Comments not related to Oil or Natural Gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
155 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, November 27, 2023”
Comments are closed.
Comments not related to Oil or Natural Gas production in this thread please. Thank you.
Comments are closed.
Another point for a good portion of the site’s visitors.
Thirty years ago when carbon dioxide was about 360 ppm we were promised droughts, floods and famine. The concentration is now about 420 ppm and the good farmers of America have just harvested the largest corn crop in history. So much for Famine.
Ervin,
Ervin.
Thanks for the information. Might it be the higher concentration of carbon dioxide that helped boost the yield I wonder. On a more serious note though is that I am not one for intensive mono-culture farming. Going back a decade all the talk was about cellulosic ethanol and the 1 billion tonnes of agricultural waste that could produce cellulosic ethanol.
Mandates were made for a cazillion gallons of ethanol to be blended into gasoline. Total flop. Millions wasted and the whole scam unraveled. Over 100 years in the making and it still does not work, and never will work. Once again thermodynamics rule. I dread to think the damage to the environment had all the ag. waste been removed.
Another scam was Kior. Woodchip to gasoline. That went belly up too after millions of US taxpayers money was wasted.
Carnot
Add to it that plants close their stoma at higher CO2 reducing water vapor which is a much higher GHG than CO2. That’s why deserts freeze at night and the tropics are miserable. This article misses that effect and focuses only on cloud reduction and albedo effects.
https://www.mpg.de/6337430/carbon-dioxide-climate-change-clouds
As you have rightly stated CO2 warming is nonlinear however warmer air can increase water vapor. Negative feedback loops and the ocean is taking a hit right now so we really don’t know what we don’t know. It could simply be to much heat that can’t be dissipated quickly enough.
Ya know 75 yrs ago we were promised flying cars and nuclear aircraft and it didn’t happen!
And now the US is producing the most oil and gas ever, remember when “we were told oil production was about to peak” and it didn’t!
That’s like saying people have been talking about oil depletion for 100 yrs and it’s still coming out of the ground so oil must not be a depleting resource, we keep finding “more”.
Aren’t you the least bit embarassed attempting such a flawed argument?
Not sure what your point is. Have you been drinking the cellulosic ethanol?
My point is that “We were promised..” is not an accurate representation of any kind of scientific paper 30 yrs ago or now. Do you whine when representing factual matters in your business?
“Aren’t you the least bit embarassed attempting such a flawed argument?”
Hah. That doesn’t register to some posters here. Maga.
Ervin-
You’re so impatient. And near-sighted.
Richard
Try these on for size. Ice free summers in the Arctic, it will never snow again in the UK, island nations going under the oceans. None have occurred. All the while countries pushing for a renewable power system are becoming poorer and poorer with ever more expensive electricity . The poorest, sickest and most vulnerable people on the planet are the ones with the least access to fossil fuels.
So when did you discover Popular Science magazine wasn’t about science?
Try these on for size. Ice free summers in the Arctic, it will never snow again in the UK, island nations going under the oceans. None have occurred.
Reference?
Seems to me that those are things that are predicted for later in this century if BAU continues, usually modified with words like “might”, “could” or “possible”, not as things that are supposed to have happened.
To be more accurate, none have occurred… yet
You must be one of those people who can only see what’s directly in front of you. Sad
Renewables helping China to halve power prices compared to US, Europe
The idea that renewables are helping to keep electricity prices is the polar opposite of what the naysayers claim. I guess this proves that these :analysts” don’t have a clue about reality! /sarc
Prices in China will be what the Party (CCP) wants the prices to be. To believe otherwise is foolish.
Spot on. CCP economics. Not the real world.
The EIA reports that 18% of new cars in America are plugins now.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61004
And?
Alimbiquated,
The 18% number includes hybrids, plugin hybrids, and BEVs.
oops sorry
I’ll be more impressed when the Fed gas tax goes up 17 cents to make up for inflation, another ten cents for public transit and a dollar over five years to affect vehicle choice and usage.
Commercial-Scale Demonstration of a First-of-a-Kind
Enhanced Geothermal System
Jack H. Norbecka and Timothy M. Latimer
https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/5704/download/11142/
Can any of the oil drillers comment on this?
A 3.5Mw test system.
Having successfully completed the drilling, completion, and
well construction phase of the project, we have demonstrated that
currently no technical barriers exist to developing horizontal well
geothermal drilling programs in high-temperature, hard rock set-
tings. The project was completed using drilling and completions
tools and technology that already commonly exist in the indus-
try. Reservoir simulation forecasts and history matching were
able to replicate key reservoir response observations, indicating
that physics-based modeling can effectively be used to evaluate
reservoir performance of horizontal well geothermal systems.
From another site, there was a comment
“Fervo Energy (the geothermal start-up that Google partnered with) is founded by an ex oil/gas drilling engineer who decided to take all the lessons learned by oil/gas of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing over the last 20 years and apply to geothermal.”
Defintely possible but the amount of heat recovered is 3.5MW which does not mean lot. If that is 3.5 MWh that is around 12 MMBTU per hour. Decide your cost of gas – say $2 MMBTu and you have hot water costing $24 per hour. What is the temp and pressure of the water. It looks marginal to me, very marginal. What is the cost of the well. It looks like a row of beans has more value.
I see you didn’t read the paper.
It would be nice to get an opinion from someone who had done this kind of drilling.
I was reading recently that the queue for interconnection with the grid is much shorter in Texas where ERCOT has a different philosophy than other US grid operators. Seems the rest of the US could learn from what Texas is doing and should implement some of those policies. If we want to ramp up renewable power the long interconnection queue needs to be addressed.
Europe also does this much better than in the US, with the exception of ERCOT.
Dennis, What have you been smoking. The EU charging infrastructure is nothing but a joke. EV’s are being charged by diesel generators because the grid is so limited. New houses and data centres have created asuch a load tha new connections are impossible. We re running along a knife edge. Oh, and by the way EV sale are below 15% and are likely to stay that way. The EV bubble has run its course. Fires, range and waste of time are all having their toll. Re-sale value. – oops. The next big bust
Carnot,
See
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/whats-next-in-interconnection-reform-lessons-from-international-experience/
EVs have little to do with this discussion, it is about ramping up electricity generation, particularly non-fossil fuel power plants.
There was plenty of resistance to ICEV, but we don’t see many horses used for transport today. The ICEV will be looked back on as horses are today.
On Europe using oil for electric power, in 2022 it was about 1.35% of electric power being generated using oil (Statistical Review of World Energy).
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
Maybe you should look at the consumption of gas and coal in electricity production in the EU. You might learn something. Oil disappeared years ago. Try Gridwatch for the UK.
I drive a hybrid vehicle. Have done done for 14 years, but I will not be buying BEV any time soon, and neither will most Brits.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. – Disraeli. Always best to check your data, including the Permian basin EUR’s. The Permian is not a homogenous sugar cube.
Carnot,
It was you who mentioned burning distillate for electricity so I looked at oil consumption for electricity production as last I checked most distillate fuel is produced from crude oil.
Yes the Permian is not homogeneous, I use overall average well profiles as I don’t have time to do individual well profiles for 45 thousand wells.
The model is not perfect, but a 0.9981 correlation coefficient from Jan 2014 to August 2023 is not bad for such a simple model.
Dennis,
I do not remember the actual reference. What type of distillate were you referring to?
All distillate fuels are derived form crude oil ( there are some minor exceptions). The are typically referred to as light distillate boiling range about 0- 180, middle distillate 180 -370, and heavy distillate 370+ ( which sometimes has a yield at 565) all units deg C. A gas turbine, can just about run on anything – light and middle distillates with minimal upgrading. Some gas gas turbines can run on hevy distillate but this is not that common as fouling can occur. When I was working in KSA there was a plan to tun GE GT generating sets on crude oil. To my knowledge this was never done and they ran on diesel instead.
Middle distillate is generally cut around 230 deg. The light fraction is jet -kerosine and the heavy 230+ fraction diesel/ gas oil.
There is very little oil used for power generation in the UK Generating sets that are used for temporary purposes and in isolated locations are not counted. In any case they are relatively small.
I make models, mainly for process units such as refineries and steam crackers . They never correct because the data available is simply very limited but it gives a useful idea.
You are attempting to forecast the future based on data that you have averaged across many thousands of wells. This is where the problem lies as you are not necessarily seeing real time data correlation. Much depends on what and when the owner/ operator reports and it is hard to synchronize the data from many different sources.Worse still you are dealing with the vagaries of sedimentation 1000′ s of feet below, and now with ultra long laterals that have significant variability in terms of trajectory and mineral composition You might have an R2 of 0.9981 but I do not believe it, mainly because I am not sure of the actual reported data. The DPR has even worse issues with accuracy.
Time will tell who is correct but the story that productivity has gone up due to longer laterals is a bit misleading. What really matters is the GOR, and shale wells depend on solution gas drive. Ultra high rates of production are very bad for EUR, and that looks suspiciously what is happening in the Permian. The bubble point cometh.
Carnot,
I am using distillate as in middle distillate, I should have said diesel fuel.
See
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-november-27-2023/#comment-766536
you said diesel generators, so I looked at oil use for producing electricity.
You can believe what you like, the data comes from Novilabs
https://novilabs.com/blog/permian-update-through-july-2023/
The model is a simple a convolution of wells completed and average well productivity
Link to an older model for Bakken (from 2014)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398Umd3RUJhNE9vbzQ/edit?usp=sharing
An older post where charts are gone at link below
https://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-field-models-decline-rates-convolution/
Like all models it simplifies reality and is imperfect, the first time I saw this type of model at the oil drum, I didn’t believe it could work. I was wrong.
Carnot,
People have been talking about the bubble point of death for about 5 years. I will believe it is important when the data reveals it. Well productivity will decrease in the future, at what rate is unknown. I have been predicting such a decrease in average well productivity since about October 2013, see
https://oilpeakclimate.blogspot.com/2013/10/exploring-future-bakken-decrease-in.html
Eventually I will be right about this, perhaps in 2023 (we won’t have good data to confirm this until late 2024). We also cannot predict future completion rates or much of anything about the future.
Carnot,
From Statistical Review of World Energy
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
Natural Gas and Coal Power consumption 2010 to 2022
I have learned that consumption is falling, as I expected.
Dennis,
Does the Statistical Review adjust for changes in generation efficiency over time? Germany and China have both been closing old, inefficient plants at the same time new, more efficient plants have been built. So if no adjustments are made for efficiency then current coal consumption will be overestimated.
Nick,
Yes they assume average power plant efficiency increases over time from 2001 to 2022 with a linear increase from 40% in 2017 to 45% in 2050. They assume from 1965 to 2000 that efficiency is constant at 36%.
Dennis,
Could you point me to that reference?
Thanks.
Nick it is the last tabs of the Spreadsheet for the 2023 report (tab is labelled “Methodology” which can be found at link below.
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
or
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/resources-and-data-downloads
The specific numbers used for 2001 to 2022 are in the Approximate Conversion factors tab
Screenshot, 2001 is 36.2%
Well, that’s a conversion factor for renewable power: it gives you estimated primary power to allow comparisons with FF.
But it doesn’t tell us what they use for coal.
Nick,
That is correct, I believe they use the amount of coal actually consumed for all uses, they don’t break out the amount of coal specifically burned in coal fired power plants. These are the average efficiencies of all fossil fuel power plants at the World level. It is necessarily an approximation.
42% Of New Cars In Netherlands Now Plugin Cars!
EVs Take 26.5% Share In France — Dacia Springs Up
Last time I checked 16.7% was not “below 15%”. Curious to know where you are getting your market data from. I will continue to monitor Clean Technica’s EV sales archive with interest.
Sure monitor the right data source. Try the ACEA website ( automoitice industry )which posts sales figures each month, quarter and year to date. Have a good read, because numbers matter not % ‘s. BEV’s sales are about 15%, PHEV 10% which do not realy count, because few people plug them in. Gasoline sales increased to 60+% includes gasoline and hybrids.
Sorry, but the consensus is looking like EU BEV sales have peaked or near peak. Why are Tesla slashing prices and most of the OEM’s loosing their shirts on EV’s. No-one wants them. Profits or lack say it all. Time will tell. 2024 will be a graveyard for leasing companies. You heard it here but all I am doing is stating what is already well known.
>>In almost all major markets, BEV sales grew far more than the total light vehicle market.
https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/de/en/industries/automotive/electric-vehicle-sales-review-2023-q2.html
PHEV 10% which do not realy count
LOL
How can something that is growing 50% yoy be “peaking”? And this is the US which is the laggard in developed nations in adopting EVs. Would you care to modify your asinine comment, Carnot?
“EV sales surged 49.8% compared to last year, increasing 5% from the 298,039 sold in Q2.“
https://electrek.co/2023/10/12/ev-sales-7-9-us-market-volvo-mercedes-hyundai-gain/#:~:text=EV sales have now expanded,the 298,039 sold in Q2.
As someone who has primarily driven an EV for the last decade and follows the industry closely, I will suggest that now is a not a good time to buy an EV. The price for EVs is likely to drop significantly over the next 2-3 years and the product will improve as competition increases and economies of scale set in. The industry needs standardized charging equipment. This should occur by 2025. I purchased a Nissan Leaf new in 2022 and the fast charging port on it will soon be obsolete, which is a major bummer. Tesla is led by a megalomaniac asshole so buying one of those is also suspect. Lithium prices have dropped dramatically but this hasn’t made its way into car costs yet. Chinese models will put huge pressure on the industry globally and the result will be better cars at lower prices. I still enjoy my car and the savings in fuel costs and maintenance pays for the majority of my car payments even with current gas prices. But in general they’re not quite ready for prime time.
I’ve been driving a PHEV Chevy Volt since 2016. It defaults to EV mode when starting so if there’s juice it’s an EV. I don’t keep careful track any longer but through the end of 2020 only 18% of my mileage was using gasoline. I take fewer long trips now so the % of gasoline milege is almost certainly less. Where did you get data saying “few people plug them in”. Why buy it then? The car is really more pleasant to drive as an EV.
Yes Dennis…here an article talking about that from just the other day
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/connect-and-manage-grid-interconnection-ferc-ercot-transmission-planning/698949/
Somebody might learn something by reading.
something I was not aware of. which might in part explain the pretty transparent effort by Israel to push the Palestinians out of Gaza – the old Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste plan…
Per the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
…’The new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the Levant Basin, amounting to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas at a net value of $453 billion (in 2017 prices) and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil at a net value of about $71 billion, offer an opportunity to distribute and share a total of about $524 billion among the different parties’….
https://unctad.org/publication/economic-costs-israeli-occupation-palestinian-people-unrealized-oil-and-natural-gas
Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have the same philosophy “It’s all ours”. Hence the Palestinian manrra “From the river to the sea”. Just two weeks ago or so Netanyahu said basically the same thing on TV. It’s not only about resources it’s a culture war to the death.
Some thoughts on copper.
As of today, November 29th 2023, the copper futures price is $3.80 (USD/lb). It first reached this price in February 2008. Can we say the price has been flat for the last 15 years? Not exactly, the 15 year mean is about $3.25. Wouldn’t we expect it to be higher given the demand for copper from EVs? And (as Hideaway points out) the continuing declining percentage of copper present in the ore leading to higher extraction and processing costs? Peak price was $4.95 in February 2022.
Production: copper mine production is up 37% from 2010.
Recycling: new copper contains between 30% and 50% recycled copper. (estimates vary). Copper is the third most recycled metal after steel and aluminium.
Only about 12 percent of known worldwide copper resources have been mined so far. ~ PolyMet mining.
Thanks for that. Do you know how much the ore grade has changed by over time?
WP, a few days ago, Hideaway said ore grade has gone from 5% 100 years ago down to 0.2% today. Sorry, I have no idea of the curve in between those dates. Amazing that copper is still so cheap!
Perhaps because fossil fuels are still so cheap? Just guessing . . .
I found something:
https://earth-investment.com/en/insight/grade-decline-at-the-worlds-largest-copper-mine/
and
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/5/4/36/htm
No He didn’t…. the 0.2% reference was about the grade that would need to be mined on average to build the ‘renewable future’ that people envision, over the next few decades, and falling below that grade on average.
Current average copper grades are around 0.5-0.6%, though there are some mines like the giant Aitik mine in Northern Sweden, inside the arctic circle that are mining around 0.2% Cu. Aitik copper mine is the perfect example of copper extraction using electricity. They have very cheap hydro and nuclear power (around 3.7c/Kwh), so use electricity for everything possible.
Over the last 30 odd years the average copper grade has halved from around the 1.2% level.
Calvo and Mudd did a study on energy use in copper mining and found a 30% increase in production from 2003-13 came with a 46% increase in energy use..
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/5/4/36/pdf?version=1478507459
Prior to 1905, when the first commercial flotation was used to separate minerals from waste at Broken Hill, the ore mined was at much higher grades. Flotation was a huge technology advancement in mineral extraction. It is still the most used method for separation and allows for much lower grades of ore to be used compared to the old gravity separation.
Flotation is an excellent method for copper extraction as over 90% of copper in the ore is liberated. However when the grade gets too low, estimated at around 0.15% copper the percent recovery starts to fall rapidly..
New solar installations to hit 413 GW this year, says BloombergNEF
High interest rates, inflation,high sticker prices, and uncertain economic circumstances are unquestionably weighing heavily on renewable energy in general and on offshore wind in particular.
It’s my belief that before too long, the pendulum will swing the other way, with oil and gas prices going up, while in the meantime, the prices of these fuels are likely to go up quite a bit due to this same inflation, and these same high interest rates having the effect of reducing investment in oil and gas production.
Furthermore, depletion never sleeps, and the world wide political landscape is such that at least three or four countries are big enough exporters to create a supply crisis if for some reason they wish to do so.
I look for electric car and truck sales to continue to grow on a global basis in the short term, and take off like a rocket in the USA and Europe within the next four or five years, once the manufacturers start making some that are competitive on price.
Higher gas and oil production costs are likewise to eventually result in offshore wind being competitively priced.
From my side of the pond here is the link to the ACEA website – EU vehicle registrations
https://www.acea.auto/nav/?content=press-releases&tag=registrations-of-vehicles
This is rich source of information , if you have the time. It is all there even by type. Just go and explore. Overall sales are subdued. BEV are not quite !5% of lacklustre sales. You can, if you are smart , see the legacy fleet.. Its up to you how you wish to consider the facts, but the reality is, in the EU, EV sales are growing slowly , if at all in terms of real numbers.
Would you trust Cleantenica over the ACEA.? Answers please. Only if you subscribe to Michael Mann , the number fiddler.
Here’s what ACEA says:
“In August 2023, EU battery-electric car registrations surged by 118.1%, reaching 165,165 units, accounting for 21% of the market. Except for Malta (-22.6%), all EU markets saw double- and triple-digit percentage growth, with Germany, the largest market by volume, growing by a remarkable 170.7%. Belgium recorded the highest growth rate of 224.5%. Overall, battery-electric car sales increased by a significant 62.7%, with nearly 1 million units registered from January to August.”
“In August, the EU petrol car market slightly increased by 2.1%, although its market share decreased from 38.7% to 32.7% compared to August last year.”
https://www.acea.auto/files/20230920_PRPC_2308_FINAL.pdf
Nick G
You look at one month and cherry pick the data. August is always a high month for new cars. Look at the quarter, year to date, and when it is published the complete year. If you search the news you will see a pie chart with the breakdown and you can choose what time period. You can also see the history and each individual producers sales and some sales by model, as the link that you posted shows. There is a lot of data. If you look at overall sales over the past five years they are well down averaging about 10 million cars per year. The fact remains that the penetration of BEV’s is lagging forecasts. PHEV sales are not growing and the major growth is in HEV’s which are grabbing more more of the declining diesel market than BEV’s, and gasoline consumption is rising slightly.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Disraeli
PHEVs in Germany are mostly a tax evasion scheme – many of them are never or seldom loaded.
See it in my company directly and not only in media.
When driven on fuel, most of these cars use more than pure fuel cars due to lot’s of extra weight – they are not the original Toyota Prius which is designed for conversing fuel.
We made a small, not representative test:
Colleague: 4.5 KWH and 6.4 liter of Diesel / 100 KM with his PHEV which he loads for short travel but needs to drive often long trips.
Me: 5.9 Liter of Diesel / no KWH in my conventional car.
EULENSPEIL
I agree that your test is unrepresentitive.
I usually take a 700 mile round trip once a year to visit an old buddy (at a race track to reminisce about our years as racers). I take the Chevy Volt and switch it to all gasoline for the freeway trip as the thing only goes about 40-50 mile per charge depending on the outside temperature. I have consistently obtained 40 miles per gallon (5.9 l/km?) of gasoline with freeway driving. The car records and displays the mpg and I rather obsessivly record it on paper as I always did when I drove gas powered cars. Tne numbers match so I’m pretty confident they are correct.
You don’t mention what the brand and model of your friend’s car is but he should have bought a Chevrolet.
I bought the Volt because I thought the concept was brilliant and it was too soon for pure EV driving, even here in crazy California. I think I have been proven correct on both counts. For today’s conditions the PHEV still seems like an ideal combination. Since I only drive about 7,000 miles per year I suspect the Volt will last my entire lifetime.
The fact remains that the penetration of BEV’s is lagging forecasts.
This is pretty much bullshit. No doubt anyone can find a forecast to back your claim, or one that undermines it.
As Dennis likes to say, all models are wrong.
The interesting question is not past perception or prediction, but reality. And the reality is double or even triple digit growth, which means the market is wide open.
In the UK, YTD sales of BEVs are up 34% for a 16% market share. This is 10 months of data, not a cherry picked isolated month.
Alibiquated and John Norris
Try reading this link. I do not think its fiction. It fits with many another sources of EV sales
https://evvoiceofthecustomer.com/
It fits with many other articles on EV’s.
The UK EV’s sales are mainly business vehicles which have been taken up by business drivers under a salary sacrifice scheme, saving on the BIK tax that applies to company cars. They are a productivity killer as a colleague of mine will tell you, and the rapid public chargers are dearer per km than ultra taxed diesel or gasoline. There are very few private buyers of BEV’s in the UK.
By 2030, now 2035, all cars sold in the UK and EU are supposed to be BEV’s That means 100% adoption and yet we are only seeing 1 car in 6.25 sold as a BEV this year imainly to leasing companies. How much will it grow next year? We are 11 years away from BEV Armageddon. I simply do not see it happening, mainly because the technology is immature. In the UK Tesla does not have a good reliability record ( Source Which magazine). I think it is too complicated. The more high tech that is crammed into these vehicle, then the more likely that reliability goes down. As these vehicles come on the to the second hand market there are going to be few buyers willing to take the risk on a used battery. 5 years ago I nearly bought and EV. I am sure glad I did not.
But the real kicker is that there is no power grid in the heavily populated countries of the west that could cope with 100% BEV’s. and it will take years to do the upgrades necessary.
Oh, and by the way the BEV sales YTS- Jan-September ( 9 months) the sales were 14% of registration 14.8% in September.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Disraeli
https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-registrations-9-2-in-september-battery-electric-14-8-market-share/
Carnot, my friend, Nick used your own source to show that EV sales are up 63%. Yet you continue with the EV sales have peaked theme. That stupid Disraeli quote. It’s all so pathetic. Get a new hobby dude.
“According to The Phrase Finder, the earliest known citation of the expression in close to its current form is by Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, as quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 29th June 1892: “there are three kinds of falsehoods, lies, damned lies and statistics.”
https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/211/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics#:~:text=According to The Phrase Finder,, damned lies and statistics.”
You look at one month and cherry pick the data. August is always a high month
Read the source more carefully. Heck, read my comment more carefully: it’s 63% year-over-year BEV growth for the year to date through August.
You guys are just looking at things differently. Both things can be true, new car registrations YTD can be 15% while at the same time YOY growth in EVs sold can be up by 63%. The growth rate in EV sales is rapid, but currently the over all share of EV sales is relatively small.
Let’s say 15 of every 100 cars sold is an EV and EV sales grow at 50% per year for 5 years (which they have Worldwide for 5 years or more), then we have 22.5, 33.75, 50.6, 75.9, and year 5 growth would need to be less than 50% because we can’t have more than 100% of new car sales as BEVs.
I do not think it will go that fast, the rate of growth will slow over time so that it might be 10 years to reach 100% of new car sales as EVs and another 15 years beyond that until 99% of the light duty vehicle fleet is BEV.
Well, the argument that I was responding to was that BEV sales growth had stalled at 15% market share.
For which there is no evidence…
NickG,
It is amusing how people talk past each other, that was simply my point. I agree there is little evidence that EV sales have stopped increasing.
Yeah, I agree on both things.
It is completely amazing how much people talk past each other. People talk a lot, but they don’t listen much.
Where do you think Clean Technica gets their data from? I’m pretty sure its’s the same source you are citing. Here’s the latest post from 11 hours ago as of the time of this comment:
Volkswagen Group Shines, But Volkswagen Disappoints — Europe EV Sales Report
A report on the largest vehicle market in the world from four weeks ago (the October report should be coming out soon):
25% BEV Share In China! — China EV Sales Report
You can pick them to pieces all you want it doesn’t really matter. In the largest car market in the world battery electric vehicles are steadily gaining market share.
Not sure how I came upon this, maybe I’m reposting something I found here. Anyway y’all know the saying “The map is not the terrain”. Seems like a lot of people have a hard time understanding that because a map has errors doesn’t mean the whole map is in error or the task of map making is futile.
Recalibration of the Limits To Growth Model. 2023
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442#:~:text=The%20main%20effect%20of%20the,urban%2Dindustrial%20land%20development%20time.
“ 4.3 Future trends
So far, the results have mainly been considered in comparison with the empirical data for the recalibration. However, the course of the variables is also interesting in terms of future trends. Here, the model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and industrial agriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer sustainable. Pollution lags behind industrial growth and does not peak until the end of the century. Peaks are followed by sharp declines in several characteristics.
This interconnected collapse, or, as it has been called by Heinberg and Miller (2023), polycrisis, occurring between 2024 and 2030 is caused by resource depletion, not pollution. The increase in environmental pollution occurs later and with a lower peak (Figure 3).”
Leeg
Many thanks for the link. As someone who has followed this topic for nearly 5 decades it is good to see the revised data set. . Not that it really changes anything but it sure looks tough going forward. The only way I can see the population leveling off is due to starvation- we have already reached 8 billion which is a small overshoot – and that is what the model indicates. A few years either way makes no difference to the end result.
1970 we were just getting a handle on various kinds of pollution that muck up fast growth so according to the recalibration it’ll be resource limits crashing the party first with “pollution” (and climate change) following second. My $.02 is that without preparing for depowering so that fossil fuels can be diverted to transitional power infrastructure we’ll do “all of the above” which will simply strip resources faster.
In aggregate it’ll be like choosing to jump off a five story building instead of a four story. There’s gotta be more survivors at four story compared to five.
The Club of Rome Limits to Growth study is sometimes presented as evidence for an inevitable collapse. But…it’s not. It’s simply an analysis of what it might look like if we DID hit resource limits.
It’s a very, very simple model. It has one variable called non-renewable resources, which in a recent revision is explicitly modeled on fossil fuels. There is no provision for wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc. The only renewable resource is agriculture: “Non-renewable resources, measured in resource units Meadows et al. (1972), include all non-renewable resources on Earth… In order to provide suitable and accurate data, fossil fuel consumption is chosen. Although this proxy does not include metal resources, it is the most appropriate and available data.“ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442
“Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful.…The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them” (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 94).” http://wtf.tw/ref/costanza.pdf
Meadows was right – the Club of Rome LTG models were not predictions, they weren’t forecasts: they were *scenarios* that assumed limits to growth, and simply modeled the dynamics we’d see in the model outputs when the economy hits those limits. Basically, they modeled “overshoot” – what happens when there are lags, delays and positive feedback between between the points of hitting limits and seeing the results in the economy.
Most of all, they *assumed* limits to growth – they didn’t prove that those limits existed. Perhaps more importantly, if limits exist the model didn’t show *when* they would occur.
Sadly, Dennis Meadows has forgotten this basic fact, or chooses to not remember it, and lately has been talking as if those scenarios were in fact forecasts, and discussing how close they came to reality. In fact, the overshoot modeled in those scenarios has not been seen in any way – so far the world economy is pretty much simply growing in the same exponential way as before.
The Club of Rome models did do us a service, by showing us what overshoot might look like, and showing us the impact of lags and delays. This appears to be relevant to Climate Change, though probably not relevant to Peak Fossil Fuels – for Fossil Fuel, the lags, delays and positive feedbacks that might impair mitigating the impact of a peak are much smaller and shorter.
They assumed the Earth isn’t infinite?
What.
You seem fixated on resources and miss the big pollution problem, y’know, the one we’re seeing on a global scale now as predicted.
“If limits exist”? What, exactly, is the alternative?
Numbskulls thinking we can carry on as we are, but via renewables because Reagan said the only limit is human ingenuity.
A dementia addled actor is the leading mind for modern neoliberal thought.
Interesting that the paper comes from a renewable energy institute. The first index that seems to be turning over is human welfare, anecdotal evidence would certainly support that. It seems clear that the model is under estimating the importance of pollution: climate change, micro plastics, estrogenic chemicals etc. are becoming highly disruptive. The biggest disruptive and unpredictable social effect is going to be rapidly growing mass migration of climate and conflict refugees and economic aspirants, and it’s going to be huge.
Interesting that the paper comes from a renewable energy institute.
George, I couldn’t find that info for the authors. Could you point me to it?
The Apes are meeting to “decide” what to “do” about CO2 emissions and climate change.
They are doing what Apes have always done, what they have evolved to do: “chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter about shmatta, shmatta, shmatta.”
We have to choose between the bureaucrats, the politicians and the technocrats to make whole-world sized decisions. The most compelling argument is to choose the politicans so we do. If they are doing their job they follow the advice of the technocrats. as they did (eventually )for CFCs, acid rain, smog and Y2K. Compared to those problems the climate change “eventually” seems to be staying a long way in the future even thought the stakes are so much higher.
November saw the highest monthly temperature anomaly ever recorded, beating September by 0.03 degrees. If December comes in similarly then 2023 will have reached the Paris threshold of 1.5 above pre-industrial. To the hundreds of millions so far affected by, supposedly, once in however many years heat waves, droughts, floods, fires and storms, this threshold might now seem less “safe” than has been asserted, e.g. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231128-climate-crises-drove-27-million-into-hunger-in-2022-charity and https://www.france24.com/en/video/20231129-death-toll-from-kenya-floods-surges-as-thousands-left-homeless
If temperatures continue to rise in parallel with 2015, as they have been doing but at a higher level because the EEI is so much higher now, then some days in February and March are going to be close to unliveable in some parts of the southern tropics. After that, in theory, things should cool a little for a few months, but it is becoming apparent that we have disrupted the earth systems so much and so fast that previous patterns are becoming less reliable as a guide for the future.
The large jump in temperatures this year may or may not indicate passing a tipping point but it has been highly non-linear and unpredicted. Such volatility is going to get worse as the warming trend continues (in fact is accelerating) and will be the principal cause for the coming concurrent crop basket failures that will signal one of the next major steps in civilisation’s collapse.
What is probably most worrying is that the proportional jump in sea surface temperature anomalies this year is higher than that for the near surface atmospheric temperatures, and they seem to be rising faster. So there are huge amounts of energy available for transfer to create storms, evaporate water vapour and supercharge the hydrological cycles (hence floods, droughts, feedback to even more warming etc.). This is directly related to the increase of EEI (most of the energy goes into the oceans, particularly in the southern hemisphere during its summer) but, I suspect, it is also highly affected by the slow down in the southern ocean overturning circulation, which means less heat is being taken down into the deeper waters. This is related to loss of Antarctic sea ice and is only going to get worse as various feedbacks kick in. In any case unless the EEI starts coming down pretty soon and pretty fast, as a result of long wave radiation increases from a hotter surface overcoming GHG blanketing and albedo changes, then it’s game over no matter what.
And, a team of scientists has found that carbon dioxide becomes a more potent greenhouse gas as more is released into the atmosphere.
CARBON DIOXIDE BECOMES MORE POTENT AS CLIMATE CHANGES
“Our finding means that as the climate responds to increases in carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide itself becomes a more potent greenhouse gas,” said the study’s senior author Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the Rosenstiel School.
In this study, the researchers used state-of-the-art climate models and other tools to analyze the effect increasing CO2 has on a region of the upper atmosphere—known as the stratosphere—that scientists have long known cools with increasing CO2 concentrations. They found that this stratosphere cooling causes subsequent increases in CO2 to have a larger heat-trapping effect than previous increases, causing carbon dioxide to become more potent as a greenhouse gas. The amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere from a proportionate increase in CO2, which scientists call radiative forcing, has long been thought of as a constant that does not change over time. “This new finding shows that the radiative forcing is not constant but changes as the climate responds to increases in carbon dioxide,”
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-carbon-dioxide-potent-climate.html
I have my doubts on that due to the study of leaves. They take in CO2, sequester the carbon, and breathe out pure oxygen. Their transpiration also powers an evaporation cooling effect that lets the oxygen rich cooler air sink, which is why swamps and woody areas have cool, fresh squeezed oxygen air that people generally like. The plant growth that drives this process most effectively happens best at about 2000 ppm CO2, obviously a level that will not be within reach any time soon.
Doug
In the last thread you posted a nice chart of carbon dioxide concentration versus global temperature rise in response to a paper I posted on the logarithmic approach to estimating the total warming to be expected from carbon dioxide. On closer examination of the graph, I realized that the warming contributions from methane, nitrogen oxides and halogenated hydrocarbons were not recognized, but especially in recent decades have been a rapidly increasing factor in total warming. If the effect of these gasses were to be added to the plot you posted, then the temperature rise attributed to carbon dioxide alone would show a decreasing slope in recent times ( exactly what the logarithmic approach defines). We are rapidly approaching the saturation point for the narrow infrared wavelengths that carbon dioxide interacts with, recognizable as the elbow in the logarithmic curve. Extrapolation of the straight line in the graph you posted is not justified unless one postulates monstrous increases in the contribution from methane and other gasses.
A simple example:
Suppose you add a one inch layer of insulation to your house – over the next year you will save X joules of energy
One year from now, you add another inch of insulation and your savings will be not 2X joules, but a lesser amount, say (2X – a)
Two years and you add another inch for savings of ( 3X -(a+b))
As the years go by you reach a point where savings are miniscule. Logarithmic asymptote.
The paper you posted today is interesting, new to me but I would point out that more than 90% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide is below the stratosphere ( which makes it kind of like adding a higher ‘R’ value material to the 90th layer of insulation on your house)
Another paper for your consideration
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-climate-data-driven-major-goal.html
My personal view is that if the wheels stay on the wagon long enough humans will burn every bit of the fuels they can lay their hands on, resulting in somewhat above a two degree total temperature increase.
As countries become more affluent, they move towards less pollution:
Nick your chart is interesting. But it has absolutely nothing to do with affluence,
Countries prioritize “nice-to-haves” like nature and you know, being able to breathe, as they become more affluent. That’s why the US and Europe have reduced coal consumption, and why China is starting to. It’s also why India, not so much.
Affluent” countries are simply “exporting” their pollution by sending their manufacturing to other (mostly un-developed) countries.
Seen any quantitative evidence of that?
FARMER
12/01/2023 at 11:17 pm
“That’s why China is starting to [reduce coal consumption]” – Nick G
Nope, wrong again:
“In March 2023 both China and India set new monthly [coal production] records, with China surpassing 400 million tons…
Coal production and coal consumption are not the same thing.
Consumption = Production + Imports
World coal:
GLOBAL COAL DEMAND SET TO REMAIN AT RECORD LEVELS IN 2023
Global coal consumption climbed to a new all-time high in 2022 and will stay near that record level this year as strong growth in Asia for both power generation and industrial applications outpaces declines in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA’s latest market update.
Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record, according to the IEA’s mid-year Coal Market Update, which was published today. In 2023 and 2024, small declines in coal-fired power generation are likely to be offset by rises in industrial use of coal, the report predicts, although there are wide variations between geographic regions.
https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-set-to-remain-at-record-levels-in-2023
Weird. What direction would you say that tail is going?
Don’t worry, Nick. I’m sure by 2030 everyone will be driving EVs powered only by solar and wind, produce no pollution whatsoever from manufacturing these things, in a limitless growth environment that is the global economy of feel good tourism for all the nature that certainly won’t be despoiled (the affluence will make nature grow stronger).
OLD CHEMIST —
“My personal view is that if the wheels stay on the wagon long enough humans will burn every bit of the fuels they can lay their hands on, resulting in somewhat above a two degree total temperature increase.”
I hope you are wrong for the sake of all the critters who live on this planet.
So, do you agree that the nations of the world should make it a top priority to transition away from oil, gas & coal as quickly as possible?
No, I think the nations of the world should burn every tonne of coal they can dig up and every barrel of oil they can extract as quickly as possible. They should also vent every gram of methane from every natural gas well, all in an experiment to see how high we can raise earth’s temperature and also to kill as many plants and animals as quickly as possible. All in the name of science of course.
Doug,
Your comment is obviously meant to be interpreted as irony (or sarcasm), which would mean you agree with a fast transition away from fossil fuels.
And yet…you have often criticized the primary alternatives: wind, solar, electric transportation. Climatologists will tell you that fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change, yet when a transition is discussed you have diverted the discussion to other problems, like species extinction. When people like Islandboy highlight successes in that transition you try to shoot them down by pointing to apparent contrary evidence. Just now I pointed to success in reducing coal consumption, and you tried to refute it (the IEA and Energy Review numbers conflict, and we don’t know which is correct, but we certainly have a plateau).
So…you can see why your position is unclear.
Yes, we should move to making the largest mining operation in Earth’s history our goal as we effortlessly glide towards the renewable future that has zero impact on the environment.
Bing bong, so simple.
Farmer,
The Nick’s coal chart ends in 2022 not 2021.
See
https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/energy-charting-tool/energy-charting-tool
screenshot below for World Coal Consumption in EJ, in 2022 it was 161.47 EJ and in 2014 it was 161.49 EJ, so a very slight decrease since the peak in 2014 based on this data source (Statistical Review of World Energy 2023) considered by many as the premiere source for such data.
Click on chart for larger view.
Data below for World Coal Consumption in Exajoules
2010 150.97
2011 158.03
2012 158.48
2013 160.81
2014 161.49
2015 157.21
2016 153.77
2017 155.27
2018 157.66
2019 156.72
2020 152.04
2021 160.43
2022 161.47
Farmer,
2023 is expected to have similar consumption levels as 2022. If that forecast is correct then World coal consumption would be less than the peak in 2014. The reduction in very small, but if the numbers are correct, it is less.
“My personal view is that if the wheels stay on the wagon long enough humans will burn every bit of the fuels they can lay their hands on, resulting in somewhat above a two degree total temperature increase.”
I agree.
The earth’s energy imbalance sets the rate of temperature rise (as some combination of land, oceans and atmosphere and ignoring minor latent heat effects from ice melt and increased evaporation). Since 2003 the averaged measured EEI has been rising approximately linearly, hence the temperature has been rising approximately quadrilaterally. Therefore although the direct causal relation from CO2 to warming is logarithmic (sub linear) the actual correlation is super linear and accelerating because of other GHGs and the net impact of various feedbacks.
This is, in any case, just another bullshit denier straw man . Scientists do not assume a linear relationship. Even the simplified back-of-the-envelope equation from NASA is logarithmic. The earth sensitivity is always couched in logarithmic language (i.e. doubling CO2 gives a linear temperature rise). The logarithmic relationship between concentrations and other thermodynamic propertiess is implicit and deeply ingrained in chemists, physicists, chemical engineers etc. ways of working. To say otherwise is just a cowardly, passive-aggressive denier way of calling them all incompetent.
I think I have a pretty good technical background but I have been out of school for 45 years so maybe I forgot a bit. Even so like most technical folks I suppose, I’ve looked at the climate change science enough to think that the experts say makes sense. We should worry.
But you can double check that by asking yourself who is arguing against it too. Do you trust that corner?
No.
Searching for organizations opposed to the science you largely find political organizations, not technical societies. And the political organizations, no surprise, largely come from right wing groups with relationships to the ff industry.
My favorite though, is the Heartland Institute. Remember them? They are the sweethearts who made their bones defending the tobacco industry not by offering factual proof that tobacco use was not harmful but by denigrating the scientists who have done the work and by casting doubt about the science itself. When Heartland started publishing climate “doubt” their oil connections were obvious. As public interest in the topic grew Heartland’s finances became more obscure but their basic ethic has not changed since we were taught to believe that there was no harm in smoking. They shill for money.
There are a few scientists who I will give credit for being sincere and, yes, once in a while the minority opinion turns out to be right. Unless you a scientist whose expertise is climate science the safe bet is with the majority of the world’s scientists with expertise.
Antarctic sea ice area has ben second lowest behind 2016 for a few weeks but is now back to lowest. What is most remarkable is that the Bellinghausen/Amundsen Sea area is close to all time highs while the other areas are at or close to lowest and probably heading to effectively zero at the minimum levels next year. The Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers drain into the Bellinghausen/Amundsen area and have sped up markedly recently, but I haven’t seen any studies that show the ice there is coming off the glaciers rather than freezing sea water. If the low ice areas in 2016, at both poles, were connected with the El Nino rather than weather effects then next year should see another set of all time low global records.
Coal remains king in India.
India produced a record amount of electricity from coal in October to make up for a shortfall in hydro generation following lower-than-normal monsoon rains.
Notwithstanding the ambitions expressed at the UN climate conference in Dubai, for the foreseeable future, India will depend on its mines and rail network to satisfy rapidly growing electricity demand and ensure reliability. Total electricity demand met increased by 24 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) (+21%) in October compared with the same month a year earlier.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/india-turns-coal-hydro-generation-falls-2023-11-30/#:~:text=Coal%2Dfired%20generators%20produced%20a,%25%20from%20more%20than%2015%25.
Someone should tell them about cheap solar and how it’s cheaper than coal. Seems stupid not to.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01075-y
Abstract
Extreme heat and drought typical of an end-of-century climate could soon occur over Europe, and repeatedly. Despite the European climate being potentially prone to multi-year successive extremes due to the influence of the North Atlantic variability, it remains unclear how the likelihood of successive extremes changes under warming, how early they could reach end-of-century levels, and how this is affected by internal climate variability. Using the Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble, we find that even under moderate warming, end-of-century heat and drought levels virtually impossible 20 years ago reach 1-in-10 likelihoods as early as the 2030s. By 2050–2074, two successive years of single or compound end-of-century extremes, unprecedented to date, exceed 1-in-10 likelihoods; while Europe-wide 5-year megadroughts become plausible. Whole decades of end-of-century heat stress could start by 2040, by 2020 for drought, and with a warm North Atlantic, end-of-century decades starting as early as 2030 become twice as likely.
What is the difference between a drought and a ‘megadrought’?
One million.
Get an EV you say.
According to Car and Driver, Ford sold 573,370 units of its heavyweight truck in the first nine months of 2023, including 12,260 electric F-150 Lightning trucks. In a testament to America’s love of pickup trucks, the F-Series is trailed by the Chevy Silverado and the Ram Pickup in second and third place, before the Toyota RAV4 is the first non-heavy-duty vehicle in this year’s ranking of best-selling cars and trucks.
New pickup trucks these days are quite as comfortable, spacious, and luxurious as cars and vans.
They also provide a very comfortable ride, about as good as cars.
The only real downside compared to a full sized car is lower gas mileage.
But after taking into account the purchase price, maintenance, taxes, finance and insurance costs, etc, fuel economy isn’t much of a priority at all.
Pickups hold their value better, and generally last longer than comparable cars. They’re easier to work on, and generally more reliable as well.
And if you’re a typical Yankee, once you drive one a few days, you’ll like it better than your car. The seating position is better. Visibility is far better. Getting in and out is easier on old bones well padded with an extra forty or fifty pounds around the middle.
Plus every once in a while even a typical suburbanite needs to haul something.
Pickups are here to stay.
I’ve had two pickup trucks and three full sized vans. I agree that the seating position and the view of the road are great but I’ve always finally gotten sick of muscling them around parking lots and, as you say, the gas mileage. I guess I drove little sports cars for too many years. I haven’t owned a truck or van for about 15 years and I’ve never missed the ability that a truck offers to carry big loads. My car has a hatch and can haul 8 foot 2x4s just fine. I confess that in my “golden years” I do a lot fewer projects than I used to.
The last time I travelled in Europe I was amused by the absolute lack of giant vehicles on the roads. I doubt their lives are the less for it.
As long as gasoline is priced as low as it is pickups as daily commuters are here to stay but I don’t see how that can continue.
It can continues as long as the suply of gasoline maintains its relationship to consumption. Having been driving and buying gasoline since 1959 I am constantly amazed that the price stays so low. In 1960 we were paying 25 cents per gallon and our cars were getting probably a lot less than 20 mpg. In 1973 I was horrified to see gasoline at 50 cents due to the Arab embargo. Mileage wasn’t any better.
In the late 1980s gas was still well under $1(85 cents as I recall) even here in California but gas mileage had made vast improvements. I had a 1985 Mustang V8 that easily obtained 25 mpg on the highway. But inflation had been raging so the 85 cents wasn’t expensive compared to 1960. Today it’s reasonable to assume overall prices are ten times what they were in 1960. Gas here borders $5/gallon but I know it’s much cheaper in other states so it isn’t more expensive than in 1973 but even crazy high performnce cars get 30 mpg on the highway. So gas is cheaper than in 1973 during an embargo.
Those of us who were reading the old Oil Drum ten years ago were expecting something called “Peak Oil” to change the dynamic but it hasn’t happened. It will some day but I doubt it will occur in my lifetime or before the obvious changes taking place with climate will disrupt BAU.
IN UK there have been a few articles linking increasing pot holes with heavier EVs (wear goes up with axle weight to the fourth power I think) and also expressing concern that multi story car parks could collapse if all the spaces get filled wither heavier EVs,
It is a pretty clear example that fuel costs are not a significant issue for those truck buyers. I’m afraid the changes in political leadership needed to begin more rational fuel pricing will not be in the democratic direction as populism and immediate reward rule.
An aerodynamic hybrid work van could do nearly everything people want a truck for with much better mileage but what sells is a 400 hp hybrid big tire beast that gets just a little better mileage.
I’ve been driving my daughter’s 15 yr old Honda Odyssey and it can carry 1200 lbs of feed in 50 lb bags and still get 20-25 mpg. It can take the proverbial 4×8 sheets. Just wish it had 2” more ground clearance.
Interesting, and here I thought climate science was well established.
COP28 PRESIDENT SAYS THERE IS ‘NO SCIENCE’ BEHIND DEMANDS FOR PHASE-OUT OF FOSSIL FUELS
Meanwhile, the country hosting COP28 climate talks aimed at cutting fossil fuel emissions is massively ramping up its own oil production.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67513901
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
…and Sultan al-jabar was an honorable man. No ulterior motive.
Doug,
Please. You cite the BBC and The guardian as your sources. I did not know that they are definitive sources of wisdom. Quite the opposite because they are run by woke half wits who would not know what a watt is even if you gave them a day to work it out. Newspaper reporters are rarely science savvy people, especially from the sources you cite. Utter drivel.
Sadly, if you have view on this blog that does not support the crooked scientist Mann then you are climate denier and a raving idiot. Idiot I am not, but wind and solar is not going to power our economies, which is why the Chinese are buiding coal fired power plants that will be operating for 25 + years, if they have the coal.
If you really want to beleive in carbon dioxide causing climate change then you need to delve a bit deeper and understand the true impact of 400 ppm carbon dioxide. Every storm and every high temperature is tagged as being “because of climate change”. The fact is that it is very difficult to link carbon dioxide with climate changes, because the climate is not static and there are many other influences and cycles that occur naturally.
I think we are doomed in the long run, but not by climate change but by resource depletion and overpopulation, and unreliables are going to get us to cliff edge sooner. Just show me how you can build a resource hungry wind turbine without fossil fuels. I will be waiting a long time for an answer.
CARNOT —
Ouch! Yes, I feel do guilty quoting the BBC and The Guardian on occasion. My old Engineering Physics, Geology and Geophysics Profs (all long dead) would have been appalled.
There’s wokism in the Sultan forcing him to believe the leftist lies of climate science. Or not. I don’t really know what this guy Carnot is going on about, nor his brain worms.
Carnot, I am one of the “woke half wits” who read the Guardian and tune in to the BBC. I can assure you that I do know what a watt is, and an ohm, and a calory, and a joule, and an amp, and a volt, and what DNA is, and meiosis, and mitosis, and the differences between igneous, sdedimentary and metamorphic rocks are, and the possible causes of the Triaassic extinction occurred, etc. You seem to have the same arrogant ignorance that characterises the “world was created in seven days” of the bible bashing fundamentalists who would definitely dismiss me and others trained in climatology and meteorology as “woke half wits”, and who would be utterly unable to say what a Rossby wave is, and a Hadley cell, and and a dry adiabatic lapse rate, and an occluded front, and ENSA, and the importance of the coriolis effect in the to the general circulation of the atmosphere, and what an ITCZ is, and why winters tend to be generally colder on the east coast regions of the continents than the corresponding west coast regions. Even in their ignorance of meteorolgical science, they set themselves up as experts in climate and weather, and can and do dismiss the realities anthropogenic global warming and climate change long since established as scientific truths as valid as the Copernican reality that the Earth is a near sphere revolving on its axis and orbiting round the sun. I know there is no suh thing as phlogiston – do you? And it would be interesting to hear your scientific definition of “woke half wits”. Is it in fact anything more than a term of abuse employed by the ignorant and prejudiced, somewhat akin to “N****r”?
Obviously “woke half wits” like me are people who tend to believe scientists about science and don’t believe that the market will solve all the problems of mankind if we can “only get the gummint off our backs”.
https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-discovery-deep-underground-could-210000229.html
Any informed opinions will be very much appreciated.
OFM, try and find out how large the world reserves (as in usual concept of reserves being economically viable) actually exist. I just spent a while and came up with nothing.. There is lots of talk about potential resources, but detail? No…
There have been millions of deep holes drilled around the world, so I would expect some bright spark to have tested for hydrogen, even if inadvertently along the way. There is ONE reported hydrogen well providing energy to a small community in Mali.
Hydrogen is ‘worth’ around $5-10/kg, so if it existed underground in great quantities, easy to access and separate from ‘waste’, it would have been drilled and mined already. Why bother with steam reformation of natural gas if you can pump hydrogen directly from the ground?
IMHO anything that is likely to make a difference, would be well known by now with lots of both known resources and reserves, if it really did exist in great quantity. I suspect hydrogen is like helium underground, a bit here and there, enough to be useful on a small scale, but currently more expensive than simple steam reformation of natural gas.
“I would expect some bright spark to have tested for hydrogen..”
A great pun, intended or not
https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/101723-geologic-hydrogen-attracts-interest-as-a-clean-energy-source
A fascinating (and disheartening) article about the inventor of the solar panel, George H. Cove.
The Vanishing 1909 Solar Panel Inventor.
Talking moving away from coal while building new plants. Makes you wonder.
INDONESIA’S COAL LOVE AFFAIR STILL AFLAME DESPITE PLEDGES
“For some, the age of coal is now clearly over, and Indonesia has committed to moving away from the fuel despite being the world’s top exporter. But it is adding two more units to the Suralaya power plant, in Banten province next to the capital Jakarta, and has plans for new plants to power its nickel industry—key to the electric vehicle boom.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-indonesia-coal-affair-aflame-pledges.html
Meanwhile,
IN CHINA’S COAL COUNTRY, FULL STEAM AHEAD WITH NEW POWER PLANTS DESPITE CLIMATE PLEDGES
“On a flat, dusty patch of land 13 kilometres (8.1 miles) west of Yulin in the heart of China’s coal country, construction workers braved sub-freezing temperatures at the site of a planned 700 megawatt (MW) power plant set to open in less than a year. Surrounded by cranes, the main building at the 3 billion-plus yuan ($419 million) Yushen Yuheng plant is taking shape, part of a spate of new coal-fired power construction in China even as the country pledges to begin reducing coal use during its next five-year plan, beginning in 2026. China has decommissioned 70.45 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired plants in the last decade, and is building far more renewable energy capacity than any other country. Analysts say coal use may peak as soon as this year. But a sudden flurry of approvals of new coal-fired plants in recent years raises doubts about China’s commitment to phasing out the fossil fuel, and its key role in the country’s energy security plans shows the difficult task that lies ahead for world leaders.”
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/chinas-coal-country-full-steam-ahead-with-new-power-plants-despite-climate-2023-11-30/
And,
INDIA TURNS TO COAL AS HYDRO GENERATION FALLS
“India produced a record amount of electricity from coal in October to make up for a shortfall in hydro generation following lower-than-normal monsoon rains. Coal remains fundamental to the country’s energy security, despite rapid deployment of wind and solar generation, underscoring the challenge of reducing emissions. Notwithstanding the ambitions expressed at the UN climate conference in Dubai, for the foreseeable future, India will depend on its mines and rail network to satisfy rapidly growing electricity demand and ensure reliability.”
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/india-turns-coal-hydro-generation-falls-2023-11-30/
A classic case of solving a problem caused by climate change by an action making climate change worse.
Here’s a source of data about greenhouse gas emissions: https://climatetrace.org/
It’s interesting to see how much cement plays a role in Chinese emissions.
The energy industry doesn’t exist to “keep the lights on”, it exists to make money, just like any other industry. Renewable energy, especially solar, it a profit killer, so fasten your seat belts.
The reason solar is a profit killer is not that it is cheap — although it is. The reason is that solar has zero marginal costs. You don’t have to buy fuel to generate electricity, and maintenance is minimal. This makes it impossible to underbid solar is wholesale markets.
The difference isn’t just technical — it’s a different business model. If it doesn’t some people in the energy business, then they aren’t paying attention.
As solar capacity increases, competition for market share between solar providers will increase, pushing any producers with operating expenses out of the market at certain times of day. Traditional power plants are most profitable when they run 24/7, but that is no longer an option.
Alimbiquated … “This makes it impossible to underbid solar is wholesale markets.”
LOL, only if the contracts allow for it. If the wholesale market demanded a consistent 24 hour supply for periods of weeks or months, neither solar or wind would have a look in. Instead the market rules are written so that solar and wind can supply electricity at anytime they are available, even though heavy industry in particular needs constant power.
As I’ve stated before, if solar and wind, with the appropriate battery or pumped hydro back up, were really cheap, then we would have lots of aluminium smelters set up and operating offgrid with only solar and wind and storage. The fact we have zero of these world wide, nor plans to build any, tells everyone that solar, wind and storage are not cheap at all for consistent power!!
Catabolic collapse FTW.
HIDEAWAY —
As I mentioned in my post, the industry does not exist to keep the lights on. So your “consistent power” requirement may play less of a role in the way the industry goes than you think.
The fact that you find an extreme case — aluminum smelting — to make you point suggests that there are many less extreme cases where solar will work. Trusting that a new technology won’t work because there are some extreme niches where it might not has failed many an industry incumbent.
Claiming that it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t work very well either. over 400 GW of solar will be installed this year.
But anyway, your claim that nobody is planning to smelt aluminum with solar is simply false. Yes, nobody plans to go off grid, but that isn’t a great plan anyway. It’s a straw man argument. check out this chart:
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/ORlnwWc6MJKO_r3G9rO6P-LQp3oKPM1GkVngMaJ-_aY.png
Context here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/how-china-is-decarbonizing-the-electricity-supply-for-aluminium/
The fastest growing demand for electricity is data centers, and most of the industry is scrambling to find renewable resources.
Many industries need constant power supply.
It’s not only you need twice as much machines if you can produce only 12 hours a day – some machines need long power up time until they reach ideal working conditions to minimize waste. And regular shutdown, not just switching off power.
So either you have backup power plants, batterie storage or you need the double or triple amount of machinery.
The most extreme thing is a blast furnace for steel production. It’s 24/7 for a year or more, and when you have to cool down it it’s a big repair job to bring it on again.
The biggest strain to sun and wind energy is the green plan to do everything electric – inclusive heating with heat pumps.
When they are needed most, sun is almost dead and wind often, too. Like these nice days last week where coal was running full, weather was cold (-20 degrees Celsius at some points) and we where buying from the neighbors (the space under the fine black curve):
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&week=48
Luckily we don’t have that many heat pumps or electric cars just now, we would need much more gas and coal reserve power plants otherwise.
You can’t bridge that with batteries and pumped hydro – that’s for a few hours like a day/night cycle or a midday high. In the chart you can see pumped hydro working, battery isn’t there yet.
Alimbiquated, my claim is no-one is using solar, wind and storage, nor is anyone planning to use this combination, to smelt aluminium, despite the world being told continually that solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.
Your links do not show any real plans to go solar or wind alone either, except for the usual hand wave of ‘in the future’ it will be xyz.. That’s not a plan, it’s a hope!!
If solar and wind really were cheaper than fossil fuels, then no-one would choose to build any new coal fired power stations anywhere in the world, yet every year we get more. Why are China, India, Indonesia choosing the more expensive option?? Unless, perhaps they are choosing the cheaper option?? (economically speaking only)…
China and India and most of BRICS are continuing massive rollout of fossil fuels as a joke. Boy, will they have egg on their faces when they could have just gone 100% into RE instead of using them additively to their FF stock.
A young fellow asked me what I thought of the move to label the present times Anthropogenic . I told him the length of time we humans are in ascendance does not justify a geologic label and that the human population explosion , in the fullness of time will most probably viewed to be more akin to a locust plague.
to OFM
Try this for hydrogen. It gives a little insight to the theory of geologic hydrogen by the US GS
https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/potential-geologic-hydrogen-next-generation-energy
Making parallels with Helium is in my opinion flawed. Yes there is He in natural gas but it was produced from radio active decay of Uranium and the production of alpha particles.
Hydrogen is suggested to be produced by the reduction of water by contact with iron in the mantle. Though it could happen the likelihood of the hydrogen being trapped in recoverable quantities must be very low. The well would have to be drilled into basement rock, also known by oil mend as suitcase rock. When encountered it is time to pack you suitcase. The cost of drilling would be high – very deep and very hard rock.
Farmer,
Very well described. I wish I could have done so eloquently.
I am in full agreement. I do not believe in climate change due to carbon dioxide and nor do I think we can continue BAU using finite fossil fuels ad infinitum. A collapse is all but assured ,but when is the tricky question. What will remain will be very little, that is usable. All the knowledge gained over the last 500 years will be lost. There will be no computers, there will be no books, and the world will return to a hunter gatherer society, with perhaps windmills and water wheels. The challenge will be learning the skills that will be required – most have already been lost.
” I do not believe in climate change due to carbon dioxide”
In this case, as in so many, the facts are indifferent to beliefs.
“the facts are indifferent to beliefs.”
Thanks, Jjhman; I am going to save that one. I will use it in my book.
Perhpas you might point me to the facts – i.e. not the Mann nonsense and why do all the so called models run hot?
THere are many thousands of eminent scientists whp do not agree with the degree of warming is solely due to carbon dioixe.
My belief is based on scrutiny of suspect data. Suspect data is not factual.
Farmer,
I imagine that population will peak around 2050 and decline after that and that solar energy will replace much of the fossil fuel energy currently used (of which only about 50% at most is not simply waste heat that is not utilized), there is also hydro power, geothermal power, wind power, and nuclear power that can be utilized. From an environmental perspective faster population decline and a more rapid transition away from fossil fuel may reduce environmental degradation. Mostly I expect that things will change in the future, exactly what those changes will be cannot be predicted, only a fool believes the future can be known in advance.
Dennis …. “Mostly I expect that things will change in the future, exactly what those changes will be cannot be predicted, only a fool believes the future can be known in advance.”
I believe, because the science tells me it’s so, that the Earth will become uninhabitable for humans well before 600m years time, as the sun increases luminosity. I also believe that at about 5B years into the future the sun will swallow planet Earth as the sun goes red giant, so in your thinking that makes me a fool..
I believe the sun will rise tomorrow, also a future prediction, so I must be especially foolish in trying to predict both the short term and long term..
It’s very easy to predict what no fossil fuels will mean at some point in the future. There will no longer be any manufacture of just about anything, other than stuff made from wood and charcoal, certainly no modern civilization as we know it today.
Everything about our modern world unravels when oil decline accelerates year after year. Oil is the master resource as we use it for all forms of heavy transport and many products. EVs and solar panels do not solve anything. An accelerating decline means the world will not be able to cope with less of everything very rapidly, with supply lines breaking down causing a cascading effect of collaspe.
We are in such a complex system, meaning the exact cause of collapse for any individual or community will be unknowable in advance, but overall collapse is guaranteed, it’s just a matter of which part of the downward spiral gets you first. It could be lack of food, water, medicine, heat stroke, freezing, nuclear war, local murderous thieves, disease, local police ‘enforcing’ martial law, who knows.. Perhaps you will be one of the unlucky few to make it through the bottleneck of civilization collapse..
We humans are so far in deep overshoot, passing tipping points all over the place, climate, biodiversity and pollution wise. There is no evidence anywhere that we will stop, because the economy is designed to grow or collapse, so growth is always chosen. We have been heading to the edge of the cliff for decades, centuries or perhaps many millennia since agriculture freed up people to do more than just look after their own lives..
Hideaway,
Many of thosegeneral predictions may be correct. Predicting what human society will look like in the future (say in 100 years) is a more difficult challenge.
Farmer,
Nice straw man, farmers are good at that stuff. Climate outcomes depend on future choices made by humans, I don’t believe that can be predicted with any degree of certainty (probabilities are close to zero for any emission scenario chosen).
Probabilities of what the future will look like, particularly short term (say the next 50 years) are often quite subjective. Some future events, tides, sunrise, positions of planets and stars can be predicted with high probability, others such as the price of oil and real GDP for the next 10 years are much more difficult.
I don’t think many of us will be correct in the scenarios we fashion for future human society, the probability of choosing a correct scenario from the infinite set of possible future scenarios, is straightforward, the answer is zero.
WORLD COULD BREACH 1.5C WARMING THRESHOLD IN 7 YEARS
The world may cross the crucial 1.5C global warming threshold in seven years as fossil fuel CO2 emissions continue to rise, scientists warned Tuesday, urging countries at the COP28 talks to “act now” on coal, oil and gas pollution.
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-world-breach-15c-threshold-years.html
Meanwhile,
SAUDI ARABIA SAYS ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT’ TO OIL PHASE DOWN AT COP28
Saudi Arabia’s energy minister has slammed the door shut to agreeing to phase down fossil fuels at the UN’s COP28 climate talks.
In an interview with AFP last week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a total phaseout of fossil fuels, warning “complete disaster” awaits mankind on its current trajectory.
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-saudi-arabia-absolutely-oil-phase.html
GLOBAL EMISSIONS ARE SET FOR ANOTHER RECORD THIS YEAR
Global emissions from the combustion of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas are set for another record this year, the Global Carbon Budget report has warned. “Fossil CO2 emissions are falling in some regions, including Europe and the USA, but rising overall – and the scientists say global action to cut fossil fuels is not happening fast enough to prevent dangerous climate change,” the report’s authors said. Released during the COP28 conference, the report said that global emissions will reach 36.8 billion tons this year, which would be a 1.1% increase in 2022, the report’s authors said. The report is produced by a group of scientific institutions led by the University of Exeter.
COP28 has a special focus on hydrocarbons but few believe this would lead to any meaningful agreement for phasing these out.
COP28? More like cope.
A new open thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-december-6-2023/
A new updated thread on US September Oil Production has been posted.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/us-september-oil-production-new-record-high/
Farmer
Nice post!!!