55 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum September 27, 2024”

  1. Solar generation up 26%, but electricity demand outpaces growth

    The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released its September Electric Power Monthly, which includes data through July 2024.

    Solar generation has increased by nearly 26% year over year, with a 1% rise in electricity consumption in July 2024 compared to July 2023 and a 4.5% increase in electricity generation from January to July 2024, while residential electricity prices have climbed 4.6%.

    Nationally, solar has seen a steady increase, now accounting for 6.22% of all electricity generated over the past 12 months, as shown in PV Intel’s national solar data summary. This represents a 20% increase from the previous year when solar constituted 5.16% of all electricity.

    1. islandboy
      6% isn’t huge, but much of this solar generation overlaps the time of day and year where air conditioning is heavily used, though it isn’t a perfect match.

      Air conditioning saved the electricity industry from decline in recent decades, and spawned the American Sun Belt cities and other freakishly misbuilt places like Dubai.

      Because demand in these places is so much higher during the day, utilities moved to the peaker / baseload business model, with night generation a loss leader for high profit peaker plants. This is getting hard to sustain, especially with batteries shaving the profitable tips off the peaks.

      But the industry will shift to powering data centers. Unlike humans, AI doesn’t sleep, so data centers need power 24/7. It’s a whole new ball game. Something will have to fill in the troughs left by “unreliables”, but it isn’t clear how that will be profitable.

      I do consulting for a German renewables company. They say wind output follows an annual “Badewannekurve” — bathtub curve, low in the summer, high at both ends of the year. Solar partially fills it. You results will vary by region. The problem from the produce side is that nothing can compete with renewables when they are running hot.

      But in the short term, that 6% is bad news for anyone selling coal or gas.

  2. Forrest strikes $4 billion deal for electric trucks and dozers to eliminate fossil fuels at giant mines

    Iron ore billionaire and green energy evangelist Andrew Forrest has struck a $4 billion deal that will see hundreds of giant electric trucks, excavators and dozers installed at its huge iron ore mines to help eliminate the burning of fossil fuels.

    Forrest has set a target of reaching “real zero” terrestial emissions for the Pilbara iron ore operations of Fortescue Metals, and he wants to achieve that by 2030. The deal announced overnight with Leibherr – the biggest in that company’s history – will take a big step towards that goal.

    The $US2.8 billion ($A4 billion) agreement with Liebherr includes the purchase of 360 autonomous battery electric haul trucks – the T264, some 55 electric excavators, and 60 new battery electric dozers under development, the PR 776.

    The 240 tonne haul trucks and the dozers will use electric power and propulsion systems developed by Fortescue, and Fortescue will also supply the hundreds of giant batteries needed for the machines.

    “This is an important next step in our 2030 Real Zero target – to eliminate emissions from our Australian iron ore operations by the end of the decade,” Forrest said in a statement after the announcement at a mining expo in Las Vegas.

    “The world needs Real Zero now – it simply cannot afford to wait. The green solutions we need are here today, and Fortescue Zero is supplying them and rolling them out across our massive mining operations.”

    Fortescue’s targets are way more ambitious than its mining peers, such as BHP and Rio Tinto, even though they are also trialling electric haul trucks and other equipment. But Forrest, who opposes the use of offsets as “greenwashing”, says the industry must move more quickly.

    “We invite all companies in the mining, heavy industry and haulage sectors to join us. The solutions are there, and the missing ingredient is leadership,” he said.

    It is interesting to see what some people with lots of money are doing with that money!

    1. Islandboy,

      I am happy to see someone committing to that deal.

      After all a mine is a stationary target, and if Australia can keep pushing towards that 70-80% renewable target in the electricity grid with adequate backup; I see no reason why gigant trucks and excavators can not be supplied with the technology already there.

      It is a big handshake to China (by volume) with Japan and South Korea as competitors to make even better battery technology in the future.

      How long we can keep advancing with productivity gains into the future I don’t know. Most manufacturing processes likely have fossil fuels linked to it, so the 2030 Real Zero target is probably way too optimistic.

    2. Large diesel engine efficiencies are around 50% these days, for vehicles such as these. The T 264 haul truck with diesel engine has a ‘standard fuel tank of 3028 litres and can run for approximately 24 hrs.

      Given diesel’s approx 10KWh/litre of energy density, then one of these trucks does approx 15MWh of ‘work’ in 24 hrs, which is around 630KWh of work per hour.

      An electric drive train is approx 90% efficient, so an electric T264 truck will use around 700KWh/hr. The batteries are 1.4-18MWH (I’ve read both numbers from different sources) and take 30 minutes to recharge, with Fortescue’s new 6MW charger.
      Given that these trucks use 700KWh/hr, and you never use 100% of lithium ion batteries (60-80% to extend life of battery), then these trucks have to spend 30 minutes of downtime every 2 – 2.5hrs. They are also planning for them to be autonomous (both diesel and electric).

      The outcome is you need more trucks. A diesel truck will run for 24hrs autonomously, continually before needing refueling, whereas an electric truck will have 8, 30 minute stops for recharging, a total of 4 hours downtime every day.
      So Fortescue need 16.66% more trucks, for the same work. Now imagine every mine in the world goes fully electric, we immediately need 16.66% more mining of the minerals for the construction of all the trucks, and a lot more batteries than is expected.

      At 8 charges/d these batteries have around 3,000 cycles/yr, all in the Pilbara heat where days are often over 40 degrees C (which means shortened battery life). These batteries will be losing capacity by their second year of use and need replacing shortly after 2 full years of use!! Will they last 6,000 cycles in high temperatures??

      BTW Fortescue has around 160MWh of solar installations currently running their daytime operations, with power supplied at night by diesel generators. Are these electric trucks going to be recharged at night by diesel generators as well??

      The devil is always in the details, not the marketing hype about how we are good corporate citizens…

        1. Autonomous operations slash labor, so fuel costs will be the largest cost for trucking, much larger than others such as capital. Diesel costs 3-4x as much as electricity after efficiency adjustments, so electric trucks will be much cheaper.

          The potential for reduced costs is very large, creating a very large incentive. As your article suggests, companies will make it work.

        2. Dennis how do you get around the problem of cycling the batteries too often, so needing new batteries every year or 2??
          In places like the Pilbara where the temperature is often above 40 degrees C, the life of batteries will be very short!

      2. I really don’t know anything about mines, but, do they really need batteries? couldn’t they just work like trams with overhead cables? after all, they are probably doing the same trajectories over and over, well that’s how I imagine it.

        1. Superkaos .. At an open cut mine you have both waste and ore, they go to different places. You also something called a ROM pad for the ore to be stored before it can be processed. Unfortunately the ore of everything we mine has varying grades, usually designated in blocks of different grades in the reserve model.
          A mine with an average grade ore of 1% might have anything from 0.1% to 4% in the actual reserve, but has to be blended to feed through the plant at a consistent 1% grade. On the ROM pad there are a whole lot of different piles of different grades so the FEL loading it into the crusher can take 1 bucket of pile A 2 buckets of pile B and 1 bucket of pile C in order one after the other so a consistent grade goes through the crushers, grinders and mill.

          The waste also goes into multiple different piles depending upon exactly what it is. Some could be good enough for gravel on tracks, while other waste might be very soft and can’t be stacked very high etc.

          In other words every single truckload could be going in a different direction, depending upon exactly the digger is digging, and the onsite geologist determines which pile every truck load goes to.

          Some mines have been using overhead cables just to go up out of the pit, but then need their own power to go to various places to dump their loads.
          To use those cables to both power the trucks and charge the batteries a little bit, might be possible, but the trucks then have to carry both the batteries and the charger as well, adding weight. Most of these large mining dump trucks are now diesel electric so the power lines out of the pits can be electrified.
          The next problem is that the road out of the pit keeps changing as the pit is expanded/deepened so there is extra cost in moving the poles and cables when the haul road out of the pit changes.

          Boliden is the World leader in trying to electrify everything at the Aitik mine because the electricity is very cheap Nuclear and hydro, it was costing them just 3.7c/KWh a few years ago. This video shows what they can and can’t do.

          https://streamio.com/api/v1/videos/5d91d3c96f8d8dfdc4000002/public_show?link=true&player_id=59eed3d56f8d8d20b5000001

          Mining is a highly complex system made up of many subsystems that all need to work in a coordinated fashion, to get the minerals we use for everything. The grades of ore on average are getting lower, while the energy cost for extraction of each tonne of metal is constantly growing.

          We will never run out of any mineral or metal resource, we will not have enough energy to collect the minerals and metals in the quantities needed..

          BTW the Fortescue mines run off diesel generators at night, so their entire battery operated trucks will be charging off diesel generators at night, or they buy a few GWh of batteries so they can collect solar energy during the day, then charge the trucks at night from batteries with efficiency losses at every stage. I’ll bet they keep the diesel generators running at night, which to charge electric batteries anyway is pretty inefficient.

          1. Thanks for the good explanation, Hideaway, and the very interesting video.

        1. Are you going to believe the zero degradation batteries story?? So no entropy, as in a first for the universe?? If so I have a bridge on Jupiter you might be interested in buying…

          Also notice the first story of fast charging, but no mention of cycle life..
          FYI they are working on fast charging and longer life spans on some batteries that are far more expensive with exotic metals like Niobium included in anodes and cathodes. there are not a lot of Niobium mines around..

          1. The fact that CATL can even dare to make these claims tells me that the technology is advancing rapidly, whether the claims are true or not. A couple years ago the charge rates, cycle life and cost were way different than they are now. Are you aware that CATL reduced their battery prices by 50% this year alone?

          2. The second law of thermodynamics applies to closed systems ( no mass or energy in or out of the system) a battery is not a closed system when it is plugged in to recharge,

            1. Absolutely.

              Also, thermodynamics suggests that efficiency or reliability can’t be 100%, but the entropy police won’t pull you over for 99.999%. aka six sigma.

            2. Dennis,

              The second law applies to both open and closed systems. In a closed system the entropy is transferred as heat.

            3. Carnot,

              Are you confusing the isolated system with a closed system? The transfer of energy across the boundry of closed system is allowed, I am fairly sure the second law applies to isolated systems, but not to closed systems.

            4. Dennis,

              Just a quick remark. The definition of a closed system is a bit of a grey area. Some textbooks say a closed system is one where energy can be transferred but not mass. Other textbooks say neither energy or mass can enter the system.

              In my postgrad physics courses we strictly adhered to the definition of a closed system being one in which energy can be transferred but not mass, hence the earth by in large was considered a closed system. The universe an isolated system.

              But i have also seen online university notes which consider the earth an open system. I think they define an open system is the only system were energy OR mass can be transferred.

            5. IM,

              Clearly, it’s a question of precision. The Earth has a very tiny amount of mass transfer: helium leaves, meteors arrive, etc. Closed…open…not a big difference.

              OTOH, the sun drops roughly 130,000 terawatts on the Earth continuously 24×7, and that’s an enormous amount of energy being transferred. So Earth is clearly not isolated.

              So the 2nd law is, in this context, not really applicable: there’s no danger of the Earth “running down” any time in the next few million years, and neither do we need conversion efficiencies, or reliability, to be absolutely 100%.

          3. The main conversation here is about mines and mining, plus the fast degradation of batteries in hot climates, yet the 3 of you want to only discuss some new tech, instead of looking at the big picture.

            These fancy new batteries that Nick is trying to claim in a round about way are 99.999% (something)… Tell us all how many cycles the new CATL batteries will last at 45-50 degrees celsius?

            You will find in the fine print of these batteries caveats of temperatures for both charging and discharging, plus rates of charge and discharge to meet the parameters often stated, with real life performance way below claimed.

            You guys envisage a world where there has been massive new mining to build all the different techs that will ‘save us’ (as in modern technology), yet it’s all happening only with more fossil fuel use, as we use fossil fuels to build every aspect of this modern world you envisage.

            Twiggy is not going to build his clean green mines without fossil fuels used at every stage to build it, as that’s how any of it is built cheaply!! Every cheaper solar panel is only made possible by cheap aluminium coming from new coal powered smelters in Indonesia, or more flat glass with the use of more natural gas, and coke used to make the silicon wafers, plus cheap plastic and polymers for backings and glue.

            No-one anywhere is setting up new factories to make any of these products without the extreme use of fossil fuels. There is no transition, we keep using greater quantities of fossil fuels to build any of it, yet you want to concentrate on the exotic new tech instead of reality of what’s actually happening…

            More mines means more destruction of the natural world, more industry, building all the new short lived toys, means more burning of fossil fuels making the climate far worse off. It’s the hunt for BAU by a different means that is accelerating the damage to the natural world, and hence our home.

            None of our modernity is close to sustainable, nor will it ever be as entropy and dissipation guarantee we need to mine lower and lower grades of ores, meaning we need exponential energy use to just keep what we have going, which means it’s all impossible in the very short term.

            1. how many cycles the new CATL batteries will last at 45-50 degrees celsius?
              You will find in the fine print of these batteries caveats of temperatures for both charging and discharging,

              That’s an important consideration for laptop batteries and very small EVs, ranging in size up to the Nissan Leaf. Are you familiar with Battery Management Systems? In most electric vehicles (and this certainly includes large mining trucks) a BMS maintains temperatures within the battery specs.
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_management_system

              —————————–

              As for the rest of your arguments, they appear to be unrealistic handwaving.
              Please present quantitative evidence for them, including written sources with page numbers. Please, no videos, and articles from popular journalism is unlikely to be helpful. Trade journals can occasionally be helpful. Peer reviewed is much more likely to be convincing.

            2. Good grief Nick, …. “BMS maintains temperatures within the battery specs.”

              You have absolutely no idea about this stuff do you?? BMS, in batteries turn the battery off automatically if the temperature rises too much, that’s it. So imagine your 200T dump truck stuck in the middle of the haul road, stopping all other dump trucks moving because the BMS tripped.

              Newer better batteries, for both storage and EVs have temperature sensors connected to the BMS, which trip the BMS to turn off the battery in the event of a temperature getting too high, that’s it, there is no ‘management’ of the temperatures at all. It’s a safety feature to stop batteries from catching on fire due to thermal runaway.

              If you knew anything about any of the technology you are in love with it would be helpful. None of it is sustainable in the slightest, not is there any evidence it can be sustainable, as in built without fossil fuels.

              I’ll bet you cannot point to a single factory that produces Solar panels, Wind Turbines, or Batteries that doesn’t use any fossil fuels in the production of whatever. Fossil fuels are limited and will decline in use because of depletion, so why isn’t anyone anywhere making the replacements for them without using them??

              The answer to the rhetorical question above is simple, because it’s not physically possible, all renewables are just a derivative of fossil fuels and only possible while we continue to use fossil fuels.

            3. “ BMS, in batteries turn the battery off automatically if the temperature rises too much, that’s it. ”

              Oh, my. I’m curious who told you that. Do you have a source?

              Because it’s really really not true. Battery management systems actively cool down the battery pack. Just like ICE engines which, of course, would massively overheat without cooling systems.

              “ Cooling is usually achieved by two methods, passive or active, and both techniques may be employed. Passive cooling relies on movement of air flow to cool the battery. In the case of an electric vehicle, this implies that it is simply moving down the road. However, it may be more sophisticated than it appears, as air speed sensors could be integrated to strategically auto-adjust deflective air dams to maximize air flow. Implementation of an active temperature-controlled fan can help at low speeds or when the vehicle has stopped, but all this can do is merely equalize the pack with the surrounding ambient temperature. In the event of a scorching hot day, this could increase the initial pack temperature.

              Thermal hydraulic active cooling can be designed as a complementary system, and typically utilizes ethylene-glycol coolant with a specified mixture ratio, circulated via an electric motor-driven pump through pipes/hoses, distribution manifolds, a cross-flow heat exchanger (radiator), and cooling plate resident against the battery pack assembly. A BMS monitors the temperatures across the pack, and open and closes various valves to maintain the temperature of the overall battery within a narrow temperature range to ensure optimal battery performance.‘

              https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-a-battery-management-system.html

            4. The BMS that is bought to build or within an existing off the shelf battery, is the electronic device I explained above, yes it also manages the rates of charging batteries and helps balance the voltage level across cells.

              I have BMS’s in my own lithium iron phosphate batteries as part of 2 separate systems For our property.

              None of these comes with active temperature control, which you are now alluding to. Active temperature control comes at much greater cost, plus greater energy usage for the active cooling to operate. I know of people that have an air conditioner in the battery room to keep them cool. This is active cooling…

              The link you gave, is just for electronic control of of the battery, a standard BMS that does not do any type of active cooling, for when the temperatures are outside the goldilocks range.
              From your (new) document ….. “Thermal hydraulic active cooling can be designed as a complementary system, and typically utilizes ethylene-glycol coolant with a specified mixture ratio, circulated via an electric motor-driven pump through pipes/hoses, distribution manifolds, a cross-flow heat exchanger (radiator), and cooling plate resident against the battery pack assembly. A BMS monitors the temperatures across the pack, and open and closes various valves to maintain the temperature of the overall battery within a narrow temperature range to ensure optimal battery performance.”

              “can be designed as a complimentary system”, which clearly means it is an EXTRA expense and draw on power. When operating electric dump trucks in 40-50 degrees C temperatures, which will reduce the power available to haul the iron ore, and shorten the battery life by guaranteeing more charge/discharge cycles per year…

              So now you need fancy coolants and extra piping and weight in the truck for the battery cooling system, plus extra power draw on the batteries to power the cooling, meaning more electricity has to be generated to power it all, making the whole lot less efficient.

              I’m still waiting to see a single aluminium smelter anywhere in the world, set up running off just solar, wind and batteries as would happen if renewables really were cheaper than coal fired power, but the silence on this is deafening…

              I’m not saying coal is ‘good’, it’s not, but it is what we built our current system with, cheap coal coming from pits right next to the power plant. It’ also what the Indonesians are currently building to produce cheap Aluminium.

              We only get renewables as cheap as they are, providing we build them all with fossil fuels, with zero evidence of anything different being actually built.
              BTW the iron ore from Twiggy’s mines is of lower grade taking more coking coal to produce the same tonnes of steel as high grade iron ore, so his end product is still very bad for the environment…

            5. Well, I answered your question: electric vehicles larger and more expensive than a Leaf come with temp management, including cooling.

              The rest of your argument is the usual non-quantitative, un-referenced hand waving, which mostly has been addressed elsewhere.

              Good night.

  3. Fertility crisis
    Jamaica facing economic threat due to falling replacement-population level

    Jamaica is now in the throes of a “crisis”, with its total fertility rate falling below replacement-population level, a matter that has grave implications for the country’s economy, experts in the policy, medical, and academic fields are warning.

    Jamaica, with a population of roughly three million, for the first time in December 2023 recorded a fertility rate of 1.9, falling below the internationally accepted 2.1 fertility rate required for maintaining the population at replacement level.

    This has triggered concerns for its strategic and development outlook as the country hastens to determine the resources and policies required to maintain a sustainable population.

    Where some people see a crisis, I see a blessing in disguise!

  5. Looks like global emissions have peaked last year or this year. This was a pleasant surprise for me. Also, 30% of the global electricity now comes from renewables China continues to astonish. They added more solar last year than US over the last 50 years. This year China will add even more.
    So the cornucopians were right after all. Not only is peak oil irrelevant but even global warming will not end human civilization.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-21/major-climate-agencies-call-global-emissions-peak/104016030

    1. It will be great news if that is true, although I suspect it is premature. I have been expecting Peak Global co2 Emission Day to come in about ten from now. I’d like to be wrong.
      Remember CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere will continue for probably something like 100 years after peak, with roughly 1/3rd more fossil fuel to be burnt.

  7. Greenest Cities in America Least Green Cities in America
    1. San Diego, CA 91. Louisville, KY
    2. Washington, DC 92. Detroit, MI
    3. Honolulu, HI 93. Newark, NJ
    4. San Francisco, CA 94. Chandler, AZ
    5. San Jose, CA 95. Gilbert, AZ
    6. Seattle, WA 96. Baton Rouge, LA
    7. Oakland, CA 97. Mesa, AZ
    8. Portland, OR 98. Houston, TX
    9. Fremont, CA 99. Hialeah, FL
    10. Irvine, CA 100. Glendale, AZ

  8. Nick G
    I guess like a few others here you live in a science fantasy world. If everything you said were true we would have perpetual motion machines. Have you ever thought of attaching a wind mill to the top of your car to power it? Keep in mind it only works when you travel against the prevailing winds and are going down hill.

    1. A straw man argument is a logical fallacy that involves misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack. The arguer will then refute this distorted version of the argument, instead of addressing the actual argument.

      To avoid straw man fallacies, you can:

      Be honest and respectful in your reasoning and communication
      Listen carefully to your opponent’s argument
      Try to understand their perspective and assumptions

    2. JT

      I think you nailed it.

      Here is another dose of reality for the fantasy land proponents who believe in unreliables. I read all sorts of websites to get a balanced view. Sometimes the truth hurts. Try this:

      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/01/floating-wind-farm-lost-30m-last-year/

      And especially for OFM this:

      https://www.eugyppius.com/p/how-schleswig-holstein-sold-their.

      So what do we have. A floating wind farm that costs a fortune and an electric ferry. Even better is the Equinor Hywind floating wind farm that is now having all the turbines moved to Norway for extensive repairs- knackered after only 5 years. You have got to read both stories and then you will understand that this can only be possible because we are governed by clueless cretins. But what really bothers me is that many in academia are just as culpable because they cannot see the wood from the trees, and only encourage nonsense like this.

      It is our money that is being pissed away

      1. Meanwhile, by 2050 in Europe wind energy will be providing roughly 50% of the electricity supply.
        You make use of what resources you have. Same as ever.

        1. You might be correct about this, but for entirely the wrong reasons. Perhaps the few remaining solar panels provide the other 50% of electricity…

      2. “It is our money that is being pissed away”

        The total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Helene in the United States is estimated to be between $95 billion and $110 billion. This includes an estimated $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

        Helene is the eighth Category 4 or 5 Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the US in the last eight years. That’s as many of these intense hurricanes as hit the US in the prior 57 years.

        Communities across the southeast US are reeling from the impacts of Hurricane Helene, which may be one of the country’s most devastating disasters on record.

        Donald Trump has sparked controversy for declaring that climate change is “one of the great scams” after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction, killing more than 100 people, across the southeast US.

        A new report from the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress released during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting indicates that if left unchecked climate change could cost the global economy US$178 trillion over the next 50 years.

      3. Carnot
        I agree and am surprised how dumb really smart people can be. But they’re a product of the system and have been taught to believe what they were taught in school. The new censorship initiative are the last ditch political effort to prevent anyone from finding out what they learned was all wrong. True journalism has been criminalized. But the first casualty in war is truth. The war this time will be controlling the ever shrinking global resources. The US persistence in provoking Russia is a last ditch effort to break the federation so as to free its resources for western exploitation. Just like what it did to Iraq who didn’t play nice by not developing its oil reserves quickly enough and started selling its oil in Euros. Libya made the same mistake and developed a gold backed currency that challenged French Mark.
        All wars are resource wars including the one that is starting now. However things have changed immensely since WWII the US is no longer resource rich nor independent from the global system to support its military or infrastructure as can be seen in North Caroline.
        Russia is in a position of strength along with its allies China North Korea and Iran. We will likely see NATO neutralized if things heat up anymore. And likely will.

        1. JT says- “The US persistence in provoking Russia is a last ditch effort to break the federation so as to free its resources for western exploitation”

          “On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which started in 2014. The invasion, the largest conflict in Europe since World War II,[13][14][15] has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. As of 2024, Russian troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

          In late 2021, Russia massed troops near Ukraine’s borders and issued demands including a ban on Ukraine ever joining the NATO military alliance. After repeatedly denying having plans to invade or attack Ukraine, on 24 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation”, stating that it was to support the Russian-backed breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose paramilitary forces had been fighting Ukraine in the Donbas conflict since 2014. Putin espoused irredentist views challenging Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state, falsely claimed that Ukraine was governed by neo-Nazis persecuting the Russian minority, and said that Russia’s goal was to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine. Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched on a northern front from Belarus towards the capital Kyiv, a southern front from Crimea, and an eastern front from the Donbas and towards Kharkiv. Ukraine enacted martial law, ordered a general mobilisation and severed diplomatic relations with Russia.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

          JT says- “the first casualty in war is truth”

          “Infamous Russian Troll Farm Appears to Be Source of Anti-Ukraine Propaganda

          The Justice Department has announced the seizure of two domain names as well as nearly 1,000 social media accounts used by Russian actors to create and spread disinformation in the United States.

          US agencies including the FBI and Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), alongside agencies in Canada and the Netherlands, released a joint advisory detailing the influence operation and the technology used, revealing an GenAI-enhanced, social media-focused bot farm used to support Russian government objectives.

          According the advisory, affiliates of Russia Today, a Russian state-sponsored media organization, used Meliorator, an AI-enhanced software package, to create online personas reflecting varying people of different nationalities to post disinformation regarding countries that include the US, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands.

          Meliorator is capable of creating authentic-looking social media profiles, mimicking realistic social media content, mirroring disinformation of other bots, automatically perpetuating false narratives, and formulating messages based on the type of bot using it. The authoring agencies are urging social media companies to identify this kind of troll activity to help reduce the volume of Russia’s disinformation campaigns.”

          https://www.darkreading.com/cloud-security/feds-uncover-genai-enabled-russian-troll-farm

          1. Hmm. Carnot says sometimes you learn things in unlikely places, and perhaps he’s right. I think I learned something from the Russian propaganda that JT has been channeling:

            Russia is desperate to believe that their commodity resources and their extraction economy gives them something that they can rely on for the long term, and that it gives them an edge in geopolitics!

            I suppose it’s not a surprise: it’s clear that Russia has no plan to diversify, and they clearly get more aggressive when oil prices rise.

            But still. KSA has learned that they can’t rely on oil forever. China is dumping it as quickly as possible. But Russia? They’re going to milk that cow just as long as they can, right into the dustbin of history.

            Wow.

        2. JT
          Russia is in a position of strength along with its allies China North Korea and Iran.

          Your Putin is showing.

          1. Try this:
            Say the names of all those countries, then with an evil grin say “The axis of evil”
            The audience will crack up every time. More likely “the axis of incompetence”.

            1. How did a thread on the sci fi fantasy of perpetual motion machines devolve into Russia discussions?? Talk about deflection from the real issues.

              Everything we build suffers from entropy, no exceptions (except in sci-fi fantasy world), which means it all needs to be replaced over time. Because our modern civilization is spread out all over the world, we get dissipation of the prior mined resources along with entropy. We need to continually mine lower grade ores on average to replace what’s lost to entropy and dissipation. This means an increasing quantity of energy needed to mine these lower grades for the same quantity. This is backed up by plenty of research on the issue (Calvo, Mudd et al).

              There is no long term solution to this problem of trying to maintain the existing system of civilization (even without growth!!). Total energy used in our civilization continues to rise, to the detriment of the remaining natural world as clearly shown by temperature rise, species extinctions, micro-plastic poisoning (endocrine disruptors), etc.

              Everything we build totally relies upon fossil fuels in the modern world, but they will be leaving us soon, either by choice or just depletion. If we burn more, we damage the planet more. If we mine more we damage the natural living world more.

              There is no way out of our predicament, as 8B humans are way too many, by orders of magnitude and just maintenance of this huge overpopulation, with only 15% or thereabouts enjoying full modernity, is vastly destructive of all natural systems that we totally rely upon.

  9. Why GDP doesn’t matter

    “The real purpose of the economy isn’t to move money around, but to deliver material products and services to society. This can’t be accomplished through financial engineering, but depends on our ability to use primary energy to convert raw materials into products, and into those physical artefacts without which no service can be provided.

    This is a dual equation in which the productive process of resource conversion has a parallel and inseparable dissipative process whereby energy is converted from a dense to a diffuse state. If, by using less-dense energy inputs, we truncate the dissipative process, we simultaneously shorten the productive process, resulting in a smaller economy.

    And entropy does

    https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/

  10. From the Washington Post, (behind a pay wall.)

    The staggering reach of Trump’s misinformation — not just on Haitian migrants

    A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Excluding those who are “not sure,” twice as many say it’s at least “probably true” as say it’s at least “probably false.”

    43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth” — another claim Trump referenced at last week’s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)

    28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations,” something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.

    81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)

    Are people really that stupid? Just how dumb does a person have to be to believe that schools have an operating room, staffed with doctors and nurses, that give sex change operations to students during the school day? 28 percent of Trump supporters actually believe that. That would be perhaps 20 million people or more. It boggles the mind.

    1. Maybe, but the mainstream media constantly lies to Americans about everything, so they turn to something else.

      It’s all lies, Ron. You can’t in good faith tell me the major news networks, newspapers etc. tell Americans the truth.

      I like you but you’re living in the past. Your “good ole” America doesn’t exist anymore.

      1. Yeah SG999, you probably believe that those sex change operations are actually happening in thousands of American high schools. Only a Trumpite could believe such total bullshit. Thang God, only a tiny minority of the American public are so fucking stupid.

        Have a nice life. Bye now.

        Ron

      2. Nowadays, just saying “mainstream media” makes everything you say suspect. One has to wonder if any Trump supporters have ever looked for information out of that oh-so-comfortable bubble.

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