “climate models” do not agree with the observed temperature data- they run hot.
I do not disagree that carbon dioxide does not cause some average temperature increase, but the effect is NOT linear. The greater the concentration the lesser the increase and 400 ppm of carbon dioxide is not a catastrophe. Resource depletion is.
Renewables are only possible because we have fossil fuels to enable their production. No one to date has come up with a viable means of producing unreliable renewable energy that can produce ALL the inputs for renewables production.
Renewables were supposed to provide abundant cheap electricity. Where is it? Not in my country- not in Europe. Wind and PV is unreliable and our economy requires 24/7 dispatchable power, from a grid that is robust and able to handle variable demand. Wind and Solar are next to useless for this and a back-up is required without exception. The back-up cost is paid for by the consumer, rather than the the unreliable producer who should be forced into providing reliable power.
I am Head of Feedstocks and Petrochemical Technologies for a large chemical producer and I review pathways to produce the base petrochemical that are required to manufacture a huge array of polymers and intermediates that enable our current lifestyle, and the ability to produce petrochemicals and intermediate for renewables production. To date most, if not ALL, pathways are hopelessly uneconomics with negative EROEI’s.
I am not against recycling; in fact I am absolutely for recycling of all waste. BUT, in too many cases the economics just do not work. Take the recycling of post consumer polymers. These make up the bulk of the scrap plastics , and can be made up of many polymers, some of which are not worth recycling. Even the best waste polymer – rich in polyolefines- is not suitable for up-cycling without intensive upgrading. A typical feedstock for base chemical production is naphtha- the up-cycled pyrolysis naphtha after being upgraded itsabout 2.5 – 2.7 x the fossil naphtha. Go figure that one, and the supply is limited. Until we design products, and packaging with recycling in mind then the level of recycling will be limited. We have long way to go on this one.
BAU is not an option. We cannot continue with fossil fuel consumption with the current population let alone an expanding population so something will have to give. I do not believe in Peak Demand but I do believe in Peak Supply which is probably imminent.
So if you wish to throw stones – both John Norris and Hickory l- you might wish to do outside the greenhouse, lest you break the glass and do some serious homework.I would be happy to debate any of the mentioned topics with you as long as you stick to science and not opinions.
The problem is pricing. Resources are simply not priced high enough. It’s a cultural problem, not an innate human failure. You were raised a Christian and browbeaten into believing that humans are bad by nature, but that’s just lies to get you to to expect the end of the world and hope for supernatural salvation.
Recycling only seems expensive if you think resources are cheap, which is nonsense if you think depletion is a problem. Your claim that resources are depleting and recycling is too expensive is self contradictory. It is an artifact of you cultural mindset, about as universal and inherent to the human condition as wearing a cowboy hat.
Trillions sounds like a lot of money. Here’s a video talking about the cost of car culture in America, from the point of view of a city planner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp75-46PnMY
Car culture isn’t an innate human trait, it’s a cultural phenomenon. The same applies to land fills. The coming century will be challenging, and societies that put a high price on natural resource consumption will come out the winners.
Alimbiquated … “The problem is pricing. Resources are simply not priced high enough.”
You are highlighting the conundrum humanity is in. By increasing the price of resources, a lot less people can afford them, so instead of ~15% of humanity enjoying a modern lifestyle the percentage would go down, but everything’s OK for the rich..
We are going to get much higher prices for resources when oil availability starts to decline. All resources are clearly linked to oil prices as per every time in the past high oil prices has lead to much higher commodity prices.
What happens when the decline in oil gets greater every year?? The price goes much higher and all other resources get scarcer and higher priced. New renewables, new recycling, pretty much new anything gets to be unaffordable, all while the population votes in anyone that promises a bright future by stealing the neighbours scarce resources… History is a clear guide for this…
Hideaway —
It’s wort mentioning that fuel prices vary wildly between rich countries, mostly thanks to differing tax regimes.
You can live very well indeed with wasting fuel so I wouldn’t worry too much about poor not getting enough. As the Soviet bloc demonstrated nicely, cheap energy is not an effective means of poverty reduction.
The important thing is to stop obvious waste.
https://www.globalfueleconomy.org/blog/2023/november/heaviest-ever-suvs-massively-undermine-climate-benefits-of-other-vehicle-improvements-says-new-gfei-report
Alimbiquated
I am not sure which world that you are living in. In the main economics drive the pricing of goods- supply and demand . How would you suggest that we price commodities ? By government edict? A Citizens Assembly ( Extinction Rebellion/ Just Stop Oil) or Marxism perhaps.
You do not know me at all, so do not make such ridiculous claims that I was raised as a christian etc.
I am a scientist full stop and I spend my time analysing processes. That involves me looking into the cost and efficiency of these processes.
The greater the resource base, then the lower the price, by simple economics the best resource gets used first.
Also by simple economics we tend to use the best process until something cheaper comes along. A good example is shipping. First we had human power from oars, then wind using sails, then steamships burning coal and then oil, and now diesel engines burning residual fuels.
Likewise the chemical industry has evolved over many decades and now provides us with the means to build huge wind turbines ( that don’t as envisaged).
To be able to recycle thing well , there has to be recycling designed into the product. Even then recycling is always going to be energy intensive. Used tyres are a good example. It is ot possible to deconstruct a tyre and use all the parts, to make another tyre. Much of the rubber is simply worn away. There are multiple types of rubber used in the carcass. there are fibres and metals. Most tyres are down-cycled. Some are combusted. Some are turned into rubber crumb, and thee is a process for producing carbon black. One of the biggest costs is logistics of the collection.
I do not have mindsets. or cognitive bias. I look at facts and avoid group-think.
Good luck with your dystopian ideas because like it or not, not everyone wants to buy into the society that Charles Schwaub and his sycophants advocate.
Whilst I am writing I may as well comment on the view of the UN/WEF and IMF that fossil fuels are subsidised, under perverse idea that the cost of carbon is ignored. I do not see the price of gasoline being subsidised. I pay a huge amount of tax to buy a litre, – 2 x the cost of production.
By all means go ahead with cost of carbon taxation and watch the jobless figures jump and universal poverty for all. it is already happening. Those taxes should also be applied to unreliables and then watch the population squeal about the cost of heating.
I do not have a solution to resource depletion- there is none. I do not have a solution to over-population, because few would buy into such a concept. The best that we can do is to conserve and use our resources better. But that would be wishful thinking.
There are two infinities – The universe and human stupidity . Alber Einstein
How would you suggest that we price commodities ? By government edict?
Yeah. For example, oil is heavily taxed at the pump in Europe, with the result that Europeans waste a lot less of it than Americans do — though they still waste a lot.
In another example, Germany banned grocery stores from giving out free shopping bags. OFM mentioned recently how people in his area reacted when Aldi stopped doing it in America. They aren’t allowed to in Germany, and it works fine.
Another huge problem all around the world is the bone headed incentives farmers get to ruin the soil. This has nothing to do with the free market or human nature, it’S just bad policy.
The idea that not wasting resources is dystopian is not one I can buy in to.
Apologies I managed to cut the first few lines.
Reply to John Norris, Hickory et al.
Charles has been around a while. Carnot and Hideaway not so long, a few months? They seem to share a few common beliefs:
– renewables are a waste of time
– climate change is not the problem (population is) [this might be just Carnot]
– we are wasting fossil fuels building renewables
– recycling doesn’t work
– “business as usual” is the inevitable way forward
Just curious, does anyone else recognise this as a list of Libertarian talking points?
Wrong on all points, except climate change. I am not new to this blog. I first started reading the blog form its inception.
“carbon dioxide does not cause some average temperature increase, but the effect is NOT linear. The greater the concentration the lesser the increase”
Carnot, you likely have that backward. Might want to pay attention to some of the information provided by George Kaplan and Doug Leighton about positive feedback.
Secondly, you ask why place with renewable energy don’t have cheap electricity pricing. Once again, ask yourself how much more energy would cost if alternatives to depleting fossil fuels aren’t deployed. Lastly, global warming is going to get very very expensive.
Hickory
Actually, Carnot is correct about the relationship of carbon dioxide concentration to temperature increase. Every 100 ppm increase has substantially less warming impact than the preceeding 100 ppm increase.
The climate models use the modest warming caused by carbon dioxide to postulate that higher temperatures will increase the water vapor content of the atmosphere, a much more potent warming contributor. I understand they generally assume relative humidity will remain constant as the temperature rises ( a perhaps reasonable assumption when they started), and it also represents a knife-edge balance between orderly temperature increase and a runaway situation.
In the intervening years it has become apparent that global relative humidity in the atmosphere is dropping ( yes, there is more water in the atmosphere, but not as much as was modeled).
OLD CHEMIST —
“Carnot is correct about the relationship of carbon dioxide concentration to temperature increase. Every 100 ppm increase has substantially less warming impact than the preceeding 100 ppm increase.”
Actually, historical data as well as future climate models show that global warming is (approximately) directly proportional to the increase of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. I suggest you read: HOW ARE CO₂ CONCENTRATIONS RELATED TO WARMING? This paper, cited below, provides graphs, mathematical formulas and data used by climate scientists.
Of course, the world is on the brink of ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points that, if crossed, will make the linearity of CO2 vs temperature superfluous.
https://factsonclimate.org/infographics/concentration-warming-relationship
If you click on Carnot’s links you will be flooded with anti-vac anti-science earnest sounding and looking people spouting denialist garbage. Be warned!
Chemist, my understanding is that 90% of the heat increase is going into the top layer of the ocean so isn’t it missing a significant factor looking just at air temp changes?
Doug, Leeg
Good technical paper.
My defense of Carnot was based on the fact that the contribution of CO2 is a logarithmic function and will decrease as the concentration rises. The paper I referenced deals specifically with the warming potential of increasing levels of CO2 only. Other factors such as Methane, Nitrogen oxides, and of course increased water vapor caused by the higher temperatures will push temperatures substantially higher than the number quoted in that paper.
Air temperatures are critical, because that is where we live. Ocean temperatures are critical to determine overall energy balances. I much prefer the ocean temperature values because the thermal inertia of the oceans really reduces the noise in the reported values compared to the chaotic ( mathematical sense) values for atmospheric temperatures. I wish the climate people would move to measuring temperatures from sensors with significant thermal inertia. Picture drilling a six foot hole in the north side of the rock of Gibraltar and measuring the temperature there. Place a few similar probes around the world and declare that data to be the global temperature. You would probably get a nice gentle sine curve similar to the curve from Mauna Loa for CO2. Leave the air temperature measurements to the weathermen.
Wet bulb temperatures are the critical value for human survival. 35 C for six hours kills everyone, lower numbers for the old and very young. I wish those values were more widely reported.
Old Chemist- you got documentation or a source for that assertion?
Hickory
Try this one
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.00708.pdf
Not taking time to check out individuals, but Carnot or anybody else who denies the value of vaccines, etc, obviously has a one or the of two basic problems.
Such a person is literally technologically illiterate in the broad field of life sciences and health care, even if he or she is may be a fully qualified engineer………. or else they’re some sort of political true believer or fossil fuel shill.
I wouldn’t hire an engineer to build a sidewalk if I were to discover that he’s so intellectually narrow minded as that……. to deny the reality of other science and professional fields.
Old Chemist…those links are a big fat nothing burger when it comes to what is happening in the real world.
Hickory
“Nothingburger” is a shallow approach I did not expect from you. Please identify the data or calculations which you find to be in error. The climate modelers already incorporate similar calculations in their models.
Keep in mind, carbon dioxide is only one of the factors in global warming, but in combination with other greenhouse gasses emitted by humans , the warming projected by climate models is based on the projected warming from these gasses, plus the warming from more water vapor from increased evaporation kickstarted by the human emissions. Water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas.
I understand the climate models generally assume relative humidity will remain constant as the temperature rises, however data over the last decade shows global relative humidity is decreasing ( water content in the atmosphere is increasing, just not as quickly as the modelers expected). The models should be adjusted.
This year has certainly been a bad one , temperature wise, in large part due to El Nino dumping excess ocean heat after years of suppression by three consecutive La Ninas. I expect temperatures after this to moderate somewhat, but at a higher baseline until the next El Nino.
John Norris, I’ve been reading and following this site since Ron set it up after The Oil Drum closed down, I just didn’t bother to comment for a long time..
JN ….”Renewables are a waste of time” … As someone that has been using solar for over 3 decades, it makes a lot of sense to me as a retail customer of energy, especially as the government subsidises the costs. As a retail customer I would pay somewhere between 6-10 times the wholesale price of electricity, so economically it makes perfect sense.
However my knowledge of solar also allows me to know the weaknesses as a ‘solution’ or part solution for the future. Making sense as a retail customer is totally different to whether we can run a civilization on it. It takes far more energy, and constant energy at that, to build ‘stuff’ compared to running ‘stuff’…
A few years ago company I was invested in had a very large, low grade deposit of nickel and copper in a very remote location, but both windy and very sunny, pretty much a desert area. These are the type of minerals needed for the ‘renewables future’. So I went about using my knowledge to work out how they could mine the deposit using the vast solar and wind resources they had.. It was totally uneconomic, so I halved the costs of solar, wind and batteries allowing for cheaper prices in the future, still didn’t work, halved them again, still didn’t work…
Even back then (2018-9) renewables were being touted by many, including University professors etc that renewables were ‘cheaper’ power than coal..
So why didn’t the numbers add up?? Because it makes assumptions that don’t work in the real world. Everyone in favour of going totally renewables, ignores the reality of the vast resources and costs involved, plus the highly intermittent nature of solar and wind, not just day to night, but summer to winter as well..
Why does the world think we need to go renewables?? It’s not as most here understand a lack of future oil supplies, it’s because of climate change. To me climate change is just one of a number of major problems we have going forward, yet every government policy is treating climate change as the only problem. We are going to have green growth to get out of the problem….
Unfortunately renewables and nuclear are not the answer, as the numbers just don’t add up, but I fully agree that is exactly where we are headed, which mean collapse of modern civilization sometime in the not so distant future.
I have worked out a proper way of accounting for the energy inputs in making every type of power generation, one which doesn’t leave out the embedded energy in the machines we build. Solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, gas powered plants, hydro electricity dams and generators are all just machines, that cost a lot to build, operate and maintain..
The largest solar farm in Australia has an EROEI of 1.74/1. This means the total energy this plant will produce over it’s life is only 1.74 times the energy we could go out and buy today in Mwhs of oil equivalent. It’s pitiful compared to what we need to run a modern civilization. This is also without the added cost of transmission lines, storage and backup power when storage is not enough (cloudy periods in winter). A small new (2023) gas project in Western Australia has an EROEI of 37/1, meaning it will produce 37 times the amount of energy the total capital, O&M costs could buy today.. Oil wells in Saudi Arabia run at hundreds of times….
If something is the wrong answer, and guarantees collapse of modern civilization, why should we continue supporting that path??
We are in massive overshoot with only ~15% of the world’s population having a modern lifestyle, and most of those ~15% want MORE from life, as in more trinkets, more travel, better car, better house, top health care, basically more money to afford all these things..
So somehow people expect that by mining 0.2% copper which takes much more energy than mining 5% copper, as was done 100 years ago, to build multiples of ‘stuff’ to meet everyone’s wants is a good idea, in an energy constrained world that we will have sometime in the near term future…
The population of the world is in deep overshoot, possibly by a factor of 20-100. Climate change is one of a large number of ecological problems, we have been wasting fossil fuels for 200 years for short term gratification and no thought for the long term. Recycling as it’s done it totally reliant upon fossil fuels, how is it done without any FFs??
We rely totally upon fossil fuels for plastics, modern agriculture and long distance transport, none of which comes into anyone’s calculations for energy needed in a post fossil fuel world, which is going to happen whether we like it or not..
Business as usual is what we are getting, it includes lots of platitudes for renewables, and lots more burning of fossil fuels to build it all. All that’s happening is overall energy use is continuing to rise, with a massive proportion of humanity still no better off, while the environment is much worse off!! Growth is not possible without increasing fossil fuel use, yet all talk is about ‘green growth’ as the path forward.
Growth in the human enterprise, as William Rees puts it, is what has put us into the trouble we’re in, as in massive environmental damage, it’s certainly not going to get us out of it, yet everyone that expects the future to be renewables is expecting growth in mining, processing, building etc…
Well put.
My experience with academia and government bodies is not that good. Most staff have never worked in industry and have no idea about cost. I have seen no end of bio routes to fuels and petrochemical most of which are pure fantasy. There is simply not enough biomass available to make any significant impact even if it could be done. There is no such thing as waste biomass. We can only afford to remove a minor amount of biomass from the environment. I will now get a comment from OFM which is fine. My reply is go look at NPP- net primary productivity.
There is much hype about hydrogen and once again bodies like the IEA and EIA all claim some low cost route is just around the corner. “A bit more research money and we will get there. We will be able to produce hydrogen for $1/kg”, is the claim of the EIA. Well they seen to mis-understand the Laws of Thermodynamics because hydrogen by electrolysis needs 52 kWh of electricity – effectively meaning electricity at $0.01 per kWh. Good luck with that one. You cannot get to even $0.1 kWh without, you guessed it , a subsidy., and electroysers need continuous power, so even more cost. A su large supply of demin water is also required.
No surprise that the much hyped electrolyser project at the Heide refinery has been scrapped. The next one to go will be the Shell project at Wesseling.because that is inland and you should see the cost of German electricity. I suggest you sit down first and keep a defibrilator nearby.
Carnot, I agree with you on biomass and hydrogen.
But not on wind/solar/hydro/batteries/geothermal.
Hideaway: JN ….”Renewables are a waste of time” … As someone that has been using solar for over 3 decades, it makes a lot of sense to me as a retail customer of energy, especially as the government subsidises the costs.
Cool. Good for you. But isn’t it you who argues that making renewables, in this case solar, is a net loss for society, increasing CO2 unnecessarily? And hence a waste of time? So why in good conscience would you buy solar panels? Isn’t there a disconnect there?
John Norris,
Like Hideaway I have a smart tracking solar system at home which boosts the power by about 30% over roof mounted system. I also have a 13kWh battery pack. Half the year it works well. The other half of the year not so. December and January are a waste of time.
So tell how unreliables are going to power a dynamic power grid that will be able to produce ALL of the inputs to a produce wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear power equipment without fossil fuels. I am not against nuclear or geothermal but they are limited. Nuclear is especially costly and goethermal is still small and site dependent. A geothermal project in my hometown was financial bust.
Too many people have been brainwashed into believing renewables are the answer to our problems, boosted by endless claims of a climate crisis, based on dubious models and unsound data. There are lies, damned lies and statistics (Disraeli) and most of the climate change fruitcakes are academics ( as well as celebs) trying to obtain funding so that they can fly around the world preaching their nonsense to the gullible. I will keep saying what I believe. Climate change is not the problem; resource depletion and overpopulation is THE problem.
It’s interesting how “shoot the messenger” is still so alive and well. Instead of trying to pick apart an argument, using numbers, go for how inconsistent the actions of the poster are…
Guess what, I’m an economically rational human being. I bought those past solar systems (3 in total first in 1985!!) when I was still a ‘believer’ in a green future. It is only when I turned to the energy content of how ‘stuff’ is made that I worked out where my ‘belief’ was wrong.
Like many here I use to concentrate on the operating of everything in the existing system. How much energy it took to run cars trucks, electrical grid etc. That is the wrong way to picture the future. It’s all about the resources that need to be mined, the factories that need to be built, the education the experts need and the processes actually used to make everything. There is a massive embedded energy in all that, that is usually not considered…
Can we go on pretending that renewables and nuclear will save modern civilization in the future, being a drop in substitute for fossil fuels?? Of course we can, and with near 100% certainty that’s where we are heading, until it all falls to pieces..
BTW, in the last 2 years we have had back to back 25-30% increases in power prices, while the reliability of power in our area has declined massively over the last 30 years. We get power outages 20-30 times a year these days, so yes having solar and off grid batteries makes a lot of sense, so even though I know it’s not a long term solution for anything, I’ll most likely buy more….
John Norris
You are a liar
Have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!
The heat index—which combines air temperature and humidity—hit an astounding 58.5ºC (137ºF), the highest index ever recorded, in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday.
Probably temporary
As fossil fuels peak out and the climate heats up
choices are and will be made about where to deploy money in attempt to adapt.
Fusion/fission, carbon capture, hydrogen, coal bed methane, electric hummers…for example.
A lot of money will be very poorly spent. ‘Same as it ever was’, I suppose.
I am of the mind that two developments, in addition to the obvious ones of having less offspring, PV and the electrification of vehicles, will achieve strong traction. I’m sure there are others
-One is NaI batteries, such as NorthVolt and others are working on
https://www.energy-storage.news/northvolt-and-altris-develop-breakthrough-160-wh-kg-sodium-ion-battery-for-energy-storage/
-A second is the new generation of geothermal being developed “enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)”, such as being pioneered by Fervo in the US
https://fervoenergy.com/
Hickory,
One thing is certain. OPM( other peoples money) will be frittered away on a grand scale. Of that you can be assured.
I disagree with you on EV’s. In Europe they are loosing traction fast. Private buyers are shunning EV’s and the projected new EV’s sales has been adjusted downward. A lot of EV producers are loosing their shirts. Look at Ford and the Europeans will soon reveal the losses that they are making on EV’s. It just another boondoggle burning money like no tomorrow. Both car and house insurance premiums are rising fast. If you own an EV and it is parked within 15 metres of your house you pay extra. Pretty soon car ferries are going to band EV’s . It is already happening I am not against Ev’s, in fact I nearly bought a Hydundai 5 years ago but decided to wait and see. I would not buy an EV now as the resale value is next to zero. Who wants a used battery.
Will the sodium ion battery pan out. I am not sure. It is not a new concept and sodium is definitely more plentiful than Lithium, but the same issue with a fire hazard will be ever present. But all the current issues will persist. Range anxiety, poor cold weather performance and fire hazard will be ever present, not to mention the charging times.
I surprised my management by forecasting that gasoline sales will increase in Europe, and not decline. I am being proven correct in spite of really tough economic conditions. Buyers of new cars are switching to gasoline and gasoline hybrids. Where I got it wrong was that I expected PHEV to grow faster than what has been achieved. Likewise my EV sales estimates were also higher than was actually achieved.
I am not convinced about the climate heating up. A little yes, but the whole carbon dioxide hype is overblown.
I am now going to get a whole lot of abuse. So what, I am used to it.
Carnot, by definition hype is overblown. When you say you aren’t convinced the climate is heating up are you saying the measurements to date are not accurate or something else?
He thinks thermometers are lying and the greenhouse effect is a hoax. It’s a global conspiracy promulgated by thousands of scientists and researchers (but he knows better!).
Carnot
From a psychological viewpoint, I consider society has recognized a big problem looming in the future and have now moved into the ‘bargaining stage’ by putting faith and hope in renewables, fossil fuel substitutes, alternate lifestyles ( without sacrificing standard of living) , and flavor of the day research projects.
Senior politicians have been briefed on oil depletion and other non-renewable resource supply challenges, many are just using climate change as an easier to sell approach to the issue, and even there the pushback is rising. Nobody can get elected on a bad news with no solution campaign.
A few people have jumped to the acceptance stage, including many on this site but for the general public, watch out for the transition from the bargaining stage to the grieving stage – it will probably be ugly!
As for climate change, it is a little bit nuanced, depending on where you live. My wife is from a tropical island about 5 degrees off the equator and when I first visited there about forty five years ago I found the heat and humidity really challenging while the locals went about their daily work, the kids ran around in the street playing and everyone thought the situation was ‘normal’. The town had a small generator that ran from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, providing street lighting ( 20 watt fluorescent tube every half-block) and similar lighting in the homes of the well-to-do. No fans, no refrigerators, no aircon, no television. no radios, just simple living. Now they are on the grid , many have fans and television, a few have refrigerators and the well to do have a bit of aircon but for the general population not much has changed with respect to their living environment. What has changed is the distress level on hot, humid days. A healthy, young adult can survive a 35 C wet bulb temperature for about six hours but old people, children and the obese are more vulnerable than that and local wet bulb temperatures are occasionally approaching those values. When you are close to the limit, small changes matter.
Generally, reading all of the above, I think that Chat GPT has won the contest… Whomever “they” may be.
I will get another Islay Mist now, an excellent blended Single Malt : ) Got plenty, just in case.
And remember to honor Winston Smith!
Cheers! Skål as we say it.
And happy Black Friday too!
Edit: This was a beer and scotch enhanced post, might need an acronym, but I´m ready for TEOTWAKI now.
Horses were first banned in favor of cars for ecological reasons, just like EVs are starting to replace combustion engine vehicles.
They banned many horse-drawn wagons in London (and NYC) around the turn of the century, due to the manure problem.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/
Paris had the same problem, and started allowing horseless carriages only in the middle of streets.
https://vanessacouchmanwriter.com/2019/05/08/the-transport-crisis-in-paris-1900-14-an-unlikely-sounding-problem/
That was one reason why the British and France had so many trucks in WWI. Erich von Ludendorff later claimed, “The Entente victory of 1918 was the triumph of French trucks over the German railway”.
Needless to say, the horse lobby complained loudly about all this and ridiculed anyone claiming horses could be replaced.
You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/
I am glad you would draw historical comparisons, and I have to say it is pretty comforting to live in a big city with high EV penetration. The horses with all the stench and oat comsumption as you point out, is inadequate. Fossil fuel cars without catalysts creating unhealthy smog around the city was the force from the 1970s going into the 1990s. I would guess electric cars, wise urban planning and more use of 2-3 wheelers and hybrid cars, can delay a slowly deteriorating situation (the way I see it) so much that people can adapt more easily to lower energy consumption. Leaving the major heating/cooling of buildings aspect and industrial aspect out of it. And especially a lower carbon consumption is infact needed at some point. If you look at the situation for immigrants in the mid west for example in the 1850s in the US, they were energy deprived as an example. In the slowly deteriorating situation we are probably facing now, people would be more like energy poor with several options going forward. Renewables are key to that. It is not very difficult really – if we are going from a situation of using historical sunlight to continuous use of sunlight energy, then to build out as much renewables as feasible are much better than the alternatives. I really don’t comply to resource nationalism views, but I guess that it is inevitable that trade would go way down at some point going forward and that noone would really gain in that respect. Comparative advantage when trading will never go away.
Really enjoyed the last link thanks alimbiquated. For those who didn’t read it, it is a reprint of an article – “In 1930, Alexander Winton, by then one of the legends of the auto industry, wrote this article for the Post about the wild early days when even promoting the idea of a self-propelling machine would make you the object of ridicule.” Its the reminisces of Winton, who “was a bicycle maker, and as he writes below, he soon became infatuated with the idea of a bicycle that “a rider wouldn’t have to push and keep pushing.” In 1896, he founded the Winton Motor Carriage company, and soon began turning out cars at the dizzying rate of four per year. He would sell his first car in 1897 — arguably the first automobile sold in the U.S. — for the princely sum of $1,000.” It’s fascinating reading, describing all the development required to produce a car that no-one thinks about today.
Cornucopians predicting the demise of coal might want to scratch India off their list.
DESPITE INDIA’S NET ZERO AMBITIONS, COAL MAY REMAIN KING
According to data from the Ministry of Coal, overall coal production in September 2023 jumped 15.81 per cent to 67.2 million tonnes, compared to 58.04 million tonnes in the same period last year. Cumulative production in the first half of the ongoing fiscal (April-September) increased 12.06 per cent year-on-year to 428.25 MT. Simultaneously, state owned players like Coal India Ltd and NLC India Ltd have multiple thermal power plant plans in the works, to be set up across the country, with a completion target around 2028. “Thermal capacity will continue to play a major role in India’s electricity supply share. In the 2030 and even 2047 projections, coal and lignite continue to play a dominant role,” NLC India’s chairperson and managing director Prasanna Kumar Motupalli told DH, adding that the country harbours coal reserves for nearly 100 years, going by the current rate of resource exploitation.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/despite-indias-net-zero-ambitions-coal-may-remain-king-2747247
Yes, it will be up to richer countries like Canada, US, Australia to get their house in order first.
A good initial step would be to bring down the per capita level of coal consumption to that of India.
Per capita coal consumption [cubic ft/capita]
India- 721
Canada- 1,188
US- 2,234
China- 3,081
Australia- 5,359
Touché HICKORY. I didn’t mean to call the kettle black. Canada is bad but Australia is especially depressing (on a per capita basis) isn’t it?
I guess Aussies are used to warm weather, so they don´t mind a few degrees more. On the other hand, they seem to have quite some area to put PVs on, but I guess all the Foster´s have mislead them, happens quite easily from my experiance.
India has 1.4 billion people.
Canada has 38.25 million.
Can you do the math?
Each person has a personal desire for energy to live,
regardless if they are privileged to live in a more or less crowded place
and regardless of the math.
Each person has a personal desire for energy to live,
I disagree. Each person has a desire for energy services, but not for energy itself.This distinction is important because there is more than one way to skin a cat.
For example, in cold climates having a warm house in winter is a universal need, but you can keep your house warm with insulation or by heating it.
Canada is up past 40 million now thanks to Trudeau opening the floodgates to a million immigrants in one year, largely from, get this, India. Another million were on the way this year until the Liberal Party’s polling numbers started looking beyond abysmal what with all the arrivals naturally making housing shortages and cost of living crisis even worst. As a compromise the flood was reduced to “only” 400,000 new immigrants a year instead. The public didn’t find that amusing either. Trudeau and his party are now likely certain to go down in flames at the next election. Some of these Indian immigrants don’t like what they find in Canada and later decide to sneak across the U.S. border using human smuggling agents.
Yes, and we all complained whenever a new of immigrants arrived, from the Italians to the Poles and the Vietnamese. Somebody’s gotta change all those hospital beds and manage Tim’s take-out window for us.
India 721 Cuft/capita … really?? Care to offer a source??
According to different sources the weight of a Cuft of coal has vastly different weights, from 40lb to 85lb, depending on the source..
Taking the lowest 40lb/cuft = for India at 721 cuft/cap X 40lb = 28,840lb = 13.08tonnes/capita
For India total would be 13.08 X ~1.4B = 18.3B tonnes…
So the numbers are way out considering the world only burns around 8B tonnes per annum..
Always check the numbers, especially when they use unusual measurements like Cuft/capita.
Hickory, those numbers also have Australia consuming over 2.5B tonnes of coal, Canada over 800MT, USA 13.4B tonnes and China 75.4B tonnes.
The numbers are not even resources or reserves per capita as Australia has way in excess of the figure given..
It’s just another fake made up BS set of numbers…
Again, always check the numbers from whatever source!!! There is just so much garbage out there…
The climate has no interest is how many tonnes of coal is burned per person, to prevent global runaway feedback loops CO2 emissions needed to be half what they are today.
https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/feedback-loops-make-climate-action-even-more-urgent-scientists-say
We are burning more coal than ever, more gas than ever and more oil than ever
The writting is on the wall
Hideaway,
You beat me to it. Thanks. I smelled a rat as I have never seen coal in cu/ft units. It did not look right and you proved it. Coal is hugely variable in calorfic value, so one has to tak this into account too.
As you quite rightly ointed out whee is the source. Praby the biased BBc, Guardian or some other unqualified sources that are too frequently quoted on this blog as the gospel according to Michael Mann, a person well known for adjusting data.
Again on this blog there are frequent references to record tmeperatures. I am also a little circumspect about the lastest record “temperatures”. Last year the UK had a number of new record high temperatures. Either at Heathrow airport- a thermal island – another airfield. In the latest record, reported by the BBC of course, it turned out that the tmperature was recorded on an RAF airfield with the weather station located next to a taxiway in which the jet efflux drifted oever the weather station – equivalent to placing the thermoter in a hairdryer.
That is why it is important to do your homework on carbon dioxide forcing. The actual value is much lees than most of the model predictions because a linear forcing co-efficient is used when it is anything but.
Hideaway- here is the source
https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/
They list data sources as
-Statistical Review of World Energy – British Petroleum
-U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
If you have a ‘better’ source of coal consumption/capita lets see it.
My point was that simple math shows the numbers are clearly wrong. It is fairly simple to look up any countries coal use and just divide by capita, especially if the source you are looking at is clearly wrong..
It doesn’t matter the source, if the numbers are wrong, they are wrong!! As the world burns a total of just over 8B tonnes per annum, anything showing India is burning 18B tonnes MUST be clearly wrong!!
Australians do not consume 5359 cubic feet of coal per person, Hickoery. I doubt wheteher Australians consume very nuch coalnat all. But they do export if in vast quantities – much of it to China where the consumption value you quote is 3081. To that latter figure you probably need to add the bulk of the Aussie suppposed consumption figure you quote.
Just on interesting numbers, the latest report from IEA…
https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2023/overview-and-key-findings
Total spend on Renewables investment from 2015 -2023 … $11.7T total added energy 2,345Twh
Total spend on Fossil fuels investment from 2015 -2023 ….$9.5T total added energy ~8,073Twh
Of course transmission lines and backup storage are not included in either…
Thanks for the link. The chart “Annual clean energy investment, 2015-2023” shows renewable power investment totalling $4.1T. Just curious, where do you get $11.7T from?
First graph from overview, the 2 blue columns, one for ‘clean’ energy and one for fossil fuels, just added them up..
The TWH numbers came from total primary energy consumption, as this information was not in the IEA document…. Our World in Data…
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
If you have a better source I’m all ears…
Thanks H. I’m OK using the IEA source. It shows renewable energy as just 35% of the total Clean Energy investment which you mistakenly label Renewables investment.
You go on to say Of course transmission lines and backup storage are not included in either… which is patently false as Grids and Battery storage are included.
You then implied the TWh numbers are from IEA document. Now you tell us, actually they are not. I’ve been to your Our World in Data source and will post my results (if different from yours) in a separate comment.
H, my TWh numbers (from your OWiD source) are indeed different from yours. Combining my numbers with our revised understanding of IEA’s terminology then I would say:
For 2015-2022:
Clean Energy investment (including grids and storage): $10.0T
FF investment: $8.5T
Clean energy increase: 7.9k TWh
FF energy increase: 7.8k TWh
A better picture for renewables than your original IEA posting, no?
Ahhh the substitution method to show renewables in a much better light…
Please tell how they ‘substitute’ for plastics, fertilizer, asphalt, explosives, coking coal, from just electricity, as about 10% of the fossil fuel increase will go to these products??
In this country, many renewables have to be turned off due to lack of grid capacity when the sun is shining and wind blowing, meaning transmission lines still not built but needed. Likewise for storage, yes some has been built, but nowhere near enough to cater for day to night (10-12hrs) or summer to winter, for existing renewables. So, yes I included all the spending on ‘clean’ energy which is a fraction of what they really need to spend…
Every dollar spent is extra energy used..
My point is not that fossil fuels are ‘better’, or we can continue using them. They were much cheaper than present, which we built our modern civilization with. They will be leaving us us from depletion anyway, let alone the damage caused to climate, and environment.
The numbers clearly show we can’t replace our current lifestyle with renewables nor nuclear. To get the full drop in replacement for FFs we would need to spend multiples of current expenditures, and every dollar spent is extra energy used. To go on a huge spending spree of building more mines, processing plants, factories, roads, transmission lines, etc, etc to build out renewables, it would raise the ‘base’ rate of energy currently used from ~178,000Twh to a much higher number, of which over 80% would have to come from fossil fuels.
Also, I’m seeing no mention of energy produced, in TWh or otherwise, anywhere in the document. Please help, I may be missing it…
Hey guys…try to not get lost on blind alleys.
All I was simply pointing out is a basic point about fossil fuel consumption being
important to view not based simply on ethnicity or country borders,
but also on a per capita basis where a much different, and important, story is told.
I think a lot of you guys are getting your hair so tangled up on some of these issues that
it is effecting your brain ability to sift the wheat from the chaff.
Hickory,
Could not agree more. Where do you you live?
Try this. Crude oil consumption b/d
USA 18 million
China 16 million
EU 13 million
India 6 million
Total 53 million
Do the maths and see who has the highest consumption per capita.
The highest consumer per capita will be found in the ME. Any suggestions?
We can do the same for coal and gas if the like. Slightly different but the usal suspects will be there.
You can bicker all you want but:
A sobering UN report this week gave updates on the climate crisis and global attempts to tackle it, finding we’re currently on track to reach 2.9°C of warming by the end of the century, almost double the Paris Agreement’s target set back in 2015.
In the Nov 20 report, the UN concluded that the world would have to cut its emissions by 42% by 2030 to meet Paris’ 1.5°C goal. The report also found that greenhouse gas emissions — largely from coal, gas, and oil — actually rose last year.
The findings highlight an increasingly common reality: Extreme weather like wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are only going to grow more powerful and common as the climate continues to warm and temperatures climb past the Paris accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial times.
The report makes official what many around the world experienced this summer, with record heat in a number of major metropolitan areas. The UN’s findings will likely take center stage at the COP28 conference starting on Nov 30, where signatories of the Paris climate accord will gather in Dubai to talk about the world’s efforts to meet 2015’s targets.
The fossil fuel fans are so sure of themselves that they are evidently incapable of even visualizing an industrial economy and society based on renewable energy.
““Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have the answers.”
People like Carnot aren’t really willing to listen to anybody who isn’t already in their intellectual camp. Such people are unwilling or possibly unable to deal with any knowledge, technology, etc, that’s outside their own world view.
Nowhere in his arguments is there any acknowledgement of some totally obvious facts…… such as the fact that in the developed world birth rates are falling fast. Nowhere does somebody like Charles acknowledge that unless India starts WWIII, which is a real possibility, it doesn’t really matter in terms of life a few generations down the road if just about everybody in India, or Indonesia, or Egypt, and other such places, is long dead. If there are any remaining unexploited minerals in such countries, any survivors a century down the road will go and get them.
My own professional background is such that I’m a doomer myself, in terms of the future of the larger part of the world population, and I’m quite ready to acknowledge that most of us or even almost every last one of us even in countries such as the USA or Canada might also die hard within that time frame.
But industrial civilization is not NECESSARILY doomed. There’s a real possibility that a few generations down the road there will be pockets of people who are enjoying the abc’s of industrial economics, albeit at a far more modest scale per capita than we do today.
There’s no real reason a well constructed and well maintained house can’t last for centuries, while using only a very minor fraction of the energy we use to run a house today.
I may not be any smarter than the average, but I’m open minded enough, and knowledgeable enough, in terms of the BIG PICTURE, to understand that while there are no guarantees, we CAN adapt, and that it’s rather likely that we WILL adapt, sometimes, in some places, and do what’s necessary to have a real shot at transitioning to a renewable energy based economy.
I don’t hear the FF faction acknowledging that the FIRST third of our per capita energy consumption is worth three, four or five times, maybe even more, than the last two thirds.
We can drive minicars, or bike or walk. We won’t be needing new freeways or shopping centers or sports stadiums or international airports.
We can have short range electric cars that will last just about forever that need only a third of the materials used to build a typical conventional car…….. if that’s all we can afford.
Lawyers and engineers in some places are already accustomed to riding bicycles to and from work.
I could easily get by with a super insulated refrigerator one third the size of the one I’m using now, if doing so were to be a matter of necessity.
There’s room enough in my house for three or four more people, easily.
We can live FAR BETTER eating more wholesome foods in a more nearly natural state than eating seventy five percent of the stuff in a modern supermarket.
We have seven household freezers for processed meat. It’ll probably be cheaper to keep buying replacement freezers but I sometimes imagine building a super insulated walk-in from a 20’ shipping container.
I have been playing around with the energy flow charts available at:
https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy
Looking at the world as an average, roughly two thirds of the primary energy used to generate electricity goes to waste as rejected heat. Similarly roughly four fifths of the primary energy used for transportation goes to waste as rejected heat. From the chart below, the amount of primary energy the ends up as rejected heat from the electricity generation and transportation sectors alone is slightly more than the energy services delivered by all sectors combined.
The most recent chart for Norway shows roughly 98% of their electricity coming from renewable sources with the lions share coming from hydro. As a result less than 10% of the primary energy used to generated electricity ends up as rejected heat. The rejected heat from the chart for Norway is less than 20% more than the energy services delivered as opposed to the roughly twice as much world average. One wonders what the energy flow charts would look like for a world with a lot more energy coming from renewable sources and a lot less from fossil fuels?
Regardless of the country virtually all the primary energy used for transportation comes from oil and a little under four fifths of this energy ends up as rejected heat. One wonders what the picture would look like in a country where most of the transportation sector is electrified?
As I see it, there is an enormous amount of primary energy that is ending up as rejected heat in the electricity generation and transportation sectors. Renewable energy and electrification of transport offer opportunities to reduce this waste.
Really, You think unreliables can reduce the electrical power wasted. Tell me how? How are you going to balance the grid. Ah. I know storage. What type of storage. Battery, hydro, hydrogen? Do you think this is free. Go and read up on entropy- 2nd law of thermodyamics. . Sadly, you will waste even more energy. You will need to build so much excess capacity to balance the grid, and by the way waste even more fossil fuels.,because so far you cannot build a power grid without fossil fuels. The bigger the unreliables you build the more fossil fuels you waste.
OFM
you never let me down with you eternal optimism. I am afraid you do not read everything I write. I am not a fossil cornucopian, far from it. Some of what you write I 100% endorse, BUT, the idea that we can live a pleasant life after the crash then good luck. Do you have a car post 1993.?Then most likley this will have CANBUS technology. Go look it up. Most of this technology is reaching a point when 1993 cars are not repairable when the CANBUS fails. You can write your car off. Prior to 1993 you have car that was repairable with carburettors and points ignition. What they do in Cuba.
You assume that there will be some liquid fuels fossil or otherwise- probably very crude fossil fuels, assuming that there are still drilling rigs to produce the oil and people who know how to operate them. Then you will need a refienry – I might have a job. One generation yes, but at two good luck. As for falling birth rate then show me the data because so far there is NO fall off in global birth rates. Just check the time inrterval between each billion and then sit down and drink a big whisky. Only when the crap hits the rotary oscillator. Just take a look at Gaza. Out of control population growth .
Label me a doomer or a denier. I do not disagree. I work on facts not fiction from the MSM, especially the BBC ( biased broadcasting corporation) and the even more dire Guardian.
Do not preach EV’s. They are full of short lifed electronics that will be obsolete in less than a decade. Can you repair a 10 year oild iPad.?
Since 1948 Israel’s population has increased by a factor of 12. Since 1950 Gaza’s population has increased by a factor of 12. What racist point are you trying to make (again)?
PS Look up ‘population momentum’.
Notable point-
Gaza population growth since 1940’s was due entirely to high internal birth rate.
To the contrary the Israeli growth since 1940’s was due in large part to immigration, with internal growth close to western country average.
Interestingly, the number of Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from Moslem countries to Israel in the last century has been as large or larger than the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel during its establishment.
Like much of historical and political events involving countries, there is a lot of complexity to the situation.
Hi Carnot, when you dismiss EV’s, did you read the link alimbiquated provided earlier? It is a reprint of an article from 1930 – “In 1930, Alexander Winton, by then one of the legends of the auto industry, wrote this article for the Post about the wild early days when even promoting the idea of a self-propelling machine would make you the object of ridicule.” Its the reminisces of Winton, who “was a bicycle maker, and as he writes below, he soon became infatuated with the idea of a bicycle that “a rider wouldn’t have to push and keep pushing.” In 1896, he founded the Winton Motor Carriage company, and soon began turning out cars at the dizzying rate of four per year. He would sell his first car in 1897 — arguably the first automobile sold in the U.S. — for the princely sum of $1,000.”
It’s fascinating reading, describing all the development required to produce a car that no-one thinks about today. In 1900 your car didn’t even have a carburettor, so forget about repairing that! You bought your gasoline from a drug store – if they stocked it. Read it and learn how much you assume is simple about a ICE vehicle once upon a time wasn’t. Here’s alimbiquated’s link again. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/
Where some of these “EVs are dying” fairy tales may be coming from.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/27/youtubes-loaded-with-ev-disinformation/
This is not good news for the anti-EV types:
BYD Produces Its 6 Millionth Plugin Vehicle!
“Other locations” includes the Caribbean with a Jamaican dealer representing the brand. The brand was launched by the dealer in Jamaica about a week ago and landed a spot on a local morning TV show. This is one of the Chinese brands that western automakers should be wary of.
Yup, Youtube has filled up with higher level spam. Clips with sensationalized titles about everything from ED cures to astrophysics to world events. Flashy graphics and lifelike computer generated voices but a few seconds in you’ll notice the images don’t correlate with the dialog and the dialog has blatant errors.
Europe’s Transit Firms Realize China Is The Only Scaled Manufacturer Of Low-Carbon Solutions
Six Chinese made electric buses are now operating in the capital city of Jamaica.
ISLANDBOY —
L.O.L. According to the Internet (Your Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology) : “Jamaica’s energy system is highly dependent on imported fossil fuels, petroleum imports accounting for over 80 percent of electricity production.” So, does that mean your six Chinese electric busses basically run on imported fossil fuels?
But significantly less.
Can Electric Bikes And Mopeds Reshape The Way People Move?
I will get an e-bike when I can no longer manage a carbon-fiber road bike.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/11/280-million-e-bikes-are-slashing-oil-demand-far-more-than-electric-vehicles/
I ebiked my bike because my 68 yr old body can’t climb 10-15% grades in hot humid weather w 25 lbs of stuff. If yr riding a cf road bike I’m guessing it’s for recreation and not transportation. What really gets me is that some of the batteries are poor quality/durability. The 48v 17 ah battery I got w the kit has failed do to what I assume is a loose wire Worked for two years and replacement cost is upwards of $750. Cheap stuff, even cheap cf bikes are cheap for a reason and there is a hell of a lot of cheap ebikes around. I’ve got another kit motor for another bike but I’ll get a Honda 150 motorcycle before I get a fancy $9,000 German ebike.
One climb I regularly do on a road bike is 8 km long, gaining 580m in height at an average 7% grade. Several sections of the climb are well in excess of this with the maximum gradient of 12%. It was along this ride that I have experienced getting passed by an eBike. The first time (on a different climb) I was surprised because it was an older woman pedalling away, which confused me for a while because didn’t realize it was an eBike right away.
That would be a good section for the TdF. I let go of big efforts awhile back as my weight and age slowed me down. I was commuting in Annapolis going over the Naval Academy bridge when a young fit big bottomed young woman shot past me on a hot day. Oh well says I.
It’s a single climb of a TdF stage :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Tour_de_France,_Stage_1_to_Stage_11#Stage_9
I watched that stage and Jungels never gave up. He got passed on that first climb but made it up on the last climb. Most people who watch don’t get a good appreciation for how grinding an entire Tour is. Do one stage, and then have to do another the next day.
I can’t imagine oil production declining at all from LEVs but they do make it possible for more people to get around.
A new Open Thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-november-27-2023/
An update regarding Non-OPEC and World Oil production has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/july-non-opec-and-world-oil-production/