116 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Oct 4, 2023”

  1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05
    /singapore-most-expensive-car-license-intl-hnk/index.html

    The most expensive city in the world wants as close as possible to nothing to do with personal cars .

    And it works. They don’t have the legendary traffic jams afflicting other similarly crowded cities.

    2. In Singapore you could leave your wallet stuffed with cash on the sidewalk and come back the next day and pick it up. You might get a littering offense though.

      It is a case study in the “rule of law”.

      If you remember many years ago some American kids went over there with their parents and put some graffiti on a wall.

      They were publicly caned for doing it.

      It became a diplomatic issue between the USA and Singapore.

      People do not commit crimes there. Not the ones that were raised there atleast.

      It is very small. You walk outside, jump in a cab ( they are all over the place) and go to your destination on the cheap. Nice system in my experience.

      Not sure that scales to other places.

      1. No one has ever won a Nobel Prize in Singapore.
        Denmark, of similar size, has won over 12, last I checked.
        We always avoided it.
        14 for Denmark- I was a little short.

        1. It is a surveillant state nightmare.
          And that is about as good as it gets.

          1. I didn’t say I agreed with it.

            I said it was a case study. “What happens if you have a zero tolerance policy towards crime?”.

            I enjoyed my time when I was there.

            I know people that live there and love it (American expats).

            Just don’t get drunk and have a punch up at the local bar.

            And locals drink lots and lots and are more or less prosperous!

            Never saw a homeless person there!!

            it aint North Korea.

  2. WARMEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD

    The world’s September temperatures were the warmest on record, breaking the previous high by a huge margin, according to the EU climate service. Last month was 0.93C warmer than the average September temperature between 1991-2020, and 0.5C hotter than the previous record set in 2020. Ongoing emissions of warming gases in addition to the El Niño weather event are driving the heat, experts believe.

    Beating a long term recent average by almost a degree is bad enough, but this masks even greater differences in some parts of the globe. In Europe, for example, the scale of heating was remarkable, beating the long term average by 2.51C.

    “This is not a fancy weather statistic,” Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto said in an email. “It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems. It destroys assets, infrastructure, harvest.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67017021

      1. And, CO2 continues its relentless climb.
        Oct. 4, 2023 = 418.56 ppm
        Oct. 4, 2022 = 415.16 ppm
        1 Year Change 3.40 ppm (0.82%)

      2. This article points to the trends that indicate that is likely to change in the not too distant future:

        Australia leads pack as wind and solar drive structural shift in power sector emissions

        The rapid growth of wind and solar in Australia and the rest of the world is leading a major structural shift in power sector emissions that point to a significant decline in carbon pollution in come years.

        A new report by think tank Ember shows the global power sector saw emissions tick up by just 0.2 per cent in the first half of 2023, compared with the same period last year.

        Emissions would have fallen significantly, however, were it not for droughts in China that had a major impact on hydro generation.

        The report suggests 2023 might be the first year of structural power sector emissions reductions, if the growth in renewables continues, as this is the first year when emissions should have fallen, without a “shock” driver like COVID-19, given the amount of renewables available.

        Although the world is seeing a rapid adoption of wind and solar, this was countered by falling hydro, as drought in China accounted for 75 per cent of a historic crash in global hydro generation of 177 TWh.

        Power sector emissions would have fallen by 2.9 per cent, had global hydro generation been at the same level as last year – but even this picture is complicated.

        1. Yes, you keep writing about Australia’s solar and wind while ignoring the fact this country is a substantial net exporter of fossil energy, including coal and natural gas, with net exports equating to over two-thirds of production. Around 91% of black coal energy production was exported in 2021-22, as was around 76% of domestic natural gas production and 86% of crude oil production. I suppose as long as you export the stuff, it’s OK?

          1. Yup I keep posting stuff about Australia because Giles Parkinson over at reneweconomy.com.au keeps posting articles at the site mostly about Australia but sometimes about other countries or regions. Top of the page as of the time of this post is an article written by Giles himself:

            NSW leaps to new renewables peak of 87.5 pct: Will it be first coal state to 100 pct?

            New South Wales may well have the biggest fleet of coal generators in the country – even after the closure of the ageing Liddell coal generator in April – but it may be about to stun the energy world with a new, unexpected record for renewables.

            On Thursday this week, the share of renewables in NSW leaped to a stunning new high of 87.5 per cent of state demand – albeit for a 5-minute period at 11.20am (AEST) – as the share of renewables in the country’s main grid also hit a new peak of 70.8 per cent around about the same time (actually 11.40 AEST)

            The NSW record is a remarkably big leap up from its previous peak of 78.8 per cent set just two weeks , according to data from GPE NEMLog 2, and mostly came from wind and solar, which provided 77.5 per cent of state demand, also a record.

            You see, in Australia things are actually changing in a way that can be reported on daily, not like my country where there is nothing to report most months.

            Have you ever wondered why the Australian people are investing so much in solar PV systems for their homes and businesses if their “homegrown” coal is so cheap? (see https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-02-08/record-amounts-of-rooftop-solar-installed-during-lockdown/100805838). According to this site https://www.solarquotes.com.au/australia/ more than 300,000 PV systems have been installed each year for the last three years, over a million in total. It seems counterintuitive to me that the country that exports so much coal is set to abandon it’s use at home. Maybe they are just being like Norway where despite being the largest oil producer in Europe, Norway’s EVs At A Record 93% Share (of new vehicle sales).

            1. Islandboy

              Global ice sheets are melting at a record rate.

              https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/

              If the rate of destruction of the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic is happening with CO2 levels at 418ppm what do you think melting rates will be when level get to 430ppm.
              Do you know what CO2 levels are required to stop further destruction?

            2. @Charles I do not recall seeing any suggestions from you as to how global CO2 emissions might be reduced without a major (and likely very unpleasant) forced involuntary reduction in human numbers. Please remind me if I missed something.

            3. Norway is a bad example. They have a huge surplus of hydro unlike most any other nation on Earth, and they also have a population less than half that of Greater London.

              Frankly, I’m surprised Oz isn’t better in the PV numbers. What does the place have outside of constant sunshine and coal now?

            4. Replying to Kleiber, something else Oz has is agricultural exports. For example, according to https://www.worldstopexports.com/wheat-exports-country in 2022 the worlds top wheat exporters (not producers, but countries that produce an excess they can export) were:
              Australia: US$10.2 billion (15.4% of total wheat exports)
              United States: $8.52 billion (12.9%)
              Canada: $7.9 billion (12%)
              France: $7.4 billion (11.2%)
              Russia: $6.8 billion (10.3%)
              Argentina: $3.1 billion (4.7%)
              Ukraine: $2.7 billion (4%)
              Sunshine and space can be useful 🙂
              Cheers, Phil

    1. OFM

      Reminds me of the great plains states in the US. In the wind belt they could without a doubt get enough wind energy and high voltage transmission lines to cover their own needs. But still totally dependent on imports like almost all countries in the world as it unfolds.

      (Russia tries to be self sufficient. And as one of the the most prominent nations to obtain that status, there is probably still much left to be desired by trying to act like the strong man on the global scene).

      US renewable electricity potential and grid interconnection is really interesting when it comes to how diverse it is, but I am absolutely sure of that the current government does what it can. My concerns are more the longeviety of democratic institutions. So I am aligned with Hickory on that point too (I am not Hickory, but it seems our world views and values are very closely aligned)

    2. From the npr.org article: “Today, when you drive through the Uruguayan countryside, you don’t see tankers of gas, train loads of coal, power plants spewing black smoke into the air. What you do see? Hundreds of turbines harnessing the power of the wind.”

      Another takeaway is that being it isn’t nuclear energy, there’s no need to set money aside for the eventual decommissioning that goes along with nuclear, no nuclear waste either. Win-win.

        1. I read the whole article. I would say that it is no more than an “announcement” that there is an opportunity for follow on usage of the blades. It certainly isn’t an “Oh my god, wind turbines are as awful as coal”.
          Every one here knows there is no long future in non-renewable sources of power. There’s no long future in non-recyclable materials of any kind. If windmills or solar panels aren’t recyclable then they are no more than a transition energy source. Transition to what?

      2. Not to be “that guy” but win-win means a positive sum game where both players win, not a game in which a single player wins in two different ways, or wins what every he does.

  4. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/05/global-carbon-emissions-electricity-peak-thinktank-report

    This sounds rather rose tinted to me, but it nevertheless indicates what’s actually possible, assuming OMBAU stays on his feet another decade or two.

    “The report found that global power-sector emissions rose by 0.2% in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year.

    However, it also found that wind and solar power had climbed to a combined total of 14.3% of the world’s electricity, up from 12.8% last year.

    Solar power in particular grew by 16% in the first half of the year, compared with the first six months of 2022, after 50 countries set new monthly records for solar generation, according to Ember.”

    It’s not just about money anymore. Politically renewable energy is turning into a serious player in the employment and security areas. Local jobs are priceless at election time, and military establishments are awesomely expensive.

    1. Let me know when it happens.

      https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

      Until then, this is all that matters. Not a plateaux, not a “may start to decline”, but the continued REDUCTION in CO2. Anything else is rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. This chatter (which I heard back in 2019 too) is very reminiscent of the inflation talk. Inflation is dropping, they say. We’ve passed through the bad times to the good times. Except, inflation dropping is the second derivative and the prices are simply rising less quickly, not dropping.

      Adding less CO2 each year is no win. We’re still pumping a gigatonne a week or so into the sky. And to get normality, we need to suck ALL that stuff back into the ground.

      I’m sure emissions from industry will decline, just not for the reasons Ember think and not quite yet.

  5. Leave it in the ground you say.

    ARGENTINA’S OIL PRODUCTION SURGES

    The exploitation of South America’s largest shale formation the Vaca Muerta, which is the size of Belgium, continues delivering impressive results at a crucial time for Argentina. The geological formation spanning 7.5 million acres is believed to be the world’s second-largest shale gas deposit, surpassed only by the U.S. situated Eagle Ford shale, and the fourth largest shale oil deposit.

    “YPF expects Argentina’s oil production to peak in 2035 at 2.2 million barrels per day and decline to 1.35 million barrels per day by 2040. While industry analysts predict the crisis-prone country, which is being roiled by its worst economic catastrophe in two decades, will be pumping one million barrels per day by 2030, the latest events indicate that potential production growth could be far higher than anticipated. This becomes even more likely with global energy giants investing in the Vaca Muerta and many of the infrastructure constraints in the formation being addressed. The most important was the commissioning of the first phase of the Néstor Kirchner natural gas pipeline earlier this year, which has seen record levels of shale gas shipped from the Vaca Muerta.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Argentinas-Oil-Production-Surges-As-Political-Instability-Soars.html

    1. Hi Doug,Everybody
      I’m not really scared, myself, about what the future holds, because the odds look pretty good to me that I’ll not live long enough to see the shit REALLY hit the fan.

      But I’m trying to bring the “big picture ” into focus and I just can’t see any solutions that might actually work that are politically and economically at least POSSIBLE, except one. That’s Mother Nature’s solution, with our overshoot culminating in a crash and burn scenario encompassing large parts of the world, possibly just about ALL of it, and possibly just about all of humanity.

      I’m forced to believe that this crash is utterly and absolutely inevitable, unless maybe we have some sort of miraculous good luck soon enough to prevent it. The odds against that are so high that this possibility isn’t even worth mentioning, not really.

      You say “Leave it in the ground you say.”

      And then you (collectively) point out what’s actually happening.

      Of course you all ALSO collectively know that if we DON’T leave it in the ground, we’re more or less totally screwed, within the foreseeable future, climate wise.

      But if we step back as far as possible, and look at the big picture as dispassionately as we can, we have to recognize that the only REAL hope for keeping the world economy moving towards sustainability paradoxically depends pretty much entirely on our current fossil fuel economy rocking and rolling as long as possible..

      Because …. otherwise…….

      There won’t be any money, materials, or manpower available to go renewable, to allow us to invest heavily in conservation and efficiency, convince people to change their lifestyles before it’s too late, etc.

      We’ll just continue full throttle dead ahead burning everything we can put our hands on until we crash and burn for real. Once OMBAU is on his back or dead, little or nothing will be done about long term problems, because every last dime and ton of material and day’s work will be all about staying alive in the short term.

      The very things that are SURE to kill us over the mid term to the long term are the same things that are keeping us alive, for the most part, in the short term.

      We survive short term, otherwise the the long term is of academic interest only.

      I think it’s likely that things won’t get so bad that some of us won’t survive living as subsistence farmers or craftsmen in at least a few places.

      And there’s at least a possibility, in my opinion, that some people in some countries can and will pull thru not necessarily because they have made the necessary investments in renewable energy, recycling, efficiency, conservation, etc, but for ANOTHER reason.

      This other reason is that while the crash will come, it will not necessarily come at the same time in any given area of the world. There will be trouble out the ying yang everywhere, no question. But hopefully and most likely not in the same year, and maybe not even two or three years in succession.

      I expect people to starve by the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, in some places, and die of contagious diseases, exposure, local violence and outright war in similar numbers.

      But let us suppose half the people in various small tropical or subtropical areas or countries die over the course of a year or two due to crop failures.

      I’m not aware of any good evidence that such countries are capable of creating any really serious problems for the rest of the world, unless maybe they happen to be the source of a particular mineral we simply must have. In that case, the big surviving countries will simply go in and take whatever is needed.

      All the stuff we hear about modern military power being useless against local people willing to die for is pretty much just bullshit….. because there just aren’t any top dog governments in the world today that are willing to simply WIPE out the locals, to any extent necessary to take over. Even the worst ones aren’t WILLING to go that route, at least for now.

      The so called TPTB, the powers that be, whether the President, the Pentagon, and Congress , or the Russian Mafia headed by Putin don’t want to go that far. Hitler wanted to wipe out the Jews and Gypsies, etc, but he never set out to kill all the people in countries he invaded, and never WANTED to.
      Even Genghis Khan didn’t just raze cities to the last man, woman and child, so long as his victims agreed to cooperate with him.

      But if a Putin or a President or Prime Minister is up against it to the point that it’s TAKE a resource, or perish along with his country….. the locals won’t last more than a few days or weeks before they’re all dead or fled…… a long way.

      So far as I know, there just aren’t any countries in or near the hotter and drier parts of Africa that are strong enough to invade anybody other than their nearby neighbors. A few hundred million people could die in that part of the world without creating any problems we couldn’t deal with here in North America, or in Western Europe for that matter, unless maybe local wars morph into bigger wars until the major powers countries get dragged into the fight.

      We could still eat, no problem at all, here in North America, even if the climate gets so bad that we can’t produce even half the grain we grow and more than a couple of percent of the beef we eat now. Nobody would be happy about it, but we could have all the bread and chicken we could eat growing only half as much grain, and we wouldn’t actually STARVE if production even falls by two thirds.

      So…… how bad will it get, and how fast?

      I really don’t have a clue, but if things go downhill by five or ten percent annually, we’ll be able to adapt, at least in the USA, and hopefully keep the lights on and food in stores, etc. Rationed lights maybe, rationed food, not much in the way of luxury or highly processed foods, but food that will keep you alive.

      I just don’t see our electricity or water and sewer systems going out all at once, except maybe due to a nuclear WWIII scenario.

      If we absolutely have to, we could, and very likely will at some point, go to a martial law and wartime rationing economy, and continue to live, even with half the people in this country on outright welfare or make work jobs.

      People and countries have survived famines, droughts, killer diseases, flat out wars, and just about anything you can imagine, over the course of known history.

      So……. things are going to get to be REALLY tough, no question at all, on a world wide basis.

      But can anybody say HOW bad the climate will get, and how fast it will go downhill?

      It’s possible to envision the fossil fuel pollution problem more or less solving itself, due to collapse from overshoot… if a large enough percentage of the world population perishes. Dead people don’t burn any coal, oil, or gas at all. A country that’s collapsed back to a subsistence level state won’t be burning much in the way of fossil fuel.

      If China and the rest of Asia goes down the tubes, as a lot of people believe will happen, maybe a few Western countries will be far enough along in going green, with declining populations, etc, that the climate might not get so bad that their citizens could continue to live dignified lives …… while using a quarter or even less of the energy we use today, per capita, consuming only basic foods, walking or riding bicycles, reusing and recycling just about everything…

      Maybe all these sorts of thoughts should be confined to cheap sci fi and fantasy novels…… but consider our present day political reality, right now, here in the good ole USA…….

      A few years back, movie producers weren’t willing to make a movie approaching our cultural and political reality….. because they didn’t believe anybody would pay to see it.

      1. I agree with what you point out.
        In the intermediate term we are not in a human extinction event. [Other species yes].
        Even though not extinction for us, I think that extreme failure scenario for humanity
        is on the table. A billion tears.

      2. Mac,

        “…we’ll be able to adapt, at least in the USA…” Really?

        Most knowledgeable people seem to agree that the first step in adapting to climate change, and its associated dangers, is to move to the southern hemisphere: New Zealand or New Caledonia, for example. But, like you, people near to where I live seem to think (like you), that others may suffer but we’ll be just fine here. Seems unlikely to me but the way things are going we’ll find out sooner rather than later!

        1. Hi Doug,
          For some reason I can’t copy and paste at the moment.

          But I made it perfectly clear, adding various caveats, that by adapt I simply mean continuing to live in a more or less civilized fashion.

          Caveats included were the likelihood of the USA going to a wartime type managed economy, with everything rationed, Per capita energy consumption a quarter of what it is today, a diet heavy on bread and chicken, with beef, processed foods etc, being extremely scare or unobtainium.

          Everything reused or recycled.

          To keep grain production at half the level, or maybe a third of today’s level would very likely involve Uncle Sam mandating available diesel fuel, feed stock chemicals for fertilizer, etc going first to agriculture. Even this level of production might be possible only by forcibly, if necessary, putting lands at higher elevations or farther north into production, regardless of such land’s status as private or public property, etc.
          And I frequently mention ” no gaurantees” , ” things being extremely tough everywhere”, cars, if you happen to be fortunate enough to have one being low slung bullet shaped fore and aft two seaters adequate for commuting and local errands with batteries maybe one fifth or one sixth of the capacity of the ones used in today’s electric cars, etc.

          There’s one thing about my personal perspective, my personal history, that I strongly suspect is just about entirely lacking in the perspective of the vast majority of the membership here.

          I’ve been there and done that, when it comes to living hard and making do, growing up on a two bit hillbilly farm as poor as a church mouse. Professional people know a good bit about the way people who have very little purchasing power live, but they know only AT SECOND HAND.

          When it’s down to either living or dying, and the going gets really tough, the tough ones get going, and the weak ones perish. Now when we get right down to it, I’m at least cautiously optimistic about our being tough enough to make it.

          My kid brother grew up in the blue jeans I outgrew. Right now I need maybe one new pair of jeans every three or four years, one new pair of boots every four or five years, no paid for haircuts at all, been wearing the same heavy winter coat ten years and expect to wear it until I die. I haven’t bought a new piece of furniture within the last twenty or thirty years. Haven’t bought a pot or pan within living memory. The ones I have are made to last more or less forever.

          Spend absolutely nothing on tobacco, soft drinks, very close to nothing on fast food, nothing on air travel, sporting events, or a hundred other things that add nothing other than entertainment or maybe status.

          The old house I live in alone now has space for six or even eight people, easily, and it will last at least another hundred years if it’s taken care of. In my neck of the woods, considering the birth rate these days, there will be an excess of houses in another thirty or forty years, unless they’re all filled up with damnyankee well to do carpetbagger retirees looking for cheap places to live……. or maybe climate refugees from Florida , Texas and that neck of the woods, looking for a place you can go outside in the middle of the day, lol.

          I’ve got a clothes dryer, and I use it, but I could hang my laundry and get it in again in no more than ten or fifteen minutes a week.
          I can’t even GUESS what percentage of our national economy consists of goods and services that add nothing or next to nothing to our quality of life, but it’s a big percentage, and once we HAVE to, we’ll get along without these goods and services, and get used to it.
          ASS U ME ING we are lucky enough that the climate doesn’t go entirely to hell, that we don’t have a flat out WWIII, that we have at least somewhat competent leadership, etc.

          Old people in need of tertiary medical care will die in short order, people in jail watching tv now will be out in the fields on prison farms. It’s rather likely that a few million of us even here in the USA will suffer violent deaths …….. but bottom line…….

          Adaptation means making the changes necessary to survival, period, the way this word is defined in MY field… which is basically applied biology aka agriculture.

          I’m not saying it’s going to be all cozy and nice, that we’ll still have new cars, manicured lawns, dry cleaners, or that we’ll be flying to Florida or Colorado for vacation, or convenience stores selling sugar water ( soft drinks ) for three or four times the price of gasoline, on a per liter basis.

          Air travel will be next to non existent, in my opinion. I know all about rich people still being able to fly in their own jets, or paying thousands for a flight between two far away big cities……. But it’s my opinion that the PUBLIC will more or less outlaw it, because if the public can’t have a car, and most people won’t, or afford to fly, then the public will insist on laws and regulations that shut down the industry.
          There might not be any paper towels in the grocery store, but you can cut up an old bath towel and wash the pieces as necessary and get by just fine that way.

          Tens of millions of jobs will disappear in short order, and the only hope of preserving the peace and holding the country together will be that Uncle Sam can work with the states, and provide the necessary welfare benefits, namely housing and food, to the unemployed masses….half or more of the people in the country.

          Keep in mind that people and countries have survived times that have been as bad, or maybe even worse. Consider what the Russians went thru in WWII for instance.

          On the other hand….. the climate might get so bad that nearly everybody dies, even in places like the USA and Canada.

    2. Ervin.
      Now that you have acknowledged the inconvenient truth of global warming I can send you an Al Gore hero button to wear around in town.
      Maybe some pretty gals will then flirt with you. Worth a try anyway.

    3. Wattsup is the worlds PREMIER climate science denial site.

      Read this link https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/10/03/the-energy-transition-is-social-vandalism/

      It’s virtually one hundred percent don’t think just be happy and believe what WE tell you, lol.

      There’s a very brief mention of going nuclear in the future….. and all the rest is either energy history or lots of sis boom bah cheerleading for all the things made possible by the fossil fuel industry….

      The thing is they tell us all about the PREVIOUS energy transitions…… without having a GODDAMNED WORD to say about what the NEXT transition must be…….. given that fossil fuels come out of holes in the ground. Take it from me, an old farmer, that coal, oil and natural gas don’t grow back like potatoes. It takes Mother Nature millions of years to create a new deposit.

      There’s NOT A SINGLE GODDAMNED WORD about the REALITIES involved in depending on fossil fuels.

      According to Wattsup, as I interpret their bullshit, there must never have been, and never will be, a war fought for access to fossil fuels. There will ALWAYS be lots of new oil fields, new gas fields, and new coal fields to be opened up as needed……… because DEPLETION is a word not to be found in their dictionary.

      Now they do publish a lot of stuff that LOOKS and SOUNDS just right, if you want to believe forced climate change is a liberal hoax, lol. You have to know MORE than a typical layman in order to understand the numbers and trends involved.

      It’s sort of this way, by analogy. Even the best doctor can’t usually say with any real degree of confidence how long a given patient will live with a disease likely to kill him. Errors are quite common in terms of days, weeks, months even. But in terms of years and decades, such errors are uncommon, and actually rather rare, in percentage terms.

      Climate scientists can’t say just how fast things are changing, but they can say with a very high degree of confidence that things are changing , at a very fast rate, and that just about all of the changes happening are making things worse instead of better.
      If you know very much at all about the math, you understand that virtually every VARIABLE known in terms of average temperature world wide indicates that the temperature will continue to increase.

      And if you know anything at all about PEOPLE who happen to be scientists, or doctors, or mechanics, or janitors, you will know and understand that there are BIG differences in how they individually decide how important this fact or that fact or that number, etc, may be, in terms of making predictions.

      Some of them sell out for money or status or power. Any GEOLOGIST who writes about the future and fossil fuels without devoting substantial space to depletion in his work is a fucking scalawag sell out, because if he graduated from a real college or university, he damned well knows that oil, gas, and coal, not to mention other minerals, are DEPLETING resources, and that eventually we’re going to have to recycle them, or come up with substitutes, or just get along without them.

      And on the other hand, there are sincere climate scientists who deliberately exaggerate their positions, so as to create more concern, hopefully to be followed by more ACTION, on the part of the public.

      In order to understand the real score, you have two choices. Learn all you can about any particular issue or question, and then THINK about it. I mean REALLY think. Question everything….. up to the point you have to just take the word of authorities pro or con in any given field.

      OR…… you can just go along with the people you happen to like and trust best, according to your own ideas, values, morals, and prejudices.
      So………. If you happen to be an American right wing voter, a believer in the so called conservative establishment, you will just naturally believe what that establishment tells you about any particular question or issue. If you’re a typical leftish leaning Democratic voter, you’ll just naturally go along with what the leftish leaning academic and political establishment tells you. You’ll be happy, and won’t have to bother doing any hard thinking at all, either way.

      But lets be REAL. Unless you’re just fundamentally STUPID, you have to know that fossil fuels come out of holes in the ground and that they won’t last forever, and maybe not even another few decades in terms of affordable supplies on the grand scale.

      So…… if you can think THIS FAR, then you have to know that the right wing is bullshitting you about fossil fuels. We simply cannot continue to depend on them, because there’s less in the ground every year, and more people wanting them every year.

      And if the right wing is bullshitting you about oil and gas, etc, well……. that’s an EXCELLENT indication they’re also bullshitting you about climate science as well…… because the better they can KEEP you in the dark, KEEP you fooled, the longer they can continue to rake in the cash by the billions and tens of billions of dollars…. because you won’t be worried about running out, and therefore not bothering to support the renewables industries………..

      If you believe the world is heating up, and that this is a VERY bad thing for the world and for us as human beings, you won’t have any trouble at all understanding why there are sites such as Wattsup…. sites designed to keep you in the dark.

        1. He really went full mask off climate denier after TOD. Shame, really. I liked his stuff up until he turned part of his brain off for ideological boogeymen.

    4. If you think that it is a “serious analysis” you really should try reading a few books by real scientists. It’s by the Javier idiot who hasbeen proved wrong in just about everything he has ever said about climate.

    5. British American Tobacco told me about the UK gov’t trying to ban smoking too and how they’re actually really wrong about the cancer thing, up to 90% probability too.

      1. It’s not a coinicidence that one of the primary sources of climate denialism, the Heartland Institute, was originally created by the tobacco industry to foment doubt about the health effects of smoking.

  7. Record smashing heat over most of the world this year, including within the oceans.

    It is highly likely that we will look back by the end of the decade and consider this year to have been a cool one.
    At some point here we will lose a major grain crop…or two.

    1. I believe personally that the odds of losing ” a major grain crop… or two” are high enough that I’m fairly sure I’ll live to see it happen.

      More and more of the important variables involving agricultural production are trending fast in the wrong direction. We’re down big time on fossil water, we’ve lost a substantial part of our top soil in most places, we’re losing good farmland to development, the things we need to maintain our industrial ag production system are in ever shorter supply,etc.
      And while the population is stabilizing or even starting to fall in some places, it’s still growing by leaps and bounds worldwide.
      So the potential productive base is shrinking, while overall demand is growing…. and there are many places already where production can barely keep up with consumption, with many other places depending on imported food for SURVIVAL as such…… even such countries as the UK. They could probably somehow or another grow enough food to make it, without imports, but doing it would totally disrupt their economy, and their society, and their countryside.

      People who aren’t hands on or at least academically well acquainted with the subtleties of raising crops generally don’t understand that disaster is only a few weeks away, if the rain doesn’t come at the right time, or if there’s an extreme hot spell lasting more than a few days at the wrong time in the growing season……. or that extreme weather, wet, dry, hot, or cold can and does result sometimes in pest populations running wild, and potentially wiping out a crop. Diseases that are usually only a minor concern can wipe out a crop if the natural controls are disrupted by bad weather. Various molds, fungus, and insects run wild in unusually wet or damp or cold weather, ditto when it’s unusually hot and dry, etc.

      One well known, at least to people paying attention to the climate, example is the loss of our evergreen forests in large areas in the USA….. due to pine beetles running wild …… because for the last decade or so the winters have been too MILD to kill ENOUGH of them off, and so too many survive until spring.

      These commercially valuable and ecologically critical trees have died by the millions of acres……. setting up large stretches of otherwise pristine woodlands for runaway forest fires, followed by erosion of soil into streams killing off fish downstream, etc.

  8. While the discussions around here center around collapse, here is what’s all the rage in Jamaica:

    Construction Tallest Building in Jamaica (drone footage)

    This building is right in my neighborhood, just a couple minutes walk away from my apartment building which actually shows up in this drone footage. I have to drive or walk past it every time I go anywhere. Collapse is the furthest thing from the mind of the guy behind this building (a Canadianj/Jamaican who has named the project after himself). I’m pretty sure he’s focused on the amount of money he stands to make from building so much floor space on a relatively small lot (2500 m2, a little more than 1/2 an acre).

    So after reading the comments here, I have to pass this edifice that is going to absolutely require a reliable supply of energy (electricity) to be habitable. Air conditioning is going to be an absolute necessity with the East facing apartments soaking up the morning sun and the west facing apartments soaking up the afternoon sun. I doubt very much that there will be windows to allow natural breeze to blow through the occupied spaces. The water supply in Kingston is inadequate and the water supply is reduced to a limited time per day during the dry spells. The people that will want to live in this building are unlikely to countenance being without piped water at any time so there will have to be storage to store water on site and pumps to pump the stored water all the way to the top. Even when the water is coming from the public water supply I don’t think the water supplier is obliged to supply the pressure needed to go up the top of 20 floors.

    This building is just the tallest example but, multi-story building are springing up all over the city and the politicians are delighted at the economic growth that this indicates. The problem I have with all of this is that the energy supply to make all these structures comfortable for human occupancy is largely imported NG and liquid petroleum based fuels. These structures are always going to require considerable amounts of energy and if the energy is to be supplied by the international petroleum markets, who knows how affordable it will be to live or operate a business in these structures once the peak in petroleum extraction has been passed? This will not be my problem but, it may be a significant concern for the occupants of these multi-storey buildings that are still going to be around long after the builders are dead and gone.

    1. As I mentioned in a comment further down, I have been informed that that the developers of this building plan to star construction a a new development on adjacent plots (starting next January). Below is a screenshot of a Google Maps satellite image of building and the area to the southwest with a landmark, the Half Way Tree Clock in the extreme lower left hand corner of the image. The distance as the crow flies between the clock and the building is about 850 m (2790 ft.). The area enclosed in the back rectangle is a plot of land that has been used as a staging area for the construction of the current project from the start of the project. The area enclosed in the blue rectangle is a house that was recently purchased and demolished, ostensibly to make way for the planned development.

      Fans of these projects say that apart from the employment generated during their construction, they will add to the modernization of the island’s capital city.

  9. Both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice areas set daily record lows yesterday, probably for the first time since the early years of satellite viewing in the eighties. In the Arctic the Pacific side is particularly low; it looks like the whole pack has been shifted from the west to east. Let’s. hope this this doesn’t indicate some fundamental phase shift as happened to wind directions in Antarctica that led to such an anomalous drop of about four standard deviation from average there this year.The higher areas in the Greenland Sea indicate more export of loose ice through the Fram Strait, this ice is doomed to rapid melt as the floes move south.

    https://cryospherecomputing.com

    1. This is a weather pattern for one season.

      It was the same at the record low ice amount in 2007? I think – there a rare summer storm smashed the ice right before the height of melting season, letting is melt faster.

      For climate the multiyear trends are important – otherwise you have also the El Nino / La Nina / between noise in the data, additional with strong / low sun activity years. That’s all statistical noise.

  10. The WASF doomsday graph for earth energy imbalance from Eliot Jacobsen (using three year smoothing) highlights the recent big jump from the July numbers. The value has risen by a factor of six this century and is accelerating (i.e. the sensible heat absorbed by the oceans, land and air plus the latent heat from the net ice melt is six times more and getting worse). I’m pretty sure that is far more than even the most pessimistic scientist would have predicted, and the most worrying thing is “getting worse” – that means the huge jump in temperatures seen this year can be expected to be regularly exceeded in the future.

  11. I have only a reasonably well read layman’s understanding of the physics involved in the circulation of the atmosphere and the circulation of the waters of the world ocean, both of which are substantially determined by geography of land masses blocking winds, deflecting currents, etc.

    But it’s quite obvious that all the floating ice world wide doesn’t amount to very much at all, no more than a very minor fraction of all the waters of the top few hundred feet of the oceans.

    So…….. if for some reason we pass a tipping point that results in relatively warm surface waters coming into large scale contact with ice shelves in Greenland, Antarctica, etc, the floating ice wouldn’t last hardly anytime at all.

    My very limited knowledge in this area leads me to believe that this is very or even extremely unlikely to happen at least not within the next few decades or centuries……. and I haven’t seen much if any speculation about this coming about in any reputable publication.

    But there may be some serious researchers out there who think this might be a real possibility.

    If it were to happen, a century or two’s worth of sea level rise might possibly come to pass within a decade or two, with the ice shelves gone and warm water in contact with much faster moving glaciers at the coast line.

    Any comments or links will be very welcome and thanks in advance.

      1. 24ºC here today and I’m wandering around in a tee getting a sweat while a couple hundred miles north, Scotland gets landslides from months worth of rain in a day.

        Shit is fucked.

  12. FAO Food Price Index virtually unchanged in September. These numbers are global. See red line…

  13. Of all the worlds problems this is probably the most immediate, the programme highlights many areas of the world under serious strain

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1MZFrJPPIQ8

    Germany would need 30 desalination plants of the size of Beijing’s to balance it’s water budget. Water meters have helped a bit but the problem is getting worse and many other countries are in a worse position.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_management_in_Beijing#Seawater_desalination

  14. Maybe things aren’t QUITE as bad as I have assumed for the last few years, in respect to the major media swallowing the “eternal growth means prosperity” meme hook , line, and sinker.

    Here’s at least one little bright point of light in the overwhelming prevailing darkness.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/opinion/letters/population-decline.html

    Note that this is published only as an opinion piece, but it at least has been published in one of our most prominent and best respected major newspapers……..

    Which incidentally depends for it’s very existence on advertising revenue …….. revenue that’s pretty much one hundred percent generated by ad purchases by the super giant corporations that collectively own and operate the business world.

    So I don’t expect to see much of this sort of thing published in the usual mass media. I’m actually surprised to see even this little bit.

  15. Famous Hockey stick

    It’s not like the fossil fuel industry has given up. They’re still doing everything they can to prevent us from moving on. But they’ve largely moved away from denialism.”

    https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/06/michael-mann-deconstructs-the-current-state-of-climate-denial/

    Shouldn’t FF industry be more concerned over dwindling resources?
    I guess there’s still enough to wreck havoc.
    Like Carnot,textea,,,I think depletion is more of a problem than climate change but (I don’t matter, just bored, maybe only experts should comment)

    1. “I think depletion is more of a problem than climate change”
      They are both huge problems, that go hand in hand.
      The side effect of the incredible collective fossil fuel combustion.

      1. They’re more like evil Siamese twins of the sort that Stephen King would put in a novel, joined at the hips or with one body and two heads, than just holding hands.
        Someday a new Shakespeare will write it up, as a colossal novel, and then as a three act play.

        The twins eventually kill each other, and everything else as well. The fossil part mortally wounds the climate part, which in it’s death throes finishes off the industrial economy, which in turn finishes off the fossil fuel industries. The plot is entirely consistent with what we know about it.

        The economists have had a couple of centuries worth of laughs at Malthus and his theory, but in the end, his last laugh is going to echo throughout whatever history is preserved in books or carved into stone.

        Their basic error is that they confuse human time with natural time, with biological time.

        A couple or three centuries is no more than an eye blink to Mother Nature.

        1. “We” don’t “all” know anything.
          Some of us know something, in wildly various amounts. As an old sarge told me in the army “You’ve heard of people that don’t know nothun. Some guys don’t even suspect nuthun”.
          Who are the “climate people”? I don’t even know that.
          The You Tube link wasn’t very informative so I searched for the source:
          https://www.circlesofclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/No-Regrets-Charter-2015.pdf
          I read the charter.
          The preamble made me a little nervous (no hate involved). It didn’t mention reducing fossil fuel use and every paragraph of the preamble focused on adaptation, nothing there about active action to reduce the danger.
          Yet as I read a little further they did discuss using renewable resources so I would guess that it is the deniers that would hate the strategy. Besides, they (the deniers) are aligned with some really serious haters.

          1. Th climate people don’t like the NoRegrets strategy because (1) it takes the focus off of climate change as a unifying adversary and (2) they don’t want to dwell on stoking fears of fuel shortages.

            This is the original 1991 white paper on No Regrets, by C. Boyden Gray a WH councel and European Union ambassador
            https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1148717.pdf

            ” In view of the uncertainties underlying the global warming debate and the limits of available resources, the administration has embraced a balanced policy of adopting tho environmental measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing concrete environmental benefits. This approach has bee termed a “multiple objective steps” or “no regrets” policy. Actions taken in this area should be based upon the long-term outlook “taking into account the full range of social economic, and environmental consequences proposed actions for this and future generations”

            ….

            ” Of all the world’s various environmental and economic problems, energy use and its consequences figure most prominently. Today, the world as a whole depends on oil, natural gas, and coal for most of its basic energy needs. These sources of energy are nonrenewable and at least oil and coal pollute the environment on
            a grand scale. Yet energy supply is the lifeblood of modern economies. The events of the 1970s demonstrated the importance of natural resources in the world’s strategic balance of power. To take one example, the severe disruption to oil prices caused by the 1979
            Iranian Revolution and its aftermath probably cost the economies of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries about $1 trillion, causing unemployment to rise from 17 million to 29 million between 1979 and 1982. Given this nexus, any environmental strategy must include a sound energy policy. The administration’s recently released NES, featuring an ambitious alternative fuels program, is a good example of balancing environmental, economic, and energy considerations.”

  16. So, here’s where we’re at folks, Total Indifference.

    COP28 BOSS’ APPEAL TO RAISE CLIMATE TARGETS MET WITH TOTAL INDIFFERENCE

    In July, when Cop28 chief Sultan Al Jaber laid out his battle plan for the upcoming climate summit in Dubai, he issued a plea to all governments: raise your climate targets by September. His appeal has gone totally unanswered. Two and a half months later no country has updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement-mandated blueprint to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

    Current NDCs are short of what is needed. If countries meet their 2030 emission targets in full, global heating could only be limited to 2.4-2.6C this century, according to the UN Emissions Gap report. Emissions need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest report.

    https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/10/02/cop28-boss-appeal-to-raise-climate-targets-met-with-total-indifference/

  17. Did somebody say we should get off fossil fuels?

    NEW OIL AND GAS DISCOVERIES PROPEL SOUTH AFRICA’S ENERGY RENAISSANCE

    • South Africa plans to expand oil and gas operations, with recent approvals for TotalEnergies’ drilling activities.
    • The country aims to reduce coal reliance, which currently powers 80% of its energy, through increased gas exploration.
    • New legislation and the dismissal of appeals against drilling are paving the way for increased exploration and energy security projects.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/New-Oil-And-Gas-Discoveries-Propel-South-Africas-Energy-Renaissance.html

    1. A billion barrels of newly discovered oil is played up in the media as big happy news.
      But the news never mentions that a billion barrels is only a week or two’s supply at current rates of consumption.

  20. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/opinion/letters/population-decline.html

    This link is actually about the history of the solar energy industry up until today.
    It’s well worth the time it takes to read and think about it.

    Students of twentieth century military history will tell you we Yankees were able to successfully and quickly mobilize for WWII not only because we were big and rich in natural resources but also because we had a substantial CORE of well experienced NCO’s and commissioned officers that enabled us to get the job done …… these men having mastered their profession as the result of fighting WWI.

    I believe the wind, solar, and battery industries are big enough now that it’s quite reasonable to say that if we keep the pedal to the metal, trucker’s slang, that we can build enough renewable capacity and enough transmission lines, etc, to manage a successful transition to renewable energy.

    It’s not like it has to be finished at any particular time, with the population peaking within the easily foreseeable future. Falling population means less consumption, and as the renewable electricity industry grows, the remaining supply of fuel in the ground will last at least a couple of decades longer before depletion becomes a critical short term problem.

    Peeing and moaning about the climate and CO2 in this scenario is a waste of time. We CAN stay pedal to the metal on renewable energy, efficiency and conservation. What ever we do in the way of renewables can’t HURT anything. If the transition fails, well, the climate is going to hell ANYWAY.

    Flip side, cutting back in any substantial fashion, enough to MATTER, on fossil fuel anytime soon is an absolute impossibility, as a practical matter.

    Oil ( plus coal and gas of course) is the lifeblood of the industrial economy. No world stage politician, any place, any party, any country, is going to go that route. Any politician in any industrial country dumb enough to push such a policy on the world stage would be history at the next election, or otherwise dead from an assassin’s bullet even sooner.

    A few leaders in really small countries can pull it off……. but these countries, places such as have hydro out the ying yang and plenty of money, don’t amount to a tick on an elephants back in terms of the global economy.

    We’re for sure up shit creek without a paddle, in general terms, but if by some miracle we were to come to our senses and put our hearts and souls into building out the renewable electricity industry, while also putting a war time effort into conservation and efficiency policies…….

    There’s at least a possibility that we can turn the corner on fossil fuel consumption before depletion turns that corner for us…… and the turning point could at least in theory come before we put so much CO2 in the atmosphere that only a handful of us are still around here and there at higher elevations in northerly or southerly climes.

    Maybe we’ll get a chunk of broken brick upside our collective head sufficient to wake us up. But a chunk big enough to do it might be so big that it cripples us to the point we won’t be able to implement the necessary proactive policies.

  21. Not good.

    WORLD BREACHES KEY 1.5C WARMING MARK FOR RECORD NUMBER OF DAYS

    “On about a third of days in 2023, the average global temperature was at least 1.5C higher than pre-industrial levels. Staying below that marker long-term is widely considered crucial to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66857354

    1. from the article, “Breaching these Paris thresholds doesn’t mean going over them for a day or a week but instead involves going beyond this limit across a 20 or 30-year average.”

      that’s a crazy statement. so 2023 didn’t really count, because it wasn’t “on average” above 1.5C. and it was a pretty sobering year. so we need 50% of the next 20 years to be worse than 2023, then we’ll address the fact that we failed. brilliant. odds are currently in favor of 2024 being the first of those years given previous “First Year After El Nino starts” trends.

  22. More oil moving from tar sands as world warms (or oil sands if you prefer).

    TRANS MOUNTAIN PIPELINE CAPACITY SET TO TRIPLE

    Line fill is set to commence some time in the next quarter, with the process expected to take between six and seven weeks, Trans Mountain said on Friday. Line fill will require 4.5 million barrels of crude oil and is the last step before crude deliveries from the pipeline can begin. “We expect commercial operations to commence near the end of Q1 2024,” Trans Moutain said in a Friday statement.

    The $22.6 billion Trans Mountain expansion project will triple the pipeline’s capacity to 890,000 barrels per day.

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trans-Mountain-Pipeline-Capacity-Set-To-Triple.html

  24. Islandboy and others have highlighted the increasing investment in wind and solar. The hope being that sometime around 2050 we will stop burning fossil fuels, and the likes of China will somehow cut coal consumption from 4.5 billion tonnes this year to nothing.

    I have pointed out that if 750 billion tonnes of Antarctica, Greenland and other glaciers are melting now, how much will be melting in 2030 with much more CO2 and deforestation sending temperatures even higher?

    I have found this study which has calculated that we need to reduce CO2 from 410 to 353ppm. That’s is the level in around 1990.

    https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2013/2020/

    This would require getting to zero emissions by 2030 at the latest, reducing deforestation to net zero about the same time. Then reforest all areas destroyed since 1990. That hopefully would stop the permafrost melting and releasing the CO2 and methane it holds.
    So can see why I don’t get too excited about the increase in solar panels.

    1. Most of us here are well aware of what you have pointed out. Some of us are wondering what can be done about it. The most obvious answer is to reduce the human population but humans are not like livestock where you can just cull the herd. The Christian edict of “go forth and multiply” still has a stronghold on many places. The “religion” of economic growth has a stronghold on all but a few countries if any at all. This makes the idea of voluntary population reduction a taboo subject. How then do we tackle the problem of global warming caused by CO2 emissions? Got any ideas, or should we just try and enjoy a “Thelma and Louise” moment?

      1. “The Christian edict of “go forth and multiply” still has a stronghold on many places.”

        It actually goes back to the Hebrew, predating Christianity by a thousand years. Nevertheless, it’s not just a religious edict: It’s absolutely Darwinian, natural, inevitable–and ultimately catastrophic. Here’s Papa Charles himself:

        [W]e may confidently assert, that all plants and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every station in which they could any how exist, and that the geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life.

        The. Geometrical. Tendency. To. Increase. Must. Be. Checked. By. Destruction..

        1. Well then, that settles it, Thelma and Louise it is! Enjoy the ride folks!

          Speaking of which, the guys that are building the edifice on the street where I live (see comment further up) apparently have plans to start construction of a very similar project on land adjacent to the current one. They are obviously maximizing the returns on the investment in the land they have acquired. Good for them!

        2. That way before they invented the pill.

          Humans are very strange animals.

      2. Islandboy

        I just gave you the meathod above.

        You are obviously so desperate to try and say something clever you cannot even take in the things you are replying to.
        Global warming is not just about CO2. I will give you a big clue.

        Why are countries in Central Africa on the Equator cooler than Saudi Arabia which is much further north and should be cooler but is 6-10C hotter most of the time?

    1. Yes this how vast real estate empires will collapse. Once it becomes clear to the actuaries that stopping Thwaites from sliding into the sea and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it, no one will insure any home under 10’ sea level. Florida, New York, Boston, etc will have no means of insuring their homes. Banks will not provide a mortgage without insurance. Where will these tens of millions of people go over the next 2-3 decades?

      https://en.mercopress.com/2020/01/30/scientists-surprised-at-unusual-temperature-at-the-base-of-huge-glacier-in-antarctica

      https://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-going-change-insurance-090558065.html

      https://therealdeal.com/miami/2023/10/04/progressive-dropping-100000-florida-insurance-home-policies/

      https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/state/2023/09/16/citizens-insurance-revised-florida-rates-increase/70866219007/

      1. That’s why I’m holding on to my three rental properties btwn Austin & San Antonio…all those Houston folks are gonna be looking for places. Currently renting them on Airbnb.

  27. In the interest of balance on what is otherwise a one sided debate have a look at this video on rising sea levels.
    https://youtu.be/Ac6TvN1hvKA
    Warning. Many here will object to this video but those who are not blighted by cognitive bias and group think might like to consider rationally the data provided.
    I note the recent attack on Euan Mearns. He does not endorse the more wild claims of climate change. The climate has always been changing – it always has done and it always will do.
    Our future will be determined by resource depletion and the global carrying capacity of the population. Fiddling with carbon dioxide concentrations will not solve the primary issue.

    1. ” Euan Mearns. He does not endorse the more wild claims of climate change.”
      Oh yes he does- that there is no fossil fuel combustion related global warming underway.
      Flat earther.

    2. In the interest of balance, can you please provide some debate material for the earth being flat, immaculate conception, and aliens living among us disguised as cats?

      “The climate has always been changing” – are you serious?? My 3rd grader is smart enough to know this makes no sense. I’m thankful she’s not blighted by stupidity.

      “Questions about funding often imply, or state outright, that we take money from the fossil fuel industry and that doing so somehow compromises our integrity. Because we do not believe fossil fuels are having a disastrous effect on climate we would feel no unease at all in receiving donations from people in the energy sector.”

      Edit to add: Check out Carnot’s web site!! I’m going to share that with my kids to show them what completely adulterated bullsh*t looks like. I won’t be buying them climate denier t-shirts for sale there, however.

    3. I have never heard a claim for significant acceleration in measured sea level rise so I’d class this as a worthless straw man. The important considerations for sea level rise are when and how quickly the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers collapse, and no historical data set can help in determining that. Recent and continuing studies indicate that the mechanisms leading to collapse could already have started and, given the catastrophic consequences, the precautionary principle would suggest taking notice there rather than raising non-issues.

      As with other denialism Skeptical Science has already addressed this:

      https://skepticalscience.com/decelerating-sea-level-rise.htm

      And now to the really important part, which is not the math but the physics. Whether sea level showed 20th-century acceleration or not, it’s the century coming up which is of concern. And during this century, we expect acceleration of sea level rise because of physics. Not only will there likely be nonlinear response to thermal expansion of the oceans, when the ice sheets become major contributors to sea level rise, they will dominate the equation. Their impact could be tremendous, it could be sudden, and it could be horrible.

      The relatively modest acceleration in sea level so far is not a cause for great concern, but neither is it cause for comfort. The fact is that statistics simply doesn’t enable us to foresee the future beyond a very brief window of time. Even given the observed acceleration, the forecasts we should attend to are not from statistics but from physics.

      1. On the long term, i.e. centuries, around Greenland at least, and perhaps Antarctica, rises in sea level associated with ice cap melting, would be complicated by isostatic adjustment: the reduction in the weight of ice pressing the crust down would result in a vetical movement of the crust. Scandinavia and Northern Scotland have until recently experienced an upward movement of the crust due to isostatic adjustment that compensated for the rise in oceanic water volume following ice cap melting. In efect, southern England is suffering rising sea levels and coastal drowning, while Northern Scotland is rising out of the water and is fringed by a series of raised beaches.

    4. “Balance”? You can tell in the first five minutes that the commenters simply don’t know what they are talking about. An example”
      “It’s hard to measure sea levels…”
      Here’s what NOAA says:
      “Sea level is primarily measured using tide stations and satellite laser altimeters. Tide stations around the globe tell us what is happening at a local level—the height of the water as measured along the coast relative to a specific point on land. Satellite measurements provide us with the average height of the entire ocean. Taken together, these tools tell us how our ocean sea levels are changing over time.”
      Who ya gonna believe?
      Another example of nonsense”
      “Islands aren’t sinking because coral is growing and making up for any sea level rise” Really? This both acknowledges that the sea is rising and ignores that the temperature change causing sea level rise is also killing coral.
      The really shocking news in the video was that the Economist, the NOAA and the Guardian were “climate alarmists”. Spare me.
      I wondered about the expertise of the narrator, a Dr. John Robson. It turns out he is a Dr. of History and runs an organization called the Climate Discussion Nexus. Here’s a fun video reviewing another of Dr. Robson’s videos:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvCc3EuPX-c
      I’m all in favor of balance but this guy isn’t it.

      1. It gets worse – now my Youtube feed is filled with these slick glossy videos with credible-looking people saying more nonsense. “Since scientists can not exactly predict the future climate, we should do nothing”.

  28. https://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-solar-storm-revealed-183032495.html

    It’s probably impossible to come up with any detailed prediction as to the odds of such a solar storm occurring , but we know enough to know that it’s fairly likely there will be a big one every century or so.

    A really big one would be the end of industrial civilization and life as we know it, because it would destroy the industrial base level of production.The electrical grid would be down, and if you look into it, you will find that there’s only about a year’s supply of big transformers, etc, on hand, which is enough to replace the ones that routinely go bad.

    The lead time on custom ordered equipment of this sort is at least two years and likely longer.

    In the past, we’ve had supply problems that were mostly brought on by war, disease, or economic stupidity, etc. The raw materials were still pretty much available, at least in the ground, and the men needed to mine them, process them, and manufacture them into finished machines were still around, ditto the machines used to make machines.

    But with the grid down……. the shit would be totally and irreversibly in the fan in terms of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again……. because the grid enables everything else…… and we don’t have the necessary supply of back up replacement parts to get it up again.

    1. Seems to me a strategic reserve of big transformers wouldn’t be a bad idea.

    2. OFM
      A Carrington type event does not need to be catastrophic to the electrical grid these days. With satellite information and solar monitoring in place these days, we have at least 24 hours advance warning of the event. With the installation of appropriate remote control grounding and isolation devices, major systems can be largely shut down and safely preserved.
      Will anybody spend the money and effort to do that?????

      1. Good to know. I was reading that faraday cages are of questionable value.
        I also read that these events are more likely now due to the weakening of the electromagnetic shield.
        Lowering co2 without this insurance policy doesn’t make any sense.

  29. More balance

    “Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, is quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” This quote serves as a warning of the importance of testing a forecasting model out-of-sample. It’s often easy to find a model that fits the past data well — perhaps too well! — but quite another matter to find a model that correctly identifies those features of the past data which will be replicated in the future”.

    Might be worth considering this quote when assessing the Mann Hockey stick. The one where the data was adjusted and a different data set added to fit the narrative. Good science – depends on your point of view. Not where I come from. By the way I do not refer to people with opposing views as idiots.

    1. More “balance”-
      Gravity is highly variable. I saw it on you tube on it.
      It explains the advantage of Chinese manufacturing.

      Trump has taught the republican voter that facts (voting results or scientific data) don’t matter if they work to your disadvantage.
      Funny/sad examples
      -he has a press conference where he alters a hurricane storm track forecast from NOAA with a sharpy to suit his narrative, and misrepresents it as the factual projection
      -he proclaims that he won the presidential election, even while losing by over 7 million votes according the final tally after all audits by the Federal Election Commission

  30. EVEN TEMPORARY GLOBAL WARMING ABOVE 2℃ WILL AFFECT LIFE IN THE OCEANS FOR CENTURIES

    “There is growing consensus that our planet is likely to pass the 1.5℃ warming threshold. Research even suggests global warming will temporarily exceed the 2℃ threshold, if atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) peaks at levels beyond what was anticipated. Exceeding our emissions targets is known as a climate overshoot. It may lead to changes that won’t be reversible in our lifetime. These changes include sea-level rise, less functional ecosystems, higher risks of species extinction, and glacier and permafrost loss. We are already seeing many of these changes.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-10-temporary-global-affect-life-oceans.html

    1. Green waste is a problem and needs to be addressed, as does all waste, but it’s important to look at scale and context. Can you spot the blight of the turbine dump in Sweetwater TX? It’s about one mile south of town on 70, west side of the road.

      Now pan around the surrounding area a bit. Here’s the sprawl of fossil fuel extraction from the same elevation.

      The cumulative projected tonnage of turbine production 2029-2049 is 6.5 million metric tons.
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/1279272/wind-turbines-waste-generation-by-region/

      At 80 million barrels a day, oil consumed is 24 million tons per day! Some of it will even become turbine blades.

      This fun little trash clock says we generated 5.7 million tons of trash TODAY globally, so, a bit less than wind turbine waste total anticipated over the next half century.

      1. Your conversion number od barrels to ton are wrong, by quite a bit. The generally accepted conversion- Platts- is 7.3 barrels per tonne. Crude densities vary according to the composition and maturation of the source rock. Another confusing metric is BOE ( barrel of oil equivalent) which is generally accepted as 6MMBTU.

        Actual global crude & condensate consumption is a little of 85 million b/d which is about 11.6 million tonnes. Still a lot of oil of which the US alone consumes about 1/6 of the total.

        Conversion for NGL’s and products in barrel/mt
        ethane 17.66
        propane 12.4
        isobutane 11.1
        n-butane 10.78
        natural gasoline 9.45
        naphtha 9
        finished gasoline 8.45
        jet-kerosine 7.86
        diesel 7.46

        Thus the use of boe in oil reserve estimates can be a very misledaing metric.

        1. Sure enough. Thanks for the correction Carnot. I used 300 lbs per barrel, but just dropped the last three zeros and failed to divide by two.

          1. Bob,
            Sadly the oil industry uses a set of units which are not always easy to understand. BOE is one ofdmy pet hates, for obvious reasons. Quoting ethane in barrels is a particular irritation and a decade ago I made a well known consultancy look utterly stupid when they got their conversion factor for ethane wrong. I spotted the mistake straight away but let them babble on until the maximize embarrassment.

            I spend a lot of time on polymer recycling. To keep things short, turbine blades are mainly composite with either glass fibre or carbon fibre re-inforcement, and generally held together with epoxy resins. Currently there is no effective way of recovering the xpoxy resins for recycling. GRP can be autoclaved at high temperature to gasify the epoxy which can be used as fuel. The glass fibre can be recovered and used in portland cement production. Carbon fibre cannot be readily recovered. BMW developed an autoclave process and recovered carbon fibre which could be used in fillers – a very limited application.

            To produce all the polymers we are familiar( polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene,PVC, PMMA, ABS and many more) we need too produce base petrochemicals. The are ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, xylene, methanol and ammonia. Eyhylene is almost exclusively produced by steam cracking of ethane, propane, butane and naphtha fractions. Methanol and ammonia are mainly produced form natural gas. Benzene is produced from steam cracking and catalytic reforming of naphtha.

            Recycling of polymers is not easy. The difficult stuff is the post consumer mixed plastic waste. We are in the very early stages of developing and proving this technology and it is fraught with challenges, mainly from contamination by various substances. I have been in the business of oil , gas and petrochemicals for 45 years. Many people despise the petrochemical industry and those that work in it. We are victims of our own success. We have enabled a modern vibrant economy that is totally dependent on our products. The snag is no-one ever considered the end of life issue, which really has to be done at the design stage – design to recycle.

  35. https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/11/chinas-oil-gas-giant-sinopec-says-peak-oil-demand-already-happened-in-china/

    I’m sort of skeptical, to put it mildly, about fossil fuels peaking as soon as predicted in this link, but assuming Old Man Business As Usual remains on his feet, the peak is coming, and it’s not all that far into the future, certainly not more than a decade or two down the road, maybe within a decade.
    By business as usual, I mean business in the historical sense, considered over decades, generations, and centuries. At this time scale, things change radically rather than slowly.

    Unfortunately nearly everybody collectively focuses his attention mostly on the short to near medium term, with the rare exceptions being people who hang out in forums such as this one.

    In any case, this article is well worth the time spent in reading it.

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