143 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, October 23, 2023”

  1. To Hideaway,

    Once again spot on with your analysis, except the situation is even worse for hydrogen. There are 3 methods of production(alkaline, PEM and SOE) The alkaline electrolyser is the most developed/ mature at present. All pathways require a supply of demineralised water as otherwise the electrodes will scale up. The needs to be a constant blowdown of water to purge mieral build up. No method can be used intermettently. The idea of 4-6 hours per day of operation is fantasy. Turn down is limited – they need to run 24/7 and minimum 30% capacity which even then is sub optimal. So to be viable there has to be a back-up supply to maintain the minimum output. In other words, produce hydrogen from electricity to produce electricity!! That makes perfect sense – perpetual energy consumption- net energy gain nil. But this is typical for most renewable. Look at the embeded energy on solar and wind and then calculate when they become energy positive. Pretty much at the end of life after all of the increased infrastructure and back-up is included. The squandering of valuable raw materials produced from fossil fuels beggars belief. Worse still is the idea that energy demand per capita is going to fall – total nonsense. Try telling that to the 7 billion that do not use even half the energy in the west per capita.

    1. “Look at the embeded energy on solar and wind and then calculate when they become energy positive. Pretty much at the end of life after all of the increased infrastructure and back-up is included.”

      Ridiculous statement.
      Put solarPV in a sunny spot (most of the world), and the lifecycle energy payback period published results are in the range of 1-3 years.

      1. Hickory,

        You have lost the plot. I have a PV system in the UK. 10 years on and it is no nowhere near to payout, and I have a tracking system . It feeds a battery back up.

        You need to look at the full installed cost. When the sun does not shine then you need a back-up. At 50 north the ratio is 6:1 from june to December. What are you going to do inthe Autumn Spring months . Freeze.
        You need to consider the impact to the grid.
        Even a sunny spot is ridiculous. What do you do at night. You need a back up. I guess you are an expert on power distribution and grid infrastructure (not).

        1. Using UK as a basis for your impression explains everything.

          From last thread-

          “I don’t think the UK should deploy any domestic photovoltaics. Seriously.
          Any financial resources going to the energy sector would be far better spent elsewhere, for them.
          Solar is weak there. The best locations in the UK are worse than any location in the lower 48 states.
          And Ireland even a little worse.
          In fact most of the northern tier of European countries would do better spending their money elsewhere.

          This is not the case for over 150 other countries, where the vast population of the worlds people live.”
          Hickory

          https://globalsolaratlas.info/map

          1. Hickory,

            This may be why many of these nations focus on hydro and offshore wind power, solar makes more sense in southern Europe.

            1. Utilities generally make very good decisions about their 30 year purchases.

        2. CARNOT,
          You have definitely lost the plot. Hickory’S remark was about when the system is energy positive.

          >You need to look at the full installed cost.
          Not related to when the system is energy positive.

          >When the sun does not shine then you need a back-up.
          Not related to when the system is energy positive.

          > What are you going to do inthe Autumn Spring months
          Not related to when the system is energy positive

          >You need to consider the impact to the grid.
          Not related to when the system is energy positive

          > What do you do at night.
          Not related to when the system is energy positive

          >You need a back up.
          Not related to when the system is energy positive

          > I guess you are an expert on power distribution and grid infrastructure (not).
          Not related to when the system is energy positive

          Saying someone has lost the plot and then rattling off a series of non sequitor remarks
          shows a distinct lack of self awareness.

        3. Interesiting, I really would like to get your numbers on a day to day bascis,
          However, since I´m at 65N. and we have some hydro, and quite a bit of wind too, currently juice is almost to cheap to meter for us,
          Sucks to be me….

      2. @Hickory …. “Put solarPV in a sunny spot (most of the world), and the lifecycle energy payback period published results are in the range of 1-3 years.”

        I have repeatedly asked you to provide some evidence for this, but all you do is repeat this fabrication.
        It’s easy to work out the energy solar panels will return over 1-3 years using a simple multiplication of hours of sun X size X number of days. For example Australia’s largest solar farm at Uralla of some 720Mw (when finished) will have an average collection of 5.5 hours/day, so 720Mw X 5.5 X 365 X 3 for 3 years worth electricity generated (providing it’s not turned off too often due to negative prices!!)
        Uralla will produce 4,336,200Mwh in 3 years. It will cost a total of $1.3B and has 400Mwh of battery storage (enough for about 30 minutes of rated capacity after losses).
        So for a payback of 3 years they would have to get $300/Mwh when the sun shines, without a single cent being spent on operating and maintenance..

        The current NSW price for wholesale electricity at 3PM is -$26/Mwh and has been negative since 8.15AM this morning.
        There was a window of 5 minutes yesterday afternoon at 5.45PM where the price spiked up to $2000/Mwh, but such occasions are very rare. (maximum discharge from battery is 400Mw/hr, so in a 5 minute period they could have only supplied 33Mwh at the high rate).

        This solar farm will never pay back the energy at current rates, so why was it built? subsidies, tax credits and dumb investments by groups that think ‘green’ is the future.

        Even if we attributed a $US60/Mwh for the price of energy, which happens to be the average price of the energy content of a barrel of oil in 2022, the 4,336,200Mwh produced would be equal to $US260,172,000
        and the plant cost, converting $A to $US, $US832,000,000, so only paid around 1/3rd of energy input, before we allow for operating and maintenance costs, plus interest on the capital. Yes money has a cost!!

        You have to spend the capital up front to build a large solar farm and using a 6% interest rate (good luck finding a rate as low as that to build a solar farm in Australia!!) the interest cost alone on $US832M is $49,920,000 p.a. The operating and maintenance cost given by the solar industry itself is 1% p.a. of the capital cost for the first 5-10 years, up to 4% thereafter for life of plant, which makes sense as older equipment will have higher maintenance costs. Averaging it out at 2% p.a. = $US16,640,000 p.a.

        Costs for this wind farm are $US66,560,000 p.a. returns from energy given an artificial number of $US60/Mwh = 720Mw X 5.5hrs X 365 X $US60 = $US86,724,000 or a net return of $US22,164,000.

        Over the 25 year life of this solar farm (with a battery changeover somewhere in the middle not accounted for), it would return only $US554,100,000 for an initial outlay of $US832,000,000.
        It’s a negative proposition over 25 years at the ‘average’ Mwh cost of a barrel of oil in 2022, which is way beyond the average cost of wholesale electricity during the day in Australia!! (now -$A20.99)

        1. I can’t help you to understand what you are so dedicated to avoid understanding.

          For everyone else…the cost of energy used in the production of a solar panel, or a car or a refrigerator, is passed onto the customer. That includes the minerals and mining, manufacture and transportation, labor…everything. The whole chain of costs, including energy, is passed on to the customer.
          And guess what….the cost of solar electricity/kWhr is inexpensive in sunny areas. This reflects a very favorable EROEI.
          This has changed dramatically over the past ten years due almost entirely to the efficiencies of mass production, with less energy required/panel during the manufacturing process.
          If common sense doesn’t satisfy you then here is a recent academic paper to waste your time with.

          1. @Hickory, you seem to miss the premise that it is an entire system we are talking about, with multiple subsystems that are interacting and overlapping. Energy, resources, capital, debt, skills, location, management all overlap to create and destroy parts of the overall system we call the economy.

            We also have some physics laws that are completely out of our control, entropy being a biggie here. Nothing lasts forever, ever aspect of the economy has a life and must be replaced over time. It’s entropy over time that’s important. We are running out of the easy to get and cheap energy and minerals. It takes energy and time to process minerals into useful forms, lots of energy including embedded energy in all the manufacturing plants and education of all the workers.

            It takes a background system operating normally. ‘Normally’ has meant a growing system for the last 200 years, more energy, more resources, more stuff, more people, more pollution.

            You can’t build anything ‘new’ unless we have growth. Without growth, the only way to build something ‘new’ means deficit somewhere else in the system. We use money as the scorecard in our economic system. The example I gave above of the largest solar farm in Australia, is a losing proposition at an artificially high electricity price of $60/Mwh, far greater than the system is actually paying!!
            It means lack of investment for replacement of that part of the system, if it can’t make a profit.

            Why can’t it make a profit at the capital cost of $US832,000,000 plus ongoing operating and maintenance? Simple, the energy/dollar cost to build/operate it, was too expensive. It doesn’t return the energy to pay back the cost of building/operating it over it’s expected life.

            Why was it built?? It was only built because of subsidies and tax credits that made the initial capital cost in dollars artificially low!! Future planned buildout of large solar farms are being cancelled because they are not economic.

            People don’t understand the time component. Every large project that takes years to build ends up costing way in excess of initial budgets, Nuclear power plants are the classic example. The background system is undergoing entropy the entire time so much of the system needs to be replaced as it reaches the end of life. Manufacturers, planners, workers all charge more than expected to replace their bit of the background system because the energy cost has risen. The cost of the big project blows out without anyone understanding why.
            The big solar farm was built over years, still is being built, so the entire build is happening over almost a decade. It never would have started without a large subsidy and ongoing tax credits because the budget price of just building it was never economic.

            A coal plant at a cost of $A1B (in today’s money), the way they use to be built, can produce 1gw at a 95% capacity rate. It will return 83,220,000Mwh in the first year of operation. A similar $1B spent on the solar farm (at the rate of 553.8Mw capacity adjusting the spend down to $1B from the $1.3B actual cost), would produce only 1,111,753Mwh in the first year of operation.
            There are a lot more mined, processed and manufactured minerals and metals in the amount of solar, compared to a coal plant, that needs to be built to equal the energy output of the coal plant. The coal plant will also last twice as long as the solar. The batteries to spread whatever solar you need to spread over time will need to be replaced at least 4 times to bring it equal to coal.

            There is so much more stuff that needs to be built to produce the solar, then replaced, all from the background system that is undergoing entropy over time, so has a much greater background energy cost.

            Pretty much every paper I’ve been able to find on EROEI fails to acknowledge the background entropy as if it didn’t exist, when it is a very real energy cost.

            @Hickory … Your argument that the customer will pay for the energy cost fails to take into account, that a point will be reached where the customer can’t pay so the system will collapse because the energy cost was too high. The customers are not paying for the large solar farm right now, so when and how do you expect them to pay from an energy basis point of view??

        2. Thanks for working this out, nothing like old math. In the usa there’s a new math every 20yrs in the schools. Yep when ROI is low it looks rosier but I’ve wondered what that number really is. I’m guessing your projections apply to usa solar farms also.
          What about rooftop that pays back in 6-10 yrs?(in USA , not where Carnot is)
          I can see where this helps a bit , heating the water etc..like hickory says so we do nothing?

          1. “What about rooftop that pays back in 6-10 yrs?”
            Keep in mind that the cost of rooftop solar includes all sorts of costs other than Energy Input. You pay for labor, electricians, permits, administrative fees for the installing company, wiring, and component materials of the panels and inverters (beyond their energy component).
            The energy component of the overall cost of the system gets paid back by energy production in 1-2 years if you put it in a sunny area. Same goes for a utility scale installation.

            1. @Hickory …. “The energy component of the overall cost of the system gets paid back by energy production in 1-2 years if you put it in a sunny area. Same goes for a utility scale installation.”

              Despite me constantly asking you to prove this misinformation, you never do. You just keep repeating this lie. There is no evidence anywhere that the total energy cost can be repaid in such a short period of time!!

              Please do the research!! It’s the Energy Invested bit of EROEI that you need to properly research!!
              There is a lot of embedded energy invested in the electrician, wiring, inverters, installation company, roof connection components etc, that are a necessary energy spend to get any return out of solar panels. Excluding them is just self delusion!! Likewise for the mines the minerals came from, the factories they were built in, the workers that worked in these, the roads and bridges crossed by moving all the minerals etc. There would be no solar panels without all this background system existing and operating normally, but the embedded energy in all this is never counted in the Energy Invested bit of the EROEI calculation…

              Repeating a lie very often does not make it true….

            2. Hideaway. About 2 or 3 months ago I responded to your query with links to 3 or 4 sources on EROI. Either you missed them or choose to disregard the the information.
              I have no further comment on the issue, other than to say-

              The proof is in the pudding…follow the price. It includes the energy component of creating the product, as prices for all products always do.

              https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

            3. Hickory,

              Thanks for the chart.

              I have a similar chart that was published about 1981 in Scientific American that showed a price of $30 then, and projected a price of about $3 in 2010. Looks like it was spot on. It’s remarkable that the rate of decline is not only not slowing down, but is actually accelerating since 2010.

              That this SciAm author was able to forecast this so accurately tells us something about science, engineering, and manufacturing, and the reliability of cost reductions with scale and experience. It strongly pushes back against nihilism!

            4. Hickory,

              It seems Hideaway is talking about the energy payback for the entire PV system and you may be talking about the energy payback for just the solar panel. As an entire system is required for a PV system to operate it seems like payback should be looked at for the entire system.

              It may be the 3 year payback is based on living in an area with high residential electricity prices, an area with low utility prices would have a longer payback period, the solar resource will also have an effect.

              See

              https://www.solar.com/learn/what-is-the-average-payback-period-for-solar-panels/

              For utility scale solar I could not find pay back periods.

            5. Dennis,

              “For utility scale solar I could not find pay back periods.”

              It’s funny how people who have residential pv have the mistaken impression that their system gives them experience that will help them in evaluating utility-scale solar. It really doesn’t. Residential solar is a completely different animal from utility-scale solar. Residential solar is the only form of power generation that can be done cost effectively at home (as opposed to home generators using NG or diesel). I like to say that it’s like a dog walking on two feet: you don’t ask it to be perfect, you just marvel that it can be done at all.

              As you have noted in the past, nobody in the utility or other energy industries thinks about Energy ROI, and I don’t think they evaluate large projects in terms of $-ROI. I believe they think more in terms of evaluating the competitiveness of the overall cost of electricity produced (LCOE). Secondary measures include the value and reliability of energy produced during periods of peak demand: “Capacity is the maximum level of electric power (electricity) that a power plant can supply at a specific point in time under certain conditions.”

              https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php

              “There is a difference between energy and capacity, and power plants are compensated for both because both are important to maintaining the electrical system in different ways.

              Here is the distinction. A power plant generates electricity that you use in your home—and it needs to be paid for that electricity. This happens in the energy market. In these markets electricity is like any other commodity, bought wholesale and resold to consumers at retail prices.

              However, some grid operators are experimenting* with capacity markets, or “forward markets,” which direct investment a few years ahead of when electricity needs to be delivered. This is important, since power plants are expensive and take a long time to build; adding the additional risk that they may not even be used can obviously discourage investment. Hopefully, these markets create long-term price signals for all resources.”
              *This article is from 2013, so it’s a bit out of date
              https://energycentral.com/c/ec/how-capacity-market-works

            6. The weaknesses in ‘look at this one chart’ to prove a point are just too many to point out in a single reply…

              According to that chart alone, without any further information, one could conclude that a continuation will happen, soon solar panels will be free, and then at some point in the future people will pay me to take new solar panels, argument closed the world is saved…

              I’m not saying anything about how the price of solar panels has fallen over time, nor is it relevant to the future, unless your argument is that they will continue to follow the path of the past, despite the mining of ever more energy expensive minerals to make them..
              I’m always talking about the price of renewables NOW, not how they have become cheaper, the price of a total system now, in todays energy cost to pay back the energy input to making useable electricity.

              A solar panel by itself is about as useable as a car without a road or fuel, or a refrigerator without any wiring..

              The EROEI calculations I keep asking for, especially the Energy Invested bit, is still lacking, can you put up those links again so I can check them please, then pull them apart just like every other report I’ve read…

              The only real way we have of comparing the Energy input to any type of useful energy, is the capital, operating and maintenance cost of the energy producing unit over it’s life time, compared to the energy output. No-one promoting renewables wants to do this as they come out very poorly in comparison to what built the system…

              In Australia, no new large solar farm projects are being planned, after the completion of existing projects, for the very good reason that power prices are negative when the sun shines brightly over a number of states connected to the same AEMO grid. Money and returns are important!! If prices stay negative when the sun shines as more home rooftop solar gets installed (all being subsidised) then the daytime returns for solar will go further negative.

              The current utility scale solar farms are not going to have anywhere near the energy returns expected as the keep turning the plants off when the price is negative!! So the EROEI is much worse than anticipated!!

              Australia now needs a huge amount of electricity storage…
              It is a part of the cost of relying upon solar, yet no-one wants to count the energy inputs into this storage as part of the energy cost of solar. It is a huge part of the energy cost of solar which takes the EROEI of solar to a very negative value, a user of energy over the life of panels and batteries, not a provider of net energy.

              Every study I’ve read on EROI or EROEI wants to count every skerrick of renewable energy as being useful, none wasted at all, but then discounts coal and gas for having lower actual capacity factors than nameplate. Every study has major flaws because they do not want to compare apples with apples.

              You put up the best study in terms of calculations of Energy Invested in solar and I’ll point out all the energy they have missed!! Still waiting….

            7. Hideaway,

              It’s been at least 20 years since EROEI researchers like Charlie Hall concluded that wind and solar had more than acceptable EROEI, using a standard methodology across all forms of energy.

              Fewer people are doing EROEI research these days because it’s just silly. The cost of wind and solar have dropped dramatically since then, and it’s just obviously no longer an issue.

              EROEI isn’t really needed in most cases: cost analysis does the job. EROEI is only needed when some energy input is subsidized in some way, like Russian toilet paper which was free to consumers, and so toilet paper producers started using it as their feedstock, because….it was free…

              When you look at cost, wind and solar are far cheaper than coal, NG and oil.

              “The lowest LCOEs in the first half of 2021 can be found in Brazil and Texas for onshore wind, and in Chile and India for PV, all at $22/MWh.

              In China, the largest market for renewables, BNEF estimates the cost of building and operating a solar farm is now $34/MWh, cheaper than the cost of *operating* a typical coal-fired power plant at $35/MWh. Similarly in India, new solar can achieve a levelized cost of $25/MWh, compared to an average cost of running existing coal-fired power plants at $26/MWh. Combined, China and India account for 62% of all coal-fired power capacity worldwide.”

              https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/report-its-now-cheaper-to-build-new-solar-than-to-run-existing-coal-plants-in-china-india-and-most-of-europe/

              The comparison still holds even when you include the cost of storage. There’s really no serious debate about that, at least until you get to 80% grid penetration for renewables. There is some debate about the costs of getting rid of that last 20%, though the naysayers are definitely a minority view, in part because the cost trends for wind, solar and storage are very clear (and it will be a few years before we need to tackle that last 20%), in part because a lot of good research says you don’t really need a lot of storage to get to 100%: just good old solid planning by utilities, ISO, etc., using forecasting, overbuilding, geographical dispersion of sources, complementarity of sources, demand side management, etc.

              Still, if you want studies, there’s lots of research:
              https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/07/05/energy-output-is-over-100-times-the-input-needed-to-manufacture-solar-panels/

              The Energy Payback Time of PV systems is dependent on the geographical location: PV systems in Northern Europe need around 1.2 years to balance the input energy, while PV systems in the South equal their energy input after 1 year and less, depending on the technology installed and the grid efficiency.

              https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf

              2016 overview article: old data (from roughly 2014) finds E-ROI of about 25. That’s likely to be at least 100% better now.

              “The system without batteries had an energy payback period ranging from 0.7 years for polycrystalline panels in Alice Springs to 1.1 years for monocrystalline panels in Melbourne. Since solar panels have an expected lifespan of at least 25 years…”

              https://renew.org.au/renew-magazine/solar-batteries/energy-flows-how-green-is-my-solar/

              ‘Their energy payback times (EPBT)—the time it takes to produce all the energy used in their life cycles—currently are between six months to two years, depending on the location/solar irradiation and the technology. And with expected life times of 30 years, their ERRs are in the range of 60:1 to 15:1’

              https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf

              This one shows renewable has having much higher EROEI than FF:
              http://www.roperld.com/science/minerals/EROEIFossilFuels.htm

              PVs return far more energy than that embodied in the life cycle of a solar system (see Figure 1).Their energy payback times (EPBT)—the time it takes to produce all the energy used in their life cycles—currently are between six months to two years, depending on the location/solar irradiation and the [specific panel] technology. And with expected life times of 30 years, their ERRs are in the range of 60:1 to 15:1, depending on the location and the technology, thus returning 15 to 60 times more energy than the energy they use. Here is a basic tutorial on the subject…
              https://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf

              Or…
              “Reaping the environmental benefits of solar energy requires spending energy to make the PV system. But as this graphic shows, the investment is small.Assuming 30-year system life, PV systems will provide a net gain of 26 to 29 years of pollution-free and greenhouse-gas-free electrical generation.”
              https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

              And…
              A complete PV system based on polycrystalline panels, made in 2017, would need 15.8 MJ of primary energy per watt-peak. This corresponds to an EPBT [Energy Pay Back Time] of roughly 1.2 years (for global average yield)
              https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2016/12/8/musqo7036dslptm1b8efduj6i3e7ms

          2. I love the new way they are teaching subtraction in American schools.

            What’s 43-26? Start with 26. It 4 to get from there to 30, 10 to get to forty from there, and 3 to get to 43 from there. 3+4+10=17

            I’ve always loved calculating in my head, and this is a real winner.

    2. Carnot
      You are correct about the challenges of producing electrolytic hydrogen, but the solution to that will be to connect the hydrogen electrolysis facilities to reliable electric power sources ( hydro, nuclear, geothermal). There are many other industrial and utility services that are impractical without continuous, reliable power supply and some that can operate reasonably on unpredictable power supply ( rock crushing, sawmilling, furniture making, whiskey making…..) . The processes that require reliable power will get it, the main consumers of intermittent power will be power storage facilities and John Q Public.
      Hydrogen is the only viable ( not cheap, not easy) route I see to maintaining any semblance of an industrial society with capability to manufacture nitrogen fertilizers, refine metal oxide ores, produce computer chips etc. etc.
      None of this will work with a global population of many billions, but possibly with one billion? To paraphrase OFM, getting there will be ugly, but I forsee small military groups seizing control of reliable, long term power facilities during that shrinking process, and if the shrinking of the population is not protracted, maybe something significant can be retained from the present.

      1. Old Chemist,

        I am a chemist. I like thermodynamics. Most people struggle with thermodynamics, especially entropy. Now tell me what a reliable electricity supply is. Wind and solar – Good luck. Hydro- fine when it rains. Nuclear -yes – but no-one wants to build them yet in quantity and they take decades. So we have fossil fuels. Coal and gas that ARE reliable and cheap compared with wind and solar.
        Show me a low cost wind or solar source that can produce 24/7 reliably and is grid forming. Otherwise you can dream about excess cheap power which but it is an illusion. Wind is full of wind. Unreliable and extremely costly. Solar is at best 10 hours per day- and very unreliable. So how are you going to supply your hydrogen electolyser? I am open to persuasion.

        1. The current ‘plan’ by such august organizations as World Bank, IEA, IMF, WEF etc is that the world runs pretty much on solar and wind by 2050. It looks like even @Hickory and @Old Chemist are starting to agree that the plan is not possible.

          If you put solar in ‘sunny’ spots, say desert and semi desert areas, for maximum production of electricity on a yearly basis, you run into the problem of large long distance transmission. Adding that cost, as in energy cost, to build and you may as well have built the solar closer to the populated area in the first place. You still need storage.

          Coal, oil and gas are not just electricity suppliers, they are their own energy storage as well, able to run 24/7. Excluding the cost of storage, especially from summer to winter, is something that’s needs to be included with solar and wind.

          All the mainstream backers of the renewable future, as is planned, leaving out proper storage and transmission requirements, they are just deluding themselves and the public. Doing the proper energy calculations on the needed metals, including the mining never enters the picture.

          I’ve just looked up the requirements for the 316L stainless steel that’s needed to avoid hydrogen embrittlement in electrolyzers and associated hydrogen handling equipment. 316L stainless steel requires 2-2.5% molybdenum. That’s high!! Anyone done the sums on how much molybdenum will be needed to build the infrastructure for the hundreds of millions of tonnes of hydrogen that would be needed annually?? Nope. World reserves of molybdenum are estimated at 12M tonnes.
          316L grade SS is also used in offshore wind turbine production, for anti corrosion reasons.

          Molybdenum is just another road block to the planned ‘renewable’ future. As the price of all these metals goes through the roof when we get to the rapid declining production of oil phase, all the renewable plans get way more expensive with the world unable to pay for it, in either dollar or energy terms. People just want to deny the future bad outcome for modern civilization, especially one with 8 billion humans on the planet.

        2. Carnot
          Please notice I listed the power sources suitable for coupling to an industrial electrolyzer – hydro,nuclear, geothermal. There is a large aluminum smelter at Kitimat, Canada which has been operating for more than 60 years on self generated hydro power ( would work for an electrolysis plant just as well). Iceland runs an aluminum smelter on geothermal energy.
          Fossil fuels are going away, useless to count on them for the longer term future.
          The only possible path forward that includes some level of technology is one with a much smaller global population, and lower per-capita energy consumption. My view of solar and wind power is that they would be sold on an interruptible basis to those who cannot afford the much more valuable reliable continuous power. All energy will become more expensive in the future. The population will decide if the cost is worth it.

          1. To Old Chemist

            I appreciate that you cited hydro, nuclear and geothermal but these potential sources are in very limited supply. Only nuclear could be built on demand but at what price. To produce 1mt of hydrogen would require a minimum of 50 MWh of power. At $0.1 per kWh (highly unlikely) means a cost of hydrogen of $5000 mt. That does not include the capex and opex to build the electrolyser which Hideaway has already noted. Fossil hydrogen is less than $1500 mt. This is a non-starter however you look at it.
            I assess projects in the petchems business all the time. All too often the estimated cost is far below the true installed cost. Nuclear is no exception. Electrolysers are immature technology so the early plants will be expensive and unreliable. One parameter that cannot be reduced is the power demand. Thermodynamics will assure that.

            1. Carnot
              I do not look at present day costs. When fossil fuels are depleted to near zero what are your options?
              As I see it there are two basic options:
              1) Attempt to maintain some semblance of a technological society,or
              2) Spend time practicing making and throwing stone tipped spears, tilling soil with a sharpened stick.
              Even if No. 2 is the most probable eventual outcome, I still think it is well worth trying to achieve No.1 and the key to that is commercial production of hydrogen.

            2. Old chemist,

              Is hydrogen the cheapest synthetic fuel? Could we use ammonia, or synthetic methane as a fuel instead in order to reduce costs? I assume you may be more familiar with the chemistry than me.

            3. Carnot and others,
              (a top tip, read up about the carnot cycle, it´s interesting, failed the exam twice,..)

              But in theory, you could have several electrolyzers, call them trains if you like, as in LNG production, running att full capacity when power is availible. If not, shut sections down, so intermittance problem solved. (if there was any)
              Regarding cost, I would guess your next suggestion would be an SMR, however they are, besides being presently non-existant, the current calculated cost of building them is from a timepoint where thousands have been built, but I guess someone will pay a bit more in the meantime?
              Btw. worked with bipolar plates for a while, never heard of the intermittancy being a problem, but what do I know, will investigate.
              Edit: beer-improved post, currently out of scotch due to current world affairs…

    3. So ……. We’re wasting priceless fossil fuels on renewable energy?

      I’m still waiting to hear what solutions, if any, renewables naysayers have in mind for the day when oil and gas are so scarce and therefore expensive that the industrial economy eventually grinds to a near halt.

      Being a world class jackass of all trades rolling stone, back in my younger days I worked short term jobs in nukes a number of times, because this work paid really well. Took the opportunity to learn all I could about nukes.

      The cost and payback time for wind and solar power compared to nukes is a rather minor fraction of the cost and time involved with nukes……….. although I MYSELF am willing to admit that a new generation of affordable and safe nukes IS a real possibility.

      The anti renewables faction doesn’t credit the obvious fact that renewables are just now really approaching adult hood.. I personally think of renewables as being at about the same stage of development as high school athletes compared to pro’s, in terms of the future…… or at about the same stage as the transition from animal power to I C E machinery on the farm in the twenties. We were still using mostly animal power then, but the future was obvious to those willing to open their eyes to realities such as the fact that you have to feed horses all winter , and let them rest a day for every day of really hard work…….. where as you parked the tractor in a shed, and three months later, it still had the same amount of fuel in the tank. And you could run it twenty hours a day, day after day, with a couple of hours off twice a day to take care of routine maintenance and minor repairs.

      “The squandering of valuable raw materials produced from fossil fuels beggars belief. Worse still is the idea that energy demand per capita is going to fall – total nonsense. Try telling that to the 7 billion that do not use even half the energy in the west per capita.”

      Bullshit on the first sentence. We’re getting a VERY GOOD return on the energy invested in building wind and solar infrastructure.

      The second and third reflect a deep bias in terms of conventional economic thinking and politics.

      Demand can be thought of as what we would LIKE to have, in terms of energy, or medical care, or personal cars, in a wide ranging discussion such as this one. In the narrower sense, demand describes how much of a good or service we will purchase at any given price under prevailing conditions.

      If my prevailing conditions are that I want milk for my minor children, I will pay a hell of a lot for it….. ten bucks a gallon,, even twenty or more, as opposed to the going price of four to six at my local super market. The upper limit would be the limit imposed by my income, and or my ability to substitute other equally nutritious foods for my kids.

      If I could buy whole milk for fifty cents a gallon, I would by it by the six thousand gallon truck load and feed
      it to hogs.

      “Demand” for fossil fuels will crash for various reasons. The biggest one will be the limit imposed by the income of consumers, which ultimately limits the demand on the part of industry. The population is going to decline rather sharply indeed within the lifetime of today’s younger kids. The cost of producing oil and gas is going to rise sharply, even allowing for technical innovations, due to the remaining untapped new fields being fewer , smaller, and harder to produce from one decade to the next.

      You have to believe in eternal growth to believe that today’s billions are going to have income to purchase more than liter or so of oil on a per capita basis as depletion and rising costs force the price up over the long term……. unless maybe you’re somehow thinking depletion is a myth, or that just maybe some miracle will take the place of fossil fuels…….

      Well, here’s a nice chunk of sharp broken brick upside you naysayer’s collective heads . The only likely such miracle, as a practical matter, is renewable electricity.

      SOMETIMES energy efficiency, in terms of energy in and energy out, or simple efficiency of use, simply doesn’t really matter.

      Going from fifteen percent efficiency solar cells to thirty percent doesn’t matter at all in terms of the raw resource…… sunlight. There’s more than we could ever conceivably use. It does matter in terms of the cost of solar electricity because panels twice as good means we have to manufacture and install half as many, using half as much space, etc. Half as much aluminum, copper, concrete, steel, glass, labor.

      And sometimes the price of energy can still be one HELL of a bargain, for SOME purposes, even if the price goes up ten or even twenty times. I’m retired, but I would pay forty bucks a gallon for diesel and go back to farming with my old tractors without a second thought about going back to horses and mules.

      I could produce a lot more and sell it a lot cheaper than I could raise or purchase feed for draft animals using one man as opposed to at least a dozen plus two dozen horses or mules, for most of the work raising grain…. meaning bread…… meaning the staff of life, bottom line, for large dense populations.

      So……. if we HAVE to, we can put a lot of wind and solar juice into making SOME synthetic fuel as a PURELY practical matter. Now I don’t believe we will really need synthetic diesel fuel or hydrogen or ammonia for fertilizer to run farms within the next few decades……. at least not in terms of the depletion of oil or gas. These fuels can be rationed as necessary so as to get ESSENTIAL work done for a long time to come, maybe even a century or longer.

      But if you are a national security planner, and your country has to depend on imported oil……. it may well be that given your country has sun and wind, you should be making plans to manufacture some synthetic fuels, even if the cost will be four or five times higher than the going market price……. because Putin, or others like him, can cut off your supply, leaving you utterly destitute in terms of producing food, hauling it, running cop cars and trucks to service your electric grid……… etc.

      1. OFM … “I’m still waiting to hear what solutions, if any, renewables naysayers have in mind for the day when oil and gas are so scarce and therefore expensive that the industrial economy eventually grinds to a near halt.”

        Simple, there are NONE!!

        What we are doing with ‘renewables’ and nuclear is continuing to promote the growth forever myth. Instead we should have been on a campaign of powering down, population control and environment conservation. We should have taken that route at least 5 decades ago.

        Once we get to terminal decline in output of oil, everything will become much more expensive. Renewables and nuclear are totally built, transported and maintained with oil. Parts will get very hard to obtain, let alone the ability to build more renewables.

        Wind turbines rely upon regular maintenance, the huge bearings need constant grease supply and need to be changed regularly, all done with oil in giant diesel powered cranes. No oil and wind ceases in a short period of time.
        Solar parts are not lasting the 20-25 year life claimed with inverters needing to be changed regularly 10-15 years. Plus solar get destroyed by big storms, which we should expect a lot more of in the next few decades.
        Have a look at the photo on this page and tell us how long solar is going to last again as the climate gets worse…
        https://www.americanexperiment.org/the-environmental-disaster-of-solar-energy/

        1. “What we are doing with ‘renewables’ and nuclear is continuing to promote the growth forever myth.”

          On this you and I see it very differently. These ‘other’ forms of energy are simply an effort to avoid the rapid and chaotic decline that will occur as fossil fuels decline. I’d much rather live in a region that declines from peak slowly.
          That may be wishful thinking, but its worth the effort.

          1. @Hickory … “I’d much rather live in a region that declines from peak slowly.”

            Same here. I suspect you are in your thinking where I was a few years ago. I was trying to work how renewables and nuclear together could sustain humanity. The problem was when I went down into the nitty gritty of the numbers on anything, I couldn’t make it work.

            One example, the BHP Olympic Dam mine. Because I’ve been investing in junior mining companies and explorers for decades, I thought I’d have a go at working out the cost and returns if BHP went full green on a much expanded Olympic Dam, so it would produce around 1M tonnes of copper per year and lots of U3O8. This mine is already the biggest uranium mine in the world and produces around 200k tonnes of copper/yr. Plus a bit of Gold and Silver.
            It’s also in a desert area so plenty of solar, my numbers were based on feasibility studies on various mine plans and at $120B I stopped counting, because the cost of money/debt was way too high. Also used pumped hydro as energy storage method for all operations in the mine and processing plant.
            BHP’s own plan about 15 years ago was smaller and an open cut using diesel, and they scrapped the idea when capital cost went above $35B..

            Limits to Growth was a study requirement when I went to Uni in 1975, so I’ve been aware of the problems and studying them for decades. It’s only the last few years when doing the full numbers on everything that I came to the conclusion there is no way out. This is especially so with feedback loops because we have an entire system where actions in one part have negative consequences elsewhere. Every energy study I’ve read, looks at one aspect and expects everything else to remain the same as in ‘normal’.

            IMHO renewables and nuclear will continue to look good on the available flawed information available, but once we go down the backside of the oil availability curve, the feedback loops will very quickly undermine civilization. Cost of money will rise rapidly and availability of capital will fall drastically as economies start to crater. When grids get into trouble with constant shutdowns, like is currently happening in Lebanon or South Africa, the large scale grid renewables will quickly become statues, parts become impossible to obtain etc.

            1. Agree with much of what you say. I too studied ‘Limits to Growth’ in year 1975, in 9th grade science class.
              “I was trying to work how renewables and nuclear together could sustain humanity. The problem was when I went down into the nitty gritty of the numbers on anything, I couldn’t make it work.”

              I don’t expect anything to ‘make things work’, if by that you mean the continuation of overall growth. I think contraction is inevitable.
              Where we seem to disagree is about the idea that humanity will work hard to replace some of the depleting fossil fuel energy on the way down, and that humanity will try hard to voluntarily cut down on coal to some degree as the world bakes before our eyes. I see these things as highly probable. And the efforts will progress regardless if the ultimate outcome is overall contraction.

              This discussion brings up the idea of ‘intentional rapid de-industrialization and population contraction’, as some advocate.
              I recognize that this would be best for the rest of the biosphere, but doubt humanity will volunteer for the cause.
              I suppose that a chaotic and extremely destruction contraction phase is in the works, regardless of what we talk about. But the people younger than us generally aren’t willing to just lay down without working hard to achieve a measure of stability.

              And as G. Kaplan points out below-
              “The earth energy imbalance continues its inexorable climb and is now above 2 W/sq. m.. At this rate talk of energy transition, peak oil, economic collapse and overshoot is a bit superfluous because we will be a burnt cinder in not too many years.”
              This can’t be overemphasized. However, I still believe it is worth the paramount effort of getting off thermal coal as soon as possible.

            2. @Hickory …. “Where we seem to disagree is about the idea that humanity will work hard to replace some of the depleting fossil fuel energy on the way down, and that humanity will try hard to voluntarily cut down on coal to some degree as the world bakes before our eyes. I see these things as highly probable. And the efforts will progress regardless if the ultimate outcome is overall contraction.”

              I don’t think we we disagree at all, as the above is exactly my thinking as well. Humanity will ‘semi try’ or perhaps look like trying to avert contraction when FFs decline (especially oil!).

              Look at the words, and money spent, by politicians of all persuasions , over the last 20 years on renewables, and the great growth rate, yet a quick look at the Keeling curve shows it hasn’t made a dent on the trajectory on global emissions. To actually replace fossil fuels, would have taken an effort of multiples of what’s been spent.

              The catch 22 of course being that as all renewables are made from fossil fuels, no matter what great spend had happened, FF use would have increased anyway, just from all the new mines, processing plants and factories needed to build out the multiple times spend on renewables.

              My whole point over months has been about the numbers that clearly show renewables and nuclear can’t replace FFs. I’m sure there are plenty of people high up in militaries and govt energy departments that have worked this out as well.

              Politicians, even if they have received the memo about how the transition is not possible, will certainly kick the can down the road as much as they can. I mean it’s not like politicians would lie to the constituency (LOL sarc)….

              When we get into a large decline of oil in particular, the effects around the world will be chaotic, using history as a guide, nothing pleasant will be happening as countries stop exports of all kinds, to look after their own, then the wars will start as ‘other’s’ possessions start to look very attractive and a ‘better life’ by grabbing them could be sold to the local public..

              We have had great depressions over the last 200 years while the world as a whole has increased energy use very rapidly. I don’t think people can comprehend how bad things will get as energy availability and use declines rapidly.

              The economy runs on energy, with money being the token of exchange. Money needs to keep growing to pay off the interest that isn’t created when money is. Growth is essential for our financial system and overall economy. Energy declines and the money system must implode, making depression much worse than anything previously encountered.

              All we are doing is prolonging the point of when collapse happens, and taking a lot of the environment with us. Starting from a higher peak guarantees a bigger fall, not a softer landing. Now we have 8.1B people on the planet that will accelerate decline on every other species when we get into full on oil decline.

              What use will a solar farm be when ‘locals’ have ripped out all the copper wiring to gain some cash to buy food for their families in an accelerating depression?

            3. My view as well, and I think, to varying degrees, that of most on this forum. But we are a self selected group who maybe aren’t as affected by cognitive dissonance and denial as some, certainly most politicians (and I’m not saying that is necessarily a good thing, in the long term it is probably not evolutionary adaptive).

            4. In other words- its ultimately a futile attempt so why even try?

              Well, thats pretty simple.
              People have a strong will to survive. They will try hard, even if far too late to the effort.
              And as has been pointed out many times before, you can’t paint the world with a single brush. Some places will rush to edge, and others hold their ground and decline more gradually.

              Did you (anyone here) refrain from having offspring?

  2. October temperature anomaly is looking highly likely to be a close second behind September, and the Northern Hemisphere has the highest anomaly except for a few days in early March (and is currently increasing).

        1. I’ve reduced the image from 2 MB to 43 kB, via a screenshot, so it can be attached here…

      2. You are talking about mainland USA, which, believe it or not, is not the world. The cold air is displaced from the Arctic where it is forecast to be over 20 degrees above normal for some areas, and above 15 degrees high for a lot of Alaska and the western areas as a consequence.

        1. The US (including Alaska) is about 4% of the land area of the world.

      2. Donald sounds perhaps the naive and parochial type. Outside of the lower 48 there’s this thing called “the rest of the world”. I wonder if he’s heard of it?

        Arctic Outbreak to Invade the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles
        https://www.weather.gov/ama/novcold

  3. In previous blog:
    1)Fossil fuel growth
    has been quite slow from 2018 to 2022, with a growth rate of only about 0.3% per year.
    2)from electrek:
    If just the “high probability” additions materialize, by mid-summer 2026, solar will account for more than 12.9% of the US’s installed generating capacity. That would be more than wind (12.4%). Solar’s installed generating capacity by July 2026 would also surpass oil (2.6%) and nuclear power (7.5%) combined, as well as approach that of coal (13.8%).

    I think solar has ramped up faster in the previous 4 yrs than 2014-18.
    I thought that FF use would be greater to build out the solar. In any case it seems that there will be plenty of FF to keep the trend growing.
    I’m on the fence about green energy but can’t argue with the trend.

    1. Meanwhile, energy demand is outpacing wind and solar.

      RENEWABLES ARE CHEAPER THAN EVER YET FOSSIL FUEL USE IS STILL GROWING

      “Despite the rapid growth of renewable energy, the most carbon-intensive forms of electricity generation, using coal and natural gas, have risen by 22% and 37% since 2010, respectively. Coal and gas power generation is still the backbone of global energy systems and these fuels are likely to remain dominant for decades to come. Nonetheless, the phase-out of coal (arguably the dirtiest of fossil fuels) is gaining momentum.”

      https://theconversation.com/renewables-are-cheaper-than-ever-yet-fossil-fuel-use-is-still-growing-heres-why-213428#:~:text=Despite%20the%20rapid%20growth%20of,37%25%20since%202010%2C%20respectively.

      1. Doug,

        Using Statistical Review of World Energy and fitting a linear OLS trend to the natural log of power output data in TWh per year from 2010 to 2022 for the World we find total power consumption increased by about 2.4% per year, power produced by fossil fuel increased at 1.4% per year, and power produced by non-fossil fuel sources increased at 4.2% per year. Wind and solar power consumption from 2010 to 2022 grew at an average annual rate of 17.7% per year.

          1. We might be bending the curve on coal and natural gas growth, but Doug’s point that this is occurring very slowly (not nearly as fast as needed) is absolutely correct.

            1. Guys

              Get a life. You are comapring apples with pears. Covid caused a huge dip in fossil fuel consumption driven by transport fuels reduction. Look now. We are back to growth which is about 1 mb/ d per year , if not more. Jet fuel demand is back, gasoline is growing as is diesel. See IEA reports.EV sales are stalling. Tesla is cutting prices and they are still out of reach. Power supplies int he west cannot support EV growth. So we are reliant on fossil fuels. The latest IEA enregy outlook is nothing short of pure fantasy. I used to peer review their reports until I did not agree with their narrative. Now it is a pile of dog dookey

            2. Carnot,

              As Old Chemist correctly pointed out, fossil fuels are not unlimited, at the socket electricity from wind and solar is no different from electricity produced by coal or natural gas, widely dispersed resources of wind and solar that are highly interconnected by a modern grid will require very little backup to satisfy average load. Demand pricing also helps, use the electricity for some uses when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing which reduces the price of electricity during those periods.

            3. Dennis
              On your question about Hydrogen:
              There are , of course, many ways to produce hydrogen in the lab, but on an industrial scale, producing it from natural gas has been so cheap, no other approach has been deemed necessary.
              My own experience with producing hydrogen electrolytically involved generating it as a byproduct ( unwanted) in the process of producing sodium chlorate. The challenge was to simply dispose of it safely. Not an economic route to producing industrial hydrogen.
              Ammonia is a chemical that requires hydrogen for its production.
              Russia did report finding substantial quantities of elemental hydrogen in one of their deep geological exploration wells.

      2. Coal power generation has been more or less flat since 2013. By choosing 2010 as your based, you can hide this.

        It’s also worth noting that China has been shutting down older coal fired plants, so the fleet’s efficiency has improved. So measuring TWh is not the same as measuring carbon output or coal consumption.

        Meanwhile, the price of solar panels continues to fall and fall

        https://www.energytrend.com/solar-price.html

  5. So far this decade we’ve had:
    2020 – Covid.
    2021 – Start of fossil fuel supply issues; cost of living crisis; beginning of the end of globalisation.
    2022 – Ukraine; indications of food shortages; interest rate rises; beginning of the end of economic growth.
    2023 – Extreme heat, drought and floods; Canada wildfires; Antarctic sea ice collapse; Sudan, Gaza, Niger wars and spreading global unrest.

    Many countries are close to, or effectively, failed states: Lebanon, Yemen, Tunisia, Somalia, Eritrea, Venezuela, Sudan, Syria, Haiti, Mali, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan.

    2024 – ?
    What happens next year (and beyond)? The climate will be at least as bad as this year and might be as bad again as this year was from last (how will Michael buy-my-book Mann explain that away), which would probably bring an order of magnitude change in the number of deaths and amount of destruction. After previous El Ninos the temperature has stabilised for a few years, with the EEI shooting up as it is, that seems less likely this time. Some areas will be seen to be uninhabitable from direct heat or because of the cost of rebuilding and insurance. Maybe the cause of this years’ sudden increase in temperatures will be found (my guess – a phase shift in Southern Ocean overturning circulation patterns). The real cost of biodiversity loss may start to be seen.

    Realisation may come that there isn’t as much oil as we’ve been promised, certainly not at a price that most economies can afford any more. Several countries will default. International aid organisations will all start to declare their coffers to be empty. A large country such as Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria or Egypt could roll over into full chaos. Sociopolitical unrest will increase with widespread low level riots to full blown civil wars in a couple of places. Right wing demagogues will rise faster, most countries with a democratic election will switch to the current opposition as “anything can be better than this lot”. More borders will be closed and more expulsions initiated even as migrant numbers expand.

    I think it will start to become generally accepted that things will not only not get better but will be getting worse faster; and then watch out – “When you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose”. By Turchin it may be possible to keep the lid on things until the counter elites and credentialed precariate get up in arms, but once that starts it doesn’t stop until a new low is reached.

    This is the ongoing process of collapse, unfortunately for us.

    1. Good post! It tickled my doomer bone.

      But seriously, who would have thought that human overshoot ends just like overshoot for any other living being? I mean it’s unfair, we are above them all aren’t we? We have our unmatched intelligence, souls and free will.

      Let’s pray that we humans find a way to continue our species project of turning this planet into a giant parking space devoid of all wild life and ride our speed boats through a fishless ocean. Amen.

    2. I don’t mean to toot our horns (ew!) but a key pillar of the PO thesis is that slowly unfolding crises would reinforce each other through feedback loops. no more katrina one year, then the GFC, then fukushima a few years later. The issues are starting to overlap and pile now more. It’s a testament to the power of propaganda that has kept civilization together this long.

    3. Great post again George.

      We have pretty much been in collapse of modern civilization in an economic sense, since the availability of oil stopped growing exponentially in the early 1970’s. From an environmental perspective possibly 10,000 years ago when humans changed from hunter gatherers to agriculture.
      It’s been a slow but steady acceleration on a human time scale but a blink of the eye in a geologic time scale.

      To underscore the lack of understanding of the time scale, I just read a mining company report of how they were going to do a feasibility on expanding production because some new drilling expanded the resource life out to 40+ years at current rates of mining. Economically it makes sense to mine the resource in a shorter period of time, because we discount future cash flow, so making more money today (next few years) makes more sense than the distant future, 40 years being distant future in economic terms.

      There is no regard for the future beyond the short term. The mining example is classic. It will take a lot more energy and resources to expand the mine to gather these resources in a shorter time frame. The company could continue to mine the resource without extra equipment over the next 40 years, but will choose to spend extra capital (which constitutes energy and resources) now, to deplete the resource faster. If the company does not find more resources, the life of the company will be shorter and overall profitability less.

      However there is an underlying theme or belief that more will be found, the company must grow in the short term to placate ‘the market’ (stock market in this case), and the new expansion can be ‘green’, so everyone is happy.
      Realistically, they are using up a known resource faster, will dig up more ground faster, damaging the environment faster, clearing native vegetation and associated wildlife refuges to establish a solar energy component to their power supply, while polluting the atmosphere a bit more by producing a ‘required’ renewable resource (lithium).

      There is no hope for humanity as the underlying game plan, hidden in plain sight everywhere, is to damage the environment in the quickest possible way. That being the same environment that we rely upon to survive. Even the ‘green’ industries and proponents are blind to the reality of what’s happening.

      1. That is the way we have evolved and probably the only way we could have evolved (leading to Fermi’s paradox not really being very paradoxical).

      2. Hideaway,
        Given the lack a long term gameplan to sustain 8.1 Billion people (and maybe not even 2 billion),
        are you suggesting that the collective humanity should stand up and acknowledge the situation, and then simply come to a standstill?
        That somehow there would be a voluntary global movement to contract…to have no more births, to cease all new industrial activity including energy production, to halt all building projects?

        That seems to be what you have been saying.
        I don’t think that is going to happen. Not voluntarily to any widespread degree.
        Humanity is going to try and replace fossil fuel depletion, and coal, with other mechanisms.
        Count on it.

        1. Agree entirely with your post.
          What I hope will happen and what I expect to happen are 2 entirely different things.

          My guess is that we go straight to collapse at some future point in time. The exact timing is of course the hard part to predict.

          The real problem is we are in a predicament of massive overshoot and instead of looking for an exit, before civilization collapses, everyone wants civilization to continue because it so much more comfortable and enjoyable than the alternative.

          My guess is when oil starts to decline rapidly in availability, that a cascade of failures throughout the system accelerate feedback loops, with governments plugging one hole that only exposes many others.

          It will be the complexity unravelling far faster than 8.1 (or .5 or .7)B humans can cope with because we live in a world that totally relies on supply chains from everywhere, and everything currently relies upon oil. Coal mines are dug with giant diesel machines, the coal then transported with diesel. Gas wells are drilled with diesel equipment and the drills are brought to site with diesel equipment, same for the pipes, same for every mine in the world. Nuclear and renewables rely totally on mines and transport.

  6. So oil, gas and coal at record levels (and increasing). Gotta keep pumping out that CO2 I guess.

    GLOBAL FOSSIL FUEL DEMAND SET TO HIT RECORD HIGH IN 2024

    • A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit shows global energy consumption rising by 1.8% in 2024, hitting a new record high.
    • Despite high prices and supply disruptions, the report shows crude oil and natural gas demand climbing in 2024.
    • Demand for renewable energy is also expected to rise in 2024, climbing by 11%.

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Demand-Set-To-Hit-Record-High-In-2024.html

    1. Daily CO2

      Oct. 24, 2023 =418.88 ppm
      Oct. 24, 2022=416.37 ppm
      1 Year Change 2.51 ppm (0.60%)

      1. Yeasts gotta gobble sugar and poop out CO2. Hyperencephalic apes gotta gobble carbon and emit carbon out of every orifice. & so crash. No free will. It’s our fate. Read Sapolsky.

          1. Why is suicide any more an act of free will than changing jobs, or going to the cinema, or scratching your ear, or needing to take a dump at two o’clock this morning? Your behaviour is the sum product of your DNA, and environment and experiences since insemination. As Sapolsky asks – where is the first neuron that makes the uninfluenced decision? You can’t find it because it doesn’t exist. Life is deterministic with maybe a bit of quantum randomness on top; it is not freely directed or controlled.

            2. Behave (just about the best popular science book ever written) and Determined by Robert Sapolsky, Free Will by Sam Harris.

              Also there’s a funny book from the 18th century – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, . The narrator blames his problems on a few incidents in his life, which shows we may have come full circle. In particular that his father was distracted while rogering his mother on the night of his conception (as I remember this was always scheduled for a Thursday after the father had wound the clocks, but on that particular night the mother was concerned he’d forgotten the clocks; another event was when he was accidentally circumcised I think – but I read it a long time ago).

            3. Behave (just about the best popular science book ever written)

              I’m a mere lay reader, but I managed to read it twice–and it is a monster–which is a tribute to Sapolsky’s ability to engage ignoramuses like me.

            4. Managed to get my quite clever daughter, as I might have mentioned, to read 1984 (original language) in early English studies, in my mind it would be required reading for everyone. How´s things at Airstrip One btw?

  7. There is a slowdown in EV adoption in the US, and to some degree elsewhere.
    As a result GM, for example, is delaying some of its manufacturing plans-
    “The unwinding of the tie-up roughly a year and a half after it was announced is the latest in a string of decisions by automakers, specifically GM, to scale back or cancel previously announced EV plans. The partnership (with Honda) was expected to use GM’s next-generation Ultium battery technology to produce millions of EVs that cost less than $30,000 for global markets beginning in 2027. They were set to include popular compact crossover vehicles.
    Since the automakers first announced the partnership, the outlook for EVs has dimmed due to higher costs, lack of infrastructure and slower-than-expected consumer demand.”

    The range and charging infrastructure issues are a big hurdle. And battery cost.
    It will take a longer period of high petrol prices to reignite the growth in demand.

    1. Hickory,

      The situation in Europe is the same if not worse. Private EV sales are weak, and only business sales volumes are holding up. The charging infrastructure is a problem across Europe and fisticuffs at charging stations has resulted in security guards to keep the peace. Sales lag estimates ( about 14% of new car sales) and overall car volumes are down for the 3rd year running. The target was for 20% of EV’s in new car sales.
      The real kicker is the second hand value of EV’s – a chest of drawers falling off a cliff would be a good analogy. Who wants a used battery.

        1. The odds of an oil supply crisis within the next five to ten years are pretty high, in my opinion, at least in the neighborhood of three or maybe even four to one.There’s growing consumption, depletion, high finance, and politics, which famously extend to war. Etc, etc.

          The fossil fuel shills have convinced the typical driver capable of financing a new car that it will be impossible to take a trip in it, that it will depreciate like a falling rock, that it will be unreliable, that it will have to have a new battery when it’s only four or five years old, etc.

          None of this is true, but a new car is the second biggest of all purchases for nearly every body, after a house, and people are CONFIDENT a new Chevy or Toyota will cost them next to nothing in the way of repairs for the first five or six years, etc.

          And of course electric cars are still quite a bit more expensive that ordinary cars that meet one’s needs quite well for maybe half to two thirds of the money. Sure it’s a blast to floor your new Tesla, but a Chevy with as much room, and as comfortable, is more than fast enough to earn you an appointment in traffic court, and the difference in the money means eating out, nicer clothes, a better apartment or house , or vacation, NOW, etc.

          And as a practical matter, the supply of used electric cars is so small in the USA that you can visit every car lot in a city of fifteen or twenty thousand people and not find EVEN ONE used electric car. I’ve yet to see even one for sale locally for less than ten grand.

          The transition to electrics will pick up steam again, and assuming the economy holds up, etc.

          I’m willing to bet that electric sales will cut into I C E sales to the .point that within ten years electrics will be outselling I C E cars by a factor of two to one.

          1. Yeah, I hear German EV sales are weak too. They’re only up 70% YoY.

          2. From my perspective, I wouldn’t be too worried about Tesla, Hyundai/Kia and other companies as long as they are based in “normal” countries. The companies to worry about are the ones based in China. These include a couple of well known brands like Volvo (owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group) and MG (owned by the state owned SAIC Motor Corporation). The picture below was taken on Saturday at a new car dealership on a street in an area called New Kingston with 4 or five car dealerships in a row. The two vehicles in the center of the picture are BYD Yuan Plus (Atto 3 in some markets). On either side of them are BYD Dolphins and hidden behind the olive coloured Yuan Plus is a BYD Han (Tesla Model S competitor), The company that has the BYD dealership in Jamaica also has the dealerships for the Volkswagen Group (Porshe, Audi and Volkswagen) and BMW/Mini and Kia. This is the first shipment of BYD vehicles they have got since securing the dealership and they will be showing them off at a car show in the middle of November.

            I have also seen tiktok videos of a Wuling Baojun Yep that was bought by a Cuban expatriate and social influencer know as ‘florkubana” on tiktok. She and her husband have also bought a Wuling Bingo to add to their stable of two Nissan Leafs. This couple apparently imported the cars directly from China but no doubt a commercial dealer will be interested at some point.

            The Chines government made the strategic decision over ten years ago that the EV market was going to be their way to get a foothold and eventually dominate the world automotive market. The Chinese market is now the largest and most important market for cars in the world and it is transitioning to battery electric models at as frenetic pace. See China EV Sales Report – August 2023, 39% Plugin Vehicle Share In China!

            I remember back in the early seventies when quirky little Japanese cars started showing up on Jamaican roads. The Toyota Corolla went on to become the best selling compact car in the world in 2022, with the Honda Civic coming in at number 2 ( https://www.focus2move.com/world-best-selling-compact-cars-2022/ ). The Nissan(Datsun) Sunny has also done very well over the years but, the model range is too fragmented for it to register on global sales charts (the same car is sold in different markets under different model names and different cars are sold in some markets under the same name). It feels like deja vu with these news Chinese cars. Will they eventually go on to dominate the world. (Hint: that is the Chinese government’s plan!)

            They way I see it, we are on the verge of a bloodbath in the global auto industry. Western governments would do well to look at how they can assist the industry in their respective countries to counter the Chinese onslaught, especially as it relates to EVs.

            1. Yes, but that’s not what Jamaicans need to worry about. China’s booming electric vehicle industry does not harm Jamaica’s benefits. Western countries are right to be concerned, because industry equals jobs and money. I hate to say it, but I think most westerners here feel that you don’t have enough status to worry about them from their standpoint. Jamaica is not a normal country and is disconnected from the industrial world. I wonder if China burning more fossil fuels would make you happier because they didn’t “win”? let it be, chill.

    3. There is a slowdown in EV adoption in the US, and to some degree elsewhere.

      The stats don’t back up your contention.

      From CarEdge.Com: (https://caredge.com/guides/electric-vehicle-market-share-and-sales)
      -Fully-electric vehicles (BEVs) had 7.9% market share in Q3 2023. This is a new all-time
      record. One year prior in Q3 2022, EV market share was 6.1%.       (US market numbers.)
      30% yearly growth in market share doesn’t seem like a slowdown to me.

      As to the legacy manufacturers, they are less than half the market, and your complaints are the reason why. They are not committed to the task: their vehicles are overpriced, have dated technology, and most are not produced at high volume (critical to low prices).

      Tesla, however, is selling all they can produce, and will increase their production by between 400 and 500 thousand units this year (an increase of over 30%). They are pricing to build market share while still being profitable.

      There’s nothing wrong with demand: there is something wrong with the product planning, design, and pricing strategies of the legacy manufacturers.

      1. Agree- My point was that by looking at data like EV adoption on a very granular level one can easily come to the wrong conclusion. Looking at my delta chart ( with an intentionally cherrypicked time period it looks like cars had a real problem getting widespread adoption. With the benefit if hindsight we all know that adoption has not been an issue ( well, it has from other POVs of course but not from a numerical “success” POV.
        rgds
        WP

  9. “The 2023 Interconnected Disaster Risks report analyses six interconnected risk tipping points, representing immediate and increasing risks across the world.

    “Today, we are moving close to the brink of multiple tipping points. Human actions are behind this rapid and fundamental change to the planet, driving us towards potential catastrophe.”

    https://interconnectedrisks.org

    1. George Kaplan,

      I looked at your link and was not impressed. Wishy washy claptrap form the UN. It dodges the main issue.

      Overpopulation and a finite world.

      There is no mention of population controls because it is too sensitive to mention. It will not be carbon dioxide that screws up the planet. It will be the ever growing population and demand for minerals, water, and energy, all
      of which are finite. Oil production will peak – I just do not know when but it will not be decades away. Shale oil gave us another 10 years. We might see another two decades but sooner or later EROI will take charge and mankind will be sailing against the tide and making no headway. We will have to lighten the ship to make headway.

      You are absolutely correct on your position of how we evolved. There was no other way to get to where we are now. As far as I am concerned the “Limits to Growth” predictions are looking to be pretty much on track.

      1. Mother Nature will be taking care of the population problem before this century is out. Keep in mind that the Four Horsemen were in her tool kit a million years before we evolved into modern naked apes.

        George and Carnot are pretty much on the money involving human nature and our evolution.

        The top layer of our brain, good eyes, and opposable thumbs, etc, allowed us to control fire and make weapons, culminating in our current industrial civilization. But instinctive behaviors originating in the mid brain trump rational thinking.

        The mid brain is the real boss, like it or not.

        The mid brain runs the mammalian world. Sex,food, shelter, status, community, power, companionship, family, everything that matters is determined in the mid brain.

        But having said this much…. at least a few of us have enough wrinkled top level gray matter to understand that our survival ultimately depends on making decisions contrary to mid brain algorithms.

        Evolution never installs brakes where brakes have no survival value. So we eat as much as we can put our paws on, because a lack of food was the real problem. We strive to own everything possible, because a well stocked cave meant making it thru a tough winter.

        Maybe by some near miracle there will be enough WELL EDUCATED people in some countries to get control of the levers of power and do what’s necessary to reduce collapse from crash and burn to a a belly landing on at least the local basis.

      2. Carnot,

        Overpopulation and a finite world is indeed mentioned as one of the root causes. For a public/UN-report that needs to be poltically correct it doesn´t get any more clear than this:

        “Growing global demand for finite resources has the potential to increase disaster risk and the reaching of risk tipping points. Driven by a growing population and increasing development, the global demand pressures for food, water, energy, land and other materials foster practices that maximize production at the cost of our environmental and social systems.”

        from: https://interconnectedrisks.org/causes/global-demand

  10. What else is too late to stop?

    THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET IS MELTING, AND IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP IT

    “It’s not looking good for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This body of ice is Antarctica’s largest contributor to global sea-level rise, and it’s only going to get worse from here. After running multiple simulations, researchers determined that increased melting of the sheet will be unavoidable throughout the rest of the century.”

    https://www.space.com/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-melting-unavoidable

  11. Article on new Speaker of the House in the US, a dark day for democracy.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-us-house-speaker-tried-to-help-overturn-the-2020-election-raising-concerns-about-the-next-one/ar-AA1iRnh3

    Excerpt:

    Joanna Lydgate, chief executive officer of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group organizing against election deniers, said Johnson’s ascension was alarming: “How can you run the people’s House if you don’t believe in the will of the people?”

    Noting the speaker’s role in “the peaceful transfer of power” between presidential administrations, Lydgate warned, “When those in power don’t take our democracy and the will of the people seriously, it can have dire consequences.”

    1. It seems so bizarre to me that the republican congress, and voters, won’t simply acknowledge that they made a mistake on the election issue. Based on all of the factual evidence.
      Do they know that Fox News paid $800 million settlement to avoid public trial for lying about issue?
      Its a thorough brainwashing.
      They act as if they have no respect for this country, ready to throw democracy out into the trash.

      1. I think that facts often matter much less than one would think, or that we ( people) would learn from the past. That’s obviously not the case and we most certainly will repeat easily avoidable mistakes that were made in the past.
        I was just reading a depressing article in the WSJ about how China is beating the US in deep sea mining operations. Deep sea mining has such terrible consequences that it should be obvious that humanity should not engage in this practice. But here we are, scraping the bottom of the ocean for stuff we think we need.
        Depressing.
        Vince

        1. I think that facts often matter much less than one would think, or that we ( people) would learn from the past. That’s obviously not the case and we most certainly will repeat easily avoidable mistakes that were made in the past.

          Could you be referring to this bullshit quotation: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? – George Santayana. A crock of shite if there ever was one.

          Humans repeat the same shit, commit the same atrocities, whether they “remember the past” or not. In fact, sometimes “remembering” the past is the exact goddamn thing that causes people to repeat it!

          Ape is as ape does.

          1. Interesting point. Perhaps we don’t “forget” “mistakes” but rather would like to label certain actions as mistakes because when the war high has worn off certain actions don’t look so great – so let’s label it a mistake. “forgetting” and “mistake” are great words to hide behind. I guess on occasion we just like to pillage, rape and murder.
            Rgds
            Vince

          2. “And you know something is happening here
            But ya’ don’t know what it is
            Do you, Mister Jones?”
            — Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

  12. “It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” concludes Dr Naughten.“

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67171231

    It’s time to start thinking through the implications of a rapidly rising sea level starting about mid century. Changing from a stable sea level to a permanently dynamic sea level will make maintaining port infrastructure and maritime shipping impossible. Also real estate under 10’ sea level will rapidly lose all its value. A complete cessation of maritime trade will gradually occur in the second half of this century including trading in the remaining fossil fuels. By 2080 it’s reasonable to assume no more fossil fuel use, which implies a peak human population 20-30 years prior.

    1. I think population may peak about 20-30 years after fossil fuel consumption peaks (2030’s), rather than being related to the time that fossil fuels ‘run out’.

    2. “It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,”
      I’ve seen this headline a few times.
      Funny the things people say.
      As if we ever had control of it, or even ourselves.

  13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agftFIh6Z04

    There are some natural disasters built into any medium to long term future scenarios, disasters that are seldom even mentioned in terms of economic and population discussions, excepting climate problems……. and I suggest that likely climate disasters are less natural than man made in modern times.

    Maybe somebody here knows enough geology to say what the short term, say ten years, odds of a super quake such as the one that WILL happen on our West Coast, eventually,

    The last one in 1700 was about four hundred years ago. There were others, now well documented, but I don’t know if the average time span between such quakes has been estimated.

    So…….. maybe the odds of the BIG ONE hitting up that way within the next ten years are one in ten…… or maybe one in twenty five or fifty?

    1. The ‘Cascadia Event’ is overdue, based on historical precedent. However the variability in interval is pretty high. No one should be surprised if it happens tonight, but almost everyone will be. Risk probability very high.
      I live in the risk zone. Preparation for such a risk is a very difficult task. Survival during a winter event could be very difficult. Medical and transportation system function is at high risk.

      Another natural disaster wildcard is a big volcanic episode somewhere in the world. Climate models cannot account for such a possibility. Could be a massive effect (cooling), but the risk probability in any particular time frame is very low.

  14. Oops, not good.

    ROGUE GREENHOUSE GAS COMES FROM CHINA

    “Efforts to curb emissions of a potent greenhouse gas, HFC-23, might be falling short. HFC-23 is a by-product of refrigerant manufacture and around 14,700 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at warming the globe. In 2020, scientists found an increase in HFC-23 that ran counter to an expected decline. Nearly half of the unexpected HFC-23 found in the atmosphere from 2015 to 2019 was traced back to factories in eastern China, despite reports to the contrary.”

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03325-7?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=d9f234db2f-briefing-dy-20231027&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-d9f234db2f-50701100

  15. The earth energy imbalance continues its inexorable climb and is now above 2 W/sq. m.. At this rate talk of energy transition, peak oil, economic collapse and overshoot is a bit superfluous because we will be a burnt cinder in not too many years. The most worrying thing is that whatever the causes are they don’t appear to be captured in the climate models. With the surface so much hotter this year the outgoing long wave radiation must be increased so the effects that are capturing more incoming sunlight and/or preventing the IR from reaching outer space must have made even bigger relative jumps.

    1. LIFE ON EARTH UNDER ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT’:

      Climate change poses an “existential threat” to life on Earth, prominent scientists warned Tuesday, in an assessment on this year’s avalanche of heat records and weather extremes that they said are hitting more ferociously than expected.

      Their stark assessment: “Life on planet Earth is under siege”. They said humanity had made “minimal progress” in curbing its planet-heating emissions, with major greenhouse gases at record levels, and subsidies for fossil fuels soaring last year.

      https://phys.org/news/2023-10-life-earth-existential-threat-climate.html

      1. Daily CO2

        Oct. 28, 2023 = 418.84 ppm
        Oct. 28, 2022 = 416.33 ppm
        1 Year Change 2.51 ppm (0.60%)

      2. No one seems to have mentioned Acapulco so I’ll post a link:

        https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/10/acapulco-reeling-from-catastrophic-damage-in-the-wake-of-hurricane-otis/

        Most articles focus on looting, or cellphone reception, or central government mis-steps. No one really talking about Acapulco getting a direct hit from a Cat 5 hurricane that developed from nothing to Cat 5 and landed in about 12 hours. They just lost big in the Climate Casino.

        “Otis is the strongest hurricane on record to hit Mexico from the Pacific, and Mexico has now seen two of its top-10 strongest hurricane landfalls on record this month, as Otis was preceded by the landfall of Category 4 Hurricane Lidia on October 10.”

        1. Imagine if it had hit a major US city in the GoM, which it could easily have done, and something like it certainly will. The Gulf got off really lightly this year – the waters were exceptionally warm (and will be even more so in coming years) and there were three or four periods of very conducive convection but the storms formed either in the Pacific or eastern Caribbean and veered away North West.

      1. Leon Simons twitter, note he shows anomalies, which I find confusing as the equilibrium state is zero. Eliot Jacobsen’s twitter also shows numbers as 36 month average, which might give a more realistic overall sense of the increase. I haven’t figured out how to download the data from NASA yet.

  16. IN EARLY 2029, EARTH WILL LIKELY LOCK INTO BREACHING KEY WARMING THRESHOLD

    “In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate.”

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01848-5

  17. Assertion-
    Diversion of less than 10% of petrol currently used for global light transportation towards
    the non-fossil fuel ‘all things electric’ energy system build out
    would be more than enough to get the energy portion of the job done over the next 20-30 years.
    I make no bets beyond that timeframe (can’t see the landscape that far out).

    I don’t pretend to have a system to make this kind of calculation/projection with accuracy. Maybe I’m too high or too low on it.
    Nonetheless the argument that a transition to replace depleting fossil fuels just can’t happen without fossil fuels is coming from a fallacious start point assumption. There are fossil fuels available, and much of the current consumption is simply wasted low-efficiency combustion for optional and often frivolous uses.

    A pretty big chunk of the fossil fuel system replacement can (and will) happen over the next 20-30 years. And that is the energy level whoever is still standing will have to get by on.

    1. Hickory, Looks to me that if you wish to divert 10% petrol to non-fossil electricity infrastructure you are using fossil fuels. It makes sense to use what remaining oil resources we have to do so while reducing use based on last centuries growth but looking at USA’s inability to increase the fuel tax let alone address a 30yr stretch since the fed fuel tax was last adjusted it looks like we’re opting for BAU right off a cliff. Can you imagine any politician being able to get people to accept higher gas prices by choice?

      1. No, not by choice.
        But I do expect that in all countries fossil fuel use will gradually get shifted away from optional uses towards more critical ones, like the energy, heavy industry, and agriculture sectors. This will happen by some combination of high price, use taxes, incentives, rationing, and government mandates. It will vary by country.
        Its a matter of time, and the absence or presence of collective foresight and policy making. Most countries will stumble into it, late to party and poorly dressed.

    2. Hickory
      “Assertion-
      Diversion of less than 10% of petrol currently used for global light transportation towards
      the non-fossil fuel ‘all things electric’ energy system build out”.

      Wishful thinking at best. The global gasoline demand is a little over 1 billion tonnes. thus your 10% amounts to about 100 million tonnes of light distillate fuel.. The most likely best use for light distillate is in petrochemicals which are used to produce some of the materials used in EV’s, PV and wind.( mainly polymers, resins and coatings). Light distillate is not much use in a diesel engine.

      The real issue though is the increase in demand for middle distillates- particularly diesel which is extensively used in mining of the key materials for the production of all things electric. The global demand for diesel is growing- in fact there is a shortage in some regions in spite of EV’s. We are a long way from farming , mining and shipping moving away from diesel. When the crap hits the fan in the west ,there is going to be a surge in demand for diesel generators, when our grids collapse due the intermittent supply of renewable power. I have already invested in a diesel generator, in anticipation of the impending collapse of the power grid, and no western country is exempt. Our power grids simply cannot cope with the demand and the real shortage will be with electrical engineers. Moreover
      the climate change mob are in effect slowly choking off fossil fuel processing in the west. As we loose refining capacity we are placing more and more reliance on importing finished fuels, mainly middle distillates, from places like the ME, China and India.

    1. OFM
      The smallest and lightest element in the universe., and not only that it is also fairly reactive. Just how would hydrogen survive in the earths crust in any quantity that could be recovered. It would have to exist beneath a rock that has a perfect seal with a porous rock below because hydrogen will find a way out.

      Though hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe the chance of there being significant volumes in the earth’s crust is practically zero. If was present in large volumes we would have found it by now.
      This is a bit like abiotic oil. Often talked about but never proven to exist.
      The few reservoirs that have re-charged are most likely to have been recharged by oil continuing to migrate from a source rock, below the reservoir.
      I spend much of my working looking at new technologies- mainly for the production of petrochemicals . I have an open mind and in most cases I am correct. Many of the so called new technologies will never be commercial. In general, in the energy sector we are already using the best technology Other technologies that exist just cannot better the current processes. Here are some failures:

      1. Biomass gasification and Fischer Tropsch chemistry – it works but needs a big subsidy.
      2. Algae to fuels – only for loonies
      3. SAF – sustainable aviation fuel – wishful thinking
      4 Oxidative coupling of methane to produce ethylene – decades in development and no-where near close
      5. Direct air capture of carbon dioxide and carbon recycling- dumber than dumb
      6. Hydrogen by electrolysis – needs a lot of expensive power

      I could go on but all of these processes are being championed as a way to reduce fossil fuel use. However you look at it we will need a lot of hydrocarbons to continue to produce petrochemicals, without which you can just about forget everything we use in our everyday lives. Think about the humble toothbrush or the polymer insulation that allows us to use a myriad electrical items.

      Never trust anything that you read on the internet. OilPrice.com is a classic source of wishful thinking. Most of the content is cut and paste gibberish, with the weekly, don’t miss out, must buy technology.

      After 45 years in this business I have seen many crackpot ideas, some of which a pure scams, and others written by academics trying to retain their tenure.

      1. South Australia doesn’t have any coal fired power stations, however the imports from other states often does contain coal fired power, but this doesn’t get recorded as production for SA.

  20. “Here we evaluate recent RCB [Remaining Carbon Budget] assessments by the IPCC and present more recent data, calculation refinements and robustness checks that increase confidence in them. We conclude that the RCB for a 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5 °C is around 250 GtCO2 as of January 2023, equal to around six years of current CO2 emissions. For a 50% chance of 2 °C the RCB is around 1,200 GtCO2. Key uncertainties affecting RCB estimates are the contribution of non-CO2 emissions, which depends on socioeconomic projections as much as on geophysical uncertainty, and potential warming after net zero CO2.”

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01848-5

    1. Thus my prior statement that it looks like we are on track to blow through 1.5 degrees…
      in short order.

  22. Welcome to the future.

    EXTREME WEATHER IS OUTPACING EVEN THE WORST-CASE SCENARIOS OF OUR FORECASTING MODELS

    “In the wake of the destructive Hurricane Otis, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in the history of weather forecasting. The hurricane roared ashore with 165mph winds and torrential rainfall, slamming into the coastal city of Acapulco, Mexico, and claiming the lives of at least 48 people. The speed at which Otis intensified was unprecedented. Within 12 hours it went from a regular tropical storm to a “category 5” hurricane, the most powerful category and one which might occur only a few times worldwide each year. This rare and alarming event, described by the US National Hurricane Center as a “nightmare scenario”, broke records for the fastest intensification rate over a 12-hour period in the eastern Pacific. Otis not only caught residents and authorities off guard but also exposed the limitations of our current predictive tools.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-10-extreme-weather-outpacing-worst-case-scenarios.html

  23. Islandboy –

    You continue to tout Australia’s wonderful accomplishments in getting off fossil fuels. How to you fit projects like these into your equations?

    THE BEETALOO GAS FIELD IS A CLIMATE BOMB. HOW DID CSIRO MODELING MAKE IT LOOK OTHERWISE?

    “Even as Australia braces for a summer of projected extreme heat waves and bushfires amid the intensifying climate crisis, the fossil gas industry is gearing up for a truly enormous new fracking project in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin… Our analysis shows annual domestic emissions from fracking in the Beetaloo and processing at Darwin’s Middle Arm industrial precinct would produce up to 49 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, 11% of Australia’s total emissions in 2021. That means a single project would produce more emissions than the entire reduction goal under Labor’s revised safeguard mechanism. Our deep dive into the CSIRO report found its cumulative domestic emissions projections are underestimates of up to 84% in some cases. Emissions are underestimated at almost every stage, from how emissions-intensive fracked gas is to how much methane is lost to the atmosphere and how much is emitted in manufacturing LNG.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-10-beetaloo-gas-field-climate-csiro.html

  27. October had the second highest global average temperature anomaly after September and well above July this year or February 2016 but, thank god, Bismark, North Dakota, USA is still going to be below freezing today so there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

    In the last El Nino new daily record temperatures started to get set in the second week of November and continued through spring. At the moment the world is about 0.6 degrees centigrade hotter than 2015.

  28. This is a bit redundant from some previous comments but….

    OCEAN WARMING IS ACCELERATING, AND HOTSPOTS REVEAL WHICH AREAS ARE ABSORBING THE MOST HEAT

    “The world ocean, in 2023, is now the hottest ever recorded, and sea levels are rising because heat causes water to expand and ice to melt,” says Prof. England. “Ecosystems are also experiencing unprecedented heat stress, and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are changing rapidly, and the costs are enormous.”

    “Right now, the ocean is warming at a dramatically accelerating rate, nearly doubling during the 2010s relative to the 1990s,” says Dr. Zhi Li, lead author of the study from the UNSW Center for Marine Science and Innovation. “What we wanted to do in this study was to figure out exactly where this ocean heat uptake has been occurring.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-11-ocean-hotspots-reveal-areas-absorbing.html

    2. During the Super El Niño of 2015-2016, October was record high for about half of the month.

      Until now, October 2015 was the hottest October on record. There is perhaps likely more extreme months to come, during this still developing El Niño

  30. Erase your doubts lads

    EARTH’S VITAL SIGNS ARE NOW IN ‘UNCHARTED TERRITORY’

    “As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms,” the researchers wrote. “The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.” Of 35 vital signs of planetary health, 20 are at record levels, and most in an environmentally harmful way, the scientists concluded. Although renewable energy is increasing and rainforest depletion is slowing, ocean acidity, glacier thickness, and Greenland’s ice mass all fell to record lows over the past two years, while greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise and ocean temperatures rose to record highs.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-11-earth-vital-uncharted-territory-climate.html

  32. Climate-driven extreme heat may make parts of Earth too hot for humans – “If temperatures continue to rise, we will live in a world where crops are failing and millions or billions of people are trying to migrate because their native regions are uninhabitable”

    https://desdemonadespair.net/2023/10/climate-driven-extreme-heat-may-make-parts-of-earth-too-hot-for-humans-if-temperatures-continue-to-rise-we-will-live-in-a-world-where-crops-are-failing-and-millions-or-billions-of.html

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