85 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Sept 27, 2023”

    1. I´m both scared and fascinated that the US puts up either Joe or Donald for any office, but for now next we´ll hopefully see how deep the Hunter and affilates hole gets. The plot thickens…

      1. I would be willing to bet even money that Hunter is guilty of at least one technical but still serious crime, and possibly three or four. His Daddy has said he will not pardon him, and there’s been a special prosecutor on his case for quite some time.

        My personal guess is that except for the fact that Daddy was a big wheel Democrat back then and an even bigger one, the very biggest one, now, he would have gotten a short prison sentence and probation at the worst.

        This is a typical sentence for the things I’m reasonably sure he has done.

        But the Republicans are making a ton of hay out of him, thereby deflecting attention from their own REAL crooked politicians, starting with trump and his kids enriching themselves by the billions right out of the White House.

        Never in my wildest imagination did I ever believe I would live to see my country so screwed up and divided as it is now.

    1. The market will get God to put more copper in the ground once demand is found to not be met. Read it in a textbook.

  3. From climatic change through the ages:
    The theory received a fatal blow when it was realized that carbon dioxide is very selective as to the wave lengths of radiant energy it will absorb, filtering out only such waves as even very minute quantities of water vapor dispose of anyway.

    https://electroverse.info/preparing-for-the-collapse/

    So this article concludes:
    No probable Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could materially affect either the amount of insolation reaching the surface or the amount of terrestrial radiation lost to space.

    That’s an old book So I found this which is more recent:
    https://www.randombio.com/co2.html
    Fig4 seems to back that up.

    Why a CC pretext to limit FFs? It doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is there’s a coming FF shortage & population overshoot.

    1. Every denier tactic you are ever likely to come up with has already been debunked and explained at basic, intermediate or advanced level at Skeptical Science (and thanks for the opportunity to recommend this excellent site – try the Cranky Uncle quiz)..

      The mistaken idea that the Greenhouse Effect is ‘saturated’, that adding more CO2 will have virtually no effect, is based on a simple misunderstanding of how the Greenhouse Effect works. 

The myth goes something like this:
      * CO2 absorbs nearly all the Infrared (heat) radiation leaving the Earth’s surface that it can absorb. True!
      * Therefore adding more CO2 won’t absorb much more IR radiation at the surface. True!
      * Therefore adding more CO2 can’t cause more warming. FALSE!!!
      Here’s why; it ignores the very simplest arithmetic. 

If the air is only absorbing heat from the surface then the air should just keep getting hotter and hotter. By now the Earth should be a cinder from all that absorbed heat. But not too surprisingly, it isn’t! What are we missing?

The air doesn’t just absorb heat, it also loses it as well! The atmosphere isn’t just absorbing IR Radiation (heat) from the surface. It is also radiating IR Radiation (heat) to Space. If these two heat flows are in balance, the atmosphere doesn’t warm or cool – it stays the same.

      https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-basic.htm
      https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-intermediate.htm
      https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm

      I Misunderstood the Greenhouse Effect. Here’s How It Works:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqu5DjzOBF8

    2. AGAMEMNON,
      I would totally agree with you that so the called climate change is not a threat to mankind. Long before the climate becomes an issue we will have depleted the Earth’s easily available resources and overpopulated just about every continent. No-one talks about carrying capacity but in the end it will be the primary issue. Renewable electricity is going to be a major waste of scarce resources. The environmental destruction that renewables will create is only just starting.

      If you are a climate change denier( I am) you will be ridiculed and excluded. The facts are there to see, as long as you remove the blinkers The earth has had much higher carbon dioxide concentration is the past. 400 ppm is insignificant compared with the contribution of warming due to water vapour. Why are inland deserts cold at night. Go to the coast and the water vapour in the atmosphere will trap heat like a blanket.. The likes of Mann did a huge disservice to science. Oppose climate change and you could loose your job if you are an academic.
      Oh, and did the Artic ice sheet melt as predicted by CC brigade. No, and neither did the sea level rise up to the elbow of the Statue of Liberty.

      1. Carnot, no one predicted the Arctic ice sheet to be completely gone by now and no one predicted the sea level would rise to the elbow of the Statue of Liberty. Such exaggerations make you look like an idiot.
        Yes, carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past, and when it was, the temperature of the earth was much higher. Higher carbon dioxide levels caused global warming then, and it will again.

        GINKGO BILOBA LEAVES SHOW CLIMATE OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS

        A new study maps carbon-driven ecological change over millions of years and forecasts what current carbon trends could mean for the future.

        Present-day Western Oregon, for example, was a subtropical forest 16 million years ago, when carbon levels reached 650 ppm, about 240 ppm above today’s levels. At the lowest levels of 180 ppm, glaciers crunched their way down half of North America, but as levels rose above 1,500 ppm, global weather havoc led to the greatest mass extinction in the history of life.

        “There were also striking spikes of carbon dioxide above 1,500 ppm at other times of mass extinction, like the great dyings of 252, 200, and 66 million years ago,” Retallack says. “Each of these spikes ramped up quickly thanks to volcanic activity, and they came back down within a few hundred thousand years with the expansion of carbon-sequestering vegetation and soils.”

        You wrote: No-one talks about carrying capacity but in the end it will be the primary issue.

        Bullshit, I have been talking about overshoot and carrying capacity on this blog ever since I started it ten years ago. Too many people burning fossil fuel and clearing the forest are what is causing CO2 levels to increase. Too many people are the primary cause of global warming.

        Don’t you climate change deniers know how to use the internet? There are dozens of sites that give accurate past CO2 levels and the associated climate change that went with those levels. Damn guys, learn how to use the internet and perhaps you will get an education and stop posting stupid shit.

      2. I’m not sure what the desert example is supposed to prove. They get cold because the lack of humidity means heat is not trapped so well, if there was lower CO2 they would get even colder, and because CO2 has risen they don’t get as cold as they used to. (i.e. they are warming just like the rest of the planet with fossil fuel use as the ultimate cause, the dearth of water means it is not as fast as other places). Water is an inevitable feedback, which effectively doubles the effect of the other GHGs

        As to ridicule, posting this denier bullshit and expecting the rest of us to buy it, despite mounds of exclusively contrary evidence, seems to serve no purpose but to take the piss.

        1. Silver lining- climate science deniers won’t survive the famine.

    1. Dude, fusion is not going to save us. Fission couldn’t, and it’s orders of magnitude less complex and cheaper.

  6. “A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.

    Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?”

    Surely comrades, they are just hiding thm from me?

    2. Most of those ideas are dumb and don’t do anything useful or productive..

      1. The same could be said for what we did get: Twitter, Amazon, Apple watches, manned space exploration and oh so much more that all ends up being tools to move wealth to the already wealthy.

  7. STRONG EL NIÑO EXPECTED TO DRIVE RECORD-BREAKING GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURES AND TRIGGER CLIMATE CRISES IN 2023–2024

    “The El Niño event, known for releasing massive heat into the atmosphere, is poised to change atmospheric circulation patterns, influence tropical-extratropical interactions, and impact subtropical jets, monsoons, and even polar vortices, and finally results in a rapid surge in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST).”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-09-strong-el-nio-record-breaking-global.html

    1. Meanwhile,

      EUROPEAN COUNTRIES SMASH SEPTEMBER TEMPERATURE RECORDS

      Austria, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland announced their hottest Septembers on record on Friday, in a year expected to be the warmest in human history as climate change accelerates. “Until we reach carbon neutrality, heat records are going to be systematically broken week after week, month after month, year after year,” UN climate report lead author Francois Gemenne told AFP this week.

      https://phys.org/news/2023-09-european-countries-september-temperature.html

  8. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Fast-Tracks-A-Unique-Renewable-Energy-Project.html

    I personally believe such giant renewable energy projects such as this one will be the norm instead of the exception…… ASS U M (E) ING Old Man Business As Usual stays on his feet for another ten to twenty years.

    By BAU I do NOT mean continuing to rely on fossil fuels indefinitely, but rather that CHANGE at a fundamental level is part and parcel of Business As Usual in historical terms.

    History is moving fast enough that a decade, or maybe two decades these days, is long enough for major change at the most fundamental levels.

    Technology plus capital can get us there in terms of renewable energy, and social and cultural change is coming about at an equally breathtaking speed in terms of women getting some education and taking their rightful place as equals politically and economically on the world stage….. at least in most of the well developed world.

    I have a gut feeling that birth rates are going to continue to fall to the extent that even the lowest accepted estimates of peak population are going to be on the high side, and that the peak will come years ahead of it’s predicted date.

    This comment sounds as if I’m wearing a cornucopian hat, but keep in mind that I expect the Four Horsemen to be running wild before this century is out, and that there’s a VERY REAL possibility that the combined synergistic effects of climate change, war and famine will move the needle noticeably toward peak population within the next decade or two.

    Since about twenty fifteen women have been getting more college diplomas than men in the USA.

    And in Europe
    “Over the past decade, the shares of women and men graduating from university have increased steadily in Europe, with the gender gap slowly reversing to favour women. In 2010, 20 % of women and 21 % of men had gained tertiary education, while in 2018 more women than men had graduated from university in the 15 or older age group (26 % and 25 %, respectively).

    The largest gender gaps in favour of women tertiary graduates were registered in Estonia (17 p.p.), Latvia (14 p.p.) and Sweden (11 p.p.), while an additional nine Member States had gaps higher than 5 p.p. (Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Finland). Men were more likely than women to graduate from university in four countries: Germany (with the largest gender gap of 8 p.p.), Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria (all with gaps below 4.5 p.p.).”

    The birth rate in Brazil took a sharp nose dive within less than a decade as the people there got access to television and the internet.

    It didn’t take Brazilian women anytime at all to conclude that they could live a lifestyle at least somewhat similar to the lives of the women they were watching on tv….. meaning with few or no kids to tie them down, a job meaning they could have more than one pair of shoes and one dress, etc.

    The world as a whole is headed for a built in hard crash, it terms of climate, population and natural resources, etc.

    But it might possibly turn out to be more of a belly landing in lots of places than hard core pessimists expect. A belly landing is nothing, compared to a crash and burn scenario.

    Plain old luck may play as big a role in the course of history over the next couple of generations as hard science.

    We can have HVDC power lines here in the USA, all over the place, if we simply muster the will to build them. The cost will be trivial, compared just to the DIRECT cost of burning ever scarcer oil and gas over the next two or three generations. And the more that are built, the cheaper they will be in terms of miles and capacity in constant money.

    And there are dozens of ways we can effectively shift electrical loads so as to take advantage of peak production of wind and solar electricity without building so many batteries that we run out of the materials needed to make them.

    Don’t forget that fossil fuel prices skyrocket when they’re in short supply…….. and that renewable electricity and electric vehicles, etc, will have a HUGE effect holding down the market prices of oil and gas.This savings on oil and gas must be taken into account in penciling out what it will cost to build a robust system of long distance transmission lines and lots of wind and solar farms in places a long way from big cities.

    If you go with people like Tony Seba, who may be wrong of course, we could actually see the price of oil falling over the next decade or two because of vastly reduced demand…… IF we really do go whole hog for electric cars and trucks. Personally I tend to think he’s right in general terms, but maybe too optimistic about the rate of change.

    The regulars here mostly take a rather dim view of religion, which is totally understandable in terms of current day American politics, due to so many of us supporting right wing politicians, etc.

    But don’t forget that some of the countries conventionally thought of, in terms of religion and history, have some of the lowest birth rates ever…….. well below replacement level.

    And I can say without a shadow of a doubt, given that I live in one of the darkest corners of the Bible Belt, and come from a family and community of the sort that backs trump, etc, that even among my neighbors, and my own family, the birth rate has simply COLLAPSED over the last decade.

    There’s no doubt at all in my mind that the typical young woman in this part of the world will have less than two children on average going forward.

    The old folks, my generation, are fast headed to nursing homes and cemeteries.

    Churches all over the place with an acre of paved parking are no more than a quarter full on Sunday mornings, and the large majority of worshipers are middle aged and older.

    Sure there are mega churches, but as a percentage of the population, they don’t amount to a hill of beans, compared to the percentage that went to church on a regular basis a generation back.

    1. OFM

      Plenty of good comments to digest there.

      I have commented this Morocco-UK cable project before. It is not the most outlandish idea, even if it seems far fetched. For context, in the 1970’s two underwater electricity cables were built between Norway and Denmark. They were very sceptical about the longevity and need to repair the cables (why 2 were built; it was a big risk project). Still, they operated more than 40 years without the need for repair. So, given that a lot of other alternatives might not have an insignificant infrastructure depreciation rate; electricity cables subsea or above surface for that matter should probably not be the limiting factor. At least as long as we have enough copper or aluminium in sufficient amounts. In Morocco they could even use surplus renewable energy to power desalination plants and agriculture.

      It is still an ambition to get the electricity grid to run on 80% renewables with fossil fuel back up in developed countries. Where there are sufficient hydro power, it is much easier (Norway, Sweden, Washington state (US), Brazil overall). If not, nuclear power as baseload, natural gas powered plants and coal plants are much more central. It might not be possible to get to more than 50% renewable energy some places, and to maybe have an unwanted dependency in global markets. Probably lack of resources are going to limit the “size” of the electricity grid, and the countries/regions that can operate with a high renewable percentage will do relatively well.

      1. Well said, Hickory

        You’re in or near the ten ring just about every time.

        I believe, barring bad luck, that some of us, maybe even a lot of us, will manage to squeak by the built in crash headed our way globally, and with the population growing only very slowly or actually declining in today’s well developed countries that aren’t yet basket cases in terms of natural resources………

        There will be enough of the critical resources such as copper and aluminum to build out the necessary renewable infrastructure in a world with billions less people.

        Once the shit is UNDENIABLY in the fan, so to speak, governments that are still operating on a basis of honesty and competence will do what has to be done to ensure essential infrastructure gets built…. going so far as necessary to make it happen, up to and including wartime type centralized economic policies. Needless to say, such governments exist only in countries with well educated citizens…… leaving me having trouble sleeping some nights because we have so many abysmally IGNORANT people here in the USA….. and plenty of predatory politicians ready and eager to use them like livestock.

        It’s heartbreaking to think about how bad things will likely get in the so called third world, and even in better developed countries with incompetent governments. In these places just about every decision will be made on the basis of short term survival not only of the people but also of the leadership, meaning not only politicians but also the wealthy people who more or less own the politicians. The actual OWNERS are as apt as not to live outside the afflicted areas or ( entire) country in question. If not, they’ll be ready to leave on a minutes notice, and will undoubtedly have made plans to do so.

        You’re undoubtedly right that in some places it will be tough to impossible to get anywhere close to going totally renewable, but if such places make it to fifty percent, this will have the effect of extending the affordable supply of oil and gas out for another decade maybe two or three decades. And by then the odds are pretty good the local populations will be at or very close to peak, and start declining….. meaning less dependence on fossil fuels from then on.

        Everything in the physical world is all tied together by the laws of nature such that anything that happens, anything we do at any given spot, causes ripple effects up to tsunami effects everywhere else.

        The two things that scare me the most are runaway climate, and hot war, which is far more apt to happen due to desperate countries and people going to war hoping to ensure their own survival.

        And so long as coal continues to be sold on international markets, it’s pretty much a given that countries that depend in it for their short and medium term economic survival will continue to buy it and burn it by the tens of millions of tons. So the odds of the climate going entirely nuts will continue to get worse as far out as the skeptical or pessimistic eye can see…………

        But maybe the population world wide will peak before the climate goes entirely nuts.
        It’s actually possible that if some countries pull thru the bottle neck more or less whole that they will be able to persuade the survivors in other places to use less coal or even give it up…… maybe even by force. Ships are easy to sink, and it would be necessary to sink only a few to convince the owners of the rest that it’s better to scrap them in port than have them sunk on the high seas. There’s precedent for such actions, such as in fighting piracy and slavery.

        I’m wandering of into satire or sarcasm here…….. but remember what HL Mencken had to say about America:

        “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
        ― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

        He missed it only in respect to the fact that while trump is without doubt a moron in almost every respect, he’s a genius in terms of manipulating unhappy, scared, angry people….. one of the very best ever.

        In the end, luck will play a far bigger role than most people would ever guess or acknowledge.

        A Dust Bowl level drought in some of the poorer parts of the world may result in a hundred million or more people dying of starvation. There’s just not a big enough carry over of grain in reserve these days to guarantee relief will be available at the necessary scale, and the reserve supply is growing smaller as time passes. A hot war, such as in Ukraine, at the same time could make this scenario two or even three or four times more likely, as countries with questionable domestic food security would be extremely reluctant to supply more than token amounts.

        And keep in mind that such food relief, while it is generally SUPPOSED to be paid for, is seldom ever really repaid, except possibly over many years in money deflated to the point it’s more or less worthless.

        It’s unlikely but possible that a new contagious disease will emerge that renders men and women sterile once infected, and that it might take years to devise a cure or vaccine, and more years to convince people to accept it. Or it might kill enough people young enough to move the needle.

        STD’s have already infected as much as a quarter or even more of the people in some places. Just one infected traveling truck driver in Africa might as well be tossing fire bombs out of his truck because there are desperate women just about anywhere he stops…..

        Mother Nature doesn’t give a damn, she’s entirely indifferent, and keeps score only in the fossil record.

        Mankind evolved to deal with short term problems, and while the well educated are capable of long term planning…………

        Most of us are as ignorant as the animals in the fields.

  9. https://realclearwire.com/articles/2023/09/27/the_answer_to_american_electric_grid_reliability_is_fuel_cells_149815.html

    More likely than batteries ?
    I like hydro. Build a dike on the shore letting inflows on turbines. Let an outflow open up during low tide.
    ( I know, it’s probably crazy, hmmm the Dutch should know)

    But I’m all for solar since it’s the cheapest even though it depends on coal burning in China. Nothing like a real live experiment; not like when it use to be general consensus that EVs being a pipe dream (even when batteries were making progress)

    1. So……. if the Chinese burn a ton of coal, all in, to manufacture solar panels and associated equipment such as inverters,racks, electrical cables, etc,

      How much electricity will be produced by the panels built with this one ton of coal?
      I’ve seen figures quoted ranging from next to nothing to twenty or more times as much electricity as could have been generated by burning that one ton in a coal fired boiler.

      Here’s hoping somebody here has something to say about this question.

      I’m personally sure that an accurate big picture answer is that the solar panels will generate at least ten or twenty times more electricity over the life of the panels….. considering that HALF of the energy in a ton of coal goes right up the smoke stack at a power plant, etc. Another five or ten percent is lost in transmission, more energy is lost mining and transporting coal, air pollution is paid for in terms of public health, more expensive food, etc.

      Another way of looking at this question is how long will it take the so produced panels to generate enough electricity to offset the amount produced by burning that ton of coal.

      1. The articles that I have seen that have been published within the last 10 years indicate that solar panels pay back the energy utilized in their manufacture within several years after being deployed in a sunny area.
        And those articles indicate that this is life cycle energy consideration- including mining, manufacturing, and deployment.

        I can’t vouch for the accuracy of me calculations, but they are similar from multiple reputable sources, including the US Department of energy NREL

        1. @Hickory and @OFM, unfortunately all the figures given in all the papers that are reported as “reputable” give false numbers for the energy invested into solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, and for that matter coal thermal plants as well.

          They all tend to look at the process of making solar panels etc. For example the typical ratio of weight of a solar panel is 76% glass, plastic and plastic polymers 10%, Aluminium 8%, silicon 5%, copper 1% and some trace silver and ‘others’.

          For 100 tonnes of solar panels it would include 76 tonnes of glass, with glass manufacturing taking up about 5-7 Gj per tonne of flat glass production. So in the calculations (changing ~6Gj to Kwh) the 76 tonnes of glass needed for 100 tonnes of solar panels would have an inclusion of 126,000Kwh for the glass component.
          At about 25Kg for a 450w solar panel, 100 tonnes of solar panels = ~1.8Mw of panels.

          The way energy input is calculated is adding up all the separate energy inputs for glass, plastic, aluminium, silicon, copper etc and using this number of kwh as the energy input in building the panels.

          There is never any consideration of the the cost of building the factory to make the glass, not the equipment inside the glass making factories, nor the factories that made the industrial equipment inside the glass production facilities, nor the workers in any of the factories, nor the people that built the factories and the equipment, nor the training of the workers that built any part of it, or the training of those that tought the teachers etc, etc. It all takes a lot of energy but none of it is included in the calculations of “energy invested”.

          In other words what is missed in all the calculations is the background system operating normally that allows the solar panels to be built. The normal background system we have had for over 200 years is a growing economy, always with more mining, more energy use, more production of everything.
          We cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet, and we are reaching limits now.

          The only possible method we have for comparing the energy cost of the different energy producing machines is the total capital, operating and maintenance cost over the lifetime of the producing unit in dollars to do the comparison. For $US1B (2022 dollars) we can and have built coal generators that can provide 1,000Mwh of electricity with a 95% capacity factor, with very low ongoing operating and maintenance costs.
          For the same $US1B we get much less bang for buck from any other non fossil fuel energy source.

          Renewables and nuclear are all built with gobs of fossil fuels in just about every step of the process, so no-one has even tried to work out the EROEI of using just electricity to produce them. They are all derivatives of fossil fuels, none existed in the modern form before fossil fuel use and none will exist for long after fossil fuels stop being used.

          Coal, oil, gas, wind ,sun, uranium are all natural resources that are free to humanity, we build machines to harvest the energy into a form usable by other machines. None of it is sustainable.

          1. You are absolutely coorect with your analysis. If you look at the levelised cost of renewable electricity it does not come even close to reality. It will never be low cost and will always be unreliable.

          2. “For $US1B (2022 dollars) we can and have built coal generators that can provide 1,000Mwh of electricity with a 95% capacity factor, with very low ongoing operating and maintenance costs.
            For the same $US1B we get much less bang for buck from any other non fossil fuel energy source. ”

            I must agree that it’s tough, almost impossible, to really know the total monetary, manpower, material resource, and environmental cost of wind and solar electricity.

            But having said this much, this observation applies EQUALLY to the cost of producing electricity by any other means, nuclear, gas or coal fired, or whatever. It also generally applies to just about any large scale industry.

            I strongly disagree that the cost of running a big coal fired power plant is low by any measure except our short term economic convenience.

            The coal burnt in such a plant is burnt every single day, for the life of the plant, by the thousands of tons, and the cost of doing this is HUGE, in not only monetary terms but also in terms of catastrophic environmental costs, including forced climate issues, etc.

            As a practical matter, given that solar panels and wind turbines last at least a couple of decades, and run fuel free, it’s my semi educated guess that the total amount of mining needed etc, is actually less over the long term, going renewable.

            Wind and solar farms will NEVER wear out. They will be refurbished as necessary for a rather minor fraction of the cost of building new from scratch, as necessary, as time passes. The grid will have to be upgraded and expanded to a substantial extent as we use more renewable juice, but that’s pretty much a one time expense, compared to buying coal or gas indefinitely.

            It’s hard to say for sure, because I’m not seriously into crunching numbers, and haven’t the time nor resources to do in depth research, but there seems to be a general consensus that wind and solar farms generate enough revenue to pay for themselves within ten years or less, in terms of construction costs minus operating costs. After that, except for interest, they seem to be quite profitable for their owners.

            I’m old enough that I’m not personally sinking any money into ANY new investment,personally, but I have acquaintances who are saving enough money generating their own juice to cover the payments with something left over, especially if they have or will shortly be buying an electric car.

            There are reports that some wind and solar farms are now being built without any direct subsidies.

            But it’s not just about the environment, and it’s not just about money as such.

            Consider the obvious fact that nobody has discovered a new super giant oil or gas field within the last forty or fifty years, and that production is outrunning discoveries at a scary pace.

            We’re fortunate, here in the USA, and in a few other Western oriented countries, in that we have enormous coal reserves……… but lots of countries don’t, and are dependent on manufacturing and selling enough stuff on international markets, or selling food, timber, other minerals, etc, in order to pay for imported coal.

            I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night living in a country dependent on the international market for oil and gas, considering such factors as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ( We could get by ok here in the USA, in this respect……. except that we depend on the importing countries as trading partners and allies as well in some cases. If their economies go to hell, ours will follow. )

            The rate of change in the world today is such that a country that has done very well in the past, such as Germany, may not be able to indefinitely continue doing so, because there are too many other up and coming countries, such as Korea, already arrived, that are able and willing to compete in just about ANY industry nowadays, by turning out good stuff while paying lower wages.

            Germany has some coal, but next to nothing in the way of oil or gas, and they’re acutely aware of the fact that they’re going to be up against it buying oil and gas in the future, as the population grows and the supplies in the ground deplete. They understand that not only do they need to generate their own power fuel free, but also that if they’re going to make it long term as industrial exporters…… one of the very biggest markets is ALREADY the wind and solar market.

            A robust wind and or a solar farm infrastructure in years to come is very likely to be as important to the security of a nation that has to import fuel as a military supplied with planes, ships, men, and weapons……. all VERY expensive.

            1. OFM, your statements in quotes…

              “I strongly disagree that the cost of running a big coal fired power plant is low by any measure except our short term economic convenience.”

              My main point is that we built our modern world with cheap energy to the level of complexity we currently have. There is no evidence we can rebuild the world with modern complexity by using expensive energy. To build out a system using renewables requires massive numbers of new mines, processing plants, and factories all over the world, which means burning more coal, oil and gas to do it. There is no evidence that we can build any of it with just electricity.

              The answer always appears to be let’s destroy more of the climate and environment by building more (should be read as burn more FF every time someone mentions build more….), which will last for 20-30 years then be replaced with what?

              “Wind and solar farms will NEVER wear out. ”
              That’s just plain wrong. The average age of solar panels being pulled down is something like 17 years. Solar panels develop micro fractures over time from wind and constant changes in temperature. As the module bend and flex due to external pressure, the fractures on the cells stop conducting electricity, causing degradation in the damaged solar panel.
              The rate of contraction of the aluminium frame is different to the plastic polymers within and different to the silicon cells.

              For wind turbines, if they do not get major services on time a decade at best would be expected. The nearest wind farm to me a 132Mw farm, the nacelles have to be taken down for major bearing replacement every 8 years. This is done with the giant diesel cranes. Without replacing these bearings on schedule you can expect the turbine to fail. The average life of past wind turbines has been about 15 years (from nuclear industry papers, not wind industry hopium). Of course wind industry will always talk up the lifetime of turbines.

              “Consider the obvious fact that nobody has discovered a new super giant oil or gas field within the last forty or fifty years, and that production is outrunning discoveries at a scary pace.”

              Again I don’t dispute this at all, I also clearly acknowledge that fossil fuels are greatly harming the environment with all the pollution especially CO2, as can clearly be seen in the temperature anomalies we are increasingly suffering from. It comes back to my main point, we built the system with very cheap to obtain fossil fuels, without thought about the environment.

              We increase in both population and complexity, yet somehow think we can build out a modern world of greater complexity, for a larger population, using less and diminishing quantities of FFs, while mining lower grade, deeper in the ground minerals, that have a harder crush index.

              We can do it all without any major plan, nor bother with a proper accounting of the energy invested, nor a proper study on the feasibility of replacing all uses of FFs with electricity. We can do it because the price of renewables and batteries have come down in the last decade or so, despite them only making up a tiny percentage of overall energy use.
              We will therefore extrapolate that despite lower ore grades, rising costs of money, reaching economies of scale in production, using cheap (underpaid overseas) labor, and diminishing returns on complexity, the trend of lower prices will continue indefinitely, just like growth is projected to continue indefinitely on a finite planet that is running out of easily obtainable resources of all types, while the climate is rapidly changing. All with a wave of the hand because proper research doesn’t give the required results.

              All around the world we have had the advances of cheaper consumer goods, toasters, refrigerators, air conditioners, dishwashers, etc, with production moving to cheaper labor countries with slack pollution laws and of course the quality has become so much better, except they last a lot shorter time than ‘stuff’ built in the 60’s and 70’s.

              Now we have offshored most of the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries to cheaper labor countries and the build quality is so much better, or so we are told. Somehow I don’t expect the solar panels I’ve bought recently to last anywhere near as long as the ‘one’ I bought in 1985, made from quality parts. (at a very high price!!)

              We are in deep overshoot, a predicament, when people are looking for answers to the current and future problems of climate and declining resources. There are none except to rapidly reduce population before the natural world does it to us, but no-one wants to talk about overpopulation and what can be done about it, so we blunder forward towards the Seneca cliff that inevitably awaits humanity.

    2. “Several tidal power barrages operate around the world. The Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station in South Korea has the largest electricity generation capacity at 254 megawatts (MW). The oldest and second-largest operating tidal power plant is in La Rance, France, with 240 MW of electricity generation capacity.Aug 10, 2022”

  10. https://www.slashgear.com/1403108/electric-motorcycle-cake/

    Just look at this electric two wheeler, and stop to consider that you can get a very well made compact car with air conditioning, etc, for only twice the price……. and at least ten to fifteen times more steel, aluminum, rubber, glass, etc…………

    I don’t see any real reason why such an electric two wheeler such as this one won’t be selling for only a couple of thousand bucks, in terms of constant money, ten years down the road.

    It’s built to accommodate just about any kind of extra such as luggage racks or a passenger seat or maybe even towing a small light weight trailer loaded up with a couple of hundred pound bags of fertilizer, etc. It can run a power tool for you.

    And just check out the battery ( or two?) as pictured.

    THAT kind of battery is the STANDARDIZED kind you will be buying at auto parts stores and big box stores without paying a big premium to get one that FITS and WORKS in just about every electric two wheeler I’ve been looking over on web sites.

    And if the frame were stretched another foot, at the expense of adding another battery and maybe ten or fifteen pounds max more aluminum, you could take this thing out for an all day pleasure ride in a state or national park or just out someplace in the countryside. A lot of commuters could use it all week charging it only on the week end.

    1. Needs a real motorcycle seat. As a long time cyclist I see the US having to go through some major reductions in personal two axle vehicle use before two wheels becomes a viable part of transportation for moms and old folks on the roads. I’ve added a midrive motor to my bike for getting around which has been a fun way to keep on the bike in this hilly rural area.
      A well made utilitarian ebike is still going to cost an arm. What bugs me is that there isn’t an affordable internal gear hub, think 3+ speeds, that can take the torque of a midrive motor. The good stuff is German/European and the hubs alone cost $1700. Honestly a Honda 150 would be my choice for two wheel transport for the money.

      2. Hi LEEG,
        I agree about the transition to two wheels versus two axles.

        It won’t happen here in the states until two axles are simply too expensive and traffic is too snarled up to the point that lots of people will go with two wheels in order to take residential streets or use bike lanes just to save grocery money and time on the road.

        I have no hands on expertise in electric bikes, but I’ve had greasy hands just about forever, being a world class jackass of all trades.

        So……… I’m confident in saying that an internally geared rear hub, which in essence is a super compact transmission, currently costs an arm and a leg for two basic reasons.

        The first and most important one is that this is a specialty or luxury item, at this time, which CAN be sold for a very high price, considering the very modest amount of materials in it, because the people who buy them have money to burn, when it comes to their bikes. ( I’m contemplating paying that much for an elderly high mileage pickup truck myself…… four thousand pounds of steel, copper glass, and at least fifty times as much high precision machine tool work in it. )

        So…… the buyers can pay that seventeen hundred, but there are only a very few of them.
        And it costs an arm and a leg to build such things at low volumes…… it’s more of a CRAFT job using really expensive machine tools, than it is a mass production deal. Low production numbers guarantee high costs.

        When the biking community comes to understand that another couple of pounds won’t matter, BECAUSE their bike will be electric, the cost of design and production of such hubs will crash like a rock, and once they’re a generic item like tires, lights, chains, etc, you will be able to buy one for as little as a couple of hundred bucks in today’s Yankee money. I’ve seen this process play out a dozen times over the last fifty years working as a jackass of all trades.

        I foresee the same thing happening with batteries. As far as I can tell, most of the electric bikes sold today, at least in the USA, require a battery that’s an odd size or shape in order to fit, and this means relatively low production and high price for a replacement battery.

        The biking community will eventually come around to buying bikes with standardized batteries just as they buy bikes with standardized tires. Then replacement batteries will be a LOT cheaper to BUY, and somewhat cheaper to manufacture as well.

  11. China has approved over 100 Gigawatts of new coal power plants.

    A study show that in order to avoid a temperature increase of 2c all those coal power stations that are under construction would have to be bulldozed to the ground. Then every other power plant operating would need to be shut down 10 years before their operational lifetime.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12618-3#:~:text=Lifetime%20limits%20for%20coal%20power,years%20or%20longer32%20(Fig.

    China is already under huge financial pressure. These plants provide the power for all their manufacturing. China could not shut down all these plants even if it wanted to.

      1. Yes

        India’s government stated aim is to increase coal burning to 1.5 billion tonnes per year, witihin the next 4 years.

        That is more than all the coal reduction in Europe since 1990.

        https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220502-2

        The cost to ordinary people in Europe has been huge, massive bills for gas when we had very cheap coal that was shur down 20 years before time. Now China and India are burning all the coal they can to make very cheap electricity. They are getting rich while people in this country cannot heat their homes.

        https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1139133/annual-fuel-poverty-statistics-lilee-report-2023-2022-data.pdf

    2. Which raises the question, what is China going to do with all the new PV capacity they are installing?

      China aims to add 160 GW of wind, solar capacity in 2023

      Chinese PV Industry Brief: China hits 500 GW milestone

      Chinese PV Industry Brief: Rystad forecasts 150 GW of new solar in 2023

      They had already installed roughly 116 GW by the end of August and at their current pace should exceed 150GW of new capacity for 2023 by the end of October. But wait, there’s more:

      China’s solar capacity expected to hit 1,000 GW by 2026, Rystad Energy says

      So, according to these guys (Rystad) China is going to double their cumulative installed PV capacity in less than 28 months starting from the end of August 2023. What then? Are they just going to stop installing PV or are they going to continue increasing PV deployment? Extrapolating current exponential growth to 2028 suggests over 2 TW by some time around the end of 2028. That is equivalent to adding almost 400 GW of coal plants over the next five years

      From Statista

      China has the highest installed capacity of coal power plants in the world. As of July 2022, it operated coal plants with a combined capacity of 1,074.1 gigawatts. This was more than four times the operational capacity of coal plants in the United States, which ranked third.

      What are they going to do with all that PV capacity?

      1. Island boy

        If they have built all this wind and solar over the last few years, why is China burning an extra 300 million tonnes of coal over the same period?

        https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-country-terawatt-hours-twh?tab=chart&country=~CHN

        According to some analysts China electricity consumption will increase by 60% over the next 20 years.

        https://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/china-s-power-consumption-shows-5-yoy-increase-in-2023-288958-newsdetails.htm

        If you do the calculations you may understand what I have been saying to you for the last 8 years.

        How much solar power does China produce at 7PM in November, how much wind? The gap is filled with coal and they will want 60% more in a couple of decades

      2. ISLANDBOY —

        It’s interesting that you are quick to report on countries like Australia but rarely about situation at home. This appeared on my in-box the other day; perhaps you’d be willing to comment on it. As you probably know, lot of Canadians go to Jamaica on holiday.

        STATE DEPARTMENT — JAMAICA TRAVEL ADVISORY

        “Country Summary: Violent crimes, such as home invasions, armed robberies, sexual assaults, and homicides, are common. Sexual assaults occur frequently, including at all-inclusive resorts. Local police often do not respond effectively to serious criminal incidents.” Sounds grim!

        https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/jamaica-travel-advisory.html#:~:text=Country%20Summary%3A%20Violent%20crimes%2C%20such,effectively%20to%20serious%20criminal%20incidents.

        1. I don’t report on the situation “at home” for a myriad of reasons. First is that there is very little I consider worth reporting about energy here.

          One example. Jamaica has been operating it’s own state owned petroleum refinery since the Esso refinery here was nationalized in the 70s. It operates at a loss while other larger facilities in the Caribbean have been shut down. The refinery cannot produce ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) which is needed for virtually all modern light duty diesel engines and I suspect some of the large heavy duty ones as well. ULSD has to be imported and there are private companies importing gasoline with a higher octane (93) than than the highest octane available from the refinery (90). The refinery has also been mired in controversy surround allegations of impropriety:

          Holness headache – Petrojam scandal resurfaces with force as Wheatley labelled ‘dishonest’ in report”

          In my opinion this refinery should have been shut down a long time ago. Why not?

          On the renewables front, the last utility scale solar facility was commissioned in mid 2019. Since then there has been a lot of talk from the politicians:

          Jamaica to tender 500MW of renewable energy projects

          Note from the article above, “The last time Jamaica issued requests for proposals, RFPs, from renewable energy investors was in 2015 – for 37MW.” This is the 37 MW that was commissioned in 2019 so, it took four years from RFP to commissioning.

          Last month we finally got another RFP:

          Jamaica invites bids for 100MW renewablesProjects with storage will not have their net capacity increased as the total capacity of a power plant will be determined based without storage. No commitment or payment regarding firmness will be made, and no incentives of any kind will be recognised for storage installations.

          Moreover, projects with storage will compete with those without storage under the same conditions, and the energy delivered from batteries will be paid at the same price as the rest of the energy supplied by the project.I excerpted that quote to show how nonsensical these things can be. Adding storage (batteries) will add a significant cost and this RFP offers absolutely no means of recovering that cost so why would anybody in their right mind even think about adding storage?

          As for reporting on trends in electricity generation, I have explained here before that the Ministry of Science, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport publishes the data annually and there is not a great deal of detail.

          When it comes to EVs,

          Jamaican Government to incentivise push to 100% electric vehicles by 2032

          “However, because duties on motor vehicles are such a huge part of Government revenues we will need to limit the number of electric vehicles being imported that benefit from this duty reduction to 1,000 per annum.”

          Jamaica has some 575,000 vehicles certified fit by the Island Traffic Authority (DOT, MOT) to utilize the island’s roadways in 2022 so one wonders how the island is supposed to get to 100% EVs by having incentives on 1,000 unit per year for five years? You would be tempted to think that these guys are smoking way too much of the fine Jamaican “wacky t’backy” but, the minister of finance is not that type of guy! Any one want to take a guess at how many EVs have been imported under this incentive scheme? (vehicles more than 3 years old do not qualify)

          Is it any wonder that I am frustrated/disillusioned/angry with matters relating to energy in Jamaica? All the stuff I have posted above is worthy of a face palm.

          The fact is, Jamaica is a small island that is so small many people can’t even find on a world map. With a population of only roughly 3 million people Jamaica has punched way, way above it’s weight in the area of athletics (Usain Bolt and the current fastest woman alive) and popular music (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff among many others). In the area of “music” there is cause for concern among the fans of Jamaican (reggae) music.

          Europe sounds the alarm and the reggae fraternity had better wake up

          According to Ms Pater, the festivals, which usually drew between 7,000 and 20,000 patrons per day, had seen their numbers plummet by an average of 50 per cent per day, compared to previous editions.

          “Without going into details, we can easily say that after COVID, the fees from numerous artistes doubled or, in some cases, even tripled,” she told this newspaper.

          The music of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh (both deceased) has been replace by something called Trap Dance Hall, a “music” form that is very similar to American rap music and somewhat similar to the Afrobeats pop music coming out of Africa. The backing tracks are extremely simple consisting of a drum machine and a electronic keyboard, in many case the keyboard produces all the sounds (drums, bass, etc.) so it appears to me that it is just a way to produce recordings without much effort or cost. As for the lyrics, they are hard for even me as a 62 year old Jamaican to follow and from what I have been able to pick out they lean heavily towards describing sexual acts or the occult or violence in reprisal for grudges or glorifying criminal acts like drug trafficking and scamming (lottery scamming). Who wants to listen to that shit? Apparently a lot of the younger generation that I see repeating the lyrics word for word when these “songs” are played. Most of them cannot be played on radio without exntensive editing because they are considered “unsuitable”. What can we expect from this sort of popular culture?

          Boy beaten unconscious
          “The Jamaica Observer was told that shortly after the dismissal of classes on Thursday, Colman and another boy were among students collecting their phones when the older boy accused the younger boy of stepping on his Clarks shoes.

          “He made a bad step,” Colman’s aunt said.

          The older boy is accused of pushing Colman to the ground, beating him, and stepping in his face.

          “He fell, hit his head, and got knocked out and then [the student] was stepping in his face. It is very sad to see that you can send your kids to school and to get a phone call like that,” said the aunt.”

          In this case footwear of a certain brand and style has been elevated to some sort of status symbol! I guess the equivalent in the US would be starting a fight because someone accidentally stepped on your Converse sneakers.

          Frankly I don’t think most people in this forum are interested in any of this stuff and as such I see the “situation at home” as being of little to no interest to the readers of this blog.

  12. I think some readers of this blog might find this interesting.

    Germany covers 52 pct of electricity consumption with renewables so far this year

    Renewables covered more than half of Germany’s electricity consumption so far this year, according to calculations by utility association BDEW and the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW).

    Between January and September, the amount of renewables in the electricity mix rose to around 52 percent – an increase of almost five percentage points compared to the same period last year.

    “Between March and September, the share of renewable energies was consistently around 50 percent or more in every single month.

    For those that say renewables are a boondoggle, Germany has been able to avoid having to purchase fuel to produce 52% of their electricity. They would have to have bought significantly more NG from Russia if they did not have the amount of renewable capacity they have. OFM understands the ramifications of this.

    1. Islandboy

      Why start talking about Germany when you have failed to answer basic questions about China which is now burning 4.5 billon tonnes of coal this year. 500 million tonnes more than when you claimed it’s coal consumption peaked and would continue going down in 2015.

      https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-world-consumption-data.html

      As the article I attached stated China alone will push global temperatures above 2c so what Germany does is of no importance. We then have to look at India, if you had been right and India’s coal consumption fell each year from 2014 as you also thought there would be real hope for climate stabilization.

      However India coal consumption has increased by 300 million tonnes per year and it intends to increase that further. China and India burning 5.6 billion tonnes each year have killed us.
      Unless ofcourse you think global oil consumption, gas consumption and coal consumption will fall from next year by 5% and each year after.
      zero hope of that

      1. “pro-degrowth”

        translation- ‘a person or organization who favors intentional permanent trend of recession or depression.’

        I call it ‘economic contraction’, and since we are talking about humanity it will only be an involuntary trend.
        Its not the basis of a winning political campaign.

    1. That won’t even happen by 2100 if BAU continues which it will until it hits a wall or something drastic happens.

      2. Iron Mike…yes that emission goal will be met far before 2100 since humanity will have moved far beyond peak combustion by then….by running out of burnable materials.
        For the record, I predict peak global combustion day to be July 27th, 2037, with a very long tail.

        Don’t bet on my projection (no refunds provided).

  14. Here are a couple of articles highlighting the growing realisation of just how much trouble we are in. Increasingly these days when I book a plumber, or grocery delivery, or physiotherapist I wonder how many more years before it’s the last time they come out. We are going to collapse, some places faster than others, and possibly with different reasons, but it is has been inevitable since evolution chanced upon the unique set of adaptive traits in modern humans on a resource rich planet. I don’t know how things would have turned out if all the resources had been available as we evolved, maybe we’d have found a stable equilibrium for longer, but they weren’t and consequently civilisation is done, and maybe humans too.

    https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/challenging-the-accepted-wisdom-why-economics-isnt-up-to-the-job-of-tackling-climate-change/

    Challenging the accepted wisdom: why economics isn’t ‘up to the job’ of tackling climate change

    Finance leaders are key to the economic and governmental changes required to reach net zero – but the Global Government Finance Summit heard fears that they have not yet understood the flaws in their models or the challenge they face (Some good stuff but a lot of the standard delusion present in politicians.)

    https://wraltechwire.com/2023/09/22/doomsday-authors-analysis-we-have-destroyed-our-ecosystem-now-we-await-the-collapse-of-civilization/

    Doomsday author’s analysis: We have destroyed our ecosystem – now we await the collapse of civilization

    The headline for this article is: We have destroyed our ecosystem. It is not: We might destroy our ecosystem. Nor: We are on the verge of destroying our ecosystem. Nor: Unless humanity takes steps X, Y and Z, we will destroy our ecosystem.

    The headline is: We have destroyed our ecosystem. The die is cast. The deed is done. We have gone too far. And we have destroyed it.

    Also, if you are a fan of “Big History” books like Gun, Germs and Steel, I recommend The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, by Peter Frankopan (author of The Silk Roads, also recommended, this is him on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25r4PxYZcg).

    1. …it is has been inevitable since evolution chanced upon the unique set of adaptive traits in modern humans on a resource rich planet.

      Beautifully stated, and exactly how I view the situation, along with many others who post here.

      1. ditto!
        I wish I had come up with that ever so accurate, elegant and enlightening twenty three words.
        But at least since they are now in the public domain I will be using them, and try to remember to give credit.

  15. Welcome to the future folks.

    CANADA LEFT BATTERED BY ‘NEVER BEFORE SEEN’ WILDFIRE SEASON

    There had never been so many areas burned — 18 million hectares (70,000 square miles), via 6,400 fires — or so many people evacuated, at more than 200,000.

    Another particularity of our northern forest: it releases 10 to 20 times more carbon per unit of burned area than other ecosystems. That’s helped Canada’s emissions reach unprecedented levels, at 473 megatons this year. That’s more than three times higher than the previous record, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus observatory.

    https://phys.org/news/2023-10-canada-left-battered-wildfire-season.html

  16. This link will be of considerable interest to those of us who are paying serious attention to American social and political culture and thinking about how things will change over the next decade or two.

    https://www.salon.com/2023/10/02/taylor-swift-maga-men-conservatives-mad/

    It’s all about the values and choices being made by the youngsters, with emphasis on the women.

    Combine this with the increasing number of older voters headed for the cemetery every year from here on out for decades to come, and it’s not hard to imagine that maybe it’s not too late for us as a country…… assuming of course that we somehow manage to get thru the next decade or two without crashing and burning.

    1. Right now I see a lot of the press and talking heads trying their hand at Nazi apologism and historical revisionism.

      So, agree to disagree.

      1. I’m not actually predicting such a rosy outcome. I’m just saying that it’s possible, lol.
        Your opinion is as good as mine, depending on what happens over the next ten to twenty years.

        But I’m just about dead sure that the younger people coming up to adulthood or approaching their middle years are going to collectively take my country to the left, towards greater all around prosperity and happiness rather than to the right wing fascist model.

        Demography IS destiny….. given time.

  17. In case you were wondering.

    GREENHOUSE GASES CONTINUED TO INCREASE RAPIDLY IN 2022

    Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, the three greenhouse gases emitted by human activity that are the most significant contributors to climate change, continued their historically high rates of growth in the atmosphere during 2022, according to NOAA scientists. CO2 is by far the most important contributor to climate change. The main driver of increasing atmospheric CO2 is the burning of fossil fuels, with emissions increasing from 10.9 billion tons per year in the 1960s — which is when the measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii began — to about 36.6 billion tons per year in 2022, according to the Global Carbon Projectoffsite link, which uses NOAA’s greenhouse gas measurements in its estimates.

    https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/greenhouse-gases-continued-to-increase-rapidly-in-2022

    1. And,

      JAPAN SEES HOTTEST SEPTEMBER SINCE RECORDS BEGAN

      “Japan has seen its hottest September since records began 125 years ago, the weather agency said, in a year expected to be the warmest in human history. The scorching September’s average temperature was 2.66 degrees Celsius higher than usual, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on Monday.”

      https://phys.org/news/2023-10-japan-hottest-september-began.html

    2. Global combustion won’t peak until the collective purchasing power of humanity can no longer afford to find find more stuff to burn.
      And within 20 years after that the population will peak.

      And by that time the tree of life will have yet more dead and barren branches.

    1. Wow. From your post: “Early analyses show global warmth surged far above previous records in September — even further than what scientists said seemed like astonishing increases in July and August.” And the graph is downright scarry.

    3. Record high for EEI in July, even as it was the hottest month recorded so would have had the highest IR radiation out from Earth (i.e. retained radiation because of loss of ice albedo, reduced aerosols, higher GHGs etc. went up more than the increase in the IR).

      1. ‘Let’s get to 2°C before 2025, guys. I believe we can do it.’

        Will that make Ervin feel as though he is getting his moneys worth on global warming?

        1. We’re clearly letting Ervin down unless we hit a good 10+ degrees by burning all the combustible products on Earth.

  20. CANADA’S WILDFIRES TAKE DEVASTATING TOLL ON WILDLIFE

    “The biologist notes that certain species can quickly become trapped, because they do not have the capacity to fly or run fast enough and over long distances in the face of very intense and rapidly advancing fires. And in certain regions, the fires struck very early in the season, therefore shortly after gestation, leaving no chance for hatchlings or sucklings to escape. The consequences are severe also for aquatic fauna. In addition to ash that blankets lakes and rivers, soil erosion caused by the loss of vegetation alters water quality.”

    https://phys.org/news/2023-10-canada-wildfires-devastating-toll-wildlife.html

  21. ANTARCTIC SEA ICE SHRINKS TO LOWEST ANNUAL MAXIMUM LEVEL ON RECORD

    Antarctica has likely broken a new record for the lowest annual maximum amount of sea ice around the continent, beating the previous low by a million square kilometres. The new mark is the latest in a string of records for the continent’s sea ice, as scientists fear global heating could have shifted the region into a new era of disappearing ice with far-reaching consequences for the world’s climate and sea levels.

    https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/10/04/news/antarctic-sea-ice-shrinks-lowest-annual-maximum-level-record

    1. Will Michael Mann finally admit he was wrong about the hockey stick?

  23. ““Dubai Firm Wants a Fifth of Zimbabwe Landmass for Carbon Credits…”

    So, if they promise to refrain from deforestation it will allow them to sell ‘green’ petroleum?
    Our species is misnamed.

  24. Back to upthread comments:

    “There is no evidence we can rebuild the world with modern complexity by using expensive energy.”

    I haven’t seen any good evidence to the contrary, although it’s obvious that we can’t do this in the short term. It’s necessarily a long term job, one taking probably a century at least, even allowing for the population declining sharply within the next few decades.

    Of course it’s the OPINION of lots of smart people that it can’t be done. I used to think that way myself.

    The insanely fast growth and falling cost of the renewable electricity industry, combined with rising education levels and falling birthrates, etc, have convinced me that we CAN go entirely renewable, eventually, and still have a nice comfortable industrial life style….. although it will be VERY different from today’s prevailing rich western lifestyle in terms of consumption of energy and raw materials.

    We can live well on a third of the energy we use now in countries such as the USA, per capita, but this will mean using it VERY efficiently, and mostly only for NECESSARY purposes.

    The era of continued PHYSICAL growth of most infrastructure is within sight. The first cracker box super cheap house I ever owned has been well maintained and is good for another fifty years easy as pie, and probably for a century or two, assuming it’s well cared for. The streets in that neighborhood will never be resurveyed, planned, graded and paved….. but they will eventually be repaved. The water and sewer lines will be replaced piecemeal as they fail. The bigger trunk lines will last indefinitely, with proper maintenance.

    This scenario applies right across the industrial economy. Old stuff will be good in most cases for a very long time, and we will be needing LESS of it instead of more, as the population declines. SOME industries will grow of course, such as renewable electricity, long distance transmission lines, any and all workable energy storage technologies, electrified transportation, super efficient appliances and houses, etc.

    But a typical brick or frame tract house can be SUBSTANTIALLY upgraded, fairly close to net zero, with better windows and doors, more insulation, better appliances, etc, etc, for a quarter to a third of the cost of new construction.

    The people that DON’T fly will eventually get together and put a SERIOUS tax on aircraft fuel, and air travel will gradually fade away, for the most part.

    ” The average age of solar panels being pulled down is something like 17 years.”

    This is quite likely true. The solar panel industry is sort of like the early car and truck industry. Nearly all of the hundreds of early manufacturers went broke for various reasons. The same is going to be the case with solar panels. The stronger companies will survive and honor their warranties, and their products will be good for another twenty or thirty years before they degrade to the point it’s better to just scrap them.

    The manufacturing short comings you mention will gradually be dealt with……. just as a good make of car today lasts two or three times as long as the same make lasted back when I was a kid. A hundred thousand miles back then with no major repair work was BRAGGING territory. Now you don’t brag about how long your car has lasted until it has three hundred thousand on it.

    Ditto the wind turbine durability question. The manufacturers have raced ahead , fighting for market share, to the point that they’re looking reckless in some cases. But they’ll solve these problems just as the solar panel and car and truck makers have solved and continue to solve problems.

    We WILL be downsizing, there’s no serious hope of avoiding it.

    But do we actually NEED a car or two for every household in this country? I know an old lady who has told me she will retire at her fast food job……… because she can WALK to and from work, and to and from a super market, and that she would have to make an extra ten grand to afford a car she could depend on.

    Self driving or autonomous cars and trucks WILL be a REAL thing, although it might be another ten years or even longer, before they’re perfected. Then one for hire car will very likely be enough to replace three or four individually owned and operated cars.

    It’s pretty much a given that ANY deep mine is already running on electricity, and back when I was a kid, I worked in a quarry, driving a big off road truck. The loaders, dozers, drills, and so forth ran on diesel, but the entire crushing and sorting and stockpiling operation was one hundred percent electrical.

    It wouldn’t be cheap, but the trucks and loaders could run on electricity, by using overhead lines and a small diesel engine for close quarters work away from the lines.

    And a couple of hundred acres covered with brambles would be enough to supply power to the whole kit and kabootle……. when the sun is out. I’ve been making hay since the sixties, myself, when the sun is shining. Literally.

    Sure the price of gravel will go up, at least at first, compared to the status quo…… but on the other hand, we will be needing a hell of a lot less gravel, given that nearly all of it is used for paving or making concrete, given a falling population.

    NOW……. IN THE MEANTIME….. new panels are so much MORE productive, and cost so much LESS in constant money, that it’s often, even typically, profitable to replace panels over fifteen years old with new ones, even if the old ones are still working just fine, up to spec.

    Furthermore the cost of installing them, at residential or industrial scale, is falling and will continue to fall, in terms of constant money.

    I agree about crappy appliances. They’re dirt cheap and energy efficient, but prone to failure way too soon.

    But eventually the buying public will wise up and buy from companies that offer really good long term warranties. Nobody is yet doing it this way, but they WILL, eventually…….. just as the domestic auto industry was FORCED to get its shit together in terms of reliability, durability, and fuel economy when the Japanese manufacturers once got a good foothold in our domestic market.

    If I were a congress critter, I would mandate that every manufacturer of a large appliance would HAVE to post complete parts lists, and make all parts available for at least ten years from date of sale… and at prices that relate to the COST of the parts. Or maybe just mandate buying the appliance back on a set schedule according to how long it lasts.

    Right now, the way the industry works is that a simple rubber door gasket for a refrigerator costs two or three hundred bucks……. which is a full quarter to a third of the cost of a cheap refrigerator. A single part for my chainsaw, a minor but essential part, costs forty percent of the cost of the entire saw, new.

    I could get elected president if I could get a law such as this passed by Congress, lol.
    My point is that we can and will figure out how to get by ok, eventually, using far less in the way of raw and refined materials.

    1. Genuinely want to have whatever you’re on with the optimism, because the supply is primo judging from the output.

      Especially as an American. I look at the recent rail projects in your nation as a means to offsetting the despair over the UK cancelling all but the rump part of the HS2 project, which is only slightly more useful than burning £100 bn. in bank notes in front of a load of poor people for heat.

  25. Once in a while Nat Hagans has a good episode. This new one is good…lots to ponder.

    https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/91-luke-gromen

    One topic that we are going to have to confront one way or another in the coming decade is the risk (or promise as some people see it) of the conversion of democracies to autocracies, as a response to contraction. This has the risk of sweeping all bets, savings, entitlements, assets, and personal freedoms, off the table. Careful what you wish for, or tolerate.

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