78 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Sept 19, 2023”

    1. Probably of little or no relevance.
      Its happening (global warming),
      and some of the affects are happening more quickly and stronger than many have projected,
      such as antarctic melting and ocean temperature rise.
      The only good news on this is that there is a limit to fossil fuel supply, and the human ability to afford going after the more difficult to grab deposits is also limited.

  2. For those who are interested nuclear energy, there is a US company working on small reactors that may emerge with product this decade. They have a contract for installation at an inland WA state (the Columbia Generating Station), Dept of Defense contract, and are part way through regulatory approval.
    X-Energy
    https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100
    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/energy-northwest-x-energy-xe-100-nuclear-small-modular-reactor/688460/

    I don’t know if planned fuel source is Russian, or elsewhere.

    2. The Xe-100 is designed to operate at high temperatures to produce electricity more efficiently.

      I’m not sure of the differences between that & the molten salt types & The integral fast reactor but this is a remarkable statement:
      IFR-type reactors extract 99.99% of the energy immanent in mined uranium but today’s reactors extract only 0.6%.

      Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and Paul Simon (D-IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994, at greater cost than finishing it. When this was brought to President Clinton’s attention, he said “I know; it’s a symbol.”

      1. The democratic energy bill (IRA) provides funding for all SMR’s under development.
        In fact the one that is furthest along (NuScale) is projected to be roughly 50% funded by the Federal government under this program.
        Cost performance of these projects (and time to further develop and deploy) are very big question marks that will take at least two decades to get a good fix on. The prototypes need to deployed and monitored, and if successful then production ramp up will come next. In this time-frame its going to look very expensive. No guarantee that will ever change.

  3. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

        1. We need to find the painting that is keeping him on this mortal coil still.

    2. Watching Dave slowly have his mind break over the years has been something.

  5. Various graphs and pie charts abound, showing the contribution of various energy sources ( both renewable and non-renewable), but I have not seen one that includes a very crucial source of energy – photosynthesis that provides 100% of the energy that we need to survive. My rough calculations are as follows:

    Assumptions
    world population eight billion
    daily calorie requirement 2,500
    Loss from farm to fork 30%
    20% of calories from meat/fish @ 4 calories of photo synthesis energy for each calorie meat/fish consumed

    Daily energy equivalent in oil – 28 million barrels

    For all of human history except maybe the last century or two humans have existed at the limit of their ability to feed themselves, and even today many are at that balance point.

    10,000 years ago at the start of the agricultural revolution , approximately 5 million humans were able to support themselves in the hunter-gatherer mode
    2,000 years ago approximately 200 million were able to support themselves with agricultural output combined with hunter-gatherer input. The agricultural expertise included irrigation, use of horse, ox, and donkey and selection of superior strains of food plants.
    250 years ago approximately 800 million were able to survive, based on continued improvement in agricultural practices ( crop rotation, for example) and the use of basic iron farm implements. Continued shrinkage of the glaciers contributed more habitable real estate over the 10,000 years as well.
    Today, 8 billion of us survive thanks to non-renewable fossil fuels and other minerals. As non-renewable resources decline and with a significantly damaged ecosystem, how far back down the ladder will we have to descend.

    1. The ghost of Malthus still haunts the banquet. He long ago was dismissed by the technocrats who would conficently announce that the application of science to food production would ensure that ever greater populations of humanity would be supported by an ever growing cornucopia of food. More land, they say, can be brought into cultivation, and greater yields can be won from existing farmland. There are those who suggest that in the future, much larger populations will be fed by artifically cultivated nutriments produced by bacterial action in bacterial soups artificially generated in great factories, and producing in such abundance that so much present cultivated land might be returned to nature in rewilding schemes. Myself I think there is a limit to the size of human population imposed by resource depletion and the economcs of energy production. The truth is that however far advanced our technology and agricultural science, there is an ultimate limit beyond which population can comfortably increase, and that beyond that limit, there is famine, malnutrition, political chaos, warfare, pandemic, and despair. Alterntively, the solution to overpopulation and a Malthusian crisis might be the Soylent Green option. Anyone remember that film?

      1. Soylent Green is People!!!
        Actually isn’t technology itself also part of the problem allowing us to overshoot?

        1. Any “solution” that doesn’t involve cutting energy and resource use precipitously is basically bunkum.

          Watched Soylent Green last week, despite knowing the twist, very good film. Interesting how in their 2022 it basically emulates reality in saying the plankton supposedly used for the food is extinct now. Got a real hearty chuckle from me.

      2. “—–site in Western Australia that showed 46,000 years of continual occupation and provided a 4,000-year-old genetic link to present-day traditional owners has been destroyed in the expansion of an iron ore mine.”

      3. “It’s people!” One of Charlton Heston’s greats.

        No-one’s going to care enough to set up factories to reprocess people, or even bacterial mats, unless there’s some kind of benefit like in The Matrix where humans are batteries – as long as spare humans are needed for the Earth’s richest families to continue operating the world for their benefit, they’ll be kept alive somehow.

        Of course, there’s a limit – the limit, however, is the limit of one’s benevolence vs. convenience.

      4. Malthus never heard of family planning, not to mention the pill. Human population is set to crash in coming centuries unless someone can come up with a good reason for young women to put up with the difficulties of childbirth, and for young families to put up with the financial and career issues surrounding child raising.

        For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the looming ecological issues of the 21st century. What scenarios result in population over 10 bn?

        On current trends, populations will collapse pretty quickly after 2060. That’s because old people don’t have babies, and the world is aging quickly.

        There is a lot of money being poured into extended life expectancy, because old people are rich. Any breakthrough here could lead to a huge population explosion of the over 80 crowd. If you are 90 the chance you will die this year will double every year for the rest of your life. Currently this might not seem decisive, but Japan already has 10% of its population over 80.

        What would happen if 50% of the the over 70s lived to be 200? The falling death rate could be more significant that the falling birth rate.

        Fertility may be improved for older women. One current brake on population growth is that women are choosing to have children later, which limits total childbirths but also slows growth. Ignoring the second point, childbirth at old age could change population dynamics.

        My mother had 13 children in 22 years, between the ages of 22 and 44. My wife had two between the 34 and 38. How much would extending fertility to the age of 60 increase birth rates? What about to 120 years? How would psychological and economic factors play into this?

    2. “how far back down the ladder will we have to descend.”?

      On sustainable food production after fossil fuels…most of the way back down.
      From about 10 billion peak humans down towards 1 billion.
      We will all do our part, one way or another.

      1. Not at all, most primary production is wasted on farm animals, which are extremely inefficient aggregators of plant protein.

        Briefly, proteins are complex molecules made of amino acids. Plants produce amino acids and combine them to build proteins. Animals (and fungi) consume proteins, break them down into amino acids and build native protein from them.

        We eat animals because they are tasty, not because they are a particularly good source of protein. In fact beans are better and cheaper. As food processing improves, the added value of animals is declining, which is why hamburger, pork baozi, and chicken nuggets are more popular than delicacies like liver, calf’s tongue and pork kidney.

        I read once a brag that Argentina was so rich that they would kill a cow to cut out the tongue and leave the rest to rot. Tongue are now used for sausage, because nobody will eat them. though I love it as a child. In Germany, where I live, only Chinese customers buy pork kidney at the supermarket, as far as I know.

        At all levels of the food supply chain — the farms, the processor and suppliers, the retailers, and the restaurants, competition has created massive price pressure. At the end of the chain the consumers want a certain taste and consistency, and normative pressure, but are clearly open to change and let themselves be influenced by media. The weakest link in the chain is the dependence on animals to aggregate amino acids. It is hugely inefficient and seems more than unlikely to survive as more than a niche offering.

    3. “How far down the ladder?”
      There are hundreds of millions of people at least who may or may not survive living as they do today….. people who consume next to nothing except locally produced food and materials produced by muscle power.

      Most of them do have a few metal tools and maybe a few nails or other such hardware. If the climate doesn’t get too crazy, they’ll be ok except for trouble brought to them, but the land such people live on isn’t worth very much to anybody else, unless the aggressor is willing to live the same way. If there’s a nearby neighbor country with resources enough to pull off an invasion, the local people would be mostly displaced by newcomers.

      But in a crash and burn economic scenario, the newcomers would be very unlikely to have fuel, machinery, fertilizers, etc to come in and farm the land on a modern industrial basis. Local life could continue on a subsistence basis.

      With a little luck, people in such places as the Mid South Eastern USA could fall back to a horse and mule way of life, once the population crashes and things settle down in terms of pandemic disease, local violence and so forth……

      But that couldn’t happen for quite some time. It would take at least a couple of generations for the population to stabilize and the survivors to learn the necessary skills and acquire the necessary draft animals, which are slow breeders, etc.

      Today’s big cities, and most of the ones hardly any bigger than a village, would be mostly empty wastelands, without the necessary electrical, water and sewer grids, never mind the means of earning money for food imported from hundreds or thousands of miles away. The food wouldn’t exist in sufficient quantity, nor would the necessary means of transporting it.

      And nearly all of the goods and services produced in cities today would be next to worthless in any case in such an economic scenario.

      But any survivors in the hinterlands would have a ready supply of easily salvaged tools, building materials, and various durable goods for quite a long time….. centuries at least for such things as copper pipes and wiring, stainless steel or glass cookware, etc.

      1. All of that (described by Alimb..)
        may allow 1 billion, plus or or minus a billion.

        1. Lol at anyone assuming climate stability for agriculture will be a thing mid-century anyway.

          Even if you still had the energy, petrochemicals and machinery, you’d be hard pressed to preserve yields and ensure such output as today. Now throw in reducing liquid fuels, increasingly complex methods to get the returns we have now, and social instability and you got a Bad Time.

          I remember people only a few years talking about greenhouses like those in the Netherlands being the way forward, except, whoops, the energy crisis has made those places black holes financially.

          Climate change is an outside context problem for BAU. People are going to have a hard time accepting this when they already demand blood over the mere hint of curbing meat intake or air travel or car size.

  6. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germany-Sees-Renewables-Generating-Over-50-Of-Its-Electricity-In-2023.html

    A few days back one of the guys with a background in the oil and gas industry wanted me to demonstrate that renewable electricity is a real and viable THING, that a transition to renewable energy IS actually possible.

    Well, people of that sort were telling us a few years back that we would never be able to have more than ten percent wind and solar power on the grid, that maintaining hot spinning reserve would cost more in fuel than the energy generated by wind and sun would be worth, etc, etc.

    Germany has a relatively poor solar resource and only a so so wind source.

    I’ve never been fortunate enough to go there, but I’ve met and worked with some German guys living out of a suit case, as I was, on short term industrial maintenance work.

    It’s my opinion, for what it’s worth, that if they were collectively living in Texas, rather than Germany, they would be exporting enough wind and solar power already to cut into the market for gas for generation in the USA by at least a fourth and maybe even more.

    It’ takes a while for them to get to know you and trust you, but once they do, they’re really nice people, and you can bet your very life on the fact that they’re ORGANIZED and COMPETENT.

    If we have to, and there’s a very serious possibility we WILL have to, we could very easily erect overhead transmission lines on our major highways and run commercial trucks mostly on wind and solar power, directly, no batteries needed, by putting wheel motors in the hubs and retaining a smaller diesel engine and small fuel tank sufficient to go maybe a hundred miles round trip off the main highway.

    Deep mines already run almost exclusively on electricity, although it is generally supplied by the grid or by large diesel generators located on site. Finishing up the job, by adding batteries and electric motors to the ground vehicles, is a manageable job, if there’s wind and solar electricity available at reasonable costs.

    If the land is available for a sun and wind farm, it’s looking as if actually building one or both, so as to use the juice on site, at cost, no grid connection needed, is going to be practical and profitable in a number of places, assuming the mine is expected to be kept in production for a long time, a couple of decades are so.

    I used to be a hard core doomer, but after seeing how fast costs have dropped, and how fast capacity has been growing in renewables, I’m sure a successful transition is possible at least in theory.

    And if we stay after it, and the economy holds up for a few more decades, I’m willing to bet the farm on it actually coming to pass. It’s not like I’ll be needing it anyway.

    1. Good thing we only need electricity and not any other form of energy and even if, electricity is by far the largest part of energy production. No, that’s not the case? Oh well ..

      1. Required,

        Keep in mind that it is useful work that is important, for electricity about 85 to 90% can be utilized for work, for fossil fuel it is typically about 35% on average that is converted to work, this first year thermodynamics, not all that difficult to understand.

        1. Thank you for your reply. We will see how this absurdly complex system, the human endeavor, will react when faced with shrinking net energy. Have you seen the presentation called “Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time?” by Jean-Marc Jancovici? What are your thoughts on it? You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

            1. However regardless of whether they are necessary, there is a very robust nuclear industry re-invigoration underway currently entering the prototype phase of small modular reactors (SMR’s).

              For the enthusiastic and optimistic view on this- here is a good 45 minute podcast
              https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-smrs-scale-fast-enough-to-reach-climate-goals/id1221460035?i=1000608941046
              I recommend it.

              Some observations-
              -these prototype (at least 3 companies) phase projects are 10-20 yr timeframe , and will be very expensive with about 1/2 of the cost paid for by me and you (fed money) The new energy funding program (IRA) provides very generous money for the sector.
              -if these prototype phase reactor units do well, then scale manufacturing may bring the price down in the following decades (2030’s and beyond?)
              -currently the nuclear fuel for these kind of reactors comes from Russia. That will need to change
              -they could be very useful if the experiments pan out
              -the country needs high level radioactive waste storage up and running (its been over 70 years of ‘temporary’ storage now)

              NuScale, TerraPower and X-energy are the companies I’ve heard about.

            2. Hickory,

              I am fine with the research on better nuclear reactors, in the mean time we should ramp up wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal as quickly as is feasible.

              All non-fossil fuel energy should be on the table, I just think we should use the technology at hand. The current generation of nuclear reactors are too expensive to build and probably not a viable option.

            3. I agree, however the IRA bill funding is technology neutral for low carbon energy deployment. So between government and private money these prototype phase nuclear projects (NuScale, TerraPower and X-energy) are going to move along this decade.
              It looks to me like they will be very expensive in this phase, take a lot of time to move beyond the prototype phase, and yet may very well prove successful.
              If so, relevant scale will be a long time coming, meaning that baseload energy supply to compliment intermittent sources of wind and solar energy will have to continue to be provided by sources other than new nuclear energy. In fact this country average nuclear plant age is 41 years. Its going to take a lot of heavy lifting just to run in place with current generation capability.

      2. It’s not necessary to point out in every comment I make that life as we know it today will not continue as usual.

        If you are following what I post, you will know that I expect the population world wide will peak and fall like a rock, and that I expect only a relatively few people in a relatively few places to continue to enjoy life with electricity, water and sewer, food in the stores, cops, hospitals, etc.

        It’s entirely possible for people willing to get their ass in gear and DO IT to remodel and existing house to be heated using a tenth of the energy used in a typical house today. Sure it will cost a good bit. People in places where air conditioning is NECESSARY…… well, when they die, not very many people will be moving there, if electricity is really expensive.

        Anybody fortunate enough to have a personal car will own a micro car with a battery capable of running it maybe fifty miles or so. Most of what’s in grocery stores today will be seen only in old books. Highly processed and convenience foods …. forget it, except for maybe a bag of peanuts…. sold in a bag with a big enough deposit on it that you WILL return it.

        Doomers tend to forget that even back in the horse and mule era, life could be dignified and even pretty nice, if you were a relatively fortunate individual.

        I have or have at times had all the typical modern conveniences, but in a lot of ways I live very modestly indeed. I wear a pair of blue jeans until they fall apart. I own one nice suit of clothing, brought out for funerals of relatives and friends, or maybe the odd occasion when I have business in court, etc.

        Nearly all my furniture is at least fifty years old, hand made locally. It’s NICE furniture, made by a local man using locally sawed lumber. If the house doesn’t burn, it will cast for centuries, being nice thick solid oak or maple, etc, with brass hardware.

        I have zero desire for soft drinks, potato chips, or heat and eat foods. I know how to make beer and liquor, there’s not much to it.

        I have an acre plus of lawn, but if I were to live thru the coming crash, I’ll trash the lawn mower and put a couple of goats on it to keep it down rather than letting it go back to trees. Goats are good eating.

        Computers are wonderful, and they’re absolutely essential in today’s economy.

        But let’s not forget that we had electricity, water and sewer, airplanes, hospitals, cops, etc, a hundred years ago.

        I believe that some people, IF the cards fall right, in some places will succeed in building out the renewable energy industries, and adapting to life using a quarter or less of the energy they use per capita today, and thereby continue to live a decent, dignified life with ESSENTIAL goods and services available.

        Of course there’s no GUARANTEE that this scenario will come to pass. I’m simply arguing that it’s possible, for some people in some places, to pull it off.

        There’s no doubt in my mind at all that anywhere from ten or twenty percent to eighty or ninety percent of us on a world wide basis will die hard within this century due to overshoot and the consequences thereof.

        In a country such as the USA, there will be enough derelict automobiles to meet our need for steel under the new rules of survival for centuries at least. We won’t be needing any new roads or shopping centers or sports stadiums or subdivisions or air ports .

        We won’t be paying lawyers and accounts unholy sums to deal with an accident or figure up our taxes. Doctors will still set bones and dentists will still fill and or extract teeth but under the new prevailing conditions my parents would have died five or ten years younger, because the necessary high tech and resources to pay for it will mostly be unavailable.

        On the other hand…… diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, etc, will mostly disappear, because survivors won’t be sitting on their fat asses guzzling sugar water, beer, and smoking a couple of packs a day while eating mostly junk food. Individuals that do continue to live this way will simply die a lot younger than they do today.

        1. OFM

          I agree a large percentage of the world’s going to be dead by the turn of the century – beginning mostly in the Bay of Bengal region with the brown people there waving their arms into the cameras pleading for help. From there, the malaise will spread like wildfire flashing through Ponderosa pines. I’m glad I live in the inland PNW USA and my offspring and theirs will have a semblance of a chance. Aesop’s fables will once again be relevant!

    2. Meanwhile Australian rooftop solar is killing the Australian energy business.

      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-23/rooftop-solar-cannibalising-australian-power-market/102889710

      I’ve been predicting this here for some time. Wind and solar aren’t “keeping the lights on”, and they aren’t “replacing traditional electricity generation”. They are flat out killing the industry. It’s disruption in the Silicon Valley sense of the word. What comes afterwards is an interesting question.

      Compare this for example to the plight of grocery stores. Groceries are a low margin business, but grocery stores survive on high margin extras like textiles, knickknacks and electronics. That is why they evolved into superstores, with groceries as loss leaders. Online retail is stealing these extras. So superstores are dying not because of loss of sales but because of loss of profit.

      Something similar is happening to electricity. The peak prices are where utilities make money, like the textiles in the superstore. Baseload is their loss leader, their canned beans. But those daytime peaks are turning into losses as demand goes negative thanks to solar. The air conditioner, god’s gift to the electricity industry, is no longer delivering the goods in an increasing number of places.

      Is this good? Is this bad? What comes next? Interesting questions, but all I’m saying is that it is happening.

      1. Electricity has historically been regulated as a monopoly utility, with the government forcing the providers to serve just about everybody, even out in the boonies, at an affordable rate.

        I’m one of the lucky far out in the boonies people who get grid juice at a much lower rate than otherwise for this reason.

        As Alimbiquated points out, this traditional model seems to be headed for the circular file, due to the rise of the wind and solar power industry.

        I don’t think this is either good nor bad, it’s just going to be the new reality.

        Given time, the government, acting thru it’s regulatory authority, will create a new model where in rate structures are such that traditional providers burning coal and or gas will be subsidized as necessary to maintain enough fossil fuel,nuclear and hydro capacity to keep the lights on when wind and solar power fall short.

        It’s my own wild ass guess that we will need some gas and maybe even coal fired juice on a back up basis for at least another twenty to thirty years, depending on how much progress is made in the battery industry. It may be cheaper to maintain some gas fired capacity for as far out as the eye can see, with it being used less and less frequently as time passes.

        I’m willing to believe that a new generation of safe and affordable nukes can be perfected and built, but that’s at least a generation down the road.

        1. Yeah, I doubt fossil fuel will disappear entirely from the electricity system in the near future as well. There is a lot of discussion about going 100% renewable, but in my experience optimization beyond 90% tends to be a waste of effort. If we could cut carbon emissions from electricity generation by 90%, it would be nice. After that, there are likely better ways to invest in carbon reduction, most obviously in transportation.

        2. I suspect that when the bloodbath begins in earnest the private electricity providers will want out of the business. They will want to sell but, there will be no takers. If their facilities are the only ones that can keep the lights on, governments will be called on to step in and the electricity business will become a public utility like water, sewage and roads in most places. Some sort of cost recovery system will have to be devised but, profits will not be a part of the system. In some case there might be an operating surplus and in others there will be an operating loss. Australia is likely to be a bellwether in this regard.

          In quite a few places the electric utility was owned by the government but, the privatization bug bit and they were sold off to private companies. I know in the case of Jamaica, the IMF insisted that the utility was privatised as a condition of get the loans that were critical at the time (1980s onward).

          1. Like I said, Australia is likely to be a bellwether of what happens when customer ownership of solar and batteries squeezes all the profit out of the electricity supply business.


            Rooftop solar meets all of South Australia demand in major new milestone

            The milestones continue to fall in Australia’s rapidly evolving electricity grid, with rooftop solar meeting all of South Australia’s native or underlying demand in the early afternoon on Saturday.

            The milestone was noted by a number of energy analysts and date providers, including Watt Clarity and GPE NEMLog2, which provided the graph below and which said rooftop solar peaked at 101 per cent of state demand at 13.55pm on Saturday.

            At the time, renewables contributed around 114 per cent of the state’s demand, exporting most of the excess while some went into storage, and a significant amount was curtailed due to negative prices. The new milestone beat the previous peak for rooftop solar of 99.2 per cent recorded a week earlier.

            Such milestone are significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, because you don’t have to go too many years back to find people saying that such a milestone would be impossible without the lights going off. They didn’t.

      2. “Is this good? Is this bad? What comes next? ”
        What comes is much higher energy prices, and prices for all of the derived products and services.

        An exception will be for those with their own personal oversized solar power plants,
        for the first generation.

  7. Doesn’t sound like coal is dead!

    CHINA’S COAL IMPORTS FROM RUSSIA AND AUSTRALIA SOAR

    “Chinese coal imports jumped in August by 12.9% from July to a record in data going back to 2015. Imports also surged by 53% from August last year, according to China’s customs data. With a significant decline in power output from China’s massive hydropower sector due to insufficient rainfall and drought, coal production, coal imports, and coal-fired electricity generation have jumped this year.”

    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Chinas-Coal-Imports-From-Russia-And-Australia-Soar.html

    1. And,

      INDIA COAL DEMAND LIKELY TO PEAK BETWEEN 2030-2035

      “In 2022-23 (April, 22 to October, 22), the coal consumption in coal based power plants has increased to 447.6 Million Tonnes (MT) as compared to 398.2 MT during the same period of last year with a growth of 12 %.” — Press Information Bureau
      Government of India, Ministry of Coal

      https://pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1885381#:~:text=In 2022-23 (April,,with a growth of 12 %.

  8. Accumulated cyclone energy for this season is almost up to the maximum for an average season. Prediction for this season was for a total around 160, which is still looking likely. There is Nigel still churning for another day and two other areas likely to get to at least tropical storm strength in the Atlantic this week. All the indications are that conditions will be highly favourable for strong cyclones in the GoM and Caribbean in the first two weeks of October (very high SSTs and ocean heat content, and strongly convective atmosphere. In October and later these storms do no turn out into the Atlantic but tend to come ashore in Texas or Louisiana.

  9. The World’s 3 biggest companies by revenue are:

    . Amazon
    . Walmart
    . State Grid Corporation of China

    (One of those companies is unlike the others.)

  10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciFut3yYpL4

    The political leadership in Italy is begging for cooperation and help in managing uncontrolled immigration, human trafficking and smuggling, etc.

    There’s good reason to believe that machine guns have been to good use already in some places in the Middle East to put a stop, at least temporarily, to people migrating to places they aren’t wanted.

    The geography of land, sea and national borders puts Italy in a pretty tough spot in terms of people willing to put their lives on the line to get there, compared to most other countries.

    I’m happy to think about the Atlantic and Pacific between me and a few hundred millions of people on the other sides of them desperate to get here without being invited.

    We’ll have trouble enough, going forward, just dealing with people arriving from the South, but one way or another we’ll manage that problem. I’ve never forgotten that my own family arrived here only a couple or three centuries ago as immigrants, taking part in killing off the locals, to the extent the only obvious physical evidence they were ever here consists of arrowheads I find when I plow my bottom lands.

    So I don’t believe in the right wing inspired ” yellow peril” meme, etc.

    But we are making a HORRIBLE political mistake when we fail to remember that one of the PRIMARY REASONS the orange orangutan got to be president, and that people like De Santis get to be governors, and Senators, etc, is that they have played the immigration card brilliantly in their quest to get into power and STAY in power.

    Consequently the leftish liberal leaning political side of our country needs to be doing some very hard thinking about the way we talk about immigration, etc.

    Just one well meant heart felt speech from a bleeding heart Democrat, excerpted and played over and over again on right wing media, IS ENOUGH enough to convince tens of thousands of people such as my neighbors that trump and company are their friends, rather than their worst enemies.

    1. Yep. The
      “Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (“McCain-Kennedy Bill,” S. 1033) was an immigration reform bill introduced in the United States Senate on May 12, 2005 by Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy…. incorporating legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components.”

      was a comprehensive program to address immigration and
      I have no idea why it didn’t get adopted, however-
      “The Republicans maintained control of both the House and the Senate (slightly increasing their majority in both chambers), and with the reelection of President Bush, the Republicans maintained an overall federal government trifecta.”

      It would have been a great start to build from. Its been downhill since then.
      And yes, the failure to have a comprehensive program does play right into the hard line Nativism line.
      Ironic that all of the Nativists are in fact descendants of immigrants.

    2. The current leadership of Italy created the problem they are pretending to want to solve by whipping up public excitement about a non-issue to get elected.
      In fact the last thing they want is a solution to their non problem, because it would end their own viability as a political force.

      1. We’re in much the same situation here in Yankee Land.
        Whipping up hatred for immigrants is one of the foundation keystones for our right wing politicians.

  11. There’s a Libertarian named Paul Sand who ran for Governor of Idaho in 2022 who has posted a lot of interesting information that might grab your attention.

    Take a look: PaulSand.org

    “My name is Paul Sand and I ran for election to the Office of Governor of Idaho in 2022. Although I only received 6,714 votes, I sensed a rise in popular support against our political duopoly. Without a word of support from the Libertarian Party of Idaho, and not spending a dime of my or your money, I received more votes than the number of registered libertarians in Idaho. My wife and I are now 75 years old. We live in the small community of White Bird, Idaho, pictured above. I am no longer seeking elected office but intend to remain politically active and usually have a number of projects going.”

  13. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12549179/Putins-Black-Sea-Fleet-HQ-hit-Storm-Shadow-missile-attack-sparking-huge-explosions-occupied-Crimean-port.html

    I have argued in my own head that Russia moving into Crimea in 2014 was the “Canary in the coal mine” for Peak Oil.

    Russia was anticipating military conflict caused by an energy shortage. And they need to secure the submarines.

    USA Shale caused their forecast to be wrong.

    This is why they waited 8 years for Phase 2 (Ukraine invasion) …… The Peak of USA Shale.

    NATO and China are oil importers!! Both are on Russia’s borders.

        1. Thanks!

          We can now see clearly who wants to take out Russia’s submarines.

  14. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12550205/New-ufo-videos-released-government.html

    Please don’t ban me.

    A tranche of UFO videos has been released by the US Government.

    I’ve wondered if alien’s have developed AI drones…LIKE WE HAVE….and somehow figured out how to get them here…

    They have figured out how to manipulate gravity for propulsion. Gravity can push or pull.

    They are surveying us….but the aliens never appear because they aren’t on board.

    Please note the one that dipped into the water and then split in to 2…..

    Just entertainment….I’ll go back to the looney bin!!!

  17. Something that is seldom discussed here is the actual physical storage of natural gas in European countries.

    Where and how do they store it during the summer for later winter use?
    I’ve heard about old salt mines, exhausted gas wells, high pressure tanks, etc, but hardly anything about how much gas is stored using any particular method.

    Any answers appreciated, and thanks in advance.

  18. Canadian forest area burnt this year is just about to pass 5% of total area at 18 million hectares; 913 of 6443 for the year are still burning with 511 out of control and several still starting every day.

    https://ciffc.net

    Total carbon emissions are estimated at 850Mt, or 2.2% of total global annual emissions, and the forests’ efficacy as a future sink has been permanently damaged – it is now expected to be more of a source with permanent peat fires as a large contributor. I have not seen estimates of how many animals have been killed or displaced.

    I’d guess Siberia is in not much better shape.

    1. George,

      Peat fires across western Canada emit about 6 teragrams (million metric tons) of carbon annually, while fires across Canada as a whole emit about 27 teragrams. This means peat fires are already contributing significantly to carbon emissions. In Alberta, where carbon-rich peatlands are common, they have been fighting fires smoldering to depths dozens of feet underground this year.

  19. September is going to have the largest temperature anomaly ever recorded by a large margin, and might just beat one degree if the next few days stay near records. The previous largest was at the peak of the 2016 El Nino.

    1. I don’t see how Michael Mann can say the temperature rise is not accelerating, it pretty clearly is. The past three months have seen the largest increase for that month and September will be almost the largest for any month (also seen at the 2016 peak).The first years of the previous two major El Ninos saw nothing like what is happening now and it seems likely next February and March anomalies will eclipse anything we’ve seen so far.

    2. When you see this 2023 World Temp Anomaly and realize that this is air temperatures,
      and take into account that something like 90% of fossil fuel earth heating effect so far
      has gone into the worlds oceans
      well….if it doesn’t startle the heck out of you there is something very important that is dead in that brain.

  20. https://japantoday.com/category/features/environment/water-starved-saudi-confronts-desalination's-heavy-toll

    Given the revenue that over a million barrels of oil can bring in every single day, it’s hard to understand why the Saudi’s aren’t building solar farms out the ying yang to run desalinization plants.

    It’s obvious that they will get max production almost every day of the year from solar, and that they could build super sized solar farms at bargain prices.

    So ……. Maybe they aren’t doing it because they’re just too tied up with their existing status quo and there would be too much political turmoil as a result.

    I haven’t run across any good -solid information about the potential problems associated with running osmosis type plants intermittently, but as best I can tell, the only real problem is the loss of production, meaning capital costs per cubic meter of clean water would be roughly double……… unless of course they just run them on solar power during the day and on oil and gas fired juice at night.

    They should still be able to save at least a third and probably much closer to one half of the oil and gas used and SELL IT.
    ???????

    1. They run desalination plants on low grade heat fromturbine exhausts etc. which they wouldn’t have much else to do with.

      1. Thanks George.

        I learn something here quite often.

        There’s probably plenty of opportunity to do the same in various other countries, assuming power plants can be located in spots where more water is needed.

  21. ANTARCTIC SEA ICE HITS LOWEST WINTER MAXIMUM ON RECORD

    “This is the lowest sea ice maximum in the 1979 to 2023 sea ice record by a wide margin,” said the NSIDC, a government-supported program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At its high-point this year, the sea ice was 1.03 million square kilometers smaller than the previous record, roughly the size of Texas and California combined.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-09-antarctic-sea-ice-lowest-winter.html

  23. Maybe population growth will slow down more quickly, even without war or famine-
    https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4218666-ai-girlfriends-are-ruining-an-entire-generation-of-men/

    How does this process become a global phenomena? People can live in a digital cocoon,
    and leave the biosphere less disturbed.
    Maybe we can make a cellulose based food product would be perceived as great satisfaction.
    And convince people to seek a quick transit to the Everlife (used to be called the afterlife).

    1. Somebody is way ahead of me with early development of the concept
      https://www.playeverlife.com/

      “How will you live your Everlife?
      ‘Create your own character and take them on a journey from birth to death. Swipe through each year of life, make difficult decisions, and watch the consequences unfold.
      Along the way, develop your personality, experience major milestones, navigate life’s ups and downs, and deal with unexpected drama.’

  24. Speaking of peat fires (and Zombie Fires).

    ‘ZOMBIE FIRES’ IN THE ARCTIC: CANADA’S EXTREME WILDFIRE SEASON OFFERS A GLIMPSE OF NEW RISKS IN A WARMER, DRIER FUTURE

    “While governing bodies that are working to curtail the pace of climate change worry about exceeding a 1.5-degree Celsius threshold globally, the Arctic has already exceeded a 2 C increase compared with pre-industrial times. And, about 70% of recorded area of Arctic peat affected by burning over the past 40 years occurred in the last eight years, and 30% of it was in 2020 alone, showing the acceleration.”

    https://theconversation.com/zombie-fires-in-the-arctic-canadas-extreme-wildfire-season-offers-a-glimpse-of-new-risks-in-a-warmer-drier-future-209666#:~:text=The%20blanket%20of%20wildfire%20smoke,part%20of%20the%20story%2C%20though.

  26. Trump finally being held accountable for something should…….
    Make Americans Grin Again!

    NY judge finds trump organization guilty of fraudulently using inflated values to get loans, etc

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