107 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Sept. 24, 2021”

  1. Interesting technology.
    https://www.tudelft.nl/en/3me/about/departments/delft-center-for-systems-and-control/research/data-driven-control/hydraulic-wind-turbines/

    It remains to be seen how practical it is. The idea is to replace the electrical generator in a wind turbine nacelle, with water pumps. Turbines are clustered into wind farms, with the hydraulic outputs of multiple turbines generating electric power in a central generating station.

    The potential advantage to this scheme is design simplicity and the reduction in use of rare earth metals, copper and aluminium. The hydraulic pump may be constructed from steel. It probably isn’t a good idea to try and pump sea water. But fresh water would work fine, as steel components build up magnetite layers so long as they don’t dry out.

    The use of wind turbines to produce low-pressure compressed air is a related concept. In each turbine nacelle, the electric generator is replaced with an air compressor. A compressed air pipe would run down the inside of the tower. A number of turbines would be clustered together to allow electric power to be generated at a central station from a large number of individual turbines. Energy storage could be provided by undersea compressed air energy storage, between the turbines and central station. Such an arrangement would not require the use of batteries for frequency regulation, as the reserve air stored within the undersea tanks and within the pipework itself, would provide grace time for gas turbines or DGs to take up any reductions in power output as wind speed drops.

    The problem I can see with this idea is that air compressors of the size needed are quite large and they tend to require replacement of seals and other high wear parts. This system could end up requiring a lot of maintenance. Energy losses in compression are a manageable problem, so long as pressure does not exceed 10 bar.

    For a home based project, I once examined the possibility of using a horizontal axis, home made wind turbine to power my workshop using a line shaft. The system would have included a flywheel to store energy and hydraulic break, which would have converted excess power into heat. The project ultimately failed because of the difficulty in coupling individual machines to the shafts. Using belts was too expensive and too labour intensive. And it would have meant modifying commercially available electrical machines to fit the mechanical energy source, which wasn’t very practical. Still, such a solution might work one day if a fully integrated system can be developed, with purpose manufactured machines that run directly off of mechanical shaft power. These machines can generally be cheaper to manufacture than electrically powered machines.

  3. RE: George K post, Bill Rees paper:

    Answer “techno-industrial solutions to problems caused by techno-industrial society.”
    Question: Why is Climate Change a thing while resource depletion is fringe?

    Most of us, me included, lack the imagination to understand how completely fossil fuel depletion requires reinventing fossil fueled civilization rather than merely flipping the Fuel Source selector switch. In the US we drive 14.3k miles a year but sleep in the same bed every night and can’t imagine anything different. And that doesn’t count the +/- 60k pounds of freight—per person— hauled by semis yearly, total heavy truck miles around 140 billion per year.

    Climate change is easy, “They’ll think of something” translates to “I need do nothing.”
    Much harder to contemplate the loss of virtually too-free-to-meter energy that will make the pandemic “shutdowns” look like summer stay-at-home vacation.

    just a 2¢ rant, thanks for the reading list GK

    1. This is what you call a false dilemma. You don’t have choose between worrying about resource depletion and worrying about global warming. In fact cutting consumption of fossil fuels addresses both issues.

      1. Hi Alimbiquated
        False dilemma is ignoring an alternative, whereas blithely spouting “cut consumption” is a hasty conclusion, you show no proof that you (or anyone) can convince people to do such a thing. It is what’s known colloquially as wishful thinking.
        I’m interested in how you plan to convince society to cut fossil consumption.

        1. >I’m interested in how you plan to convince society to cut fossil consumption.

          Cost mostly.

          Energy use per capita peaked in rich countries forty years ago, and population is leveling off as well, and in some cases even falling. Meanwhile technology is racing ahead, making the energy hungry gadgetry of the 20th century more and more obsolete. So poorer countries are consuming more but they will never party like its 1980.

          Also schemes like the carbon pricing in the EU have proved very effective. For example, coal and lignite were about 45% of German electricity production in 2016. Now it down to about 25%, thanks to higher carbon prices.

          I think we will continue to see the move away from using expanding fluids to generate mechanical energy. Both steam and internal combustion will decline. The reason is that they are simply too complication and expensive to deal with. So I expect fossil fuels to continue to be used for heating, but to decline in other areas as an energy source.

          There will be a decline in the production of waste heat. Cooling towers will shrink and get rarer, vehicles will lose their radiators.

          1. I often thought the best way for, say, curtailing wasteful motoring impacting on the environment wasn’t to go the EV route. Instead, bring back the ICE engines of the 1960s and have people barely get 10 MPG, but keep all else equal. That will certainly make sure people focus on using cars only when needed, and find alternatives where applicable.

          2. Good point Alim, but I wonder how people will tolerate that (carbon taxing) when energy supply falls short and/or becomes too expensive?
            I suppose there would be a move to replace leadership.
            I’m pretty sure you’ve seen these battles brewing in Europe.

            1. I dunno, the Greens just did pretty well in the German elections. My guess is they’ll be back in government soon, though it is far from decided.

              My (totally unscientific) impression is that anti fossil fuel thinking is getting more popular among right wingers here. One guy buys an EV or gets solar panels, and suddenly his peers get jealous.

              It happened in my company. One of the top guys bought a Tesla, and suddenly the management types who ranted against EVs a few months ago are talking about getting an EV too. And now they’ve changed the company car policy to allow EVs. Monkey see, monkey do, as the old saying goes.

              Even in America, you find a few people who question the wisdom of spending you life in a car.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtBVY0q5DBs&ab_channel=Streetfilms

          3. Alimb,
            “Cost mostly.”

            I guess I don’t see a difference between high price due to oil scarcity vs high price due to government action. After all, why worry about peak oil whatsoever except for continuing demand destruction and the economic effect—demand is just another word for economic activity. Point is, all that gadgetry equates to someone’s livelihood.

            I met a guy in a bar once, he pumped septic tanks and was proud of his business cards bearing this slogan:
            “It may be shit to you but it is my bread and butter!”

    2. Pops – I thought by far the most comments would be about the Michaux paper with all its new data that puts the kibosh on most of the green new deal plans – but so far there are none that I can find, which probably says something about the influence, or lack thereof, of most blogs. By the outcome of the Rees paper (with which I broadly agree (although I think the risk of undershooting the ultimate carrying capacity during a collapse and so reaching a minimum with very few people, or eventually none, is far from zero) there will be about seven billion more deaths than births over the next century (or centuries). Most might well be premature and unpleasant and end a life that has had nothing like the comfort and opportunities that our cohort has enjoyed, and what blog posts the dying have or have not read will not make an ounce of difference of course.

      1. George,
        the Michaux paper summary indicates that
        1-the scale of 100% replacement of fossil fuel energy is more immense than people generally acknowledge and
        2-that it takes along time to get the job done.
        I have not read the other 1000 pages of the report, so perhaps there is another theme I have missed.

        I have no quibble or surprise with those conclusions.
        It doesn’t change the fact that one way or another we are going to have a hell of lot less fossil fuels to use over the next few decades, and that all efforts to become more efficient and conserve will be insufficient to cover the shortfall, and that there is no magic replacement for fossil fuel.
        All of this is ground-shaking, but is common knowledge to anyone paying attention.

        I do think the study has very limited application to policy choices. First off, planning for a 100% transition from fossil is a fantasy/fallacy position- it is not an all-or-none scenario globally. It is a matter of degree- if we lose 50% of crude oil supply globally over the next 30 years, how much of that transport capacity can/will be offset by electric transport? That is the more practical question/task for the next generation or two, and a similar set of questions regarding coal and nat gas.

        Some places will work hard to develop energy capability that replaces some of the fossil energy, and some will not. Some have better resource in this regard than others, by a long shot. Just like fossil fuel resource disparities. And some places have much more effective energy policy making than others.

        As time progresses, the economies of all countries will have to get by with much less energy, and the population will have to contract. Its going to be extremely chaotic as this century unfolds. Along the path it will be good to still have a grid with some electricity. (ex- Iowa got 57% of its electricity from wind in 2020. It used to come from coal).

        I have a strong sense that young people see this whole set of issues with a different view than those over 60. In general the younger want to work hard to keep the lights on, and that means being open/eager for the attempts to adapt. Not many other constructive choices.

      2. George K.,
        The crux to me is the huge amount of surplus energy wasted in the current system. Two thirds of petroleum goes to transport with more or less 80% of that energy goes to surplus heat—if you consider all of the remaining miles “essential.” And even with that great waste we can still afford a Dodge pickup with 700hp to haul our coffee cup to the office.

        There simply is no substitute.

        My knee jerk reaction has been toward overshoot since about Earth Day #1, frankly it is a battle to keep a positive attitude. To that end I don’t investigate too closely how poor the substitutes chances are to provide a soft fossil landing.*

        We in the rich world will be able to look back on an amazing time tho.

        *I do have the Michaux paper open in another tab tho…

        .

  6. Some detailed information concerning current and growing problems with the climate for rice growers and the billions of people for which it’s a staple food. THE staple food in probably a billion cases.
    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rice-agriculture-feeds-world-climate-change-drought-flood-risk?utm_source=Editors_Picks&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorspicks092621

    A key point that laymen don’t understand is that it doesn’t take major long term change to really fuck things up for farmers. A week of extremely hot weather can pretty much destroy a lot of crops.

    A week of NORMAL spring seasonal weather wiped out ninety percent plus of local peach, apple, and cherry production in my neighborhood.All it took was a few weeks of unseasonably warm late winter weather, and then that couple of frosty nights to freeze the emerging blossoms, which were two weeks to a month or so past where they SHOULD have been.

    The orchard across the road from my house doesn’t even have enough fruit on the trees to pay for harvest labor. It’s costing substantially more to get the apples out of the field than they’re worth, but leaving them to rot sets you up for disease problems next year.

    1. Here in Maine, our one-acre market orchard got a severe case of fire blight for the first time, and I spent all of June cutting out strikes (we’re not large enough to afford airblast sprayers to spray strep). This used never to happen up here, but May was preternaturally hot and dry. The drought further stressed the trees, and we had severe June drop. So I’m picking and selling what I can and carting it to Portland. We’ve had five anemic years in a row now because of lack of spring rains. But, oh, it picks up in July and we have been inundated with rain–for nothing.

  8. I just finished a fantastic book: Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth by Jim Baggott

    The book is a 300-page tirade against the multiverse, string theory, and the anthropic principle, all of which he regards as fairytale nonsense. And I could not agree more. Near the end, on page 283, he writes, italics his:

    “So, what do I think is going on? How do I explain the fine-tuning of the universe? My hands are in the air. It’s a fair cop. I have no explanation because science has no explanation. We may be here because, by happy accident or the operation of some complex natural physical mechanisms we have yet to fathom, parameters of the universe just happen to be compatible with our existence.
    And this is indeed the point. Scientists (even theoretical physicists) should not be afraid to say that they don’t know. Nobody is expecting them to have all the answers to human existence. We want them to speculate, to push the frontiers of their science. But when their ambition to give answers drives them to tell fairy tales, smothered in a sugar-coating of anthropic logic, let us all be clear that we’ve left science far behind.”

    My opinion: Science has no answer because this is not a scientific question, it is in the realm of philosophy. And philosophy does not give hard yes or no answers, only philosophic speculation. Causes are usually a question for science. That is all causes except the first cause. As to that cause, we can only speculate.

    1. The problem with string theory, parallel universes, etc, is that theories on this scale are difficult to corroborate by experiment. There are fundamental limitations to the energy that can be achieved in particle accelerators on Earth. So theories end up looking like conjecture. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to theorise. But one must accept that progress will be slow and not necessarily within one’s own lifetime.

      Maybe several centuries from now, when humanity has (hopefully) colonised the solar system, we will have sufficient resources at hand to build far more energetic test facilities. But for the time being, we find ourselves in the position of Ancient Greek philosophers, trying to solve the secrets of the universe by thought experiment, with limited observation capabilities and even more limited experimental capabilities.

      When I started out in high school, I had a talent for maths and physics and wanted to study physics at university. I was fascinated by cosmology in particular and was lucky enough to have access to my Grandfather’s technical library. At 17, I wanted to be the man that invented warp drive! As it was, I went on to study mechanical engineering at the suggestion of my father, then nuclear engineering and my third degree was fire engineering. I have grown wealthy enough following this path, but part of me wishes I had studied physics and pursued my original calling, however foolish and impossible I now know it to be. Sometimes, money isn’t everything.

      1. TonyH wrote: The problem with string theory, parallel universes, etc, is that theories on this scale are difficult to corroborate by experiment.

        No, that is simply not correct. They are not difficult to corroborate, they are impossible to corroborate by any scientific method whatsoever. The idea that any particle accelerator, no matter how powerful, could prove the multiverse is laughable. Just how would one find another universe in a particle accelerator?

        So theories end up looking like conjecture. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to theorise.

        To call parallel universes a theory is an insult to all genuine theorists. Grimm’s fairy tales are far more realistic. And yes, it is definitely wrong for astrophysicists to make up totally absurd shit and posit it as a genuine scientific possibility. Scientists should not be in the business of making up absurd fairy tales.

        But thanks for your short biography. Interesting.

    3. Hi Ron, I have to challenge your post above supporting the author’s view that modern physics has betrayed the search for scientific truth. Modern quantum theory has been shown by every experiment to be a proven theory & this was done by many top scientists who were trying to disprove it (including Einstein). Virtually every electrical device depends and follows the proven laws of quantum physics (probabilistic wave-function) . Yes these scientists still find quantum theory puzzling but they certainly know how to use it to build computers and everything else electronic. Some of the newer quantum experiments are really reveling and mind blowing such as the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment which also shows that our consciousness is intertwined with the quantum universe. As far as our ultimate understanding of reality – we can’t see the truth but we can see its shadow as metaphored by Plato.

      1. Izzy, I think you completely misunderstand the author, Jim Baggott’s, point. He was not talking about what modern quantum theory has proven, but what it has not proven. Of course he supports what quantum theory has proven, but string theory has not been proven and the multiverse theory has not been proven. And for sure the “many worlds” version of the multiverse has not been proven. Not just that but they are unprovable! They are nothing but pure science fiction conjuring.

        He is not alone. There are at least a dozen astrophysics who have a similar opinion. Sabine Hossenfelder calls the multiverse theory religion. Why the multiverse is religion, not science.

        But by my count over half of the astrophysicists, at least of those who write books and post Youtube videos, have jumped on the string theory, multiverse bandwagon. And I can name half a dozen who now subscribe to the Everettian many-worlds bullshit. There is not one iota of evidence to support any of that crap.

        I completely agree with the last half of your paragraph starting with: “Some of the newer quantum experiments are really reveling and mind blowing…” But those experiments have been proven, they are not fairy tale conjecture like the multiverse theory or even the Anthropic Principle. And when quantum scientists turn to fairy tale very silly stories, they have indeed lost their way.

  9. Another TVA nuclear project goes out with a whimper, rather than a bang.

    https://www.yahoo.com/now/end-era-tva-gives-construction-080000912.html

    Interesting quote:

    Since the 1970s, a total of 95 nuclear reactors proposed to be built by U.S. utilities have been canceled due to rising construction costs, slowing power demand and cheapening power alternatives. The NRC now regulates 93 remaining commercial nuclear reactors at 56 nuclear power plants

    In other words about half of American nuclear projects get cancelled. TVA’s explanation is interesting too:

    TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said in the past two decades, the growth in power demand in the Tennessee Valley has continued to slow as more energy efficiency measures have been adopted and the price of natural gas, solar power and additional hydroelectric generation has declined in competition with nuclear.

    1. ‘TVA completed the last new commercial nuclear reactor in the United States in 2016 when it began power generation at the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee more than 40 years after construction first began on the unit.’

      On Watts Bar: Why on Earth does it need to take 40 years to build a nuclear power plant? Back in the 1970s, 1000MWe LWRs were being completed in less than 5 years at capital costs of $1000/kWe or less in modern money. They are still being built to that timescale and price in South Korea and China. With modern manufacturing, we should be able to build these things in less time. But in the US and Western Europe, we apparently cannot build these things to the timescales and costs that we did 50 years ago. It clearly has nothing to do with the technology itself. A 1000MWe nuclear steam supply system could fit into a modest 4-storey building. It is very compact for the power it produces and should be cheap to build. There is something badly wrong with the system of management when it comes to nuclear power. These things are costing 10 times more than they should.

      1. China has the “advantage” of increasing electricity demand, which makes new power plants with a long term payback more attractive.

        As to the cost overruns, I don’t understand it either. The project management always seems chaotic. I grew up in East Tennessee and I remember there was always talk about screw-ups at Watts Bar, but I can’t remember the details any more.

        1. Alim-
          I am of the thought that no new nuclear plants should be permitted until there is an operating permanent high level radioactive waste repository in this country.
          If we can’t get that done, we have no business building more generation.
          You concur?

          1. Probably true. I think it’s pretty clear however, that no solution will ever be found the way the problem is currently formulated. Or in other words, without some radical technological breakthrough, the problem won’t be solved. I’m not holding my breath.

            1. There are fast neutron reactor designs that are capable of fissioning long-lived actinide wastes. That is the most elegant solution to the problem, because waste ends up becoming fuel.

              But either way, we are talking about quite small volumes of material. Radioactive materials are toxic, yes. But they are a small proportion of the total toxic waste generated by human beings. You just need to take precautions to ensure that they don’t get into the food or water supply, much as you do with other toxic substances. High and intermediate level waste disposal will involve encapsulating these materials and burying them deep underground. It is highly unlikely that anyone will be exposed to high levels of radioactive waste products unless they really go out their way to find them.

              Tens of thousands of years down the line, it is possible that water courses may have penetrated a waste repository. Actinide metal oxides, tend to be quite insoluble and not very mobile. None the less, your distant descendants may be exposed to slightly higher background radiation levels if they happen to live close to it. It is unlikely to be their biggest concern. When you consider the prospects of moving somewhere, how many people factor the increased background radiation level into their assessment? When choosing between the coast and the mountains, how big a consideration is cosmic radiation going to be in most people’s deliberations?

              My point is, that the problem of nuclear waste just isn’t the problem it is made out to be. It is far less of a toxic load to human beings than things like coal ash heaps, which are full of mercury, cadmium, arsenic, thorium and soluble aromatic carbon compounds. Mining wastes are the same. The main difference with radioactive wastes, is that they are produced in thousands of times smaller volumes. So we can afford to spend money putting them out of harms way. In terms of the total toxicity risk that is generated by human civilisation, you could lose radioactive waste in a rounding error.

            2. >My point is, that the problem of nuclear waste just isn’t the problem it is made out to be.

              That pretty much confirms my opinion. When someone who favors a certain technology or policy addresses its most commonly cited problem by saying it isn’t really a problem, it’s a clear sign that there is no (known) solution.

            4. It’s mostly a political issue. Power plants are one of the 1st targets in any conflict, it will be the end of life as we know it, due to decades of “spent” fuel on site.

  10. Two worrying reports from Wolfstreet.

    In China, many industries are now being forced to temporarily close due to natural gas shortages. This will aggravate supply chain shortages. Coal shortages are creating their own problem of electricity supply shortfalls, leading to rolling blackouts.
    https://wolfstreet.com/2021/09/26/suppliers-in-china-for-apple-tesla-intel-nvidia-qualcomm-nxp-infineon-ase-tech-forced-to-halt-production-amid-chinas-energy-crackdown/

    Upstream producer price index is experiencing 20% inflation year on year. This is effectively, tomorrow’s consumer price inflation.
    https://wolfstreet.com/2021/09/10/up-the-price-pipeline-inflation-rages-at-20/

    I begin to suspect that many lofty plans for renewable or nuclear energy transitions, will prove impossible to implement, because the systems that supply the components and materials are failing. Utility solar power costs are up about 20% this year and wind turbines face a 10% cost increase. These products are energy and materials intensive and depend heavily upon low cost coal based energy and cheap (often forced) labour in places like Xingjiang. It may be that it is impossible to supply the products needed in the volumes needed for the green new deal energy transition, regardless of price. The Chinese cannot sustain production levels as they are, let alone the 10 fold increase that will be needed to affect the energy transition by mid century.

    And for some bizarre reason, the western world is incapable of building new nuclear reactors to the sort of timescale and price that it could in the 1970s – some 50 years ago. We are paying about 10 times more for new nuclear reactors than we should be, based on production prices back then. Our inability to do this is absurd, given that it was done fifty years ago, with far less advanced manufacturing tech than we have available now.

    Collectively, this leaves us up shit creek without a paddle. I honestly cannot see a way out of this now that doesn’t involve a lot of human suffering and huge reductions in living standards. I still hold out hope that western governments will pull their heads out of their arses and get on with a massive nuclear new build programme. But the time to have done this was the 1990s or early 2000s. Western governments have spent thirty years sitting on their hands.

    1. Tony, Tony, Tony, don’t let your whites get in wad. The Chinese have an above average IQ. They have plans to put big rubber bladders in the empty containers being returned to China from the US and fill them with what currently is being flared NG from the Permian.

      See, problem solved without going nuclear. You know, no worrying about going kaboom. I also heard their working on a pipeline from China to the US to eliminate the container ships. This is going to cut costs in half and reduce inflation by 25 percent.

      Things are going to get better yet. The Republicans don’t plan to pay the countries bills and shutdown America. Amazing how those American high IQ’s are going to drop along with America’s GDP. Funny how that works.

  11. I have often thought that Chinese government actions in the energy arena have been misinterpreted by many in the West. Chinese coal production has been on a plateau of 3.5GT per year since 2011. It represents about 60% of total energy consumption in China and more coal than the entire rest of the world is able to consume. The Chinese mine as much coal as the rest of the world, from reserves only half the size of the US. The average depth of mines is now 600m. Chinese coal is growing more expensive. Gail Tverberg has written about the prospects of a peak in Chinese coal production in the near future.

    Not only has it proven difficult for the Chinese to increase coal production, but the sheer scale of their energy consumption makes it difficult to substitute other fossil fuels. They would need the entire world’s production of natural gas to supplant coal as the dominant energy source. Domestic natural gas production is only a minor addition to their total energy needs and the scale of their energy needs makes it unlikely that LNG could provide anything more than a minor addition.

    So Chinese actions in the energy arena need to be interpreted in this context. Their attempts to integrate renewable energy into their grid is heralded by many in the West as embracing an energy transition to Green energy. But to Chinese leaders it has the more practical function of reducing coal consumption in coal burning power stations – stretching a resource that is close to its realistic limits. Wind and solar power allow coal plants to act as backup powerplants. This cuts their fuel consumption by a third. There has been criticism of China in its continuing construction of coal burning powerplants. But new coal powerplants are ultra critical units, with very high steam temperatures and thermal efficiency of 45%. They replace older saturated steam plants, with efficiencies lower than 30%. And the capacity factor of Chinese coal is falling, as powerplants are increasingly used as backup plants and fuel shortages often leave less efficient units standing idle.

    Chinese policy can be understood as an increasingly desperate struggle against coal depletion. They are expanding nuclear capacity as rapidly as possible, with the lofty goal of constructing 1TWe of fast neutron reactors by 2100. But their nuclear build capacity will take decades to build up to that level. They are therefore using every means available to them to stretch the benefits of their limited coal production, until new nuclear reactors can be built at a rate that comfortably exceeds the decline rate of coal production. The fact that they are searching for ways of cutting power consumption (bit coin for one), suggests that they may be falling behind in this race.

    1. Tony —

      You said: “I have often thought that Chinese government actions in the energy arena have been misinterpreted by many in the West.”

      In general, I agree with this statement, however, I’m curious; how much time have you spent in China and how many discussions have you had with actual decision makers there? The reason I ask is I spent roughly seven years working in the resource industry in China (representing a Texas based oil company who were looking for Joint Venture opportunities) and would never dare make such a statement. The first thing I learned is the almost all decisions in the energy sector in China are made at the Provincial level with little or no input from Beijing. Of course, there is always a rep from Beijing wandering around, but he is normally ignored — or given a small bribe to not interfere in serious discussions.

      BTW, as an aside, at one point I was befriended by a chap high up in their nuclear power industry who I mention because he got his PhD in nuclear engineering from Princeton in the U.S. and there are some among us who think Chinese engineering is inferior to that in the West.

      Anyway, my advice is to beware of generalizations about China. It’s a big and complicated country where pronouncements from the central government are just that. You may know better but I doubt it. I’m certainly no expert but have had discussions with a few, especially ones involved in China’s oil and gas business.

      1. My only direct contact with the Chinese has been discussions that I have had with Chinese nuclear engineering students at the university I attended. I certainly do not have the on the ground level of experience that you have, so it is quite possible that I am wrong. The judgements I can make are limited by what I am able to read about China, its people and problems and what little I gleaned from interacting with Chinese students.

        I am not sure to what extent I would consider Chinese nuclear engineering to be inferior. Many of their people have educated in Western universities. There seems to be no less understanding of nuclear risk factors amongst the Chinese techs that I have known. But I don’t know much about the regulatory environment in China. I doubt that Chinese nuclear engineering is inferior in terms of their ability to understand and model the concepts involved. I doubt that their designs are inferior.

        Where they are likely to come unstuck is in their knowledge of materials interaction and degradation in coolants and exposed to radiation fields. There is no shortcut to that knowledge. It takes a lot of years and patience gathering data in research reactors. And the Chinese may not have access to the same volume of materials data that western designers have. We have a lot more reactor years under our belts. Quality control of components may be an issue as well. It sounds obvious, but if you don’t control things like copper contamination in reactor grade steels, you can end up with crack growth that seriously reduces the lifetime of a plant.

        1. Well I do know that Sino-French nuclear cooperation has been ongoing for over thirty years, beginning with a collaboration that began with construction of China’s first nuclear power plant. It seems unlikely to me that Chinese nuclear power engineering is inferior, or lacking, in ANY respect.

  12. In search of ‘Lithium Valley’: why energy companies see riches in the California desert
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/27/salton-sea-california-lithium-mining

    “The earth deep below the southern Salton Sea is rich in hot, mineral-abundant brine that contains some of the world’s largest deposits of lithium, and Colwell and others envision a “Lithium Valley” that would establish California as a global production hub and employ thousands of workers for generations to come.”

    “For all the hype, lithium in the Imperial Valley is far from an assured thing.”

    1. Afghanistan is the Saudi Arabia of lithium according to a US military report.

      Now the Taliban controls it.

      1. General Lee , seems the end of the oil age will not be always painful but occasionally humorous also . 🙂

        1. Trump said me (General Lee’s Ghost) could have taken Afghanistan.

          If Trump says it, it must be true!

      2. Now the Taliban controls it.

        Cave men with wrist watches.
        And that puts down cave men a bit hard.

  13. https://news.yahoo.com/china-power-crunch-spreads-shutting-060437092.html

    The depletion crunch is ON. The sarc light is OFF.

    I have said many times that economic and environmental collapse will come piecemeal, rather than wholesale.

    Of course there may be knock on or ripple effects that are self reinforcing in both arenas.

    Now just suppose that China continues to grow in economic terms, and the USA and allies were to decide the MIC is a bad thing.

    How long might it take for the Chinese to simply launch an invasion of Australia?

    China’s past history of non aggression is not highly relevant to this hypothetical question.

    In the past, China never had the ability to project power, or any great need for such resources as Australian coal.

    The first rule of military intelligence is that you worry about what potential enemies CAN do, and second what they MIGHT do.

    1. “MIC ”
      What is that?

      It is true that Australia is a sitting duck.
      If China was to face severe energy poverty, yes they would do whatever they can to find energy.
      Each country will do the same.
      How much policing is the USA going to be up for, or capable of?
      If people haven’t realized , that is a losing game.

      At some point the US will no longer find it worthwhile to secure the middle east oil exportation.
      I expect a big shuffle at some point, and the emergence of more state failure (ala Libya).

      As oil and nat gas supplies for export become more limited, the importing countries are going to be stuck seeing who can outspend each other for the residual supply. That phase will come well before military action I suspect. Expect a big shift in Alliances.

      1. Australia has been a part of the US 7th Naval fleet for decades.

        One of the submarines in that fleet could bring Beijing to its knees.

        USA policing the world may be coming to an end; but giving up on Australia would be a big mistake IMO.

        The Natural Gas, Coal and Uranium will be going up in value. Good ROI

        Doesn’t take much with nuclear weapons. Australia is buying 12 of them.

        “The key to a successful invasion is an invitation” – YankMeDownUnder

        1. Yankee ” One of the submarines in that fleet could bring Beijing to its knees. ”
          Since when did they make them invincible and indestructible ? Just wondering . Confidence is good but overconfidence —-??? . Buying 12 , sounds good . Question when will they deliver ? 2050 . You seem to forget that we are now at the fag end of the oil age . By the way the USAF is still struggling to get the F 35 airborne and their naval aircraft carriers have to be towed back to harbor . Sad but as is said ” they don’t make them like before ”
          Reminder . the semiconductors for the submarine are ” Made in China ” . Best of luck . ROFL

          1. U must not know much about US submarine technology.

            They are extremely difficult to detect and loaded to the teeth with nukes and conventional. A completely honest person I know used to work in US Weapons Acquisition for US Navy.

            US is already putting military equipment in OZ. B2 Bombers, Super Hornets, Subs.

            I am slightly more optimistic than “Hole in Head”

            1. General Lee , the only submarine I have seen are in the movies , maybe you know more . But you said ” They are extremely difficult to detect ” . Difficult is not impossible . Arming them to the teeth is immaterial if you are detected and torpedoed . Amen . Military equipment is not the same as nuclear equipment . US is selling and installing it’s equipment in NATO and in many other countries . Nothing special after all they are the biggest arms and ammunition’s suppliers in the world . No sir , I am not a pessimist just a “disappointed ” optimist . 🙂 . Best of luck .

          2. Hole in Brain,

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8Ms0pbPcw

            Watch this video on the Falklands Island War.

            The Argentinian Military tried to surround the British Navy.

            Their Navy either ended up on the bottom of the Ocean or Ran as fast as they could back to port.

            Imagine what US Navy could do.

            1. General Lee , the war was in 1982 . 40 years ago . Then we were still using rotary dialers and now we are in 5 G . Irrelevant comparison as they are different eras . Who is a greater tennis player Rod Laver ( only person to complete two slams) or Roger Federer (first with 20 slams and the highest earner in tennis ) ? Rocky Marciano (undefeated ) or Mohd Ali ? Sorry but your argument is dismissed .

      2. MIC is the military industrial complex, a term used to describe the coalition of companies and politicians that make sure we have lots of military installations, lots of personell, lots of weapons, lots of cutting edge technology, etc.
        It’s so deeply entrenched that even the most liberal progressive Democrats aren’t in a position to say much about it in a lot of cases, because there are too many people and companies in their state or districts employed with such companies, and the spending on the people and bases contributes too much to the local economy.

        I generally agree with your comments.

        1. Ah yes, familiar with term (as everyone should be), but had never seen the abbreviation version.
          Thank you.

          Its apple harvest season here in WA state.
          You’d marvel to see how well the trees thrive in this climate, especially on the dryer eastern part of the state. Incredible bounty, and the smell in the farm stands is incredible, as you know like the palm of your hand. I haven’t tasted any hint of smoke in the fruit. It was extremely smokey in the Yakima and Okanogon valleys this summer, but the first of the coming winter rains has put an end to the fires and smoke a few weeks back.
          Grapes do get smokey and wine gets put down the drain wholesale.
          I’m big on apple cider myself.

  14. Some people have argued that no attempts should be made to shift away from fossil fuel dependence toward electrification, either because it simply will be a failed effort or because it is just a continuation of mankinds tidal wave of environmental destruction.

    Yeh, likely both of these notions have merit.
    Nonetheless there will be a strong attempt undertaken, and those regions that make prompt progress in this adaptation attempt are going to be in much better shape than those that don’t.

    An example of the kind of infrastructure project that will enable sending wind energy from the producing areas to the consuming areas is this HVDC transmission line that will be placed underground along existing rail corridor.
    https://www.soogreenrr.com/

    “SOO Green will connect two of the largest electricity markets in the U.S.: the Midwestern MISO market where renewable energy is abundant and inexpensive, and the eastern PJM market, where clean energy demand is strong but more difficult and costly to develop.
    SOO Green will run along rail right of way from central Iowa to eastern Illinois, delivering more than 2,000 megawatts of large-scale low-cost clean energy to buyers in the eastern U.S.”

    When we see the Texas grid (ERCOT) make moves to get in on this action we will know the country is starting to take this challenge seriously.

    1. I absolutely agree that renewable energy has a big place in our future. Renewable energy (solar,wind) can last 20-35 years when it is in place. I don’t understand why people are against getting 80% of their electricity from wind power. That is what we are going to get in Northern Europe and the east coast of the US (and several other places) after a while. Intermittency issues are there, and we just have to cope with them.

      There is no way to keep up the magnitude of industrial production and global trade that we have now in my opinion. But I disagree that it is not possible to degrow; these processes takes a long time in practice. Let’s say for offshore windmills: It takes a lot of steel in the structure (it can be recycled). Rare earth metals (e.g magnets). Concrete bottom structure longevity for who knows how long. Carbonfiber blades can be aluminum blades or even wooden blades. It has a longevity built into it, and has a potential to be recycled. Or easily replaced.

      When it comes to transportation, slow paced sea transportation (with wind masts) could be king along with rail transportation. The heavy lifting transportation is probably more critical than personal transportation. It is an open question how the energy transition is going to affect more remote places not connected to the sea. It is not going to be easy; connection to rail, rivers or even just to support the increasingly local market could be key. Or just be self sufficient with limited consumption (an option to all).

      The reliance on China is fragile right now. Their energy abundance should be questioned due to their electricity being shut down so easily the last few months.

      1. >Let’s say for offshore windmills: It takes a lot of steel in the structure (it can be recycled). Rare earth metals (e.g magnets).

        Wind turbines do not use permanent magnets. They use induction motors. The rare earths scare is nonsense as an attack on wind.

  15. Rooftop PV meets 84 pct of South Australia demand, sends operating demand to new low

    Rooftop solar PV has a few important new benchmarks in South Australia, contributing 84.4 per cent of total energy demand on Sunday afternoon, as well as setting a new low for minimum “operational demand”.

    The 84.4 per cent rooftop solar share was set in a five minute interval at 1.15pm, on a mild sunny day. It suggests that the state may well deliver on the Australian Energy Market Operator’s predictions that rooftop solar could reach 100 per cent of local demand at some point this spring.

    If it does reach that level, it will be the first gigawatt-scale grid in the world to do so. It is likely that the 84.4 per cent share reached on Sunday is also unprecedented in any other grid of this size.

    AEMO also noted that South Australia – because of the impact of rooftop solar PV – set a new minimum operational demand record of 236MW in the 1.30pm to 2pm settlement interval. This is 21 per cent below the previous record set on October 11, 2020.

    AEMO says that during this 30-minute interval, rooftop PV contributed a record 83 per cent of total energy demand, or a total of 1,1341MW. It earlier set a new record aggregate output of 1,177MW in the 12pm to 12.30pm interval.

    Records smashed again on Australia’s grid as renewables share reaches 61.7 pct

    Just before state and federal energy ministers met on Friday to discuss the future design of Australia’s electricity market, records continued to tumble as renewables set new benchmarks for total output and the biggest percentage to date.

    At 1.15pm on Friday, according to OpenNEM, the share of renewables on Australia’s main grid, the National Electricity Market, hit a record 61.7 per cent, just four days after setting a new peak of 60.1 per cent.

    It was helped by good wind and solar conditions, which provided a record share of 59.6 per cent (hydro made up the rest), and because of the public holiday in Victoria which would have moderated demand.

    At the start of this month, the record for a share of renewables was 57.1 per cent, so it has jumped 4.5 per cent in less than four week.

    The Australian Energy Market Operator predicts that by 2025, we will see moments when the share of renewables reaches 100 per cent – and CEO Daniel Westerman says much needs to be done to prepare the grid for such moments.

    To answer Doug’s question from the previous thread as to why i post these stories and ignore Australia’s horrible record on emissions, i don’t need to talk about their ill deeds. Doug does an excellent job of that! i post these stories to show what the Australian citizenry and individual states are doing in comparison to the (captured) federal government. I also hope that these stories help give in indication of how fast things can change.

    1. Time to remove your rose-coloured glasses Islandboy. Because, in Australia, it’s all systems go for coal – and for gas, again, totally out of step with the rest of the world. The government seems determined to consign the country into being an international pariah, along with having to bear the brunt of increasingly damaging climate impacts, such as the potential loss of the Great Barrier Reef, bushfires and floods.

      THE WORLD IS MOVING AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS, WHILE IN AUSTRALIA, IT’S ALL SYSTEMS GO FOR COAL AND GAS

      “The Morrison government is emerging as an extreme ideological representative of the fossil fuel industry and seems wilfully willing to set aside the longer-term interests of Australia in favour of protecting the short term concerns of this industry. Malcolm Turnbull has colourfully described this as “ideology and idiocy”, and it surely is, but with a qualification on the idiocy side because the Morrison government is clearly effective in transferring large volumes of taxpayers money to support the fossil fuel industry and carbon intensive activities in general, at the expense of the clean energy transition that we all need and will benefit from.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/the-world-is-moving-away-from-fossil-fuels-while-in-australia-its-all-systems-go-for-coal-and-gas

      1. Like I said. Or maybe I should have said, I post these stories to show what the Australian citizenry and individual states are doing in comparison to despite the best efforts of the (captured) federal government.

    2. Island boy , ” The 84.4 per cent rooftop solar share was set in a five minute interval at 1.15pm, on a mild sunny day. ”
      I forgot there are 24×60 = 1440 minutes in a day . So what were they doing for 1440-5 = 1435 minutes ? Just makes me go ehmmm– .

      1. It is anticipated “that rooftop solar could reach 100 per cent of local demand at some point this spring” in South Australia. That does not include utility scale solar and wind. The next stage will be when rooftop solar is providing 100% of local demand at 9:00 am. and more than 100% from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. At that point there should be huge incentives to mop up all this virtually free excess power and either use it to produce useful work (make hay when the sun shines) or store it for use later in the day or night. I know many people say the scale of this problem is huge but, if there is money to be made and resources exist, the solutions will scale up to fill the void. Maybe I’m just drinking too much of Tony Seba’s Kool Aid!

        1. Islandboy , your reply to my post . “At that point there should be huge incentives to mop up all this virtually free excess power and either use it to produce useful work (make hay when the sun shines) or store it for use later in the day or night. ”
          AT THAT POINT ??? When ??? Just thinking at which point am I as rich as Bill Gates ???
          Your sentence ,not mine “Maybe I’m just drinking too much of Tony Seba’s Kool Aid! ”
          My response : Mr Seba’s Kool Aid is injurious to mental health .
          Be well

    3. Islandboy “I also hope that these stories help give in indication of how fast things can change. ”
      I agree . Must send this over to my buddies in the UK . Two weeks ago they were cruising on the M25 today they are fighting for gas at the gas station . Been warning them for years that life will change abruptly when there are no FF , but they totally ignored me . Buggers deserve it . 🙂

      1. This is exactly the sort of crisis that will drive the transition to EVs.

        There is no real shortage of fuel in the UK and this shortage has been precipitated by a shortage of truck and panic buying. The whole thing is a result of a comedy of errors starting with Brexit and tighter immigration controls. Those in the UK that were concerned about immigrants had better figure out how they are going to fill the 100,000 vacancies for truck driver that have arisen as the aging cohort of truck drivers retire and immigrant drivers leave. Young, video game and smart phone obsessed Briton are not particularly keen on careers in truck driving!

        I haven’t heard any news of electricity shortages so, EV drivers are probably driving past the massive cues at petrol stations with huge grins on their faces. More people will come to realize some of the advantages of owning an EV at times like this!

  16. And so, it begins. According to Goldman Sachs, as much as 44% of China’s industrial activity has been impacted by power shortages. The bank said on Tuesday that it was cutting its GDP growth forecast for China to 7.8%, from the previous 8.2%. China gets 60% of its electricity from burning coal.

    CHINA’S POWER CRUNCH COULD FUEL ANTI-CLIMATE BACKLASH

    “Climate analysts are concerned that the power shortages, which have been attributed to environmental policies by many media outlets, could lead to a backlash against climate action. Factories, owned by suppliers to companies including Apple and Tesla in the northeastern cities of Shenyang and Dalian, have been hit as provinces have been forced to ration power supplies. People in northeast China have said on social media that they are without heating and that lifts and traffic lights are not working. Citizens and businesses are calling on the government to increase coal imports to allow businesses to continue operating and keep lights on. Han Jun, governor of the affected Jilin province, has said China should source more coal from Mongolia, Indonesia and Russia.”

    https://www.climatechangenews.com/2021/09/28/chinas-power-crunch-fuel-anti-climate-backlash-analysts-warn/

  17. Meanwhile, outside of the information bubble that is the first world, the virus continues to confound with new case counts soaring in 80% fully vaccinated Singapore!

  18. Islandboy,

    AUSTRALIA’S CLIMATE RECORD LABELLED ‘SIMPLY EMBARRASSING’ AND AMONG WORST OF G20 NATIONS

    “Australia has no national policies to expand renewable energy and per capita emissions are three times the average. Australia is one of only two countries in the G20 not implementing or planning any sort of carbon price scheme, one of only four without a national policy to increase renewable energy and ranks last in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from transport, a new global report has found. Meanwhile, Australia had one of the highest shares of fossil fuel use, per capita emissions three times the G20 average and ranked highly for vulnerability to climate risk. The sole policy area in which Australia was not given a bottom-level “low” ranking was on limiting emissions from new buildings.

    So, while renewable energy provided nearly 26% of electricity in the national grid (covering the five eastern states and the Australian Capital Territory) over the past year, fossil fuels supplied 93% of Australia’s total energy needs once heating, cooking and transport were factored in.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/18/australias-climate-record-labelled-simply-embarrassing-and-among-worst-of-g20-nations

  19. Wind industry is collapsing fast. Vestas closed half its generator factories a few days ago.

      1. It added 13gw in 2012. Your graphs show slowing growth, you just don’t care.

          1. Well since you’re just factually wrong I don’t see why you’re allowed here.

      2. From the link:

        ‘The 2021 edition of the Land-Based Wind Market Report, prepared by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, detailed a record 16,836 megawatts (MW) of new utility-scale land-based wind power capacity added in 2020 – representing $24.6 billion of investment in new wind power projects.’

        Those wind turbines will produce about 5GW of time averaged power, or about 44TWh per year. Unfortunately, US electricity demand is about 4000TWh per year. And if the country switches to electric vehicles and electric heating, power demand will at least double. At present rate of investment, it would take 200 years for wind power to replace the energy that we get from fossil fuels. And from now on, wind and solar power will stop getting cheaper and start getting more expensive. It is happening already. Solar power prices are up 20% compared to last year; Wind power: 10%. To completely transition by 2050, which seems to be the target now, new investment must increase by roughly an order of magnitude. Storage or backup will require a lot of investment on top of that.

        Realistically, we are entering a period in which declining EROI of all energy production, is making people poorer. You are likely to find that by 2050, energy production per capita is a lot lower than it is now and per capita income along with it.

          1. Bob, you’ve come back under a new name! You used to be called Mustang!!

    2. Bob, you’re post is incomplete.

      Last week Vestas announced they would close three plants to integrate their operations after acquiring a 100 per cent stake in MHI Vestas from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

      In the past couple of days, Vestas has announced a series of major projects: 250 MW, 207 MW, 240 MW, and a 253 MW project in Russia. I believe these are all based on their new 4.5 MW turbines.

      The wind industry doesn’t appear to be collapsing.

        1. Mustang Bob,

          Look, a squirrel! Over there!

          You think it’s Betz’s Law all over again??

  20. A hexagon has six sides. Add half. This to the 1.61 power twice is the structure constant of 1/137.

    Silicon is 327 kJ per mol bonding energy. The fine structure cubed divides that to .13 joules.

    Silicon has a density of 1 ton per cubic meter. Planck mass is e-5 grams or e-11 times less. That’s e-3.7 meters in a side. Or 1/5000. That’s the length of a planck cube.

    The mean free path in air is 34e-9m. In solids it’s ten times less or 3e-9 because solids are a thousand times denser and we’re taking the cube in three dimensions. Light is 3e8 meters per second. It travels 3e11.7 cubes in a second. Thats e17 free paths, or 3e5 paths per cube. A plank mass also happens to be 3e5 times less than a gram so light travels to every atom in a gram in a second. A fine structure constant cubed is 2.5 million.

    Our .13 j per planck mass which is 1/5000 of a meter is 2.5 mj per square meter. Assume similar water to silicon mass. Water at 3000 degrees and 1kj per square meter per second per degree is 3 mj per square meter per second heat transfer. Hence the fine structure relates a gram to the heat released in a second by water, at the molecular decomposing temperature. Of course were only doing 1k degrees, but steam is 100m2 so the heat comes to 100mw.

    It takes 2e17 seconds = 50 hours to make glass because a planck mass has that many atoms. That’s 18 terajoules. Our furnace is 90% efficient so 1.8 tj.

    Then the strength. It takes 1.8tj to make fiberglass as above, it breaks at 1/137 or 13gj. The Young’s modulus implies half deformation from 70gj.

    So it’s vastly easier to destroy fiberglass than create it and the eroi of wind turbines is around 1:25 at 100% efficiency and 1:50 by betz law.

    It’s really simple to understand. It’s easier to create than to destroy so any engine made out of non recycled materials will always fail.

    1. Ha! Ha!

      Betz’s Law Bob!

      Have you ever written this up and submitted it to anyone in engineering or physics to get their reaction?

    2. BULLSHIT, pure and simple.

      Bob’s full of it up to his eyeballs.

      Even a dumbass hillbilly knows better. Tell it to my neighbor who just tossed an old auto engine in a gully to get rid of it. I teased him about it, because he’s “tight” in terms of money, and could have gotten thirty or forty bucks for it at the local scrapyard. He laughed and said the trip there was worth more , and that ” anyway it’ll be gone before I am, if I live to be old.”

      “Rust and depletion never sleep.” Can’t remember his name, but he was a very famous and successful banker who specialized in the oil biz.

      “It’s easier to create than to destroy so any engine made out of non recycled materials will always fail.”

      It’- a lot of trouble to mine and smelt iron, and process it into steel, and then make it into useful things from nails to trucks. But all you have to do to destroy steel is just leave it be. Nature will convert it right back to iron ore ( a nicely concentrated ore, lol) in as little as a few weeks or months, depending on the thickness of the steel and local weather.

      Furthermore the vast majority of the infrastructure of wind and solar farms will either last indefinitely, or can be economically and profitably recycled into useful material such as gravel or road bed base material, etc, in the case of products such as fiberglass.

      Virtually all the materials in a turbine generator set will be recycled right back into new steel, copper wiring, etc.

      The blades are the only hard nut, and even if they are routinely landfilled, they will be an extremely minor problem, compared to coal ash dumps, direct environmental destruction from mining and drilling for coal, oil and gas………. and burning these fuels, thereby polluting the atmosphere with EXCESSIVE amounts of CO2, and bringing about catastrophic climate troubles.

      1. I think Bob used to be called Mike on this blog. You must remember the idiot who said global warming was caused by sunspots with a 50-year delay.

        1. Bob is gone.

          He will no doubt try to sneek in again under a new name.

  21. This is going to sound very harsh, but I am witnessing it.

    Janet Yellen said yesterday the $300 per month per child needs to be made permanent. The reason it needs to be made permanent is because it has reduced food insecurity by 24% for children.

    Keep in mind tens of millions already receive SNAP.

    Janet really needs to study how much of that $300 per month is spent on intoxicating substances. In my area, it is being spent on a lot of meth.

    We are spending trillions, and still underfunding drug treatment. One reason we have a labor shortage is many more are hard drug dependent than pre-pandemic.

    Throwing more money at people dependent on meth just makes sure they will consume more meth. I work closely with this population daily. I see it happening.

    If we need more food, give more food. Same with rent money. Not money that can be used for anything.

    Estimated we have as many as 25 million using meth, heroin, pills or other hard drugs. Think what would happen with the labor shortage if we could put a dent in that?

    USA has boosted Federal dollars for drug treatment from in the $20 billion range in 2011 to about $40 billion now. That is still estimated to be less than $2,000 per year per person dependent upon substance(s).

    A dirty little secret is that our jails and prisons are largely drug detox facilities. They have little to no drug treatment, especially the jails.

    There should be an inpatient drug treatment facility in every county in the USA and judges should be able to sentence people to those, as opposed to jail or prison.

    2. Hey Shallow Sand, aren’t you just a load of good news.

      How did America get to this point ? For a long time now, I have been blaming a lot of these problems on corporations shipping manufacturing overseas for the last twenty or thirty years. It has eliminated about 25 million high school educated jobs above minimum wage. We got low cost stuff.

      Honestly, I don’t think without opportunity any drug addiction program will be successful. Work is more than just an income. It’s an identity with structure.

      1. Huntingtonbeach and Shallow Sand,

        It is likely both approaches are needed, better drug treatment (or universal healthcare that includes drug treatment) and better opportunity and education, perhaps free post high school education (both technical school for non college bound folks and undergraduate education for those who have the requisite skills to be admitted to a University).

        Note that for out European readers, they are thinking, wait you guys don’t already have those policies?

        The US is decidely third world when it comes to social policy, in fact some developing nations do much better in this regard compared to the US.

        1. Its a hard and complex issue all right. Our country tried quasi-military style education and training of prisoners for a while. The consensus was that all it did was produce faster, fitter and smarter criminals. IMHO good civil behavior has to start from pre-school with an education system that teaches civics and a legal system that has a well-defined set of simple to understand laws to be obeyed. By 5 years old every child should know and understand their duty to conform to the Ten Big Laws, by 10 years old the 10 and the 100 Main Laws and by 15 they should get a 90% pass on the 10, 100 and 1000 Laws. The need to live within the agreed set of laws in order to sustain a decent society should be top of the social and educational agenda.

    3. Something that the vast majority are unaware of is the extent to which the private prison industry has very strong vested interest in the current situation.

      “the states that have seen an increase in the number of prisoners in for-profit facilities have a higher mean number of dollars donated to elected officials. This seems to indicate that decisions regarding
      incarceration may have more to do with campaign donations than justice.”

      The documentation of this phenomena is extensive.

      1. per WIKI — As of May 2021, the U. S. had the highest prisoner rate, with 639 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Pretty weird stat for “land of the free and the home of the brave”. One wonders how overcrowded prisons deal with Covid 19 and all its permutations? North of the border, Canada’s national incarceration rate is 127 adults per 100,000 population. Do we have fewer criminals or are we not good at catching them? But that can’t be, don’t the RCMP ALWAYS get their man? 😉

        1. The discrepancy is mainly because Canada has fewer Blacks and Hispanics compared to the USA. Like a lot of statistics where the USA is an outlier, if you factor out the diversity, the statistics look a lot more comparable to other advanced countries.

          1. You are a racist, and you haven’t stated your sources…probably because you pulled this out of your ass.

            Canada has a greater percentage of non-whites than the US, and a more diverse population in general.

            Even if you allow for the over-representation of Blacks and Hispanics in the in the prison population (because the US is racist), the incarceration rate of US white males is almost double Canada’s total incarceration rate per 100,000 people (127 vs. 238).
            Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

        2. In VIrginia, if an inmate asks for the Covid vaccination, it is provided, with wait times typically being at least a week, for the paperwork to grind it’s way thru the various people that set up work schedules for prison nurses.

          I was just told yesterday, by a spokesman at the “regional jail” that due to various shortages of materials, namely delivered vaccine, and nurses, that some inmates have had to wait as long as a month.

  24. Who would have guessed (or, this is the last thing we need) !

    EARTH IS DIMMING DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

    Warming ocean waters have caused a drop in the brightness of the Earth. The Earth is now reflecting about half a watt less light per square meter than it was 20 years ago, with most of the drop occurring in the last three years of earthshine data, according to the new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences. That’s the equivalent of 0.5% decrease in the Earth’s reflectance.

    “It’s actually quite concerning,” said Edward Schwieterman, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Riverside who was not involved in the new study. For some time, many scientists had hoped that a warmer Earth might lead to more clouds and higher albedo, which would then help to moderate warming and balance the climate system, he said. “But this shows the opposite is true.”

    https://phys.org/news/2021-09-earth-dimming-due-climate.html

    1. ““People dare not to have children due to increasing economic pressure,” they wrote. ”
      “China’s population could halve within the next 45 years, new study warns ”

      Interesting to see how this is portrayed as a tragedy, and in many ways it is- for nationalism, for business growth, for political stability.
      But it would be a miracle for the environment and overall long term sustainability of humanity.
      This applies to all countries, not just China.

      But alas, the scenario is very unlikely. It is an extreme outlier among various population scenarios.

      1. HICKORY —

        You wrote: “But alas, the scenario is very unlikely. It is an extreme outlier among various population scenarios.”

        Spot on, and even if China’s population has a dip (they have abandoned the one child policy and replaced it with a three child one) India will fill any gap in population projections, according to numerous studies.

        In any case, I doubt the population of China is well known. I recall visiting friends in Beijing and being surprised to find several kids in their home; was told there are numerous ways to skirt the number-of-children-per-family limits. Apparently, the most common was to tell anyone who asked that they belonged to aunts and uncles living in some far-off province and and say they were visiting (long term) to attend school in the big city. Some of these “kids” were in their 30’s so I doubt anyone was paying much attention.

    2. It will be hard for all countries to deal with having less cheap energy.
      And it will hard for countries to learn to deal with shrinking population. This will mean lower supply of young people, of labor, of tax payers, of growth in demand ( or even worse- actual contraction of the economy).
      Shortage of goods, shortage of government funds, shortage of services including medical care.

      I’m not banking on automation to fix these problems, maybe help somewhat.
      Some countries will remain attractive or relatively prosperous enough to attract immigrants.
      Will China? Will an angry, isolationist and racist USA?
      People will want to go where they sense opportunity and security, as always.

  26. Not all is coal in Australia-
    “A colossal US$22 billion infrastructure project will send Australian sunshine more than 3,100 miles (5,000 km) to Singapore, via high-voltage undersea cables. Opening in 2027, it’ll be the largest solar farm and battery storage facility in history.”

    And the there is this:
    Ex Tesco CEO wants 22-billion for morocco UK power pipeline
    https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2021/09/344612/ex-tesco-ceo-wants-22-billion-for-morocco-uk-power-pipeline

    In addition this: Floating wind off Iceland to pump green power to UK
    https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-transition/floating-wind-off-iceland-to-pump-green-power-to-uk-under-21bn-anglo-us-mega-plan/2-1-1014369

    The cost of laying the cable is worth it, it seems. I would say the first UK project is more realistic than the second. Floating windfarms around Iceland connected to UK doesn’t seem like the easiest of projects; at least not within a reasonable timeframe. But still, it took six years to lay the cable from inland Norway (the place where the most productive hydro plant in Norway is situated) to Blyth in Northern UK. It came officially into operation today, and will be able to ramp up to 1.4 GW after 3 months. If on all export mode all the time, it will export 14% of Norway’s electricity production I read somewhere. There is also the power cable to Germany at the same capacity 1.4 GW a year earlier. The purpose is not to drain Norway’s hydropower resources, but to increase the value of unstable offshore wind power. So when the wind is blowing, water reservoirs are filling in Norway. And in exchange exports are coming when dire needed, until a too low water magazine level is reached (the hydro power must be able to run until spring time). The consumers in Norway are complaining about higher prices (as the rest of Europe), but the export of high priced electricity when needed should balance out the inconvenience. Up to the government how they solve inequality issues.

    I have some hopes that the UK’s problems are transitory. Energy will be more expensive and we have to twist every kwh of electricity towards it’s best use (not mine words, just quoting one of the higher standing officials in the EU system).

  28. One of those ugly “inconvenient truths.

    FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY GETS SUBSIDIES OF $11M A MINUTE

    “The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed…

    The comprehensive IMF report found that prices were at least 50% below their true costs for 99% of coal, 52% of diesel and 47% of natural gas in 2020. Five countries were responsible for two-thirds of the subsidies: China, the US, Russia, India and Japan. Without action, subsidies will rise to $6.4tn in 2025, the IMF said.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

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