155 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Sept 13, 2023”

    1. And,

      GREENHOUSE GASES CONTINUED TO INCREASE RAPIDLY IN 2022

      “Atmospheric CO2 is now 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. 2022 was the 11th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases in the 65 years since monitoring began. Prior to 2013, three consecutive years of CO2 growth of 2 ppm or more had never been recorded.”

      https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/greenhouse-gases-continued-to-increase-rapidly-in-2022#:~:text=Atmospheric%20CO2%20is%20now,more%20had%20never%20been%20recorded.

        1. Romanov – which university did you pay fees to so that you could get a degree in meteorology and climatology? I woud advise you to ask for your money back.

        4. @Mike G. When I am reading what is written above is beyond my capacity of understanding Romanov. But, in a way, it is interesting as it is showing the delirium in the climato-denialist environment. 1) the tropopause is rising (continuously between from 1980 to 2020) or tropopause height is increasing ; Liu, J. Science Advance 2021, 5, eabi8065. Logical, the temperature is rising in the tropopause and the gas layer is expanding. 2) The heights of the other layers above are decreasing because the carbon dioxide is also accumulating in these atmospheric layers but the radiative behavior of carbon dioxide gives a different result in the high atmospheric layers from that caused in the troposphere : Pisoft, P. Environmental Research Letters 2021, 16, 64038. https://e360.yale.edu/features/climate-change-upper-atmosphere-cooling

        5. The level of oyxgen in the atmosphere is decreasing steadily ; each time a carbon is oxidized, a molecule of dioxigen is absorbed to form a carbon dioxide molecule. https://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/

        6. Romanov, I know of a way you, personally, can help us conserve oxygen.

  3. For electric vehicles to reach price parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, battery pack prices need to reach $100/kWh*** This corresponds to a cell price of around $80/kWh

    https://reneweconomy.com.au/battery-cell-prices-plunge-in-august-close-to-tipping-point-for-the-end-of-ice-vehicles/
    Ok, this blog is winning me over (but mostly because optimism is a good thing)
    I’m just focusing on price because it’s a lot easier than taking into account resource availability, mining cost etc..
    So at parity I’m guessing if FF has cost , supply problems each EV still reduces the gas usage. Also so much could be done by making models that don’t try to compete with ice(for long distance for example)

    Im wondering about negatives such as insurance, crashes destroying the batteries, fires.
    I would think big auto is researching that.

    1. A lot of EV parts are currently based on the limitations of 12 V tech. Moving to 48 V will cut costs by eliminating a lot of older gizmos like power steering and power brakes.

      The real breakthrough will come when car companies lose their addiction to expensive vehicles. Cars are expensive because car companies don’t know how to make money selling cheap cars.

    2. Price parity is a point which is specific to one’s location and use case. If you live in a location with low power costs and drive a lot vs a high cost location with not much use you end up at two very different price parity points. In the US there are are locations where power costs 10c/kwh or less and in Europe there are places where power can cost over 30c/kwh. Even in the US, charging at home vs at a supercharger leads to very different conclusions.
      Regarding fire, ICE cars have this stuff in them called liquid fuels, which are actually much, much more likely to combust in accidents than batteries, but the headlines are not as juicy.
      https://insideevs.com/news/561549/study-evs-smallest-fire-risk/

      rgds
      WP

    3. In my last post on the previous open thread I posted a link to that same article but, I followed i withe following link Lithium Deposit In Extinct Nevada Volcano Could Be Largest In The World

      I should add the following:

      Redwood Materials Raises $1B To Boost Its US Battery Recycling Efforts

      Redwood Materials, the battery recycling startup founded by Tesla co-founder and current board member JB Straubel, has raised more than $1 billion in Series D shares from its most recent equity funding round.

      The round was co-led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, as well as funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. New investors, including OMERS, Caterpillar Venture Capital, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, and Deepwater Asset Management, also participated in the round.

      Redwood Materials said it will use the funds, which are in addition to the nearly $1 billion of previously raised equity capital and a $2 billion loan commitment from the Department of Energy, to continue building its capacity, expanding the domestic battery supply chain, and allow its customers to purchase battery materials – like lithium, nickel and cobalt – made in the US for the first time.

      Below is Tony Seba’s projection for battery cost from a presentation he did on June 8, 2017 in Boulder, CO. He is literally right on the money with his $100 per kWh projection. While some of his projections from his initial 2014 presentation have turned out to be wildly optimistic but, this 2017 projection has aged pretty well. The chart is from about 6 minutes into his 2017 presentation. The following link will take you straight to it.

      https://youtu.be/2b3ttqYDwF0?t=370

      1. Made in USA, technically, in terms of the law, means lithium and other metals from recycled electric car batteries, can be used to make new ones per the IRA regulations.

        Bottom line, even if the batteries being recycled were built overseas, or using imported materials, these materials still qualify under IRA rules.

        Red Wood Materials is putting a LOT of money and talent into recycling them because it’s obvious such metals are going to be in short supply from here on out as the electric vehicle industry continues to grow like mushrooms in a warm spring rain.

    1. The Earth isn’t spiraling in toward the Sun, in fact it’s spiraling outward, away from it as are all Solar System planets. Every year Earth moves slightly — 1.5 centimeters, or 0.00000000001% the Earth-Sun distance — farther from the Sun. ASTRONOMY 101.

      1. Doug, you are trying to reason with somebody that has shown themselves to, literally, not know the difference between black and white.You are on a hiding to nothing. This is what the X-out box is for if Dennis and Ron will not ban them.

    2. The Milankovitch cycles are not warming Earth. The precession cycle has led Earth to be at the maximum distance of the sun while the Northern hemisphere is in summer. And the obliquity cycle was at maximum tilting 10000 years ago and will be at minimum tilting in 10000 years. The combination of these two was making the summer in Arctic areas and in Antarctic as well, outside the current climatic reversal, fresher and wet and the winter mild and wet, the two enabling the accumulation and the persistence of snow throughout the year. As a result, during, at least, the last two millenia, the temperatures in both Antarctic and Arctic areas dropped (Kaufmann, D. S. et al Science 2009, 325, 1236; Stennis, B. et al Climate of the Past 2017, 13, 1609). The second result was an advance of 200 km or so of the grounding lines of several glacial currents from West Antarctica Ice Sheet toward Ross ice-shelf (Neuhaus, S. U. The Cryosphere 2021, 15, 4655) and probably from others in other parts of Antarctica (that’s my guess). We are far from a warming sequence due to the Milankovitch cycles.

      1. I am beginning to think that Romanov is taking the piss. He really cannot honestly believe this guff. He is just trolling Peak Oil Barrel with nonsense science for a laugh. I think he finds it amusing to act like like a kid with a stick, rattling the bars of the cage to provoke the big bear. Best to ignore him..

        1. This persons objective it to add 6 yards of bullshit to the comments thread in order to diminish its value. Kinda like the idiots who show up at school board meetings to complain about CRT.

        2. He’s harmless. The larger point is why, given the consensus that Milankovitch cycles have on the climate over a >millenium interval, don’t other orbital factors that lave much faster regimes play into natural climate variations over the interannual range?

          I think the answer relates to scientists always looking for the easy linear harmonics, and ignoring the non-linear cross-terms and sidebands that come about from the fluid dynamics response of the ocean and atmosphere.

        4. Agree with Mike. I put the Romanov disruption on ignore a couple weeks ago, although it seems that exclusion would be appropriate given all the comments.

      2. The isostatic movements have no dependence on warming or cooling. The Earth crust and the mantel below are sensitive to the weignt which is applied on it and the change of weight. This weight generally come from ice-sheet and their disappearance but it can be something else such as the weight of mountains. As an example, retreat/re-advance of glacial currents of West Antartic Ice Sheet during Holocene is thought to have been caused by the retreat of the grouding lines of several glacial currents, subsequent isostatic rebound, increased grounding of glacial currents and readvance of them (Kingslake, J. Nature 2018, 558,430). An other example, is the post glacial rebound of the British Isles. The north of these Isles was covered by a little ice-sheet whose weight was enough to depress the crust and the mantle below. The mantle flowed radially around the ice-sheet and as a result the south and south-west of British Isles were raised during the glaciation. The ice-sheet gone, the inverse process took place and is still taking place. The area which was approximatly beneath the ice-sheet is rising and the south and south-west are sinking. Therefore, the assumption that ”land uplift in Alaska is proof that the Milankovich cycles are still making the Earth warmer” is false. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Post-glacial_rebound_in_British_Isles.PNG

    3. Yes, I had just been looking at the trend line, wondering about the period of relative stability of arctic ice volume in the face of ever increasing temperatures, and if we were due for another leg down at some point. Interesting to see some potential explanations for the short-medium term trends that we see. My gut feel is that the next leg down could prove to be quite dramatic, especially since the amount of multi-year ice has reached such low levels.

    1. Cheers Andre. Russias prob the easy way to more resources for China. The rest of the combat options on that list of nations look to be more costly.

      1. The Russians may find themselves in such a position that they are more or less compelled to do business with the Chinese, on Chinese terms..

        This is already the case to a substantial extent, for instance having to sell oil to them at below market prices.

        But one thing’s for sure, for quite some time to come. Nobody whatsoever is going to actually invade and occupy Russia. As fucked up as they are, as corrupt and incompetent as they are, I’m still convinced that at least SOME of their nukes and delivery rockets will work if they choose to use them……. and they would, in case of a boots on the ground invasion.

        1. Cheers OFM,

          China will invade and occupy much of Siberia. It’ll get chemical. Put a pin in it.

          “Siberia, a region bigger and richer than any place on Earth, with resources that underpin Putin’s economy. It is Asian, not European, and one day will mostly fall into China’s hands. Xi knows this and needn’t lift a finger to speed along this outcome.”
          https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3654427-does-china-have-designs-on-siberia/amp/

          Was China Betting on Russian Defeat All Along
          https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/was-china-betting-on-russian-defeat-all-along/

          You know what China has that Ukraine doesn’t, a functioning navy! Putins losing ships to an enemy that can’t deploy a navy. Russia appears wealthy and weak. A bad combo in a collapsing world.

          1. Bs, there is no separatism in Siberia.
            Your Yellow Perilism is overflowing.

          2. Back atcha Survivalist,

            In terms of the ” The Great Game” as the English used to call international relationships commercial, military, cultural, etc, you may very well be right.

            Part of this was expressed as saying England has no PERMANENT friends, but she has permanent interests.

            One thing we should never forget is that the Chinese don’t think and plan for the short term. Their culture, even today, after generations of ( evolving ) communism is all about the long term.

            In ten, twenty, thirty years, the Chinese may for practical purposes own Siberia, by way of owning the industrial infrastructure that will have to be built to make use of Siberian resources. Putin’s Russia will never build it.

            By then, if the cards fall this way, the Russians are likely to be a de facto Chinese colony.

      2. Love how you can just create a “New Map”.

        I’ve got a “New USA Map” that starts in Texas, goes down to Venezeula and Brazil (Monroe Doctrine),

        Takes a pitt stop in South Africa ( lots of things we need in Africa )

        and ends up encircling Australia, New Zealand and the surrounding waters.

        The guy with the biggest gun draws the map.

        1. “The guy with the biggest gun draws the map.”

          Well, that has been pretty much true over the past 500 years, with a few exceptions such as Viet Nam. Determination against foreign invaders played the bigger factor there.

          And going forward, the gun size may very well be less important than the digital warfare capability.
          ‘Gun’ will have a very different meaning.

          1. “Guns, Germs, Steel” by Jared Diamond.

            Countries that could manufacture guns and steel, and spread or survive pandemics and microorganisms tell the tale of human history and conflict.

            But I know most people on this board are smart enough to know this. Jared Diamond brilliantly documents it.

            2. Me too. Great food for thought. I’m pointing out that the tools of the game are changing. Certain advantages from prior times are becoming obsolete.

            3. I can’t say enough about this book.

              You can learn more from it than you will learn from half a dozen conventional every day history books. Maybe even a shelf full of them.

            4. Sorry…”Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond

              “The combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European people had acquired immunity through natural selection (such as the Black Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case for Native American hunter-gatherers and farmers”

              Brilliant. simply brilliant.

            5. I actually prefer Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I recall hearing a lot of critiques about Diamond’s book over the years (for one, it’s highly Eurocentric) and confess to never having finished it since I’d already read the former.

            6. For alternative views I’d recommend Why the West Rules for Now, by Ian Morris and The Dawn of Everything, by Graeber and Wengrow. Sapins would have been better if he’d ended it two chapters earlier.

  8. Getting back to something from the last time around:
    09/13/2023 at 9:27 am

    ‘And it’s obvious that materials such as wind turbine blades can be economically recycled as well. ”

    Really. Perhaps you would like to elaborate on the process and the economics because I for one would be very interested. I am unaware of any process that can recover either epoxy GRP or carbon fibre RP. or this this another of your unsubstantiated claims of success.

    In another post you foresaw the re-use of expired wind turbines with larger new units bolted to the same mast. You might like to think about that a little more carefully. The mast is designed around specific wind loadings and mass carrying capacity. It would not be possible to mount a larger output turbine on an existing mast safely. Moreover the powers density needs to be at 5 W/square metre or less to minimize wake turbulence.
    Another fallacy is that if the wind speed increase the turbine will produce more power. Another myth. The turbine will have a rated output at a specific wind speed. When the wind exceeds the rate power speed the pitch control mechanism will modulate the turbine rotational speed to keep the angular momentum and hecce the delivered power constant.
    When a wind turbine over-speeds, even by a small margin it it will place damaging loads on the gearbox, pitch mechanism and mast., not mention the centrifugal loads on the blades and attachments. That’s is before the other stresses and strains caused by leading edge erosion, fluctuating loads, and bird strikes. Do you really think these things are the way forward?
    I will leave you idea that we can reduce the population to below 1 billion and still maintain a decent lifestyle by repairing existing infrastructure. With what?.

    This is a rather long read but WELL worth it for anybody interested in recycling in general and wind turbine blades in particular.

    https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-wind-turbine-blades/100/i27

    I’m just about dead sure that anybody who takes the time to read it with an open mind will conclude that turbine blade recycling is going to be a viable business, once the volume of old blades grows to the point it’s possible to recycle them in large quantities, so as to keep the necessary equipment and men busy.

    The article goes into quite a bit of detail about the components that can be recovered and reused, and the uses these components can be put to. Keep in mind that the vast majority of industrial processes only work at SCALE. There’s plenty of stone under my farm suitable for making gravel, or tombstones, or fancy flooring and skyscraper facades. But it’s worthless, in commercial terms, because there’s not enough of it in one place.

    Ten miles away there’s a quarry doing tens of millions of dollars annually mining this same stone…… because it’s there in QUANTITY, close to the surface, meaning it’s easy to get it out.

    Recycling once the volume is sufficient is pretty much a no brainer. It saves a hell of a lot of other materials, saves landfill space, etc. Putting this stuff into concrete means using less sand, less limestone, less energy, less CO2, less water, etc.

    The very thing that makes these materials HARD to recycle,using traditional methods, is that they are EXTREMELY durable. They won’t leach metals or poisons. They can be mixed right in with gravel to make a highway or parking lot road bed under the pavement.

    And from the above link:

    In addition to building new wind ​energy installations onshore and offshore, energy companies are upgrading aging turbines. Known as repowering, the process includes replacing older blades with newer, generally larger ones designed with improved aerodynamics to generate electricity more efficiently. The older ones are adding up quickly. WindEurope and other trade associations estimate that around 14,000 blades may be decommissioned annually around the globe during the next few years.

    Now I’m only a backyard engineer, but I know a few things…… such as the very most profitable thing you can do with a truck is to overload the hell out of it, to just short of the point you start having excessive breakdowns. In the words of my supervising engineer when I was driving a fifty ton Cat truck, the fuel bill was just about the same, capital costs were the same, maintenance costs were up only ten percent or so, my wages were the same…… and the other machines , the ones at each end of my haul, were thereby being used more efficiently. So……. the engineer told the loader operators to load them up until the rock and soil were running over the sides.This gained a load every third or fourth trip.

    Engineers build stuff to have pretty damned conservative safety margins. I’ve seen PLENTY of eighteen wheelers that grossed fifteen tons on the tandems crossing the twelve ton bridge nearest my home. This has been going on for years, no problem…… except if a cop happens to be on the scene. BIG fine in that case.

    New turbines will be running at both lower and higher wind speeds, because they will be DESIGNED and built to do so, enabling them to produce more juice. They’ll be lighter for the same blade span. And those old towers…….. well, they DO fail once in a while….. but so seldom it’s big news. The owners will be overloading them, and they’ll get away with it, because after all, it’s no really big deal if one falls, smashing some corn or maybe squishing a cow or two. There isn’t anything very important close to them.

    The engineers who design them know how to deal with varying wind speeds and turbine speeds already, and they’ll get better at it every year from here on out.

    Today’s turbines are just strongly enough built to handle the torque produced by the blades at their top design speeds.

    Our first truck back when I was a little kid had well under a hundred horsepower. My last big one had well over three hundred, sixty years later. There’s zero reason to believe the engineering of wind turbines has hit a dead end limit on what’s possible , lol.

    It five year or ten years they’ll be running at wind speeds a meter or two above today’s design limits, and producing quite a bit more power, MORE of the time.

    Now as far as having industry with a far smaller population…. I’ll take that up another time.

    But here’s a link about recycling electric car batteries.

    https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/

    “Recycling goods is big business across many industries, and the automobile business is no exception, with metals such as steel and aluminum—which make up much of a car’s body—typically getting recycled at the end of a vehicle’s service life. EVs are distinctive, though, thanks to their battery metals.

    In 2017, a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur with extensive experience in auto startups launched his own company to scale up battery collection and recycling. JB Straubel, one of the earliest employees at Tesla (and also the automaker’s former chief technology officer), raised hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital when he announced the launch of a battery-recycling and -supply startup. Redwood Materials is now headquartered in Carson City, Nevada, not far from Tesla’s battery-manufacturing facility in the Reno area. Straubel’s decision to focus on supplying battery minerals spurred an investment race, and more than a dozen venture-funded startups or corporate entities have emerged in various parts of the battery-recycling industry.

    Currently, Redwood’s biggest challenge is procuring a sufficient number of EV batteries to recycle. The company has set up programs with auto-recycler trade groups and automakers, including Ford and Volkswagen, to boost its supply of used cells to feed into its grinders and purifiers. The U.S. Department of Energy even gave Redwood a $2 billion loan to build out its Nevada factory.”

    1. I don’t know who your addressing that question to, but my guess is that you right there just put more thought into it than they ever did.

      1. Carnot posted the comment saying he would like for me to post something about recycling wind turbine blades, etc, because he apparently doesn’t believe it’s possible, at least not as a practical matter.

        My guess is that like hundreds of millions of others, he’s partly simply behind in terms of the current state of the recycling industry in general, and partly convinced that renewable energy is mostly a scam, this being the usual mindset of people who get their news from right wing outfits with skin in the game, politically, and money or friends in the fossil fuel industries.

        1. Personal attacks on a person’s integrity usually is a sign of lacking the ability to argue from a position of knowledge. Yes I am connected to the oil and gas industry and petrochemicals- I have worked in oil production, refining and base petrochemicals. 45 years in the business at a senior level. I am very concerend about oil depletion, and sceptical about renewbles as I have first hand experience of my own solar tracking array. I also have driven a hydbrid car for the last 14 years. As part of my job I have been working on polymer recycling and wind turbines as a means of carbon reduction in the base chemical industry. The article you refer to CEN is just another puff piece of optimism; typical of the waffle pasted on Oilprice.com. Where is the detail.?Here is a link that is far more relevant and if you can read it, you will get an appreciation of the issues to hand with recycling/re-purposing.
          https://ore.catapult.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CORE_Full_Blade_Report_w

          This is not really recycling. Most is just another form of land fill;- glass fibre into cement, and carbon fibre still very much in the early stages. The thermosetresins binding the fibre are pyrolysed- not much better than burning as it ends up as carbon dioxide.

          Most wind turbines are unlikely to get to 25 year, especially offshore. 5MW is about the limit of capacity. It would appear that you do not appreciate power density constaints, or that placing a larger turbine on an existing mast and foundation is likely to overload the structure. Blade design is improving especially the tip design (c.f. aircracft winglets) but the mast load is the limiting factor.

          Might I suggest that you look into the subject of blade bearings, and false brinelling and fretting. Blade bearings only work in a narrow arc of operation. That causes lubrication issues, as the bearing are constantly in boundary lubrication. That means a lot of maintenance.

          When I started working I was an optimist. After 30 years I had become a pessimist. I have over may career looked at many new processes in my industry. Most were abject failures. The better ones were implented. The overarching principle is to ensure we make a profit.

          Another area of research is hydrogen. The idea of low cost green hydrogen is pure fantasy, especially if you think it will be from wind power.

          1. Some people think of hydrogen as an energy storage opportunity for humanity. As far as I have seen the Japanese are most hopeful about it given their lack of any other domestic fuels.
            I see it as a sign of desperation, like corn ethanol and carbon capture.
            Perhaps with hydrogen I will be surprised on the upside, but I am not at all impressed with the process inefficiencies and material handling challenges that I have heard about so far.

          2. People who bad mouth renewable energy are generally right wingers, or else they have money and skin in the fossil fuel industries, one way or another…….. as you say yourself.

            So tell us…… since you don’t seem to think renewable electricity is going to take the place of gas and oil one of these days, assuming of course that industrial civilization survives the built in crash headed our way, tell us what you propose your great grand children will do for energy, since both oil and gas come out of holes in the ground.

            They do ” grow back” in one sense of the word, but it takes millions of years for a new gas and or oil field to come into being.

            The ff industries, and their friends in politics and finance, have been feeding us a steady stream of reasons for decades now why renewable electricity just isn’t a practical, workable solution to the fossil fuel depletion problem, and the air pollution associated with burning ff’s.

            In the meantime, the cost of renewable electricity has been falling like a rock, and the percentage of it on the grid in most modern countries has been growing like mushrooms in a warm spring rain.

            I’m not an energy expert by any means, but I have read countless articles and papers written by professional physicists, engineers, and business people in various fields, and I have enough credits in biology, geology, chemistry and such to have a couple of degrees of my own, instead of just one, but I took l these extra courses as an undergrad and over the years so as to keep up in my own field.

            There’s no doubt in my mind that the necessary resources exist. There’s no guarantee we will succeed in successfully transitioning to renewable energy and a new economic paradigm based on efficiency, conservation and an all around low environmental impact way of life…… but if we FAIL…….. we will be better off in the meantime, and no worse off in the long run.

            The population problem is going away on its own, because women are having less than two kids on average in well developed countries across the board.

            Mother Nature in her utterly impartial way will take care of the remainder of this particular problem……

            If I were young again, the old family farmhouse would get remodeled to be close to net zero, super insulated, etc, and I would be driving an electric pickup truck and charging it up most of the time with my own pv system.

            But I’m too old now to bother, and back when I was young enough to make it worth while, the pv was still to expensive, and the electric pickup was unobtainium.

            For every professional who says renewable energy CAN’T be scaled up to get the job done, there’s at least one or two who says it can, and most of the rest seem to be willing to concede it’s at least possible in theory, if not in terms of money, materials, and skilled workers.

            You make a point of saying burning the binder resins in turbine blades is not really recycling, that putting chopped up blades in concrete is a cop out, environmentally. That burning them in any case will release CO2.

            Well… given that you’re a professional, you must realize that burning old blades, If this is done in the future, will release an entirely TRIVIAL amount of CO2 in relation to the amount of electrical energy produced over the lifetime of the blades, and that this energy will be used at least twice and more likely three or even four times as efficiently in an electric vehicle as burning gasoline or diesel fuel in an ICE.

            We still had a couple of mules and horses on our family farm back when I was a kid, and we used them a few days a year for old times sake. I’ve plowed with a mule, used a horse to pull a wagon, drug logs for firewood with them.

            Now I see experimental tractors running in the field all by themselves, although I’ll never own one of these new ones myself.

            Almost everybody I know less than eighty has his or her very own crystal ball in his pocket or her purse……… except that they’re made flat and thin and rather small, so that it’s easy to tote them along everywhere and every when.

            I used mine to see what some friends were doing this afternoon, on vacation, a thousand miles away. Talked to them too, lol.

            In ten, maybe fifteen years, assuming OMBAU manages to stay on his feet, we’ll mostly be driving new electric cars and trucks, and we’ll be charging them mostly with wind and solar power.

            Old wind turbine gensets will come down when they’re worn out, and they WILL BE replaced with somewhat more powerful ones that are lighter, an more efficient in capturing the wind at both higher and lower speeds than the ones coming down, and the cost of putting them up there will be a rather minor fraction of the cost of building a new wind farm from scratch.

            And if one falls, well as I said before, this happens so rarely that it’s NEWS, and as a rule there’s nothing much anywhere near them anyway. Maybe an acre or two of corn gets flattened, or a few cows get squished. These towers are and will be private property, in nearly every case, and the owners will pencil out what they can make by taking a chance on wrecking them by overloading them, and they will take that chance, just as the engineers running big highway jobs routinely overload off road trucks, because doing so is VERY profitable.

            And solar panels have gotten so much more efficient at ever lower costs to the point that panels still in great condition may be replaced after only ten or fifteen years, rather than twenty to twenty five, because the new ones capture so much more energy that it’s PROFITABLE to swap them out early.

            The engineers who design and build wind farm equipment will continue to refine their designs. They’re not paid well into six figures to drink coffee, lol.

            The metallurgists will create better alloys, the chemical guys will create better lubricants, the robot guys will create machines that can crawl up and down blades and refurbish worn edges, repair any cracks or peeling material, etc,

            The guys who build the towers are going to show up with giant rolling mills, right on site, and roll truck loads of heavy steel plate into pieces that will be welded together , also on site, and erected far faster, for far less money than it costs using current methods. That will eliminate the problems associated with transporting tower sub assemblies.

            I’m not predicting it will happen, but there’s a significant possibility supersized helicopters will be used in pairs or maybe four at a time to get turbine blades thru the worst part of the trip from factory to field site while passing thru cities, etc.

            Maybe the reason such super copters don’t exist, except for a few that belong to the military, is because there’s not enough work for them to make them profitable. Transporting turbine blades by air may be a routine job someday.

            And EVEN IF they get landfilled……. well, there was a blow out at a coal ash pond not too far from where I live a few years back. It killed all the fish for many miles downstream.

            As best I have been able to determine, a smaller hole in the ground would hold enough blades to have produced many times as much electricity as was produced burning countless thousands of tons of coal down to poisonous ash.

            I am not pretending renewable electricity doesn’t involve some truly serious problems such as mining the minerals, building transmission lines in otherwise pristine neighborhoods, child labor, etc.

            But compared to the alternative….. it’s a no brainer.

            I’ve seen strip mines in West Virginia, it’s not that far, an easy drive there and back in a day, and going anyway on business. I have at least half a dozen relatives buried in collapsing mines, men known personally to my paternal grand father. To me they’re just names in old family Bibles, but the environmental destruction continues right along.

  9. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/09/14/a-terawatt-of-solar-module-capacity-expected-within-16-months/

    The bigger it gets, the faster the solar can grow. Fossil fuels are going to be in ever shorter supply as time passes, and more and more countries that necessarily have to import them are going to be looking at going renewable as a national security and employment issue, and “put the pedal to the metal and let ‘r roar” in trucker’s slang. Keeping the money spent on fuel HOME while providing local jobs is not yet a political no brainer but it will be, in a few more years.

    The solar industry has a couple of huge advantages over wind power. It can be economically built at scales down to the household level, and it can be deployed out the ying yang in places where wind turbines are simply out of the question, from roof tops to tracts of land as small as a few hectares in an old brownfield area in a city, if the necessary permits can be had.

    It’s fast and cheap, in terms of upfront costs, compared to wind. A solar farm once permitted can be built in as little as a few months, from ground breaking to interconnected, if the permitting process can be streamlined the way permits for shopping centers, hotels, most factories, etc are issued.

    1. That level of PV production is astounding.
      One terawatt of PV when deployed around the world gives the annual electricity output of roughly
      230 fullsize [1000MW] nuclear power plants.
      We (the Chinese) are more than 1/3rd to that level of manufacture this year.

      And almost all of that manufacturing and price decline progress is thanks to the Chinese government who has pushed hard to make electrification of energy production and transportation a national priority.
      The motivation can be seen as an excellent example of industrial policy foresight and implementation, along with the in-your-face experience of relying heavily on imported oil and having an aggressive opposing military presence ruling over your import/export shipping lanes.
      I hope they can keep up the PV effort, and that we can avoid trade and physical warfare!

      1. Hi Hickory,

        The Chinese are pretty much like everybody else in one major way.

        Their current culture and way of thinking is determined in large part by their history, and for many centuries they were focused on the long term, culturally and philosophically.

        That trait has survived right thru the last couple of centuries of interactions with the rest of the world, and it continues to guide their thinking.

        I’m willing to believe China may collapse economically, ecologically, or politically, but unless that happens, in my opinion at least, they will be at the cutting edge and if not dominant at least highly competitive in whatever promises to be the most critical industries going forward.

        For now, three of them are wind, solar, and long distance transmission. A fourth is battery storage.

        My money says they’re on a roll and will be on a roll for at least another five or ten years. After that, who knows?

    1. Thanks. The religiosity puts me off but that’s beside the point. He’s as humane as they come.

      1. Carter was a REAL Christian. I’ve known a considerable number like him, personally, including some of my own family.

        The problem with Christianity in our country today is that it’s been largely co opted by right wing politicians and degraded to the point that it’s a caricature of the real thing by tv preachers, etc.

        You wouldn’t have any problem at all being good friends with the current younger generation of my Christian family members. You wouldn’t want to meet the ones that have gone over to the redneck hillbilly side. I avoid them myself when I can.

        But the older ones mostly take a very dim view of what they see as sin in the case of any and pretty much all alternative lifestyles, meaning anything outside what THEY consider as normal and proper.

        But even in their case, they’ve managed to loosen up to the point that when one of my nephews shows up for Thanksgiving with his live in long term black girlfriend, she’s treated like family, without reservation.

        Unfortunately a typical American Christian these days is more or less a Christian in only a nominal sense.

        They’re apt to honor the teachings of Christ more in the breach than in the observance, especially when it comes to loving their fellow man, helping the unfortunate, living modestly, etc.

        When you get to know them well, you come to understand that they’re having some really serious troubles, as a group, because they’re scared, falling farther and farther behind, economically, due to lacking a decent education and this creates a situation making them easy prey for hate mongers telling them they’re going to MAGA.

  11. I guess I may be the only Chinese here. I used to think that the people on this forum were very professional and elite, because I didn’t understand many of the terms you guys said, and I was just an amateur peak oil enthusiast. So I basically don’t leave messages because I don’t want to expose my ignorance.

    But now I feel like most of the people here are actually stupid, even the senior and authoritative people. How do I know? Because I live in China I know better. Especially when someone cites SerpentZa, a white supremacist sexpat, and some Falun Gong channels as sources, I roll my eyes. Seriously, what kind of person with an IQ would believe this shit. It really made me think about whether what these people are saying has any value when it comes to resource depletion, climate change, renewable energy.

    None of this will matter when climate change or peak oil screw the whole world over. Billions of people will die and reality will be like hell. “China will invade Russia, China will buy all the oil in the world, and the evil CCPee will rule the world…” It’s not going to happen because the world is going to collapse or get really, really bad. I’m not talking about 2100, it’s almost here.

    To put it bluntly, white men cannot accept the rise of an Asian civilization, which makes white men very uncomfortable. I’m human and I get it. Especially now that we are in an era of political correctness, we cannot say anything about our innermost thoughts about race. So, “I don’t hate the Chinese, I just hate the CCP”, what a perfect excuse. No matter how racist and outrageous things were said, no one can blame you with a CeeCeePee card.

    One thing is true, and it makes a lot of people happy: China is almost doomed. But at +4°C, there is indeed no distinction between skin color.

    Enjoy everyone!

    1. You guys need to get ready for when the US starts a war over Taiwan. We’re getting bored of the Russia-Ukraine thing, so need to rattle the sabre over that side. The 7th Fleet has been getting itchy to see how well US military industrial complex boondoggles work against clearly inferior Chinese knock-off Soviet equipment. There is absolutely nothing that can go wrong here.

      Since Russia is collapsing (has been since February 2022), it won’t be long before it has fully collapsed after 18 months of having only a dozen shells and two useless tanks and a single Sukhoi to fight with. I hear all the troops routed last week and Moscow is for the taking. Then the West can take on China with superior artisanal artillery shells made at $10k a pop from only the most exclusive arsenals in the world.

      The real red flag will be when TikTok, a clear CCP psyop to get kids dancing, gets banned. Then it’s game on.

      P.S.

      Can you hurry and build the extra tank guns and electronics we need for our war machine? Hoping to start by Q2FY24, thanks in advance.

      1. Where did you hear that, YouTube Military Expert? Even if Russia loses, it will return Ukrainian territory, but Moscow is occupied? Take your medicine, please.
        You are a lunatic. War kills people, including Americans. Are you dying so you want to see the world burn before that? Lmao

        1. I agree Chaser. A war over Taiwan ain’t gonna happen. It makes no sense to say the U.S. starts a war over Taiwan. If anyone starts a war over Taiwan, it would be China, not the U.S. China has more sense than to try that. If the Russian invasion taught the world anything, It showed the enormous cost of war, not only in human lives but that is destructive to the economy of the nation that started the war as well. China has enough economic problems right now without adding sanctions and all the other problems that would come with such a war.

          China knows that would be a suicide mission. Give them a little credit for having a little common sense.

        2. I guess China and America share something at least: you guys don’t get clear sarcasm and hyperbole.

          It’s pretty funny the world has become so brain dead that I have to point out that fact, because actually, now I think about it, most of the media are basically aping my style with a straight face.

          For what it’s worth, the US is absolutely pining for something to happen with Taiwan and setting the table for something in Asia. They’re moving to closing up on Ukraine, which I saw coming early in spring given if the counteroffensive didn’t make massive (and frankly unrealistic) gains, the US would pivot to cut Ukraine loose even before a possible Trump presidency gave up on this.

          I don’t think the world is done yet with seeing death throes of empire fuck shit up for everyone.

          1. “US is absolutely pining for something to happen with Taiwan”
            Absolutely false.
            Americans of all political strips would like nothing to change regarding Taiwans status.
            That is up for them to decide.

          3. Kleiber,

            Are you taking your meds ?

            So help me, you sound about as disconnected from reality as the people here in Yankee land who worship at the altar of trump.

        3. Chaser, here’s to hoping you stick around here. Many of us comment little but listen a lot. We sorely need perspectives like yours.

    2. Chaser. Thanks for your perspective.
      In regard to “I don’t hate the Chinese, I just hate the CCP” , I see it this way-
      I like most of the Chinese people I know, but I don’t like many governments, especially the religious fundamentalist ones like Iran and the authoritarian ones like N. Korea.
      Many in the US would like to have a religious fundamentalist and authoritarian government here, but more would strongly reject such a development.
      Most people in the US see CCP as strictly authoritarian. Do you see it that way…are you allowed to say without attracting attention to yourself and losing your job, your house, your social credit rating?

      1. Hickory. Yes, I do not deny that China is a dictatorship. Saying something won’t cost your job or house, but the comment will be deleted and that’s it. You will indeed be arrested if you call on people to demonstrate or overthrow the government.

        Also, the Social Credit System is not real. LOL

        1. Chaser, thanks for your posts. It is really good to get a perspective from an actual Chinese citizen. I agree that most people are stupid. However, those on this list are at least one standard deviation above the general public. But still, we do get a lot of stupid posts.

          I am not hoping for a China collapse. But building cities where hardly anyone will live just does not make sense. One would think that those guys would know that this house of cards was destined to collapse sooner or later.

          But it is not just China that is destined to collapse due to the depletion of the world’s natural resources and the destruction of the world’s environment; it is the entire world economy. It is truly baffling why hardly anyone in the general public cannot see this. It is just so goddamn obvious it blows your mind.

          1. The Western leaders figure if we go out in a blaze of glory by horribly massacring Chinese people over perceived threat, then no one will question the bigger picture.

            Don’t think about crumbling infrastructure, worry about immigrants is the usual refrain.

            1. Kleiber, I haven’t heard such a line of bullshit in a long while. Just who the hell do you think “WE” are? The president? Congress? We will not do any such thing. Massacring any population on earth would be far from a blaze of glory. It would be something Pol Pot or Hitler might do.

              It is true that the better angels of our nature seldom show up on the battlefield. And we have made some horrible mistakes in the past. But I hope we are far better than Hitler or Pol Pot. And we will eventually go out, just like the rest of the world, but it sure as hell will not be in a blaze of glory.

            2. Ron, this isn’t about what the population wants. This is about what the power figures need. And like any power being faced with a rising one, you will see efforts made to distract or to downplay the impact of the change in dynamic.

              If the last several years constant berating of China as being an authoritarian power not to be trusted isn’t a good indicator of the pieces being moved, I don’t know what to tell you. The very same playbook has been used repeatedly for lesser powers (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria) and things came of it that would be far less of a disaster than what would happen if the US and China went toe to toe.

              There is nothing the US or Europe can really do to stop a China and BRICS power struggle. And going into a resource strapped future with climate change rocking everyone’s boats, don’t think any gov’t is above using outside factors to quell dissent internally.

            3. And just who are these power figures you are talking about? Are they senators, congressmen, or the president? All these guys get elected by voters. That is the general population. And China has not been berated nearly as much as Putin. I have no idea what the hell you are talking about there. Just who has been doing all this berating? I watch the news every day, and I have not seen any of this berating. We need China, and China needs us. We are trading partners. Not just no, but hell no, we are not going to start a war with China.

              Yes, there will be skirmishes. Close fly-byes in the sky and close cruse byes in the seas but it will not amount to war. Both sides are just letting the other know they are there.

            4. I forgot, when you elect people, they do exactly what you say. How silly of me to doubt the true democracy.

              That’s why the demos is satisfied and not disillusioned with democracy in the modern world.

              https://www.reuters.com/world/half-worlds-democracies-decline-intergovernmental-watchdog-2022-11-30/

              I don’t remember anyone telling the UK to do half the things its been doing lately. Maybe I should write my MP, like how I did multiple times about sewage waste leaking into local waterways and the unsustainable housing going up. Oh wait, they just sent a boiler plate “thank you for writing” letter back and carried on anyway.

              I don’t recall voting to build up our military because of Ukraine while I see more homeless on the street and schools and hospitals literally being held up with scaffolding as their structures decay dangerously. BAE Systems shareholders seem pretty happy, though.

              Don’t recall drilling for more oil and gas being on the ballot for this “green” Tory gov’t either. Or forcing people to go with unaffordable electric vehicles and heat pumps in 2030 and 2025.

              I seem to recall Brexit wasn’t a binding referendum, We got it, though.

              Remember how everyone voted for bailing out the banks in 2008? Remember how everyone wanted to invade Iraq in 2003? How about Libya in 2011?

              How about the PATRIOT Act? The Online Safety Bill? All for the greater good, yet, it’s strange, no one I know asked for these.

              Ron, you’re not that naïve. But hey, if Trump gets in next year, I’m sure you won’t have any problems with the direction the country goes in. After all, people voted and got what they wanted, no problem. Just like student loans will be getting paid back under Biden, despite everyone kicking up a fuss during this cost of living crisis.

              The difference between somewhere like the UK/US and China is, China makes no illusions about it being authoritarian and doing what it feels is in the best interests of people. The West, meanwhile, is captured by capital and doing the bidding of the people creaming off the profit off the brow of every working man, woman and (now in the US, thanks child labour legislation) child. And yet nothing improves.

        2. Chaser…careful not to generalize your observations or opinions of USA, since this is a very diverse place with many ethnicities, and a wide range of beliefs.
          For example I live in a county that is ranked number 6th GDP in the US, and it has 45% non-European population, including Asian (over 20%), Hispanic, Black, Native. And 6% mixed race. All Americans.
          Those who want a war with China is close to 0%.
          Those who want a respectful and cooperative relationship with China is probably close to 100%.
          Those who need to know much more about China is 100%.
          Those who would like to see an end to dictatorship in China is probably close to 100%…if they an opinion on it.

          I also think that most Americans think it should be up to Taiwan whether or not they remain independent or merge with China.

          1. Hickory. Well, this gives me a little bit of faith back in humanity. Maybe reddit or twitter’s information cocoon has biased me.

      2. “Most people in the US see CCP as strictly authoritarian.” – and an increasing percentage of the US see their OWN government as inverted authoritarian regime – liberal on the surface, but authoritarian in practice. I would hope one would see “finger pointing” at China as increasingly hypocritical.

    3. Chase – yep – welcome to old, Western, white, relative position of privilege. I come for the peak oil, climate change updates and how all that relates to the US and global economy. whenever the conversation moves to geopolitics et al I typically tune out. Some of the conversations around whether an RE transition will be possible or successful are also interesting. People are smart within their field. And POB gives people a place to air their opinions in a relatively small environment where the comments will get attention and be part of an actual conversation. Just as an example I don’t think most people here are much aware of Falun Gong, influence, agenda. For instance – the Epoch Times. And when you try to counter their preferred narrative you get the weird Kleiber nonsense below (who is normally very well reasoned). You just have to stay away from certain sensitive large nerves.

    4. Hi Chaser,

      I’m wondering who these people, the ones posting here in this forum, that you mention in your comment.

      If they’re actually posting here, or being quoted here, they’re certainly out of the mainstream, and ignored or even banned after a while.

      And while some of us no doubt don’t like the idea of not being the top dog anymore, well, you obviously DO like the idea of being top dog, right?

      Taken as a group, we take Asia very seriously indeed, although some of us believe your country won’t dominate the world economy in future years.

      There are countless reasons to believe that, as you point out, the entire world is in a hell of a lot of trouble, and that things are going to be VERY tough to catastrophic in the not so distant future.

      China may survive as an industrial giant. She may collapse. Ditto the USA, Germany, the UK, etc.

      I’m agnostic concerning China, it can go either way. I’m somewhat optimistic concerning my own country, the USA, but half the regulars here believe the USA is doomed .

      1. OFM, I don’t want to mention who they are, it’s not necessary.

        I’m a doomsday person. I don’t like the world, so when I go down this rabbit hole of climate change and resource depletion and I find that collapse is near, it actually gives me a weird sense of satisfaction.

        There are many reasons why China can’t be top dog, I’m well aware of that. It’s a pity, of course, but it is what it is. It’s really laughable to see those BAU people gloating about China’s population crisis when you’re in a state of collapse consciousness. Having a collapsed consciousness is like opening up God’s perspective, comfort your dissatisfaction with the status quo, because in the end nothing will matter. There are some bloodthirsty westoid who want to die for a stupid island just because they don’t want China to “win”. If I were an American, I wouldn’t die for a stupid island, and I don’t give a shit about Taiwan.

        Of course, humans will not really become extinct. I am just referring to industrial civilization. I don’t remember if you said that. The United States will retain some basic modern services, and most people will live in farming. Don’t you think it’s doomed? I personally think this kind of life is not worth living, without the Internet is doomed to me.

        1. Sorry but I’m finding myself forced to conclude that you’re not thinking things thru carefully, to put it mildly.

          So it’s NOT NECESSARY to say who these people are?

          It Is true that the large majority of people in the USA, and for that matter the rest of the developed world, believe that declining populations are a crisis level problem, maybe even an existential level problem in terms of some countries survival as such, as countries.

          This shouldn’t surprise anybody it”s been preached in the colleges and universities of the world for a century or more now that eternal growth is the ” only way to Heaven”, in a manner of speaking.

          You come to this forum, and when you’re posting here, you’re talking to and about the regulars here. The vast majority of us are acutely aware that the world is quite likely headed to hell in a hand basket, and most of us understand the abc’s of biology, including population and resource issues.

          The regulars here don’t see declining populations as a problem, we see them as the only possible route for us to get thru this next half century or so without going back to a pre industrial life style, if we’re still around and lucky enough to have survived.

          1. Sorry, maybe it’s the language barrier, I can’t express my point of view very well. In previous threads I’ve seen many opinions about China’s demographic crisis and economic collapse, perhaps they focus on China’s short-term oil consumption. And I am more concerned about the long term and the overall situation, so I misunderstood this as a kind of schadenfreude? I don’t remember the IDs of the regulars here, I only have some vague impressions. I also noticed that most of the regulars on this forum are elders, I’m in my 20’s, young people are cynical.

            1. I’m a Zen Buddhist over here in the USA, also of European ancestry as is most of my temple membership. Our teaching comes in substantial part by way of Chinese Chan Buddhist practitioners from between 1000 and 1500 years ago, so I have a great deal of respect for the deep history of your culture. I’m curious, what is the state of Chan Buddhism in China now? Are there any current practitioners that you know of, or is it just looked at as some dusty old history?

            2. Peter Zeihan has a lot to answer for. His American exceptionalism rhetoric goes fully into the way China is turbofucked, but strangely doesn’t point out any of the same or worse issues for the USA. Or rest of the developed world, for that matter.

              It would be hard for him to acknowledge that maybe the US is more akin to Japan in the ’90s now than the US circa 1945.

            3. Peter thinks he’s a source of unbiased analysis because he doesn’t have a Dim or a Repug spin.
              Everybody except most Americans sees the problem with this biased definition of ‘unbiased’.
              Pete’s a mountebank.

            4. Bill, I don’t know anyone who is religious and Chan is just a noun to most people but doesn’t care what it is.

            5. Hi Chaser maybe the language barrier is an issue here. You said “Chan is just a noun but doesn’t care what it is”. I’m not sure what that sentence means. I’m sure my tiny transliterated version of the Chinese language is very inadequate. What does the noun Chan mean?

              Anyway, I’m still curious about how things are in your country but wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. Here in the “democratic” USA we can say almost whatever we want (Julian Assange being the embodiment of our “free speech” limits) but the vast majority of people are brainwashed by consumer culture and national chauvinism so saying anything that doesn’t jive with the brainwashing just gets you ignored or verbally chastised by your neighbors. The popular understanding of China by Americans is that you guys are under constant surveillance and the state will put you in jail with no recourse if you say the wrong thing. I think we’re both living under authoritarian regimes in different ways (I’m sure that statement will bring vitriol down on me even on this site, we can vote blah blah).

            6. Chaser I thought some more about your reply that confused me and I think I understand it better now. Thank you for that. I was also very cynical when I was in my late teens, but now I understand better how vast the universe really is. Even if we fail completely and utterly the universe does not care, but it also does not not care. We are heading into the Autumn and I get especially tired and broody around this time, so I’ll sign off for now, but I look forward to hearing more from you whenever you feel so inspired.

            7. Bill, I don’t know why your comment doesn’t have a reply button, so I reply under my own sub-comment.

              Sorry, I don’t know much about Buddhism, but from my understanding Zen is the Japanese version of Chan. I mean I know the word Chan/Zen but not exactly what it stands for. Religion has no influence in Chinese society, so people don’t study these things.

              In China, if you say anything related to politics online, it will be deleted by the platform. I think they have an automatic detection system with keywords set in it. If you say something wrong, you will go to jail. First of all, there are not that many police officers to arrest people, and there are not that many places in the prison. And monitoring is not that easy. The Internet can generate 99999999999 (just a guess) pieces of information a day. I don’t think there is any technology to monitor and analyze which content violates regulations.

              I have a family member who is a civil servant but is not a member of the Communist Party. In fact, membership in the Communist Party is not required to be a government employee in China. Even being a member of the Communist Party does not mean anything, people just need this status to get better jobs (promotion to senior officials requires being a member of the Communist Party). It said it was an open secret that many of its colleagues were also dissatisfied with the government. Civil servants in China can resign at will, but it is difficult to find a better job. People work for the government for money, what communism? Never heard of it, LOL. As individuals they are not oppressors, it’s just that the system is designed that way.

              Take an example: the social credit system. In fact, this does not exist, but I think billions of people, not just in the Western world, believe this to be true. The United States controls social media around the world, and the purpose of doing so is to reduce the Chinese to subhuman beings. They do not know what freedom, democracy and human rights are. I think the real intention is $$$MONEY$$$. The media promotes to the public that the Chinese are subhuman and brainwashed zombies, so the military-industrial complex can use taxpayer money to counter China. American citizens have no problem with this, just as humans have no moral burden with slaughtering livestock.

              Why do Chinese citizens know about democracy but are content with the status quo? First of all, it is impossible to overthrow the government, the state machine is powerful and unwilling to give up its power (I think this is the case for every government). Secondly, we know that democracy is not a panacea. Look at India, the Philippines, Mongolia and other countries (perhaps more than 100). They are all democratic countries (actually not really democratic), but how are they living? Democracy cannot fill the belly. A prosperous country and a good life rely on high-value industries. Democracy in rich countries is like a jewel in the crown, democracy in poor countries is like diamonds in turds, who cares.

              From a personal perspective, I’ve been frustrated with the system before, not that I’m not disappointed now, but I’ve compromised and I won’t shed a tear over it anymore. I finally understand why so many people are so numb to injustice. Sentimental teenagers also have to worry about life and have no time to pay attention to so many ideological things. Those high hopes: that China will move towards democracy or that China will become a developed country and completely overthrow this Western-dominated world order, are no longer important. Like the death of an idealist. If I can’t get it, I don’t want it.

              The world works regardless of what humans think, including me. The earth will not grow new oil and minerals because everyone prays, or be destroyed by gamma rays because everyone is a doomer. I often wonder if I am too pessimistic. I believe that the peak of human civilization will be in 2019, and it will decline all the way from then on. I’m constantly shocked at how small the collapse-related community is, and how many clues are right there, but people just don’t see it. Just a guess, I think a lot of people here actually have self-destructive tendencies inside. The information is there, and only those with dark fantasies within can read it. Like magnets attached to stones (ordinary people) or other magnets.

        2. Life without the internet was just fine…girls were even prettier, food tasted better, and there was great music.

    1. @Old Chemist, couldn’t agree more.. It’s the same argument I’ve been having with gold nuts for years.

      Why use precious energy, mostly fossil fuels, to mine 1g/t (or less) fragments of a shiny metal, use massive amounts of energy to process it, leaving piles of toxic chemicals, to concentrate little specs into a larger lump, then transport it around the world to bury it somewhere else in a vault.

      To us dumb humans somehow this creates value, which to me means humanity has lost the plot about what’s important in our world. Yet somehow many those that can see we are destroying the environment and are reaching peak everything with a dull future ahead for civilization, often preach that people should own gold to protect themselves from the coming crises. As it is the single dumbest thing humans could be doing, but we keep doing more of it, realistically there is no hope for any type of bright outcome…

      A clear example…
      https://edlenergy.com/project/agnew/
      A gold mine in an isolated area wasting lots of renewable resources (the turbines, panels and batteries), while continuing to use diesel of course, to make up for when renewables are not available and heavy transport machinery.
      With zero diesel, the mine will not be able to operate, yet somehow our world thinks that wasting more resources to build and operate wind, solar and batteries to extend the life of a gold mine is ‘environmentally good’. The mine needs just as much gas and diesel powered electricity generation as it did before, for when there is no wind at night, plus diesel to move the waste rock and transport the ore..
      https://edlenergy.com/project/agnew/
      Today a sunny windy day, renewables are providing 21% of the needed power..

      We are destroying the natural world at an accelerating rate, but by having more mines to gain the glass, aluminium, copper, silicon etc needed to build ‘renewables’ so we can call this gold mining ‘green’. LOL…

      Humanity has lost the plot, we just continue to expand our footprint while denying we are damaging the living ecosphere. Renewables and nuclear just are an excuse for people to feel good as more damage is done..

      1. I’m plugged into and a solid part of a culture that most of the regulars here know next to nothing about on a first hand basis…….. the very poorly educated working and religious class here in the USA, Bible Belt Southern variety.

        When and if the shit hits the fan, so that electrons and greenbacks are worthless or nearly so, there won’t actually be much of anything at all that’s perishable to be bought. There won’t be much meat or produce in stores, if any, etc,

        And the people who do have such things, such as maybe an old farmer in the neighborhood, will be FAR more likely to want to trade for some new boots, or tires for his truck or tractor, than gold coins.

        My personal opinion is that while a few gold coins are a very worthwhile safeguard store of value, it’s far more likely that it will be easier to trade boxes of twenty two ammo and shotgun shells, or damned near any really high quality DURABLE item that’s useful on a day to day basis in a hard crash scenario.

        A cast iron frying pan or dutch oven works very well over a wood fire.

        A hundred pound sack of salt might be the means of surviving a coming winter, because that’s enough to salt down a a couple of hogs or a cow.

        There’s no way to be sure how long they will last, but if you have something in the way of farmable land, a well, a house, etc, and your own solar panels, a few batteries, etc, well…..

        You’ll be a HIGHLY desirable man, in the eyes of a young woman, the equivalent of today’s one percenter guys who drive Mercedes and own a small personal plane, lol. After all the one you like best will have a refrigerator, washing machine, hot water, , electric lights, a microwave, etc, anytime if used sparingly, until the batteries go bad, and after that, she’ll still have some electricity during daylight hours.

        You’ll also be at rather high risk of being murdered for your home place and your young woman. Guns will be more valuable that gold coins, by a factor of ten, maybe a factor of a hundred.

      2. Hideaway- “Humanity has lost the plot, we just continue to expand our footprint while denying we are damaging the living ecosphere”

        We agree on something apparently. What is your solution to having humanity contract its footprint and reverse the damage to the ecosphere?

        1. Move humanity to another planet for a little while. I hear Mars is good this time of year.

        2. @Hickory ” What is your solution to having humanity contract its footprint and reverse the damage to the ecosphere?”

          There possibly was a solution decades ago, but now we are so deep into overshoot that nothing that could have a positive effect would ever be tried. We need to re-wild probably over 50% of all civilizations land use and crash the population to low levels.

          Can’t see anyone agreeing to a 50% cut in agricultural land use, nor the rewilding of 50% of cities. Plus of course, rapidly reducing population is pretty much a taboo subject. Jack Alpert has as close a plan of what’s really sustainable, but it will never happen.

          Despite how I seem to be anti solar, I’m not. I use it extensively myself as it makes perfect sense to avoid retail pricing for power where I live. What I’m trying to do, is too wake people up to the fact that renewables and nuclear are no where near the replacements for fossil fuels that all the cornucopians make out.

          Solar is not cheaper than coal or gas on a like for like basis as in providing power 24/7 for industry. Industry, not retail use, is where we need to look at energy inputs. Without heavy industry there is no building of anything. We encourage China to burn more coal, oil and gas to make our solar panels and wind turbines.

          I use the latest up to date pricing for working out capital and operating costs of all energy machines and even with the lower capital costs of newer panels, the O&M costs are proving to be way higher than industry forecasts (every energy industry).

          Solar, Wind, Nuclear and coal have much lower EROEI than oil and gas with coal being better than the first three. We have built the modern civilization on the back of oil and gas, but mainly oil when it had a very high EROEI. All the modern economic troubles started in the early 70’s, just as the oil growth rate stopped rising exponentially.

          Cheap oil allowed us to educate the masses, which we were then able to allow the best to go on to tertiary education, where the best of the best did post graduate work to specialize in all facets of life. We can’t have the very best solar, wind, nuclear designers and engineers unless we continue to educate the masses in the first place. It’s part of the complexity we’ve built into the system that must be maintained to produce the future experts. No-one wants to count the complexity of the ongoing background system in their energy calculations. The only way we have to count that complex background energy cost is the actual dollar cost as a representation of all inputs, capital, operating and maintenance costs.

          We are in a clear predicament, with no answer to the combined problems of gross population overshoot, ecosphere overshoot and resource depletion, oil resources in particular.

          1. HIDEAWAY —

            It’s much easier talking about windfarms and EVs (technology) rather than ways of reducing Earth’s human population (the REAL problem); currently 8,000,000,000 people and counting. So we find ourselve with biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, deforestation, water and food shortage, etc., all exacerbated by our ever-increasing numbers. Population Overshoot has one and only one consequence; can’t see that changing.

          2. Hideaway- “We are in a clear predicament, with no answer to the combined problems of gross population overshoot, ecosphere overshoot and resource depletion, oil resources in particular.”

            Yes indeed!,
            however it is extremely naive to think that humanity will simply voluntarily downsize in response to this realization.
            Rather, the collective and near universal response will be to attempt to adapt to the scenario.
            A major part of that attempt will be deploying energy supply systems that replace some of the fossil fuel depletion (and if these methods emit less CO2 so much the better).
            And that is why you are going to be so very wrong on solar energy. It will be widely deployed and it will be very effective at supplying intermittent electricity in large amounts at comparably excellent price.
            And successful pockets of humanity will become very good at dealing with the intermittency with complementary energy production facilities, storage and load shifting.

            And regarding EROEI- once again I say just look at price of energy produced. Energy input costs at all points in the chain of manufacture and deployment are embedded within the price of product, whether it is an airplane, a cellphone, a barrel of oil , or a PV panel.
            For PV- with modern era mass production the energy output per unit is very favorable compared to the energy input…and that is reflected in low cost of panel systems and the produced energy.

            If you want to worry about something important in regard to PV then focus on intermittency and lifespan. Those are indeed important issues. All energy sources have particular limitations and weaknesses.

      3. There’s no plot to be lost. The biosphere can be pictured in the human mind, or a novel or movie, but it’s Mother Nature’s creation. She has no mind, no ethics, no morals, other than one.

        This one is to survive to reproduce successfully. No brakes as such are built in. Excess populations are not a problem at all from her NON EXISTENT POV, she doesn’t have a POV at all. Species and populations either survive and thrive or crash and perish, she’s utterly incapable of giving a damn.

        We’re doing what we were programmed to do for the last few hundred million years of evolution, surviving and thriving. There has never BEEN any need for built in brakes, because predators, disease, war, famine, flood, changing climate, etc, have always been sufficient to limit our numbers.

        And these same things, war, famine, changing climate, etc, WILL work and are already working locally and regionally, to control our numbers.

        They work in an eyeblink, it terms of biological and geological time, although a few decades seem like forever to us.

    1. All the talking heads just flat out rewriting reality is something else. Actually, it’s fine because inflation isn’t as high as in 2022 and so Bidenomics is working. Once you strip out rent/mortgage and energy and food, everything is good. Great, even.

      1. “Once you strip out rent/mortgage and energy and food”

        That is outright fraud!!! Take things people are dependent on and subtract that out of the equation.

    2. I really wish I had the time and energy to go back to U and study economics, banking, and finance systematically.

      But while I’m fully aware that I don’t really understand a lot of what’s going on in this general area, I’m just about DEAD sure that there’s no way Uncle Sam will allow any substantial amount of deflation to come about across the board in the American economy, if any means of preventing it can be found.

      We can live with what we thing of as high inflation, say five to ten percent. This would result in major problems, for sure, but if prices are allowed to collapse across the board, in real estate prices, rental rates, automobile prices, etc, prices in general……. this would throw the entire economy into a depression that would make the Great Depression look like a Sunday School picnic.

      This would be political suicide, plain and simple, and whoever is in power in our country will do anything, even if it’s WRONG, to prevent it happening. And I mention wrong because it’s entirely possible that some policies intended to prevent deflation might make it worse.

      1. lots of inflation or lots of deflation in a short amount of time are both bad.

        We’ve created a situation in the USA where we are going to get one or the other thru easy / cheap money policies.

        1. Hi Andre,

          I agree. But it seems to me that inflation, so long as it isn’t really severe, say less that ten percent, is more easily manageable or survivable that a fast deflation.

          What do you think about this?

          1. The Fed’s mandate is stable prices. That is 0% inflation/deflation.

            That they target 2% inflation (an exponential curve) is fraud as they are blatantly ignoring their mandate.

            My prediction for the USA (which is not worth much) is the FED is going to try to squash inflation because they and congress do not want to be the victims of civil rioting.

            And remember the members of congress and the Fed are not Peak Oilers and Doomers.

            They think once inflation is halted everything will go back to normal.

            I disagree, an energy crunch will be massively deflationary.

            1. Andre,

              The Fed has a dual mandate, to keep inflation low while maintaining close to full employment. The 2% target is designed to fulfill this dual mandate. There is seldom no inflation and deflation is a problem for the middle class that typically has debt.

              You may not realize this, but achieving 0% inflation is not an easy task and would typically tip an economy into recession if achieved.

              See

              https://www.chicagofed.org/research/dual-mandate/dual-mandate

            2. I realize getting 0% inflation may not be achievable or that the fed actually has precise control over anything.

              But they are targeting 2% which is not stable, its an exponential curve.

              They should be be targeting 0% even if they can’t realistically achieve it.

              Actually, you probably want a very slight deflation as that means your economy is getting more productive.

  14. World temperature anomaly greater than one degree over 1979-2000 average for first time at 1.08 (it was exactly 1 on the eleventh). The warming seems to be markedly accelerating from an already high position this year.

    1. Which is maybe not surprising given the EEI curve. Note for the 15-16 El Nino the curve dipped a bit as temperatures increased, not sure if that is happening this time.

      1. On ‘earth energy balance imbalance’ what is normal?
        Is volcanic activity considered a source of imbalance?
        How variable is the global energy balance based on factors like orbit variation?

        1. With respect to earth energy balance, I recommend following Leon Simons on twitter. You can see a longer term chart of EEI there. But the short version is that the long term chart of EEI looks a lot like the long term chart of CO2 in the atmosphere.

          It seems like the EEI is rising faster than CO2 in the most recent period though, potentially due to the reduction of aerosols as we reduce sulfur pollution. Survivalist posted a link to a short and simple paper higher in the thread that lays all of this out fairly clearly.

          “Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind?”

        2. Normal is zero (for the Holocene there was pretty much no imbalance, therefore stable, therefore agriculture, civilisations and, eventually with FFs, massive overshoot), anything positive is bad (warming), positive and increasing is very bad, positive and accelerating is extremely bad, positive and taking great jumps up in a smoothed curve when it is supposed to be decreasing because of increased outward radiation from higher surface temperatures equals WASF.

          1. Thanks George.

            And NASA says this-
            “Ninety percent of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water’s internal heat to increase since modern recordkeeping began in 1955…”
            https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-warming/

            The ocean is very slow to warm. When it gets to the level of measurable warming (now) it means that tremendous heat energy has been added…and the effects of this will be massive and enduring.

            On a global basis this August comes in as the hottest on record, almost double the prior record of year 2016.

            The Air Was Hot This Year but Its Nothing Compared to the Ocean-
            https://time.com/6313639/warming-world-air-ocean-essay/

            1. The question is how fast can heat absorbed at the surface get taken down to the deep oceans. This depends on the global overturning circulation. If it is rate limited then adding more heat at the surface, but keeping a fixed rate at which it can be taken away, means the surface gets hotter, faster. In fact the southern overturning circulation is slowing down so things are actually worse, especially as most of the heat is absorbed there. If we get to blue oceans at the poles, so some of the 4% of heat currently absorbed as latent heat in melting sea ice has to go somewhere else (i.e. as sensible heat warming the oceans, land and atmosphere) things could change at a rate making even this year look pedestrian.

    2. And with the low (and apparently rapidly falling) Antarctic sea ice cover that might be expected.

        1. Thwaites has not been happy for a while.
          Just read The Quickening, and would recommend it, if you have an interest in Thwaites.

    3. Typically with El Nino, you get the most heat in year 2 and we are still in year 1 so you would expect next year to be the one that really tops out the high temperatures for this El Nino cycle – which makes the fact that the last few months have blown away the historical records that much more worrisome.

    2. Good riddance, and thanks. It was perfectly obvious he was no more and no less than a relatively well skilled troll.

        1. I agree, nonsensical, to be sure.
          But to the general public, such a person sounds as if he knows as much or more than real scientists.
          Never forget what Twain had to say about arguing with fools in public. One thing, the fool will wear you down and beat you with experience.

          And the other was that the public won’t know which is the fool.

          The whole idea is to sow doubt and confusion in the minds of laymen drawn into the argument. That’s getting on base. Convincing the general public that fossil fuels are good, and renewables are bad, that’s second and third base. Winning votes for the conservative political faction, that’s scoring a run.

  16. In times past, you could reasonably expect most books to at least briefly acknowledge, no matter the author’s positions, that there’s always the OTHER side to be considered.

    Not anymore. The paycheck rules, and the right wing culture vultures feed at will on the ignorance and prejudices of their sucker audience.

    Consider this article by the author of a book which is more or less summarized in it.

    https://nypost.com/2023/09/16/chinas-population-is-falling-from-its-former-one-child-policy/

    There’s not a single WORD in it acknowledging that all those buildings WILL be put to use, when the time comes. Not a single word acknowledging that Chinese central planning has enabled them to dominate in two or three of the most important industries that will determine the course of history over the next few generations and after that, far into the future as well, namely wind, solar, and electrical storage infrastructure.

    Not a single word acknowledging that when ( if ) the crisis posited by the author actually comes to pass, that the new government will either own or control the process of putting new owners into all those supposedly useless buildings. Not a word acknowledging that debts can be and have been historically repudiated countless times after wars, or crashes, etc.

    Not a single word about resource depletion, or climate issues, or soil and water issues, etc.

    And at least one out of every three or four voters in the USA gets his or her news pretty much exclusively from such sources.

    1. Yeah, get a load of these idiot Chinese building excess infrastructure like cities and fast rail networks and powerplants. When will they realise it’s far more fruitful to invest in NFTs, crypto and securities?

      When the collapse happens, the US will easily dominate Mad Max world with a bristling portfolio of the very finest and most valuable stocks and bonds.

      For real though, it reminds me of Obama’s comment on Russia: it’s just a big gas station, nothing more. How terrible to only have vast quantities of the vast master resource that everyone else literally kills to get ahold of. I guess China with all that agriculture land and minerals is also “just” a breadbasket that can sustain itself.

      Neoliberalism really did a number on peoples ability to consider things outside of dumb financialisation. It makes me wonder what, say, the UK would do without the City of London fintech side of things which gives them a massive chunk of GDP, along with other services making 70% of total GDP. A nation that has to import pretty much everything else. Super great system that.

      1. Sometimes you NAIL it , Klieber.

        But I would still rather be in the UK than in Egypt. Getting from there to the Americas or Australia would be a hundred times easier.

  17. Over on another site…

    The Oldest Man posted:
    I want you to imagine something.

    You’re apple. You built an iphone. The iphone contains metals that were mined somewhere. The mine generates co2 emissions with its heavy equipment. Transporting the minerals generated co2. Manufacturing the finished metal stampings generated co2. Transporting the finished metal stampings generated co2. If any of the energy inputs for any of this came from renewables, the renewable power generators themselves had to be mined, transported, manufactured, and transported again, in a fashion which has some carbon-intense inputs.

    So some co2 was emitted to atmosphere during this process. For this to be “carbon neutral,” the carbon emitted has to be “offset.” That’s what neutral means. You emitted some carbon over here, you… somehow made some carbon not get emitted over there, because actually removing the carbon you emitted yourself is not happening and obviously not emitting that carbon is a no go since you want to keep selling iphones which emit carbon.

    The most common way to “offset” carbon is by planting trees. Trees slurp carbon out of the atmosphere so hey, if you protect or plant enough trees, that’s offsetting your giant ass coal plant or lithium mine or whatever.

    Unfortunately:

    1. Paying to protect existing trees is an accounting scam. Those trees aren’t something you just made happen, they’re just a way, on paper, to say you prevented x million tons of co2 from being emitted by paying a guy who theoretically was going to cut down his trees to not do that. But that guy is just collecting a pay check to do nothing, which means anyone who could theoretically chop down some trees can sell an offset to not do that (whether they actually would have or not) and a lot of those trees get sold as offsets multiple times using different offset schemes.
    2. Paying to plant trees is an actuarial scam. Some trees don’t live long enough to sequester co2 out of the atmosphere, so there is a formula that assumes trees will sequester carbon for, on average, something like 100 years and the offset bakes in an extra amount of trees to account for things like forest fires over that 100 years. All of this is highly optimistic math based on historical trends. Now look at, you know, Canada. Something like half of the buffer trees that were supposed to last for 100 years worth of future fires have already burned down in the last 5 years. RIP. And when those trees burn down, that is real co2 emitting to atmosphere. What happened to the offsets? Well they already got banked and counted toward Apple’s carbon neutrality last year or the year before that or five years ago, and that carbon neutrality accounting is never undone even though the trees themselves quite literally were unmade. It’s quite tidy. Plant a tree today, it counts toward you being carbon neutral. That tree burns down tomorrow, no harm no foul – it doesn’t count against you.

    Now replicate that by every other carbon offset like clean energy projects that never get built or would have gotten built anyway, “blue hydrogen” where carbon offsets literally go straight into the mouth of big oil, etc. It’s scams all the way down, scams within scams.

    Like the solutions to every other existential problem in our political economics, “carbon neutrality” is marketing and grifting wrapped around the problem getting worse faster.

  18. Further to George’s comment.

    ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE AT ‘MIND-BLOWING’ LOW

    “Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth’s refrigerator to a radiator, experts say. The ice that floats on the Antarctic Ocean’s surface now measures less than 17 million sq km – that is 1.5 million sq km of sea-ice less than the September average, and well below previous winter record lows. That’s an area of missing ice about five times the size of the British Isles.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66724246

  19. HOW RISING WATER VAPOR IN THE ATMOSPHERE IS AMPLIFYING WARMING AND MAKING EXTREME WEATHER WORSE

    “This year’s string of record-breaking disasters — from deadly wildfires and catastrophic floods to record-high ocean temperatures and record-low sea ice in Antarctica –- seems like an acceleration of human-induced climate change. And it is. But not only because greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. What we are also observing is the long-predicted water vapor feedback within the climate system. As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture in the form of water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas. This in turn amplifies the warming caused by our emissions of other greenhouse gases.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-09-vapor-atmosphere-amplifying-extreme-weather.html

    1. Paul Krugman espouses economics that has already been debunked.

      He uses his “Nobel Prize” as a grifter. He doesn’t care about what is true.

      He just cares about making money for himself.

      1. Andre,

        Which economics are you talking about?

        I disagree strongly about Paul Krugman, his views on economics seem quite sensible to me. Perhaps you have not studied economics?

  21. I’m reading at some other sites that electric cars are now numerous enough that the demand for oil FOR cars, meaning cars only, not trucks, has already peaked.

    ????

    1. That’s it. I intended to ask if the regulars here who crunch numbers have an opinion on it.

      I’m willing to believe it’s true, but the sale of gasoline powered cars is still going up, and electric car sales may or may not be increasing fast enough for this to be true.

      Note that it does refer to cars only and not trucks.

      I’m not seeing much about it on the websites I usually read, but on NPR today there was a program about what’s happening in Germany right now on the renewables front. It sounded as if they’re half way there to doing what I believe is necessary to have a shot at actually going renewable……. putting the pedal to the metal and going at it on a war time basis, diverting manpower and money into it as if their survival depends on it…….. and in my opinion, it does, over the medium to long term.

      It’s a much bigger problem for Germany than most other Western countries because the economic foundation is heavy manufacturing industry……. which means importing huge amounts of fuel and raw materials.

      Up until the last couple of decades, they’ve been able to stay ahead of the competition, by having better trained workers and more efficient factories, making premium quality cars and so forth.

      But countries such as Korea, Mexico, and even Vietnam, never mind China, are catching up fast, and given that wages, benefits, and environmental regulations are less expensive, less restrictive, etc, it’s my opinion that German model isn’t going to work much longer…… maybe another decade or two.

      They’re going to have to make some big changes. But if they can fix it so that they produce what they need for their own use, without buying oil and gas on the grand scale, and grow most of their own food, etc, they’ll be ok. Just importing metals won’t be that big a deal…. because they can eventually recycle enough that they won’t need much in the way of imports for domestic use. The German population is going to stabilize sooner that most people expect in my opinion.

      And for that matter, the same holds true all over Europe and most of Asia, at least the developed parts.

      And they’ll probably be able to hold onto their customers for some stuff, just as the Italians have.

      The world seems to look at Italy as some sort of industrial backwater, producing olive oin and FIAT’s. Fix it again Tony, lol.

      But they’re probably the very best in certain areas, such as high capacity high production machine tooling.

      It’s rather unlikely that anybody else in the world could have built the giant presses Tesla bought to make castings for cars and trucks.

      Sure we Yankees could have done it…….. eventually, taking four or five times as long and that many times over budget, most likely.

      1. OFM,

        Keep in mind that for short haul trucking EVs will also dominate pretty soon, the jury is still out on long haul trucking, but it’s possible to move that to rail and use short haul EVs to move from rail to distribution centers. Within 20 years we could see much of land transport use of oil eliminated (roughly half of current World oil use).

        1. Hi Dennis,

          I’m willing to bet the farm that in twenty years things will be just as you describe them, given a little luck.

          But between now and then, it’s my personal opinion that we’re at high risk of an oil and gas supply shock that could throw not only the US but pretty much all of the industrial world into a crash and burn situation.

          It’s not just whether sufficient production is possible, but more that the half the world is more or less like a powder keg, and there’s a hell of a lot of reckless tin pot two bit power mad people out there who WILL be starting various little hot wars.

          And one of them could easily morph into a situation wherein the tankers won’t leave port, or worse.

          1. OFM,

            Perhaps, but big powers would step in with potential cooperation between Nato, Russia, and China in such a scenario. Ports would likely be reopened in a hurry. I think the risk is low and big powers prefer stability over chaos.

            There is enough oil and gas to get the World through the next 20 years especially as demand wanes due to EVs, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power ramping up while coal, oil and natural gas use gradually ramp down as their uses are replaces by other forms of non-fossil fuel energy.

  23. And in the meantime, back on the farm,

    https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/09/19/indian-scientists-making-high-purity-polysilicon-ingots-from-recyled-pv-cells/

    My personal scientific wild ass guess is that once the supply of old panels is sufficient to set up industrial scale recycling facilities, the odds are at least ninety five percent old panels will be profitably recycled.

    If I were a youngster again, I would try to invent or perhaps rather I should say perfect a couple of things that would enable us to save a hell of a lot of energy.

    Suppose you could attach a giant air bag device underneath an existing heavy duty truck, so that it could be inflated while traveling, creating a smooth undercarriage, thereby working wonders in reducing aero drag…. It’s not like this would require a lot of energy, even in the case of an electric truck, and in the case of a diesel rig…….. the hot exhaust is free.

    1. That would be most welcome (panel silicon recovery) particularly if the energy input for the process is favorable.

      2. Holy cow, what are you smoking. I will start with OFM., then Dennis, and finally Hickory.

        Since when did a casting need a press. A press is usually used for sheet metal forming.

        Then this. ” My personal scientific wild ass guess is that once the supply of old panels is sufficient to set up industrial scale recycling facilities, the odds are at least ninety five percent old panels will be profitably recycled”
        Yep a wild ass guess that is never likely to be acheived any time, not even soon.

        Short haul trucking will be EV’s . How short haul? Very short haul because when they get back to the depot the charging system cannot keep up withe demand .

        Then this gem” Just importing metals won’t be that big a deal…. because they can eventually recycle enough that they won’t need much in the way of imports for domestic use.” .Really- what do you know about recycling metals? Clearly not a lot.

        I am a chemist. I have seen a lot of claims in my 45 year in the business. Most are pure BS. If recycling panels was profitable it would already be in place. The EROI is just too great. EROI is the killer for most recycling. It’s like swimming in a current and recycling silicon panles amy be possible but will NEVER be economic.

        I constan;ty remind my colleagues. There is much we can do with chemistry- not all of it makes sense. Most recucling is a boondoggle.( I await the caustic onslaught)

        I also appreciate the great physiicist Neils Bohr- ” Predictions are always difficult, especially when they involve the future”. Never a truer set of words spoken.

        I stick to what I know. I do not forecast an oil price and I know the oil supply is finite. It will end in tears bit I do not know when. But I am prepared and can probably see out 10 years, but it will not be easy. The collapse, when it happens, will be brutal. We will loose pretty quickly the ability to repair/ maintain everything we rely upon, but worst of all we will loose our knowledge. Psychology and media studies degrees will be less than useless.

  24. The “Letter of the Day” from the older of the two newspapers in my neck of the woods:

    Letter of the Day | Pharma companies should be held accountable

    For some time now, it has been known, but probably not widely recognised, the tremendous control exerted by the big pharmaceutical companies over medical research and publications, and over the major international and national health regulatory authorities – this, by virtue of their massive financial contributions to these agencies.

    This reality was magnified during the recent COVID-19 episode when Big Pharma, in concert with the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health in the United States, and other national health regulators, was allowed to produce and proclaim a medical intervention as “safe and effective” without adequate evidence, declare it as the main means of dealing with the epidemic (to the exclusion of other measures), and even propose mandatory use with serious consequences for disobedience.

    This was not penned by me but, wait for it……… a local medical doctor.

    There is a growing chorus of voices many of them MDs proclaiming that all is not right in the world of health care. IMHO the rot started when John D Rockefeller got involved in the pharmaceutical business. See

    How Rockefeller Founded Big Pharma And
    Waged War On Natural Cures

    April 14, 2019

    Western medicine has some good points, and is great in an emergency, but it’s high time people realized that today’s mainstream medicine (western medicine or allopathy), with its focus on drugs, drugs, radiation, drugs, surgery, drugs and more drugs, is at its foundation a money spinning Rockefeller creation

    Note this was written almost a year (11 months) before the COVID-19 pandemic. was declared.

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